Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Recreation.gov

recreation.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 205 posts

Re: Recreation.gov

#191

Post by baddox »

CrazyStat wrote: post #187
baddox wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, I guess I was confused about how people buy tickets to concerts online. I've always just...gone to the official ticket website and purchased the ticket. I've certainly never created a bot.

Have you ever tried to get a ticket to something that sells out in seconds?

Perhaps not in seconds, but certainly minutes or hours or the first day. But that's still not the point I'm making. If bots are a significant reason that something is selling out within seconds, then changing the system from first-come-first-serve to a lottery will probably not significantly increase your chances as a human of getting a ticket (because whoever runs the bots can make essentially as many bots as they want).

Re: Recreation.gov

#192

Post by brewdad »

almog wrote: post #147
gk1 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*Cairns Be careful with that, though. Some times they’re used as trail markers. Last year I was on a trail in the Southwest that had loads of cairns, like every 20-30 feet. Rather than feeling disgust at silly Instagram tourists that must’ve built them, I made a game of kicking over as many as I could. When I returned to the trailhead I saw a sign asking to please not touch the rock stacks because they mark the trail…

lol, as a general rule, I think that's a good call, below the treeline for sure. The original Steve Roper's guide book for its brainchild — Sierra High Route, opens up by instructing hikers to do just that so it doesn't end up becoming a well worn path. It's probably not a good test case for whether or not it's good for the environment since very few people hike this route. Anyhow, the vast majority of (official) tra…

There aren't a lot of trees in the desert southwest. Those cairns ARE the markers that make it a well-marked trail.

Additionally, in an extreme environment like that a single well-worn path is far less impactful to the environment than wandering all over in generally the right direction.

Re: Recreation.gov

#193

Post by bitexploder »

allovernow wrote: post #169
bitexploder wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience many of the best camp sites I have been to have been in federal forest land on forest roads. The tougher the road the better (limits traffic). I have found some amazing places in Colorado that you could never reserve and they don’t exist as official camp sites. You find a good spot and you camp. Camp grounds with packed in sites are... good for some things. I acknowledge this is a problem for some hi…

How do you find these spots? That sounds like a great excuse to bring out the 4x4.

You just look up the regulations in your area, Federal Forest and Wildlife Management land have uniform rules as far as I can tell. Then you explore. I just spent a few weekends off riding and cruising the mountains this summer, visiting places and taking notes of good camp sites. That’s part of the fun. You can find sporadic information online, but generally I think people keep their favorite spots to themselves? Great reason to bang around, bring food. I set up the back of my truck to sleep in. Poor mans Tepui tent.

Re: Recreation.gov

#194

Post by e12e »

michaelt wrote: post #132
degenerate wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What good is a lottery when it's a few hundred people vs. 20,000 bots? Online camping spot reservations need to ask for your name at the time of reservation, and ensure the name matches your ID when you arrive at the park. This is how many ( non-Ticketmaster ) concert e-tickets work.

Presumably ginko means a lottery between people who've provided IDs

Yes, it's worked pretty well for eg fusion festival (well, they don't really enforce the I'd thing, but apart from that..): https://www.fusion-festival.de/en/x/start

(ticket raffle not up yet for 2020, though)

Re: Recreation.gov

#195

Post by almog »

brewdad wrote: post #192
almog wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, as a general rule, I think that's a good call, below the treeline for sure. The original Steve Roper's guide book for its brainchild — Sierra High Route, opens up by instructing hikers to do just that so it doesn't end up becoming a well worn path. It's probably not a good test case for whether or not it's good for the environment since very few people hike this route. Anyhow, the vast majority of (official) tra…

There aren't a lot of trees in the desert southwest. Those cairns ARE the markers that make it a well-marked trail. Additionally, in an extreme environment like that a single well-worn path is far less impactful to the environment than wandering all over in generally the right direction.

That is why I mentioned that the SHR is not a good test case, it's an outlier - very few people hike it every year, there is really no trail other than where it coincides with the JMT highway. In that case, cairns are nothing but impact on the environment, since people will have to make their own way between them anyway.

I totally agree that cairns are a good marker when there is an official trail that in parts has no visible trail (usually in boulders/lava/talus fields).

btw, which desert of the southwest is in question? That's a LARGE area. If we're talking SoCal for example, the entire 700 first miles of the PCT are desert with trail so well maintained and visible that when I hiked it last year, I walked many nights well into night without having to take my flash light out until it became pitch black.

Re: Recreation.gov

#196

Post by kylebarron »

almog wrote: post #195
brewdad wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't a lot of trees in the desert southwest. Those cairns ARE the markers that make it a well-marked trail. Additionally, in an extreme environment like that a single well-worn path is far less impactful to the environment than wandering all over in generally the right direction.

That is why I mentioned that the SHR is not a good test case, it's an outlier - very few people hike it every year, there is really no trail other than where it coincides with the JMT highway. In that case, cairns are nothing but impact on the environment, since people will have to make their own way between them anyway. I totally agree that cairns are a good marker when there is an official trail that in parts has n…

Good to see more thru-hikers on HN! I just thru-hiked in 2019

I could imagine there are trails in southern Utah and northern Arizona that might be heavily cairned

Re: Recreation.gov

#197

Post by heelix »

The launch this year was a bit rough for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) permits here in Minnesota. They limit permits to lakes, and the holiday weekends go fast, so I'm one of those who makes the Labor day plans (etc) in January.

Mine worked. Lovely site, knew exactly what I was headed to, and got my permits. Seems others had issues if they had to search around. Entire thing sounds like it shook apart later that morning. They canceled the reservations and did a second 'launch', which was the right thing to do. I don't know of anyone who thought they had booked, canceled, and could not get a permit later. Successfully turned a terrible kickoff into something OK.

Re: Recreation.gov

#198

Post by almog »

kylebarron wrote: post #196
almog wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is why I mentioned that the SHR is not a good test case, it's an outlier - very few people hike it every year, there is really no trail other than where it coincides with the JMT highway. In that case, cairns are nothing but impact on the environment, since people will have to make their own way between them anyway. I totally agree that cairns are a good marker when there is an official trail that in parts has n…

Good to see more thru-hikers on HN! I just thru-hiked in 2019 I could imagine there are trails in southern Utah and northern Arizona that might be heavily cairned

Oh, hi there, it is good to see other thruhikers here indeed!:)

Yes, I can imagine that being the case, I'm actually reading Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey, mostly about the times he worked in Archs National Park and it sounds just like that.

Fun fact you might share - I stumbled upon Edward Abbey following a quote I saw on a blaze in NorCal (which carried bullet hole, obviously, but it actually what made this quote stand out to me): https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5bbY00X4AA_eeu.jpg:large

It was misattributed I think, I later found out these were Abbey's words.

Re: Recreation.gov

#199

Post by habosa »

baddox wrote: post #186
habosa wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want a campsite in a major national park you need to look up when they are released (normally 3mo in advance) and wake up at exactly 6:59am and get your trigger finger ready or you really don't stand a chance. I just wish there was a "calmer" way. The experience of exploring our national parks should be an escape from our hectic every day lives. That begins with getting a place to sleep.

Believe me, I feel the same way. I've spent a great deal of time at campsites and trails that are extremely popular and difficult to get permits (like Yosemite). But that's not really a technical problem: it's an inevitable problem when you have vastly more demand and a small finite supply. What I was pointing out is that a lottery does not on its own help with bots. Bots are good at making reservations very quickly…

Some of the demand is induced by how easy it is to get the reservations. I hate to say this but maybe we should make it a little more annoying?

Imagine if campsites were either: a) first-come first-served b) reservation by physical mail only

I guarantee you'd see different levels of "demand" than we do now.

Interestingly I noticed that Yosemite backcountry permits still require mail or fax, but they email you the result. I think this is intentional, putting a small hoop to make sure they get "serious" inquiries only.

I say all of this out of defeat. On principle I would want to remove any and all barriers to visiting our national parks. But in practice what we have is not really working for anyone (at Yosemite and the other mega parks)

Re: Recreation.gov

#200

Post by yetanotherjosh »

peterangular wrote: post #183
jachee wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how the sibling comments all expect an abuser to reveal how to prevent their abuse. To paraphrase Sinclair: It is difficult to get a man to divulge how to prevent something, when his salary depends on his not preventing it.

I'm an open book! Ask any question that you would like! Here's the thing - all of this info is out there (largely in other HN threads on this topic) and I'm nothing special in my field-of-knowledge ;) I'm confident if people fully prevented my "abuse" they'd start to block actual users... simple as that.

What's your take on ML for bot classification? How successful has that family of strategies been in your opinion? One could speculate on what particular features of client behavior a model would hone in on to detect a bot, but it would actually likely be unexpected behavioral oddities not shared by legit clients that a human developer's intuition wouldn't think of.
Post reply on HN