Dear AirBNB, No thank you for the XXX Freak Fest - <AUTHOR> http://dearairbnb.tumblr.com/post/79657042387/dear-airbnb-no-thank-you-for-the-xxx-freak-fest-you <comment><USER3> Unfortunately, this is why there's hotel regulations. I think AirBnb is net- good, but it certainly is going to make a few people's lives miserable in the meantime. Hopefully AirBnb finds a way to mitigate these issues.

That being said, I guarantee you were violating your lease when you used AirBnb. And, you approved the person to stay in your house. If anyone should be mad, it's your neighbors and apartment owner -- they followed the rules. This is really unfortunate, but it's not all AirBnb's fault.

<comment><USER4> >That being said, I guarantee you were violating your lease when you used AirBnb

How can you guarantee that? Plenty of places let you sublet. Hell, in reasonable jurisdictions you can't legally prevent someone from subletting.

<comment><USER5> Unless the poster was registered as a licensed BnB in the city of New York with a lease that allowed said usage, they were violating their lease and the law. Under NY law, it is illegal to sublet your apartment without you being physically present. It's to prevent, among other things, situations like this, which are an annoyance and a danger to the other occupants of the building.

<comment><USER4> Violating the law doesn't automatically violate any random contracts you have entered into.

<comment><USER6> If the violation of the law is the purpose of the contract, then it's not a legal contract.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_agreement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_agreement)

<comment><USER4> It isn't the purpose of the contract, that's a complete non-sequitur.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Amusing Hacker News cognitive dissonance:

\- "AirBNB is great! Will revolutionize the world! Stupid hotels just take your money for no reason! Regulations are only there because governments hate you and want to oppress you! By next week, 7 billion people will be using AirBNB to rent their homes to each other! And it's totally safe, because AirBNB stands behind each and every transaction!"

\-- "Stupid poster, she should know that AirBNB is absolutely unsafe. She bore 100% of the risk and of course she should never have used this service. She was violating her lease and deserves everything that happened to her. Shooting is too good for her; hanging is too good for her. None of this is AirBNB's fault; they had literally nothing to do with the transaction and it's impossible to understand why the poster would ever have thought they did."

<comment><USER8> I am shocked to see everyone rallying against the victim because he may have violated his lease terms. If that is the excuse AirBNB have, they should not be doing business in the cities where their business model is not 100% compliant local laws.

How does the lease terms even matter in this incident? It's not like David vandalized her apartment because he figured the host is violating lease terms and he deserve this? Do you really think that David would have cancelled his XXX fest if the host's lease terms allowed subletting? This would have happened to him even if he was 100% compliant with lease terms and local law.

AirBNB should take responsibility for it and do the right thing. AirBNB should caution their hosts and customers about risks like these instead of lying them about 100% guarantee.

Moreover, it should be AirBNB's responsibility to ensure that every single listing and transaction is 100% compliant with the local laws. Ebay doesn't let me sell drugs or other illegal items. AirBNB should do business

<comment><USER9> I think that's a developer unconscious talking. "We have a bug here in AirBnB, here's a reproduction scenario". - "Oh, you see this small print in this manual? It says you couldn't do that. Therefore, not a developer's problem, ticket closed, PBKAC".

The other part of "blame the victim" is "the victim did X, and bad thing happened. I would never do X, therefore bad thing would never happen to me". Of course, nobody thinks it explicitly, but it's how the mind works - <USER2> thing happens, the mind automatically thinks "omg, this is terrible, it could happen to me, I should worry" and then another part of the mind thinks "no, the bad thing happened because lease said don't do it, and she did it, so if I never do what lease says to not do, it won't happen to me, so I should not worry". And the mind is happy again.

>>> Ebay doesn't let me sell drugs or other illegal items.

Drugs yes, but you probably can sell tons of illegal (in some places) items on Ebay. Ebay has no possibility of tracking the local law in every locality, and a lot of things can be made illegal. For example, selling medals and order signs are illegal in many countries, still ebay has a lot of them for sale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't see how this is AirBnB's fault, at least to the degree that's implied.

You rented out your apartment to a stranger on the internet based upon what other strangers on the internet said about them. You almost certainly broke the terms of the lease in the process and probably deserved to be kicked out even if you hadn't had an "XXX freak fest" thrown.

Sure, AirBnB should try and figure out the damages, charge the accounts credit card(guarantee that won't work) and the pursue damages(good luck).

This is why people have renter's insurance(doubt you thought of it as you were probably trying to do this illegally anyway).

This is also why this industry is regulated, because when it's not humans get pwnt by their own stupidity combined with the malice of other humans.

At the end of the day for a lot of people AirBnB is a way to make easy money under the table, that's why there's little to no regulation; yeah that regulation comes with taxes/overhead, but it also comes with protection from the hazards of the business. It's pretty fucked logic to take such a huge risk with your property, give it zero protection, and then be not only surprised, but furious(with the site connecting you to the offender not the offender themself), when shit goes down. How dense can you be.

TL;DR- AirBnB pays for these situations anyway[0], this drama post is made by someone who took a huge risk in renting an apt without insurance, without a face-to-face, and probably not in accordance with his/her lease. The post will probably result in a faster payout, but the entitlement is slightly annoying considering the circumstances.

[0]-[https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee](https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee)

<comment><USER11> There are absolutely tons of people more dense than the OP, tons. Vast parades of dense people. So it's a little bit unwarranted to really come down this hard on him.

On the other hand it is these vast parades of dense people who keep voting for less regulation as a whole. So I can appreciate the need to come down hard on them. But this guy doesn't seem like the guy honestly.

AirBNB is a business model used by millions, they take a huge or even really huge cut just for being the middle man. You expect a tiered amount of "XXX Freak Fests" rolling through your apartment.

<comment><USER12> Tell me how regulation solves this? Why is it that this couldn't happen in a hotel? (Guarantee it does all the time)

There isn't any regulation that can fix people being jackasses. This isn't AirBNB's fault, and it isn't the OP's fault. It's the jackass who held the party fault. Could the OP have done things differently? Sure. It's likely the sublet wasn't entirely legal, and it's likely he could have renter's insurance. That being said, his insurance still probably shouldn't have to pay it. That is what AirBNB's cut should be covering. And I'm sure they will in fact cover it, as this is really bad publicity for them. The only reason for this post is to make that money get there faster.

<comment><USER13> 1) hotels don't use keys. The dodgy hotel guest can be shut out with the stroke of a key at the reception desk computer.

2) when things go wrong, hotels have staff on hand to deal with the situation.

3) hotels have insurance for when things go badly wrong.

All of these things cost money, which is partly why hotels are more expensive than AirBnB. The author assumed a lot of risk when subletting through AirBnB and is now complaining when the risk went wrong. I have very little sympathy for him / her.

The people I do have sympathy for are fellow residents of the apartment block, who had a reasonable expectation that their building wouldn't be turned into the site of a free for all sex party. They didnt get any say in this, and didn't receive any compensation. _That_ is unfair.

<comment><USER10> Exactly.

The reason this vertical hasn't been disrupted in this manner is the inherent liability of dealing with humans.

An institution like a hotel chain can both:

-React to a situation like this immediately instead of letting it play out.

-Take the losses in the event that damage occurs and the guests credentials were fake.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

To an individual renting out less than 5 properties a loss like this is crippling.

Also agree that the real victims here are the fellow tenants +landlord, they won't be seeing any of that 90k+ or their shitty past tenant.

</comment><comment><USER14> I love airbnb, have used it in the past, but I have a really hard time sympathizing with this or seeing it as AirBnB's fault. This is _always_ a risk if you let people you don't know (or hell, even people you do know) into your home.

It kind of sounds like this person never even bothered to meet the people who were renting his apartment (I was always shocked when someone rented me their apartment without meeting me, personally).

Nothing airbnb can ever do will guarantee something like this won't happen to you. That's why you have to also do whatever you can to protect yourself. If you wouldn't be comfortable with the precautions you took had you found the renter on craigslist, you shouldn't be doing it.

Of course, airbnb will probably pull out from their own insurance on this for this person because the likely result of not doing so enough times for them is that more places make it clearer that it's largely illegal to do it and start enforcing more zealously.

<comment><USER15> What does meeting the renter personally accomplish? You won't be able to tell that he is planning a XXX Freak Fest tomorrow. Even if you do, cancelling the reservation after meeting him might get _you_ kicked out of AirBNB as a host.

<comment><USER14> It's certainly not a catch-all, but it can help. It strikes me as the very least you can do. And there are other measures you can take, like having a neighbour (or hell, if you're actually doing it legally, your super) keep an eye on things.

The point is simply that if you abdicate all effort to ensure your house is kept well to a corporation that barely knows either of you are people, you're more likely to get this stuff happening. No one makes anyone be an airbnb host.

And if you met a potential guest and thought they might be planning to host an orgy in your house as soon as you left, I'm gonna say you might want to risk getting kicked off airbnb rather than risk having your house trashed. That's just me, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> AirBnB has an insurance policy to compensate for cases like this.

Color me cynical, but I don't have a lot of sympathy for the blogger. If you have a landlord (i.e. you don't personally own the building), and you aren't there to personally meet and be around the guests, then you are knowingly taking on the risk that the guests will be sketchy and that you will be evicted, even if you are allowed subleses (not to mention that you almost always aren't).

<comment><USER5> > AirBnB has an insurance policy to compensate for cases like this.

Not quite. AirBnb specifically excludes things you don't own. So, while they would be responsible for the original poster's stuff, any damage done to the apartment itself, paint, floors, appliances, walls, hallways, doors, bathroom, fixtures, any furnishings that were already in the apt, etc would not appear to be covered.

> PLEASE CAREFULLY REVIEW THE DEFINITIONS OF "COVERED ACCOMMODATION," "COVERED > LOSSES," "EXCLUDED ACCOMMODATION," AND "EXCLUDED PROPERTY" BELOW. THESE > DEFINITIONS ARE ESPECIALLY SIGNIFICANT IF YOUR ACCOMMODATION IS A > CONDOMINIUM, TOWNHOUSE, CO-OPERATIVE, APARTMENT, OR ANY OTHER UNIT IN A > MULTIPLE-DWELLING STRUCTURE, COMPLEX, AND/OR DEVELOPMENT. TO THE EXTENT THIS > HOST GUARANTEE COVERS REAL PROPERTY, IT COVERS ONLY REAL PROPERTY THAT YOU > OWN.

<comment><USER17> I imagine a _lot_ of the people on AirBnb happen to list their room when actually they do not own the building (renters).

I wonder how many would still continue listing if they knew that AirBnbs insurance doesn't actually cover them.

<comment><USER18> Huh, their public-facing page is _really_ misleading about that: [https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee](https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee)

The page continually uses the term "hosts", and emphasizes that you are covered up to $1,000,000 so should relax. It does also say that the guarantee is not insurance or a replacement for "homeowners or renters insurance". But to me that phrasing strongly implies that the AirBnB Host Guarantee covers both the kinds of hosts who might also have homeowners insurance, and the kinds of hosts who might also have renters insurance— just that it is not to be properly considered insurance in either case. Wording the page this way, and then excluding paying for damages to rented property in the legalese leads to results not in keeping with the expectation I got from this summary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is exact reason why AirBnB like services cannot succeed in India. You could be in jail, as the police here will never understand why you allowed someone into your house if you are not a hotel. The attitude of police here is that if anything goes wrong, the owner of the house or business is responsible.

To illustrate, in 2004, early days of e-commerce in India, someone put up a certain CD to be sold on e-Bay. The police just arrested the CEO of eBay India. When something goes wrong police here arrests biggest possible names either to show its working or extract maximum corruption money. Any wonder why Indian startups cannot go beyond providing services to foreign businesses for cheap? To be fair, many startups are innovating in India, but the point is the kind of challenges they have to deal with are just unknown to the more developed world.

eBay news link from 2004: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2902203/India- throws-Ebay...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2902203/India-throws-Ebay- chief-into-prison.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> My two favorite bits are:

\-- You sent an "XXX Freak Fest" into my home By which joshmn means "I invited an XXX Freak Fest into my home in exchange for money."

\-- As such, I'm going to be evicted. Its subtle enough that you miss it the first time you read it until later when you get to 'my landlord is certainly going to make me move after an "XXX Freak Fest"'. Yup, joshmn has in fact not been evicted.

So, lets summarize. You went on a website, found a stranger, accepted money in exchange for your keys. Then they messed with your furniture. Now you want $87k. Oh, and you have trouble looking at people in the eyes.

I am checking with my attorney to see if there is any legal recourse I can take to recover the last five minutes of my life.

<comment><USER15> AirBNB has insurance for cases like this. It's not much different from getting a hotel room, would you say a hotel's management was stupid if this happened at their property?

> "You went on a website, found a stranger, accepted money in exchange for > your keys. Then they messed with your furniture. Now you want $87k."

Try re-reading that phrase in the context of a standard long-term apartment lease. What's strange or stupid about that?

<comment><USER21> In a long term lease I'm personally meeting the renter, running a credit check, getting references from previous land lords and/or friend, an up front security deposit equal to 3 months rent, not furnishing the apartment and insuring the apartment against any additional damages.

A standard long-term apartment lease situation is considerably different.

<comment><USER15> Renting fully furnished homes is common in many countries. AirBNB charges upfront, keeps your CC data on file, has references from previews hosts, and allows landlords to collect a security deposit if wanted. Looks about the same to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is obviously a bad situation. No one wants this to happen. (Except perhaps the FF participants) There have been plenty of bad situations at hotels as well, though.

I'm most interested in the final paragraph.

 _All because I trusted AirBNB that this individual was a "Verified" member with multiple positive reviews..._

AirBnB has pioneered some of the workflow for establishing and communicating social proof. P2P requires trusted reputation.

If the story is as described, it appears AirBnB failed to provide a trustful counter-party. And it went very wrong as a result.

<comment><USER23> > There have been plenty of bad situations at hotels as well, though.

Sure, but hotels are regulated and licensed and zoned so they keep those bad situations away from residential areas.

> AirBnB has pioneered some of the workflow for establishing and communicating > and social proof.

It's really an open question of whether "reputation economies" are workable at all. I continue to be disappointed by user ratings on services like Yelp. I wouldn't trust anything more substantive than a new restaurant pick to such ratings.

<comment><USER24> > Sure, but hotels are regulated and licensed and zoned so they keep those bad > situations away from residential areas.

Is it any better that hotel guests might have to stay near this sort of behavior?

<comment><USER25> Yes. The reality is that if this happens in a hotel, the hotel immediately kicks the "XXX party" out, and will usually move the aggrieved neighbors to a different floor or (as has happened with me at hotels with loud parties) do that _and_ refund the night's cost.

<comment><USER24> Is that required by hotel regulations?

<comment><USER25> To an extent, yes, and more importantly it's civilly enforceable, because neighboring guests can chargeback the room if they're not moved (or even they are), and will almost certainly win the dispute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What's wrong with all of you?

A year ago it was a woman, under almost the same circumstances that had her apartment vandalized. You all rallied behind her.

Now since it seems its a man and and ranted online under pretty much the same circumstances, but different type of people, you say its not airBnBs fault?

that's truly disappointing.

<comment><USER27> There's a way to make your point without saying things like "all of you".

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> One, I would definitely evict and sue this blogger as well if I was the landlord.

Two, how the AirBNB user the blogger rented to is "Verified" with multiple positive reviews needs to be investigated. Whatever weakness they are exploiting in the AirBNB review system needs to be eliminated.

Lastly, I am sorry this happened... but the reality is...

this is the reason you shouldn't be using AirBNB. This could have turned out much worse to be perfectly frank.

</comment><comment><USER29> A potentially interesting thread of discussion --

Who has ideas on how to handle customer service and public perception in an industry where the downside of a single bad event is the mix of horrific, intimate, and very newsworthy?

Even if the rate of AirBNB disasters was only 1 disaster for every 1 million successful rentals, you'd still get very sticky disaster stories coming out regularly. Similar to how the evening news covers all the murders and trauma in the world, potentially inflating our perception of how often it happens..

Any general thoughts on what's required to thrive if you're in an industry where things will go wrong even if you do best practices conservatively everywhere, and the "going wrong" scenario is both quite bad and quite public?

</comment><comment><USER30> This exposes a big flaw in the entire premise of AirBnB.

AirBnB's core market is people renting out their homes when they aren't there. This problem is inherent to providing unsupervised hospitality. If no one is there to verify customers beyond meaningless internet reputations, no one is there to prevent your possessions from being destroyed. Fixing this problem quickly turns you into a business with employees, running a hotel.

Regulations are about more than just taxes.

<comment><USER31> you make liable the parties that did the damage. airbnb could take a bond from the renter (to cover damages, if any), or get something hard to forge such as an ID card of some sort, and recover the damage from them should it occur.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I would like the blogger to post a follow up on how AirBnB will respond. I've heard of multiple incidents of damage to the property, but have never read about the follow up. I suspect that a hush hush settlement was made.

Is there a kind of insurance that AirBnB sets up or is it completely on the renter's dime?

<comment><USER33> To be a little more helpful, they've partnered with Lloyd's of London to provide a nice insurance policy for all renters: [https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee](https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee)

<comment><USER34> But since this person is in violation of AirBnB's terms of service, he might have problems collecting on their insurance policy. Their TOS states[1]:

        ... you will not:

        ...offer, as a Host, any Accommodations that
        you do not yourself own or have permission to
        rent as a residential or other property...

Clearly he does not own the property or have his landlord's permission to rent it.

[1] [https://www.airbnb.com/terms](https://www.airbnb.com/terms)

<comment><USER35> This is one of the things about AirBnB that bothers me. They _know_ it's not legal for him to rent it because of NYC's Illegal Hotels Act. I can't shake the persistent feeling that they know their business model relies on people breaking the law and they just don't care. That bugs me.

<comment><USER36> I poured myself a glass of wine and sat back to read these comments. This is exactly what I wanted to say myself. Facilitating breaking the law and the social compact of residential neighborhoods, that is their business model. It is because of this argument that I will be happy the day I see AirBnB go down in flames, though to be honest, I doubt I'll have that pleasure.

Edited to add: I would change "don't care" to "have consciously decided that limiting their business to places where it is legal, while feasible, would limit their profits and their relevancy in ways they do not want to do."

<comment><USER36> The buzz from the wine is wearing off, and I remembered that I do think the AirBnB model (but not modus operandi) has 2 legitimate purposes: 1) occasional subletting during occupant absence and 2) satisfying temporary demand.

Case 1) is essentially making vacation home exchange totally fungible. By definition (at least for most people), a vacation is infrequent and has significant cost, in part due to paying for 2 dwellings concurrently (the vacant home, and the vacation accommodation). AirBnB solves this by having a large market of people who may want to pay you for your empty home.

Examples of case 2) would be huge conventions and university graduations. These are cases where it would be inefficient to build hotels to satisfy peak demand, and sometimes it becomes impossible to find (conventional) lodging at any price. AirBnB solves this by providing elasticity in the form of non- conventional lodging only available during the peak.

In both cases, the difference with the current situation is that these cases are limited in time. I think AirBnB would be a good thing if it limited the rental of any property to a maximum of 1 month per year, with a limit of 4 guests per year. That would eliminate people running residential businesses, which is my main objection (and probably the company's whole profit and growth strategy). In other words, AirBnB would be a great but small niche player.

<comment><USER36> Since I'm just talking to myself here, I'll continue with another thought.

If I were in or interested in city government, here's what I would do: pass a city ordinance that A) limits residential short-term leasing (<30 days) to a maximum of 4 events with a maximum of 28 cumulative days (allows for vacations and special events, as detailed in my post above); and B) requires any company offering or brokering or representing such properties (such as AirBnB, VRBO, etc.) to enforce A) and report actual usage to the city for tax purposes.

To me, this is a sensible compromise to regulate the residential homestays enabled by the AirBnB model, to get the benefits of this model and limit the impacts on neighbors and the rental/real estate market. It will also eliminate the unfair "first-mover" advantage that AirBnB encourages (if you are the first in your neighborhood to buy or develop a one- multi-unit mini-hotal, you can fly under the radar and make a small fortune, essentially get a free property). Depending on the local conditions, the city could consider a vacation rental license that allows year-round short term rental--in which case the property can be listed on websites as long as it is described as such and the license must be listed in the ad. Occupancy and taxes must be reported to the city/local government as in the first case.

<comment><USER35> You might be talking to yourself, but I am reading. =) And I largely agree with everything you're saying. It's utterly incompatible with the growth- obsessive sort of business plan that AirBNB must follow, but it'd be a better thing for human beings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm amazed it has taken so long for something like this to happen. It's almost worse than MethBNB. Does it happen more frequently but AirBnB just quietly pays out? Or is my perception of how horrible 1% of the world is inaccurately calibrated?

Hack AirBnB accounts, until you find a nice renter who has a place with (presumably) nice stuff who will hand off keys to you without physically meeting, then clear it out, or destroy it like this, or something else. I'd be assuming that would happen 1:1000 rentals, but maybe that's paranoia.

Still, while I feel sorry for the renter here, I feel even worse for his landlord and neighbors, who should sue him, and get part of that $1mm.

<comment><USER15> That doesn't make any sense. Just choose a random house with valuable stuff in it, break in and clear it out? Getting past the door is the least of your problems, why go all that trouble with AirBNB? It doesn't make it less of a crime.

<comment><USER37> It gives you a window of time when you know the owners won't be home. Burglary is way safer (and legally less punished) than robbery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Firstly, as others stated, you took a risk and likely violated your lease as well as NYC law.

With that said, this tidbit from your listing is a brilliant indicator of how you inevitably brought this issue onto yourself:

"You may host up to 50 people in the backyard or apartment, but please leave $80USD so I can pay a cleaning lady to clean the extra mess."

Did they pay the extra $80USD? You invited them to bring 50 people over, I am sorry for what happened, but I don't feel sorry for you...

<comment><USER39> After confirming this with a quick google, I'm having trouble not "blaming the victim" here. It's sometimes the case with ridiculous things happening to people, that there's "more to the story", and that certainly seems to be the case here.

The poster willfully assumed additional risk on top of the standard AirBNB risk, and it's that additional risk that bit him.

Telling someone you've never met that they can bring 50 people(!?!) into your apartment, and just assuming that things won't get out of hand, is... naive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> FYI: should be obvious from the title, but NSFW images in post

</comment><comment><USER41> So these fucking strangers turned out to be literally fucking strangers.

</comment><comment><USER42> _The stress and fear that a large band of "XXX Freak Fest" individuals have my address and keys to my home is unreal_

Do they not have locksmiths in NYC?

</comment><comment><USER43> If David would have just invited him all this drama could have been avoided. Huge party foul, David.

</comment><comment><USER44> Well I am sorry for the OP. But posts like this make it clear: I will not use AirBnB.

It isn't worth the cost. Even if AirBnB pays the (no doubt depreciated) cost of the damage; I don't want my prized possessions trashed. (or worse).

Thank god there wasn't a fire!

</comment><comment><USER45> _my super is having me evicted by my landlord_

I assume that your lease prohibits subleases without the consent of your landlord.

<comment><USER46> Even with a lease permitting subletting through AirBnB (something becoming more common) this might very well be cause for eviction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> You're basically operating a business when you rent out your home. Unless AirBNB has a large amount of assurances that you will be protected then you need to do your own due diligence and ensure that you have insurance, gather identification, and that what you are doing is legal. As far as I know, operating as a hotel without a license is not legal in NYC.

Just like walking a tightrope across two building in NYC is illegal without sufficient permits and people to ensure it's done safely and responsibly.

Your landlord might not evict you if you explain the situation and ensure them that there is no way this will happen again, you've learned your lesson.

If that doesn't work, sue the people who stayed in your place. If that doesn't work, sue AirBNB. They might both claim that acting as a hotel in NYC was illegal and you're screwed for taking that risk, if so, you've learned an expensive lesson.

What kind of contract does AirBNB make people renting sign? I would hope that it explicitly prohibits large gatherings, destroying personal property, and disturbing neighbors, if it doesn't, then it should.

Has AirBNB attempted to pass any laws in NYC (and other cities) that provide some type of protection for people renting out their places for a limited period of time? Would it really be that difficult to allow inspections of private residences? There could also be something that requires the home be used by the owner for X months out of the year or that there is a maximum of X separate renters during a year (which might be hard to enforce / prove).

Is there a minimum amount of time someone has to rent a residence before it can be considered a sublease? Maybe you should only do that until laws protecting you are passed.

</comment><comment><USER48> That's a sad story. Clearly not a common occurrence (at least not common enough to be "oh another airbnb trashed my place" type response).

So what happens next will be interesting.

Presumably AirBnB's insurance will make the renter whole again.

Also presumably their ability to identify the person responsible will allow them to press charges against them, I suspect there are codes against charging cover charges for a sex party (I vaguely remember the controversy over the sex club in LA about this, something about indirect solicitation but that was like in the 70's so I'd really have to go back and dig it up.)

It seems like the 'TWINN' character was reasonably well connected in this community and perhaps if a great big hassle comes his way it will discourage others from that community in using AirBnB that way.

Definitely a wild story though.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm struggling to understand how this is AirBnB's fault? Do we expect them to detect when people are lying?

<comment><USER50> That's what the 'verified' status would seem to imply.

<comment><USER49> And if I use AirBnB legitimately for a while, then decide to do this, then what? It's AirBnB's fault for matchmaking?

That seems similar to blaming Google Search, not the site itself, for returning a site that has ranked well for a long time, but has just now started serving malware.

<comment><USER50> Your point is fair, but IMO it would not be incorrect to blame both the site as well as Google Search, obviously for different reasons.

'Verified' should eventually mean verified, with no qualifiers. If it can't be guaranteed then it's better to say so.

edit: I see from jamesroseman's comment below that 'verified' only means that their ID is verified, not the reason they require the accommodation. ([https://www.airbnb.com/help/question/450](https://www.airbnb.com/help/question/450)) If that's clear from the UI (and not just buried in a FAQ), it invalidates my point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> _"...worldly possessions tossed in a pile into the common area, while a group of strangers form a pile to have their private areas tossed."_

I would've gone with "...while a group of strangers have their piles tossed". It's cleaner(?).

All joking aside, this is why I refuse to participate in AirBnB. It's just not worth the non-negligible risk of very bad things happening. It's a great idea, yeah, and they've done super well, and a lot of people are exceedingly happy with it all. However, I'm not one of them, and I don't think these risks can be removed--having a stranger (or heck, even a friend!) stay in your house while you are not there is inherently risky no matter what regulations are in place.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm amazed the guy still has his listing online. It's here if anyone is interested:

[https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1058615](https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/1058615)

<comment><USER52> update: And it's pulled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is fucked up.

87k of damages ... doesn't that seem a lot?

<comment><USER54> I would imagine most of that is rent you are liable for if you are evicted. At least $2k+ a month for x amount of months.

If they had decent furniture that could add up quickly as well, but $80k does seem like a lot unless they are including 'emotional' damages which at that point is hard to quantify.

<comment><USER6> Zillow estimates rent at that address as $6700/month, with the 2 bedroom condos in that building selling for over $2 million. Another listing at the same address was renting for $7950/month.

<comment><USER54> Wow, yeah that definitely makes up for it then. I didn't really look too much into how much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Hotels constantly deal with their rooms being a location for prostitution, drug dealing, porn films, and so on.

People who lend out their personal property are constantly lending it to people who are rude, lying, and destroy it -- often causing them great harm and psychological damages.

I'm not sure what part of this is AirBnB's problem. It's like blaming GMail for letting you meet that nice kid online who borrowed your car and then totaled it. Huh?

Now if the author had made some extended argument that AirBnB was somehow guaranteeing his property's safety? Might make a little more sense. But AirBnB isn't an insurance company, or a private security service. The most I'd expect from them would be 1) solid identification on who the person is looking for the room, and 2) dependable (non-fake) reviews from previous experiences.

You have to remember that even people who are great borrowers-of-things will, on occasion, really screw the pooch. You can go for ten years being the pillar of the community and then lose it all on a month-long drug binge. It happens. So I don't think you're ever going to get rid of the occasional bad experience. It would be interesting to see if something evolves in this area, perhaps an insurance policy or city-wide micro-term security service.

</comment><comment><USER56> Airbnb will almost certainly cover the damages: [https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee](https://www.airbnb.com/guarantee).

He might not have as much luck getting them to pay his relocation costs, since I'm sure that renting out his apartment was against his lease anyway.

The real problem for this guy is going to be finding another landlord in Manhattan who will rent to him, unless he is extremely wealthy, of course.

<comment><USER6> If Zillow's estimates are at all accurate, the building at that address is full of $2M+ condos that rent for $6-8K/month. He mentions the doorman; he's probably pretty well off to afford living there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> > _I enjoy a "Festival" as much as the next fellow, but this is a family > building and some people don't enjoy having their neighbor's worldly > possessions tossed in a pile into the common area, while a group of > strangers form a pile to have their private areas tossed. As such, I'm going > to be evicted._ >

> _You're going to pay my moving expenses, because my landlord is certainly > going to make me move after an "XXX Freak Fest" (and I can't look these guys > in the eye after this either)._

In New York, it is _illegal_ for you to rent out your apartment while you are gone. Besides that detail, how can the OP's landlord evict him, unless there was something in the lease saying such renting was not allowed? Can the OP post the relevant portion of his leasing agreement?

<comment><USER58> > In New York, it is illegal for you to rent out your apartment while you are > gone.

Pretty sure that's the reason. Also NY state has laws requiring a minimum stay in a property that isn't zoned as a hotel.

In any case, if you break the law relating to your rental it's fairly easy for a landlord to terminate the lease.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Why did this become a blog post, and not a conversation with AirBnB's customer service and legal departments? Unnecessarily jumping that gap is what makes me seriously doubt the pure validity of his claims.

</comment><comment><USER60> Firstly, it comes to mind that someone could easily orchestrate a series of incidents like this to impair Airbnb's potential, especially in a particular location. If they deny a payout, anyone who doesn't own their place will think again.

Secondly, admittedly Booking.com and so on don't "verify" a customer beyond email and credit card, but it's hard to imagine a hotel piping up like this for being referred a dodgy customer.

</comment><comment><USER61> If I were a cynic, here's how I would read the upvoted comments: Regulations are bad when then they impair a YC company's ability to make money.

</comment><comment> k-mcgrady It's likely that by hosting anyone through AirBnB the OP was violating the terms of their lease agreement. So technically it's not who they hosted that's the problem, it's that they hosted anyone at all and that's the real reason for eviction. As for the damages to property AirBnB should help recover those losses from the person who rented the apartment.

</comment><comment><USER62> How on earth did this incident cause $85k in damages? They just dumped a bunch of furniture out. Was it really expensive furniture?

</comment><comment><USER63> A question I've been mulling about Airbnb since it started: who TF allows total strangers to stay at their home????

</comment><comment><USER64> I always wondered about pre-approved AirBnBs, which based on the screenshot is what this one was. I usually don't pick them because I feel that if a host doesn't actively screen, that it's a very bad sign. And by actively screen I mean look at my facebook, twitter, etc.

</comment><comment><USER65> AirBnB has a $1,000,000 insurance on every booking. Yes, what happened sucks, but the guy should raise noise if AirBnB refuses to cover his damages. For what it's worth, claiming your host insurance with AirBnB is part of doing business with them.

<comment><USER66> There's been a few other comments that point out that a condition of the insurance is that you must own the property, or have permission to rent it out, which author didn't. To the policy as it's written, this would be an uncovered claim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I sometimes wonder why this doesn't happen a lot more often...

Anyway, people seem to be much more trustworthy, which is why airbnb is still going strong. Until more legislations make it illegal to rent out apartments as quasi-hotels...

</comment><comment><USER68> Wait, is it even legal to use AirBNB in NYC?

latest is this: [http://www.thenewyorkworld.com/2013/10/24/airbnb/](http://www.thenewyorkworld.com/2013/10/24/airbnb/) ??

</comment><comment><USER69> Although this is disturbing regardless, someone who puts a _rented_ apartment (i.e., someone else's property) on AirBnB and then complains about abuse by others strikes me as extremely hypocritical.

</comment><comment><USER70> 87k seems like a lot of money in damages. If the poster is already living the rich life, why be greedy and AirBNB for even more cash? Greed is the root of all evil. I do not feel any sympathy.

</comment><comment><USER71> To quote Nelson Muntz: "Haw haw!". Hey, I've got an idea, let's treat our home like a hotel room and rent it out to strangers... what could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER72> > I am looking for a place for my brother and sister in law who visiting for a > wedding this weekend. I just don't have the space for them.

Shouldn't the writing style be a red flag ?

</comment><comment><USER73> You shouldn't be using rented property on airbnb, the solution to this is owning the property and then checking up on the occupants and being the super yourself.

</comment><comment><USER74> So you think you can make $710 renting your studio for two nights without any risk of this kind of thing happening? Wake up, man. No risk, no reward.

</comment><comment><USER75> I'm constantly amazed that people will rent out their own homes to total strangers, and then blame Airbnb when things like this happen.

</comment><comment><USER76> oh, I'm really sorry for stuffed animals. They probably thought stuffing was the last time they were abused.

</comment><comment><USER77> This is like accusing craigslist of causing murder through its dating forum.

Any time you rent a place out you face this risk.

</comment><comment><USER78> I don't doubt about the story, but has anyone find out what's the URL of the Airbnb place?

</comment><comment><USER79> Wonder how the "million dollar" insurance policy will work out for this guy...

</comment><comment><USER80> Got anything from airbnb yet? Very curious to know how is this going to end

</comment><comment><USER81> lol!sorry but that's funny!Well, if I were a porn producer,it would be a cheap way to rent new locations to shoot porn flicks for sure!

</comment><comment><USER82> whoa whoa ..it isn't AirBnB's fault, it is google's ! ..not wait, it is the fault of the interwebs ..ehe, so Gore ? Yep, that's it, Gore set the XXX Freak Fest to your place. Jeez !

</comment><comment><USER83> Can someone explain why we should think this tumblr post has any credibility?

<comment><USER6> Because it contains ample verifiable evidence.

<comment><USER83> That's not actually a response. You are just restating the premise. And exercising your right to be snide.

What is the ample verifiable evidence in the post?

<comment><USER6> The tweet by the "BBW party promoter" is on twitter; you can view it there. The account has 5 years of history tweeting about sex parties.

The address of a residence is in the tweet. You can do a Google search and see the previous real estate listings for the residential condos/apartments at that address. You can look at it on Google Maps to see that it's a real address and not some kind of sex club.

The "porn star" profile of the party organizer that tweeted, screenshotted, is there on Xvideos; you can look it up and view it yourself.

The screenshots of the booking conversations through Airbnb are included as well, which Airbnb can confirm actually took place.

These are all evidence supporting the story, and all of these pieces of evidence can be verified by third parties. That's verifiable evidence, which is what I said.

"Restating the premise" means to restate the base of your argument. I argued the opposite, that the post does have credibility. Sorry that you felt I was being snide by disagreeing.

<comment><USER83> The tweet is verifiable. That a porn party took place at that residence seems likely.

There is no verification this occurred over airbnb. There is no verification that the tweets were by anyone other than the resident or owner and no verification that the tumblr post was written by the resident.

All of this, including the tweet, could be a pretty simple hoax.

And worse, it's from tumblr.

The premise you restated was the basic post itself: Hey! This shit happened to me.

I asked, why should we believe this.

You said, "Because shit happened to that guy!"

Until airbnb responds we have no reason to give this anecdote any credence.

And you were totally snide. Your apology is disingenuous. "Sorry you felt I was being snide" is not an apology. It is a faux apology.

<comment><USER66> _And worse, it 's from tumblr._ That's an unqualified contention. What makes content hosted on tumblr less credible than what's on any other free blog site?

Most articles should receive a healthy dose of criticism, but on the whole, I really didn't see any suspect. The only basis for questioning is that AirBnB is the darling of the "OMG! DISRUPTING!" crowd, and thus any criticism against them must be a conspiracy from the evil industries.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A surgeon is suspended for operating on the wrong patient - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/03/05/a-surgeon-was-suspended-for-operating-on-the-wrong-patient-and-his-colleagues-went-on-strike/ <comment><AUTHOR> I was an anesthesiologist for 38 years. Wrong patient/wrong site surgery happened at every hospital — UCLA/USC/UVA — I worked at. No matter how many safeguards are in place to prevent such misidentification, somehow, one gets through from time to time. The public rarely hears about it.</comment>


Planet could be 'unrecognizable' by 2050  - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110220/sc_afp/scienceuspopulationfood <comment><USER2> How is this different from all the doom and gloom predictions of the 20th century?

It turns out that it's now quite easy for nations to be self sufficient in food. Many developing nations already are food exporters. The idea that an increase in population will cause resources to become more scarce is silly nonsense. People _create_ resources, very few resources are actually all that limited (even gold). More people and more demand means more resources will be produced. More clean water. More Iron. More Aluminum. More food.

And it need not have such a drastic impact on the planet. The US has vastly increased its per capita food production and its population over the 20th century, yet the impact of farming has actually diminished due to improved and more efficient practices.

Edit: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%E2%80%93Ehrlich_wager>

</comment><comment><USER3> I worked in R&D for one of the largest agricultural seed producers in the world for 3.5 years and I'd like you to know that there is no need to worry about food. Using hybrid breeding techniques, corn has gone from an average of 40 bushels/acre to 180 bushels/acre in the past 60 years. And the bulk of that gain was simply from traditional breeding techniques - they've just barely cracked the door on using genetic data to make better/more informed seed selection and advancement. The industry is currently averaging a gain of 4 bushels/acre per year and that is only going to accelerate with the massive amount of money that is being plowed into marker analysis.

And it isn't going to stop with corn either. Big-Ag is expanding BIG into Asia, South America and to a lesser degree Africa and a lot of awesome work is being done on Rice, Canola, Sunflower and Sorghum. Those crops will be making some major gains in the next 10 years.

Don't let the Malthusians scare you, everything is going to be alright.

</comment><comment><USER4> Planned Parenthood donation page: <http://bit.ly/gDIrl5>

<comment><USER5> Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan, but Planned Parenthood won't help impoverished nations with high birth rates. The church allowing condom usage however...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Fully managed blogging platform w/ support for SSL/TLS & custom domain? - <AUTHOR>

Hello dear HN fellows. I'm looking for a blogging platform that lets me use a custom domain and serve the blog over SSL/TLS. As far as I understand none of the major platforms support this :/

  * Wordpress.com (custom domain, no SSL)
  * Tumblr (custom domain, no SSL)
  * SquareSpace (custom domain, SSL only on store/checkout pages)
  * Blogger (custom domain, no SSL)
  * Medium (no custom domain, SSL)
 Did I miss something? Is DIY the only way right now? I'm willing to pay, but there is no one to take my money? <comment><USER2> They would have to host your SSL certificate, and that may require a static IP address. Probably difficult for them to scale and keep profitable. You can do it on WPEngine though:

[http://support.wpengine.com/how-does-all-this-work-https- ssl...](http://support.wpengine.com/how-does-all-this-work-https-ssl- certificates-ca-public-and-private-keys-csrs/)</comment>


Legacy Applications with Rails - <AUTHOR> http://blog.magmalabs.io/2020/04/24/approaching-rails-legacy-systems-chapter-1-project-anatomy.html <comment><USER2> Very nice, thanks! I recommend posting this in the Rails/Ruby reddits to get some more traction</comment>


How Losing Is A Profitable Game In Baseball - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129493504&ft=1&f=1055

<comment><USER2> Not surprising, the MLB has been in a death spiral for decades. Their problems are entirely political. Two teams (and I don't know why this article mentions the Dodgers, they're not even in the top 10 in terms of revenue) make the majority of the sport's money, and even among them one is far larger than the other. The entire sport revolves around the Yankees and, to a lesser extent, the Red Sox.

Those teams' considerations are given undue weight when determining league policy and have been for what in the sports world would be considered an eternity. This has led to a league designed to keep the Yankees winning and the Sox picking up their crumbs, which might seem great to the 25% of baseball fans who love one of those teams but alienates the rest.

Pittsburgh may be gaining $39m a year from revenue sharing, but they're losing a ton compared to what they'd make in a well-run league. If the MLB really believed that a rising tide lifts all boats they'd implement a salary cap and be done with it. The cap (along with revenue sharing) is the biggest reason for the NFL's parity, which in turn has driven the league's success. Whoever your favorite NFL team is, there's a very good chance they've been Super Bowl contenders in your lifetime. Most baseball fans cannot experience this.

For whatever reason, maybe because it was the scrappy upstart and it had to outfox it's larger competitor, the NFL owners have come together in a way that no other sport has to dethrone America's former pastime. If the MLB wishes to compete going forward they're simply going to have to adapt their business practices to align the incentives of the team owners (making money) with that of the fans (winning) and there's no proven way to do this other than a salary cap.

<comment><USER3> The same is probably true of 'soccer', especiall the English Premier League which is essentially a tower of debt at the upper end because only more borrowing (or billionaires buying clubs) can support the titles and growth that helps service the existing debt.

Of course, the EPL situation is made more complicated by the divisions and relegation possibility. There are probably plenty of fans - especially outside the big 4 - who would be happy to cycle through the top and bottom of the Premier League, but a cycle of relegation is not attractive. In fact, I wonder how a salary cap could be managed across different divisions, although it would probably still be better than the same clubs bouncing up and down most years.

<comment><USER4> Relegation makes a big difference because it means that aiming to minimise spending is not a viable strategy; the potential to be profitably run in lower divisions is much lower. Likewise, because the debts incurred by risky spending to try and beat the top teams (all with huge global merchandising incomes or a sugar daddy) also have resulted in financial crises, you have the curious outcome of most of the division aiming to be somewhere in mid-table.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Only tangentially related, but should be of interest to most HNers:

If you haven't read _Money Ball_ (<http://tinyurl.com/28ryy4b>) you really should. It's the story of how a coach and a stats guy hacked major league baseball; they took one of the poorest, losing-est teams in the league (Oakland A's) and turned them into serious winners. I found it well written, informative, and quite a pageturner...and I don't even /like/ baseball.

<comment><USER2> Not serious winners, marginal winners. IE they made the playoffs every year and got promptly defeated. There's a big difference.

While every hacker loves to believe that scrappy upstarts with data will conquer the good old boys every time, the reality of baseball seems to be the opposite. Sabermetrics just hasn't delivered. (It was a great book though).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Taxpayer bought stadiums probably don't hurt profitability either.

</comment><comment><USER7> The only way to fix this is for Pirates fans to stop going to the game. As a Pittsburgh fan and living there for a summer I am pretty confident in saying Pittsburgher's will never quit going.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's a great J.C. Bradbury piece on why revenue sharing really does nothing for competitive balance.

[http://www.sabernomics.com/sabernomics/index.php/2010/08/rev...](http://www.sabernomics.com/sabernomics/index.php/2010/08/revenue- sharing-incentives-and-competitive-balance/)</comment>


Amazon Celebrates Biggest Holiday – Press Release - <AUTHOR> http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2324045 <comment><USER2> It's all fine and dandy except Amazon could not handle the volume. Two of my guaranteed next day deliveries were awfully late, one of them over a week. Apparently my case was not at all isolated, as people were complaining all over the Internet. Reading their boasting leaves quite a bad taste.</comment>


Should Vaccines Be Mandatory? - <AUTHOR> https://prosperopedia.com/should-vaccines-be-mandatory-by-law/ <comment><USER2> "Although it is often accepted by the general medical community as being untouchable, the concept of herd immunity, the foundational premise of compulsory vaccinations, is highly suspect."

No. Denying herd immunity denies observed fact, and mathematics. The "evidence" given against herd immunity is "discussions" with other anti- vax/pro-death doctors.

<comment><USER3> Herd immunity is also regularly verified with other species, and easy to simulate even with high-school level programming skills. The relevant Wikipedia page even links to a simulation at [https://www.software3d.com/Home/Vax/Immunity.php](https://www.software3d.com/Home/Vax/Immunity.php) .

The text cites "The Mawson Homeschoolers Study" in the Journal of Translational Science. Snopes has an entry on the article, at [https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/05/17/vaccine-study- autism/](https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/05/17/vaccine-study-autism/) . Some quotes:

"The paper is a identical version of a paper briefly published in Frontiers in Public Health in 2016 before being disowned by the publisher."

"the lead author of the study, Anthony Mawson, is far from an impartial player in this debate: he is a vocal supporter of Andrew Wakefield, a controversial doctor who is arguably the the father of the anti-vaccine movement."

"Mawson's vaccine study was funded by two anti-vaccine groups"

"The journals that published the study are just as a problematic as the donors, though for different reasons: both journals have been accused of predatory practices."

"But even if the funding sources and authors' histories show bias, they still could have designed a careful study with high-quality research, right? In theory, yes. But in practice, the study design was riddled with flaws."

"Right off the bat, the pool of participants in the study differs demographically from the U.S. population as a whole."

"The study's authors also made no effort to track who received the survey or what percentage of people from different demographic or ideological groups ignored calls to participate"

"In short, the study's design was flawed from the start."</comment></comment>


Engineers can't gauge their own interview performance - <AUTHOR> http://blog.interviewing.io/people-cant-gauge-their-own-interview-performance-and-that-makes-them-harder-to-hire/ <comment><USER2> I actually interpret their data quite differently. There is a statistically robust and positive correlation between perceived and actual ratings:

\- 44% of the time, the actual and perceived ranking was identical.

\- 91% of the time, the difference between the rankings was at most one star.

\- Only in 9% of cases was there was a strong disagreement about how well the interview went (2 or more stars out of four).

\- There is also a bias towards engineers thinking they did slightly worse than they actually did.

Even in an alternative universe where the same interview was repeated, you would not expect rankings by the same individual to be perfect. A more meaningful benchmark (though probably unattainable) would be interviewer/interviewee consistency relative to interviewer self-consistency.

<comment><USER3> The problem with that interpretation is that it ignores how much something deviates from the expected random. If everything was completely random:

\- 25% of the time, the actual and perceived ranking would be identical.

\- 62.5% of the time, the difference would be at most one.

\- Only in 37.5% of cases would there be a strong difference in scores (2 or more stars out of four).

Would you say that 44% is a good score on a multiple choice test? Obviously candidates did better than random guessing, but not by enough to call it a strong correlation. Determining the strength of a correlation is what R-squared is for, which makes it the right choice for this analysis.

<comment><USER4> But the problem with R-squared in this case is that a linear model isn't appropriate for ordinal data. These rankings are ordered categories, not numbers.

<comment><USER3> The comment I was replying to was not about ordinal data and I stand by it in its context.

But on your point, the Jury's still out on what to do with Likert-type data like this. Purists do say that it's ordinal and therefore you can't do any numeric analysis on it, but practically speaking you can learn a lot from it by treating it as interval data.

In my opinion, statistical analysis like this is ALWAYS two parts speculation and one part science (if you're lucky). It's designed to give insight without declaring fact so you're allowed to bend the rules a little if it's in the spirit of the math.

My "gut" feeling agrees with the original post. If we treat the data as ordinal data, then we can only look at the accuracy, and 44% is, if anything, more compelling.

Cards on the table: I was involved in analyzing the data in the first place and have a vested interest in things-- but I am saying what I believe without any intentional bias.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> ...another reasonable conclusion from this data is that _interviewers_ have difficulty judging interview performance.

<comment><USER6> Beat me to it. When I interviewed at Google there were multiple interviewers and then there were multiple committees and people who look at their feedback.

Comparing interviewers to other interviewers makes a "He did above average" from a person who's hard to impress as good as a "She did really great!" from someone else.

<comment><USER7> Well, the hiring committees see the entire prior rating distribution from each interviewer as well as the hires/no hires for each previous rating.

So the committees has a decent way of correcting for interviewers who use different scales.

<comment><USER6> Right. You'd only know someone was "hard to impress" with that information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So many of you 20-somethings interviewing really make me cringe! Basically, many of you are a stark mirror in which I can see how terrible I was as an interviewer in my 20's and 30's.

Be honest now, do you do this?

        1) See something or think of something
        2) Decide that it's the most important point
        3) Go on a "fishing" expedition to try and get the interviewee to see it
        4) If the interviewee can't figure out what you're hinting at, decide
           s/he's completely worthless! (Or if she gets it, decide she's the ultimate!)

A lot of you do this. Cut it out. It's idiotic. It presupposes a pretty arrogant view of the relative value of your own perceptions. What you really need to be doing is _listening._

I had the experience of someone doing this to me with concurrency, then concluding I'm an impostor, _while I 'm telling him about 3 concurrent systems I've worked on._ The disconnect? He was "fishing" for the current undergrad spiel about scheduling. Sorry, we covered it, but that wasn't emphasized in the same way when I was an undergrad, and the poorly thought out puzzle you came up with on the spot wasn't such a great hint.

Given the number of times I was mis-identified as an impostor programmer during interviews (a minority of instances, but still) there is clearly something going on. You guys are just like the young Ivy league grads in Mad Men. You just have different clothes and different language, but you are looking out for the signs of your own tribe just the same.

<comment><USER9> Ah, the password game. You don't wanna work for those guys anyway.

It's interesting isn't it? This was all much easier in decades past. The questions don't matter. The answer doesn't matter.

What matters are the body language cues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Eh - humans generally have a hard time rating things on a 5 star rating system. That's mainly because the discrete intervals between 1 and 5 stars aren't well defined so everyone will have a different opinion of what 3 stars "mean". I encountered this when I ran a rating system in Mechanical Turk. If you ask turkers to do something arbitrary like "rate the quality of this picture" it takes quite a number of ratings on the same image to get an accurate consensus.

It would be interesting to see if you can replicate experiment but replace the 5 stars with 5 yes/no questions regarding their performance and see if those match up

<comment><USER11> Whats worse is that any type of rating system has an utter bias towards the very very upper end of the scale by it's consumers.

If you have a true rating system then 2.5/3 out of 5 means average or more or less what you should be looking for in most cases 4 is out standing and 5 is bloody icecream pooping unicorn.

You see this every where a rating system is implemented heck in entertainment movies and games don't fight from 0 to 100 anymore but form the 90-100 if you see any score below 90 or 4 stars people usually avoid that product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I never cared about my own "interview performance".

But I always cared about my interviewer's assessment of me.

So much so that I've always reserved the last 10 minutes of every interview just to find that out.

They almost always ask if I have any questions, but even if they don't I ask them anyway:

Based on what you've just learned:

      - How well would you say I did in this interview?
      - How well do my skills fill your requirement?
      - Where do you see me in the first month?
      - Where do you see me in 3 years?
      - What's the first thing you'd have me work on?
      - What gaps do you think I have?
      - What are your 3 biggest concerns about me?
      - What can I do to address those concerns?

and of course:

      - What is the next step?

I have never had an interviewer afraid to honestly (or appear to be honest) answer these questions. See how easy?

<comment><USER13> The last 10 minutes where you ask questions is a bad time to waste asking someone to judge your 3 year plan when they just met you. Most of these questions are better asked when you fail an interview and request feedback as to why.

I specifically state when I perform interviews that I will not answer the question "How well would you say I did in this interview?" The interview isn't over yet, and that's impossible to answer.

You should really spend this time to see how much you would want to work at the company. Ask about their processes, the things that would absolutely turn you off to a company or the things that would absolutely turn you on to a company and make you forget about all their other bullshit. Ask about the problems they are trying to solve. Ask about how smart the other people are who you'll be working with.

Don't waste time in the interview checking if you passed. You'll know very soon anyway and there is always the chance to get this feedback afterward.

<comment><USER14> > Don't waste time in the interview checking if you passed. You'll know very > soon anyway and there is always the chance to get this feedback afterward.

I think that would be a mistake. If the interviewer isn't able to answer those questions satisfactorily, it might be a sign that the _hiree_ isn't a good fit. Nobody wants to change jobs to something that doesn't work out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Are they being nice to me because I killed it or is it because I did so poorly that they are showing pity?

Are they being mean because they think I wasted their time or because I killed it and they want to push me?

</comment><comment><USER16> I was once in an interview where the interviewer was a hard ass. Asking all kids of hard questions about languages I knew, then he got deeper and asked about specifics into those languages. Then started asking about really abstract stuff like different sorting algorithms, OOP concepts like polymorphism, etc. I felt I was holding my own but as the interview went on the interviewer seemed to grow more impatient and irritable. Needless to say I left the interview thinking I blew it. Two days later I got a call from the recruiter saying I was their top choice and got an offer soon after.

P.S. It turned out that guy was just grouchy because he had interviewed so many underwhelming candidates. He admitted he was just trying to break me.

<comment><USER17> Trying to break a candidate seems to be very related issue to the one the article is talking about. Most people will take that kind of interviewer attitude as a negative experience that reflects poorly on the company and would make them less interested in taking the job.

The goal of the interviewer should be to evaluate a candidate, not dig and dig until you find a weakness. If it takes that much effort it's not worth doing in the first place.

<comment><USER16> Agree. Luckily attitudes have shifted over the years and companies realize there's too much risk in alienating a good candidate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Terrific analysis, thank you! I love reading your posts.

I also think that the dynamics differ based on the mode of interviewing viz. Faceless (like [http://interviewing.io](http://interviewing.io) does) vs face- ful (like normal onsite or video interviews, or the way [http://interviewkickstart.com](http://interviewkickstart.com) does).

I have an observation to share for the latter kind of interviews:

When I was hiring at Box for one of my teams (or even now), I'd generally go towards the end, to meet the candidate and talk to them about how the day went. I'd ask them about specific interviews, the interviewers and how they think they did on the given problems.

I found that it was surprisingly rare to get a candidate who was aware enough of how things went (positive or otherwise).

Digging into it, I realized that the correlation of what the candidate perceived, was simply to how expressive the interviewER was. If the interviewer was friendly and chatty, the candidate would feel like they have done well (or at least forgivably well). If the interviewer was more silent, the candidate would feel they haven't done very well.

Now that I do interview training for a living, I try and hammer this point home: that interviews are like a date. It depends a lot on the other person (in this case, the interviewer). Understanding this well often works like magic.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nobody can judge their own interview performance - engineer or not. The hard part is that you as an interviewee don't really know what the interviewer is looking for. You may have nailed the back half of the interview, but you don't have the one skill they're looking for. Or sometimes you don't blow it at all and they love you, but there's one other person they interviewed for the position that blew them away.

Trying to guess how well you did in an interview is folly. Hell, one interview tactic I use with people is to push them until they break: I keep asking technical questions until I reach a point where you say "I don't know". This sometimes makes people think they "failed" the interview, when all I'm really trying to do is see how much you know while also seeing how much you'll bullshit me on topics you don't know as well. Nobody can be an expert on everything, and interviews are as much about behavioral profiling as they are subject matter expertise.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've found this with myself as well. In one of my worst-ever interviews, I had the flu really badly the entire time, and read the signals of all of my interviewers to be both negative regarding my technical chops and negative toward my weakened state. I got the job, and was very well liked. In another trainwreck of an interview where I seriously considered standing up and leaving after getting extreme negative signals, I was offered the job as well-- but I should have paid attention to the negative signals, as they were indicative of larger problems with that group.

In other interviews, I've massively overestimated my own performance, seeing positive signals everywhere and being very impressed with myself-- of course, these didn't pull through, and my confidence was dashed. In another incidence, I did get the job offer.

The most confusing are the interviews in which I don't have a strong feeling of doing well or poorly either way-- not the median case, but certainly it happens frequently enough that I've gotten a job where I didn't think that I stood out. If anything, these cases are a consolation that others may see something positive that I don't see in myself.

This tells me that my ability to correctly predict my interview performance is no more efficacious than random chance. I think that there are a few confounding factors which make interviewee measuring interview performance as perceived by the interviewer difficult. Interviews are a time of endless posturing, flagrant lies, propaganda, and overt deception hopefully mingled in with actual mutual interest, excitement, and good will. There are many social signals to keep track of in addition to self-monitoring to ensure the correct outcome. For people who are not the strongest socially, I think that these social signals tend to get dropped intermittently as attention shifts inward (don't say the wrong thing) or outward (get this technical problem correct).

<comment><USER21> It's a fools errand to try and predict interview performance. I've been interviewing for a short while now and haven't gotten an offer yet despite feeling really great (and for some, really crappy) about my interviews. Feedback from the interviewers is equally inaccurate. On my most recent interview, I was told that my solution to their coding challenge was one of the best they'd ever seen, and that the feedback so far was extremely positive. Two days later I got the "another direction" email. I don't really take rejection to heart anymore but I hate not knowing what I need to do better.

<comment> ju-st I ask myself after a job interview if I really like my potential tasks, the people and the work environment. If "yes", then I will not get the job. If I don't like it then I will get an offer. This metric worked for me the last 5 out of 5 times.

<comment><USER21> I've yet to be met with success but I'm getting closer. I'm refactoring the way I present myself to emphasize the value I bring. I believe I was too focused on how the company could benefit me. Not salary or perks, but mentorship and training since I'm still early in my career.

The thing is that I already bring a lot of value - I could definitely bring more, but I failed to emphasize what I already have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Hopefully this gets more love than it did last time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10739343](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10739343)

I found the analysis very interesting and consistent with my personal bias (I almost always think I did worse than I actually did).

<comment><USER23> > _Hopefully this gets more love than it did last time_

We invited the submitter to repost it for that reason. I'll try to merge the comments from there into here.

Invited reposts are mostly deprecated now in favor of re-ups [1], but when it looks like the submitter might also be the author (as e.g. with Show HNs), we still send them. It's nice for an author to know that their post may still get discussed, and it's good for HN when an author jumps into the thread.

[1] All the details at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10705926](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10705926) and previous posts linked there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Very much appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> >And by extension, it means that in every interview cycle, some portion of interviewees are losing interest in joining your company just because they didn't think they did well, despite the fact that they actually did.

I hate the assertion of causation here. As always, this relationship means that A causes B, B causes A, and/or A and B have a common cause (or even more possibilities, given that we're essentially conditioning on this event taking place). Aline argues that "some portion of interviewees are losing interest in joining your company just because they didn't think they did well," but I think it's more plausible that there is something that happens in the interview that simultaneously makes the interviewer think they did poorly and makes them think poorly of the company. If you're rating me on my ability to name country capitals in a statistics interview, I'm going to think you don't want to hire me and I'll think you're an idiot I'd hate to work for. Or if you're being kind of a jerk or being impatient and checking your cell phone every 30 seconds, I'll think I'm doing poorly and that you're rude and I wouldn't like to work with you. Common cause seems much more likely to me.

</comment><comment><USER25> > "resumes suck"

Do they?

Maybe resume's specifically do suck, but surely it's beneficial to have at least some way to see an overview of what a candidate has accomplished in the past. Especially when you're hiring for more senior roles where you need to place more value on experience and a proven track record than raw technical excellence. I can't really see these "anonymous" interviewing platforms working well for those kinds of roles.

<comment><USER26> > Do they?

I have seen hundreds of CVs that show no achievements of note - and tend to be more along the lines of describing the duties of the job and little else besides. I've also had hundreds of subsequent conversations with those people that revealed significant accomplishments.

CVs are better than nothing. But there's no set way to write them that's widely known, and people tend to be rather reticent about their own accomplishments - perhaps not even thinking of them as such. There's a lot of value being left on the table.

<comment><USER22> Furthermore, not everyone's accomplishments boil down to nice bullet points.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> So Dunning–Kruger effect (poor candidates over valuing themselves) and impostor syndrome (the opposite).

<comment><USER28> Dunning-Kruger actually accounts for both.[1] But agreed, this isn't specific to hiring.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Nobody on HN has taken the PE or FE exams.

<comment><USER22> Neither have most of the engineers working for large corporations, unless it was required by their degree program (mine did not).

<comment><USER29> Except that's wrong. If you want to get hired with a job title of engineer, you at least have to take the FE exam.

That is unless you're a webdev, in which case you can call yourself head fruitloop and it would still be acceptable, apparently

<comment><USER30> What is it with software developers who take such offense at the use of the word "engineer"? Clearly, you're not a "real" engineer, or you'd know that your statement about the use of the word "engineer" in titles was wrong in the US (and Canada doesn't use the FE exam).

I've never met a engineer who gave a crap what my title was, software developer or software engineer. Which isn't a surprise, since we pose no threat to the jobs of "real" engineers. Not sure why the word is so threatening to some software developers.

Do railroad engineers have to put up with this?

<comment><USER29> Actually I'm a mechanical engineer. Webdevs calling themselves engineers is an insult to the amount of work and effort that I've put in to get where I am now. It's like medical technician calling themselves a doctor because they took a training prep course.

<comment><USER31> A technician could call themselves a "doctor", but they couldn't call themselves a "Medical Doctor". A developer can call themselves an "engineer", but they cannot call themselves a "Professional Engineer". If I started putting "PE" after my name, I'd expect the NCEES to come after me. No one but you can decide what you take as an insult, of course, but choosing industry- standard (and legally uncontrolled) terminology like "software engineer" to take offense at seems like a losing battle.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Office Farming: Growing Broccoli Microgreens Indoor - <AUTHOR> https://www.instructables.com/id/Office-Farming-Growing-Broccoli-Microgreens-Indoor/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, startup life is hard and challenging, growing indoor plants is a great way to balance the stress and tension. Also, those microgreens are delicious and good for health. Have a look if you have time, thanks.

YouTube Video : [https://youtu.be/5Pb46y2BXZU](https://youtu.be/5Pb46y2BXZU)</comment>


Surveillance planes spotted in the sky for days after West Baltimore rioting - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/surveillance-planes-spotted-in-the-sky-for-days-after-west-baltimore-rioting/2015/05/05/c57c53b6-f352-11e4-84a6-6d7c67c50db0_story.html <comment><USER2> As someone who lives in Baltimore, the riots reminded me why I'm less afraid of the police than of my neighbors. Police flying overhead to capture publicly visible events didn't try to throw a chair through the window of the restaurant I was eating at with my family, or vandalize the drug store by my house, or break the door of my favorite fro-yo place.

It's not that I'm not sympathetic to the general idea the ACLU and EFF are pushing here. It was just a reminder of why the public gives the police so much power and benefit of the doubt.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand rioters won't break into your residence while you're asleep and maim your toddler with a flashbang on the flimsiest of evidence and conjecture.

<comment><USER4> I think most people don't expect the police to do that to _them_ either. No- knock raids are something that happens to _other_ people. Riots could affect anyone. (Not commenting on the accuracy of this view, just its existence.)

<comment><USER5> I'm 32, white, male, and I still get nervous whenever I get pulled over. I can do everything right and still end up dead on the ground with the officer walking away from the situation unscathed.

<comment><USER6> How many times have you been pulled over?

<comment><USER5> Its actually been about a year, as I drive a bit more conservatively now, but probably around 18 times in my entire life (early 20s, tech worker money single guy expenses, high performance sports cars).

My point is, you should never have to worry that you might be killed during a traffic stop.

<comment><USER6> I live in the UK. Around a decade driving, have never been pulled over once. Thanks for your reply, it was interesting. Higher than I anticipated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Radiolab did a show about these surveillance aircraft. In the show the host turns from skeptic to believer-- and here's why:

The plane flies in a circle and records activity. Later on a crime is discovered, say a garage break in . The police call the surveillance team and say 'Look at this spot' and the team rewinds the video and see a blue van pull up and break in. Then the play the video forward and find where the blue van went. Then the cops are dispatched to the blue van's spot and an arrest is made.

Personally, I see the value in that system and am ok with it being deployed. Especially to places like West Baltimore.

<comment><USER8> Surveillance can certainly be used to solve crimes. But one of the issues is to get right the level of oversight, transparency, and trust in the system to minimize abuse. Because we have a long experience that these systems are abused.

For examples: police have sold information - [http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-22465173](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-22465173) . Intelligence people have spied on love interests - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT) . City workers have used cameras to spy on a naked woman in her house - [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/merseyside/460974...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/merseyside/4609746.stm) .

This extends to companies as well, as when HP chair Dunn 'authorised the surveillance of board members and journalists' \- [http://www.alphr.com/news/enterprise/93590/hp-chairman- resig...](http://www.alphr.com/news/enterprise/93590/hp-chairman-resigns-in- phone-tap-scandal) . (I use that as a proxy for a likely scenario; should a government whistleblower send documents to the press about an illegal coverup, then the same surveillance technology used to find criminals can easily be repurposed to find the leaker.)

<comment><USER9> It's not about oversight. They don't need to be spying on citizens whom are neither suspected of a crime nor have a warrant against them. I don't give a fuck it it solves crimes; I'd rather the criminals get away with it if this is the cost. It needs to stop.

<comment><USER8> This debate is decades old, and history shows that complaining about "spying" is not an effective method to keep new technology out of police hands.

If the police use a search light for better visibility a night? Not spying. Use binoculars? Not spying. Fly overhead? Not spying. Look into the windows of a barn which is "accessible only after crossing a series of "ranch-style" fences and situated one-half mile from the public road"? Not spying.

At least, not according to the US Supreme Court. There are of course many who object.

<comment><USER10> It's not even so much about "keeping technology out of the hands of police", it's about having appropriate safeguards against misuse and accountability for people granted the power to use (and abuse) it.

If we can't even indict police who shoot people in the back to go to trial(1), how can anyone believe cops won't use this to stalk ex girlfriends or anyone else they feel randomly curious about?

(1) [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us- canada-30339943](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30339943)

<comment><USER8> (Which is what I started off with, two comments upwards, with the statement 'one of the issues is to get right the level of oversight, transparency, and trust in the system to minimize abuse'.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it too conspiratorial to think that this have likely had zero law enforcement value but rather just a a real world benchmark or acceptance test for surveillance tech that will end up being used in much more high valued arenas?

If you built some kick ass new sensor you'll probably want to test it in an environment that won't put it at much risk, Baltimore rioting aside isn't exactly Pakistan or Nicaragua.

<comment><USER12> These airplanes are flying every single day circling the same cities every single day. These systems are used to crush dissent and crush any form of protest, that's the problem.

<comment><USER11> They aren't there to crush any form of protest that's absurd, should they be there probably not but take the orwelianess level down a notch or three.

<comment><USER9> The FBI planes circle cities for hours and hours, equipped with Stingrays and FLIR cameras. This has no place in a free society, period. The "orwelianness" is pretty dead-on-balls fucking accurate.

<comment><USER11> How much different is this from metro, traffic, and transportation CCTV systems that we've had for decades?

<comment><USER9> They use thermal cameras and stingrays. This is not technology that the public has access to. If traffic and CCTV cameras had thermal and cell-interception capabilities, people might be a bit more concerned. If I'm in my house, no one should be able to look inside it or intercept the signals from my phone. Do I need to thermally-insulate my house to get some fucking privacy?

<comment><USER11> Neither Thermographic nor SWIR cmeras can actually see through house walls, any internal heat source will be diffused, and bodies won't be picked up at all this isn't Hollywood.

Most modern CCTV cameras have SWIR mode for night operations.

Cell-interception is more easily achieved on a metro scale through carrier or base station based interception. In any case Stingray is a brand name for an IMSI catcher made by Harris, they sell many other IMSI catchers to local law enforcement agencies.

Miami PD for example bought their hand-held version back in 2006.

[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1282625-06-11-29-200...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1282625-06-11-29-2006-harris- kingfish-sole-source.html)

They are quite often used in raids to pin point a specific house or an apartment.

Local police units have had this tech since the late 90's, in many places this was used in counter-drug and counter-organized crime operations, you had patrol cars with IMSI catchers that would drive through a neighborhood catching all cell-id's and matching them to known numbers of drug dealers and gang members.

So no this isn't really new.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What is the big deal. Anything you can see from a Drone isn't really private anyway. And what you do as part of a violent mob real really isn't private.

I think the Taliban has proved that any sort of dystopian fears are wildly over blown.

Plus we already have police helicopters.

<comment><USER14> And police choppers are loud and annoying, while drones are presumably quiet.

On the other hand, what if we scaled if up? It would be very useful for the police to have a constant fleet of drones in the sky ready to swing their cameras around to focus on anything. Report of a mugging at fifth and D? Get visual on it in seconds. Which as a potential mugging victim I'm all for, but still, the idea of constant airborne surveillance gives me the heebie-jeebies.

That said, this, along with many other potentially useful crime- fighting tools, is about to become technologically possible, and we're going to need rules about every new thing that comes along. Right now we have no useful framework for making rules, apart from seeing what people shout loudest about. Personal heebie-jeebies aren't a good guide to sensible decisionmaking.

<comment><USER13> >Which as a potential mugging victim I'm all for, but still, the idea of constant airborne surveillance gives me the heebie-jeebies.

There are 220 million smartphones in America. How many of them are set up to send location data? 80-90%? Shit, Android reads through my texts/email and gives me directions to where I'm going to meet someone for dinner before I even ask for them.

Privacy is dead.

<comment><USER15> Is the distinction between a private entity collecting semi-consented to location data, and the government/law enforcement collecting such data lost on you?

I say "semi-" because I'd wager that less than 5% of people read and understand the implications of the TOS they click through.

 _Your_ privacy might be dead, but don't think that everyone else's is as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I recommend listening to the 'Eye in the Sky' episode of of Radiolab: [http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye- sky/)

It features an interview with Ross McNutt, also interviewed in the Washington Post story. McNutt describes aerial surveillance technology he developed for the US military operations in Iraq & Afghanistan, in use for over 10 years. The primary reason for not introducing it here is the US is opposition from privacy groups, despite having been used successfully abroad to counter terrorism and organized crime.

<comment><USER17> > The primary reason for not introducing it here is the US is opposition from > privacy groups, despite having been used successfully abroad to counter > terrorism and organized crime.

No offence, but do you really think that giving the ability to to mass scans like this to police officers won't be abused? What's our track record on _actually_ punishing police officers that can have provably (and demonstrably) abused their powers?

I'd almost trust the military _more_ with that technology than local police departments and/or the FBI.

Edit: Also, what are the chances that this technology will spend a lot of time in the field at local police departments before there are any meaningful rules/regulations on how they can use it? During that period no one will get punished for "abuses" because without rules and regulations _any_ use is valid.

<comment><USER16> No offense taken; I too do not trust US law enforcement to use this technology in a manner that respects the privacy and rights of law-abiding citizens.

Nonetheless, it is a fact that this technology has been used to trace the location of people responsible for the placement of roadside bombs in warzones abroad, and has been used to locate the headquarters of an organized crime group in Juarez, Mexico, a place that averaged 8.5 killings per day in 2010.

I highly recommend listening to the Radiolab story, it raises some interesting points.

<comment><USER18> _law-abiding citizens_

So it's OK in your book to trample the rights of criminals?

Because I bet we could find a crime you've unintentionally committed in the last week or so...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> TBH this isn't surprising or creepy. This could be a great chance to try out counting more dynamic crowds, for instance, so not all applications are inherently creepy.

Who has oversight for this kind of thing? It's crazy we can't get a straight answer about this kind of thing.

<comment><USER20> Isn't not knowing who has oversight for this kind of thing creepy?

<comment><USER19> I think it has the potential to be creepy. I don't necessarily see aerial observation, something over a century old, no worse than street cameras or cops: a necessary evil, to some people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Linked article is from May. Previously on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9504825](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9504825)

</comment><comment><USER22> While most people appear to think that is not a problem, I think that it is... even more so because of some of the sensors/imagery that they use can see much more then what the naked eye can see (unless they obtain a warrant for searching all homes in the area that is being scanned).

</comment><comment><USER23> This is 100% illegal unless a judge signed a warrant for each individual the plane observed. Is there any way of identifying the airplane and lodging a criminal complaint against the ones who were flying it?

</comment><comment><USER24> A few weeks ago at around midnight I could hear a helicopter hovering over a nearby neighborhood for a long time (10-15 minutes) apparently not moving very much. (The sound didn't change direction much.)

It was loud and obnoxious, but also troubling. Why were they up there? We have lots of helicopter fly-bys around here, but I had never noticed a long-term hover before.

<comment><USER22> Around here, the sheriff's dept. have a website that list current active calls... if you have something similar in your area, it might give you some clue to what is going on. But ours don't get updated in real time and they don't list all calls. A police scanner might give more accurate information but is often hard to understand with all the codes that they use and the audio quality can be really bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> SWIR/MWIR footage was captured for two subsequent experiments:

* Crowd detection: algorithmic detection of clusters containing greater than five person objects * Automatic backtrace: designate a cluster and see the paths its members took to arrive at the location (including linking people to vehicles travelled in to the scene)</comment>