Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

I saw a news article today about moral panic over BNPL. Apparently discussions have exploded on social media recently about people buying tickets for SXSW— the annual South by Southwest music/film/pop tech festival in Austin— using Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) services. The tenor of the discussions, which are really more like opposing rants, seems to be  Kids These Days are being fooled into spending money they don't have on things they don't need vs. Old Fogeys who can't open their email without downloading at least 3 viruses. That prompted me to think, What is BNPL— and is it good or bad?

I've been vaguely aware of Buy Now, Pay Later schemes as a way of buying things online for a while now. I say vaguely because I know they're out there but I've never looked into them. And yes, lurking within my terminology is a value judgment. I've thought of them as them schemes because I've been suspicious from the start that they're come-ons that snooker uneducated customers into overpaying, in the form of high interest rates and service charges, on luxuries they maybe shouldn't be buying in the first place. But it's not just stuff like travel and pricey concert tickets; nowadays even DoorDash offers BNPL. If you can't afford a Chipotle burrito without financing it, maybe you shouldn't be eating out so much!

Okay, so what is BNPL? It's micro-credit. When you go to purchase something online, instead of charging it to a credit card, you can charge it on a BNPL plan. There are lots of fintech (financial technology) companies out there— many startups, but also bigger companies now— that offer these short-term loans and are integrated into various e-commerce sites. You go to checkout, you see the BNPL offers, and maybe you pick one of those instead of entering a credit card number. BNPL sets up a small loan specific to the thing you're buying. The merchant gets paid right away, your item ships right away, and you pay for it in installments.

See? Put that way, BNPL is not so foreign. It's kind of like a credit card. But it doesn't require opening a credit card in advance. This makes it accessible to the "under-banked": the socioeconomic group of people who find it hard to use banks or who are under-served or rejected by banks. The modern technology and interface for setting up BNPL works in a way that's way more familiar to younger generations. That helps explain the definite age gap in whether your reaction is "Wow, BNPL is great!" vs. "What's this new-fangled thing that's trying to steal my money?"

Okay, but is it stealing anyone's money? Part of my initial suspicion about BNPL was that it seemed to good to be true. Companies have to make their money somehow. How does BNPL earn money? In particular, are they like another credit provider for the under-banked— payday lenders, who charge outrageous interest rates and fees?

A bit of research shows that BNPL generally does not charge high interest rates. In fact it seems that a lot of offers extend short-term credit to buyers for free. For example, a customer purchasing a $1,000 plane ticket may be offered a plan to pay $250 now with another $250 due each of the next 3 months.

BNPL makes its money, as credit card companies do, by charging the merchants a fee. And, also like credit card companies, they make money by charging fees to the borrower if they miss any of their payments. If you're a few days late with one of those $250 installments, you may find all your remaining installments going up to $260— plus a $7 late fee.

A lot of the moral panic around BNPL is that it encourages people to overspend. I'll just point out, that's been a concern with credit cards for decades, too. I remember when I was a kid watching a family TV show in reruns, a well known older show that was in Black-and-White, where in one episode the teenage characters were getting themselves in all kinds of trouble because one of them had a new credit card and could not understand that he still had to pay for things, eventually. "Really, the moral of this TV show is 'People Are Too Stupid To Understand Credit Cards?'" I thought to myself. And I was a pre-teen then! The point is, what was a moral panic of 1960 seemed foolish by the 1980s. Similarly, much of today's hand-wringing about BNPL seems like people choosing to be frightened by a new technology they're unable or unwilling to understand.

But that said, it does seem wrong that you can finance a burrito on DoorDash.

Enshittification is coming to fast food restaurants. The term coined to describe an unfortunate trend in online services and social media platforms certainly applies to other businesses as well. Anytime a business worsens its customer experience and also harms employee conditions or advertisers' value in pursuit of greater profits, it's enshittification.

I was reminded of the latest front in restaurant enshittification when I visited a local fast food restaurant yesterday. It had been closed for renovations for a few weeks. The way the windows were all papered over with only a vague "CLOSED" banner displayed, I was concerned it had gone out of business. But it reopened... and the only renovation I could spot, other than a fresh, more garish coat of paint on the outside, was the replacement of traditional cash registers with ordering kiosks.



In fact now there is no line to order from a human at this restaurant. But that didn't stop the majority of the customers from calling one of the employees over— the one whom I recognize from past visits as the primary cashier— to enter their orders because they couldn't figure out how to use the kiosks.

Replacing human cashiers with ordering kiosks is not new. I first saw it in a US fast food restaurant about 10 years ago. It's only in recent years, perhaps spurred on by pandemic-driven changes, that I've seen it become widespread. Yesterday's encounter was just the latest example... and the crummy experience I saw most customers— plus a few of the staff— having reminded me why it's enshittification.

I've been using self-serve kiosks in some places for a while now without much trouble. For example, I've accepted self-checkout at Safeway for years already. I can scan my groceries quickly there, and I like the fact that I can see the cost for each item appear clearly on the screen as I go. That's important because I'm a discount shopper, and Safeway has moved to a pricing model where regular prices are inflated and things are often only worth buying when they're on sale. Oh, but you have to be a member, enter your membership number, and have selected the digital coupon in the app before checkout to get the best price. So, in a sense what happened is that Safeway enshittified their pricing, and self-checkout helps mitigate the frustration with that. 😡

This restaurant's use of kiosks enshittifies the customer experience for many because the kiosks are just too hard to navigate. To order food you have to understand where what you want might appear in a hierarchical menu. At the top level there are too many choices: "Meals", "Chicken", "Burritos", "Specials", etc. What if you want a chicken burrito meal; which sub-menu is that in? What if you don't know what you want?  I was successful with my order because I did know exactly what I want. Though as I noted with a McDonald's ordering kiosk a few years ago, punching tons of on-screen prompts takes at least 5x as long as ordering from an even modestly trained human employee. And more than half of the customers around me yesterday gave up and demanded human help.

BTW, don't assume that customers who give up and demand human help equates to "Boomers can't handle technology". Yeah, the two Boomers in the restaurant refused to use the kiosks... loudly. 😅 But also refusing to use them were a variety of Gen X and Millennial aged adults. I think one issue might be that even though the kiosks can display options in both English and Spanish at this restaurant, many of the clientele are construction laborers (obvious because they drive up in work trucks and wear work clothes) who might be functionally illiterate. Asking adults to use computers is tough when they may have a 4th grade education or less.

Banks tell us to "cut up your credit card" after closing an account. It's a safety precaution to protect against fraud once you throw the physical card in the trash. That guidance is at least 40 years old, though. It dates back to when physical credit cards contained only an account number embossed as raised numerals on a plastic card. That's back in the days when merchants would run a roller over your card that imprinted the physical number from the card onto carbon-copy paper. In the long-long ago there was no validation at point of sale... so a stolen card, even one belonging to a closed account, could easily be used in a sale.

Credit card technology has gone through a few generations of advancements since then. Even a lot of middle-aged folks today may never have seen a credit card roller machine outside a museum or one of those "People Under 50 Will Have No Idea What These Are" social media threads. The industry moved to magnetic stripes, instant validation, chips, and near-field communication (NFC) "tap to pay". But what about the guidance of cutting up your cards when you cancel your accounts?

Hawk and I still cut up our old cards. We're careful to cut the chip and the antenna mechanisms when doing it nowadays. But have you ever peeled a credit card? Skinned it?



Hawk did this with one of her old cards out of curiosity this week. It's one of those metal sandwich cards, the kind issued for some premium account types where, instead of the card being all plastic, it has a metal layer in the middle between plastic front and back. We know from years ago that these do really interesting things when run through a shredder. This time Hawk tried peeling off the plastic layers to get rid of the visual number and magnetic strip. What's left is that metal previously sandwiched in the middle!

Wow, it was almost a month ago now Hawk and I made the decision to upgrade our phones. We've actually had the phones in our hands and been using them for a few weeks. How's it going? Although the transition process was ridiculously difficult our new phones are easily a win— and a very inexpensive win— over the phones we replaced.

My new phone is the iPhone 16 Pro with 256GB of storage.



Yes, mine's actually the color in the product photo above. It's called Natural Titanium. Prior to this I've always chosen black iPhones. There's nothing wrong with black. I almost picked it again for this phone. I just felt like I'd give another color a try. Plus, I knew that since I'd wrap a thin case around it the color of the phone's metal back and sides wouldn't matter a lot.

Anyway, color is not what makes this phone better or worse than the older phone it replaced.

My previous phone was an iPhone SE 3rd generation. I'd had it for 2.5 years. The SE 3 is an interesting hybrid of old and new technology. It has the size and form factor of an iPhone 8— which is many years old at this point. That means, among other things, it had top and bottom bezels on the screen and a "belly button" with a fingerprint scanner. It also had older camera technology— though not as old as the iPhone 8. Despite the parts of the SE 3 that were old, the processor was current as of 2.5 years ago, Apple's A15 chipset.

Here are 5 things that have struck me about the practical differences switching to the 16 Pro:

❖ Size was one of my first concerns about the iPhone 16 Pro. The 16 Pro definitely looks much larger because its screen is so much bigger: 6.3" diagonal vs. 4.7". But a lot of that expanded screen size comes from the edge-to-edge design. The 16 Pro has no top and bottom bezels around the screen like the SE 3 does. The upshot is that the 16 Pro is not quite 10% larger in each dimension than the SE 3. For example, the length increases from 5.45" to just 5.89". That keeps it within the realm of fitting in a pants pocket.

❖ Meanwhile the screen is noticeably larger. That jump from 4.7" to 6.3 is huge. I rarely thought, "Oh, this screen is so small," while using my SE 3 for a few years, but after a few days of using the 16 Pro I picked up the SE 3 again and was amazed at how small and quaint it looks. It felt like using a toy instead of a tool. On screen size, there's no going back.

❖ The camera's way better. In the past I've never put much value on having the best camera possible in a mobile phone. I've always had a dedicated interchangeable-lens camera for situations where I really care about image quality. My iPhone camera was always there for "happy snaps". That dichotomy made sense when dedicated camera were better than mobile phone cameras in most situations. Over the years, though, mobile phone cameras have improved much more rapidly than dedicated stills camera. They're now "good enough" for a lot of things. One attraction of switching to the 16 Pro is its 3-lens setup. In addition to a normal, somewhat-wide angle lens, it has a super-wide angle and a moderate telephoto. It also has a better imager than the old SE 3. One test was when I snapped some impromptu hawk pictures at Byxbee Park a few weeks ago. The results were night-and-day better than what I could have gotten from my SE 3. Would my dedicated camera have done even better? Absolutely. But I would have had to lug around a dedicated camera and probably 2 lenses to get those pics, versus having the phone-camera already in my pants pocket.

❖ I'm noticing I can go longer between recharging the battery. My SE 3 wasn't old enough that its battery was degrading significantly, and I was generally still satisfied with how long I could go between charges. The new 16 Pro definitely lasts longer. My seat-of-the-pants estimate is that, with my normal pattern of use, I can go about twice as long between charges right now. That's close to in line with the technical specs: the SE 3 has a battery capacity of about 2,000 mAh; the 16 Pro about 3,600 mAh.

❖ The 16 Pro switches to a USB-C connector. This is driven by an EU regulation and provokes a cable challenge for all of us who've owned iPhones for several years with Apple's proprietary Lightning connector. I still remember when Apple changed iPhone connectors back in 2013. We had a bunch of the older 30-pin connectors and had to replace them or buy adapters. Thus we knew what we were in for here. At least this time around the change is to a general standard. Lots of devices use USB-C. Now our iPhones no longer require a special cable. Though we are still having to replace things like the connector cables in our cars. Since it's a move from proprietary to an industry standard, I'm happy to lean into it.

Right after I posted my almost-leaving-for-Mexico blog from the United Club Lounge yesterday morning I saw this little number: a robot busing dishes.



The first thing that struck me was, "Yeah, this is the kind of thing that happens when we raise the minimum wage." I'm not anti-labor or anti-paying people living wages. It's just the reality of the situation; actions have consequences. Increasing the cost of hiring people increases the number of situations where business find it more cost-effective to employ technology instead. That's a big part of why ordering kiosks are replacing workers at fast food restaurants, there's self-checkout (SCO) at grocery and hardware stores, and— here, for example— robots are doing menial tasks.

The second thing that hit me was, "I wonder if the screen on the back of the robo-cart is asking for a tip." 🤣 Tipping has gotten out of control... especially in cases where automated systems prompt for tips. Like, if I'm ordering from a kiosk and/or paying via SCO, WTF am I tipping for? Whom am I tipping? *I* am literally doing the work!

As far as the first point, this robot has not entirely replaced staff busing tables. There are still a number of people at the United Club Lounge clearing tables. It's likely this robot is an experiment on feasibility and cost-effectiveness.

One of the cool things about vote-by-mail in California is that I can track the progress of my ballot through the counting system. This isn't unique to California; at least a few other states that do widespread vote-by-mail have it, but it's different in states that have been taken over by the vote-by-mail-is-a-fraud liars and the fools and conspiracy nutjobs who believe them.

There's good news and bad news about this system. One of the bits of good news is that it exists, Yay, traceability. Ironically, that's one of thing things the vote-by-mail-is-a-fraud con artists bloviate about being so important to a "secure" system. Meanwhile their preferred system often don't have it.

One of the bits of bad news is/was that for several days I didn't know if my ballot was going to be counted. 😱

See, that's one of the problems with traceability. Instead of simply having trust when you put your ballot in the lock box that it's going to be counted, you can verify that is has been counted— or hasn't. And for 4 days after I voted on Super Tuesday, mine wasn't. The website provided by the County Registrar of Voters indicated it hadn't even been received. 😰

Part of being an informed voter in the modern era, though, is understanding the limits of the system. Counting the votes is no longer a thing that happens overnight. Once upon a time results were ready by the print deadline for the next morning's paper— or even for TV broadcast on the 11pm news the night of. This is neither that time nor that system. Counting the votes nowadays— counting all the votes— takes days. I remained patient.

BTW, people who remember the days when results were published quickly and were paying attention also remember that the quick results came with a disclaimer. Absentee ballots were not yet counted. When mail-in ballots were, like, 1% of the total, officials could call most races without bothering to count them. Let me repeat that: in "the good ol' days" they did NOT count ALL the votes. And yet that's what the vote-by-mail-is-a-fraud liars and conspiracy nuts want to go back to because it's "secure". 🙄

This little story ends on a positive note. As of this morning (Sunday), I have confirmation that my vote was received and counted. Yes, the election workers were working through the weekend— and publishing updates through the weekend. Yay, hard-working men and women in our county elections offices!

This week I'm involved in another technical training workshop. Yes, I attended a training workshop two weeks ago. This is another one. This time it's not about a new product of ours but a course to help my team bolster its skill on an important industry technology, Kubernetes. It's also being conducted remotely, so there's no travel involved— for good and bad. Good because it means no travel cost or time; bad because there's so much value in reaching consensus on sensitive topics and unscripted face-to-face conversations that simply can't happen on a big Zoom meet.

The meta-lesson in this training, though, isn't about the value of f2f vs. remote work. It's about how to plan how much time the training takes. Or, conversely, how little content it takes to fill a fixed time-box. Because this training, as valuable as it is, is running way behind schedule— which is, BTW, a very common problem with training.

On Tuesday, the first of three half-days of workshops, we got through less than 75% of the material planned for Tuesday. It took us until more than halfway through Day 2 to finish the Day 1 syllabus. Basically there's at least 1.5x as much stuff in this course as there is time allotted for it. In particular, the hands-on exercises are routinely running 3x as long as the instructors planned them to.

Part of the reason I make a point of this is that I've been on "the other side of the table" for training a lot. I've done technical sales enablement. It was as semi-official part of my job at a previous employer and an official part of my job for the first few years at this company.

Now, I'm not a "pro" at training. I don't have a college degree in it. I don't have formal training in it. It's a) an aptitude that b) I've spent time & effort getting better at.

I remember the first time I worked with a "pro" trainer several years ago at this company. We'd just hired him on, and I was meeting him over dinner the night before we delivered a day of sales training together in Boston. I'd reviewed his material on the flight out there.

"Tim, I'm concerned there's too content little here," I said. "We're booked for a full day tomorrow, but I think we could be done with this by lunchtime."

Tim just smiled. "It'll be a full day," he said. "You'll see."

I pushed back gently on that, asking him to elaborate. He did. Tim explained that he was allowing time for IT troubles to have to be resolved, extra time for break-out exercises, long breaks for sales people to catch up on their emails, and the ability to say, "Great! Everyone can go home an hour early," at the end of the day instead of asking everyone stay an hour late (as too often happens with training).

The next day happened exactly like Tim predicted. Everything he allowed for happened. People drifted in 15 minutes late. IT troubles caused us to start 1 hour after schedule. Allowing 2x to 3x the time for break-out exercises made them more meaningful for everyone. Allowing generous breaks for sales people to catch up on emails and keep in touch with their customers kept everyone focused in class— because if we didn't schedule generous breaks, sales people would just drop in and out on us, and we'd lose cohesion. And we finished comfortably before 5pm, allowing everyone to feel great about going home a bit early— or voluntarily stay a bit later to enjoy those unscripted f2f conversations I mentioned above.

So, what's the lesson here for trainers? Estimate how long the class should take, then add 50%. And either book a part day or be sure to include generous breaks— because the attendees all have "day job" responsibilities they need to address.

It's now been 6 weeks since I bought my first iPad. I had doubts about whether I'd find it useful. Sadly at the one month checkpoint I found my feeling that it's a third wheel proving true. At the 6 week mark nothing's different. I did have another flying trip (to Austin last week) where the iPad could have proved useful. Recall on my lengthy flights to/from Australia I really liked having the larger screen than my iPhone. But on these flights I was happy with the smaller, easily hand-held form factor of my phone.

"But why would you choose such a small screen??" some friends have sneered. ...Actually they're not friends but are in the widening category of Assholes I used to not mind.

One in particular always rode me, and everyone else who owned an iPhone, for choosing such a small screen when Android devices were clearly so much better because they were available with larger screens. The screen size of an iPhone has virtually never bothered me. Still I wondered, am I missing something? Then one time we were in a room together using our phones at the same time....


Yeah, the dude needs a huge-ass screen because he's practically blind. My vision isn't as detailed as it used to be, but it's nowhere near that bad. I'll stick with my easily pocketable phone for now. And sadly that means my iPad mostly continues to gather dust.

A month ago I bought myself an iPad. It was on a good sale and was within my toys budget so I bought it even though I've reasoned for many years that a tablet is a digital third wheel. I figured I might as well give it a try. (Plus, okay, there was a bit of retail therapy in there during a week when I felt blue for no particular reason.)

So, now it's a month later. What's the truth of it— is the iPad a trusty tool I use every day, or is it like an awkward "third wheel" on a date?

Sadly, my iPad so far is that unhelpful third wheel. Most of the time it sits by my desk gathering dust. The one situation where I've really used it & enjoyed it was flying to/from Australia. Using my iPad to watch inflight movies and play games was way better than doing the same on my iPhone. The bigger screen absolutely rocked. But the rest of the time in my day-to-day life I'm fine with the smaller screen and pocketability of my iPhone.

When I bought myself an iPad as a birthday gift earlier this week it was a decision that was a long time in the works. ...No, not the question of whether to spend a few hundred on something nice for myself (I have way underspent my discretionary budget for years) but whether I actually want an iPad.

When the first iPad launched in early 2010, almost fourteen years ago now, it make a big splash in my circles of friends and colleagues. I remember back in 2010 discussing it with a number of people. Being (mostly) practical sorts our conversation was, "This looks amazing... but what use case does it address?" A few went out and bought one regardless. For them, the effective use case was, "It's a lifestyle badge to always have the latest thing right away."

— "It's like an iPhone, but bigger, which will be nice for when I'm sitting in my armchair after dinner reading news," one friend said.

— "The touch screen makes it more engaging for my kids as an education tool, and there's no hinge (like on a laptop) for them to break," said a few others.

— "It's a bigger screen for watching movies on airplanes," reasoned a few.

— "Maybe it can replace carrying my laptop on business trips," several wondered.

None of these reasons to buy resonated with me. I've always been comfortable reading on my laptop at home. I'd be buying the device for me, not my kids (I don't have kids). And while a bigger screen would be nice while flying on an airplane, it would be yet-another device to have to carry around. Looking at the three form factors for mobile devices— laptop, tablet, phone— I decided I have need for only two. And since tablets aren't powerful or flexible enough to replace what I need a laptop for, and aren't small and portable enough to replace a mobile phone, I don't need a tablet.

But now I've bought one. 🤷‍♂️

I figured after almost 14 years without I could give it a try. Besides, the price was low enough to buy it on impulse as a special treat.

I'll see over the coming days and weeks whether I really do have use for a third mobile device. I've got to say, from the first few days the answer is Not really. Much as I sized things up 13 years ago, the iPad is still not powerful or flexible enough to replace a laptop for the things I do daily on it. And it's obviously way too big to fit in my pocket like my iPhone does for always-there portability. But maybe it's nice for having a bigger screen on airplane flights? I'll gauge that tonight when I board a 13.5 hour flight to Australia!