Adding “running” to the list of things that Google engineers apparently don’t do.
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.
NoDodgeQuestion 31 minutes ago [-]
At risk of summoning an army of vibe coders, I wish map apps were more configurable and let you set "I'm happy to walk 20 min" or "someone can drive me a few miles and drop me off"
eli 3 minutes ago [-]
It's not exactly what you asked for, but the public transit and multimodal focused apps are generally much better at this stuff. I like CityMapper and Transit.
Neither is good for turn-by-turn directions, but both are good for "what are all the different ways to get there"
marssaxman 10 minutes ago [-]
That completely tracks coming from people who work in a place laid out like this:
Speaking of trains, that's another thing they don't do. The auto-snapping of current location consistently snaps to whatever road or goat track it can find nearby, while equally consistently refusing to snap to the railroad they have mapped.
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.
dhosek 23 minutes ago [-]
Apple Maps also does this.
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.
juujian 37 minutes ago [-]
I remember Google maps working well for walking around in Europe. Ever since I've moved to America, not so much. Go figure...
rsynnott 33 minutes ago [-]
This is in Ireland. I’ve also noticed it doing very silly things in Germany and the UK.
It’s fine for pure walking directions, but it gets unhappy about the idea of someone using public transport walking.
scarby2 15 minutes ago [-]
there really needs to be a configurable rules/decisions engine. I.e. i would prefer to walk everywhere, i will take public transit if it saves me more than 15 minutes total or 5 minutes per leg, evaluate this at every interchange node.
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.
sam_lowry_ 32 minutes ago [-]
I remember the time when roundabouts were round in Google Maps.
cineticdaffodil 24 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
jerlam 48 minutes ago [-]
I found this doozy from someone trying to test out the feature:
> 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.
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.
branon 18 minutes ago [-]
I refuse to go running with a phone - too heavy, and too distracting, running outside is one of the few places I _escape_ the phone for a bit. So I made sure to get a fitness tracker with onboard GPS. It syncs to the phone later, when I return, which then uploads workout data to the vendor's cloud.
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.
frereubu 8 minutes ago [-]
You may have tried this, but I run with my phone in an elasticated belt that's just tight enough to keep the phone stable without being uncomfortable. I really don't want to fork out for another device just for running. (I also find a watch on my wrist annoying when I don't wear one normally).
Waterluvian 56 minutes ago [-]
Is "snatching a phone and running off" a common enough problem in some regions that this is worth having? Or is this a feature chasing after fears of the bogeyman, leading to concrete inconveniences like this?
hbn 55 minutes ago [-]
> Is "snatching a phone and running off" a common enough problem in some regions that this is worth having?
Thanks! Given this was CBC, my jaw hit the floor when I saw London. I live 20 mins from London, Ontario and 70k thefts in a year would be _insane_. Then I realized it was about London, U.K. and my jaw only hit the table. 70k is still insane, though.
Is it really insane? That is less than 200 per day, in a city of 15 million people.. a single gang of 20 thieves could likely manage that! The real question is, how does this compare to other cities of this size and demographics?
skobes 35 minutes ago [-]
Even the CBC thinks of London, England before London, Ontario.
Waterluvian 29 minutes ago [-]
Poor London. (Ontario.)(Canada.)
throwaway27448 49 minutes ago [-]
Why bother stealing iPhones? Is it just for the scrap/recycle->repair value?
mapmeld 38 minutes ago [-]
There's also a scam where they contact the owner from abroad, offering to return it, claiming they're an innocent trying to activate a used phone they spent their last dollar on, or threatening the original user into unlocking it. They will say that they're hackers, connected to criminals in your home city, using your name and recent photos to say that they're going to expose your text messages. Anything to get an unlock.
hparadiz 47 minutes ago [-]
They send them to countries where they aren't locked or break it down for parts.
throwaway27448 42 minutes ago [-]
> They send them to countries where they aren't locked
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?
kotaKat 30 minutes ago [-]
there's still a fairly lucrative parts stripping market and there are extreme efforts that are used to "unlock" locked devices - it has been known in the Chinese marketplace that you could get paired chips to do SMD rework with a "clean" set of identifiers. they'll swap the SOC, the flash, and the wireless all for a few bucks.
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.
hparadiz 26 minutes ago [-]
On top of that a sizable percentage of theft victims don't even bother to report it stolen.
bigyabai 47 minutes ago [-]
You can send them to Chinese chop-shops and still turn a decent buck.
bombcar 50 minutes ago [-]
Ever since phones became pretty immune to reselling-theft (steal phone, reset it, sell it) people have been snatching phones and trying to empty crypto, banks, etc before it locks. Some apps don't reauthenticate.
gleenn 45 minutes ago [-]
Bonus security on iPhone - if you long-press on any app, you can click "Require Face ID" and it will make thieves need your face again to open bank or sensitive apps. I did this for all my financial apps amd also email so they can't reset passwords. It isna minor inconvenience but would hopefully prevent an unlocked phone from being stolen and having bank accounts emptied.
Interesting point. The article linked in a sibling comment (about 2025 thefts) suggests that they are being resold. Which makes sense if it's a $2000 product that's so stealable. But I do recall there being a lot of difficulty resetting a phone that isn't yours. Do you feel the is article wrong? Are there ways around it? Is "pretty immune to reselling-theft" a newer feature than 2025?
dhosek 20 minutes ago [-]
In Mexico, apparently, the scheme is to grab a phone from an inattentive pedestrian from a motorcycle or scooter.
datakan 49 minutes ago [-]
Yes, its why those long crossbody lanyards are now so popular.
>an official app to report incidents of phone theft
I can't be the only person to see the irony here. Do they also have a drive-thru to report car theft?
evandrofisico 6 minutes ago [-]
After you install it you cana "safe contact" or do the reporting on a website which will blocklist the phone's IMEI on all phone companies, block any banking app sessions and remotely wipe the phone.
It also functions as a public searchable database of stolen phones, allowing a prospective buyer of a second hand device to check it.
warkdarrior 48 minutes ago [-]
RTFM
46 minutes ago [-]
kbrannigan 13 minutes ago [-]
Coming soon near you:
- 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.
helterskelter 7 minutes ago [-]
2036 crime prevention, detecting this behaviour and automatically forwarding it to the police to be referenced later for probable cause.
frereubu 11 minutes ago [-]
The solution is clear - an "I am a tweaker" toggle.
z3t4 18 minutes ago [-]
In Sweden where I live you need to use the digital national ID whenever you make a credit card transaction via some app, for example when buying a bus ticket, so you need to have it with you at all times. But with the ID you can also take a quick loan and transfer all the money to a foreign bank basically ruining your life as the bank take no responsibility if the ID is used during the transaction.
sroerick 33 minutes ago [-]
Solution is simple, run slower!
chrisjj 46 minutes ago [-]
Is this creeping brand rep protection? Rather like Meta glasses' recording warning LED.
ck2 44 minutes ago [-]
oooh now I get the meme posts with the duct-taping phone to hand visiting Paris
laweijfmvo 40 minutes ago [-]
this is easily solved by buying the corresponding wearable made by your phone manufacturer!
/s
Rendered at 19:33:24 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
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.
Neither is good for turn-by-turn directions, but both are good for "what are all the different ways to get there"
https://maps.app.goo.gl/JHQPdvSStnr6jfm77
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Yes absolutely
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/phone-london-snatch-9.7204104
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.
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.
- 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.
/s