> After looking over Google’s advice, my key takeaway was that thieves are in much better shape than me, and run both longer and faster than this nerdy writer has in more than two decades.
https://www.androidauthority.com/android-theft-detection-loc...
Personally, the main situation I'm concerned about is on a bus or train, where someone grabs your phone right and exits right before the door closes. But I already avoid spending a lot of time on the street with my head buried in my phone.
- Warming up for a run: Possible agitated tweaker, possible crisis
- Going for a run after midnight: Evasive solitary movement after dark
- Sprinting the last block home: Flight behavior consistent with shoplifting offense
- Running with a hood up in the rain: Deliberate biometric obfuscation - Two runners meeting at a corner and leaving in opposite directions: Brief contact event, possible hand-to-hand
Score increase the darker you get.
<https://archive.org/details/sim_reporter_1951-08-07_5_3_0/pa...>
(Alternate link: <https://archive.org/details/sim_reporter_1951-08-07_5_3/page...>)
That's the kind of thing I can see them doing because they don't exactly get a lot of downpours in SF
Yes absolutely
Also, is there even a single city of London’s size that is mostly retirement communities?
Singapore is 0.01 per 1,000. Hanoi doesn’t have published statistics but its Numbeo crime index (calculated from surveys) is 33.8 versus London at 55.3.
I think we can stop excusing London’s numbers.
Want a non-Asian country in case Asians are somehow magical beings who don’t do robberies? Ottawa is 0.11 to 0.13 per 1,000. Vancouver is 0.73 per 1,000. Sydney is 0.13 to 0.15 per 1,000. Dubai is 0.03 to 0.045 per 1,000.
London is supposed to be a global city on par with many of these others. So what is going wrong?
It’s hard to get good stats on Cairo, but its crime index is lower than London somehow, despite the higher levels of poverty. Same with Islamabad and Jaipur.
iphones will remain locked regardless of what country they're in. I presume you're talking about states who are seemingly unwilling to pursue/prosecute claims of theft?
older iOS devices as well are also vulnerable to having their syscfg rewritten via exploits, so you can "clean" a locked device that way as well with a good set of serials. Apple Watches are a hot one for this.
I'm sure this is different with different components of course depending on how granularly apple tracks their hardware—but the whole package certainly can't be activated.
It makes me wonder if there’s some way to put a third lock on there that’s not normally unlocked.
https://support.apple.com/guide/security/activation-lock-sec...
As of iOS 27 beta, there's now an additional "partner finance lock" status that will also be an available parts-lock status (to prevent a 'leased' device from being parted out).
https://9to5mac.com/2026/07/21/ios-27-code-suggests-apple-co...
https://www.apple.com/shop/product/mggh4ll/a/crossbody-strap...
https://www.gov.br/pt-br/apps/celular-seguro-br
https://www.gov.br/pt-br/servicos/comunicar-roubo-furto-de-a...
I can't be the only person to see the irony here. Do they also have a drive-thru to report car theft?
It also functions as a public searchable database of stolen phones, allowing a prospective buyer of a second hand device to check it.
Two guys hopped a wide sidewalk, never stopped and were back into traffic in an instant.
Everyone gave me the "you should't have been dressed that way" response. Police did nothing dispite certainly plenty of evidence (video, from apple, etc. etc).
Or at least give me the option to turn off Auto Pause/Auto End just for hiking workouts - instead I have to turn off the feature for all workouts. But I suppose that level of customization would be very un-Apple.
The world of appliances is littered with these "smart" features that purport to make life more convenient, but are implemented so crudely that they end up causing more trouble than they solve.
After a year or two of daily charging I went back to my trusty Garmin 935 that lasts ~2 weeks on a charge (used to be more like a month, but you know what I can install a replacement battery!) -- the Garmin does have an XC Ski activity.
But yeah I think Garmin and other smart watches are definitely preferred by serious athletes (and people who don't like charging their watch daily). Whereas I mostly just use my Apple Watch as a way to get notifications and as a glorified step tracker.
I look at the results on my PC with a web browser, phone is a passive middleman and is never touched directly for fitness tracking.
I found a "belt" thats much wider and doesnt have a clip (has to be sized just right) that does work better. But a bit of a pain to wear sometimes.
For years I just literally ran with the phone in my hand (got used to switching hands and positions for comfort) so I could still do music and tracking. Not that bad when you get used to it. Eventually got a Garmin watch (cheapest with maps and music) which works great.
Wouldn't the simplistic improvement be to monitor Bluetooth single strength?
Is this feature able to be disabled? I'm slow walking my path to de-Google and use a Linux device for music and audio books while exercising.
How often do you go on runs? At most 3x a day?
Personally i’d rather err on the side of it locking.
> amazingly I can find no way to turn this behavior off at all, never mind a more fine-grained control like, say, "ignore this event while the app I use to time my runs is in the foreground"
> (there is a global toggle for "device protections" that ostensibly includes this, but it was set to off to begin with so ???)
/s
Where it joins “walking”. Google Maps will suggest almost arbitrarily bonkers public transport directions to avoid walking. Personal favourite: the sensible way to get from my house to work, unless the weather is terrible, is six minutes on a train and a 15 min walk. Google Maps would, generally, prefer that I spend 15 mins on the train going mostly the wrong direction and 15 minutes on a tram, then a five minute walk. It will also contemplate a ten minute walk, ten minutes walking being within the threshold Google deems physically possible, plus an arbitrary amount of time on a rather slow bus. Apple Maps and Transit are better at this.
I drive around the NY metropolitan area a lot. No, I don't want to take the route that saves a few minutes if it involves merging onto I95 at rush hour with 300 feet to cross 4 lanes of traffic for the next exit.
I set up the route, clip the phone onto the quadlock mount, ride down the street and it auto changes the route because of something motorbikes don't care about.
Or it rains and that counts as pressing buttons.
And now I am riding and with gloves on so I can't fix it.
Just "do what I told you" and don't mess with it.
It doesn't fix the problem of bad software, but try adding something like https://glovetacts.com/ to your riding glove index fingers for this particular issue.
I'd love a "I saw your suggestions, I selected one of them, don't give me any more suggestions" feature. This was on google maps.
As for detecting rain, that'd be a whole other algorithm.
I’ve had a couple times now where Google Maps has taken me into absolutely terrible traffic jams on back roads in areas where there is limited cell service. What seems to be happening is that there is a slowdown on the main road and a blind spot on the back route with no service, so Google assumes there are no cars there and no traffic, so it just funnels everyone that way until the whole route clogs up. Utterly infuriating.
How well these options work is another question, but "Fewer transfers" does seem to allow more walking. And of course you can straight up ask for walking directions instead.
It's a FOSS public transport routing engine. In the options you can select what type and how much time you want to spend on the first and last "mile" (even something like bike/scooter sharing).
It uses open data or data connectors for the routing. And being FOSS, if there is no data connector yet for you region, it may be interesting to contribute one if there is a sane way to query the data from the local transport compan(y|ies).
Neither is good for turn-by-turn directions, but both are good for "what are all the different ways to get there"
There are certain roads I would be willing to spend an extra 10-30 minutes driving to avoid. (And certainly would not get on them on a bike!)
Note: I have disabled Smart Features and there is no sharing into Gemini from Gmail, Drive, Docs, etc.
Ask Maps summarized my prompt, gave a correct answer, and displayed a graphic of the route as well.
Sure, there's not much need for navigation in that situation, but if you're trying to be smart regarding where I am, maybe take into account if I'm travelling at 200 kph before plonking me on a twisty gravel road.
This is what my options screen looks like: https://what.pictures/route_options.jpeg
But, I usually plan my route in segments... I'll ask google for times from Colman Dock and use the WSDOT app / notifications and my understanding of typical traffic to guess how long the ferry will take. Plus, if it's important to arrive on the other side on time, I try to leave an extra ferry, in case an ambulance gets to ride the ferry all by itself and I have to wait for the next one... if I knew I wasn't going to get on that ferry, I might have driven around, but it's a lot more driving for me to go around if I actually need to head to Seattle.
As for your other question, it looks like the guy was responding to an implied “I can’t turn off tolls as a hack bypass ferries because the bridge also requires a toll”. I’d speculate that it wasn’t obvious there’s a ferry-specific filter because the other filters show up as pills.
You might be on to something.
This might be unrealistic about the number and relevance of Median-Americans. Turns out more than a few Americans that are outside of the median own telephones.
It's also realistic about crimes in certain cities.
It would also be nice to have a configurable transportation choice for the time to leave notice. Because some things I’ll walk to, some I’ll take transit and some I’ll drive and Apple seems to want be to just pick one and only use that.
My other map complaint is that there’s no indication of how much tolls are when comparing toll vs non-toll routes. Because if it’s $5 to save ten minutes, no thanks but for a buck, maybe I’ll do it.
If you set a location, you can tap on “Travel Time” and select whether you want to go by car, public transport, bicycle, or walk.
https://techcrunch.com/2011/07/03/sexual-activity-tracked-by...
That sounds like it's Fitbit’s fault to me, although I guess some blame has to go to people who bug themselves with a device that tells a third party about every moment they're having sex in the first place. Fitbit having that data isn't much better than Google or anyone else who isn't intimately involved.
But then, another Google product, Pixel Watch, has the bonkers default that if you just take a walk, like I normally do on most days, it considers that a "workout" of a dedicated type "walk" that needs to be tracked. It would vibrate rather annoyingly too. So basically every time I go outside to grab a lunch, that's a "workout"? But at least you can turn that off.
My Apple Watch is set up by default to assume any 15-minute walk is a "workout" and interrupt me to ask if I wanted to record it. No, I'm just going to the store, what is this "workout" nonsense. My Oura Ring was worse, it would assume any walk duration is noteworthy and my timeline would be a jumbled mess of "workouts". But these would be reasonable assumptions for a mostly sedentary office worker living in the suburbs.
I remember when a Google feature was announced long ago, some of the headlining features was plane ticket support and currency conversion. The average American gets on a plane once a year, to a place where they accept American dollars, and wouldn't ever care about these features. But these are important if you're in your 30s and travel is an important part of your life for either business or vacations.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/JHQPdvSStnr6jfm77
People still writing code but it's now below a minimum wage job in terms of economic value addition. It's a waste of human time and energy.
Smart people need to learn biology or something that actually has value, like Jensen has been saying for years.
Google will always route me on the purple buses. Even when the metro is faster. Their directions in Mexico City make zero sense.
It’s fine for pure walking directions, but it gets unhappy about the idea of someone using public transport walking.
There are some routings in london for example where the best course of action is actually to take a train, get off walk 5 minutes then take a different train, google will always tell you to stay on the train to a point where you can change trains in the same station.
> There are some routings in london for example where the best course of action is actually to take a train, get off walk 5 minutes then take a different train, google will always tell you to stay on the train to a point where you can change trains in the same station.
Had a good one in Amsterdam recently; rather than walk 9 minutes to the nearby central station and get a train there, it wanted me to walk 6 minutes to the central station's metro station entrance (which was a bit closer), get a metro, then join the train at another station entirely. Would have taken about twice as long.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/747380/daily-step-averag...
The difference is: they COULD walk if they wanted.
You can't if there is no walkway.
The other scenario of no sidewalk are like rural roads that are very long with nothing in between. So there sorta "no place to walk to".
There is a maximum walking distance, I don't know the limit but it's certainly more than 10 minutes. I have never managed to trigger it other than by asking for a route to a location miles beyond any transit options. And it did provide me a route across the Grand Canyon. (Most people are not doing a rim-to-rim in a single day.) (But then it was totally bonkers--offered me a bike route with a time that was preposterous. Looking at it--tiny portion by bike, then walk your bike--the standard rim-to-rim route. But it assumed bicycle speed. No--try that, you're going over.)
Not with a phone, no. Why would you take your phone with you when you run? It’s bulky and annoying.
If you really need to be reachable or to be able to pay for something in emergencies, that’s what smart watches are for.
Music, being able to tell what time it is, navigation¹, emergency calls², non-emergency calls/communication. Or, … the use case in TFA.
> If you really need to be reachable or to be able to pay for something in emergencies, that’s what smart watches are for.
… not everyone has the means to drop $400+/y³ on a watch & plan. Smart phone & plan prices are high enough already.
(¹perhaps more useful when I'm biking than running)
(²I've literally witnessed accidents while out on such a run. Having a phone is handy.)
(³we have to restrict ourselves to "the set of smart watches that are capable of making a call independent of a phone, here, too. If the watch requires the phone to make the call … well, that'd defeat the point. This is approximately the per-warranted-year price of a Samsung Galaxy Watch with LTE support.)
Well, how would I get my phone back after I ran to the place I intended to run to otherwise?
So you can listen to music? And most people don't have a smart watch.
It's fairly common to see people running with a phone strapped to their arm.
Having a phone that day would have been really nice.
If I select public transport yes, it will suggest public transport ways to get there. I can't see how this is a bug in any way
If I select walking it will show me how to walk there no matter if it takes 15 min or 15 days.
I can choose which i want depending on if i'm tired or weather is bad...
It will suggest completely nonsensical public transport routes, apparently in an attempt to minimise walking.
My tips would be: check if it mistakenly thinks you can't directly walk to the station or something. In my town there's a particular place i often go to where Google I guess just doesn't know or care that there IS a crossing. if I just pick a point across the street it suggests much better routes
And personally if it's more than 5 min of walking i would just look up the way to the station and then from the station separately with whatever modes i prefer
And lobby your government for sorting out public transportation to your block? It seems crazy inconvenient