British woman undertakes trip from London to Edinburgh using only £2 local buses
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I thought the point of contactless payments, like with Apple Pay, was that there are fairly low per-transaction spend limits because it's "supposed" to be used for all the little purchases you make throughout the day.
But if there are also strict transaction volume limits, what the heck is the point? "Yeah, you can use this payment method for some of your small purchases during the day, but you still have to carry cash for the rest."
Like, WTF?
Or you could just stick with cash, and not allow a 3rd party to decide how often you can spend your money, or who you can spend it with. Or keep track of who you spend it with (and presumably sell that data to advertisers^W"partners", like you agreed they could.)
In this case it's pretty clearly uncharacteristic behaviour by any measure, including the geographical movement between transactions.
Every time I read about cases like this, my mind repeats the phrase that is a title of a niche (but prophetic) song I've heard long time ago: random is resistance.
Now that I got to listen to it again, I can recommend everyone to here to check it out. The lyrics are pretty much an artistic interpretation of any of the almost daily HN threads on surveillance and digital dystopia.
It’s very common for people in the U.K. to use a debit card for all transactions because the banking system is so robust (thus we don’t need to rely on getting a credit card statement and then marking off legitimate spend, as seems to be the norm in the US).
So while the declined transaction might seem archaic on the surface, it’s actually part of a greater whole.
Interestingly there seems to be no consistent way in how device payments are treated. For example, some card readers apply the £100 contactless limit for Apple/Google Pay while many are unlimited.
I always assumed that the verification required for device payments made them “as good as” Chip and PIN—for example I never have to do additional verification for purchases using Apple Pay on the web, regardless of the amount.
Just goes to show how poorly thought out transit is in North America.
According to rome2rio.com, you can take a train from Albany, NY to Buffalo, NY. But to get from Albany to Wellsville, NY, you'd have to take a train to Buffalo, connecting service to Mt. Morris, and then still drive a car an hour and a half to get to Wellsville.
To get from Albany to where I live in NY, I would have to take three once-a-day regional buses, and still drive a car 30 minutes.
I think the challenge for a "local-only" expedition is where one county ends and the other begins, and the local bus service may not necessarily serve a convenient point to transfer in-between.
From a US/Canadian perspective, that is incredible value. A one-way bus trip between Vancouver and Seattle costs CAD 26, which is just about the same price in pounds as the LON-EDI trip, but the distance is less than half.
A roughly equivalent bus trip for me would be Vancouver to Calgary, for which the bus ticket costs $170 / £105.
In this case, there are trains from Edinburgh to London at least twice an hour through the day, taking half the time and with much more legroom, better seats, a fairly spacious toilet, probably someone selling drinks and snacks from a trolley or bar counter, tables between seats, no road noise or pollution (it's electric), and a view.
From memory.
So it all happened in a tea break.
It's a true story, and if I remember I might even be able to get Tom to confirm it. But even true stories need to be told well, and your observation makes it better.
Thank you.
https://twitter.com/politic_animal/status/142843808187143373...
Albeit it is "local" only between Oulu and Kilpisjärvi as it stops everywhere and delivers mail.
Achually the Baja bus from Tijuana to Cabo is very much the same experience and and also "local" in same sense.