This makes me think of the old American Express commercial with Jerry Seinfeld and “the perfect pump”: https://youtu.be/m3JVr5HoeoA
For some reason I always think of this commercial when I am pumping gas, and how outdated it is. I feel like most people pay using a card now, and those that don’t usually have to pre-pay now, so the gas would shut off when they hit their amount anyway.
I do remember trying to hit round numbers pumping gas when I was younger, though.
I still say "release the hounds" whenever I start pumping. :-)
Years ago—late nineties—long after almost all pumps had CC readers in them, at least in Miami where I lived at the time, and those that didn't were at least electronically connected to the attendant booth, I pulled off at a station in rural Georgia.
Old-style pumps with a mechanical display. You didn't have to pay first. I filled my tank, then went inside to pay.
The attendant asked me how much I'd pumped. I hadn't thought to remember the amount.
I said something like "oh, let me go check for you."
He replies "no need", then pulls out a pair of binoculars and reads the amount off the pump.
Recently, I get annoyed by a pump in NY that wouldn't accept any of my cards or my iPhone. It made me miss those days of mechanical pumps.
It's amazingly rare to find gas stations that don't require prepay these days... but about three months ago I pulled off at a rural gas station, pretty remote area but two fairly new electronic pumps. The pumps seemed like they nominally accepted cards but the reader was taped over like a temporary problem, so I walked inside and put a bill on the counter and told them to put it on number one like you do... The clerk gave me a look like he had no idea what I was doing. Told me to go back outside and pump gas first so there was something to pay for (I think "so there's something to pay for" were his exact words).
I can only assume this is a joke he plays on out-of-towners. Either that or some kind of temporal anomaly has happened and I bought gas in the '90s.
For how commodity gas is it's kind of surprising the number of strange gas station stories I've accumulated over years in the rural southwest, but I suppose that's exactly why. A lot of towns have a gas station because they're a long ways from the next one, not because they actually have a lot of business. The consolidation of gas stations into the modern four-pump-plus with convenience store lead to a lot of older one-pump stations closing, but the ones that held on got stranger. So you end up with oddities like a restaurant that runs a couple pumps in the parking lot on the side, so paying cash requires flagging down a waiter (this was, if memory serves, actually on the outskirts of Silver City and so not even really that remote by regional standards).
> It's amazingly rare to find gas stations that don't require prepay these days...
Interestingly here in Canada I have the opposite experience; it seems like only stations in high-crime and super high-volume locations require it. There's ~10-12 stations I frequent and only one requires pre-payment, and even then only between 11p-5a.
Another thing that got me the first time I visited the US, what's the deal with pumps requiring a ZIP code? I know the "trick for Canadians" (the three digits of your postal code followed by 00, i.e. A1B 2C3 becomes a "valid zip code" of 12300) but it seems like a pointless extra step and a potential privacy issue.
The zip code is needed for credit card validation. Stolen credit cards are often used to pump as much gas as possible before the cardholder notices, which could then be resold or used by the criminals.
What's the fail-condition for non-US cards? Do they accept any Zip code you enter, reject everything, or expect you to enter something like the postal code digits plus zeroes?
The card issuer ultimately decides and I suspect it varies. These things can be pretty annoying internationally though, I've had the opposite problem that Canadian gas pumps won't take my US credit card and I have to pay inside - I think because for whatever reason Canadian credit card terminals want a signature slip every time I use my card, which based on cashier confusion I take it is unusual for Canadian issuers. Mexican credit card terminals don't do this, so there's something more inconsistent than just international transactions, I assume it's an irritating interaction of the network trying to line up the schemes in the various countries.
Amusingly debit cards tend to be less of a pain this way since the North American countries are mostly on the same interbank network and the rules have changed less over time.
don't you mean how prescient it was? it was literally making the point that credit cards were the new way to pay, and as you point out, it came to pass
By the time I started driving, the law required pay-before at all gas stations. So I don't really get what the problem is. How does having the card make things different for Jerry? If he didn't have it, wouldn't he just give the clerk 37 cents and be just as well off?
Back in the days of paying cash for everything, it was both rare and amazing when a transaction came out even in terms of standard dollar bills. If you pumped $20.37, you'd have to pay the clerk $21 or $25 and get $0.63 or $4.63 in change back. Coins were annoying to deal with.
At the gas pump, you could control how much you spent precisely. So many folks would slow down their pumps as they approached $10 or $20 or whatever amount they needed and then stop on the even number.
In the commercial, pay-at-the-pump is a new and novel feature, so Jerry can fill his tank up to the top without worrying about dealing with the nickels and dimes.
Coins weren't as annoying when you could buy something meaningful for less than a dollar. A walletful of $5 bills is annoying too, if a pack of gum costs $20.
You either have to dig through your change to find the exact change, or wait while he gets your change... either way is annoying.
Also, if you break a dollar bill and get change, that change will likely end up in a change jar, which keeps it out of circulation for you and also takes time to wrap into rolls to trade in (they didn't have coinstar back then)
Most people (myself included) very much dislike dealing with coins. Having to find the 37 cents (or more likely having to break a bill) is a (minor) pain point for a lot of people.
I read the law, and... wow. Talk about nannying. The whole law basically amounts to "the government needs to impose more control and restrictions in order to keep citizens safe"
> Retail Gasoline Dispensing Safety Act
> a. Because of the fire hazards directly associated with dispensing fuel, it is in the public interest that gasoline station operators have the control needed over that activity to ensure compliance with appropriate safety procedures, including turning off vehicle engines and refraining from smoking while fuel is dispensed.
> b. At self-service gasoline stations in other states, cashiers are often unable to maintain a clear view of the activities of customers dispensing gasoline, or to give their undivided attention to observing customers; therefore, when customers, rather than attendants, are permitted to dispense fuel, it is far more difficult to enforce compliance with safety procedures
> c. The State needs stronger measures to enforce both compliance by customers with the ban on self-service and compliance by attendants with safety procedures
> e. Exposure to toxic gasoline fumes represents a health hazard when customers dispense their own gasoline, particularly in the case of pregnant women
5k fires/year may not seem like much compared to the billions of non-incident pumps, but what about our limited municipal firefighting capacity? Wouldn't gas pump fires contribute to their being overloaded, unnecessarily, when all is required is a simple rule that hurts no one?
What limited municipal firefighting capacity? Firefighters hardly fight any (urban) fires these days, because of better building codes and fewer people smoking.
Where do you live? Do your firefighters just sit around taking no calls all day? Where I live (top 5 city in the US, with some of the most restrictive fire building codes) the average firehouse gets 80+ calls a day.
I doubt even 1/4 of those are actual fires, in my town firefighters show up to car crashes and heart attacks and shootings and all sorts of things that aren't on fire.
What percent of those calls are actually necessary calls though? I used to watch a fire truck roll up at least once a week to check up on the same dude napping on the sidewalk. Not to try and say that the majority of their calls are like that, but that does suggest a system with at least some spare capacity.
The hospitals, I guess? I'm making inferences from the judgement-making of...whoever, not second-guessing them.
If anything, I'm giving complete faith to the system here. My assumption is if they can send out a full fire-truck to respond to a call where clearly an ambulance would be sufficient, they're not doing it despite there also being a fire that needs response.
I would also be interested in a cost-benefit analysis for this intervention (full service pumping) compared to, say, different fire safety protocols, rules that allow only essential gas pumping to be done (like when your tank is below half full), or other approaches.
I also wonder if it's OK that we let each state decide for themselves rather than creating a federal mandate with what is judged by leading experts to be the best solution.
In cases when a gas station's fire suppression is triggered, in how many cases does the fire department never come out? I would estimate that they come out every time anyway.
I don't have a horse in this race, I'm just interested in the facts.
Your phrasing in the comment I initially replied to suggested that you believe the pump mandate reduces the number of fires. If that's the case, it should be demonstrable with data and it should be front and centre in every discussion, surely?
It’s not about jobs; it’s about entitlement. Some years back our governor at the time tried to change this and the vast vast majority of residents (not me) raised hell.
Personally I prefer to use a "cold station", as in, an unmanned station. Pre-pay with my phone, get out, grab a pump, stand around for a couple of minutes, get back in the car and drive off. No need to faff with people.
Non NJ resident who drives through the entire state periodically.
It's also annoying if you're driving down the turnpike right after a snow-storm. The turnpike is clear but the attendants are snowed-in. Once waited for over an hour for the only attendant to pump, but we weren't going to make it to CT on that tank.
> Being able to refuel your car without stepping outside is really nice, especially in winter. There has been attempts to repeal that law to no avail.
In most tank stations I've seen in Italy you have the served and self lines, the latter sparing you some cents/liter while in the former they will wash your windshield while the tank is getting filled up.
Not anymore. I'm actually old enough to have worked the "serviced lane", or "full service" as it was called in the U. S. If you are disabled, there is still the option to have an attendant come out an pump it for you (I have never even seen this, let alone experienced it). Otherwise, I haven't seen a full service lane in probably twenty years, save Oregon and New Jersey, where it self-service is illegal (unless you're on a motorcycle).
As a side note, barely-above minimum wage though it was, I loved that job. Kinda sucked in the Indiana winters, but otherwise stand outside all day and talk to people.
Side-side note: as a former "professional", I'll admit I got bored after 1976, so I have no score to post.
No, because there is no demand for full service at the extra amount it would cost to hire someone. I actually would not pay any extra for someone else to fill it, as I would prefer to not have someone else touch my credit card and risk overfill my fuel tank.
Yes, I would have to use hand sanitizer either way. But if I do not hand over my card, that is less chance of credit card skimmer or some other way of recording my card number. In NJ, many gas stations even ask for your billing zip code.
Corporate operated gas stations such as Wawa and Quickchek and Costco did not. Franchised gas stations, Exxons/Delta/Shell/etc, always asked for zip code.
Maybe it changed in previous years, I have not been there in a while.
I think gas stations are required to pump gas for those physically unable to do so. In the Washington, DC, area most do not offer a served line. (I think--I don't drive a lot.) I can think of just one that would routinely pump the gas, and I haven't been there in years.
A relative moved away from NJ to where we live. They were in their late-20's. I had to teach them how to pump gas because they had never done it before.
I got to experience this while driving through Oregon. I ended up with a check engine light because the guy didn't screw the gas cap back on correctly.
Wait, really? I'm in WA, and I tip every time I go through there. I asked the first time whether it was appropriate to tip, and the guy was like "uhh, yeah!" so I've never asked again.
If they got the dates just right, I think the legalized it for a little bit during the pandemic. Also, you can pump your own gas in certain rural areas now.
Obligatory HN angle: I’ve often hypothesized that if credit cards in the US were chip and pin (like the rest of the world), NJ would support self serve in a microsecond. Eg no way would customers be comfortable handing their card over then shouting out their pin to rue attendant.
Hypothesizing is good. Getting data to validate or invalidate your hypothesis is better.
In South Africa they use chip and pin (also tap and go for small amounts, and tap and pin for larger amounts. Most gas is tap and pin).
Incidentally there is also no self-service for gas country wide.
The way it works is that each pump has a portable wireless card machine. The attendant fills in the amount, you tap, and if necessary he hands you the machine to enter a pin. They look away (in an obvious manner) for this step. He doesn't handle your card.
Incidentally this is true mostly everywhere - you handle your card, not the vendor.
Obviously you never give your PIN to anyone - much less shout it across a forecourt.
Sadly in the USA the prevalence of wireless cc terminals is amazingly low; even in restaurants you hardly ever see them, although this is getting by better, and (same hypothesis) would likely change if chip and pin was required here
In the real world... you're normally allowed to fill more gas into the tank if you're under, while going over is a problem.
I do realize this changes the nature of the game, but maybe a better description of the rules is in order here? I released 2 or 3 cents early so that I can "top off", but this apparently isn't allowed.
Maybe somehow asking the question “Will this pump up a $50 hold or a $100 hold on my card, because I only have a $75 balance and a $100 hold would create an overdraft fee”.
Oh, definitely! When I first started driving (which was, eek, more than 20 years ago) there was no such thing as prepaying for gas, at least for all the pumps in my area. You pumped the gas, then entered the store to pay for it. I always told the cashier the amount I pumped so I'm not sure if they would have the amount you pumped on their register or not. There were warning signs saying "drive offs will be prosecuted."
Year later, around 2004, I started paying for gas with a credit card at the suggestion of a friend. At first I was super uncomfortable doing so because a casual observer from a distance wouldn't be able to tell if you actually paid for your gas if you didn't enter the store. I'd take the receipt so I had proof I paid if anyone accosted me.
Shortly after that, around 2005-ish(?) I started seeing signs that said "cash transactions need to prepay."
Now I don't see any signs because prepaying is the standard procedure now.
Another difference between now and back then was kids (teens and preteens) would regularly pump gas for their parents (or whoever was driving). Not me, specifically, but I had a few friends who were always expected to pump the gas and pay for it if they were in the car. It was one of their assigned chores.
That's really interesting. I think we're around the same age-ish (I'm in my mid 30's). It must be a regional thing -- "Can I get $X on pump Y" goes back forever here as far as I can remember (Northeast US). I bet we got it earlier in these less trusting areas (I grew up in a tourism town).
Yes, the pumps that automatically stop at a pre-set amount of money are newer. They aren't very common, but in some more rural areas of the US, I have come across the old style pumps that do not stop automatically and the attendant is just reading the value off of the pump to settle up. You can pay with a card at most of these places these days, but it is still paying a preset amount and then a sale and/or refund afterwards.
Not in Canada. Some pumps are pre-pay, particularly in bigger cities like Toronto where fill-n-fly is more of an issue, but usually you can just start pumping, then go inside to pay after. Most pump handles still have the trigger locks, too, so you can wash your windshield while it pumps.
What’s the objective here? It’s like a much slower reflex game with more waiting.
One thing that real gas pumps have is variable flow control. Once you get to the last 10 cents you can ease up on handle and gas will trickle in at a much slower rate. Also, if you stop a few cents short you can “pulse” it a couple times.
No offense taken! And to the sibling, no, I'm not much fun at parties! I've been known to sit in a corner with a furrowed brow pondering a mathematical puzzle that nobody cares to hear about. I'm quite accustomed to being "other" wherever I bother to appear, and I tend to work on abstractions far removed from what people consider "reality", and, indeed, I find like minds here at HN. But I guess we've got an invasion of the normies today, who think that making fun of nerds is cool like it's the 80s again. Been there, survived it, let's move on.
But, you've got my curiosity... what deep truth about "reality" is exposed by Gas Pump Golf?
I think the person you're responding to was making a point that you're not concerned with money if you're not shooting for a dollar value but a liter value. The inferred disconnect, as I understood it, is one of wealth and not quite nerdiness.
Playing gas pump simulator on your computer is a sign of class solidarity? Only finding that a "little" fun reveals me as the bougie scum? I'm okay with this.
> But, you've got my curiosity... what deep truth about "reality" is exposed by Gas Pump Golf?
For non US players with little knowledge of the history of prices of petrol in the US, it's a fun way of seeing how it changed (and how incredibly cheap it still is). But that's probably not what they were trying to point out.
Update: I think it's also interesting to see the different approach to filling up your tank. Why do you shoot for an exact number of liters? I've only had to do that with two strokes engines, so I know how much oil I need to add for the correct mixture. Otherwise it's either a full tank or a certain amount of money to avoid getting small coins back (if I pay cash).
The paranoid motivation: prices are in tenths of a penny. Buying exact multiples of 10L is optimal in the sense that rounding is easily verifiable. Though, in Canada today, going $.02 past an exact dollar amount and paying cash beats out whatever games the station might be playing with tenths of pennies.
The gamer's motivation: most pumps I see have 3 digits past the decimal. Exact dollar amounts are easy-mode, exact volumes are hard-mode.
On a lot of pumps, even the lowest flow rate is still enough to make it tricky to hit an exact value. Even quick pulses can easily overshoot. I always appreciate a pump that lets me run it really slowly to creep up on that round dollar amount.
If you want maximum value, turn the pump off (typically a switch depressed by the tip of the pump when its in the hanger) and squeeze the handle all the way. This releases the pressure in the line and gives you those last few drops of gasoline.
definitely needs a hold-clip feature, eg the button 'sticking' if you drag out of it? and show the current total in the title to simulate getting back in your car and peeking out at the display
Literally any car should do that, the clip works based on pressure - once the tank fills up the clip should bounce back, regardless of what car you drive.
I think trevcanhuman is saying that the clip does not work well with his car. I had a '99 Camry that became a real bear to fill up around 2019 with the newest pumps.
It is a Volvo S60, 2016 or 2015 I think. So this shouldn’t be a problem, yet, it is. Even if you’re pushing it with your own finger, it pops out less than half of the tank full. Pretty weird. Does this at every gas station I think.
Thanks yourself. I laughed out loud reading your comment and must've used at least 10min trying to explain to my non techie wife why an anti-cheat rootkit was so funny.
I wanted to see how many "levels" there were so I started to click the button repeatedly just to end the game. Then I noticed the "you did better than X%" message. I can't get first but can I get last!?
Even using keyboard events, it still says I'm better than 1%. Either someone is still...more wrong/faster...or 1% is the lowest it can go? Haha!
During high school in the 80's I had a car that I had not yet realized was leaking gas slowly. Of course, I did run out of gas on my way home from work. Of course, I didn't have my wallet.
I guess since it was the late 80's, instead of calling someone for help I just asked a stranger for $0.25 to use the phone. I went inside and prepaid $0.25 worth of gas - about 1/4 gallon at the time. The cashier didn't even flinch. I literally pumped it into a plastic bottle I found, walked to my car and gassed it up.
I made it home and grabbed my wallet and decided to see if it had enough gas to make it to the gas station. It did. All better.
Setting an appropriate user style using something like Stylus to override it should work. See how this one does it: https://userstyles.world/style/2264/unblock-algoexpert-text-...
If you can't set user styles in your browser, you might not be able to accomplish it, though.
unless the site already did that, so you'll have to out-override them by applying an id to the outer html tag and doing the ol'
#useroverride#useroverride#useroverride#useroverride#useroverride#useroverride#useroverride#useroverride#useroverride#useroverride#useroverride#useroverride * {user-select: all !important]
I feel like most people in this thread aren't understanding thoroughly that this game is telling you all that money is worth less every year incrementally, I wonder how long this can go on.
Inflation is hard to stop, and you probably wouldn't want to. Meanwhile, they aren't making more crude oil. So, it's definitely going to be more money for less gas as time passes.
On the other hand, if they made a game where you held down a button to buy a certain amount of teraflops, it would probably go the opposite direction over time!
I think its much funnier, but also completely different. It’s a sketch show, not a narrative.
But I tend to watch it the whole series every month or so. It’s fun to put on in the background.
I feel like the brain surgery sketch is very close to the perfect sketch. It’s a simple joke, you can see where it’s headed before it gets there, but it’s still executed well.
I just watched that one and it looks good enough. I was hesitant because Youtube clips aren't always representative of clip shows. Even WKUK's most popular videos don't line up with the funniest.
In high school I used to be able to nail "the perfect pump" every single time. It was a party trick when we were out and up to no good. Now of course it's completely impossible with the price of gas.
I was looking at how the high score submission works, and there is some quite interesting anti-cheat here. I haven't managed to defeat it, but this is what I know so far:
A score submission looks like this, in a POST body to /new-score:
I tidied up the JavaScript that runs the site with jsbeautifier[0], but it's still pretty obfuscated and hard to read. So far I have worked out that the "id" field on each of the "logs" is just the number of milliseconds you held the button down, with random letters interspersed. So if you hold the button down for 125ms, then the id might get "a1b2c5".
If you mess with the logs so that the "id" fields are incorrect, then the server responds with "invalid". If you leave the logs alone and only change the main "score" value then it still responds with "ok" or "top", but it doesn't appear to actually insert the score - I suspect this is supposed to frustrate efforts at cheating.
I'm not sure whether using the word "placeholder" to refer to the player's name is an unintentional bug or not. I haven't played the game sufficiently well to see if a legitimate high-scoring submission to /new-score looks different. From what I can tell from the source, if you score well enough, it creates an input box and allows you to input your own name, and this input box has "placeholder" text set. If I just randomly change "olivia" to something else then my submission gets rejected with "invalid". I haven't yet worked out where the "olivia" string in "placeholder" comes from. It's a different name every time.
I also haven't yet worked out where the main "id" number comes from (64904 in the above). If I make small changes to this number then the submission still seems to be accepted, but large changes result in "invalid". I'm guessing this number is some sort of fuzzy-ish checksum on the player's name, but I haven't worked out where it comes from.
There is also a page at /tally which seems to map score values to integers (mostly 1, but some not) which I also haven't worked out the purpose of.
You don't need to modify the logs, you can modify the "score" value and submit with (valid) logs from a different score, and it will go through. However, it seems the author is removing such scores from the leaderboard.
Fwiw, you are correct that the digits in "id" is the duration of milliseconds. The letters in-between are random (found this in the source).
If you're able to time any of the stages right, then you can find the missing variable: rate of gas dispensing (in this game, it's 6 seconds per gallon or 0.1666 gallons per second).
For example, in 1931, the price is $0.17/gallon, and they want you to dispense $0.25 worth of gas. That's as little as 1.47 (0.25/0.17) gallons, or as much as ~1.52 gallons. That means you want to hold the button for between ~8825 milliseconds and ~9175 milliseconds. If you divide that ~1.5 gallons by ~9000 milliseconds, you've found the rate, 6 seconds per gallon.
To generate your log entry for 1931, you'd then have something like this:
{"year":1931,"price":0.17,"target":0.25,"sale":0.25,"id":"k8j9g5l8"}
To generate your log id for any given year:
Target / Price * 6000 = total milliseconds to hold the button. Just put a random letter in front of each digit and you're good to go.
love this! would be super cool if replicated the click & release we used to do as tank gets closer to fill up (or on touch devices sense pressure player applying)
How so? I often fill my tank much like this, making note of the current year and the precise amount of cash I have on hand. It might be a regional thing, but I felt it was very realistic.
Are people really criticizing the realism of someone's hobby project game? Really, you want better documentation or it to work perfectly on mobile browsers? You immediately need to hack the API?
It's a short little game. Enjoy it for what it is.
+1, honestly. Projects don't need to be revolutionary and ground-breaking.
Especially when it's not your (general you, not you specifically) time or money on the line, who are you to criticize what someone spends their free time building?
For some reason I always think of this commercial when I am pumping gas, and how outdated it is. I feel like most people pay using a card now, and those that don’t usually have to pre-pay now, so the gas would shut off when they hit their amount anyway.
I do remember trying to hit round numbers pumping gas when I was younger, though.