191–200 of 347 posts
Hipmunk was simply the best. Very clean interface, no frills, quite thorough (except southwest), best presentation, easy to sort/evaluate ... A cute chipmunk. Looking at the three alternatives from all the other comments (google, matrix and skyscanner), they seem 5 or so years behind the times.
Southwest doesn't give out its pricing information at all. Which is why hipmunk didn't have it.
I always liked the Hipmunk branding :-)
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I don't understand you using consolidation and abuse of power as a reason to dislike regulation. There are plenty of non-regulatory incentives for consolidation. Why not simply regulate consolidation? Target large holding companies and megacorps with aggressive taxation policies on revenue or headcount or market cap or similar? And then enforce the regulation with teeth? There are always going to be creative people c…
Oh hell no. More lawyers to find more loopholes. How about addressing the root cause: the lack of competition? The way to do this is lower the barrier to entry, which is made of 100% over-regulation. You can involve all the antitrust you want, as long as you don't lower the barrier to entry you're just lying to yourself and adding more useless middlemen.
how can this be, Hipmunk was so much better than the competition... people... people wanted it...
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I don't understand you using consolidation and abuse of power as a reason to dislike regulation. There are plenty of non-regulatory incentives for consolidation. Why not simply regulate consolidation? Target large holding companies and megacorps with aggressive taxation policies on revenue or headcount or market cap or similar? And then enforce the regulation with teeth? There are always going to be creative people c…
Oh hell no. More lawyers to find more loopholes. How about addressing the root cause: the lack of competition? The way to do this is lower the barrier to entry, which is made of 100% over-regulation. You can involve all the antitrust you want, as long as you don't lower the barrier to entry you're just lying to yourself and adding more useless middlemen.
I don't believe it's possible. You can't fight bad actors by hoping they'll just somehow lose. The unregulated "more competition" market quickly turns into a "less competition" market as the most ruthless parties establish dominance through whatever means necessary. Your barriers to entry, in the extreme case, become things like physical intimidation.
I worked for Hipmunk for a little over two years before they were purchased and have some fond memories of my time there. There have been a lot of articles on HN lately suggesting that it is better to work for a large company over a startup. Based on my time there, I would strongly disagree. I came in as a junior engineer (feral would be an appropriate term) and during my time, touched basically every part of the web…
I think a larger company is probably more likely to have an established mentorship program in place for he engineers rather than a startup.
I also needed to take three months of disability and I received 100% of my pay during those three months (and even kept accruing PTO) because my established company provided me with short term (and long term) disability insurance.
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I haven't used Kayak in a while. I use Google Flights because I like the date grid. Usually my dates are flexible.
FYI Kayak has a date grid. When selecting a date, click the drop-down menu labeled "exact" and choose "+-3 days" (or whatever).
Hipmunk was simply the best. Very clean interface, no frills, quite thorough (except southwest), best presentation, easy to sort/evaluate ... A cute chipmunk. Looking at the three alternatives from all the other comments (google, matrix and skyscanner), they seem 5 or so years behind the times.
Southwest doesn't give out its pricing information at all. Which is why hipmunk didn't have it.
I had the weirdest experience at the airport yesterday, LAX. I went to the the United ticket counter to buy a ticket for lax to nyc, same day. They told me I was better off buying online. In fact they looked completely unprepared to book a ticket. I couldn’t believe it. I checked other counters and sure enough, I was at the right place. So I tried using Hipmunk yesterday. It felt tired to me for some reason. I ended…
I'm a bit confused. You'd go to the United ticket counter in person but then don't go to united.com when asked to book online? May I ask why that wasn't your first choice for this particular incident?
Might be a generational thing.