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Couchers is officially out of beta

couchers.org

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Re: Couchers is officially out of beta

#121

Post by aapeli »

erlend_sh wrote: post #92
aapeli wrote: post #23

I'm one of the Couchers founders and wrote this blog post (and incidentally spend way too much time on HN), awesome to see this show up here! This launch is the culmination of a huge push from our volunteer team to clean up a bunch of core features and make the platform easier to use. We are also launching a new branding strategy and new landing page. Quick plug: we are looking for senior React Native devs to join us…

Highly recommend integrating with the atproto network to hop onto its social graph; that could be a major differentiator for your service. I’d love to log in with my Bluesky account and see who else in my network has opted to share their couchsurfing status. (I put up a GitHub issue)

Thanks, will look into it. Get in touch if you want to help out on it too!

Re: Couchers is officially out of beta

#122

Post by pavel_lishin »

apt-apt-apt-apt wrote: post #82
nosioptar wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's some weird shit. I'd never couch surf without my own towel.

Sharing towels is a great way to feel better about not being the only one with a fungal infection.

Surely people wash bath towels after visitors use them, no?

Re: Couchers is officially out of beta

#123

Post by MisterTea »

akudha wrote: post #108
madaxe_again wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just hospitality reviews 101. I run a couple of Airbnbs in the uk - 99.9% of guests leave gushing reviews, 0.01% break open locked cupboards and are like “There was a cupboard FULL of cleaning supplies! Disgusting! 1/5!”. I’ve even had people bring a plastic rat with them and pose it around the apartment to then complain to customer service - successfully. That one cost me about £5,000 in a refund, lost reven…

Some people are just plain...weird? I was reading reviews of some book on Amazon (can't remember which one now). Someone gave the book a one star review, because "it was delivered two days later than it was promised" while simultaneously saying they haven't read the book. How is it the book's/author's fault that Amazon delivered the book late? Why are they giving lowest rating for a book without even reading it? None…

These are selfish, immature people. They exist all over and the reason why we can't have nice things.

Re: Couchers is officially out of beta

#124

Post by daseiner1 »

x187463 wrote: post #117
akudha wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are just plain...weird? I was reading reviews of some book on Amazon (can't remember which one now). Someone gave the book a one star review, because "it was delivered two days later than it was promised" while simultaneously saying they haven't read the book. How is it the book's/author's fault that Amazon delivered the book late? Why are they giving lowest rating for a book without even reading it? None…

In that case, the reviewer seems to have completely misunderstood the subject of the review. That's a fine review (I guess) if the subject of the review is Amazon and the purchasing/delivery experience. Of course, it would be obvious from reading the review that it's not useful to somebody looking for book reviews and it should be (re)moved, but for whatever reason we have accepted platforms such as Amazon will simpl…

i would hope by now such reviews are heavily down-weighted on the back end as far as contribution to the overall rating displayed for a given product. seems relatively easy to automatically detect and I struggle to see why Amazon would want deflated reviews for products they're selling.

maybe it's a legal thing, could be viewed as market place manipulation i suppose. and they've certainly had enough worries about anti-trust already.

Re: Couchers is officially out of beta

#125

Post by Nextgrid »

gosub100 wrote: post #112
latexr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That hate is entirely misguided, and an indication of how far you’re been tricked by the ones violating your data. It’s as if companies had been pissing in your beer for decades, then a law passed saying you could only do that with consent, and now you’re complaining that there are all these consent forms every time you want to drink your pissed beer instead of taking it as an indicator to buy from another brand. If…

There should be a browser setting that just answers yes/no for you. Not an extension, or a hack. A setting that is read on page load and doesn't interrupt me.

GDPR covers more than cookies though. It covers different usages of the same data even, so it's not simply a matter of providing/not providing the data. For example, an e-commerce site needs your address to deliver your package (legitimate interest, no consent required), but if they want to send spam to it or resell that data to a data broker they still need to ask for consent first.

Re: Couchers is officially out of beta

#126

Post by Nextgrid »

latexr wrote: post #101

> We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site, we will assume that you are happy with it. You are likely violating the GDPR. You can’t just assume consent (that applies to other areas of life), that’s the whole point. Either you only use cookies which are essential for basic usage—in which case you don’t even need to tell users about it—or you need to…

In practice, nobody is going to enforce this, so they're in the clear. 90% of the cookie consent flows you see out there are not compliant either and are little more than compliance theatre.

Re: Couchers is officially out of beta

#127

Post by johanyc »

subarctic wrote: post #67
jonp888 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatives to Couchsurfing.com such as BeWelcome and WarmShowers have been around for many years, decades even and have users counts into 6 figures. They've remained non-corporate but never managed to reach mainstream popularity like Couchsurfing.com did. What are you hoping to achieve by launching another hospitality sharing site that the other established non-profit sites couldn't?

I guess their advantage is they have Couch in the name? Joking but I'm curious what the answer is here, I think everyone that remembers the Couchsurfing glory days is hoping that they or someone succeeds in bringing them back

I do think Coucher is easier to remember than the others lol

Re: Couchers is officially out of beta

#128

Post by gosub100 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #125
gosub100 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be a browser setting that just answers yes/no for you. Not an extension, or a hack. A setting that is read on page load and doesn't interrupt me.

GDPR covers more than cookies though. It covers different usages of the same data even, so it's not simply a matter of providing/not providing the data. For example, an e-commerce site needs your address to deliver your package (legitimate interest, no consent required), but if they want to send spam to it or resell that data to a data broker they still need to ask for consent first.

fair, but then don't ask me when the page loads. ask me when I fill out the order, and even better, put GDPR:

asking up-front allows them the anti-pattern of giving me 40+ choices of what to opt-in or out of, and it allows the anti-pattern of using confusing language to confuse people (uncheck the box to revoke the widthrawal of refusal to copying your PI)

Re: Couchers is officially out of beta

#129

Post by Nextgrid »

gosub100 wrote: post #128
Nextgrid wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR covers more than cookies though. It covers different usages of the same data even, so it's not simply a matter of providing/not providing the data. For example, an e-commerce site needs your address to deliver your package (legitimate interest, no consent required), but if they want to send spam to it or resell that data to a data broker they still need to ask for consent first.

fair, but then don't ask me when the page loads. ask me when I fill out the order, and even better, put GDPR: asking up-front allows them the anti-pattern of giving me 40+ choices of what to opt-in or out of, and it allows the anti-pattern of using confusing language to confuse people (uncheck the box to revoke the widthrawal of refusal to copying your PI)

Doing it properly requires actually complying with the GDPR - deferring non-essential data processing until consent has been given, storing that consent status somewhere, etc.

Or, you can just do the fake-compliance approach by slapping the same cookie banner everyone else uses and call it a day.

> it allows the anti-pattern of using confusing language to confuse people

FYI, that is not compliant either, but again, we've already established 90% of the players out there don't bother with real compliance and just do what everyone else does - and it works, because enforcement doesn't really exist anyway.

Re: Couchers is officially out of beta

#130

Post by apt-apt-apt-apt »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #122
apt-apt-apt-apt wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing towels is a great way to feel better about not being the only one with a fungal infection.

Surely people wash bath towels after visitors use them, no?

You need a high-touch process, something like wash with high heat, maybe disinfectant, not overloaded, separate loads (cross-contamination). Dry with high heat for a long time, run a hot empty cycle after to clean machine.

In an ideal world, the host cares about your health and cleanliness and of course does all this for your sake. In the real world, it's toss and wash for minimal care, time and money.

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