[harrisoned]

> At present the project is focused on mobile platforms, specifically Android and iOS, as they cover the vast majority of users and real-world use cases. (..) Desktop support is not currently within the project's scope.

This is the equivalent of a "Do you guys not have phones??"[1] but on a way larger scale.

At least where i live i am able to use the bare minimum of phones, even working with tech. The friction is increasing though, which worries me a lot, and day after day there is a new attempt to shove it down your throat if you want to be considered a member of society. Seeing that a lot of countries (including mine) are pushing for age verification, and the whole thing about Android blocking 'sideload', by the end of 2026 you won't be considered a human being without a government certified smartphone.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly10r6m_-n8

[kulahan]

I do find it interesting that in an attempt to bring more people into modern society (via ability to access everything from an inexpensive smartphone), we're creating a stratification in society.

My brother hates tech more than me, and only has an old flip phone. I'm always surprised by the random problems he runs into as a result. Unresponsive desktop sites that beg you to download apps are the worst.

[ACCount37]

"Mandatory app" is an anti-accessibility anti-feature.

[FridayoLeary]

How is it that in todays day and age websites can be broken on desktops and favours smartphones? They are at best a compromised ux. Small screens and they are awkward to type on. Those are inherent limitations which are unlikely to change anytime soon. folding phones are a niche item and are likely to stay that way for the forseeable future. Tactile touchscreens will only mitigate the inherent drawbacks not solve them. The other solution is of course wearables like ar but not surprisingly people are stubbornly resisting buying them. I'm not sure what Apple and Meta were even thinking. What else is there? Projected holograms in 3d like in movies? I'm not yet ready for my entire world to turn blue.

[bonoboTP]

Another recent news about mandated app use: Ryanair now (from November) requires using their app for the boarding pass, no more printouts from the desktop. Also, they refuse to show the QR code for the boarding pass in a mobile browser via the website, you must use their app.

https://www.msn.com/en-ie/travel/news/ryanair-s-new-check-in...

[wkat4242]

A BIG reason these companies like Ryanair want you to use their app its that it's much easier to collect data about you than through a website :(

[XorNot]

No, it's a cost cutting measure. App-only reduces support and development costs with whoever they're outsourcing this too.

There's a line item which basically said "mobile web" and they wanted it gone to save some number of dollars per year.

[bonoboTP]

No, sending a pdf by email is no extra cost. They already have an email output interface for tickets and recipts and confirmations.

It's all about better tracking. I'm not quite sure what additional info they get exactly, but tons and tons of mobile websites (that work and don't get deleted) are close to unusable due to a barrage of popups telling you to use the app (e.g. Reddit and other socials).

Also there is no indication they will stop the mobile web version. Already today the mobile web version is there but it explicitly refuses to show the boarding pass QR code: https://i.redd.it/lj3wdnfp9mq91.jpg

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

Not just tracking - also a chance to spam you with notifications until you figure out how to block them, and free ad space on your home screen in the form of the app icon.

[XorNot]

As an SRE I can assure you that "sending a PDF by email" is far from free to support, and anything email is pretty much top of the list to eliminate.

[wkat4242]

It doesn't need to be by email. They can simply show it in the mobile website.

But they refuse to do so in order to get all that data which they can sell. In a mobile app it's way harder to run ad blockers and much easier to sneakily collect information on the user. Especially on android which is by far the biggest OS in the countries where Ryanair operates.

[bryanrasmussen]

>I'm not quite sure what additional info they get exactly

probably more guaranteed location tracking - hey this guy is buying tickets from the expensive part of town on the newest model iPhone! Chance we can jack up the price, 99% good!

[Zenbit_UX]

I don’t often log in to HN to comment, but when I do it’s usually when I see this type of comment.

You can always spot them by the first word being “No” or “False” followed by a confidently asserted yet hilariously incorrect statement.

I suggest reading this [0] and approaching these discussions with more humility in the future. As you yourself stated, you’re an SRE, not a security expert, yet this forum is full of them.

0: https://peabee.substack.com/p/everyone-knows-what-apps-you-u...

[frm88]

Wow! The linked article is downright terrifying. It convinced me that spying is the real purpose of forcing apps on users. How do we look in terms of regulations on this issue? I assume the EU data act covers part of that, right? What do we have for the rest of the world?

[lenkite]

Yeah, this is the reason why Swiggy offers discounts for their phone app and not their web app. The discount is effectively paid for by your personal data.

[sally_glance]

We (software agency) recently encountered this line of argument for the first time here in Germany.

It definitely reduces costs to swap 3 platform support to 2, but it still came as a kind of surprise to me. They (customer) poured years and seven digit figures into the web-based version which is now effectively going to be trashed. The current prod metrics are not supporting the 90% mobile thesis... I guess they just have high confidence that it will become true soon.

I'm wondering if these are the first signs of an age-based bias I have and the next generation just can't really imagine a majority of users using desktop PCs.

[johnnyanmac]

Ther's a line between "we don't support this platform" and actively making it hostile to try and use a platform. It may have even taken extra development time to make sure they can reject showing the QR code on a webpage, if their app is just serving that same web page.

[XorNot]

If corporate no longer wants to support mobile web, then it means I don't have budget to host it. It means developers can't put time against fixing it, QA aren't tasked to test it before releases, and support staff are not being trained in supporting it. The last one is pretty key because it's a huge metric for cost center: how many support calls is a thing generating? And if the thing is not supposed to exist anymore, then I would have to answer questions like "why is it still accessible?"

Internal job tracking metrics would have to answer why any time is going to running this thing, and god help us if there's a security breach via this endpoint we were supposed to have eliminated N time ago.

An unsupported internal API is one thing - and they're generally a huge timesink anyway. An unsupported external user interface is a cost center which I can't justify, and impacts numerous other parts of the business.

[hulitu]

> No, it's a cost cutting measure

Only marketed as such. Selling user data generates revenue. Win-win

[wkat4242]

lose-lose for the customer :(

[EvanAnderson]

Ticketmaster and their stupid app is another good example. As if I couldn't hate Ticketmaster any more I recently bought some tickets and learned about this idiocy.

[SketchySeaBeast]

I throw the tickets into my (digital) wallet and then don't think about the app until the next time I need to buy tickets. But that's not helpful if you don't have a phone.

[EvanAnderson]

I used to print paper tickets so I could get into a show if my phone died / got broken / etc. That doesn't happen often, to be sure, but I also don't want phone bullshit to keep me out of a show that, in the case of this recent one, I have >$500 in tickets for. One less dependency is a good thing.

More to the point, the app isn't for my convenience. It doesn't do anything to make my experience better.

[smcg]

And most wallet apps don't work if you install your own phone OS.

[lmm]

Most e-tickets designed for wallet apps follow a well understood standard which has multiple implementations available for different OSes, e.g. https://linuxphoneapps.org/services/pkpass/

[1over137]

With Ticketmaster you can at least still show the ticket via logging into their website, no app needed.

[llimos]

Big difference between a private company mandating app use, and a government

[bonoboTP]

I disagree. It's a tandem, and corporations and the government are increasingly welded together.

Also, I'm not too worried about the airport usecase as we're already being tracked and surveilled and inspected there as much as possible.

But it's another step to normalize and mandate phone and app use. The puzzle pieces are falling in place. Soon, AI could screen-capture your phone screen to detect suspicious activity, and track every tap you do, also taking pictures with the front-facing camera without you knowing, listening on the mic, etc. etc., connecting it all to your real identity. Because why not? If it's done step by step, nobody will care at all. Maybe that sounds pessimistic, but it looks like the end game and I see no principled political stance against it, nor any insurmountable technical hurdles.

[card_zero]

> increasingly welded together

That's an insinuation with some vague truth to it, but not much. Budget airlines are not government departments, and competition between them isn't phony.

"The sky is blue" "I feel that it is increasingly yellow"

[bonoboTP]

There's little competition pressure because consumers don't care. I guess the standard theory says that the buck ends there. If people are fine with it, it's fine.

[XorNot]

You are arguing there's little competition pressure between budget airlines, a business with notoriously razor thin margins which people shop almost exclusively on price to the exclusion of all other parameters?

This isn't a serious argument.

[card_zero]

Now you're talking! People suck, it's their fault.

[horsawlarway]

Functionally, I'm not sure I agree.

Ex - we already have plenty of cases where the government outsources payment processing to 3rd parties. What happens when that private 3rd party declares it's not accepting payments through anything except a mobile app?

[sunshine-o]

What do you expect?

Ryanair has always been an horrible corporation in the business of shipping drunk and old people for £5 with the help of public subsidies. They also largely abused their staff to enable that business model.

They are like many other corporations creating more and more fragile systems and I bet one of those days something is gonna go wrong and nobody will board their plane for a day or two.

Just stop feeding the beast...

[anonym29]

Wow, rendering their entire core business operation vulnerable to extortion from a DDoS attack that's capable of taking down a single API endpoint? Even if they have a major commercial WAF/CDN, the cost to take down Cloudflare is a lot lower than the revenue lost by an entire airline being unable to process boarding at all.

Fingers crossed the Russians figure this out and help remind these businesses why lacking paper alternatives is NOT a cost-saving measure. The group that can take down that API endpoint can pretty much name their price to Ryanair and the C-suite will effectively have a fiduciary duty to shareholders to pay it if there's truly zero alternative and that starts disrupting revenue indefinitely.

[alexchamberlain]

But what if my battery runs out?

[bonoboTP]

They are verbose and vague about it: "Some passengers may be concerned about what they can do if they lose their phone or of their devices run out of battery before the pass board the aircraft. Ryanair has said they will assist people experiencing difficulties free of charge at the gate gathering their information and flight details which will be cross-checked and validated against the flight manifest so that they can board as normal."

[jacobgkau]

Of course-- there will be accommodations to start out with. Then, after the new system has become "just the way things work," the accommodations will be removed for security or efficiency or some other reason.

Or maybe not. I've never lost a boarding pass, but if you lose one, you can get it re-issued somewhere, right?

[bonoboTP]

Without endorsement of the behavior, here's a guy getting arrested for being argumentative about not having a boarding pass in the app, and being told he can't pay their 5 dollar boarding pass print fee with cash.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QwwPmHyuEA

Again, being argumentative like this never helps, but it will be you either go along with it, get escorted out or not fly in the first place.

[john01dav]

Morally, this guy did nothing wrong. These abusive practices need to be stood up to. I'd rather live in a world where this sort of vehement NO when someone with power tries to pull something unreasonable, like demanding an app or fee, is common and effective, than this world where companies and governments can just steamroll people. Ideally, other passengers would see what's going on, see the systemic problem (even if minor in this case), and also join in in the NO. Make the terminal unusable with an angry growing mass until they decide to be reasonable. The comments on that youtube video mocking the guy and not even addressing the airline's unreasonable policy are also an absurd lack of solidarity against these companies. When someone is mad they probably have a reason to be mad and we ought to listen to them and then get mad too if we agree, other than just dismissing someone for feeling an emotion, lest we'll just have more and more rights, privileges, and respect eroded. We need a culture of standing up for each other against injustice, no matter how small.

I know that his behavior was not a rational pursuit, since in practice humans are too skittish about standing up for themselves and too skittish against anyone whom they see as abnormal/not complying with social norms. But, this does not change the fact that he's completely in the right. I'd love to know a more effective strategy to deal with this shit from companies, if anyone knows one. What should he do instead in this situation where it is simply too unjust to him to be acceptable to give in?

Also, I'm offended at this cop for telling the guy to "be cordial". NO. The airline's behavior is not cordial! They do NOT deserve it back! Freedom of speech means freedom to get mad at someone, possibly REALLY mad, when they try to be unreasonable. Being angry is different from being violent, and the government shouldn't shield people and companies from this consequence (angry people) of their actions.

[hulitu]

This really looks dystopian. But, this is the future.

No TLS certificate (which will expire soon), no boarding. /s

[bonoboTP]

The likely future is where you'll be given a USB-C charger to charge your phone. If you have no phone or is broken, it will be the equivalent to having a strongly damaged passport. No fly that day, get a new phone, fly on another date, just like if you needed a new passport. The phone will be your ID, passport, credit card and everything. But since it will be all backed up in Google/Apple/Microsoft cloud, maybe you'll be able to buy a new simple phone near the gate, log in via fingerprint and facial recognition and go on your merry way. But also, once all this stuff is connected up in the cloud, maybe facial and fingerprint recognition will be enough to fly. NFC chips under the skin are probably too bad optics for the near future, but in one or two generations, attitudes will shift.

> I've never lost a boarding pass, but if you lose one, you can get it re-issued somewhere, right?

Yes, typically there's a fee for getting it printed at the check-in counter.

[qingcharles]

I had a very worn passport. I got to check-in one time and as I handed my passport to the agent my photo fell out of the back page.

They still let me fly from UK to USA and back.

This was 1997. Wild times.

[caztanj]

How are you going to buy a new phone when you have to pay with your broken phone?

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

With a normal airline? You walk up to the gate, say you lost your paperwork (boarding pass, ticket, doesn't matter), show your ID, and get a new boarding pass issued within about a minute of managing to get someone's attention. At least that was my experience. No hassle, no fee.

Ryanair? I would expect them to offer you their boarding pass printing service for only $99.99 (you missed the $49.99 special that was only available until 4 hours before boarding, silly you).

[koyote]

Maybe we need to collectively all 'lose' our phone just before boarding at the gate, resulting in some flight delays, so that this nonsense gets reverted.

[john01dav]

This is the sort of solidarity that we need against this insanity.

[sjw987]

And the sort of solidarity that unfortunately will never happen. Most people will just download the app and carry on. Very few people hold the very real concern about things moving in this direction.

Your average phone user is already hostage to 7 hours of screentime daily. They don't mind installing more apps. The average person has hundreds of apps on their phone, many of which are never even used.

[Asooka]

Oh so I can just carry a phone with a dead battery and don't have to go through their idiotic app.

[interloxia]

https://corporate.ryanair.com/news/ryanair-confirms-wed-nov-...

[WaitWaitWha]

This has been the same for most low cost airlines (e.g., Frontier, Spirit). To get a boarding pass without a mobile, customer must go to the counter, pay an additional fee and get the printed version.

[CraigRood]

I'm confused by your statement as the article suggests you can get a boarding pass via email.

[oblio]

What about Google Wallet? Or just a PDF from your email?

[bonoboTP]

To me, that's getting bogged down in details. What matters is the intent and direction. Maybe you will have some workarounds for some time. But just as more and more places go cashless, it will also be paperless and mandatory app-based.

[_w1tm]

Maybe off-topic but I remember when people were worried about services becoming digital and older users no longer being able to access them without a personal computer.

Fast forward a few decades and now the old users are on desktop and we’re worried about services only being available for smartphones.

[7bit]

Are we the old people now?

[b00ty4breakfast]

the point is to have everyone "collared" and traceable. The conspiracy guys all worry about getting micro-chipped but that's far too invasive and obvious for modern society. the new Control gives the illusion of endless opportunities and freedom while also being the very method of limiting that freedom. It is the leverage through which control is exerted.

to quote Gilles Deleuze's Postscript on Societies of Control(1992):

>The conception of a control mechanism, giving the position of any element within an open environment at any given instant (whether animal in a reserve or human in a corporation, as with an electronic collar), is not necessarily one of science fiction. Felix Guattari has imagined a city where one would be able to leave one's apartment, one's street, one's neighborhood, thanks to one's...electronic card that raises a given barrier; but the card could just as easily be rejected on a given day or between certain hours; what counts is not the barrier but the computer that tracks each person's position-licit or illicit...

https://faculty.umb.edu/gary_zabel/Courses/Spinoza/Texts/Pos...

[gyomu]

It is insane to read Deleuze, Baudrillard, Debord, etc. in 2025. Just insanely prescient, and the perfect illustration that being able to describe and anticipate problems is nowhere near sufficient to solve them.

[GoblinSlayer]

>This is the equivalent of a "Do you guys not have phones??"

Remotely related: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/manor-park-ottawa-sidewalk-re... there are dozens of us, dozens.

[krzyk]

This is good I think because lack of verifications anywhere is good. So at least desktops will be free of it.

[simjnd]

Worse: You just won't be able to use websites on desktop unless you pull out your phone and verify.

[BeFlatXIII]

I hope the push for verification leads to the normies learning the ways of identity theft. The fun really ramps up once they figure out free money tricks.

[GoblinSlayer]

Normies don't use desktop computers.

[fn-mote]

I am pretty sure that the point is that the "normies" are going to be getting their identities stolen in order for others to pass the age verification.

[mindslight]

But this will at least create a healthy pressure for competing options for users on desktops, likely based on novel secure protocols.

[avra]

Most of the times the user prioritizes more convenient options over privacy. "Pressure for competing options" will mean that options compete for the most convenient way, not most secure or most private.

[mindslight]

Sure, but the point is that the more convenient less-secure ways are going to be criminalized. Otherwise nobody would use the age verification app in the first place.

[raxxorraxor]

Then the recommendation from this should be to become criminal.

[raxxorraxor]

Developers contributing to that project should be ashamed. I am sadly situated in Europe and the crap the EU pushes out recently with chat control, bad ID solutions and censorship doesn't match what democracies should expect.

Not going to use the app of course. If that restricts me I will seek to route around this censorship and share with others. This crap has to be resisted.

Stupid project, stupid design, stupid continent.