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I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

skeptrune.com

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Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#171

Post by LeifCarrotson »

cobbzilla wrote: post #169
chupchap wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't work that way. A link is to an ASIN (unique product in Amazon). The same product might have a different ASIN in a different region. The product description, title etc might vary.

Clearly there exists some higher-level product concept with a mapping of country->ASIN for that product. How hard is it to lookup the correct ASIN? Maybe you end up on the home page when there is no ASIN for your country? There should be a nicer message telling you that’s what happened. But if it always dumps to the home page, that’s just dumb — Amazon could easily do the lookup.

There's no such mapping, you could do a text search and if the item name matches then maybe US ASIN 2785334 should correspond to UK ASIN 3894948, or maybe some third party just named something ambiguously. They're essentially GUIDs and essentially separate businesses.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#172

Post by stevage »

b8 wrote: post #55

Reminds me when I got banned from Amazon for suspected fraud (had an old account, but deleted my email and number since it was in a lot of DB dumps). After I got hired, I reached out to the guy in charge of the anti-fraud team at Amazon, and got unbanned. Emails to support etc. did nothing before I reached out internally (unbanned by 1am the next day).

Yep. I had no luck getting my Facebook account unblocked until 9 months later when by chance I did some work for them. Instantly unblocked.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#173

Post by MagerValp »

carlmr wrote: post #149
b8 wrote: post #55

Reminds me when I got banned from Amazon for suspected fraud (had an old account, but deleted my email and number since it was in a lot of DB dumps). After I got hired, I reached out to the guy in charge of the anti-fraud team at Amazon, and got unbanned. Emails to support etc. did nothing before I reached out internally (unbanned by 1am the next day).

My biggest Amazon annoyance. I'm often looking for some product, reading Reddit and other reviews. They usually link to amazon.com. Then it asks me to switch my profile to American/$. But then in order to order I need to switch back to Germany/€. It's just super cumbersome. Just let me view stuff from any region without switching profiles. If I order from that region you can tell me to switch profiles. But not just f…

> In the same vein. Why is there no, I want this thing, but from a German seller.

eBay used to let you filter results by region, but apparently that ruined some kind of metric and the option is gone. When buying games or books or what have you I only want sellers in the EU. I don’t care that it’s available in the US or UK, shipping and duties are going to be 4x what the product is worth.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#174

Post by hobofan »

PantaloonFlames wrote: post #75

The cancellation in the denouncing seems … sort of obvious.

It seems obvious, but I also don't think it's optimal depending on what you are trying to do.

In some scenarios, e.g. bad mobile internet connection, you may also be happy with a slightly stale result (where you still have to ensure correct ordering of responses), depending on how the search overall is implemented.

One additional data point: Algolia used to do query cancellation in the past but stopped doing that (I think at least 5 years ago now), which you can test with the HN search. I'm not sure about their reasoning, but for them that seems to be the best overall default search experience.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#175

Post by moribunda »

392 wrote: post #111
stevesimmons wrote: post #53

If Google Maps would like to hire me so the km/miles switch can remember I only ever want to see distances in km, my contact details are in my HN profile. I must have changed that back from miles once a fortnight since Google Maps launched 20 years ago. That's 500 times. Totally ridiculous for a company who core goal is profiling their users...

Also accepting gmaps work, if only it could preemptively cache the return trip for any trip longer than an hour, so that I'm not stuck with no service trying to remember how I got there.

Download the map of the area in Google maps.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#176

Post by throwaway6612 »

Nition wrote: post #152
carlmr wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest Amazon annoyance. I'm often looking for some product, reading Reddit and other reviews. They usually link to amazon.com. Then it asks me to switch my profile to American/$. But then in order to order I need to switch back to Germany/€. It's just super cumbersome. Just let me view stuff from any region without switching profiles. If I order from that region you can tell me to switch profiles. But not just f…

Reminds me of when someone links to a product on some (non-Amazon) website, I go there, it says "this is the US site, you should go to the [your country] site!", I click OK, and it takes me to the homepage.

This is also infuriating for all those sites that take to their homepage when you log in instead of taking you back to the page you were viewing.

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#178

Post by czbd »

jraph wrote: post #135
392 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also accepting gmaps work, if only it could preemptively cache the return trip for any trip longer than an hour, so that I'm not stuck with no service trying to remember how I got there.

Suggestion to use an offline app that will save you from such surprises. https://www.comaps.app/

I clicked the link with nothing better to do, and woa, that's a really good maps app. Like, "I haven't seen something like this before" levels of good. Reorients itself with my phone, accurately - and in real time, not after I'd already walked ten steps in that direction. With other maps, I thought that maybe my phone's compass is broken. The default but optional 3D top-down view is the most comprehensible-looking map I've seen in a long time. It barely uses disk space, and going by my short experience with it, it really is very light on the battery.

Exceptional, this is what I'm using from now on. Just hope the iOS 15 support is maintained, that's a killer app to keep perfectly good devices productive even after they're restricted from everything else :)

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#179

Post by nilamo »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #171
cobbzilla wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly there exists some higher-level product concept with a mapping of country->ASIN for that product. How hard is it to lookup the correct ASIN? Maybe you end up on the home page when there is no ASIN for your country? There should be a nicer message telling you that’s what happened. But if it always dumps to the home page, that’s just dumb — Amazon could easily do the lookup.

There's no such mapping, you could do a text search and if the item name matches then maybe US ASIN 2785334 should correspond to UK ASIN 3894948, or maybe some third party just named something ambiguously. They're essentially GUIDs and essentially separate businesses.

We all recognize this as an anti-pattern that has directly led to a poor customer experience, right?

Re: I couldn't submit a PR, so I got hired and fixed it myself

#180

Post by johnbatch »

chupchap wrote: post #157
carlmr wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My biggest Amazon annoyance. I'm often looking for some product, reading Reddit and other reviews. They usually link to amazon.com. Then it asks me to switch my profile to American/$. But then in order to order I need to switch back to Germany/€. It's just super cumbersome. Just let me view stuff from any region without switching profiles. If I order from that region you can tell me to switch profiles. But not just f…

It doesn't work that way. A link is to an ASIN (unique product in Amazon). The same product might have a different ASIN in a different region. The product description, title etc might vary.

https://www.amazon.de/dp/1408855658 And https://www.amazon.com/dp/1408855658 Are both the same item. Same with https://www.amazon.de/dp/B086WQWSNT/ And https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086WQWSNT/

Seems like changes .com to .de works with every item i can find. Some just won’t be deliverable in a different geo.

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