I'm fond of New Zealand, where you either pay as you walk out or the waiter brings you a mobile POS. There's no awkward 'take my credit card, walk away with it, and bring it back' moment. It's a much better system, and I would love to see it more common in the US.
Do waiters really walk off with your credit card in America? I'd never want to let my credit card out of my sight, let alone let some guy I don't know take it from me
Cash is vastly vastly preferred for restaurants in the USA by both sides.
This is also has the advantage that if for whatever reason it is impossible to pay because all the servers have disappeared and no is up front, you can just calculate out the bill+tax+tip from the prices in the menu, lay it on the table, and leave.
Most the problems around credit/phones revolve around the fact that restaurants are operating around customs and inertia of the cash system, and awkwardly injecting other collection methods into this routine, personally I don't bother fighting it.
> Cash is vastly vastly preferred for restaurants in the USA by both sides.
What two sides are you referencing? I can't fathom that customers is one of those sides. Cash is just about my least preferred method, maybe second only to writing a check.
Sure, I believe there are lots of folks who prefer cash. I just don't think "vastly preferred" is accurate. [1] suggests that only 20% of all transactions are using cash...
For the wait staff, cash has the great advantage that it is up to the staff to report tips to the IRS. For everyone else?
I do carry cash, and probably use cash more than someone younger would, but for restaurant bills beyond the burger and brew range I tend to use a credit card. Once one gets into the white-tablecloth world, bills are beyond the amount of cash I usually carry.
Same here. The table side reader thing is something I only see at maybe 1 in 10 restaurants in my part of the U.S. During the pandemic there was a big uptick in “pay by QR code” but that seems to have gotten much less popular (I believe the extra fees charged by Toast and similar are no longer deemed worth it by restaurants).
They used to elsewhere, as well. In most European countries chip and pin became ~mandatory around the turn of the century, which made it impossible.
For various reasons the US was very slow to adopt chip-based cards, and even when it did they were usually chip and sig. It was also slow to adopt tap to pay (likely because mobile terminals were less of a thing, because chip and pin was not a thing); it only _really_ took off when Apple and Google kinda forced the issue by putting it in phones.
I think Apple and Google released their implementations when they did exactly because the US credit card companies moved over to EMV (tap and pay) standard.
There was a “liability shift” [1] that happened nearly a decade ago after many high profile card database leakage events (target retail stores being one).
The shift was that instead of credit card companies always accepting the liability for stolen cards, the policies were changed so that retailers that still used magnetic stripes would have to accept liability (because with magnetic stripes, the same card number is used everywhere). Or they could avoid it by moving to chip and wireless readers, since these protocols used a different virtual card number for every transaction.
As card holders, we all started getting our banks sending us new chip and wireless cards before Apple Pay came out.
> exactly because the US credit card companies moved over to EMV (tap and pay) standard.
That's not what EMV is, or, at least, while most tap and pay cards are EMV (besides some 90s oddities in Europe), EMV long predates tap and pay (it's from the 1980s).
Most US cards were EMV (chip and sig, usually, not chip and pin), _long_ before Apple/Google Pay came out, but usually did not support tap to pay, which is a separate standard also falling under EMV (the terminology is kinda unhelpful).
I don't like it either, but yes they still do (although to be fair it is getting rarer by the day). One thing to keep in mind though, is that if it's a reputable place there isn't really any need to worry. It's shadier places you have to watch out for.
This used to be normal in a lot of the world, which is pretty wild. Lots of weird changes like this, Floppy Disks, "Appointment Television", home phone numbers ...
For most of recorded human history literacy was rare. A typical Roman citizen could not read, certainly beyond the ability to understand a handful of marks or make their name. By the nineteenth century it is entirely unremarkable that Patrick Brontë's daughters are taught to read and write, but it is also entirely unremarkable that several of them† died of TB since at the time we didn't know a cure for it.
† It's contested whether, for example, Charlotte died of TB, it probably didn't help.
I'm kind of digging the QR code on a receipt where I just pay from my phone's browser, get emailed a receipt, and I leave at my leisure. Been seeing this around busier places in the US though still pretty rare.
Interesting discussion here, I enjoyed reading it. I was sad to learn of Anchor’s demise today. It’s rare a thread appears on HN that’s relevant to my work! If anyone is curious about the current state of the beer market from someone who earns a living at it I may be able to provide some insight.
As a professional photographer, comparisons like this drive me absolutely insane, especially when they are called "incredible".
Look, the iPhone 4s processes images with in-camera software and does it aggressively so images look pretty to the average user. They are over-saturated and over-sharpened. And the lack of detail captured by the small sensor all but negates the possibility of any REAL post processing.
I get it. The consumer doesn't care. They just know the pictures look pretty. The practicing photographer knows better.
The video comparisons are even more futile. The depth of field, flexibility, and low light performance of the 5D Mark II is so far beyond the iPhone 4s it makes my head spin.
We are headed into exciting times when a device smaller than a deck of cards will replace a device the size of a toaster. I know. But we aren't there yet. Really, we aren't even close.
I, for one, don't carry my DSLR with me everywhere, but I almost always have my phone. I'd like to know that I'll be able to get something when that one-in-a-million shot presents itself.
For me, I take my DSLR out when it's my intent to do photography. When I'm doing something where I think something might present itself (e.g., on my bike), I carry a compact camera if I've got room and won't endanger the camera too much. But I'll almost always have a phone with me.
I understand this and I agree with you. I don't even deny that the 4s has a great camera. It does! But to compare it to an S95 and a 5D Mark II isn't a story that's ready to be told. I wouldn't have said a peep if they just showed the iPhone 1-4s comparisons. That's the story - Small sensor technology is rapidly advancing and it's great! BUT it's not a replacement for the niche the s95 fills. The image presented here of the city is the most striking example of that.
I thought they just brought the 5D Mark II to show how much the iPhone has caught up to photos taken with a camera. And not to say "hey! we're there now, the iPhone can replace a really good DSLR"
Actually as a former professional photographer myself I know that you are absolutely right about the still image, but actually a bit wrong when it comes to the video.
So while the still images of the 5D are several orders of magnitude better than a 5D at resolution, I'd guess the true 1080p resolution of the iPhone 4S is probably slightly better than the 5D -- baring control of DOF.
on the other hand everyone will tell you "its a phone not a DSLR its normal that it auto processes"
then tell you "look its as good as the DSLR!"
annoying ain't it :-)
But most importantly, this comparison is just bad. The key picture is taken differently with different light and different settings even on the camera
they're doing their best to hide the reality: a DSLR, even on all auto is far better than the 4S or any other phone, and its easy to see, on "regular" pictures, even for novices, the difference is huge.
May I ask you, as a professional photographer, what do you think about the eruption of strong effects in photos shared with instagram. I fell like it is something fake, that it will look weird or stupid in a few months.
I think it's unfortunate but I can understand it's appeal and why people like it. Anyone can turn a crap photo into an appealing image with the application of a filter. Who wouldn't love that? It's like MSG for photography.
It doesn't bother me nearly as much as poorly done High Dynamic Range images. . .
Well, a maybe better comparison would be some sound effects heavily used in the eighties. I don't know nothing about photo, that's why I ask, but about sound I know a bit more, and there you have two kinds of effects:
1- The normal enhancements you are not supposed to hear. Maybe a bit of reverb or compression. For these effects, in my experience, the proper way to tune it is to turn the knob until you hear it, and then turn it back half ways.
2- The exceptional strong effect that is part of the sound. Here, you should turn knobs to their max, it will make a different sound.
The "instagram" plague looks to me like if everyone in every music would suddenly add 150% of one type of reverb, and everyone would blindly think it is great, and in two years none of these will be heard (seen) without laughing.
Butting in where I wasn't asked -- I think it's stupid, I don't use these in my Android.
Artistic interpretation of images is great. But the display of a phone (especially a smaller display as on an iPhone) just doesn't let you do it effectively. Between the low resolution, and the fact that you're probably in an environment that makes it all but impossible to accurately judge contrast, sharpness, and color, the results are pretty much guaranteed to be garbage.
If you want to do this kind of thing, go ahead. But to do so, put it on a real monitor so you can see what you're doing.
Wow, I came in here to say the same thing. I don't get enough traffic through Disqus to have issues at the moment, but when I did a while back I remember Daniel bending over backwards to answer all of my questions and it left an absolutely incredible impression. I thought that in a world of meticulously curated "FAQS" and auto-repsonse e-mails that Daniel was remarkably refreshing.
