Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

news.ycombinator.com

311–320 of 384 posts

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#311
post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can . You wouldn't find buyers or renters without discounts far exceeding the cost savings, because it's seen as substandard, however. If anything, even places where space is extremely costly, one clear way of judging relative luxury level is the ratio of bathrooms to bedrooms.

"Substandard" is not the complement of "luxury". And nobody is saying that middle class people won't pay the extra cost of private bathrooms, clearly they are doing that. The point under discussion is if it's inhumane to give poor people free housing where they have to live like European middle class students and share bathrooms, and the answer is a very clear "no, it's not inhumane".

No, substandard implies it's below the expected standard, and it is as demonstrated by the fact that the market expectation is to have bathrooms. How many places do you see on the market without a private bathroom exactly?

EDIT: In fact, many places you'd struggle to even get approval for places with communal bathrooms without special exemptions, as it's so far below expected standards that these expectations now often violate government set standards as it's come to be seen as entirely unacceptable to impose it on anyone. E.g. in Norway, the standard rules for a permanent dwelling requires a bathroom with few exceptions, and sets minimum requirements for the size of the bathroom.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AirBNB doesn't want bots scraping their data. They currently have a monopoly on STR listings - so they don't really need to care about user experience. This is what you end up with.

> AirBNB doesn't want bots scraping their data They’re likely also trying to push users to their app.

Come to think of it, does GDPR apply to apps?

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#313
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A proportion of young people sometimes do for limited periods, sure, but "almost all of your peers" do not change the fact that most people opt out of it, and even more opt out of sharing with strangers. Even with flat shares, there's a premium on flats with en suite bathrooms, because people tend to opt out of sharing if the price difference allow them to. Of course it's not the only thing people care about - a good…

The point is not that sharing bathrooms is neutral, the point is that if it's something that huge number of middle class people are happy to do while students or young professionals, it's pretty far from the human rights violation some people seem to think it is.

First of all, a very tiny proportion of people are middle class while they are students or young professionals.

Secondly, nobody here that I have seen are suggesting that it's a "human rights violation", but there is also a huge difference between people making the choice of living in a more central location or a higher standard flat and sharing a bathroom with a few people vs. establishing sharing bathrooms with strangers as an acceptable standard to impose on people who lack a choice.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#314
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the choice, I don't think anyone would spend their lives living in a dorm or youth hostel, or a homeless shelter, or a tenement block with communal facilities that would rapidly fall into disrepair (I mean, look at the state of various housing projects and slumlord setups now and imagine if the same setup with communal bathrooms would actually be better kept than that).

Is this sarcasm? Obviously there are places in the world where dorms, hostels etc are in exceptionally good condition, like in Japan, or here in Scandinavia.

Hostels in Scandinavia at least, while they may well be in good condition, make up a vanishingly small proportion of accommodation because what they provide is well below the expected standard for most people even for short term stays.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AirBNB doesn't want bots scraping their data They’re likely also trying to push users to their app.

Come to think of it, does GDPR apply to apps?

Yes

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#316

I see this as high-IQ software developers building systems to shut out non-high-IQ people from society. Managers look at these CAPTCHAs and think "oh I could solve these no problem, let's use them". In fact, they can only be solved by unusually smart people or by ML bots. Arkose Labs (the maker of this particular captcha) explicitly advertises that their methods can keep out "low-skilled workers" on "human fraud farm…

Wait are you really suggesting that the Airbnb programmers thought "guys, we need to stop low-IQ people from using our site"?? That's crazy. > explicitly advertises that their methods can keep out "low-skilled workers" on "human fraud farms" Uhm yeah. They're trying to keep people from human fraud farms (who happen to be low-skilled workers) out. It's not a weird elitist conspiracy to keep all low-IQ people from soci…

Why is HN so full of paranoid conspiracy theories?

Because many of us have been to this rodeo before.

The history of the tech industry has no shortage of thought leaders, heroes, and jabbering masses with low morals and feet on both sides of the eugenics theory.

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mailboxes, fire hydrants, Trams are not recognizable for billions of people. Cheese is though? And I'm pretty sure most of the world would recognise those things anyway - you forget how much American culture is spread through films and TV.

Putting aside the fact that at least 50% of the world doesn't speak English and might not even know what "cheese" is, a lot of the world does not subsist on dairy products or use cheese and will not recognise images of cheese. Neither will they understand the traditional American schoolbus which is a very distinctive thing and will pick any old bus that appears on the photos as long as it looks like a large motor veh…

a ton of these people do not have access to the internet and will have zero idea how to get through these arcane captchas.

While I agree with both the theme and vigor of your position, your sentence made me wonder how people are seeing CAPTCHAs without the internet?

Re: Tell HN: Airbnb just stole me 5 minutes of my time adding dices

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because it's zoned for being a hotel. What's happening with AirBnB is completely different as you're having people (1) buy up existing housing to convert it to AirBnB and (2) it's not zoned for tourists. Believe it or not, tourists are considered in city planning, and that's why they have special zoning laws for hotels and hostels. What's happening is tourists now feel they have the right to 'live as a local', an…

Couldn't you say that city planners are to blame for not providing enough supply to meet the demand? Also, I wonder if maybe lots of people don't like existing hotels for some reason? It seems the locals get forced out wherever demand vastly exceeds supply, like in the beach town where I used to live, where so many people want to visit and there just isn't enough housing/hotels for them. The locals are opposed to mor…

> Couldn't you say that city planners are to blame for not providing enough supply to meet the demand?

But there often is enough supply to meet the demand. The issue is tourists feeling entitled to living in a house, not the fact that all hotels are 100% booked all weekend.

> Also, I wonder if maybe lots of people don't like existing hotels for some reason?

I'm sure that's it, honestly. But when you're traveling away from home, well, don't expect to have a home waiting for you. That's the entitlement.

> It seems the locals get forced out wherever demand vastly exceeds supply, like in the beach town where I used to live, where so many people want to visit and there just isn't enough housing/hotels for them.

Or, just stop short-term rentals. Then the demand wouldn't exceed the supply (at least by the same margin). Or have specific areas designated for them (which most do, and which AirBnB conveniently ignores)

> The locals are opposed to more housing, so inevitably prices goes up and they eventually turn into weekly rentals.

I mean, I can understand why the locals would be opposed to more when there's enough for their demand, it's just the entitled tourists coming in and taking over things that makes it an issue.

That said, there are some fundamental differences with beach condos and mountain cabins (usually built to be rent out, not for locals) as opposed to what goes on in most AirBnB situations (built for residential, then moved away). The former two are generally considered in city planning, whereas people taking over residential neighborhoods is not.

Post reply on HN