Business Travelers Want to Be Left to Their Own Devices | Hacker News Reader

Business Travelers Want to Be Left to Their Own Devices

nytimes.com

21 pointsromefort40 comments

"But technology in the future will allow them to see travelers’ positions — through the GPS device on their phones — to track their movements. If a passenger is late for a flight, for instance, an airline might decide to rebook the passenger on the next flight automatically. The car rental service or taxi service would know of the delay, and the hotel might be notified of a late arrival — all seamlessly."

That's Just Creepy.

This just clinched my decision to leave my iPhone powered off unless I am specifically expecting an _important_ call, or I intend to make a call myself.

Having just had a big overseas trip full of delays and unplanned hotel stays, this can't come soon enough.

Everything is computerized already anyway, may as well improve the quality of data the software has to make the decision.

But the scenario doesn't even make sense. The airlines already have the ability to rebook the passenger on the next flight automatically. Why don't they do so? (They probably do for the highest level passengers.)

Granted, they don't currently know where the passenger is. But they don't need to. Right now they can send an SMS noting that the passenger hasn't arrived and asking if they want to be rebooked on the next flight ... or the one after .. or for the next day. (Though this assumes the passenger hasn't checked in online first.)

Because the airline company doesn't know the reason for the delay, or if it will be resolved by the time of the next flight. How long do they continue to rebook?

Then there's also the chance of false positives. Does "late" mean that the gate is closing and it's physically impossible for the passenger to arrive? Or is it predictive? If predictive, and I accidentally leave my phone at home, or the battery is dead, do I get bumped because the airline was unable to get accurate tracking information about me?

I once missed a flight because when I got up to the airport I realized I had left something important at home. (This was a frequent flier ticket and rebooking was free, so I didn't end up paying for a ticket change fee.) Consider a similar scenario for the future. I get to the airport parking lot, then realize that I left my baggage at home, so turn around to fetch it. Does the software assume that I'm at the airport and therefore not late? Or does it determine that I will be delayed? When does it make the assumption? Or should it assume I left my phone in the car by accident and my lift is driving away with it? How do I, as a passenger, know that I've passed some decision making boundary where I must now actively change my booking? Is it the airport parking lot? The entrance to the terminal? Security? The gate?

Same with "The car rental service or taxi service would know of the delay, and the hotel might be notified of a late arrival — all seamlessly."

The airlines already know if someone is 1) on a flight, and 2) delayed. They can offer this service right now, even if the passenger carries no electronic devices at all.

I've no qualms with the point that it's all too manual and expensive to do now. My qualm is with the hypothesis that location tracking devices are an important and useful prerequisite to enable that change.

Won't turning location off work? Genuinely curious.

That plus completely removing the battery.

They can still geolocate my IP address.

I was appalled a few months ago, to find that even though I disabled location services, when I looked up Portland in Google Maps, then zoomed in, there was a "stickpin" in the map that was located about twenty feet from where I was.

While I haven't had the headspace to deal with it yet, I'm getting ready to tunnel all of my web and dns through a Xen VM that I have in The Netherlands. That won't stop them from geolocating my IP, but it will lead them to believe I hang out in hash bars, as well as ice skate on canals during the winter.

GeoIP isn't too accurate, really. You were probably near the center of a city. (GeoIP should not tell anyone more than a ZIP code can, unless in an area with very high population density.) If people decide to track you it is much easier and more accurate to do it over actual phone networks.

I was in a loosely populated suburb.

Either my wireless access point had a static IP, or if dynamic, it had not changed since the last time google's van full of spy electronics drove by.

They dont need to drive past any more - phones with GPS are constantly mapping wifi locations and adjusting the map.

The Google WiFi mapping project would get the SSID, but not the IP address.

If someone connected from that WiFi connection point with location services enabled then that would allow the two to be correlated.

While I keep location services disabled, I expect that my housemate at the time had them enabled.

She spent much of her day online; that would enable Google and friends to keep up to date with our access point's dynamic IP.

Oh boy, let's see, there's

    * ip address
    * utdoa, e-cid, et al (trilaterated on a number of cell towers)
    * cgi and cgi-ta (from the one cell tower are you talking to)
    * bluetooth
    * wifi of course (skyhook etc)
    * gps
    * dtdoa from TV/radio reception (a number of phones have receivers; look for the Rosum TV patents) 
    * ambient magnetic field mapping (not making this up; it's pretty accurate)

The first five methods require no phone participation other than to have that radio turned on. The others need software in the phone to do the locating.

A foil bag is probably the best idea if you're seriously off grid.

Additionally, carrier-based location services don't rely on any IP or app based functionality on your phone at all. Your location is known merely by the fact you use the network.

I'm not at all convinced this is a huge problem. But then, I like the functionality trade-off I get from letting services know my location.

"I like the functionality..."

I have quite a serious mental illness, one common symptom of which is paranoia.

That's why I pay cash for everything, as well as - after a great deal of consideration - why I won't ever drive a car ever again. Not so much the car, but its license plate.

This week, starbucks had a half-off offer for frappucinos. I really like frappucinos, but their advertisement led me to believe that I had to purchase with a registered starbucks card. I sadly ordered pike's place instead.

But then I had a closer look at their offer, to realize that while they were promoting the starbucks card, it wasn't specifically required. I have since paid cash for three frappucinos.

Sometimes a grocery store cashier will ask me whether I have one of their loyalty cards. I tell them that I don't. "Would you like one?" "No. Do you know who Edward Snowden is? That's why I don't use loyalty cards."

Quite commonly, they don't know who Snowden is. A few times, I could tell by the looks on their faces, that they were considering calling the cops, to have me tossed into a nuthouse.

If I had little or no understanding of the innards of my iphone, it wouldn't get to me, but I am an iOS developer.

After reading the linked article, for me to spend much time walking around with my iPhone powered on, really would lead to my spending some time in a psychiatric hospital.

I haven't actually looked into it, but assertively conjecture that hospitalizations for paranoia have substantially increased since Eddie skipped off with those half-dozen NSA notebooks.

Whoa, in essence there is no practical way to be untracked.

It just occurred to me that quite commonly, one must present a debit or credit card when checking into a hotel.

I don't see a way to get one, that doesn't have my name imprinted on it.

Maybe I could poison their well, by purchasing a whole bunch of prepaid debit cards. One must supply a street address to obtain an imprinted card; perhaps I could get some mailboxes at a whole bunch of different UPS stores.

20 feet precision with geolocation disabled? That's disconcerting...

I just realized that it was the Mac OS X Maps application, not google maps.

I've had an airline (Delta) do this, but only if both legs were on the same airline. Especially in international travel, I'd really appreciate some automation with hotels & cars.

Why have an iPhone at all then?

I'm writing an app.

Much of what smartphones do today, they didn't do when I took up mobile development. I can defeat Google Analytics by blackholing its server with my hosts file, but that kind of thing is hard to do with mobile analytics.

A while back I attended a talk on mobile analytics in Portland. One of the speakers displayed a photo of her company's data center, then went on to point out that their SDK was free of monetary charge to mobile developers.

It costs a lot of money to outfit and operate a data center, yet their SDK is free?

Someone has to be coughing up a lot of money for that information.

I don't want to give them mine.

Guess it would be ok if you have control and can turn it on and off and choose who's tracking you. The controls on the iPhone are kind of hazy at the moment.

I would love this!

But since airlines currently have trouble with basic things like crediting my miles correctly, sending me texts about delayed flights and letting me book flights without repeatedly logging me out; I'm not holding my breath.

These kinds of services are only useful of they work perfectly every time. A glitchy service would be worse than not having it at all.

A good start would be to send an electronic ticket that Mom's iMac can successfully download over her Earthlink dialup.

What she gets is a few megabytes of mind-boggling HTML, CSS and Javascript, all so she can print a hardcopy with an eight-character booking number.

Isn't this solved by mobile devices and LTE? You can just show them a QR code that's emailed to your phone, both at the TSA checkpoint and at the terminal. I never print my ticket out anymore (and don't have a printer to do so).

My mother is quite happy with her $35.00 Walmart pay-as-you go phone.

For quite a long time I struggled to convince her to learn how to use its contacts list, but always she refused.

For years, she had the idea that leaving her phone powered off would save her money. She finally relented when I pointed out to her that I might need to reach her in an emergency.

My aunt - her identical twin sister - absolutely adores me, just loves to see me in person, but cannot bear to speak to me on the phone for longer than just one or two minutes. This because she has the idea that long distance service is exhorbitantly expensive.

I can still remember when we lived in Italy, and Mom needed to call her sister, who was coming to visit. We all got up real early in the morning. Mom requested a call to the US from the International Operator, then Mom, my own sister and I took turns waiting by the phone, so we could pick it up right away when the International Operator called us back with an available line.

I had similar issue where my grandmother would not talk more than one minute when I'm calling from abroad. Trick that worked on her was telling her that I have "free minutes" so she does not need to worry about the cost.

My mother knows what VoIP is; I expect that's because she is quite thrifty. Yet I cannot convince her to actually avail herself of it.

That's a big assumption though, what if you left your phone at home or didn't update when you got a new phone.

what if a pickpocket snatched his phone at the airport?

"But I have to get on this flight! I have a three o'clock on Sand Hill Road today, to close my Series B!"

"I'm sorry, sir, but according to my computer, you're thirty miles from here, driving East on Interstate 80."

The real threat is not Artificial Intelligence but Artificial Stupidity.

Seriously.

Maybe instead of going all big brother on the customer (and profiting off of my movements somehow) they should equip the employees with smartphones and apps that let them be more effective. Perhaps then we'd have less delays.

American Airlines - IIRC - tried that, but a bunch of flights were delayed when their pilots' iPads dropped dead.

More efficient than paper flight maps, you see.

I once toured the Oakland Regional Air Traffic Control Center. Their equipment and procedures appeared appallingly primitive - the controllers passed flights to each other by passing handwritten slips of paper.

One of the controllers told us that the FAA had been working on a more-modern system for many years, but the reason they still used the paper slips was that "They work".

With ATC, I don't think there's a worthwhile intermediate between the current insane system and full automation. You'd still want a few people supervising airport traffic, but everything in between is exactly the kind of routine-but-hectic task that's best done by computers.

The airlines don't even automatically rebook passengers for the next flight automatically when you don't board a flight (you scan your ticket when you board, so they know). I've missed several connecting flights, and every time I had to spend 10 minutes talking to a person - why not just automatically email me a ticket for the next available flight, along with a phone number to call if I want to change it (or let me walk up to a person)?

Two months ago I received an itinerary, directly from the airline, that made two connections before reaching the final destination. At each connection, my arrival was scheduled to land 30-60 minutes after the connecting departure. I'm not concerned at all about the airlines becoming an omnipotent big brother.

I'd be happy enough if my company didn't hire a travel agency to book our flights. A $60 surcharge so they can ignore my directions and call instead of email me, to offer me a flight that goes against everything I wrote down on their form, so I can look up a better and cheaper flight on Hipmunk for them.

At least they seem to have gotten me the right hotel this time, unlike a few of my coworkers.

I just send ours the technical summary that the ITA Matrix spits outs.

Obvious puff piece for certify.com with no basis in reality is obvious puff piece.

Not sure it's for Certify, but my first thought when I saw the title was: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

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