The Hotel Industry's Plan to Combat Airbnb - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/technology/inside-the-hotel-industrys-plan-to-combat-airbnb.html <comment><USER2> So the hotel industry's plan revolves solely around more legislation and regulation?

How about competing by innovating and providing the consumer with a better or improved experience?

Does the industry really believe that theres nothing they can do to improve on the consumer experience? It feels like its changed very little if at all over the years.

How about stop charging $15.00 a day for internet. It's 2017 charging for internet like charging for power in the room.

How about getting rid of inflexible checkin/checkout times?

How about lobbying local governments to reduce the exorbitant double digit taxes and fees consumers pay on hotels stays instead.[1]

Example tax rates:

18.27% New York City

17.76% Nashville

17% Houston and Indianapolis

16.75% San Antonio, TX and Columbus, OH

[1] [http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/understanding- hotel...](http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/understanding-hotel-taxes)

<comment><USER3> > Does the industry really believe that theres nothing they can do to improve > on the consumer experience? It feels like its changed very little if at all > over the years.

You must not travel alot, or at least not in the US. There has actually been a lot of innovation amongst the big brand chains in recent years. Hilton for example allows online/app check-in/check-out and they've been aggressively rolling out digital room key compatibility across their properties (via bluetooth in the app). This has allowed me in recent stays to completely avoid the front desk / human interaction - from check-in to check-out.

> How about stop charging $15.00 a day for internet. It's 2017 charging for > internet like charging for power in the room.

WiFi is mostly free for most of major chains in the US (Hilton, Marriott, IHG) - especially their secondary brands (Hampton Inns, Springfield Suites, Courtyard, etc.). Those that charge usually offer it for free to members of their loyalty/points programs.

These days, I mostly see paid-internet in the top tier hotel brands in tier- one cities. Think the Ritz in NYC, etc. Again the internet is usually free for members of their frequent traveller programs.

> How about getting rid of inflexible checkin/checkout times?

All the major brands have check-in / check-out flexibility. I've never been denied late check-out requests, especially with advance notice. Most hotels will allow early check-ins no problem and most chains allow you to request this via the web / app.

Early check-in / late check-out is also typically _guaranteed_ for elite members of their frequent travel programs (at least this is the case for Hilton and Marriott).

> How about lobbying local governments to reduce the exorbitant double digit > taxes and fees consumers pay on hotels stays instead.[1]

It's worth remembering that those taxes go towards meeting various regulatory requirements, like ensuring safety standards, etc.... things it's important to remember that AirBnB lacks. If all AirBnBs are required to have working fire alarms for example, I'm sure AirBnB will tack on a "safety" fee, just like Uber did when they had to do driver background checks.

As a frequent traveler (so far over 40 hotel stays this year), I always prefer a hotel to an AirBnB. It is 100x more convenient for mostly a marginal difference.

Pro-tip: for hilton properties use hiltonfamilymvp.com for 10-30% off the rack rates.

<comment><USER2> >You must not travel alot, or at least not in the US."

I spend a little over half a year on the road. I've recently been charged for internet at an Omni, a Wyndham, and a Westin hotel in the U.S.

>"All the major brands have check-in / check-out flexibility. I've never been denied late check-out requests, especially with advance notice. Most hotels will allow early check-ins no problem and most chains allow you to request this via the web / app."

I am referring to being able to specify my checkin and checkout time when I book. All of the online reservations systems I have used still mandate 3:00PM check in. I am not talking about picking up the phone and calling the front desk after I am already in the room.

>"It's worth remembering that those taxes go towards meeting various regulatory requirements, like ensuring safety standards, etc.... things it's important to remember that AirBnB lacks."

Really 15% of a $300 dollar a night hotel for 3 days(roughly $135) goes to meeting safety inspections? None of the $300 a night goes towards meeting that?

I'm sorry but I don't think that a hotel having an app for your smartphone is some great innovation in the industry.

<comment><USER3> > I spend a little over half a year on the road. I've recently been charged > for internet at an Omni, a Wyndham, and a Westin hotel in the U.S.

Your experience is really becoming more and more less common. I would say, especially so for a frequent traveller such as yourself. Just in the past 4 weeks I've visited the following cities: * Boston * San Francisco * New York area * Atlanta * Denver * Houston

Free internet the whole trip. Stayed in a mix of Hilton and Marriott properties (Hilton, HGI, Hampton, Doubletree, Springfield Suites, Towneplace Suites, and Marriott Courtyard) with one stay at a Holiday Inn.

If you travel so much, you should really get on the various frequent travel programs that the hotel chains offer. In fact, one of the hotels you stayed at, Westin, provides free wifi if you're enrolled in SPG's rewards program (you don't even need to have status). This has been the policy since 2015 (1).

> I am referring to being able to specify my checkin and checkout time when I > book. All of the online reservations systems I have used still mandate > 3:00PM check in. I am not talking about picking up the phone and calling the > front desk after I am already in the room.

Yes, Hilton allows you to specify the check-in times and also ask for late check-out via their app. Most, if not all, hotel chains also allow you make additional requests via a comments field when you make the booking on the web. In any case, making a quick phone call is really not that much of a hassle, and not that much _more_ convenient than sending a message to your host on AirBnB.

> Really 15% of a $300 dollar a night hotel for 3 days(roughly $135) goes to > meeting safety inspections? None of the $300 a night goes towards meeting > that?

Taxes cover many costs, some portion of it, likely due to regulations. Bringing up the room rate is a bit of a misdirection, that rate is determined a host of variables, of which regulations is likely not one (or really low on the list). In any case, AirBnB tacks on a litany of fees to their "rack rate". I'm not sure what your point here - the hotels don't set the taxes...

> I'm sorry but I don't think that a hotel having an app for your smartphone > is some great innovation in the industry.

Well your original complaint was that the hotel industry is not innovating, and you cite things like charging for wifi and not being able to check-in early / check-out late as supporting evidence.

I'm highlighting to you all the various things that the hotel industry is currently doing to "innovate". It's not just about having an app, its about the various features and functionalities that the app offers, which as a consequence, brings "innovation" to the user experience. At my recent Hilton stays, I was able to do everything (book a room, check-in, choose my room, unlock my door, check-out, receive my invoice, etc.) without any human contact involved at all. How is that not innovation?

Honestly, I'm pretty surprised that you hold these views given that you travel "a little over half the year". I would highly suggest you: 1) Enroll in each hotel chains' customer loyalty program; 2) Try to focus your stays in one/two chains as to build status. Also, take some time to do some basic research. Lots of popular travel blogs to start with and you always have FlyerTalk to default back to if you're into the discussion board format.

I started my career as a management consultant traveling every week (one year I had over 175 hotel stays!) and find myself traveling nearly as much in my current job. In the US at least, the hotel industry has changed/innovated, quite a bit in the past decade. I'm confidant that if you post your views on say FlyerTalk, people will back up my points.

1\. [https://spgpromos.com/internet/?action=main.faq](https://spgpromos.com/internet/?action=main.faq)

<comment><USER2> >". I would highly suggest you: 1) Enroll in each hotel chains' customer loyalty program; "

Why do I need to sign up for every individual hotel's loyalty program in order to receive "special treatment" when those things are a considered basic amenities and practices elsewhere? Why do they need to be part of "special program"? Creating some artificial status is not really innovation.

>"I'm confidant that if you post your views on say FlyerTalk, people will back up my points."

Now why would I do that? I'm not competing with you. This was a discussion.

There are a lot of people innovating in business today. I don't think for most people hotel chains would be there first thought as an experience that has changed with the times.

<comment><USER3> > Why do I need to sign up for every individual hotel's loyalty program in > order to receive "special treatment" when those things are a considered > basic amenities and practices elsewhere? Why do they need to be part of > "special program"? Creating some artificial status is not really innovation.

You're shifting the argument and haven't really addressed all the other examples I've cited for how the hotel industry is trying to innovate. If you can't be bothered to take a few minutes to sign-up for some programs, then I guess you'll have to keep on paying for WiFi and complaining about it on online forums :P

Plus these customer loyalty programs are pretty much par for the course in every travel industry - and soon I'm sure - will be adopted by AirBnB as well. United MileagePlus program for example has existed for like 30 years... so it's not like this is a new phenomena. I'm sure there are other customer loyalty programs that predate that.

The "I hate doing this and don't see a reason to do it" argument is not very convincing. You're projecting.

> Now why would I do that? I'm not competing with you. This was a discussion.

It's a discussion in the sense that we're both talking, but you're not really addressing any of the points or examples I've cited. If you dislike hotel chains, so be it, but clearly hotels are trying to innovate and have innovated in the past decade.

You might want to consult FlyerTalk because that forum is geared towards frequent travelers, like yourself, and frequented by subject matter experts. If you're open to learning about how the industry is innovating, I'm sure you find even better examples than the ones I've provided.

> There are a lot of people innovating in business today. I don't think for > most people hotel chains would be there first thought as an experience that > has changed with the times.

I agree with you, but don't you see that you're shifting the argument? Your original point is that hotels are not innovating. Now it has shifted to: the hotel industry is not as innovate as other industries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reading through the comments, I feel like I might be one of the few that prefer AirBnB not for money savings, but because they always feel more authentic to me.

I've been to several different countries in the past year, and have stayed at AirBnB's every time. Sure, there were some issues here and there that would not have occurred at a hotel. But I'll be damned if it wasn't nice to stay nestled into the local neighborhoods, and meet (and sometimes drink) with the hosts, who were always gracious and helpful in pointing out the best places to check out that are off-the-beaten-path.

For what it's worth, dedicated buildings for AirBnB's really rub me the wrong way, because it often takes away from the charming/local feel of the place/host. I try to avoid booking places like this.

<comment><USER5> > they always feel more authentic to me.

This might have been the case early on in AirBnB's existence. Now most of the places I've been able to find are just small-time hoteliers. The owner may have half dozen listings in Airbnb with the same generic IKEA furniture.

I've gone back to regular hotels. While I really enjoyed AirBnB in the past there were too many hit or miss experiences. I've had a few owners pull our reservation at the last minute.

<comment><USER6> I've stayed in that kind of generic AirBnB, and even those are way better than a hotel. You're still staying in an apartment, which feels more homey, and you still have access to a kitchen.

I've also stayed in truly fantastic AirBnB apartments in Europe that made my short stays feel like I was staying with a dear friend.

The most exquisite AirBnB I stayed in was in Croatia. The owner set up the apartment like a hotel, but offered homemade liqueurs and chocolates to his guests. He even picked us up from the train station and gave us a list of places to go and restaurants to try. The rate was insanely affordable, too.

<comment><USER7> How much was it and how much was a "nice" hotel?

<comment><USER6> It was 60 euros total a night, split between two people. Nice hotels were at least 200 euros per night.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> AirBnBs are fantastic until you have a bad experience. When that happens, you realize how little recourse and options you have; you're basically screwed and need to scramble for solutions. This is not so bad when you're on a vacation and have some flexibility. It is 100% a total nightmare when traveling for work and have other responsibilities to attend to.

Hotels have the advantage of: 1) Consistent product quality 2) Established process and channels for addressing complaints 3) Recourse when things go wrong

AirBnBs have the advantage of: 1) Cost, cost, cost 2) Uniqueness in accommodation environments 3) Greater flexibility (especially as it relates to cost) in terms of location and specific accommodation needs (kitchen, multiple beds, etc.)

Those who rave about AirBnB, I suspect, have never had a really bad experience. I used to AirBnB all the time, but a few bad experiences really turned me off on the whole platform. You get what you pay for, and with hotels, that extra cost provides "insurance" for when things go south.

These days I'll occasionally AirBnB when on vacation if the costs are significantly lower than a hotel (and this is only ever the case if you're booking relatively last moment). Never on business trips - only if there are literally no other accommodations (at sane prices), which is only ever the case when booking last minute in specific cities (SF, NYC, Tokyo, etc.).

<comment><USER8> This is exactly the feeling i've got too. After a couple of weeks in various apartments i stopped using AirBnB and went back to staying in Hotels. This was in 2015, it might have changed since then, but then AirBnB wasn't issuing an invoice. Since i was travelling for work, good documentation of costs is necessary, and i don't wan't to argue with my accountant each time i tried to pass some printed page from AirBnB site as "invoice" or "receipt". Ryanair also does not issue an invoice, and i've only once done the mistake of buying a ticket from them. I have not yet had a hotel so far that refused to issue an invoice for the company when i requested it so.

On a side note, both AirBnB and Ryanair had the "company name and address" fields on their web-forms, which made me believe those data will be used for printing an invoice, but those are not used nor displayed ever after being entered. What a deception.

This is some kind of misery that Irish companies do. Companies that are based in Ireland operate by Irish law, and it seems that Irish law does not require them to issue an invoice. I don't know how much money AirBnB and Ryanair are saving by not providing a printable PDF invoice on their sites, but they might just be losing customers from other EU countries where the invoice was and is the basic document of business transactions.

Then there is the rest of the problems with AirBnB. I absolutely needed an apartment with stable internet connection, to be able to work remotely. I was promised that, but when i got there it wasn't working. I was told to "restart the router", well it didn't help either. So i had to buy a 50EUR data-stick with crappy slow internet to be able to connect. Most hotels are not better in this regard either, but with hotels i can at least avoid the bad ones. With AirBnB each apartment is a new unique situation. Maybe it has bad wifi, maybe its smelly, maybe its without air-conditioning, maybe the neighbors are noisy. Like the previous poster wrote, hotels provide a more consistent service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So, haven't people been doing things like short-term rentals with their condos, spare rooms, etc for quite a while without Airbnb using things like VRBO, craigslist, other websites, newspaper ads, word-of-mouth, etc? Was the hotel industry very upset about people doing those things before Airbnb and lobbying against it because it was concerned these rentals didn't follow exactly the same regulations hotels did? I can't seem to find information about that, although it wouldn't surprise me.

What seems to be actually happening though is now there is a successful and popular marketplace for this type of rental that has gained alot of traction (Airbnb), and under the guise of 'safety, standards, etc' the hotel lobby is fighting (to actually try to get their large share of the market back).

I don't necessarily think laws and regulations are bad to have in place as it often protects the consumers. But for the hotel industry to pretend this is their motive is inauthentic, just be honest that it's about the money. What disgusts me about all this is the corporate speak that goes under the guise of values and concern for customers (same could be said of Airbnb marketing lingo).

<comment><USER10> Agreed. Why not let the consumers vote with their dollars, and let the free market do its thing?

<comment><USER11> Because if you got rid of the regulations fire-trap accommodation would come back.

<comment><USER10> .. and people will stop going there. the problem resolves itself.

<comment><USER12> Except the problem clearly didn't resolve itself last time, resulting in people dying, resulting in fire safety regulations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Having used AirBnB for a while, I now prefer to stay in a hotel. Staying in AirBnB I don't feel safe at all and 80% of the AirBnB's I stayed had one problem or the other. There is no importance given for the safety or even a proper door. I dont want to deal with problems when I stay somewhere for pleasure or business. And No, I dont want to read hundreds of reviews before I make my decision. I am back to hotel stays. I hope their lobbying finds success.

<comment><USER14> >I hope their lobbying finds success.

Your opinion piece is fine until your last line where you support using the state to ban other people from making the choice that you prefer not to make.

<comment> nommm-nommm You can't sell an unsafe car. You can't run an unsafe restaurant. You can't build an unsafe building. You can't rent an unsafe home. You can't drive in an unsafe manner. You can't allow an unsafe number of people in your business. You can't run an unsafe salon. You can't practice medicine in an unsafe manner. You can't sell unsafe food.

And you can't run an unsafe hotel.

<comment><USER15> Your usual airbnb property is not "an unsafe hotel." My flat is presently being let on airbnb and isn't suddenly unsafe because someone else is in it rather than me.

<comment> nommm-nommm So your flat has been inspected by the hotel commission and your hotel permit is displayed in a prominent location in your flat and you've kept logs of all required maintenance and I can view your flat's inspection records?

<comment><USER16> Huh? Why does he have to do that? I can understand being suspicious of those who actually come and STAY in the Airbnb, but to use your line of argument against the person renting out the room makes no sense to me. What exactly does the hotel permit specify? That the toilet is clean? That the building is structurally sound?

<comment><USER17> Among others, that it meets fire codes.

Just wait until an AirBNB customer dies in a fire because the property didn't meet fire safety requirements. AirBNB probably wouldn't survive the fallout.

<comment><USER6> One AirBnB customer DID die from an unsafe tree-swing on the property: [https://medium.com/matter/living-and-dying-on- airbnb-6bff8d6...](https://medium.com/matter/living-and-dying-on- airbnb-6bff8d600c04)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For two crazy seconds I thought this would involve figuring out how to better compete in the marketplace.

<comment><USER19> This article reads just like the combustion vehicle/car dealership articles... "It's not fair what Tesla is doing! We need the government to step in and secure our position in the market."

The younger generation is not buying it and it is a huge turnoff. I've been using AirBnB for some time and have never had a serious issue. It has allowed me to sacrifice some of the things you get with a hotel for typically a lower costs and the opportunity to stay in many places that are not considered a "tourist" area, which is my favorite part.

There are many places a typical hotel chain can innovate and actually offer very similar things to AirBnB. They can identify the target market of AirBnB, which is typically either the younger traveler or people who like to explore the cities in different areas than where hotels are. Hotel chains can build little annexes, maybe similar to a hostel, inside neighborhoods, where they can have 4-5 rooms and use the main hotel as the check in/out, other amenities. And at that level they can compete with AirBnB very well.

As far as the hotel tax, I can't say every city requires it, but almost all the AirBnBs' I've stayed at recently has a city hotel tax. So they are doing well working with local governments. So to the hotel chains...good luck fighting that, most cities have already worked it out.

At the end of the day, AirBnB is just a market place that connects private citizens with each other. One citizen is letting another use their place for a price. That's it. Same as Uber... how do you ban a person from giving somebody else a ride. It's not the governments jurisdiction. Stay Out.

<comment><USER20> Oh, don't start with that "it's just a guy helping out another guy" nonsense. Airbnb is a gigantic business, and the 'hosts' are also businesses, and have to accept regulation as such. Of course it is the governments' jurisdiction to regulate the safety, sanitation, and other relevant laws that relate to paid lodging no matter who the person is offering said paid lodging.

Airbnb rentals (in the overwhelming majority of cases) aren't me sharing my couch with my best friend while he's in town, this is me letting a stranger come into my house and stay here for money. Acting like those are equivalent situations diminishes your argument.

<comment><USER19> This is where you and I will never come to an agreement:

You quickly jump to the government to regulate and essentially run every aspect of your life and the decisions you make.

I would argue that there is no place what-so-ever for government regulation in the market that AirBnB hosts' participate in. It is self regulating. If AirBnB is deceptive or unfair in their marketplace of listings, people will stop using it. If AirBnB is unfair to hosts, hosts will stop renting their place on AirBnB. If a place is not safe/sanitary/etc., and AirBnB still allows it to be listed, people will have a bad AirBnB experience and stop using AirBnB and/or that renter. AirBnB has the motivation to make all hosts follow a certain level of expectation to avoid the above. Otherwise AirBnB will go out of business. And with places that violate building regulations/etc., the city is already responsible for that, whether the host lives there themselves or rents it out.

And yes, it is as simple as a PRIVATE citizen renting out their location to another PRIVATE citizen. The fact that it is not my buddy sleeping on the couch but some stranger is up to the HOST. They have the freedom to choose if they want to rent their place out on the market place to a stranger or not. That is what is so great about a free market, it is NOT up to you or the GOVERNMENT. Same as any person has the choice to stay at an AirBnB or a hotel, or anything else they find...hell..go camping. The point here is that it is NOT the governments job to step in and not allow a choice that somebody is WILLING to make. Just because you may find AirBnB unfitting does not make it wrong and should not be illegal. Hotels have no business lobbying to ban this practice and it's indicative of them that they are not willing to even once sit down and think, how can we better serve and compete against the target market of AirBnB. It's pretty damn simple. I even listed above something they could look at. Other commentators have made the same point and other things the hotel industry could do. But no... what do they do... turn to the government. Government regulation is NOT the solution here. It is pretty sickening that so many people turn to government to regulate something at the first sign of something not being perfect.

I am legitimately curious, have you ever walked into a hotel room and it was disgusting? Did you immediately leave and complain to the hotel manager? Did you contact the city the hotel was in and tell them the hotel was not clean? Did you tell the city they should make more regulations on how a hotel should be?

OR, if you happen to go to a hotel that was not clean, or anything else that was not up to your standards of what a hotel should be. Did you stay there still? Did you ever come back to that hotel on another trip.

My point is YOU made a decision what to do based on what you were willing to pay. That is called a free market. Not a government regulates everything market. Other people may have been willing to stay in the hotel above at a given price.

<comment><USER5> > If a place is not safe/sanitary/etc., and AirBnB still allows it to be > listed, people will have a bad AirBnB experience and stop using AirBnB > and/or that renter.

Well that's one way to regulate a market. But those are soft regulations. You do those things because the market demands it.

There are not so soft regulations, these are done because the market wouldn't know enough about them to demand it. Like making sure the fire suppression system is actually installed, inspected, and functional. The fire exits aren't locked the wrong way. I assume you test each smoke detector in your rental before handing over money?

While you have a problem with regulations some of them don't bother me. I live near the beach. 50 years ago I wouldn't be allowed to set foot on it because of my skin. It seems silly now but the gov't came in with teeth and said, "hey what you are doing isn't right." The market was rewarding these hotels for being racist shitheels. Gov't regulation put a bullet in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Before I even opened the article I knew it was going to be a legislative rather than customer-focused approach.

God forbid hotels recognize their inherent strengths and AirBnB's weaknesses and cater their services/marketing to that end.

<comment><USER22> Hotels have lots of advantages. Often better location: downtown. A 24-hour desk. You can ask for info. Get deliveries. They can give you extra soap if you run out... without emailing some guy. Ask them to get you a taxi (yes I know about Uber), etc.

<comment><USER23> But those advantages don't seem to be of interest to some segment of customers. So, there's clearly some issue with competition.

<comment><USER24> But some portion of that is the cost of compliance with safety, which AirBNB skips.

There's no reason we shouldn't require things that are effectively hotel rooms to comply with hotel safety regulations.

If AirBNB can only operate by violating the law, why should we support their business model?

<comment><USER25> Actually, there is plenty of reason they shouldn't have to abide by the same regulations.

We have the rules we have for hotels because they're typically large buildings with many rooms (often smaller than even the minimum dwelling size for private apartments) and that density presents significant safety hazards to many people should anything happen, not just you. You being in a 100sf room on the 11th floor makes it very hard to not have you die if there's a fire, especially when there's hundreds of you to evacuate.

There's no reason that someone say...renting out a detached single story house should need anything more than a working smoke/CO detector.

<comment><USER26> Exactly. The concern about lack of safety is paranoia at best. If the door locks, the smoke alarm is on, and power outlets not hanging from the wall, appliances in working order etc, then there's not much else to worry about.

For my recent Airbnb stay I couldn't fault it. Was more than I expected and great value.

I'm tired of over-priced hotels with boring rooms and mandatory daily room service. I want the option of not having my bed made and towels replaced every day. Stay out of my room until I check out!

<comment><USER27> Most have "Do Not Disturb" / "Do Not Service" signs you can hang from the door to indicate that you're not interested in your room service being performed; often makes housekeeping's life that much easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "the hotel cartel is intent on short-sheeting the middle class so they can keep price-gouging consumers,"

Well... maybe. After staying in about 10 airbnbs total, I'd generally prefer a hotel room.

* Hotels are generally clean. I still always check them before I get into them, but I've yet to find a hotel with "gross" sheets. I don't worry much about the showers either

* Hotels have parking! This is nice for the driver in me

* Hotels are safe. The door locks and general consensus that cameras are not good help me sleep better

* Hotels are generally somewhat flexible with room changes if they have availability

That all said, you're going to have to pay >$100/night to get that level of service from a hotel but that works for me

<comment><USER29> It's really what you pay for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> 1) Prosecute and inform local law enforcement. If you have a rental property exclusively used for Airbnb, it's likely illegal.

Adam ruins everything: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGLe0Wgfbyk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGLe0Wgfbyk)

<comment><USER31> My question to the HN community is, when does AirBnB cross into the out of favor status that a disruptive service like Uber has? If not any similar.

While regulation is nice there are many cases where it serves no purpose other than to prevent competition.

With regards to AirBnb a friend who rents home says its not common for contracts to forbid AirBnb and similar services and he does check sites to see if tenants are violating the rule.

<comment><USER32> By the looks of the comments, I would say ABB is already on its way out of favor. As a Firefighter, I will not stay in an ABB... nope.

<comment> nommm-nommm Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER30> Minimal maintenance, no inspections on safety equipment, and the owner isn't there to notice strange smells (Ozone (electrical problems), Gas, chemical leakage, mold, etc), no compliance with local code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> AirBNB seems to be combating _itself_ just as much, frankly.

Take this idea that an AirBNB host can set pretty much _any_ service/cleaning fee, which is _not_ factored in to search-by-price and not even _displayed_ until you click a property. This basically makes the entire concept of a "price" meaningless in search results, and I quickly grew tired of having to click into every single property just to figure out the "real" price before returning to the search results page.

And price is far from the only way that a property can be misleading.

I don't think the hotel industry has much to worry about.

<comment><USER34> I don't get AirBnB at all. The concept is just downright creepy and has always been to me. It feels like you're flipping a coin when staying somewhere with respect to neighbours, cleanliness, and the area.

I much rather pay for a hotel where everything is 100% taken care of, and usually the prices are on par with AirBnB. There's no mental overhead with hotels. If it worked like Uber where the slightest hiccup gives you a full refund, then sure I'd put up with the hassle.

<comment><USER35> _usually the prices are on par with AirBnB_

This varies a lot from city to city. In Austin, AirBNB easily wins (last time I checked) on location and niceness for the price. Hotel prices are exorbitant. Recently I traveled to Houston, though, and was shocked to find that hotels were price-competitive with AirBNB. My girlfriend and I expected to rent an AirBNB but ended up staying in a pretty nice hotel for less than $150 a night. AirBNB prices in Houston were similar to Austin with much less selection and not the greatest locations, so the convenience and predictability of a hotel won out. (Friends staying in Austin have had almost all positive AirBNB experiences, but there have been a couple of unexpectedly poor experiences as well.)

I think that as with ride-sharing versus taxis, the greatest disruption happens in cities where the traditional services are very poor or very expensive. Houston has plenty of cheap hotels and seems like it would be fine without AirBNB. If I lived in New York City and was used to hailing cabs, I might never have tried Uber. In Austin with our unforgivably shitty taxi service, and now our exorbitant hotel prices, AirBNB and ride-sharing services are fundamentally new, different, and better than the traditional offerings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I would prefer the perfect hotel experience, but airbnb is a better product (at any price) than almost all hotels. If the hotel strategy to fight airbnb rests on pushing regulators to screw consumers, it's unlikely they'll improve their product.

(Maybe some new entrant can make something better than airbnb or legacy hotels, though.)

<comment><USER37> Could you expand on why? I normally use Airbnb for areas without many hotels or for longer stays. I generally find hotels more convenient for short stays because it's predictable.

<comment><USER36> I want a hotel with 100/100+ symmetric high-quality Internet, and ideally, set up with a desk, good chair, large monitor on the desk, and keyboard/mouse.

24h checkin, and ideally essentially automated checkin -- if I'm a frequent guest, I should be able to have a key sent to my phone (or have an NFC token I carry added to the door's ACL) for the duration of my stay, ideally without dealing with humans. SPG usually takes me about 2 minutes to check in within the US, or 3-5 internationally; I'd like that to be 0.

I'd like convenient-to-transport, including both transit and parking, and carts/flat floors/etc. so I can move stuff in/out of my room easily.

Some specific amenities would be really nice -- a standard coffee machine (I'd prefer nespresso, but really anything), fridge, microwave, etc. I'd also love it if all outlets are wonpro universal sockets, and if the layout of sockets in the room is standardized (at the very least, always one or two on each side of the bed, and 2-4 at a desk).

What I'd love, but which many people may hate, is an absurd level of standardization of the room itself -- the same mattress, layout, furnishings, etc. available at every property, and actual floorplans shown so I'm booking a _specific room_ and not run of house.

(I'd be fine with this just being a subset, like the club floor, of a legacy hotel. Or, it handled as a standalone new build, conversion of legacy hotel, subset of a floor ("Towers" or club floor concept), or potentially, a decentralized hotel with a bunch of apartments in an area, centrally managed and serviced.

<comment><USER12> Wait, you want all that... but claim to prefer AirBnB over hotels?

<comment><USER36> I've been in an airbnb for a few weeks. Monthly rental.

Host is a software engineer, even less social than me, and specifically advertised 100/100 Internet. Less convenient check-in than a hotel, yes, but for a 30 day stay, knowing "great Internet" and decent workspace (there's an LCD monitor, etc.) more than made up for it.

I want something which has the tech benefits of airbnb and the institutional backing of something like a starwood hotel. My least favorite thing is a shitty unaffiliated hotel; no idea what I'll be getting. The ideal would be this hypothetical corp-managed property. Right now I split between specific airbnbs and SPG hotels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> So marriott finds many guests order pizza delivery. They create new uniforms, new name, hats and a separate number for pizza delivery. (Could not find article but ~15-20,it's old ) It goes directly into their kitchen where they make the pizza.

Why can't hotels do the same. Make it look like an ABB. ???

</comment><comment><USER39> I'd be pretty surprised if Airbnb won't be looked at as a fad in a few years time, independent of the hotel's action plan.

Hotels deliver a consistent experience up to certain standards, Airbnb doesnt. The price difference is marginal at best and staying in someones spare bedroom doesn't magically make your trip 'authentic'.

There are use cases where it makes sense (e.g. cheap shared accommodation, large flats with kitchens for families) but for most use cases covered by hotels it just doesnt.

What will happen is that more bad experiences happen and travel through social media, regulation will increase and it will go back to its niche life where it will do a great job.

</comment><comment><USER40> Aside from compliance costs, hotels are sitting on tons of real estate they must fill with sleepers every night. It's expensive.

I still think hotels could someday co-opt airbnb's success by franchising "at- home" versions that provide rental properties with branded products and regular inspections. Take a cut of the proceeds. List the properties on the website.

\- Hilton at Home

\- Marriott Anywhere

<comment><USER32> This is not a terrible idea, but the overhead of running an actual hotel business and the associated costs would likely make it less attractive than the current wild west approach.

I assume, naively, that a lot of ABB'ers skirt taxes and short-term rental codes/taxes. The advantage comes from not recognizing the state/city/town bed codes/taxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I am probably in the minority here but Airbnb is a non starter for me. The fact that they rate and review the guests and that it stays online for ever is something I cannot accept. I know there are a bunch of things like living with locals and mingling with them and all of that but I would rather keep that little bit of privacy.

</comment><comment><USER42> Do they really need to combat airbnb? I travel a lot (relatively), but I can't get the idea of this service. It's a bit cheaper, but a) I can't cancel it b) I can't book it without interaction with a host c) I can't move in without interaction with a host d) it ends up even more expensive after cleaning/service/whatever fees.

I've just checked [1]: NYC, a shitty "private" room with shared bathroom for a weekday is $150, with crazy "strict" cancelation policy, that literally says "Cancel up to 7 days before your trip and get a 50% refund plus service fees back."

What's the point and why is airbnb still alive?

[1] [https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/14165373?checkin=2017-05-18&chec...](https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/14165373?checkin=2017-05-18&checkout=2017-05-19)

<comment><USER43> A subset of a set isn't necessarily representative of the set.

I just AirBnB-rented a house for a week, $75/night plus $150 cleaning, 2 bedrooms + living room + kitchen + private screened-in outdoor pool. Loved it. Will seriously consider _not_ doing hotels any more.

A friend likewise did a week-long vacation via ABB, different house each night. Stayed in a yurt, farmhouse, log cabin, etc - nifty places, interesting or isolated locations, which hotels absolutely cannot replicate without unattainable pricing.

AirBnB exists to connect you to people renting what you want. That's it. Hotels exist to provide a dense collection of cozy rooms with rapid comprehensive service. That's it. They exist for different purposes. Like many industries, the rise of a non-sequitur competitor pushes the longstanding players to revisit their core purpose - and fighting to destroy that competition often serves only to undercut their own real talents.

The options are there. Choose what fits you. Don't try to close down options for others just because those options don't fit your needs. ABB doesn't work for you in NYC? then just get a hotel. Don't deal with it by slashing _my_ options to get unique/exotic housing which can't be replicated by hotel chains.

<comment><USER44> you're ignoring the situations where ABB is problematic and discussing only the situations where it is working well. nobody has a problem with ABB working well. the problem is the impact it has on residential areas in already housing-crunched cities. a secondary problem is health and safety regulation disparities.

if we're going to be discussing ABB let's actually discuss the reasons why it is controversial. there are very good reasons why ABB ought to be more strictly regulated in certain areas. The yurt, farmhouse, and log cabin rentals that your friend enjoyed aren't really the issue here and I haven't seen any significant effort to shut down those types of ABB rentals.

So please, focus on what matters here. There is a narrow but important subset of ABB rentals that is problematic and that is what the regulatory debate is focused on.

<comment><USER43> Zoning laws and renting contracts apply. Prosecute accordingly.

Parent post was complaining about customer-hostile rental agreements, and high prices. I focused on that.

My read on the OP is that hotels are just trying to crush the competition period, using/abusing whatever laws to squeeze ABB out of the area, if not ban 'em entirely, solely for monopolistic intentions.

I have little sympathy for housing-crunched cities. Supply of square footage is limited, demand becomes extremely high, and the only "friction" available to limit occupancy is price. Let the price drive creation of new [sub]urban areas, relieving pressure on prior areas and attracting new viable productivity.

Most areas have suitable health & safety regulations; adjust accordingly to enhance health & safety, not as an excuse to drive out competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Note that the hotel industry lobbied _against_ collecting business taxes from AirBnB hosts, afraid that paying taxes indicates legitimacy.

<comment><USER46> Which is why airbnb is all too happy to help states fill revenue shortfalls with taxes that come out of their pockets:

[https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2017/04/17/...](https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/2017/04/17/196451/airbnb- agreement-with-texas-means-hosts-wont-get-around-paying-tax/)

"By next month, Airbnb will have similar agreements with 250 jurisdictions in the United States, including 20 states."

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I feel pretty naive. When I read the headline, I assumed the hotel industry was going to adapt and innovate as opposed to using legal maneuvers and regulations.

</comment><comment><USER48> This whole economic setup becomes more fascinating by the minute.. a shared, near socialistic economy on personal goods- and a buy/sell full capitalistic economy on virtual goods. Finally some mass producion, where the tailoring of the product is left to private sub-contractors.

</comment><comment><USER49> this isn't a plan, this is just rent-seeking.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=rent+seeking&oq=rent+seeking...](https://www.google.com/search?q=rent+seeking&oq=rent+seeking&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.1577j1j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8)

</comment><comment><USER50> Is airbnb the best place to find somewhere to stay for 2-3 months?

</comment><comment><USER51> I tried to use AirBnb once, but apparently you can't book a reservation unless you upload your photo. The fuck? And then they wonder why their hosts discriminate by race! I sure don't need to show my photo to a hotel to book a room.

<comment><USER52> Do you have a source on racial discrimination by ABB hosts?

<comment><USER17> [http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/04/10/airbnb-bans- host-f...](http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2017/04/10/airbnb-bans-host-for- alleged-discrimination-against-asian-guest/)

<comment><USER52> Thank you I had never heard this before (granted I don't follow AirBnB very closely at all). Seems like an appropriate response from AirBnB at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Airbnb.com : Are we talking about that microscopic company that's barely a percent of hotels.com and booking.com ?

P.S. That's just to give a perspective on the industry ;)

</comment><comment><USER54> First they ignore you,

Then they laugh at you,

Then they fight you,

Then you win.

</comment><comment><USER55> Awesome. Move to Somalia where there's no state to prevent you from doing whatever the fuck you want.

Break the monopoly on the use of force by needing to supply your own to get anything done!

<comment><USER56> Your comments have been breaking the HN guidelines. Please post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14130829](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14130829) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Topic aside. Pretty crappy article, it's just a wall of text.

</comment><comment><USER58> I wonder how many people participating in this thread are being paid to post by (1) The hotel industry, or (2) AirBnb

<comment><USER29> Yes everyone is a shill /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Just an observation...

These comments seem to be taken over by a pro-Hotel Lobby.

Does the average developer really care that much?

So many comments? 318 comments and climbing?

Why are there so-many down-voted comments?

Why are the ones down-voted almost entirely the ones saying they like AirBnB or questioning the Hotel industry?

</comment><comment><USER60> Because lobbying is almost always 1) more effective and 2) less expensive than developing and implementing business processes which result in actual change.

It is easier to pay off a handful of politicians to legislate maintenance of status quo, for the next several decades, than it is to reengineer an entire industry in response to market forces and Capitalism. We are pseudo- Capitalists. We let market forces decide until those market forces decide that status quo isn't working. Then, rather than allowing the market to self- correct and increase efficiency and value, we artificially prop up and, further, mandate, the status quo via legislation.

Transportation, Internet Service Providers, Cable Providers, Automotive Dealers, ..., and now Accomodations.

This list of industries is growing at an alarming rate.

<comment><USER61> But some of us like the status quo where drunken vacationing Europeans aren't allowed to rent out units in our residential apartment buildings.

Trying to just "disrupt" business without actually addressing and solving the complex issues that define the market is just lazy, and often illegal.

I'm pretty glad we have regulated capitalism. If you like the unregulated kind perhaps you should visit unregulated hotspots like northern Iraq or Somalia and see what Capitalism looks like in all its raw glory.

<comment><USER62> Capitalism != Anarchy. Free markets still require laws addressing theft, property ownership, contract law, etc. Protectionism, however, simply rewards first comers. Disruption is the crux of a free market and should be embraced not lobbied against. Services that people dislike the most due to cost or service rendered (airlines, health insurance, telecom providers) are often the most regulated.

<comment><USER63> >Free markets still require laws addressing theft, property ownership, contract law, etc

It's funny you say that, because one of the features of AirBnB is that it has "disrupted" property ownership and contract law. A huge number of AirBnB properties are being sublet in direct violation of the terms of the tenancy that the tenant agreed with the landlord.

If you want a state that strictly enforces contracts between parties and property ownership rights then that's a state where AirBnB wouldn't exist.

<comment><USER64> To the extent that AirBnB hosts are violating their contract with the landlord, the state should be involved to enforce that. However if the host owns the property (or has contract permission to sublet) the state should not be involved. The state may also get involved is someone (guest or legitimate owner) is affecting their neighbors (excessive noise for example).

I can recognize that some AirBnB's are not legal even while arguing that as a whole the idea should be legal.

<comment><USER65> I think the legality of operating an AirBNB out of a residence that you own depends on the zoning ordinances that the property is in. (Renting out your farmhouse is probably ok; renting out your suburban or urban house or condo as a business proposition probably violates zoning ordinances and would require requesting a variance from your local governing council with appropriate public hearings and notifications to your neighbors.)

<comment><USER64> You are correct, but I disagree with those zoning rules in general. Specific zoning rules that prevent behavior that is significantly negative to the neighbors I'll allow, but most zoning is about keeping some other class (generally blacks or poor) out.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Electoral Programming by Russ Cox - <AUTHOR> http://research.swtch.com/2008/06/electoral-programming.html

<comment><AUTHOR> "Dynamic programming is an odd name for what is essentially cached recursion, minus the recursion."

"It's easy to see the SSA advocates saying that CPS is just SSA with a bunch of extra lambdas floating around for no good reason!"

But the interesting part is the code of course.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of clever product hacks by customers? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The Dexcom G4 is a continuous glucose monitoring system (CGMS) worn by type 1 diabetics. It has a USB port and Windows only software for downloading and analysing data.

A team of developers / users have created an open source realtime remote monitoring, alarm and glucose prediction system for it. It uses a USB OTG cable to connect the Dexcom to a commodity Android phone, which runs a custom Android app to upload the data to MongoLab. From there, a Node.js powered dashboard gives viewers - typically parents of diabetic children - a way to monitor glucose levels remotely. In addition, a Pebble watch app lets the wearer check their glucose by just looking at their wrist, instead of having to use the bulky Dexcom monitor.

[http://nightscout.github.io/posts/01-quickstart/](http://nightscout.github.io/posts/01-quickstart/)

<comment><USER3> Impressive! And something I could see myself doing at some point, too...

Any idea if anything like this is possible for a Medtronic CGM? Their latest model has very good pump integration but I want real-time electronic data too.

<comment><USER2> Medtronic pump and CGM integration is work in progress - any help would be really valuable to the project.

Ben West is reverse engineering the Medtronic protocol, this code can download pump settings and historic data [https://github.com/bewest/decoding- carelink/tree/cgm/touch-u...](https://github.com/bewest/decoding- carelink/tree/cgm/touch-ups)

<comment><USER3> Awesome. I don't have one of these yet, but I'll certainly check this out when I do. The most important thing is to know that the hardware support is there -- to paraphrase xkcd, the rest is software and I'm sure it will happen eventually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had a teacher make seating charts in Bingo Card Creator by exploiting the fact that, for the free trial, the random perturbation of the words is deterministic. She put 1 through 25 in the word list, observed where they showed up on the bingo card, then replaced them with students' names to get the desired seating chart. (How do I know this? Because she bought BCC and that replaced the deterministic random seed with an actual random seed, causing the seating chart to break and her to send me a support email the next time she tried printing it.)

Given that one of my Internet buddies runs a table planning software company I probably should have bought her a license on general principles.

<comment><USER5> Instead of calling students by name, she can just call them by their bingo numbers. B12 and N32 could you please come to the board. :-)

<comment><USER6> as a tangent... one of my former teachers would call register by assigning us numbers at the start of the year, then everyone would say them in sequence. a lot faster than the classical approach. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I did phone support for a barcode scanning company I had one customer trying to use an undecoded scan engine to guide robots across a floor.

A scan engine works by sweeping a laser across the barcode and using the light intensity at different points to determine where the bars and spaces are relative to each other. A modern scan engine will usually output what data was in the barcode, but an undecoded scan engine outputs a continuous stream of data indicating the light intensity received from the laser.

If I recall correctly, they had a bunch of timing marks on the floor that the robot would follow, and they were scanning these using the engine. You could keep a robot on-track in this way because, if the laser is angled relative to the timing marks a large part of the sweep isn't going to contain any marks and so the robot needs to correct. Then it's just a matter of servo'ing down the line.

I would never have thought to do something like that so it was probably the best call I'd gotten all year.

</comment><comment><USER8> Shortly after launching Cronitor.io, (a dead-simple SaaS solution for monitoring cron jobs), we noticed a large number of tracking events coming from a specific user -- 3000x more than we normally see after a user starts monitoring a job.

The normal use case is to curl your tracking URL at the end of your crontab line, so seeing 25k events coming in over 48 hours clued us in that Cronitor was being used for something different than we expected.

Turns out, the user needed to do a big one-time batch processing of thousands of records and wanted to keep track of how many were done, and wanted to be alerted when the process was complete. By curling his tracking URL at the end of his event loop, he could leave behind his workstation and trust that he would be notified when the batch was done.

(If you want to know a little more about Cronitor, check out an awesome blog post from my co-founder, The First Paying Customer [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8020980](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8020980))

<comment><USER9> Please try and contain yourself. I know you want to take every opportunity to promote your project, but comments like this one come across as blatantly spammy.

<comment><USER10> That's pretty much the point of this thread...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As William Gibson put it: "The street finds it's own uses for things."

Back before cell phones, Motorola sold a lot of walkie-talkie type radios. Most of these were 'ruggedized' (encased in big thick yellow/orange rubber padded boot). One day, Motorola engineers came up with a 'better' padded boot they thought would help the radios survive a fall.

But they got complaints from the Air Force. So they investigated..

It turns out that the Air Force mechanics need to 'chalk' their airplanes to track state (bombs loaded, fuel loaded, etc). But the mechanics were always loosing their chalk. So they would just 'scrape' the plane with the (padded) back of their radios, and it would leave a (non-permanent) mark like chalk. The 'improved' padding didn't work the same way, so they asked Motorola to keep selling the old padding (and they did).

(Heard this a long time ago. Really fuzzy on all the details, but I'm sure it's true.)

</comment><comment><USER12> I sold surveillance cameras when I was in University and had a customer build something similar to a GoPro using a bullet camera, a portable mini-dvr and battery packs. I don't recall the quality being very good, but he was an interesting guy!

<comment><USER13> How viable is it to offer a surveillance camera installation service while in college? I'm sure there are people who own an expensive house and don't know how to setup an advanced DVR such as ZoneMinder.

<comment><USER12> That was my theory - people don't feel secure, surveillance equipment can be complicated and so people would gladly pay for someone to come in and set everything up for them. It worked out fairly well for me, but I feel that it only worked well for me because I got lucky and had some good strategic options:

a) Someone I knew opened up a store that sold surveillance equipment. I aligned myself with his store, trained his staff and booked my appointments out of it.

b) After a few months, I started to focus on small business instead of residential installs.

c) I have a combination of strong technical and writing skills. Whenever I finished an install, I would give the client a customized report where I explained what I did, documented what types of cameras we installed, documented the lines of sight that we covered, went step by step through everything she would need to do, and gave my contact information. Those reports became biz dev.

Having a location was especially valuable to me because the surveillance industry is all about trust. Without a storefront, I would have been some guy in his late 20s who worked out of his apartment and knew quite a lot about breaking into places.

I moved into the small business market because there were unexpected quirks with the residential market. To put it gently, there are really three kinds of people who need surveillance cameras. The majority (I hope) own a home and are scared of being taken advantage of. They may own some collectible cars, or they may have a valuable baseball card collection and they want some additional security. Some people have in-home child care and want to be able to check up on the child care provider. Those people are excellent. Another group of possible clients are drug dealers/miscellaneous criminals who have property they want to protect. And, a third group lives in a different reality than I do.

One particular customer wanted to hire me to install hidden cameras in his ex- wife's house. He thought that she was cheating on him and wanted to catch her in the act. And yes, this was his ex-wife. Or, another fellow wanted cameras because he was convinced that the RCMP broke into his house at night and injected him with mind control drugs to keep him addicted to drugs. And several men came in wanting hidden cameras installed in their bedrooms, pointed at their beds. There must have been a rash of pillow thefts going on or something....?? ;)

Long story short, sometimes the residential side just felt really dodgy and I was always very concerned that people were lying to me. And, since the kinds of people who need security are often paranoid (they have a reason), it was very hard to read residential customers. Consequently, I left a massive amount of money on the table. But, it didn't seem worth the risk to me because the storefront and the fact that I had an inventory of security cameras to work with gave me access to the small business market.

Small business is all the fun of residential with some added bonuses.

a) Small business setups are significantly easier to plan than in-house setups. For example, how would you set up hidden cameras in a two storey, 1950 square foot house when a client is concerned that her babysitter is abusing her children? Do you put hidden cameras in every room? If so, do you use all wireless and risk getting into interference/interception problems? Does the customer have the budget for a 16 channel DVR? On and on...

b) Small business owners are significantly easier to deal with. For the most part, they're either pissed off with shoplifters or they're scared one of their employees is stealing from them. This is easier to work through than someone who is concerned about gangsters breaking into his grow op.

c) Small business owners tend to know other small business owners, so if you can get six setups on your own, those six people will help you line up your next projects.

The biggest downside to small business is that if you don't have a storefront to work out of, they can be a very hard group of people to market to.

Long story short, I had some success, but I feel like my particular circumstances had more to do with the success than any particular strength of the market. This is a strong market, but it's a strong market with some problems that can make it somewhere between dangerous and stressful to serve.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the in-depth answer, I appreciate it. While this is exactly what I am looking for, I want to know what is the minimum amount of equipment needed to get any jobs. For example the most important are the cameras, but to mount them you would need a ladder. To be able to bring a ladder to sites you need a long van. Then you need experience as an electrician if the house in question does not have the Ethernet cables installed. All these expenses add up to 100k plus 100k for a storefront at a minimum, correct?

<comment><USER14> The ladder isn't really that big an issue, you can get a decent collapsible or telescoping ladder that will travel pretty easily in a hatchback, small wagon or minivan. Something that will work in most offices with 8-10' suspended ceilings will probably set you back ~$100, for higher ceilings you're going to pay more and probably need a minivan, as well as some muscles to wrangle it around (e.g. Werner MT-26 or Little Giant 12026 which collapsed are ~6ft and $300-500). Having 2 ladders will often make a _huge_ difference in your productivity.

You don't really need that much electrical experience for running low-voltage Ethernet, but you will need some and you need common sense, some basic construction skills, more common sense, some planning skills, and a bit more common sense. Keep in mind that you're going to be putting holes in walls, putting up new faceplates, etc. and you don't want to put them in crooked or leave a mess. Keep in mind that it's one thing for your friends to wonder "What was he thinking?" and a completely different thing for your customers / referral sources to wonder the same.

You'll need a vehicle, but it probably doesn't need to be new. Ladders, call it $1k. Cable fishing equipment, drills, saws, etc. maybe another $1k. Consumable supplies (boxes of cable, jacks, patch cables, wall plates, low- voltage mounting brackets, patch panels, etc.) will easily take another few thousand (particularly using plenum cable). You'll want to keep some quantity of equipment (cameras, etc.) on hand to do immediate fixes/replacements for your customers unless you have a good local supplier, but you may be able to avoid keeping a large stock as long as your orders have enough lead time (and you have the ability to purchase as needed). Insurance, licensing, etc. will chew some, but even so I'd say you're still looking at well under $100k to start, and certainly not $200k unless you're in a very expensive market.

With questions like those, though, I'd recommend spending at least some time working for someone already in the business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While any specific use isn't very interesting, an honorable mention should go to the army's P-38 can opener. It was the minimum amount of sheet metal wrapped around just barely enough of a cutting surface to open a can of C rations.

As they were cheap and easily available due to being standard in a pack of rations, they ended up being used for... everything. The link below mentions a few of the simple can opener ended up being used, if you want a few examples and has a picture of the tool.

[http://olive-drab.com/od_rations_p38.php](http://olive- drab.com/od_rations_p38.php)

</comment><comment><USER16> I write software used by organizations that help individuals with developmental disabilities. Sometimes the organizations have to babysit the individuals (day programs), or have them help with work, while their guardians are out working during the day.

I recently got a call from a staff at an org that was having an individual help with her workload by using our software - she was honestly complaining that an update we had pushed out had made things so much more efficient, so that the individual they were babysitting/keeping busy/working finished their work so much faster that they didn't know what else to do with her. She wanted us to revert our update back to a state of being less efficient. (Of course we responded that we can't support that type of organizational workflow...)

We had no idea our system was used as a tool for keeping people busy for the sake of being busy and not causing trouble!

<comment><USER17> also, that individual (or his/her guardian) was paying for the privilege of doing her work for her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A company I occasionally do support for has a profitable legacy system that runs on 486 or lower PCs. Supplier of product out of busiess. One PC died and they couldn't get any more. I found a manufacturer of current PC104 boards with a 486 CPU. moved the software across to those. It nearly worked but would occasionally crash. I asked a genius friend to have a look at it. He got out his trusty DOS debug floppy disks, footled around for a few days working out what was wrong (slightly incompatible implementation of serial port in the SoC on the PC104 boards, plus crap code in the original system), hand-assembled a workaround and wrote it in to blank space on the original executable, and presto! the system has been running reliably on the new hardware for a couple of years now.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's not software, but it's really awesome.

[http://www.ikeahackers.net/](http://www.ikeahackers.net/)

Hacking cheap furniture. Ikea actually gave them some grief for a time, but I think they backed off.

<comment><USER20> I think the site is great!

I also thought the site was going away courtesy IKEA legal, but apparently based on user feedback, IKEA is reconsidering. The original legal action was voted up here on HN last month but the follow up not so much.

See: [http://www.ikeahackers.net/2014/06/inter-ikea-systems-bv- cal...](http://www.ikeahackers.net/2014/06/inter-ikea-systems-bv-called- me.html)

<comment><USER21> I thought Ikea specifically didn't want to stop the site from posting useful and interesting ways to use their furniture, they were just required to protect the use of their trademark in the name of said site.

<comment><USER22> On the front page:

"This site will be moving to a new domain. Enter your details to be informed of our big move."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Show HN" was organic, now 'official', and one of this site's best features.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/show](https://news.ycombinator.com/show)

</comment><comment><USER24> '@' mentions and the retweet.

<comment><USER25> hashtags too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A friend's family owns a plastic manufacturing facility. They buy a lot of Coca Cola, for cleaning their manufacturing equipment (of grease, oil etc) after each production round. Much cheaper than the industrial cleaning agents.

</comment><comment><USER23> I definitely recommend exploring the Sugru site ([http://sugru.com/](http://sugru.com/)) - it's a product basically made for clever product hacks by customers.</comment>


Why programming and musical talent go together: enjoying seeing patterns - <AUTHOR> http://www.threeriversinstitute.org/blog/?p=435

<comment><USER2> This seems like a very muddled claim to me. I won't refute that there's some kernel of truth in there somewhere, but using anecdotal evidence to loosely tie one's own theory together rarely ends well, especially when one's claim would be beneficial to oneself if true.

A perhaps more plausible and/or stronger explanation for programmers' disproportional display of music talent as a group:

To gain the experience necessary to label oneself a programmer, one has likely a >lot< of time on a computer. Whether that computer exists at home or at a school/university, we can already likely assume (especially for the population of "professional" programmers, due to the lesser availability of this necessary resource in past decades and the length of time necessary to become a "professional") that the group we're talking about trends toward the higher income side of the population. That alone would make the group as a whole far more likely to have ever picked up a musical instrument in the first place, let alone to have received the countless hours of necessary instruction.

Additionally, I think we can all agree programmers are disproprotionally likely to be homebodies. If one spends a lot of time at home, one has more opportunities for practice.

Lastly, if one has the patience and determination necessary to learn enough programming to label oneself a programmer (especially a "professional"), then one is more likely than the rest of the population to have the same patience and determination necessary to learn another skill which requires countless hours of disciplined study-- like music.

<comment><USER3> It goes deeper than amount of time spent. There are differences in the MRI scans of people who have spent time doing substantive work in music before the age of 12, and those who started much later. I've also taught music, and let me tell you, the difference is _stark_! It's much the same as learning a spoken language. There is a _big_ difference between 10,000 hours spent learning spoken languages during the K-12 years, and 10,000 hours in your late 30's!

Teaching adults who had no exposure to making music as a kid is like trying to teach someone who can't see color to paint a sunset! There are some adults who can't keep rhythm with any meaningful accuracy, and can't hum a tune back at you. There is some entire _facility_ which is missing. I've had similar experiences teaching programming.

<comment><USER4> I've recently wondered, is the common knowledge that kids pick up languages quickly and better than adults really true?

Adults have a much wider range of skills and far more knowledge than children, adults already have some of the most important aspects of thinking down: a set of concepts about the world. Yet many struggle to learn a second language past a certain time in their life.

Clearly children learn languages better than adults, a near 100% success rate for children picking up their first language, to what may be something less than 50% success rate for adults (guessing these numbers, but its clearly lower for adults).

As a child though, what do you spend nearly every waking minute doing? practicing and learning language, usually from their mother. Where as adults, usually they give up not because its impossible, but because its too hard -- and they have better things to do!

Is ten thousand hours of language study as a kid really worth ten thousand hours of language study as an adult?

I would be interested to hear if anyone knows of research looking into the actual hours/work put in to study a second language to get to some certain level of proficiency where the subjects started learning at different ages (5 years, 10 years, 15, 30 years old etc.)

<comment> barry-cotter _I've recently wondered, is the common knowledge that kids pick up languages quickly and better than adults really true?_

The question is insufficiently precisely formulated to be answered. Unreferenced BS follows.

As you pointed out children don't actually pick uplanguages that fast. It takes a motivated English native speaker about 600 hours to achieve near native fluency in German if they have any gift for languages. That's just classroom and home study, not talking immersion. It takes on the order of 10,000 hours for children to learn a language with _native_ fluency.

Even for children who started learning a language by immersion before 14 (approximate cut-off point for native fluency) there's a decent statistical relationship between vocabulary and the age at which they started learning. Obviously if you moved with your parents to X at ten and are a voracious reader you'll beat the deprived kid from the slum estate, _statistical relationship._

Learning a language that's closely related to one you already speak isn't that hard if you are totally immersed. Grammar books, vocabulary lists, dictionaries, helpful native speakers all help tremendously. It is possible but incredibly hard for an 'adult' (14+) to learn a foreign language natively, unless they're a biological freak (hyperpolyglot, remembered from SciAm, treat with appropriate caution)

<comment><USER3> _Learning a language that's closely related to one you already speak isn't that hard if you are totally immersed. Grammar books, vocabulary lists, dictionaries, helpful native speakers all help tremendously._

Yes, being quite fluent in a language is just a matter of effort. But really speaking like a native -- this is exceptionally hard. My dad's English is incredibly good for someone born in Korea. His grammar is impeccable, and he's completely fluent. But I still catch that he still has to think a little bit about L and R sometimes. (And he's been at it for 60 years!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Music also goes deeper than pattern matching. Often, it is a game of _awareness_! A really good musician also becomes aware of complex secondary effects, both in the mix of sounds produced and the effect those sounds have on the emotions and "kinesthetic sympathies" of listeners. (By "kinestheic sympathies" I mean a gut reaction people can have to the physics of movement implied by asymmetries in rhythm. "It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing!")

Awesome acoustic musicians are aware of little nuances, and can exploit them to great effect, much as a great chef can bring out a little edge of nuttiness or caramel in a dish that enhances the whole. Sometimes these effects can be stretched out over time, and at 2 or three levels of granularity simultaneously. (The tasty thing you are doing this time through, is also setting up a resonance with something you are doing the next time, which is part of an overall structure of drama and anticipation you're setting up over the whole song.) I've started delving into pop influenced by electronica, and find there are many of these exquisite things in electronic music as well.

To bring this back to programming: there is also a game of awareness that can be played while programming. There are may levels of granularity, and many parts coming together in ways one might not yet be aware of. Often, it's bringing such things into awareness that results in that great refactoring.

<comment><AUTHOR> What you are calling "awareness" sounds like what I mean by pattern matching. When I'm "on" as a musician, this "pattern matching" operates on a variety of time scales--multiple concerts, this concert, this piece, this verse, this phrase, this chord-- and multiple people scales--me, my fellow musicians, different people in the audience, the audience as a whole.

At the very highest level (perhaps five times in my life) any consciousness of all this disappears, even though I'm sure all those factors are still influencing my behavior. Strangely, this is absolutely sublime in music but I tend to produce code I later regret when programming in this zone.

<comment><USER3> _"What you are calling "awareness" sounds like what I mean by pattern matching"_

Perhaps pattern matching is involved. What I'm thinking of are occasions when one is listening to a very good musician and one is very taken by a particular phrase or lick. The pleasure in that moment is intense, but it's often hard to put the cause of that pleasure into words or even to replicate it musically. I often find that I have to go back and analyze what happened, sometimes by playing back a recording at half speed. Even then, I can fail to replicate the essence of what was good in that moment. There's a certain discipline of awareness one has to practice. Even though I'm able to produce a _resemblance_ of what I've heard, this often lacks the _essence_ of what gave me the pleasure. I have to be aware that I'm reproducing the right thing sonically, and not just taking pleasure from mastering a new sequence of movements. (And it's quite common to meet musicians who just stop at doing the latter.)

Pattern matching might be involved, but it's only part of it. There's a kind of introspection involved in figuring out _what made it work._ I have to think about how I'm feeling and connect that causally to some particular nuance or combination of things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Calling yourself a programmer and calling yourself a musician are both fairly easy. I would say a lot of programmers are musicians because a lot of people are musicians. I know a lot of musicians who are not programmers.

I think that if you actually look at the most talented musicians in the world, they are probably not programmers either. The amount of dedication it gets to reach the top makes it difficult to do both.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's certainly a possibility, that programming accomplishment and musical accomplishment don't correlate at all and it's just sampling error. However, I experience both and I was trying to identify the commonality, in answer to a question that has been discussed ad infinitum. It would be interesting to me if the question applied to people in general. At the moment I'm glad to have made my world slightly more understandable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I sing, play guitar, bass, and saxophone, as well as enough drums and keyboards to get by in rock or pop settings.

With my current group we've started to use a heavy dosage of Max/MSP for audio and Quartz Composer for visuals... my professional programming experience really helps with creating really good interfaces for the software (not just UI, programmatic interfaces as well), so extending or modifying the software happens at a pace that keeps up with the rest of the band... and being that music is prety much realtime...

If you're interested, we've got some demos up... <http://redblueyellow.com>

Of course I did our website as well... Rails ;)

And how many bands have a github account? Sorry, no public repos yet... <http://github.com/redblueyellow>

At one point we had three software developers in the band, but we've slimmed down due to _gasp_ , guys getting jobs in the industry elsewhere (other than SF, I know, right?) and now I'm the lone coder.

I'd say I'm about 50/50 when it comes to music... I've had periods where I did it full-time, and I've had periods where I've coded full-time. Right now I'm burning the candle at both ends with a contract job and spending at least 30 hours a week on the band.

I know quite a few professional programmers who are also professional or semi- pro/very dedicated musicians.

I think there is more to it than mere correlation.

And can I say that the 10,000 hour thing is WAY WAY off?

I'll put it in musical terms:

I started playing the saxophone in 5th grade. I played for 2 years. I switched to guitar. About 4 years ago I picked up a sax because the band I was in needed some horns. After about a week, I was 100 times better than I ever was before. So what happened? Well, I learned more about _music_ in the mean time. I'm sure I could pick up any instrument much, much quicker than someone who has never played any instruments. What am I getting at? Well, a lot of things in life have more than just a passing similarity. They have core fundamentals that are shared. I am completely convinced that this applies to music and software development, although I have no idea why.

</comment><comment><USER7> Humans are pattern matching machines. I think it's the root of our intelligence - it's certainly necessary for our survival. Basic pattern matching is required to, say, determine what kinds of plants are safe to eat, and to figure out where big game is and to predict where it will be.

<comment><USER8> Have you read on intelligence? Jeff Hawkins, talks about how everything we do is about detecting whats different in the patterns.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I haven't. I heard an interview with him, though, that makes me think we're thinking about similar ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Learning to play a musical instrument changes the brain.

[http://www.articlesbase.com/art-and-entertainment- articles/b...](http://www.articlesbase.com/art-and-entertainment- articles/benefits-of-music-education-456737.html)

<comment><USER10> Isn't it accurate to say learning _anything_ changes the brain, since that's what leaning _is_?

<comment><USER11> I agree and since the link doesn't seem to work for me, I can't comment on the article.

Perhaps learning music changes the brain in a way that is different than say, learning how to cook French food or to fix a computer?

<comment><USER3> Actually, if you are a _excellent_ French cook, I suspect that your brain was changed in much the same way. Fixing a computer, not so much. See my post about the "game of awareness" in music.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd be curious to see a poll of HN readers asking how many enjoy/excel at both programming and music.

I'll never win any awards for either my code or my compositions, but I love programming and I love playing music (rhythm guitar and drums, mainly).

<comment><USER13> Done: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1045758>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Unfortunately for the thesis, we have a well-established counterexample.

[http://www.jwz.org/hacks/why-cooperation-with-rms-is- impossi...](http://www.jwz.org/hacks/why-cooperation-with-rms-is- impossible.mp3)

<comment><AUTHOR> The good news about psychology is that a counterexample does not invalidate the thesis the way it does in math.

<comment><USER14> We probably disagree on whether this is, in fact, 'good news'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What is the basis for claiming programmers are musically talented? I know a number of very talented musicians and a number of very talented programmers, but the overlap between the two is pretty close to zero. Sure I know programmers who can string together a few chords and musicians who can hack together a website in php, but I've never seen anything to make me think that the overlap between programming and playing a musical instrument is any larger or more significant than the overlap between any other profession and playing a musical instrument.

<comment><AUTHOR> AFAIK the correlation is anecdotal and no more. However, I've had enough bar discussions of "why do musical and programming accomplishment go together" that I was glad to find an answer that made sense to me. I'd love to see real research to confirm or deny the correlation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This claim is just a subset of _people-who-excel-at-anything-are-able-to- relate-to-excellence-at-anything-else_

<comment><AUTHOR> I've certainly seen that kind of argument. What makes me think I haven't fallen into that fallacy (although it is a possibility) is that I freely admit that I'm terrible at lots of things (like reading people) and that I'm good at other things (like baking or cheesemaking) that have nothing in common with my experience of programming and music.</comment></comment>


5GBioShield USB Key - <AUTHOR> https://5gbioshield.com/ref/drmorseherbs/ <comment><USER2> > The 5GBioShield USB Key with the nano-layer is a quantum holographic > catalyzer technology for the balance and harmonisation of the harmful > effects of imbalanced electric radiation. The nano-layer operating diameter > is either 8 or 40 meters.

Perhaps it is time for HN to start permabanning people who promote this sort of garbage.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the OP is "promoting" this, the BioShield Key has been all over the news, and I hadn't even thought to look at the products' site till now.

No one here is going to buy this thing, the point is to foster a conversation about it. I'm not entirely convinced this isn't going to turn out to be ironic or some viral marketing tactic.</comment></comment>


The Suicide of the Liberal Arts - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-suicide-of-the-liberal-arts-1438987258

<comment><USER2> Thought the beginning was weak stuff, but the three paragraphs about his Scarlet Letter school reading experience were spot on.</comment>


Me on the Web - <AUTHOR> http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2011/06/me-myself-and-i-helping-to-manage-your.html

<comment><USER2> This really just pulls together things that they already had available, but makes it a little clearer and easier. Though I wonder how many non-geeks and non-social media types ever look at their Google Dashboard to see this?</comment>


Google Earnings Are Out - <AUTHOR> http://investor.google.com/releases/2007Q1.html <comment><AUTHOR> If they didn't have search, they'd be in trouble. Looks like the competition is heating up for space on publishers' sites.

Google Sites Revenues - Google-owned sites generated revenues of $1.98 billion, or 62% of total revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2006. This represents an 80% increase over fourth quarter 2005 revenues of $1.10 billion and a 22% increase over third quarter 2006 revenues of $1.63 billion.

Google Network Revenues - Google's partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $1.20 billion, or 37% of total revenues, in the fourth quarter of 2006. This is a 50% increase over network revenues of $799 million generated in the fourth quarter of 2005 and a 16% increase over third quarter 2006 revenues of $1.04 billion.

</comment><comment><USER2> Amazing how their revenue keeps increasing. You would think they would have hit a plateau in ad revenue by now.

<comment><USER3> Why would there be a plateau? The number of advertisers and their budget is not fixed.

<comment><USER4> Long tail of Advertising. Basically there is an infinite amount of advertisers</comment></comment></comment>


A Leaner, Stronger, More Modest Y Combinator - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/26/a-leaner-stronger-more-modest-y-combinator/

<comment><USER2> I was surprised that I found every single one of the sixteen public demoes to be well thought out plans to infiltrate large markets. Not one of them made me think, "yeah, but how will you make a profit?" I especially liked flightcar! What a great idea and going after two different billion dollar industries.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I assume YC S13 will be around the same size due to the success W13 seems to already have among the media and, more importantly, investors.</comment>