If you haven’t experienced suica, it’s like magically fast. Faster than NFC, faster than Apple Pay, faster than tap to pay, faster than Disney magic bands, faster than your work badge. It absolutely floored me every time I used it in Japan and it’s a full payment transaction.
It's not only magically fast, but it's super useful. You can use it at vending machines + convenience stores anywhere (unless it's one of those old ones that only take cash/coins and print paper tickets) and at the shops as well.
People not in Japan/Singapore/Korea/China should experience what a proper transit card done looks like.
I've used a Suica card for many years now. I agree it's both fast and reliable.
One summer I was crisscrossing Tokyo by train over several days, using the Suica card, so I got to see a LOT of commuters. Lots of people were in a hurry and would run through the gates (the default state is open, it closes quickly if your card is out of funds or some other problem). Running through the gates while quickly touching the card to the reader. I've done that a couple of times myself.
It's also useful in that you can pre-order a Shinkansen ticket, for example, and link that purchase to your Suica card, which you then use for the Shinkansen gate. If there are other fees (which there may be) they're just deducted from the money the card holds, as usual. Makes everything very simple.
For me a physical card is easier than using a phone. A phone is so much larger so I would need to get it from a pocket somewhere, while the Suica card I can keep in my jeans pocket or some other easy place.
For a long time in Japan, the physical cards were limited because of IC inventory shortage. There was a big push to get people to use their phones during this time.
Also, travelers beware: some of the special "Suica" sold at Haneda (and maybe Narita, too?) expires and is completely dead after 30 days, even if it has a balance. I found this out the hard way. Buy a proper Suica at Shinagawa or another non-airport station.
That’s the red “Welcome Suica”. Green or any other IC card at any other location like ICOCA don’t expire functionally ever. The stated time on some cards is 10 years since last use, but they’re practically infinite in that they can be used even after this point.
I also did prefer my plastic Pasmo (essentially the same as suica) card until I learned during my last trip, that it can only be recharged with cash :-/
This doesn't especially bother me, but it is a kinda funny workflow to go to an ATM to withdraw cash (with your bank card) only to immediately put it back into the machine (to charge your IC card).
It was funny during Expo in Osaka on the massive metro station - you could just zip in with the suica, while the less knowledgeable foreign tourists would form long queues in front of the special gates where they could pay by a payment card, which were glacialy slow in comparison.
> People not in Japan/Singapore/Korea/China should experience what a proper transit card done looks like.
In Prague city transit does not have limiting gates. If you bought unlimited ticket, you just walk in bus/tram/metro and that is it. No touching, scanning, showing, nothing. Maybe once a month (or even rarer) you might encounter a patrolling controller who would ask you to show your ticket, but that's it.
In Vienna they don't have gates at all or even much indication where gates supposed to be. My first visit I accidentally didn't pay for my ticket - I'm used to ticket machines being near the gates but I couldn't spot any. I also arrived on a train so I thought that since there was no gates or visible ticket machines between train and subway, maybe my train ticket is valid for a subway trip (happens in some places) but it was not the case.
And that's the difference. IIRC, you have to periodically top up your Suica card with money which then gets deducted from the balance each time you use it.
In Europe, there is no such thing - sure, you can buy a lot of single ride tickets and then use them when you need to, but you have to stamp the ticket when you start each ride, which does seem a little more inconvenient.
I don't think it's fair to conflagrate "Europe" as a single entity. From what I'm reading and my distant recollection:
- In London you top up your Oyster card and pay a fare according to the zone your travelling to. Metro is gated.
- In Paris your load up tickets in your Navigo pass and pay a flat rate every time you take the metro or RER. It's also gated.
- In most (all ?) Swiss cities you don't have any card to charge and have to get a ticket for every travel (like in London your fare amount depends is zone dependent); however there's an app that let you get your location at the start of your travel and end of your travel and automatically charges you the correct fare. There are no gates.
There are no gates anywhere in Switzerland, but one will encounter patrollers much more frequently in the trains (seldom in the trams/buses). I was flabbergasted by the low-trust look of the 2.5-meters high gates in the Paris subway
The European public transport system is not some centralised system that should be generalised like this.
The system in the Netherlands has worked like Suica for years (but without the extremely fast card reading unfortunately). You simply tap on with your public transport card or bank/credit card and tap out when you get off. Subscriptions, automatic/manual top ups, it's all possible.
I guess this is worth an explanation: in many European intra-city subways/trams, you're supposed to buy a ticket and then insert it into a "validator" machine that stamps current time. The validator is around where ticket gates would be, but much fewer in numbers, installed on random locations or on railings. Being on a train without the stamped ticket is equivalent to jumping a fence.
A lot of European folks seem to have positive experiences with the validator system as something convenient, less intrusive and high bandwidth, overall superior, but personally I doubt it scales out to scale and transit models of places like Shinjuku. Most rides in Tokyo commuter rails are point to point and Japanese commuters go through gate like a marching army, so it means temporary riders has to disrupt the march to get to the validator, and also a single validator in the middle of the gate area isn't going to meet demands but increasing the number of the machines kills the benefits.
btw: JRE is actually doing experiments with more modernized touch-free gates, one based on facial recognition a la Minority Report, and another based on UWB radio gadget added to phones. It is speculated that UWB is likely the intended path forward.
In London you can use a contactless (UK) bank card, and it works just like the "Osyter Card". I think that started around 2016. For journeys on the TFL network you should get billed the lowest fare, as long as you touch at the right points when changing.
This is a consequence of the world being eaten by managed code. IBM made POS checkout terminals that were blazingly fast 40 years ago. Now every modern data processing technogy is glacial by comparison.
The story makes clear that constraints matter. Product teams build against specified constraints. If latency isn’t one of them, they’re going to sacrifice it if it helps meet the defined requirements more quickly and cost-effectively.
Every time I see a shoddy piece of work, I know which constraint was sacrificed.
I much prefer convenient over fast, being able to just tap my phone's uploaded IC card/alipay without having to open it up or switch cards is maybe 200ms slower, but I don't have to think or change what I'm doing. Plus with alipay it will just autodeduct so I don't ever have to think about that as well, though Apple wallet Suica makes it easy to reload too.
JRE required Suica to be instantly accessible so there's a setting in Apple Wallet to set a card to a default quick transit use card(forgot the exact name). If configured as such, just poking the gate antenna with earpiece end of an iPhone instantly completes the transaction just as fast as a real card does.
(yes, the antenna is in the top FaceID/Dynamic Island area, Osaifu Keitai spec requires a □つ icon wherever antenna is located, which Apple managed to completely ignore)
FWIW on Android, Google Wallet tells me "Transit Cards: These cards never require verification", and indeed I can just wave my phone at the terminal without unlocking it.
Express Mode originally launched as Express Transit with only support for Suica, Beijing and Shanghai cards. It was then renamed to Express Mode when support for the other modes was added.
But you should probably just get a suica in your apple or google wallet, you don’t actually need an IC card. I’m not sure if using a phone makes it less fast though, I couldn’t tell (we had to get a card for my kid since he doesn’t have a phone).
Definitely better than the QR codes used by China.
You can use a digital Suica in Google Wallet only if your Android phone has Japan-spec hardware . International Android phones bought outside Japan generally cannot support digital Suica cards in Google Wallet.
Hardware/software-wise, yes, but putting money on the card is a problem if you don't have a credit/debit card issued by a Japanese bank (or perhaps a few others). That's fine for locals, of course, but not helpful for many foreign visitors.
As far as I could tell from everything I've read from multiple sources, every Pixel since Pixel 4 _has_ the chip, it's just not enabled and you can enable it with rooting.
I assume it's a licensing issue, where Google is too cheap to pay JR for the phones sold outside of Japan, so only setup the JP models and only pay the license for those.
Thanks, I forgot about. I have an iPhone so didnt have to worry about the incompatibility with Android. If it makes android users feel any better, here in Seattle orca cards can go on android phones but not iPhones.
You can move your alipay card into apple wallet and have it as the default payment method, so do you don't even have to swipe or turn on your phone, it will even work in low-power/off mode.
Thats interesting, but it seems most subway systems are still QR code based? Anyways, I’ll try to see if I can get that to work next time I go to China.
It was a completely custom standard conceived by JNR/JRE and Sony during 1990s-2000s, that they eventually managed to be included into the common NFC specification through years of lobbying and pressuring.
The Japanese gate machines with tickets are even more impressive because they're mechanical, and super fast. You can put a single tickets or 2, insert in any direction, and in a few seconds the tickets is out at the other end of the machine so you don't have to stop walking at a fast pace.
The inside of these machines are a sight to behold. Even more than 2 tickets are supported, including different sizes, and they're always sorted and re-oriented properly when they come out.
It's completely anonymous and available on many ticket machines. There are some half-wrong info that you have to fill in a form, but that's only for commuter passes and registered cards.
You just tap Buy Suica and insert two 1000 yen bills. The system keeps 500 yen as a deposit, which is refunded when you return the card, but it's also $3.50 for a little memorabilia.
If you absolutely don't want the keepsake, you can create a virtual card from Wallet on iPhone(7 or later). I believe an app is not needed through that path. Those can be loaded from your credit card, or at pink ticket vendors with the cavity for devices(IIRC the latter didn't work initially).
I think the reason some people are complaining about the Suica stuff nowadays is that since... I think 2021 there's been stock shortages so getting a physical Suica involves going to specific places (I think at airports for example?) to get one. There's also now this "Welcome Suica" that you can get but it only works in certain areas of the country (so much for the IC standard...)
I believe you can't get a physical one from the ticket machines anymore unless you are getting a commuter pass, but I might be wrong.
Yeah, at airports (where most travellers arrive). I recently arrived at Narita airport, you go down to the trains and there's an office you go to where a human being spends a couple minutes helping you get a Suica. It's great because you can also ask any questions you have about usage at the same time.
I heard from friends that physical Suica cards tend to be difficult to obtain these days at times, but digital one isn't at all.
Took me roughly a minute to create one within Apple Wallet ahead of my trip, and that was it. Didn't need to install any apps or register on any websites, because creating a Suica card is natively supported in the wallet app.
Idk how the situation is like with Suica card on Android though, outside of the fact that unless the phone was purchased in Japan, it will typically lack the necessary hardware for it (which isn't a concern with iPhones, because all regional versions include it).
Well you can get it only in some kind of machines, and you need to pay it cash. Also you need to use cash to charge it, and you can charge it minimum by 1000 or 500 yen at a time depending on the station, not less.
The digital version only works on iPhones, since Android phones sold outside Japan doesn't have the Felica chip, or if they have it (e.g. Google Pixel) is disabled in EU/US firmware because the manufacturer doesn't want to pay a fee for every phone to Sony for something 99.999% of people that will never travel to Japan would use.
> Well you can get it only in some kind of machines, and you need to pay it cash. Also you need to use cash to charge it
Totally forgot about that aspect, you are 100% correct.
I remember traveling with my friend who had a physical card, and more than once we had to reroute to a nearby kiosk and wait in line, so he could recharge the balance on the card. Apple Wallet felt more convenient, because recharging it was as simple as picking the amount to recharge and hitting "submit."
Many Android phones have the hardware, regardless of where they are sold, but it's disabled for non-Japanese SKUs so the manufacturer can avoid paying the licensing fees for it.
Thanks for bringing this up, I actually had no idea it was simply disabled, and assumed it was simply not included at all (for whichever miniscule savings it would bring).
Your explanation makes more sense, because it is definitely cheaper/easier to just disable (but include) that hardware to avoid licensing fees (as opposed to having an additional factory manufacturing line just to produce the SKUs that physically exclude that hardware).
There was a brief period where it was difficult but that's gone now, you can set it up easily on Apple Wallet at least (apparently Google wallet is different?).
It used to be easy to get one from a 7-11, then it was hard for a bit, then it was easy again with digital wallets.
Yes, that was during the period where there was a chip shortage for things like cars and other industrial products, this also affected production of Suica cards at the time. During that period you couldn't buy unregistered Suica cards, but you could still buy registered cards (registered to your name). This was simply used as a mechanism to limit the number of cards because of the shortage, and you could also buy those "visitor" Suica cards (those I don't like, for various reasons).
I've been able to get multiple over the past nearly 10 years, very easily. I think there was a relatively brief shortage toward the end of the COVID closure, maybe the first year or so Japan was re-opened. But generally you could still get them, just not at major hubs.
nah, you walk to a machine at the airport and get the tourist one.
I had to get 4 as I was traveling with kids who don't own phones and could get cheaper rates, took a few minutes, you waste a few yen but get to keep the souvenir.
We purchased it from a machine recently. By the way, can I just say: Japan cares about UI in a very different way to Europe. The screens had pleasant graphics and sound, and the buttons for pressing in numbers felt so good. It just felt like someone who cares designed that machine. I did not like the refill-your-IC-card machines though, they made very loud noises so you wouldn't forget to take your IC card with you.
Same deal with Opal in Sydney - the old school opal card processes a second or so faster than a card/apple pay/google pay that you can just keep walking. Smashed into the barrier the one time I forgot my card.
Something that is amazing about Sydney’s system though is that as a visitor to Sydney you can likely use the train system without needing an app or any sign up. Just use your credit or debit card via nfc on your phone (or the physical one)
I was honestly so impressed by that, you mean I can just tap on? Don’t need to stand here outside the gates for 10 minutes entering my info into a frustrating app? Don’t need to buy a $10 card, only $5 of which I’ll ever use? Even with suica being pretty easy to set up on iPhone, this is definitely something Sydney’s got over Japan’s system.
Yep, and it's increasingly common around the world. In Australia, it's also fully rolled out in Brisbane and I believe it's just about finished being rolled out in Melbourne too.
Many systems within Japan are also setup to accept Tap-to-pay/PayWave/contactless (though JR East is a notable exception), but many locals just use Suica/Pasmo because it's the much _faster_.
New York and Seattle both have the same thing and it's wonderful. Google Wallet even allows the user to set it to not require an unlock for transit transactions.
Meanwhile in another city not far away, the cards are instant but the gate has to think for a while. It's inconsistent too, so you inevitably run into it.
I feel either the gate is making international round trip calls through the internet to some SaaS service. Our it's actually doing a face scan and lookup.
I’ve never noticed any delay on the London underground with Apple Pay or a normally debit card - certainly not a second. Havent used an oyster for years but I don’t remember it being faster.
Definitely slower to use a card or your phone in London.
I remember when they first allowed card use more than a decade ago and it broke the flow quite a bit at rush hour as people were so used to the Oyster card's timing that they'd run into the back of people using cards or people using cards would run into the gate as it had not opened as quickly as they were used to. Quite a bit of commentary around it during that time:
It reminds me of that oft touted experiment where a light lit up within some number of milliseconds of a person hitting a button, and people perceive it as happening before they hit the button.
> Every Suica card has a chip storing two things: a unique card ID, and your current balance. Both of those live on the card itself, rather than a central server.
When you remove the network and run locally, you’d expect it to be amazingly fast.
But it’s also effectively physical cash. And that has many downsides as well.
OMNY with iOS Express Mode is crazy fast. I don't even have to do anything besides hold my wrist or phone next to the entrance: https://support.apple.com/en-us/105123
Pleasant alternative from a lot of US transit systems, eg BART int eh Bay Area which is the most customer-hostile service I'eve ever used. giant gates that seem right out of a dystopian science-fiction movie, an achingly slow card readers which absolutely force you to break stride no matter how ready you are. Add in the extremely unhelpful station attendants and you've got a recipe for a public transport service that people actively avoid if they possibly can. Then they turn around and ask for voters to approve extra tax money. I'm convinced none of the people on the BART board actually use the service.
There's a big difference in antisocial behaviour and visible mental health issues between Tokyo and San Francisco.
"San Francisco’s BART found that systemwide crime fell 41 percent after new gates were installed. Even more impressively, across the ten stations with the most corrective maintenance needs, staff time spent on in-system maintenance fell 96 percent, which suggests that fare evaders also cause most unreported crime, like littering, vandalism, and graffiti."
From the underlying press release (emphasis added):
BART PD boosted the visible safety presence in the system by doubling officer presence systemwide and ensuring police are riding trains more. This approach is strengthened by BART’s ongoing use of unarmed Crisis Intervention Specialists, Transit Ambassadors, Fare Inspectors, and Community Service Officers.
Safety efforts were also bolstered by the installation of 715 new fare gates at all 50 stations, a project completed in August 2025, four months ahead of schedule.
More to the point, mone of that is relevant to the fact that the giant gates impose a burden on lawful users as well as any criminals they might deter, nor is it relevant to the extremely slow performance of the automated gates themselves. The experience of riding BART sucks for law-abiding paying passengers.
Am in Japan now and can confirm: you got a broken one. It's magically fast, everywhere. I prefer it even at the 7-eleven. Why wait the interminable 2 seconds for your Visa 'cardo touchy' to work when Suica is literally instant.
Reading this article it makes sense why it feels too fast to be real, especially when using a powered phone. The things are already communicating as my hand is moving towards the reader. By the time it gets there, it's happened.
I spent 2 weeks in Japan and used the Suica card near-daily in multiple cities. Sometimes it wouldn't even activate until I tapped it again, other times there was a delay.
man, I dont even use Figma for personal & side projects because its so expensive. I still occasionally fire up sketch or freehand it.
Figma is a work tool only and I'm disappointed by its MCP tooling which feels late and behind where it should be, I just feel forced to use Figma Make which stays in their walled garden without practical utility and connections to my actual codebases
I sometimes like having my content editorialized. Some of the LLM writing tropes are ok to me—I'd delete them if I added this prompt to my instructions (but I wouldn't). But my editorial preferences—the sense of voice and tone I want the LLM to make—are rarely these tropes. Instead, I have a positive prompt of the angles I do enjoy.
However, what is cloying about these tropes for many is that they're becoming empty words. Instead of tack-sharp summaries or reductions to simple understanding, the model is spilling extra tokens for minimal value—I don't need to read "it's not X, it's Y" for the n-th time today. I'd really prefer tighter, more succinct reading that actually directly quotes sources (which modern models rarely do to avoid copyright traps).
They could be considering the new high end display a different product rather than a refresh (for marketing purposes at least).
I recall the XDR being announced alongside the last Mac Pro redesign. No new Mac Pro yet, so maybe they’ll announce the new large display whenever that is announced?
I totally get and respect the perspective of the parent poster, I'm just keeping it real that the US is generally not a high-trust society. If it were, we wouldn't have disclosures and disclaimers and limits of liability for everything we do all day long.
>I'm just keeping it real that the US is generally not a high-trust society.
Completely false, you mean Urban areas are not high trust.
I live in a place (In the US) where kids walk to school, don't lock bikes and our downtown has free umbrellas to take and give back whenever there is rain.
You can usually save more by generating solar locally and using it to power the home and charge the battery, then discharging the battery during peak hours (usually around and just after sunset) to earn the most. Obviously higher upfront capex.
Pure grid cycling is also frowned on by some utilities.
Octopus in the UK has tariffs where it basically takes over your system (ie the batteries in particular) and subsumes them into its wider activities, eg:
Not all homes are made equal: different appliances & electronics from different vintages, etc.
I have 2 EVs (Tesla and BMW), an electric oven, and a homelab rack (but no HVAC), and my usage was 34.4 MWh last year — with 100% from Solar and Powerwall.
I’m waiting on a quote for an hvac that uses its waste heat for the home hot water. Im irritated that I’m cooling the house, pushing out hot air, and heating water at the same time.
Get a basic heat recovery unit, it basically has no moving parts (just a few fans) and good ones recover 90%+ of the heat going out of your house. It's almost useless if you don't have an airtight envelope though.
All in one systems with water heating are way too complex and _will_ fail relatively quickly, mini heat pumps won't last 10 years, and by the time it dies you won't be able to find a replacement for your specific model
> All in one systems with water heating are way too complex and _will_ fail relatively quickly, ...
Can you offer some evidence of this? I don't see how adding a refrigerant to water heat exchanger after the compressor, before the reversing valve, could possibly hurt the longevity of a system.
> ... mini heat pumps won't last 10 years, and by the time it dies you won't be able to find a replacement for your specific model
Thing with mini-splits is you replace the entire unit so it doesn't matter.
> Can you offer some evidence of this? I don't see how adding a refrigerant to water heat exchanger after the compressor, before the reversing valve, could possibly hurt the longevity of a system.
The nearly infinite amount of forum posts about heat pumps dying prematurely and costing thousands and thousands to fix. You don't see how adding complexity on top of complexity in a complex system add points of failures ?
> Thing with mini-splits is you replace the entire unit so it doesn't matter.
I forgot this is an american centric forum and things are just made cheap/disposable because "it's cheaper'
This makes me sad. I’m in a 1940s house where the lack of it being airtight is a key reason it’s still standing as it leaks and the airflow dries it. Water flows down the inside of the brickwork, and the cavity is well ventilated.
On that avenue, I do push hot air from my homelab into my upper garage for heat. If it below 50deg outside I also bring in some cold air from outside. Both are somewhat free offsets for heating/cooling.
I cannot stand using gpt-oss, but I miss some of the creative spark of GPT-3 davinci dearly.
reply