If you turn on the thing that shows 'dead' comments, there is a larger than normal number here.

Indeed, and the dead comments (from new users!) overwhelmingly favor the government position.

But, this is a non-story, because those comments were correctly killed precisely so they wouldn't clog up this thread.

I wouldn't call something a non-story just because the ultimate end-goal was mitigated. The fact that it was attempted is a story, especially when it's a meta commentary on story about trying the same thing _officially_.

Eh. The actors that use these features use a shotgun approach. The result is you see a bunch of dead comments and assume the system is working as intended, while a couple of the less inconspicuous comments persist. This happens frequently on specific topics.

Could be organic dipshits with little to offer the discussion. That's the most common case in my view.

Said dipshits tend have an unnecessarily high degree of self regard.

They're definitely highly regarded.

Veiled slurs aren't funny and don't contribute anything to HN.

Nor do bots and one track minded posters.

I'd argue that it depends on what the track is. But yeah, bots and slurs: bad. Let's stop using them.

I am kind of considering the idea of changing my LinkedIn profile to one of me with a 'wild rag', checkered shirt, and broad brimmed straw hat and calling myself a robot wrangler and see if I get any takers.

Booking a flight is the kind of thing I want to dedicate my full attention to. It's expensive, and the timing and details matter a lot.

I'm happy for the voice assistant to add stuff to my grocery list, though. The consequences are not serious if it screws up a letter or something.

To be fair, you can cancel flight reservations for a full refund within 24 hours, so if the LLM gets it wrong, you're not on the hook for anything.

But in general I do agree: flight bookings are something I want to do myself, because even I don't fully know my preferences when it comes to timing and price until I see what's available. And in general I don't find it all that difficult to do. A couple days ago I booked a multi-city travel itinerary with four different destinations, and it took me about a half hour?

Sure, if an LLM can do that in under a minute, that would be cool, but in absolutely zero situations would I not need to check its work, and if it did get it wrong, I'd have to do it all myself anyway.

Even worse, I will only know if the booking is "right" or "wrong" if I look at the alternatives, to see that it really is the best flight.

The best value of "AI" there is making a shortlist of best alternatives, which is just a Google Flights UX improvement. It's not like your own little agent would have good enough access to the underlying data, gatekeeping that is worth money.

Booking a flight is the kind of thing I'd really want to avoid doing myself nowadays if possible though. Surveying the offers is usually such a snake pit of deceptive marketing and incomplete service conditions that I feel somewhat nauseous just at the prospect of having to look at it.

I wouldn't remotely trust a software assistant to deal with all that misdirection autonomously, but I guess I'd be prepared to give it a chance collating options with tolerable time and cost, attempting to make the price include the stuff that has to be added to preserve health, sanity and a modicum of human dignity.

Nearly everything targeting consumers is a snake pit now.

Everything has one or more upsells. Dark patterns are now nominal practice. Quality has gone to shit.

Asking it to find the best deal? Sure, I could totally see that. But I want to double check that myself and actually buy it in order to make sure my flight to Denver from Portland doesn't have a layover in Anchorage or something.

Booking a flight is the type of thing you think you want to dedicate your full attention to. Largely, the issue is one of trust that whatever is making the bookings will take into account the nuances of your schedule and preferences. Here's the typical flow for how my (human) assistant books my flights. I tell them I want to go to $LOCATION from $START to $END. They have my calendar, my travel preferences (airlines, hotels, etc) and the company travel policy. A couple hours later, they slack me a couple of options. If there is one I like, I tell them to book it. If not, I tell them why none of the options work. The process repeats until I see something I like or we run out of options and I have to choose the least bad option. There is nothing about this process that needs a human. It's all done on Slack and for all I know the person at the other end is actually an AI (they're not, but for arguments sake, they could be).

Apparently I'm the only one here who finds it to be one of the worst things I ever have to do, I hate managing the combinatorial tab explosion by hand. Compounded by the adversarial nature of the price-setting algorithms that jack up the price on you if you show too much interest by researching too intensively. Just booked a flight for our family in two parts, and booking for one set of us made the price for the second set of us with a slightly different itinerary massively more expensive, because it was "in demand".

Can't wait for agents to handle all of it.

Do you think an agent is going to do all of that and get you the best price/time/comfort combination for your exact preferences. Or do you think it's going to pick the first that looks reasonable? Or do you think it's going to sacrifice one dimension too much?

We already have agents for this if you really want to avoid it, they're called travel agents. They're pretty good at complex travel booking and not very expensive.

Maybe, I've never used a human travel agent. Based on my experiences with human agents in other industries (especially real estate), I think the LLM version will probably already know my preferences a good bit better than most human travel agents would bother to learn - they're infinitely patient, and not trying to maximize earnings by minimizing time spent per booking.

Also, which one is easier to adversarially fool into bad decisions, an LLM or you?

I think it depends on your priorities and needs.

I just booked a round trip for myself, plus two more flights for quicker hops while I'm away, and I didn't spend much time on it at all. I just looked at Google flights, picked the flights I wanted, and then ended up buying them through Chase with points. Chase's travel website is among the worst I've ever used, but it wasn't hard. Then I went to the airline's website and changed my seats (Chase doesn't know I have status and couldn't directly book the seats I wanted) and did an upgrade for one of the legs using miles I had at the airline. Half hour of work, maybe?

The price-setting algorithms are garbage, but an LLM isn't going to fix that.

Agree with the other sibling posters that if this annoys you so much, you should just call up a human travel agent. I haven't used one in many years, but when I did (mostly for business travel), it was always pleasant, and the agent knew my preferences and took care of things if there were any snags or changes needed. At the time, they usually got me flights cheaper than if I were to book them myself, even with their fee on top.

But I do wonder what the profession is like now. I can imagine some sort of website where you often don't even deal with the same person, who won't get to know your preferences and will be sort of like a customer service agent, just trying to close as many cases as fast as they can. But hopefully there are still smaller shops around, where you can talk to the same person (either phone or email) every time. Dunno.

Yeah, maybe just finding a small shop is the move. Surprising that they can get you something for less than buying direct can after their fee, though!

Booking flights/tickets is terrible. And then the dark patterns… wonder if OpenClaw can navigate these? Anyway, it is nothing compared to sourcing electronic components, there are literally thousands and thousands of different manufacturers, lead times, moq’s … for the same component, leading to super hard to search and filter database/websites that are slow as molasses.

Seriously. Have you tried Octopart? One of the very early YC companies, dedicated to electronics part search (I haven't used them recently, so no idea if they're good these days, just remember them from like a decade and a half ago).

I used it, mainly for 3d models and footprints. I source most of my parts from LCSC because of the assembly integration nowadays. Sticking to their part ID’s works well for known parts, but yeah, still need to find the part first. It is so time consuming.

I think we literally have those agents today, albeit implemented in meat rather than silicon. Any particular reason you elect not to use the free-to-you travel agent? Generally they are the same or less expensive and able to work in your best interests.

Are their incentives totally aligned? I'd assume they'd want to get through bookings as quickly as possible to maximize earnings?

Travel agents duh. Reminds me of the classic silicon valley startup trope that most tech bro’s are basically trying to pitch a product that replaces their mother.

Exactly. When you're spending money, you want to be in the loop. It's why the Alexa Echo devices as media for Amazon purchases never really worked out. Amazon had two conflicting aims. They wanted to race to the bottom with their increasingly shady vendors which eroded trust, while also positioning themselves and their devices to be trusted agents of purchases. Of course no one wants to buy anything sight unseen through them.

We will get to the point where you'll trust it to catch those issues. The latest models can already do it sometimes for code, like explain that it considered various options and the tradeoffs between them.

'Hold that thought'

Seinfeld wasn't at all well known in Italy when I lived there, but WTR was.

IIRC Seinfeld aired on Tele Montecarlo/La 7, while WTR aired on Italia 1, the difference in audience was massive.

I seem to recall it aired at some kind of weird time too. It didn't seem to be very widely known or watched.

Well "Europeans on Twitter" are probably the kind of people who look at the owner of the site posting about a homeland for white people and that kind of thing and aren't bothered too much by it.

Unless you want to build more sprawl-oriented social housing, you'd still need, in most American cities, to reform zoning codes and building codes (single stair and elevator reform) to get Vienna style social housing.

It's a "yes, and" problem though, mostly. Let the market build what it can, and if you want to pursue social housing, do that too - just don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good and delay the reforms while you try and put together all the social housing pieces.

The problem in San Francisco is NIMBYism, where supposed 'socialists' try and stop purely below market rate housing because it's the wrong shape or size or something.

Of course. they have enormous mortgages and anything which drags down the absurd value of their home is an ominous threat.

Blaming "fake socialists" or "nimbyism" doesnt change the fact that they are entirely rational actors in an economic system that is rigged to make the wealthy wealthier (e.g. with prop 13).

In fact, it's a clever rhetorical device to conceal the root cause and displace criticism towards the main culprits and, well, you fell for it.

NIMBYs exist throughout the US, even in states without Prop 13 or similar things.

Some of them are even renters.

No one is trying to conceal the problems with unfair tax systems - indeed, the people who spend time advocating for housing are probably your most likely allies in trying to fix it.

Tech has never been perfect, but there was a time when it felt more hopeful and optimistic and about building cool stuff. There's always been give and take with the money side of things that's necessary to keep fueling the building, but it feels like it all kind of went off the rails somewhere.

I'd be fine with earning less (we're pretty frugal) to work in that kind of environment with good people.

You'd also be a lot more likely to keep that kind of job post-crash, by all means take it if you find one.

There's a Bigfoot trap in Oregon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigfoot_trap

I wonder if it gets a mention? It does get a mention in the recent Bruce Campbell movie https://www.ernieandemma.com/ - which looks to be even more poignant with his recent cancer diagnosis :-(

Obviously Bigfoot is too smart to fall for those traps

> The trap's door has been bolted open since 1980 for visitor safety.

"visitor safety" indeed!

Human or bear?

"There is a serious overlap in the intelligence of our smartest bears, and the dumbest tourists." - a National Park Ranger

They were baiting it with carcasses! Everyone knows Bigfoots are vegans and prefer chai soy milk lattes.

As soy is a nut, the chai soy milk lattes may have work. He's an Omnivore, not a Necrophage:

> Bigfoot are omnivores, "They eat both plants and meat. I've seen accounts that they eat everything from berries, leaves, nuts, and fruit to salmon, rabbit, elk, and bear

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigfoot

In the episode, it's not what I'd call a southern accent.