Why Airbnb is dead to me - <AUTHOR> http://drupaler.drupalgardens.com/content/why-airbnb-dead-me <comment><USER2> I continue to use AirBnb but have been pretty disappointed in their customer service. I rent out a family cabin occasionally and someone who stayed there scratched the floor accidentally wearing winter boots with spikes on them. They admitted this, apologized and were generally totally awesome about it.

It took me __months __to get Airbnb to figure out how to deduct money from their damage deposit. They first said I had to call the police and get a police report, which I refused to do -- call the police on these nice tenants who already explained it was their mistake and were 100% willing to pay! Ridiculous.

Every few times we'd exchange support emails it seemed like some new person would take over and never read the past emails so I had to repeat the same stuff multiple time. Ultimately I ended up emailing the CEO after I found some blog post where he said he wanted to personally hear from everyone and anyone. He never replied but the problem magically got fixed soon thereafter.

I fear the day I end up with really terrible hosts like you did because I have no faith AirBnb will actually be there for me.

Looking forward to trying housetrip, there really need to be a solid alternative to AirBnb.

<comment><USER3> This seems like a theme with pretty much all internet companies, big and small - undercut the competition by cutting corners on things that "don't matter", until they matter.

Google for example has almost no way to reach customer service, even for their paid products. When it works it works great, when it doesn't God Help You.

Ditto Uber/Lyft/other cab companies, where there seems to be no end of people who were put in seriously unsafe situations and were unable to get any attention to their issues until they blogged about it. Who knows how many cases we haven't heard of because they weren't able to get their concerns to the top of Reddit/HN/wherever.

This sort of thing happens in any low-margin business. Not only is there not enough money to hire good customer service, but what little customer service exists is not empowered to make things right for the customer, because thin margins and $$$.

It turns out that keeping spare rooms on standby, generous rescheduling/rebooking policies, and all the niceties we associate with hotels are powered by the fatter margins they enjoy. The big innovation we've made in the last few years is making low-margin low-rent business models seem boutique and high-end.

<comment><USER4> The older I get the more cynical I get, and the further I drift leftward politically in favor of more government regulation, the underlying reason I think being that generally speaking, most cultures (and especially "high achievers" within) are fundamentally dishonest - like teenagers, they often cannot be trusted with serious responsibility. They have highly potent skills, but they don't have the corresponding maturity or morality to safely wield those skills.

And this goes not only for small startups, it is applicable across huge blue chip companies as well, the latest being VW (and now it appears other auto manufacturers).

<comment><USER5> A guy from post communist country here: how is more government regulation going to solve anything?

<comment><USER4> By restricting what companies can and cannot do and forcing them to prove certain risks are _genuinely_ covered before coming in and "disrupting" (aka destroying) industries that have generally done a somewhat decent job of things for decades.

I'm just getting tired of people advocating free market principles and proclaiming that industries will police themselves, and then turning around and lying and cheating, with next to no consequences. I'm saying this as a pretty extreme economic right wing person - today's conservatives bear little resemblance to traditional ones.

<comment><USER6> > to prove certain risks are genuinely covered

Why? I'm well aware of the risks of using AirBnB (or being a contractor instead of an employee or whatever) and _choose_ to take them on because I believe I come out ahead overall. Not everyone wants the nanny state watching out for them at every opportunity.

<comment><USER4> Not even reads Hacker News - feel free to link the location on AirBNB's website that informs regular people about the nature of things that can go wrong, and details on how they will handle that (or not, as the case may be).

<comment><USER4> *Typo: Not everyone reads Hacker News...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had a nightmare experience on vacation in Mexico that was word for word the same response from Airbnb. Because I took my wife and I out of the potentially dangerous rental, without first contacting Airbnb, they couldn't refund us anything. I followed up with evidence that the rental was unfit and unsafe with pictures, but nothing came of it. Needless to say, I'm never using Airbnb again. Worst customer experience I've ever had. Airbnb is essentially enabling any joe idiot to run a shit hotel anywhere in the world with zero accountability. Oh also, over the time you email their customer experience reps, they assign you a NEW customer rep each time so you have no relationship with whoever you talk to next during a conversation. Some people are understanding, others are a __holes. Such a terrible experience, overall. It 's a wonder they're as big as they are.

<comment><USER8> _> Airbnb is essentially enabling any joe idiot to run a shit hotel anywhere in the world with zero accountability._

You did not leave a rating or review of your unfit rental on airbnb?

<comment><USER9> So that's great but then you are doing part of the work that airbnb should be doing.

<comment><USER10> >airbnb should be doing

According to you.

Paying in to something with zero or negative ratings on a reputation-based market always carries risk; it should be priced accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _> Airbnb do not care about guests and their safety at all._

I don't know. It seems like it would be a nightmare to sort through a he-said she-said after the fact when the offended party didn't even book a stay (instead the room was booked by some other person that is insisting "no, it's cool, I know them"), and furthermore didn't even report the apartment not being available when the issue occurred.

It's nice that they were "all cool" with the host and decided to play musical buildings instead of contacting Airbnb right there, but when they did that, they went off the books and _severely limited Airbnb 's ability to quickly and effectively_ sort through the issue. A customer that didn't even book a room though the service had an issue and went with a "handshake" from the host to resolve it instead.

Let's walk through the alternate scenario.

Customer desiring a room actually books a room through AirBnB.

Customer arrives and hosts tells them the apartment is no longer available. Customer contacts AirBnB and the issue is dealt with right then and there, and the host is sanctioned properly.

No driving around in a strange city to a place you've never set eyes on, and if you want to book another apartment with the host, you do it on the books.

<comment><USER11> Have you ever travelled to a foreign country where you don't speak the language?

You really need to put yourself in the tourist's shoes. If I booked a tour and the host drove me to a different place to stay, that's all I can do. You rely on their ability to communicate, and if they're being kind and doing their best to make your stay comfortable, then that's fantastic.

What you're suggesting is that you're going to start making international calls with some website's support staff while you have luggage on the street, no place to stay, in a foreign city and completely on your own. You're also going to blow off the only person (the host) who cares at all about your situation. Are you kidding me?

<comment><USER12> I've traveled quite a bit, including to Barcelona. If you speak English (and this person clearly does) then "don't speak the language" is not an issue there, or indeed almost anywhere.

If I book a place for a certain period, then I'm staying for that whole period. If the host suddenly changes their mind and tells me I have to move, no way. I'm contacting the booking agency and having them tell the host to get lost. If the booking agency doesn't help then I'm initiating a chargeback and finding a hotel. At no point is it reasonable to just pack up, hop into a complete stranger's car at their insistence, and be driven off to some place where they won't even tell you where you're going.

Traveling _used to be_ pretty interesting when things went wrong. I got stranded in the Beijing airport once with only a rudimentary command of Mandarin because the airline canceled my flight and never told me, and I had to hunt down an airline employee, borrow a phone so I could contact people, etc. But now? Bring a smartphone and you're a few taps away from communicating with anybody you need. Host is being obstinate? Call AirBnB. Still doesn't work? Book a new place. You make a mistake taking a car with a stranger and he takes you to a place where you don't even know where it is? Open up a maps app and find out where you are. Can't talk to people? Google Translate to the rescue.

You better believe that if the host refuses to honor our agreement and starts trying to jerk me around, I'm going to blow them off and sit with my luggage in the street while I resolve the problem myself. Relying on strangers to fix your problems, when said strangers have already demonstrated that they don't really care about you, is setting yourself up to be a victim.

<comment><USER13> You place far too much faith in AirBnB's customer service line. I've called it before. I've sat outside the apartment I rented waiting on hold listening to the same 3 damn songs forever (hey did you know the music they've selected is produced by their employees?).

AirBnB wasn't reachable when I needed them the most. Sitting on the curb with my wife and 4yo at 10PM without a place to go. Trying desperately to find any hotel with a vacancy at the height of tourist season in a small tourist town.

That incident has soured my wife on me ever booking a sharing economy rental again.

<comment><USER12> I'm not placing _any_ faith in AirBnB. I laid out a chain of actions, one of which is contacting AirBnB, and the next link in the chain is what to do if that doesn't work.

No doubt you can get stuck in a crappy situation here. But you certainly have choices that don't involve doing nothing while your host carts you off to some undisclosed location.

<comment><USER13> I apologise. When I've retold the story other peoples' responses are simply "contact AirBnB" as if that wasn't the first thing we did. We eventually found a place for the night, resolved the issue with AirBnB (though weeks later), and promised to do a little more forethought into our next rental.

<comment><USER12> That's OK, and I'm glad you got your housing trouble figured out. AirBnB definitely _should_ be prepared to handle problems like this right away, but I can't say I'm too surprised that they don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is why hotel regulations popped up in the first place. If you don't want the government to crack down, you really need to protect your customers. If this happened to the son or daughter of a US Senator (I know it happened in Spain, but kids do take trips) then I would expect a whole world of problems.

<comment><USER15> Welcome to the lemons problem. Information problems are very real in the hotel industry. Most of the customers have limited information. Akerlof (husband of Fed chair Janet Yellen) got the Nobel Prize for starting the literature.

No, I do not have plans to use Airbnb. It sounded like a really bad idea from the start.

<comment><USER6> You're well-compensated for the risk you take on Airbnb, it's not like it costs the same as the Four Seasons.

<comment><USER16> And the risk is overrated - if the host seems dishonest or the place isn't as described/shown, you can still check-in to an hotel.

I find it depressing how this will probably go away, and people like me who can't afford to pay for a stay at an hotel will just lose the option of taking the risk. Hurray for the infantilization of society! /s

<comment><USER17> > if the host seems dishonest or the place isn't as described/shown, you can > still check-in to an hotel.

When I am traveling - for business or pleasure - the last thing I want to do is scramble to figure out where I will sleep that night. I value my time too much, especially for a pleasure trip, to go through that kind of ordeal.

Also, you can save money if you pay in advance for your hotel. You won't have time to even comparison shop if you're rushing at the very very last minute.

So, I wouldn't say the risk is overrated, but instead that people can stomach different amount of risk.

I like to be well prepared and have firm plans on my trips, but I know other friends will just book the first things they find and figure out what they're doing when they get there.

<comment><USER18> Prices for last minute bookings can also be discounted. Check out the mobile app Hotel Tonight.

<comment><USER19> Aside from using HT when they gave out free credits, their rates have been consistently more expensive than a comparable hotel on Priceline Express and Hotwire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just tonight, my mother checked into an Airbnb in Vienna, Austria. She sent me photos of the bed which did not have new sheets, the towels which were not fresh, a band aid on the floor and some rubbish bins full of cigarettes and ash. The apartment was overall pretty dirty. The host's contact phone number goes straight to message bank (I also tried many times) and the host is not answering emails.

In this situation, what do you do?

She's travelling alone and in her 50s and as you can imagine, she's pretty upset. I decided to get her a hotel and called her an Uber. I then called Airbnb and they said they will attempt to contact the host and they will get back to us.

She wouldn't know what to do without me and if I weren't available, she'd probably end up wandering the streets at night looking for a hotel because she'd be too upset to return to the Airbnb place.

I think for now, I will stop recommending Airbnb.

<comment><USER12> Not defending the host's actions or AirBnB in any way here, but if you're not capable of getting a hotel on your own, then you probably shouldn't be traveling to foreign countries alone.

Edit: well, that was unpopular. Am I wrong, or just saying it inartfully?

<comment><USER21> I'm 34, capable as the next guy and would probably have difficulty re-booking a room, in a foreign country while also being "homeless". In fact, during summer months I'd have difficulty booking a room 5 min from my house last minute.

<comment><USER20> I agree. It was 5pm and I had my laptop in front of me so I could quickly call hotels in the area to see if they were available. By around the 8th ok-looking hotel, I had found one that had a room available. This would be very difficult for my mother on her slow iPhone 3GS.

<comment><USER22> Interesting point. I think I'll be sure to carry a paper travel guide (Lonely Planet, etc.) when travelling internationally just for the hotel reviews and phone numbers in case of problems.

10 years ago, when travelling internationally, my first step when arriving in a city was to park myself at a payphone in the train station and start calling places.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Its equally bad as a host. I have a place that rents very well in the summer (its near the Ocean) and a group of people showed up, didn't like it for whatever reason, and AirBNB canceled the reservation with no penalty despite there being a super clear cancelation policy in place.

No recourse (customer service blew me off: "sorry, renter didn't like the bed."), no way to rent it for a week on that short of notice, I lose $1000. Really shitty experience - I prioritize Holiday Lettings now.

<comment><USER24> But what _should_ Airbnb (or any company managing rentals) do under that circumstance? The renter is doing the equivalent of a return for "item not as described." I'm perfectly willing to believe that this renter had some expectation or requirement that to your mind or mine was totally unreasonable. Or maybe they found a better deal nearby at the last moment. But there's no real way an Airbnb can start investigating the firmness of beds or other property details. The only alternative is to tilt the other way and basically make it impossible for renters to get a refund barring all but the most obviously mis-advertised rentals.

<comment><USER21> Day of arrival refunds don't work for any industry that relies on reservations, appointments, or rigid scheduling. It doesn't need to be "impossible" to get a refund, but being able to show up and say "no thanks" (for seemingly any reason) when the result is the business losing substantial revenue - is a bad situation for all.

<comment><USER24> Well, it often does with hotels up to 6pm or so if guaranteed with a credit card.

My point is that there is a very wide variance in properties. While some walkaways will be for trivial or non-existent reasons in the minds of an average person, others will be for much more substantial reasons. Property ratings aside, it's really hard for the broker (Airbnb) to distinguish those except in the most extreme cases. As a result, you probably need a sensible default but that default is going to inherently favor either those renting or those renting out the property in the case of a dispute.

<comment><USER21> "hotels up to 6pm" maybe big city, high volume hotels which have no problem re-booking. For smaller accommodation businesses with a limited stock, 24-48 hours is standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is a fundamental problem with online markets of any kind. There was a period in the early 2000's when "eBay SUCKS" type websites would surface regularly from angry users.

But then, as now, you see both kinds of story. Ones like this one, where the seller / renter was anywhere from an outright fraud to unscrupulous, but also the other way - stories of buyers who "returned" goods and got refunds, only for the returned item turning out to be fake / faulty / nonexistent. I'm sure AirBnB have equally large problems with people who have an uneventful stay, leave and immediately lodge a complaint against the host.

It sounds like AirBnB could probably be nicer about this, but equally the author of this post _did_ violate their terms of service (which aren't unreasonable - letting people book for other people opens the door to agents and unscrupulous 3rd parties who charge a fee without adding value).

It would be interesting to see the perspective of AirBnB support. I wonder how many possibly fraudulent refund claims they deal with on a daily basis?

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow, what a nightmare. I'd like to think that they'd have my back in this kind of situation, but I guess not.

Personally, though, I've stayed in almost 40 different European Airbnb rentals over the past year and didn't have any problems. It's not risk-free, but it's certainly better than trawling through the local equivalent of Craigslist. (Granted, I mostly stayed with people renting out a spare room, so there was probably less of a chance of them being terrible or crazy.)

As with all booking services, I always engaged my sketchiness radar before booking. Does the host sound conversational in their listing? Do the photos have the Airbnb official photographer seal? (Or do they have lots of grainy photos interspersed with unrelated photos of attractions in the city?) Do they have a fleshed out profile with photos? Reviews? References? What do they sound like when I message them? Even on a supposedly safe booking service like Airbnb, it's important to assume that each listing is sketchy until proven otherwise. You can usually tell if a host has good intentions by taking these things into consideration.

<comment><USER27> Renting a spare room is a key differentiator. All these bad experiences in the thread here have one thing in common: they're all for a whole suite. That's basically renting from all these real estate tycoon wannabes.

<comment><USER28> @Fandroid, I don't know about that analysis. My experiences have been good and bad. I rented a spare room and was kept up all night by the people in the next room if you know what I mean ..:)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Several months ago, members of my team at work booked various Airbnbs for a large conference in San Francisco.

We booked early to get a better deal, and I'm pretty sure a lot of Airbnb hosts didn't know the conference was coming up (or was that big).

As we got closer to the conference time, pretty much all of us had our stays canceled on us by the hosts. We were then forced to rebook at significantly higher rates. In some instances, even THESE got canceled by the hosts.

We're 99% sure that the hosts were given better offers and made the deals privately.

Having used Airbnb a few times now, I'm definitely seeing the benefits of hotels for peace of mind.

<comment><USER30> If you cancel on a guest as a host, Airbnb _heavily_ penalizes your listings. They will be outranked by pretty much every other listing for at least a couple of months. (It happened to me and many other hosts I know.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Sounds like they may have gotten into the tough space where choices were few and you take a Hobson's choice and get burned.

I've learned with Airbnb to be disciplined about ignoring any unreviewed listings and really only looking at listings that have at least 15 reviews over at least a year. It is clear that there are outright scammers using the site, as well as perhaps the well meaning but incompetent or those who play a little fast and loose, to be generous.

I almost booked a place in London for a Christmas stay 4 months out before I discovered through my own sleuthing that 100% of the listing photos were from a real estate listing for the flat and it was for sale.

</comment><comment><USER32> Regarding the comments below the blog post, what is the point of countering him with anecdotes of good Airbnb experiences? Good experiences don't reveal anything about Airbnb itself, because the dispute mechanism isn't invoked; they are simply the result of a good host transacting with good guests (incidentally, by way of Airbnb).

That's like saying, "I've had only good experiences with ABC Insurance; their premiums are low, the coverage is great and their friendly staff answered all my questions." (Wonderful; but did you ever try to collect on a claim?)

Only reports of experiences of invoking _the critical use-case_ are meaningful and relevant. A black spot in that area obliterates a thousand glowing reports about anything else.

</comment><comment><USER33> I will never use Airbnb again, either. Booked a flat in London that looked clean in the pictures, but was disgusting when we got there. Also wound up paying walk-in rates at a Holiday Inn (which were astronomical, but at least the room was immaculate and modern). Fortunately, I always book travel with my American Express card—and _they_ sure know how to handle disputed charges.

</comment><comment><USER6> You have completely the wrong expectation of how Airbnb works. The hosts are randoms and Airbnb has no way to deliver a consistent quality experience like a hotel. Airbnb is like eBay, not Amazon.

You need to realize that when you get the last apartment in a city at conference-time (almost certainly not a superhost with good reviews), you're obviously taking a big gamble that it doesn't work out in order to save a few bucks.

> so we had to shell out 9 nights of walk-in rate hotel fees

So in this worst-case scenario you wound up in the same place as you would have if Airbnb didn't exist? Cry me a river.

<comment><USER15> > So in this worst-case scenario you wound up in the same place as you would > have if Airbnb didn't exist? Cry me a river.

Worst case scenario for this story is that the driver takes them out of town, shoots them, and dumps their bodies into a river.

<comment><USER34> This is Spain we're talking about. It has a homicide rate about one sixth of the USA. It's a safe western European country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Seems like a common theme in "sharing economy" companies - start off with a great concept and great execution, but once they become popular, some part of them just falls apart.

For uber, it's the way they treat their drivers. The churn is incredible. But as long as they continue to offer cheap rides and can lure new drivers in with empty promises, they'll continue to exist.

<comment><USER36> A sharing economy works when you have a lot of like minded people in the same social circle. Once you invite the masses and investors, you lose what made it work...

<comment><USER37> How can a driver be in the same social circle as a well off professional? At the end of the day, very few industries are peers between worker and client.

<comment><USER36> Yah right... they can't.

Though the first drivers in Chicago were Hipster Musicans, which were fun.. similar culture to yuppie coders. But over time, it has moved to more and more recent immigrants who do not speak English as a first language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> My ongoing first time experience forced me to create this basic question set. The realization is airbnb is no different from craigslist. There are no minimum standards/rules. There are awesome deals out there. Only people with a good question set end up choosing a better deal and the rest get stuck with bad deals.

Room 1\. Room size (width x length in ft) 2\. What lighting do you have?. Or you have only one table lamp? 3\. Is there a table? 4\. Do you provide a towel? 5\. Send me a picture of bed size and also the measurements. (width x length in ft) Please don't just say queen or king. I need the width and length. I have seen hosts mention the sizes incorrectly. 6\. Do your personal belongins stay in the room?. Any don't touch belongings? 7\. Does the room have a knob(inside) for privacy? 8\. Is there a fan? 9\. Total house built up area in square footage? (excluding garage)

Sharing 1\. How many airbnb guests stay there? 2\. How many guests I share the rest room with? 3\. Is there space in the fridge for me?. How much (approx)? 4\. What is the typical temperature maintained in the house?. Are there guests with a requirement to keep the room warm despite me sweating?

Cleaning 1\. What is the cleaning schedule for house?. 1\. What is the cleaning schedule for rest rooms?. 2\. Who do we call if the shared rest room is soiled?.

Location 1\. Are there any loud sounds/noises from surroundings/roads at night?

<comment><USER26> I quickly learned while traveling over the winter that my #1 question was: do you have heating?! Apparently some people get by in 0 degree weather without it somehow!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm not trying to blame the victim here, but rule of thumb...never use AirBnB outside your own country and that goes double for Spain[1].

1) - Go to google, type in "AirBnB Spain", then look at the auto complete.

<comment><USER40> I'm an American, and I used AirBNB a number of times in Italy this past spring. I only booked rooms with 4.5/5.0 ratings, and only from hosts who have hundreds -- or at least dozens -- of positive reviews. My experience could not have been better.

<comment><USER26> All my Italian hosts were lovely!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Customer service is a joke. I posted this on HN about a year ago.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9005200](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9005200)

They turned me from being an advocate for their service to never wanting to use their service again. I travel frequently with kids, we use alternatives now.

</comment><comment><USER42> This July, I went on a weekend trip to Victoria with my parents who I see two or three times a year. About an hour before we should have arrived at the accommodation, our hosts calls me and tells us his son needs the place so he needs me to log on airbnb and cancel our reservation. He was _very_ persistent and kept calling me and leaving messages, despite me telling him he needs to tell airbnb himself. I guess he wanted us to take the heat for cancellation instead.

I ended up spending most of my day communicating with airbnb, hotels and motels. Around 8pm I managed to score the last two hotel rooms in the city, and could finally join the rest of the family.

Airbnb did pay the difference between the hotel and our original reservation, but I still lost an entire day with my family.

Nowadays I only make airbnb reservations in big cities where coming up with on-the-spot backup is easy.

</comment><comment><USER36> When I travel I don't have time for dealing with this crap. Hence, I overpay for hotels. Not foolproof by any means, but the big chains will generally be pretty legit and have the room you ask when you get there.

<comment><USER43> I guess this is what I learned last week! :-(

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I must say, anecdotally, I have friends who have had similar, very scary, air bnb experiences, even in California. I stayed in an Air BNB in Baltimore with a dog that genuinely tried to bite me. I'm great with dogs, this one was crazy. And my girlfriend and I had a similar very uncomfortable experience in Rome, being moved from place to place and having our rooms double-booked ... I can't remember whether that particular reservation was booked through Air BNB or not, but the feeling is very unsettling not to mention a time and money drain.

I think the blog post is spot on, in that the customer and most vulnerable person in many of these instances should be thought of as the renter. Of course property damage to the host is a concern, but it can be seriously scary to be stuck somewhere strange feeling unsafe and with nowhere to go.

Compare to Uber. With Uber, if a driver gets many negative ratings, they are booted. Yet there are still many many drivers available here in NYC. I've talked with drivers, and they expressed a lot of concern about their ratings and how they are perceived.

Air BNB is failing to create a culture of accountability, and failing to step in quickly to make things better for people who use their marketplace. If at all possible, I think they should at least do more to address the edge cases. Unhappy, scared, customers are not going to use the service.

I love Air BNB, they are not dead to me, but if they don't address this well I am afraid competition or regulation might.

<comment><USER45> _in that the customer and most vulnerable person in many of these instances should be thought of as the renter._

I tend to think of the people that have to live next to this modern day flophouse. They didn't buy a space in a hotel, they didn't expect random people to come in at all times of the day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I had a bad stay with airbnb. I can't be bothered to repost the whole situation but their customer service was fucking shit.

<comment><USER47> Same here. They still owe me $500 (which they claimed in emails) and have since completely stopped responding to any emails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Shame there are no negative reviews on his apartment to cement this all together.

I think I'm right in thinking that both parties must review one another before it is published. Therefore why would he ever review your negative experience.

<comment><USER49> If you both review, then the reviews show up immediately. If only one of you reviews, then the review shows up after a waiting period (I think it's ~2 weeks). So presumably the negative review will show up soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> As a host themselves, they afforded the other host too much of a courtesy before reporting a bait and switch to AirBnB and letting them get involved. Getting the AirBnB team involved is more about leverage as the host doesn't want to get booted from the platform so they are more likely to not push you around taking you from apartment to apartment.

Also, what was the reputation and reviews on the host used?

</comment><comment><USER51> Unless you are 21 and looking for an adventure use Hyatt, Hilton, ... when dealing with foreign countries especially if you don't speak the local language.

<comment><USER24> Eh. I'm no particular Airbnb enthusiast--indeed, I've never used it. However, I have stayed at any of a number of non-chain places around the world from the large to the tiny and I've rarely had a terrible experience. (And some of my worst hotel experience were at large chains.)

Especially for business travel, I do like a degree of predictability but that doesn't mean I feel a desire to restrict my travel to where I can stay in business hotels.

<comment><USER52> I think it's more about "governed by local hotel regulations."

<comment><USER24> That's not what the parent wrote though. He named a couple of large international chains. (Of course "local hotel regulations" may also not amount to much in some places I've stayed but that goes with traveling.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I just booked at AirBnB for the third time for an upcoming conference. The two previous times were a very good experience for me. All three times I'm getting prices way below alternative lodgings. I do take care to research the places and make sure to only use well reviewed hosts. I think that rather than make a dodgy AirBnB booking I'd pay more. I've booked hotel rooms that turned out to be rather shitty. This is a horror story to be sure. I think AirBnB dropped the ball but I can see their options narrow since the customer didn't complain immediately. They should kick the host regardless.

</comment><comment><USER54> The root of these bad host stories seem to be that the guests arrive and don't immediately contact Airbnb about issues with the rental. Because of this, Airbnb just denies any liability and puts the blame on the renters instead of the host.

This seems trivial to solve -- Airbnb should make check-ins a mandatory part of all stays, and any issues with the accommodations would obviously be included in this initial check-in. There would be no chance for a host to move you across Barcelona before realizing you've been totally screwed or before Airbnb starts denying any and all responsibility for the problem.

<comment><USER55> I've had an issue with Airbnb this summer. I contacted them within the first 24 hours (as it's the rule to get a refund) and contacted the host exclusively through Airbnb so there would be a trace.

They told me that I should have left more chance to the host to fix the issue (I left the place after 20 hours and tried to get ahold of the host multiple times). They never fully refunded me even after countless mails and calls where I quoted their own terms and conditions to prove that they needed to refund me. In the end, the customer service told me that "refund" does not mean "a total refund" but whatever they're willing to give.

The customer service lady was very nice but it seemed like her hands were tied and she was not allowed to just fully refund me. I'll never use them in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Just because this thread is filled with negativity...

My wife and I have stayed in a bunch of airbnb's (Aptos CA, Oregon House CA, Portland OR, Palo Alto, CA, San Diego CA, Princeville & Kapa'a HI, Seville & Barcelona (Las Ramblas) Spain, Venice & Florence & Rome Italy, and maybe another one or two that I'm forgetting) and the experience has been well above average every single time and every one of them were cheaper than the hotel alternatives.

No idea what we're doing differently, but we meticulously look through reviews and make sure we exchange a few messages with each host before we book.

</comment><comment><USER57> This happens with registered hotels and Expedia too. I had to be in Paris for a few days a couple of years ago so I chose a nice hotel on Expedia, and not very expensive as well. However, when I showed up, the hotel had no trace of the reservation. The manager didn't want to call Expedia because it would not change anything (no space left, he claimed). Instead, he very nicely called another hotel to find space for me. I even thanked him... However, the other hotel was the shittiest hotel I have ever stayed at and would probably not have survived a listing on the Internet. The manager there was crazy and the hotel was so bad they couldn't even manage to track which rooms were occupied by guests. And since it was a walk-in, I paid super high rates. While staying at that hotel, I heard multiple guests with the same story as me so it was not an isolated technical problem on the part of the local hotels (seems more than one hotel was in on it). When I complained to Expedia, it turned out the first hotel had cancelled the reservation right before I showed up so no foul for them (despite my never being told about it before showing up at the hotel). Expedia gave me a voucher in the end but the listing for that hotel stayed on the site.

<comment><USER43> Yup, Expedia are also terrible. I blacklisted them some years ago when they had a hotel listed as 100m from the centre of Santiago De Compostela (also in Spain) when it was actually 10km from the centre! Bit of a difference. I don't mind a mistake, but Expedia basically tried to deny all responsibility and blame the hotel. Had a real scrap to get a refund.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> AirBnB's customer service is undergoing growing pains.

We rented a place via AirBnB that seemed to have good reviews. Upon checking in, as soon as the lights were turned off, cockroaches came out and were crawling over us! So at 3AM I called AirBnB and wanted to get out. They helped me find another place, but I could not leave a review of the previous place! No wonder they had such good reviews! It defeats the purpose of a review if you can't leave really bad ones.

</comment><comment><USER59> It looks like Airbnb is focused on keeping their costs low instead of keeping their quality up. That's a good short-term strategy........

</comment><comment><USER60> This is the Groupon/Kickstarter/Ebay problem. Everything is awesome until something goes wrong. Then the user leaves forever, and tells their friends. Trust is broken.

Eventually the loses mount and the company crumbles from bad press.

Amazon fixes this with 10/10 customer service. The only known solution.

<comment><USER61> I once had a terrible experience with their kindles. They shipped me one that was a dud, and when the screen went haywire in the first few days I called and they admitted that this batch had issues. Unfortunately, they told me, I would have to shell out 100$ for a new one, even though it was their fault.

Even Amazon screws up royally, too. I bought a Nook and never looked back, and haven't bought a book from Amazon since.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I've had some horrible experience with Airbnb in LA. One place has close to perfect reviews (the lowest scored category is 8/10 in cleanliness), but the place is dirtier than a gas station's bathroom (smelly sheets, moldy showers, dirty old floor and squeaky bed). I've never met the host in person and he ran this thing like a refugee camp; there are about 50 people living in that (fairly large) complex and no one seemed happy. I went back to hotels/hostels after that experience.

</comment><comment><USER63> I think there are a handful of hosts that do not care about their guest' experience and instead are mostly focused on the financial gain of renting out their place. That being said, I'm an airbnb host who has rented out my 2nd bedroom in nyc to some of the most amazing individuals I've ever met, and many of them are some of my best friends now.

It really depends on the host. And I think that 90% are fantastic.

</comment><comment><USER64> A sample size of n=1 is an anecdote not data. Totally horrible experience but seemed to hinge on a particularly bad actor with knowledge of how best to exploit customers and airbnb. It is pretty shitty, I hope they make it right because it sounds like you acted in good faith, but this seems like a really complicated edge case.

I had a similar experience this week with Dashlane (a password mgnt app) where i installed it and it corrupted >70 passwords locking me out of vital accounts. This is why my HN UN is green for instance. Customer support was totally shit for a while but I tweeted them and they responded and actually read my responses. I ended up losing all the data but they[0] _eventually_ provided some time to look into the issue deeper as well as a free 12 month account. Should they have helped me better up front, when the data may still have been recoverable? I think NO, but want to say yes. I had a free account and didnt had non-traditional settings. So while i would gladly trade the free account for my credentials back I bear some responsibility. I AM NOT INDICATING YOU(or the writer) ARE RESPONSIBLE. My point is that some situations are really shitty and are not indicative of the experience/views of an organization. If this occurs only very rarely, conpanies can still have a great business and unfortunately some people will be casualties to circumstance

[0]xavier, if you are reading this. Thanks for the account credit and making things right, Cheers!

<comment><USER43> Right, but an organisation is only as good as its response when something goes wrong, no? And Airbnb's response was... well...

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Serves you right for owning a Drupal IT Consultancy.

</comment><comment><USER66> My opinion is that when you're using something like AirBnB, you can't expect hotel level service when things go wrong... instead of making last minute decisions, research the place a bit - look through the comments, start up a thread of conversation with the host to make sure they can communicate in your language...

</comment><comment><USER67> First, sorry to hear about your experience.

I wonder if you would have any luck escalating this to Chesky, Gebbia, et al. The Airbnb founding team really seems to take pg's advice on start-ups seriously. I'm sure that they're huge proponents of delighting their users, which your experience obviously isn't an example of.

<comment><USER68> Doesn't sound like it, otherwise they'd prioritize customer service, and we wouldn't be heading as many of these stories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Had a very bad experience with airbb support too.. Appartment was digusting and not as advertised. airbnb refused to help. 1500 euro gone, as we moved to something else.

I've had a bit too many bad experiences with the offerings of hosts and service of airbnb.

I hope this unicorn will die, and will be replaced by something proper

</comment><comment><USER70> Sounds like a horrific experience but unfortunately, it's hard to assign much credibility to the OP. Sounds very difficult to deal with. Like, no, a random photo from a balcony in no way proves that you weren't staying somewhere else.

<comment><USER21> That fact that they were even asked to provide "proof" is insane on so many levels.

<comment><USER70> Yeah, it's comically insane that a company like that would not bend over backwards to appease its customers. First, make sure travelers have a place to stay. Second, treat all parties as innocent (unless it's chronic). Third, try to sort out what happened in an empathetic manner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> We had good luck with Airbnb in the past, but only because of good (great) hosts. I have a feeling therein lies the rub - Airbnb's business model assumes a good host and a good guest, and when that falls short everything falls apart.

</comment><comment><USER72> One word: chargeback

Let AirBnB explain their idiotic policies to Amex/Visa/MC

</comment><comment><USER73> Not sure a bad Yelp review is really HN worthy...

</comment><comment><USER74> On a related note, Drupal is dead to me.

</comment><comment><USER75> This, my friends, is why regulation does make sense. Unregulated markets end up fucking people over.

<comment><USER21> No too much! just enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Airbnb has the worst customer service, no one to respond emails etc.

</comment><comment><USER28> What a story. A bit scary especially in a foreign country.

</comment><comment><USER77> This is an attempt to get a refund from AirBnB, right?

Has HN become a back channel customer service platform for YC companies?

Unfortunately since it seems to work so well. I expect we will see more of this.

<comment><USER43> Nope, it isn't. I didn't post it on HN. I didn't even have a HN account until I decided to reply to a few comments (including this one). This is simply someone so annoyed and frustrated with Airbnb's apparent indifference to bad hosts they decided to blog it and tweet the blog post. Everything else was beyond my control. And actually, the money is a side point. It was company account, meh, who cares? The REAL point is there's someone gaming Airbnb, they know this, but they're not removing this person from their listings. That's what really pees me off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> He instant booked without reading the reviews? Reviews are so important on transactions like these. Basic interneting rules.

<comment><USER43> Nope. "He" (me) read the reviews. They were OK. I can only assume the user has only recently started using (gaming?) the Instant Book feature, because we're the apparently the first to report a "bait and switch", but I doubt we'll be the last.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Hotel regulations are awful!

</comment><comment><USER80> Hmmm. I won't repeat my qualms with AirBnB. I'm afraid that this comment will get downvoted/banned in a bit, and like any negative post/discussion about AirBnB, the discussion will mysteriously disappear from the front page…

<comment><USER16> Do you have any links to those previous discussions?

<comment><USER80> I don't want to tick anyone off here, I enjoy HN, and have for a long time (over 6 years). Perhaps I don't understand the ranking, but more than once active discussions just went away, with low-vote/low-interaction topics replacing them.

I only see articles in my comment history from over a year ago. Search here isn't great, e.g. I can't find the article where PG himself commented on something I said.

Here's a few where I participated [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7923849](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7923849) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7939414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7939414) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8222687](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8222687)

In this one I reacted to someone else with the same impression [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332889](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9332889) I asked for clarification on the policy, instead I got a downvote.

Since that time, I'm keeping quiet.

<comment><USER81> I assume you mean [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7437357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7437357)?

I appreciate that you don't want to "tick anyone off here", and you haven't, but you have said some things that aren't true. I think I've answered most of them at [1], but there's at least one other. It isn't true that we single anti-Airbnb stories out. We don't treat them any other way than comparable stories about something else.

I think there's a general phenomenon affecting this. Once startups become hyper-successful, there's a noticeable HN backlash against them. Perhaps this is because they're no longer the underdog. Airbnb and Uber ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9933165](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9933165)) are clearly in this category, and we've noticed others.

The trouble with such backlashes is that the discussions they lead to are super repetitive. Even more than the indignation, it's the repetitiveness that makes them unsuitable for HN.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10292239](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10292239)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> For me it's the same as hotels, but with less service. I've relocated to SFBA a year ago, and it was cheaper to rent Extended Stay America rather than AirBnB with weird rules. We had a kid, and one guy was mentioning "no dogs or kids" in his AD. That's ridiculous! DOGS OR KIDS! O-k-a-y. Will never never never use AirBnB again.

<comment><USER24> Any number of bed & breakfasts and other small properties that aren't Airbnb are "no kids." And, of course, the majority of hotels are no dogs.

<comment><USER83> I think he's complaining about the manner of writing. It's very reminiscent of "No dogs, blacks or mexicans".

</comment></comment></comment><comment> pi-err TL;DR: friends had a bad experience once with Airbnb, will not use again.

This is not about Airbnb as a business strategy or work place or UX etc.

Speaking of UX, I do find that Airbnb does a pretty good job at managing expectations and making sure people find their fit (I don't have any figure though).

<comment><USER68> It is entirely about AirBnB's UX. Going to the rental is the largest part of their UX. If that's a bad experience, why would anyone want to try it again.</comment></comment>


The Invisible Things Lab's blog: Another TXT Attack - <AUTHOR> http://theinvisiblethings.blogspot.com/2009/12/another-txt-attack.html <comment><USER2> Can someone translate this to something I can understand?

<comment><USER3> I only skimmed the full report, but it looks like a way of root-kitting a new Intel processor. As noted, Intel has already patched this problem.

<comment><USER4> Nope, it's a way of installing a persistent rootkit with full access to the hardware (ie, a rootkit like any modern rootkit on non-TXT Intel hardware) even on systems that use TXT and VT-* to prevent that from happening.

It's circumvention of a new Intel security feature, but it's not a new compromise in the integrity of the CPU or chipset itself. Even if they hadn't corrected the problem, you'd still be better off with TXT than without it.</comment></comment></comment>


Squarespace Logo - <AUTHOR> http://blog.squarespace.com/blog/introducing-squarespace-logo

<comment><USER2> This is a pretty simplistic tool, but it shows how easy things could become. I don't think it undermines the truly talented designers nor will it take any business away from them.

The ones that should worry are the ones submitting to 99designs contests.</comment>


CV in format of MindMap. Transparency - <AUTHOR> Hello to the community of tech individuals and free thinkers!
Each time I was hired or giving a work outside I've had a difficulty with explaining my experience in short period of time or even if writing in flat-text mode. There are lots misunderstanding is happening during communication, and after.
Becoming transparent to others same as in the open-source world, what blockchain is doing. If I would describe myself, my skills, my experience in the format everyone will understand that will reduce the damage to both sides. So I've selected the format of mindmap to describe myself a be visible to others clearly.
Link to my mindmap(CV): https://realtimeboard.com/app/board/o9J_k0X6Hf8=/
What do you think guys? <comment><USER2> You do realize that a mindmap is just as much tree as a numbered list, right?</comment>


Leaked Documents Reveal What TikTok Shares with Authorities – IN the U.S. - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2020/08/10/blueleaks-tiktok-law-enforcement-privacy/ <comment><USER2> IMO this article is missing some critical info. It handwaved away the circumstances under which the data was handed over (subpoena? Warrant? Because a cop called and asked nicely?)

Assuming the data is being handed over as the result of relatively targeted court orders this doesn't seem notable to me (aka "give me the phone number tied to this account that made a video looting a store" as opposed to "hand over the data of everyone in Portland during this week")

</comment><comment><USER3> gosh I think people forget the basics: it's not Chinese people are bad, US people good. Even if tiktok has good people, and US gov. has bad people, the behavior as a group doesn't follow.

What matters is the political system. is it geared so that no one entity gets all the power? is it geared so that politicians will have to think twice before doing abhorrent things? are people in power replaced with just the right frequency to prevent long-term corruption?

US as a political system has all of them. Even though you guys say "look some US news outlet says Trump is s _it ", the fact that you guys can hear that news FROM a US news outlet shows FREEDOM of PRESS. And if Trump is sh_t, the political system of US will ensure that he won't stay in power. And its

On the other hand, CCP ("China") doesn't have that system. Its courts, the Army, the Police, the media, the internet... everything is owned by The Party. So it doesn't have actual separation of power, and the whole communication is blatantly owned by the party --- so it can conveniently and openly block messages that are negative to those in the power.

Anyway, it seems US is opting to "quietly watch" the comm, because it's an extremely useful tool in catching crime orgs and foreign spy rings. But due to its political system and the resulting backfire, US gov has to be careful to be discreet about its use.

And then... there's China, which goes straightly to "hey you send something bad for some higher up. Come to police station to have some tea!"

<comment><USER4> It's not because one system is better than another, merely a relative relationship, that it's a good system overall. That depends on the criteria used. I think you know that, yet your comment reads a bit like 'hey there's much worse things out there so don't complain'. Don't forget e.g. PRISM. Even if CCP does things objectively worse, and the US in theory has a political system as you described, that still did happen and is not exactly 'good'.</comment></comment>


Wouldn't it be more viable to build a Mars Space Station on Earth's orbit? - <AUTHOR> Wouldn't it be more viable to build a Mars Space Station—ark—on Earth's orbit and send it to Mars orbit at the next launch window?
This would save a lot of money and years of time as it won't require building many dedicated BFRs for every payload and pack of passengers allowing to use existing SpaceX Falcon rockets to bring all required payload to the orbit continuously. It would also allow starting habitat construction near Earth that could save time between the launch windows. Later the whole thing with payload and people could be sent to Mars orbit where it would unload half-baked constructions on Mars and serve as a post between Earth and Mars.
While on Earth's orbit this could attract a lot of attention, money serving for sponsors' PR, and as a tourist attraction for riches.
Do you think financially and from time frame consideration building the MSS could be more viable than building many BFRs to launch everything during the launch window and only then start construction on Mars? <comment><USER3> There are a couple downsides to send a single thing.

The final propulsion needs is mostly the same, so you won't pay more to push stuff to Mars than you would to boost that stuff from LEO to a Mars transfer trajectory. The mass and delta-v being the same, the propulsion budget is the same.

Say, if you assemble it and then something happens and you can't slow down and enter Mars orbit, you lost the whole thing.

If the station is assembled, it's shape won't probably work well for atmospheric braking and would require a bit more fuel to slow down. A single module could, conceivably, dive deeper into the atmosphere and shed more speed with that.

Acceleration loads on the assembled thing are also to be considered. If we decide against chemical rockets, the question is mostly moot - <USER2> will be low, but constant.

If we send multiple modules separately, we end up with a lot of propulsion capacity that, with some clever design, can be reused for landings and orbital ascents. You can never have too many of a single thing when you are that far from Earth.

The upside is that it's easier to assemble everything in Earth orbit and it'd be easy to teleoperate robots.

Having said that, I suppose an extra week living in the Earth-Mars transit vehicle while the arriving crew assembles their home is not a big deal for someone who already spent 3 months in transit.

edit: if we are to do that, putting a station in a cycler orbit would probably be more interesting. That way you depart Earth with supplies and rendezvous with your living quarters for the trip. The cycler can have the shielding to protect astronauts on their way.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no reason for the whole station to land on Mars. Approaching Mars the whole thing would split to start breaking. Big parts of it (bigger than a BFR) with payloads--half-baked assembled constructions--would separate and enter Mars atmosphere for landing. Then the station itself will be less heavy for breaking using the gravity of Mars and its orbit for that.

<comment><USER3> I think we were talking about a space station. If it ever lands, I assume it'd be unintentional.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep. SS. Also apart from the tech stuff, it's important to consider financial and administrative issues. Building the thing near Earth allows making it attractive for sponsor/ad money and save construction and preparation time starting earlier in space using Falcons. Meaning existing plan does not allow any payload launched unless BFR is built. Not to mention spending fewer resources to build all that BFRs required launching all payload simultaneously during the launch window.

P.S. BTW, ISS has limited service time left. So there is a need to plan construction of a new Space Station on Earth's orbit in any case.

<comment><USER3> You don't need - and you don't even should - launch all pieces at once. You can launch them into the same orbit so they meet at some point. It's easier to make the parts meet in Martian orbit because the distances allow for finer corrections over longer periods of time. It doesn't matter if some pieces arrive months or years before others as long as they are all there when it's time to assemble the station.

A Falcon Heavy can take about twice as much cargo as a shuttle could to the ISS. This means the launch costs of upgrading/refurbishing the ISS, or even replacing it, just got much lower, and the whole process requires half as many launches (and the modules can, now, be bigger than the shuttle payload bay).

I assume the BFR should be able to take, with a non-reusable second stage, almost a whole space station, ready for assembly. Or to carry large modules, such as a centrifuge, so that astronauts don't need to be continually exposed to microgravity during their entire stay in orbit.

And with the full BFR, it can return ISS modules to the ground for study or refurbishment which, I assume, is valuable as it allows the study of structures and materials exposed to space for decades, as well as reflight of existing and already validated components.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We do build them all on earth, orbit them and send them to the Moon or Mars etc and land/orbit them for their tasks.

A large structure - too large to launch as a complete station should be orbited here as many separate loads and then assembled to form the station, and then sent to Mars - as you suggest. It is not practical to send the loads to Mars and assemble there.

Every item from earth has a huge cost. Items made from loose asteroids, the Moon, Mars etc may well be a lot cheaper. You must bear in mind that elements(metals, Oxygen etc) would need to be extracted and made into raw materials suitable for whatever you want to make. That means each one would need to be screened about the relative energy economics. Few items from asteroids could be used as they are found.

</comment><comment><USER5> The problem with this is the delta-V requirement to actually send it to Mars. Even with in-orbit refueling as proposed by SpaceX you'd probably require a big rocket and/or a lot of fuel to send something really massive.

Ion rockets might be used but that would make the trip take forever and would be very costly.

There do exist very slow low-energy transfer orbit trajectories, but AFIAK those require you to start at various Lagrange points. So maybe it could be done but you'd have to build it at a Lagrange point, destroying the cost savings, and it would take forever to deliver to Mars.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sending simultaneously many BFRs basically with the same payload right from Earth I'd say would require even more fuel, lot's of investments to build that many BFRs and then construction need to be started from scratch after the launch on Earth and on Mars after unloading. So all the time and money will be spent to build a huge amount of rockets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The major cost is lifting mass out of Earth's gravity well, so if you really want to cut costs we require sources of materials which don't come from Earth. Once you have this, and build your station, why send it to Mars? Keep it here, or send it to a planet with resources we can use (a moon of Jupiter might work).

You'd need a compelling reason to do this, since the cost from R&D to launches would be in the trillions and take decades.

<comment><AUTHOR> IIS has not so many years left to live, BTW. Space Stations as posts on orbits are good for many practical and scientific reason.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely, but to me that's an argument for space stations in orbit around Earth, not Mars.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agree. Though one does not exclude another. Starting with a new ISS to test ideas and tech and extending it later to SS for Mars would be logical.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Still Committing Like Crazy - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/802-still-committing-like-crazy

<comment><USER2> Looks like people don't stop thinking over the weekend and come in with fresh ideas on Monday. I know that happens to me. Nice to see that it might be happening to others too. I mean, really, who leaves Friday without a commit?

<comment><USER3> The other interesting stat (somebody pointed it out in the comments too) is that the number of commits per day seem to slope downwards through the week although the number of pushes stays pretty much constant from Monday-Friday.</comment></comment>


What's the best laptop of the past several years for development? - <AUTHOR> I was a long-time Macbook user, but switched to ThinkPads/Linux several years ago. But:
I want a laptop that has:
* The ThinkPad's keyboard, durability, upgradability and repairability, and
* The Macbook's screen, touchpad, available software and battery life
I don't mind buying used. I'm also a huge fan of open source/libre software, and support Linux for this reason, but I sometimes struggle with the amount of config time I spend and the often better availability of apps on Mac.
I guess this is a question about laptops and OSes. <comment><USER2> Thinkpad with FHD screen and nvme drive... very nice

</comment><comment><USER3> That would be nice. Closest thing in reality might be the Thankpad X1 Carbon with ElementaryOS or Hackintosh if you're up for all of that.

</comment><comment><USER4> I still use a 2010 ThinkPad T410S that I haven't been able to find a better recent replacement for. But that's just my _very_ humble opinion.

I've looked at the ThinkPad P series, and the X1 series. But they didn't convince me they were a better overall acquisition than my existing T410S.

I use Mint MATE as my everyday OS.</comment>


Convos IRC client now supports video chat - <AUTHOR> https://convos.by/2020/5/23/experimental-video-support-using-webrtc.html <comment><USER2> How is this still IRC? :)

I'd prefer to see more expansion on the IRC protocol side rather than clients adding their own non-standard augmentations.

Things like server-side scrollback, connection persistence without a bouncer, push notifications for mobile would be great. I currently use Quassel server with QuasselDroid app to achieve these things with works well but again it's a client thing only. IRCCloud does a similar thing though not self-hosted.

I'd love to see IRC make some big strides like it did in the 90s. I don't care about video etc though. It shouldn't become another whatsapp or facebook messenger. Though embedding pictures would be useful.

I know IRCv3 is a thing but development is way too slow and isn't really taking the new requirements of the mobile world into account.

But clients adding proprietary stuff that only works with themselves has nothing to do with the idea of IRC.

<comment><USER3> >I'd prefer to see more expansion on the IRC protocol side rather than clients adding their own non-standard augmentations.

Unless there's a Council of IRC who decrees changes in protocol (and if there is, they clearly aren't doing their job), then "proprietary" features is how the protocol expansion happens - provided the features are useful and easy to implement (read: documented), other clients will jump on the bandwagon. An example of this already happening is colors in IRC - mIRC defined some proprietary control codes, and now every client supports them and it's de- facto part of the standard.

I agree with your feature list, especially scrollback. All that needs to happen is some very popular IRCd taking a stand and making a trivial extension to the protocol, which reports scrollback given a particular server command. Standards be damned - clients will rush to add support for this feature, and servers will soon be seen as second class if they don't support it. It could happen so easily!

<comment><USER4> > Unless there's a Council of IRC who decrees changes in protocol (and if > there is, they clearly aren't doing their job)

IRC was established through the normal RFC process at the time, so there is, in a way, a "council" governing it.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just wondered why STUN/TURN was needed in particular, if you can communicate details over IRC, having an external service for this when other p2p communication methods can be made using IRC seemed strange.

But then I remembered DCC (and xDCC) are unusable these days because of NAT. So STUN wouldn't help, but you need the TURN relay.

I really can't wait until IPv6 is everywhere; I believe it will allow p2p to have a second renaissance.

<comment><USER6> I always wonder why P2P applications don't just use Tor hidden services to communicate:

\- NAT hole-punching for free

\- end-to-end encrypted for free

\- peers identified by a hash of their public key, so no CA or similar required

\- no metadata leakage

It seems like the perfect solution, but hardly anyone does it.

[https://ricochet.im/](https://ricochet.im/) is a chat program that works this way, but the client is pretty minimal.

<comment><USER7> You forgot "slow as molasses".

That said, it made the tor-specific sites simple not just because JS was banned, but that's not video chat, isn't it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Kudos for maintaining a Perl app in 2020. I went into the github expecting some huge node.js jumble and was surprised to see a couple .pm files running everything.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! It's all because of Mojolicious real time web framework. The fun of using the well designed components, and not to mention the ease of writing tests makes it a no-brainer to me :)

It's fun running cloc from time to time: Very evenly between Perl, JavaScript, CSS and template files: [https://convos.by/doc/#statistics](https://convos.by/doc/#statistics)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Demo hacks the back button though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you explain? I don't understand "hacks the back button" :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _.by_

Just curious, why they use such a weird domain zone?

<comment><AUTHOR> It comes from "conversation by" iirc.</comment></comment>


The Bleak Reality of the Instagram Experience - <AUTHOR> https://thewalrus.ca/the-bleak-reality-of-the-instagram-experience/ <comment><USER2> In the early days of Instagram I had an idea for a bot that would tag photos with the approximate value of the things in them. The scenes mentioned in the article wouldn't really be 'taggable', but someone's fancy dinner or handbag or car certainly would. The beauty of it would be to distill what Instagram is about (living an enviable life) down to a very obvious message. If it worked the next step would be to include a "league table" position, eg "Your post is the 10,500,312th most expensive on Instagram."

I think I just enjoy ruining other people's fun a bit too much.

<comment><USER3> Hilariously Ad posts on instagram now will let you click items in the image and get their price. Half way there. :)

<comment><USER4> It's sort of like the photo captions in a fashion magazine, where they list all the clothing items the models are wearing and their price.

<comment><USER5> I've seen good comparisons between instagram and sears catalogues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What the article seems to sidestep (as does society-at-large, it seems) isn't so much the artifice of an experience or its documentation, but the motivations of the people involved.

In other words, we seem to have arrived at a stage where vapidity is not only tolerated or accepted but encouraged, lauded, and rewarded.

Thus an entire economy has been built atop of an "influencer" cargo cult (and too few seem at all concerned about it.)

<comment><USER7> The celebration of beauty, fame, fashion, and influence isn't a new thing. It's as old as human history.

(I wonder if nerds complaining about the vapidity of fashion has also been around since the dawn of human civilization?)

<comment> 52-6F-62 In some civilizations I'm afraid many of them would have been eunuchs. At least there's one thing we can feel good about in the present.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe it's time to revert back to[1], or even create a new service that removes the artificial layer of photo sharing...

A camera app on your phone, that can't access your files, and has no inbuilt filters. You take the photo, and it instantly gets uploaded to the photo sharing service. No editing, no offline photo manipulation. _What you shoot, is what what you share._ Deleting a previously uploaded photo should be possible, but a deliberately complex affair, to discourage image curating.

I doubt anyone would use this kind of app, but it's nice to imagine something like it existing.

\---

[1] Instagram was originally 'as-shot + filters only' on your phone. Later, they caved and allowed previously shot photos on your camera roll to be uploaded, which led to an abundance of phone photo editing apps, then finally they allowed desktop uploads, and that was the end of what made Instagram different.

<comment><USER9> In the late 1990s I was part of a group that was thinking about how cameras might be able to sign images so that later editing could be detected. The motive then was connected to using images as evidence. But I guess you could also use it to mark edited images in some way.

Would apps like Instagram be "improved" if retouched images displayed a prominent "FAKE" icon of some sort?

<comment><USER10> What does "fake" mean? Even if you're taking as-camera images (which have already had de-Bayer and some level of dynamic range and denoise processing, which may be considerable and involve machine learning!), then you can't tell what manipulation has been applied to the scene. You can rent little "sets" for taking photography in. Props and clothes can be borrowed. And so on.

Authenticity is a product, just like any other. And it's increasingly hard to say what it even means in the 21st century.

<comment><USER11> I don't know the answer to this.

But I always use McDonald's (although any restaurant can be used here) as the core of the conundrum of fake vs. real. Look at a corporate shot of a cheeseburger and compare it to reality. The marketing cheeseburger is the platonic ideal of the product -- it's fresh, perfectly prepared with care with all of the ingredients visible. The cheeseburger on the ground looks like a crumpled napkin in comparison.

Is the marketing cheeseburger fake?

When I look at some of the more image-conscious Facebook/Instagram people, some of them are kinda insane with editing and retouching. My wife has an old acquaintance who produces a highly "optimized" picture at least twice a month. (With substantial retouch to her face and usually other body "enhancements". In the age of Instagram+Photoshop, when does someone cross the line from marketing cheeseburger to fraud?

<comment><USER12> "Is the marketing cheeseburger fake?"

I would say yes, it's fake and probably fraud. You should have to show real products in advertising and not an idealized version.

<comment><USER13> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSd0keSj2W8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSd0keSj2W8)

<comment> 52-6F-62 So many late nights at that McDonalds, and in that area. (Dundas and Bathurst - Toronto). Even this video is an idealization. That corner gets grimy at night. At least it used to around that time. And that burger she bought was _not_ what they look like coming out of there. I have to laugh a little...

At least they don't use waxes in the model burgers anymore. That's a step toward honesty, at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is Instagram still heavily used by the Hacker News demographic? I'm starting to get a bit older, so I'm not always current, but my impression from my social circle is that it's fading like Facebook. I know a handful of "power users" who post nonsense everyday, but most people I know (myself included) never post at all now.

For me now, Instagram is a website, where I briefly check out surgically- altered fitness models doing barbell squats while I'm standing in line at the grocery store. I use the PWA, because the native app constantly freezes on two separate devices and the developers don't seem to care.

I'm stupefied by the idea that this could still be an important part of life for many average adults.

<comment><USER15> Try being a single dude in your 20s/early 30s without some "social proof" when trying to talk to 30 and younger girls. They will immediately think you are a weirdo for not having that proof that you're not some sort of loner. I personally use ig for posting things that give me a little more edge over normal dudes - my Olympic weightlifting progress, my trips snowboarding/surfing, my cute dogs, music festivals/shows that I got to...it's helpful. but I'm not gonna post on there about the new Jenkinsfile that I spent a week crafting to deploy a 10 microservices for a state machine. RIP Google+, the Instagram for geeks.

<comment><USER16> Are you joking? I'm 35 and regularly date girls (in SoCal) with an age range of 22 through 28 or so. I have an instagram account which I never use and has about 8 photos on it from years ago. No one ever asks me to show my instagram account and I never mention it. I have tons of "dating success."

So your theory of "social proof" through Instagram doesn't seem valid at all for me. Note: I don't have an active FB account either. So basically, I manage to successfully date many 20-something women with basically zero social media.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I went to the color factory and thought it was fun without taking pictures. I also went to a gorgeous shrine on a lake near Mt Fuji and there was a line dozens of people long to take a selfie at it. The problem isn't the pop-up experiences.

</comment><comment><USER18> This article misses that people WANT other museums to be like this.

The modern art museum experience is a quiet keep to your self affair, and people arent even sure they can take photos. Compare that to the same artist's gallery opening in a cool but grundgy part of town, and it is a loud, social and wine laden affair.

Popup museums fit right in between. Meant to be shared solely by your attendance and photo tagging with no ambiguity on the rules.

Maybe everything else the article wrote has some merit, but it is definitely out of touch and takes satisfaction from that reality, which is just poor journalism.

</comment><comment><USER19> These have existed for decades as wax museums, the only difference is the style of photo that's popular.

<comment><USER20> IMO as a non-Instagram/non-Facebook user, wax museums are much more independently interesting than the stuff featured in the article (brightly colored baths, ball pits, walls).

I had a good enough time just looking at the wax models, even if the obvious attraction there for most people was taking photos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Honestly, I love that people want more artsy experiences in their life. Growing up in the 80s, everything was about conforming and being the same. If you were a guy, you had to like sports and listen to Bruce Springsteen. If you liked art you were a "fag"; if you liked science you were a "nerd"; and if you were either of those you didn't have a place in society. My wife tells me it was similar for the girls, though they had some leeway on the art.

I get that Instagram in particular brings out the worst qualities of wanting to look cool or important or whatever. And I agree that's awful. But man I would have killed for some sort of immersive artistic space to explore when I was a kid.

I'll take this over hanging out at the mall buying things for no real purpose any day.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Instagram _is_ the mall, now...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> A similar piece from the NYT last year: "The Existential Void of the Pop-Up 'Experience'", [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/arts/color-factory- museum...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/arts/color-factory-museum-of- ice-cream-rose-mansion-29rooms-candytopia.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> _" The first phase of the domination of the economy over social life brought into the definition of all human realization the obvious degradation of being into having. The present phase of total occupation of social life by the accumulated results of the economy leads to a generalized sliding of having into appearing, from which all actual "having" must draw its immediate prestige and its ultimate function."_

Guy Debord Thesis 17, Society Of The Spectacle

[1] [https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.ht...](https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/debord/society.htm)

<comment><USER24> I love Debord and it's a really neat quote to relate to the article, but do you think this holds up to the cold light of evolutionary biology? Ie, hasn't 'appearing' long been an intrinsic part of sexual selection and raising status across multiple species?

<comment><USER25> The question of how any biological impulse operates within the economy Debord describes is an obscure and not a straightforward one. I'd say our human (i.e paychological) impulses come to the front. That is to say, the mind as developed in modern capitalist society obscures the biological link if any to signalling attractiveness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Instagram advertising was what finally drove me off the platform. An unstoppable tidal wave of poorly-targeted products including cheap sunglasses, bizarre "on-trend" t-shirts and other assorted crap by brands that sounded like they'd chosen their name from a random name generator. And the ads were just about every third image. Grim.

<comment><USER27> > An unstoppable tidal wave of poorly-targeted products

Good targeting = tracking.

I'm happy with poor targeting, thank you very much.

<comment><USER26> Sure, I understand what you're saying. It wasn't necessarily the poor targeting, simply the volume of ads that were pumped in and all such terrible quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This article really bugs me, the issue is coming from our use of social media rather than installations themselves.

If it wasn't designed just to cash-in on this issue, these could be actual art installations of the likes of Kusama's rather than extravagant photo booths.

</comment><comment><USER29> Why is it desirable to have the same photo as so many other users? Wouldn't it get more 'likes' if it was a more original photo?

<comment> dorian-graph Being original is a lot harder. People know they won't get as many likes as the original as well, but they'd get a sufficient from their friends—most people aren't aiming for worldwide popularity. It's a sort of consumerism and a cheap way to feel good. I'd wager that most people really don't _care_, they just want to be _in_.

Another example is the 'hygge' trend where people buy a candle, made in some Scandinavian country, and add some wood ornament in their home. It's not 'real', but it's enough for amongst their peers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> :sad:</comment>


Ask HN: How has Facebook figured out my family doctor as a friend suggestion? - <AUTHOR> I never use Facebook on my phone so you can hopefully rule out contact list networks - not that I ever had their personal mobile on my list - and location tracking because I haven't attended my doctor's surgery in years. We have zero friends in common. Other than my doctor actively looking me up on Facebook - highly unlikely - how on earth is this possible? I'm willing to accept friends of friends suggestions but this is beyond spooky. <comment><USER2> We've gone through this many times, its nothing nefarious.

1) doctor uploads his contacts (phone number/email addresses) to facebook and sets his contact info

2) you upload your contacts and set your contact info

if there's one match between them, facebook believes (correctly) that there is some sort of existing relationship between you. The fact that its professional and not personal and you want facebook to just be personal doesn't change it.

In other cases facebook can see you are friends with many of them same people and hence figures you might know each other.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h I think we could reasonably disagree about whether or not it's nefarious. Siphoning everyone's contacts is iffy to start with.

<comment><USER3> It's not exactly without consent

<comment><USER4> My old manager wanted me to install WhatsApp. WhatsApp wanted to access my phone's address book so that it could upload all of my contact info to their [Facebook's] servers. I denied it, and it refused to work. I didn't want to share my contacts - I just wanted to communicate with a specific set of people. The only workaround I could find is back up and delete all my contacts before letting WhatsApp rummage through my address book.

I wouldn't say this practice is very "consensual".

<comment><USER5> You wanted to use the app. The app makes the rules. Either use it or don't. I don't see how they had a gun to your head.

<comment><USER4> Sure, as Congressman Sensenbrenner said, "Well, you know... nobody's got to use the Internet"

[http://wapo.st/2nPh3JN](http://wapo.st/2nPh3JN)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Factors that contribute to friend suggestions on FB:

1\. Facebook tracking pixels on websites (if you visit a website with the pixel, you can be targeted in many different ways).

2\. Email. If you have sent or received an email to the doctor, and either of you has associated that email to FB, you can be tracked.

3\. Searching on FB, you say its unlikely for him to look you up on FB, yet theres always a chance that being a family doctor, he might have at some point seen one of your family member's FB and stumbled upon a picture or post in which you were tagged.

4\. Whatsapp Contacts. As you know, Whatsapp and FB are part of the same company, hence have access to linked information. If you share certain Whatsapp contacts, a connection can be inferred.

<comment><USER7> I question point 2. Are you suggesting that Facebook reads my email? Have I given them my email password? If not, how? (I ask, because I don't use Facebook).

Sure, if we have each other's email addresses in our contact lists on Facebook, I can see how the connection was made.

<comment><USER8> In this scenario you don't know if the doctor uploaded their contacts list to FB. You further don't know if they are using a lousy e-mail app that sends usage information to FB, perhaps as part of an advertising integration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had a surgical procedure done at the beginning of the year. I hadn't explicitly shared this information at any point online or visited any websites related to the surgery. A few days after visiting the hospital for some tests, Google AdSense was showing me ads for surgeons at that specific hospital.

I'm not sure who I was most disappointed in. The hospital for purchasing the ad, Google for tracking my hospital visits, or myself for trading privacy for the convenience of services like Google Now.

<comment><USER10> And, to top it all off, those ads were utterly ineffective, since you'd already had the procedure done!

Amazon and eBay have this same problem, wherein they show you things similar to things you've already bought.

<comment><USER11> > Amazon and eBay have this same problem, wherein they show you things similar > to things you've already bought.

Which is especially silly when it's something you'd only buy once. "Oh, you bought a table saw? Why not fifteen more?!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem with all of these mobile apps is you just need ONE of your contacts to upload your information, and then you're fucked. That's why I've given up trying to hide my details because they already have it. The idea that all 100% of my contacts respect my privacy is ridiculous unfortunately.

<comment><USER13> Definition: Your "Facebook ____" is the lowest ____ of any of your "friends" that has a Facebook account.

Where ___ is any applicable attribute such as intelligence, privacy, etc.

Corollary 1: You will be surprised at who is included in the set of "friends" that have a Facebook account.

Corollary 2: You will be surprised at how low the lowest ____ is for your "friends."

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I had something similar happen with an odd friend. I discovered that I shared my address book with the messenger app. With gmail auto-adding contacts, you might have been linked that way.

</comment><comment><USER15> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13259644](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13259644)

</comment><comment><USER10> Besides every other suggestion here, couldn't it be that your doctor actually _is_ a friend of a friend?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not possible as zero mutual friends, unless second degrees are considered which based on all other suggestions is not the case and would naively scale factorially (?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Possibilities:

1) you have instagram or whatsapp and use them frequently

2) you use an app that has Facebook login, that has location access or just has the SDK lying in app but not being used.

3) I don't know about what access react native/js frameworks have in terms of device resources, but that "may be" an another source of info leak.

4) your contacts/friends uploaded a photo on one of these services where you were there in the photo

5) if any of these apps have microphone access (when you record videos) it's "possible" to do many surreptitious things.

All of the above, done by 1 or many of your friends/contacts on Facebook/instagram/WhatsApp, FB identified you and correlated it somehow.

</comment><comment><USER17> Facebook suggests a person I keep seeing on my commute that also works in the same building as me (not same company). I always think the 0 mutual friend recommendations are a bit weird/interesting

<comment><USER18> To be fair, users who appear to travel in the same circles (even just an IP address can reveal such correlation) seems like a fairly good choice for making that kind of suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think Facebook also connects people who appear at the same wireless access points, so you could have received the suggestion once your phone connected to the Internet at the doctor's office.

<comment><USER20> Surprised this reply is this far down here.

The correct answer is that if you have the FB app installed, it tracks your location. If you are in any place with another person with the FB app also installed multiple times, it assumes you two know each other.

It is why therapists and other medical professionals should not have FB (or any social network app, for that matter) installed on their phone (or, alternatively, on while in the work place).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The most unusual friend suggestion I have received is a profile for the actor Steve Martin. It had two mutual friends, and appeared 20 minutes after a friend asked me "Have you ever listened to Steve Martin? The actor? He's also a bluegrass musician" and played a couple of songs on Spotify.

Any ideas on how that came about? It's hard to believe it's anything other than some app listening to audio.

<comment><USER22> Do you log into spotify through facebook?

<comment><USER21> Spotify was running on my friend's desktop. I have no FB apps installed other than Instagram. I do not believe I had Spotify installed on my phone at the time, though in the past, I have, and logged in through Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Something is indeed spooky with Facebook and their other products. I am friend with a guy on Facebook and a person with the same name ended up as a suggestion on Instagram - ok maybe not so spooky. But(!) this guy looked like my friend except like ten years older. So I guess the combination of same name + looked like my friend (Facebook Face recognition) made Instagram suggest this dude to me.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have a similar, but even less connected case than a doctor: a contractor that worked on my basement. No friends or clients in common that I know of. I've never been to his office. Don't even know what town he lives in. I did use FB on mobile for a short while, but probably didn't allow location info (call me paranoid). I most definitely did not upload any contact list.

How can it be?

</comment><comment><USER25> How many other people in their recommendations list do you either not know at all, or only know of them, but have never met? Whatever algorithms they use to produce these recommendations (your social graph, IP addresses in common, etc) will of course wind up surfacing a broad range of people, including some back you actually know.

</comment><comment><USER26> A Twitter acquaintance had a phone call from a website owner where he'd just browsed their site, no relationship in any other way.

We _think_ they did a whois on his IP address which was at his company address, which we all know is doable, but seeing companies proactively do this is crazy.

</comment><comment><USER27> May be due to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation)

</comment><comment><USER28> Either you have searched you doctor, or your doctor has searched you.

<comment><USER29> I believe this is the correct answer, it happened to me as well. I got friend suggestion for my daughter speech therapist, and all our communication and appointments were done only in paper form. But I searched her name on FB out of curiosity. :-)

OP: Can you exclude the possibility that the doctor just searched your name on FB? Why wouldnt he do that...?

<comment><USER30> > all our communication and appointments were done only in paper form

Just because your communication happened on paper doesn't mean that they haven't stored your email address or phone number in some service digitally, and that somehow that info has been shared (e.g. a phone with a facebook app that uploads all contacts)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Facebook tracks your location and the locations of others. If it sees that you are around some people often, it might suggest you to be friends.

</comment><comment><USER32> the facebook/messenger app upload all contacts. if he has your phone number, and your facebook account is registered with the same number, you will see a friend suggestion. i don't use any of facebook's app on my phone and a few time's i see a freind suggetion of people i just met in a week or less.</comment>