MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
Show HN: I built a short-term rental booking engine you can add to any website
by ryan-a | 2025-04-26 12:09:00+00:00
Hey Guys,

I am the founder of Hostibly.io a direct booking engine and team management tool for short term rental hosts (Airbnb, VRBO etc). I have been working on it for the past 14 months with a few beta users. We recently decided to launch a booking widget you can add directly to your website as a DIY solution, and I wanted to show it off here and get some feedback if possible!

Hostibly was started to address an issue I found when I booked an Airbnb, my host Daniel had one of his cleaners bail on him and he had to rush around to clean the place in time. We got talking about his business when he came to sort it out in person.

He started telling me about the issues he faced, particularly around managing his staff, promoting his listings, getting repeat bookings and all the other side of running an STR business no one tells you about. I offered to find him a solution that he could implement into his business. While researching I realised there are a lot of full-blown PMS systems out there that will do what he wanted however they appeared to be complex and very expensive.

Daniel just wanted a simple system where he could get direct bookings for repeat customers, a unified calendar and a dashboard to manage his team and their cleaning tasks. So I decided to take this project on and out of that Hostibly was born, an affordable direct booking engine and team management tool for hosts.

We envision two kinds of people using our product, one a smaller host who just wants to have their own website and add a booking widget to it so they can start getting direct and repeat bookings. Two larger hosts with multiple listings who want a custom integration with search functionality, other features on their website, and team management tools.

It uses your own Stripe account to process payments, so you don’t have to worry about platform fees or the like, just standard credit card fees. It syncs with iCal links, which while not as reliable as instant API syncing we have found great success in the across 50 listings using this method of syncing bookings. We have been testing and ironing out kinks for many months now, with real people using it to book real holidays!

If you are a host and have been looking for a fee free direct bookings engine or a better way to manage tasks and cleans with your team, please give Hostibly a try! We are still early stages and very keen for feedback!

Please check us out at https://www.hostibly.io/ Demo website for the widget here: https://widgetdemo.hostibly.io/

We have a 14-day free trial with no CC info. Our sign up has the option for you to put in your business info which makes it easier to automatically setup a few things later, but you can skip that if you want!

Thanks, Ryan – Founder P.S any questions feel free to comment or send me an email!
by hermitShell | 2025-04-26 12:09:26+00:00
I enjoyed your thoughts about non linear success and I think there is a sense in which the principle holds. but in both life and Balatro experientially, most win conditions are reached linearly, and the really crazy combos just let you explore endless mode for a couple more rounds. To your point being the owner of a modest business, or just being a good employee makes you ‘win’. But if you want to hit 10x win or 100x win, you need some ridiculous non linear scaling.
by wvh | 2025-04-26 12:09:36+00:00
Having worked with PCI-DSS, some rules seem to only exist to appease insurance. When criticising decisions, you are told that passing audits to be able to claim insurance is the whole game, even when you can demonstrate how you can bypass certain rules in reality. High-level security has more to do with politics (my definition) than purely technical ability. I wouldn't go as far as to call it security theatre, there's too much good stuff there that many don't think about without having a handy list, but the game is certainly a lot bigger than just technical skills and hacker vs anti-hacker.

I still have a nervous tick from having a screen lock timeout "smaller than or equal to 30 seconds".
by Boldened15 | 2025-04-26 12:09:43+00:00
I would count is as decentralized enough if there are a few major players, you have Google, Microsoft, I assume Proton Mail works fine though don’t know as I only use it for burner accounts, iCloud Mail including Apple’s cool private email relay thing. (Maybe other countries have big providers I dunno.) You can use your own domain and switch between providers if needed, and use custom email clients… it’s all the benefits of decentralization to the end user.
by jsheard | 2025-04-26 12:10:03+00:00
The winners of this years PC compos were pretty good too.

Dune by Alcatraz (PC 8kb) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1409&v=24RZGnTAIVM

Hexer by LJ (PC 4kb) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1903&v=soDhYU3Djmw
by MattGaiser | 2025-04-26 12:10:33+00:00
> The government slowed down its investment in and construction of third spaces—such as community centers, parks, and coffee shops—which has left fewer places for organic social interactions.

My anecdotal impression is that people don't really use those that are available very much and the drop in investment is because of that.

I have organized a few events in community halls over the past few years and I have been struck by just how available the event spaces we looked at were. No conflicts, no competing priorities, nobody using any of the other rooms at the same time, etc. Some communities are no longer bothering to have community halls at all, as nobody really uses them.

Where I live, the local community centres are not heavily used. Community social events have dwindled due to being poorly attended. The coffee shops, bars, and pubs have cut seating and replaced it with dedicated pickup areas for those who send in orders or are buying it through a delivery app. Schools have cut all manner of parent activities as the parents don't participate.

Same thing for anything that isn't a flagship park or flagship sports facility. Sure, the top city parks are crowded, but most are pretty empty even on sunny days.

So I have to ask, is there actually much demand for more social interaction? As it seems that the drop is mostly in demand, not supply.
by potato3732842 | 2025-04-26 12:10:52+00:00
Because it's always been happening. If they didn't already have this sort of abuse practiced they wouldn't be so good at it. The ACLU used to write basically the same exact pieces about the DEA

Maybe it's 10% or 20% more prevalent or worse, I can't say from my vantage point, but it's a difference of degree, not a categorical one. You read these stories and they read exactly like all the other stories of how all sorts of "criminals" have been abused by the system for years, especially when they have a political blank check to do do. Making it hard for people to get a lawyer, moving too fast for people to appeal anything or get outside scrutiny is exactly how these systems have always behaved when they feel like it.

Now it's ICE and not DEA or whatever but this is basically the level of abuse with which the authorities have always treated with.

It's nice that the public is paying attention now, but I have very little hope that it will actually lead to systemic changes.
by Vespasian | 2025-04-26 12:11:20+00:00
And that's not a bad instinct which (in a perfect world) drives innovation and lowers prices for customers.

But that only works if the competition can not be simply bought out which requires effective anti trust laws before they get so big that "nobody" can compete.

I firmly believe that it's better to prevent a company from growing too big than breaking it up after the fact.

Almost everybody profits from smooth and constant enforcement.
by gyomu | 2025-04-26 12:11:21+00:00
People are lazy. I’m enrolled in a language class in a foreign country right now - so presumably people taking that class want to actually get good at the language so they can actually live their life here - yet a significant portion of students just turn in ChatGPT essays.

And I don’t mean essays edited with chatGPT, but essays that are clearly verbatim output. When the teacher asks the students to read them out loud to the class, they will stumble upon words and grammar that are way obviously way beyond anything we’ve studied. The utter lack of self awareness is both funny but also really sad.
by foldr | 2025-04-26 12:11:27+00:00
It's mere cynicism to argue that the BBC must exist for propaganda purposes simply because the British government (very indirectly) pays for it.

>we'll probably find out what the current vetting arrangements are in the 2040s

We'll find out because the BBC is subject to public scrutiny. Good luck finding out about the historical vetting arrangements of CNN or Fox news! Or indeed, those of Russia Today.

You only have to look at actual examples of BBC news coverage from the period you mention to see that it wasn't government propaganda with the goal of making the British government look good or expressing some nebulous "British point of view":

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02gbms5

Margret Thatcher, the longest-serving British Prime Minister of the 20th century, hated the BBC. She had 11 years to get rid of it. She couldn't because it's an independent institution and the UK has (imperfectly) a system of democratic norms. Contrary to what you suggest, the government of the day cannot simply direct the BBC's editorial output or defund the BBC if it displeases them.
by alpaca128 | 2025-04-26 12:11:30+00:00
I thought it's clear from my comment that I don't rely on AI for information but to find out how to even search for that information.

> The majority of any 101 book will be enough to understand the jargon

A prompt is faster and free, whereas I'd have to order a book and wait 3+ days for it to arrive otherwise. Because while libraries exist they focus on books in my native language and not English.
by Expurple | 2025-04-26 12:11:56+00:00
> to the recursive definition "There are files, which are made up of 0..n files (blobs) and 0..n subdirectories"

I think, it's more like "a file node contains metadata, a binary blob of data (may be empty), and 0..n child files".

Agreed that this idea is very elegant and removes special cases, nodes become uniform. And the argument for reusing the OS(FS)-provided tree abstraction is compelling.

Although, I can imagine some performance concerns in the real world. If implemented naively and similarly to the existing Unixes, this model results in a lot of small fragmented blocks and separate syscalls+descriptors for dealing with each small file. Also, when the "tree" is actually a sequential array of nameless elements, there's some extra overhead involved with writing and storing made-up file names, as well as sorting by name when reading. This could be remedied by some new API. And a single tree implementation reused by everything could be more cache-friendly than having a userland parser for every "old" format in every application.

Anyway, this mental model is useful and I'd like to see and try out the "automounting" that the author describes.
by matwood | 2025-04-26 12:13:35+00:00
> Reason and truth are the enemy of authoritarian regimes. They want you to believe that truth is subjective. Truth and reason provide alternative legitimacy to authority. If nothing is true, there is no basis on which to judge those in power.

I agree. Only thing I would add is that the 'seeking of truth' is also important. Academics get it wrong all the time, but self correction is built into the process. Finding and fixing errors is important.
by cogman10 | 2025-04-26 12:13:36+00:00
These are often also simply hard clients.

Jones is a good example of this. He cycled through about 20 different lawyers during the sandyhook trials. The reason he was defaulted is because when he was required to produce something, he fire the lawyers (or they'd quit), hire new ones, and invariably in the depositions an answer to "did you bring this document the court mandated that you produce" the answer was "oh, sorry, I'm brand new to this case and didn't know anything about that".

Jones wasn't cooperating with his lawyers.

There are plenty of good lawyers that have no problem representing far right figures. The issue really comes down to those figures being willing to follow their lawyer's advice.

The really bad lawyers simply don't care if their clients ignore their advice.
by jampekka | 2025-04-26 12:14:17+00:00
> Of course, there's no reason that capitalism must to work this way

There kinda is. Capital is allocated to where it makes most profits, and most profits go to companies maximizing shareholder value. In aggregate this makes the profit maximizing companies more likely to survive.

Sure this can be perhaps mitigated by e.g. legislating other duties to companies, but I'd say it's very hard even in theory, let alone in practice, to have capitalism without lopsided profit maximization.
by yapyap | 2025-04-26 12:15:11+00:00
(I think) the thing is that you are not meant to get served content that is specifically for you. (insert this hole was made for me img) [1]) You get someone’s stream of content and you have to decide whether you are okay with the friction between what they are serving and yourself or if you are not and then unsubscribing.

This is the same reason why AI generated music is soulless and isn’t liked. If music can be made especially for you in milliseconds to soothe your mood or to suit your situation it isn’t art, it’s entertainment slop you’re consuming. Art and things created by other people doesn’t have to pander to you, it expresses something they made and you are allowed to observe or interact with it. What caused the creator to create it is what gives it meaning, when you start having to arbitrage your creations with the consumer (to become more appealing for more people) that’s when you start losing credibility and the start of selling out.

A few of the most heinous examples of people selling their dignity for ‘the algorithm’ to recommend their stuff to more consumers are those who impact their content for retention. An easy one is Mr. Beast, entire videos are focused solely around retention. If the team behind that channel finds something that gets them more appeal to their consumerbase they will implement or pivot towards it like there is no tomorrow.

Another scathing example is Jay Z, who - in Moment of Clarity - rapped

“ I dumb down for my audience and double my dollars They criticize me for it, yet they all yell "holla" If skills sold, truth be told, I'd probably be lyrically Talib Kweli Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense But I did 5 mill' – I ain't been rhyming like Common since (Woo!)”

admitting he has compromised his lyrical integrity for money and influence long before “the algorithm” was the all influential thing.

I guess when it comes down to it, it’s easier to make it in the world without integrity, but that definition of making it is more hollow.

1. https://i.imgflip.com/2uyz7f.png
by lotsofpulp | 2025-04-26 12:15:53+00:00
I feel like the opposite has been accentuated for around 15+ years now, especially after the 2008 recession.

The 1990s/2000s felt like "you make your own luck", but since I got out of college, it seems the 90% luck / 10% effort idea is the mainstream (including "who you know is more important than what you know"). Maybe it is just me growing up, or maybe it's the proliferation of access to data due to the internet, such as opportunityatlas.org

I wonder if the increased acceptance of this fact can cause a type of societal malaise.
by throw10920 | 2025-04-26 12:16:27+00:00
Did you read the parent comment?

> so the little Jimny is emitting 146g/km but somehow there is no problem to buy a G-Class that is emitting 358g/km

This is an example of a manufacturer discontinuing a more efficient vehicle while continuing to sell a larger vehicle that is significantly less efficient.

That's the opposite of what you want. So, no, this is not an example of regulation working well.
by tiahura | 2025-04-26 12:16:38+00:00
As an attorney, I’ve found that this isn’t the issue it was a year ago.

1. Use reasoning models and include in the prompt to check the cited cases and verify holdings. 2. Take the draft, run it through ChatGpt deep research , Gemini deep research and Claude , and tell it to verify holdings.

I still double check, for now, but this is catching every hallucination.
by robocat | 2025-04-26 12:17:05+00:00
The context is about when cars reach the poor - your example of someone spending $60k is irrelevant.

A poorer person in NZ spends at most a few thousand on their car. The original retail price is nearly irrelevant by the time it gets to someone poorish (however maintenance/parts costs do matter for old cars).

The financial benefit of a discount mostly goes to the people that own the car while it depreciates as it trickles down.

Context: In New Zealand, the vast majority of people drive second hand cars (mostly imported second hand from Japan). A 20 year old car is regarded as newish in New Zealand. I am well off, so I have two second hand cars, my daily driver is 2006 I think, and I have a 1996 4WD for other stuff. New cars are only bought by the well off.
by skydhash | 2025-04-26 12:17:28+00:00
All good software engineers learn this. Unless you’re actively working in some languages, you don’t need to worry about syntax (that’s why reference manuals are there for). Instead, grow your capacity to solve problems and to define precise solutions. Most time is spent doing that, realizing you don’t have a precise idea of what you’re working on and doing research about it. Writing code is just translating that.

But there are other concerns to code that you ought to pay attention to. Will it works in all cases? Will it run efficiently? Will it be easily understood by someone else? Will it easily be adapted to fit to a change of requirements?
by user3939382 | 2025-04-26 12:17:29+00:00
Neutrality? I’ve never seen an English language wikipedia article on a politically controversial topic that wasn’t the DC establishment/State Dept official take.

They listed Greyzone as an unreputable new source because it’s pro-Palestinian. When you Google the usernames of those who voted to ban them pro Israeli think tanks from DC come up. Wikipedia is a joke when it comes to politics. If you’re lucky you can find the real contours of an issue by seeing who’s been censored and silenced out of the article on the Talk page.
by rollcat | 2025-04-26 12:18:09+00:00
> Who is setting up their own email server when they could instead sign up for one of those?

About the same number of people who set up their own WWW server, modulo the absolute PITA that is email.

Still, federation between GMail, Hotmail, iCloud, Yahoo, ProtonMail, etc does work. You don't have as many choices but it can still feel overwhelming if you're shopping for an alternative. People at Corp & Co use their @corpnco.com addresses daily. My personal email is connected to iCloud, but I can always point my MX elsewhere. Running your own Mastodon instance is costly - however fediverse already leans on smaller interconnecting communities.

Nobody sets up an AS just to run some fiber to their home. Decentralisation and federation just happen at different levels and scales.
by poincaredisk | 2025-04-26 12:20:57+00:00
Change the way you connect - I have some friends I made over the last two years over... IRC. There's something personal about on-line pure text based communication (with bots/bouncers not being allowed). Like really being in a room with everyone else.

For a more modern alternative, discord in a relatively small server should work well. Especially if you connect over a shared interest.
by haswell | 2025-04-26 12:21:27+00:00
I think this is less about demand, and more about habits.

I’ve personally become aware of the fact that I need more social contact. I want to attend events, but never really built the habit of organizing. My ex was always the social instigator, and I didn’t realize how much I relied on that (we were together for most of my adult life).

The more people I talk to about this, the more I hear them lamenting the lack of in-person gatherings.

I think social media has kind of filled the need poorly, and this has changed habits. It’s not what people want, but it has them hooked, and IRL gatherings have suffered as a result.

It reminds me of some of the comments from the younger crowd about TikTok. “I hate it, but I can’t stop using it, because everyone else is on it”.

I really think people want real social interaction but have gotten caught in this social media habit that just barely meets the need. Junk food vs. a nutritious meal.

I suppose at the end of the day you could still say this means demand is down, but I think there are more layers than that.
by FollowingTheDao | 2025-04-26 12:21:37+00:00
"Taken together, these trends suggest that Americans are increasingly retreating inward instead of engaging in communal activities. "

I have seen, over the ,last ten years, a great depression, as in mood. People are getting more depressed, and that leads them inward, and it is driven by anxiety. Most people are "flight" when they are faced with anxiety.

And the capitalism and online world has made isolation much easier and way more "enjoyable". Movies, porn, food, all of it acquired without a single human contact. Now people are clamoring they want to work from home as well, making loneliness even more available.

This is the outcome of hypercapitalism[1]. Extracting labor from the humans while feeding it all its' needs through the tubes of the internet.

I am writing this in a Starbucks right now. Ten years ago I would find couches and comfy chairs in every store. Now? stiff Uncomfortable chairs in a cold industrial setting, the store and counter set up for rushed to go orders.

This is not about something being wrong with people, it is a system that is tearing us apart.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/978047067059...
by tycho-newman | 2025-04-26 12:21:52+00:00
It's not lost, just no longer necessary for survival.

Also, bad communities fail. They should be allowed to fail.

Until recently, individuals needed to be part of some sort of kinship group to get their needs met and to survive. To communicate with anyone in near real time you had to be close by.

We have managed to engineer a society where individuals can survive "on their own" - basically outside their kinship groups. This is possible thanks to globe-spanning networks of communication and trade.

Kinship groups are great, but many of them have painful costs. Some 60 percent of Americans, for example, suffered an adverse childhood experience in kinship groups. Some of these could not be avoided - like a loved one's untimely death. Most of these negative experiences were intent or neglect by kinship group members.

If your early experiences of kinship groups are negative, you are less likely to seek out other human connection. You have learned that your kinship group is not reliable. If people genetically close to you cannot be relied on, then why should it be different for strangers?

The connections you do find tend to be focused on your interests, and those people don't need to be nearby for you to have a strong connection. But you still have your prior experiences keeping you skeptical of human reliability.

Personally, I sympathize with everyone who is sad about communities becoming fragmented.

I think, though, that if these communities were as supportive, inclusive, or beneficial as they imagine themselves to be this would not be a problem.

Bad communities should be allowed to fail. That is probably what is happening here.