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Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#151

Post by exergy »

matz1 wrote: post #117
jedberg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Integrity -- the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness . The definition of integrity requires honesty. Do you think it is honest to tell people "there are 38 rooms left" when you know 38 is a random number? The definition also requires you to act morally. Do you think that anything legal is moral, and vice versa? Slavery was legal. German extermination camps were legal. Were th…

Morality is subjective, according to my moral framework, telling people there are 38 room left, if I'm the business owner and the benefit > cost then yes. Same thing with slavery, extermination camp, weed. To some people these are moral.

Brother, you need to grow the fuck up. Right now, you're coming across as one of those try-hard college students on a 'Rationality Rulez' bender.

Morality is subjective but not in the manner you're describing. It's not arbitrary. Our values are conjured out of thin air but for reasons that DO involve the betterment of humanity.

Slavery isn't subjective, and extermination camps sure as hell are not either.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#152

Post by dbuder »

cameronbrown wrote: post #82
burk96 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it happened to me, a hotel was priced significantly cheaper on Google and on their site initially. When the price went up I just called the hotel and the higher rate was their standard and only rate that they offered. The initial advertised price was never an actual option.

I work for Google. You can report fraudulent ads with the form here: https://support.google.com/google-ads/contact/vio_other_aw_p...

I would like to report every ad for magic crystals, essential oils and SEO services.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#153

Post by riffraff »

kbenson wrote: post #132
djsumdog wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I had a phone screening with the, I learned their entire codebase was in Perl, with no plans on migration to anything else. There were almost no unit tests anywhere. Most developers could push directly to production. Everything the girl on the phone said was horrifying and I decided not to continue. Their recruiter kept trying to call me over Skype though, and they offer more than most other companies of th…

> their entire codebase was in Perl, with no plans on migration to anything else. There were almost no unit tests anywhere. Most developers could push directly to production. One of these things is not like the others. Not liking Perl is a valid personal choice, but doesn't say much about the codebase. The others are telling though. More so if it's true given that Perl has a very heavy culture of testing (the TAP pro…

The third hand knowledge I have of booking.com was that lack of unit tests was an explicit choice. I.e. they felt it was more efficient to just catch bugs in production and be quick to fix them than spend time in unit tests that got obsolete fast and add friction.

I didn't buy in the narrative, but it was an interesting perspective.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#155

Post by winrid »

gherkinnn wrote: post #146
djsumdog wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I had a phone screening with the, I learned their entire codebase was in Perl, with no plans on migration to anything else. There were almost no unit tests anywhere. Most developers could push directly to production. Everything the girl on the phone said was horrifying and I decided not to continue. Their recruiter kept trying to call me over Skype though, and they offer more than most other companies of th…

You’re not the first to mention Bookings lack of tests. Supposedly it’s because their code has a very short half-life, gets rewritten in no time and thus tests are seen as a hindrance. Not that I agree, but it’s what I’ve heard.

I'd say that's a better reason to write tests :)

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#156

Post by wila »

krungthep wrote: post #113
Gibbon1 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder about an app that just has phone numbers and a short description of hotels. If there are 50,000 hotels in the US, and you store 1K worth of data, that's only 50M. You could keep that on a phone no problem.

Once I checked Agoda to get an idea of the room prices in the area I was visiting, but decided to get the room directly from reception assuming that the price would be the one I saw on Agoda minus their commision. I was wrong, the price was about 15% more expensive at reception and it didn't include breakfast. I pointed to them that I could get the room cheaper from Agoda and they told me to get it from Agoda then. I…

Been there, done that. There's another difference if you book your Thai hotelroom in Thai versus in English.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#157

Post by donkeyd »

Insanity wrote: post #28
boulos wrote: post #16

The Twitter thread pointed to a BBC article [1] that certainly suggests that the UK’s regulators don’t think this is okay. I’ve found that Booking.com legitimately treats independent rooms as “only one left” (e.g., the B&B has named rooms, so there’s always just one of a kind for each) but I suspect any investigation into most of these sites leads to “this is full of misleading dark patterns”. [1] https://www.bbc.com…

Booking.com is horrible to use in my opinion. It is handy but you need to ignore the dark patterns on every. Single. Page. Honestly it makes me want to use the website less, and does not urge me to buy.

Best thing to do is find a hotel through booking and then book directly. Many hotels give you a discount for it too, because they don't need to pay Booking.com.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#158

Post by Gibbon1 »

Kliment wrote: post #54
Gibbon1 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder about an app that just has phone numbers and a short description of hotels. If there are 50,000 hotels in the US, and you store 1K worth of data, that's only 50M. You could keep that on a phone no problem.

Sadly that list doesn't answer the most important questions - do they have availability for a particular date, and at what price

Hotels have this thing where you can call and a human will pick up and you can ask them questions. Like do they have a room available.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#159

Post by simula67 »

kbenson wrote: post #135
anonytrary wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lying is also intentionally misleading, so I'm not sure if your conclusion makes sense. Plus I would assume recurrent lying falls under the "dark pattern" category -- it certainly isn't a good or neutral pattern.

Lying is stating something untrue as true. A dark pattern works on implicit assumptions to get people to believe something without having to state it. Lying is fraud, plain and simple, the laws and courts nailed that hundreds of years ago. A dark patter may be fraud, or in some way illegal, or may not, depending on details and jurisdiction. Those details might also include intent. An accidentally bad UI that costs cu…

Lying requires intent. For example, if I did not follow the US elections, thought that the President was still Barrack Obama and someone asked me who the President was and I said 'Barrack Obama', I would be wrong, but most people would not insist that I am lying. Lying is a moral statement about a person or an organization. The truth or untruth is largely secondary.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#160

Post by TeMPOraL »

jchw wrote: post #129
anonytrary wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lying is also intentionally misleading, so I'm not sure if your conclusion makes sense. Plus I would assume recurrent lying falls under the "dark pattern" category -- it certainly isn't a good or neutral pattern.

We don’t need another word for lying. Dark patterns are trying to trick your users into doing something they didn’t want to. The term exists because other terms didn’t capture this undesirable behavior well enough, and it need not be expanded to literally anything negative. And not all sales/marketing tricks are inherently evil. I don’t think eBay telling you how many users watched an item in the past hour is immoral…

Disagree. "Dark patterns" exist because enough people talking about them are also working in or tangential to marketing, which makes them uncomfortable calling it what it is - lying, abuse, dishonesty, malicious activity, exploiting people. "Dark patters" is just an euphemism.
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