Operating systems, transit and cultural influences | Hacker News Reader

Operating systems, transit and cultural influences

bentsukun.ch

50 pointsedward23 comments

Tracking flights works better than tracking trains mainly because airlines have global technical standards (coordinated through global bodies like IATA) and rail operators don't. Most of the technical capability to track any flight, anywhere in the world, was built by the airline industry for its own needs and integrated into consumer technology later; I don't think the cultural bias of OS vendors had much to do with it.

Rail operators are also really good at tracking their trains. There are some issues because a) they started much earlier and have longer upgrade cycles, so in some places the tech is ancient; and b) there's less pressure to interoperate.

That said, there is good data with standard APIs in some places, for example across most of the European rail network. I find it very plausible that a similarly funded company from Switzerland or Estonia would add rail information before they add flight information, and if they had come out with the equivalent of Apple/Google Wallet they might have started out with cooperation with rail services to store your rail ticket in your phone.

The Swiss SBB has a public API for all trains across the European continent. Multiple websites making use of it have been featured on this very website.

There is little excuse. There is, though, quite some lack of curiosity from young American males to anything outside their own little lives

Right, so that's one transit company in one country. The whole point is that global flight tracking data is standardised and easily machine-parsable.

European continent has more than 20 countries not one.

No, SBB has the unifying database for all trains across all of Europe. The job is already done.

What does SBB or trainline.eu do that Google or Apple can't do?

Or do you think Europe is one country?

I've had success using the Transit app, which tracks trains and busses, even in the small US city I live in.

And I'm certain there are at least a few people who are not "young American males" working for the companies that are mentioned in the article.

> There is, though, quite some lack of curiosity from young American males to anything outside their own little lives

That's false, bigoted, and has no place in this conversation.

It's just true. Remember when Apple launched HealthKit with alcohol tracking and no period tracking? Tell me how that release could pass months of development and management without anyone thinking about it once.

https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/25/6844021/apple-promised-an...

Are you seriously suggesting that the most probable reason for not implementing a feature is bigotry? This is not Verge, this is HN. We're not journalists, we actually work in this industry.

"We judge ourselves to be good people who are not wrong whatsoever. Trust us, we know."

When Apple did release period tracking it was way more feature rich than alcohol tracking. It was backed by research into the human body. It uses multiple data points to estimate a complex process that occurs in the human body, and present actionable information to the user. It’s not just a record book.

Alcohol tracking is a pretty view over a logbook. Date time quantity and that’s it.

Oh and since I know someone from the team that did this, I can guarantee you there’s at least one non “American male” that implemented it.

Putting out a new app with initial features that are relevant to people of either sex like blood alcohol content or sodium intake vs features that are only relevant to half the population doesn't seem terrible to me. How many male exclusive metrics did it roll out with on day one?

This is a disgusting comment.

This is, alas, something seen again and again. The best and the brightest, working for a company that prides itself on user experience, create an health app and what does it track at lauch? Alcohol, not periods.

https://www.theverge.com/2014/9/25/6844021/apple-promised-an...

Tell me how this isn't a clear proof of a whole culture of navel-gazing, so strong it can defeat a prime company's culture of user experience, hardcore recrutment and management.

I don't think the API does what you think. The realtime data just does not exist for "all trains across the European continent".

These websites do not exist, then

https://opendata.stackexchange.com/questions/9547/is-there-a...

Lists and maps exist, but that doesn't mean they cover every country and train.

Also, GTFS is schedule data, not realtime data. When you click a train on such a service's map, it may or may not make it clear whether the shown location is based on the interpolation of some schedule data, whether the interpolation has been adjusted by some updated data (cancellations, delays), or whether it's actually based on realtime location data.

There are apps what allow you to monitor transit buses in the real time. They aren't built on 'bus industry' platform or whatever.

I think one part of this is that flying is a much bigger deal than other modes of transport. Many people hate flying and don't do it super often, so many of these features are designed to make the experience a bit easier.

People who use public transit probably use it semi-regularly and thus know where to go for the necessary information.

In summary, flights are done less often, making people less likely to have well established workflows. Public transit is done more frequently, so anyone who uses it probably already has some way to access the information that they need.

This is about longer distance trains not local public transit. That is trips between NYC and Chicago, which is something you can take via train but not a trip anyone would take very often.

The problem with flying isn't so much that people hate it - some like it. However no matter how much you love flying, it is always at least 4 hours of your day to fly anywhere: you have to get to the airport, spend an hour in the airport, then you fly, which for a very short flight might be an hour, then you have to get out of the far airport to where you are going. That is the best case, often it is longer flights and a transfer in some other airport. If the US had a great intercity train system there are many trips that could be faster on trains - but we don't have a great system.

Yah, well...

I'd say a phone from Huawai/HTC, and one of the chinese hyperapps which do everything in their ecosystem would be the 'better' option for that use-case.

If 'we' hadn't booted them out. And if their 'ecosystem' would be interested in interfacing with 'our' services.

That would be so metropian. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropia_(film) )

"This made me realize how much cultural influence bleeds into the features that they provide." Every technology embeds ideas of the culture in which it was developed. For me the posts example is a mild classism.

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