Do you worry that there is more or less an arms race with competitors like arvie.com, and the entire industry is basically just adding service fees on top the costs of booking a site?
Not sure there is a fair approach beyond a lottery. Parks could embrace demand, and auction the sites off, but that is trading one bias for another.
I don’t think it’s much of an arms race. There are practical limitations to scan frequency that’ll keep most groups operating within the same general constraints.
Added costs/fees are somewhat inevitable. I spent $25 for two small bundles of firewood on my last camping trip. Everyone’s got to make a buck somehow.
I see Campnab as a convenience. Anyone can refresh the booking system manually, but doing so is time consuming. Some folks are happy to pay for that convenience.
Campsite availability is largely a supply and demand problem concentrated around busy centers and amplified during certain times. Drive a little further and go on the weekdays and it isn’t as much of an issue.
Perhaps lotteries would help. Some permits have been switched to this approach. I’m not sure how practical they are to implement across the board, though.
Personally, I don’t think any solution will actually solve this problem. That said, a lot of campsites do sit unused when folks fail to cancel. Reminders a week in advance of a trip could help with this. Some areas also have policies that discourage no-shows.
Thanks! I follow a few of these sorts of subreddits and do find them useful. It feels like less of a community than HN, though. I also like the text-only approach on HN. It just seems easier for my pea-brain to a linear list of items without the thumbnails and such.
My friend and I did something like what you propose (selling services and working on a product). It was hard and slowed us down a lot.
Consulting work is a business all to itself. Tacking a startup on top of that just complicates matters. Got a family? Well, you won’t see them much.
If I were in the same situation, I’d keep my day job and spend my spare time working on the product. This approach would cover living expenses, compartmentalize my tasks, and allow me to put all of my non-job hours into the product.
Like you, we tried to start our company the “right” way. That too was a mistake. If I had it to do over again, I’d skip the lawyers and accountants and just try to make a product people wanted to buy.
If you can achieve product-market fit, funding and all of the business stuff can get sorted out reasonably easily.
I’m happy to see this launch, Andrei! You all have dedicated so many years to working on chat for business. I’m excited to see this out there, and watch this next chapter in your story unfold!
My friend and I built https://pixaver.com. It doesn’t address all of the points you note here, but it does offer some piece of mind if we get locked out of Google Photos.
Congrats on building such a nice tool! I‘d gladly pay for something self-hosted, or some tool that allows me to download it on my own hardware.
I don‘t want to solve the problem by
A) paying even more money every month, much less even more than for Google Drive & Photos storage itself!
B) uploading my personal photos to a completely untrusted provider (at least I can trust Google to some degree to not leak my photos to any stranger on the internet).
Those are fair points and thoughts I’d probably have myself. I’m not trying to sell you on this, but here are my responses to your two notes.
The first is that we know it’s more expensive than Google Photos storage. That’s in part so that we can actually fund development. As a small operation we can’t run it as a loss-leader or make up revenue from other channels like Google could.
The second is that we’ve been somewhat vetted through Google’s application process. We’ve also been building things for the web for 20+ years. Admittedly, trust is hard to earn from folks you don’t know, but we are decent people.
To be honest, Pixaver probably isn’t right for most folks on HN as most here are pretty technical. (I’m just a daily reader here, and spotted this thread, so I thought I’d share it.)
We’ve geared this more for people like my mom who don’t want to set up a local hard drive or do anything even remotely technical. For someone like her, it’s a couple of clicks to having a second backup without needing to do anything additional. :-)
We’ve thought about it, but I think it’ll be a while before we’re able to get to that. We also run two other products, and we’re just two people. So, we’re already spread a bit thin.
Let me know if that happens! I'd love an easy way to make sure my data is safe in the event Google randomly bans me :) I'll check out Pixaver soon to see if it'd work as a backup for my Google Photos!
Nice! If you do try it, please let us know how the experience goes for you. I think the onboarding process is a bit intimidating given the (necessary, yet lengthy) permissions we request.
I’ll mention that you’d be interested in more options around backups to @shelkie. Like I said, I don’t think we can make this happen now, but it’s good to have a sense for what others might find useful.
Fair enough. I understand your point. Also, there are plenty of really good type families available for free. From what I’ve seen, though, pricing based on traffic is pretty common among those selling type.
Plus, these are single purchases, not recurring fees. For most organizations that makes these costs trivial. (I.e., License the font indefinitely for about the same cost as an hour of a consultant’s time.)
I felt differently. For me, this article echoed the same ideas which I’ve often had about death, but I rarely hear others articulate these ideas in this way.
Many are obsessed with the notion of an afterlife and over-prioritize around that possibility. I kind of like the idea that I continue in some form, even if I’m not conscious.
As for “raging against dying”, fair enough. I’m just not sure that such rage will accomplish anything. At this age, I’d rather accept the inevitable and make the most of the time I have.
Personally, I do believe in an afterlife. And I apologize if this reply gets a little mystical, but the topic warrants it :)
When I said “raging against dying”, I really mean making peace with the thought of death. I strongly believe it isn’t something to be swept under the rug, but rather something to be wrestled with, thought through, and truly considered, with genuine honesty. In a sense, there can be nothing more important.
Your individual consciousness is special, it is unique. You have memories and experiences. Deep thought, shallow urges, appreciation for beauty, relationships, love.
If you believe that consciousness ends at death, each time it does, its like a whole universe winks out. And everything that consciousness experienced is meaningless. If this is true, then no amount of self generated “meaning in this life” can make up for even an ounce of pain this consciousness experienced - because that pain was experienced for nothing. No “meaning” endures. It’s universe ended when it did.
But in your heart you know that isn’t true. There are answers if you seek. But giving up and not thinking about death is nothing but a cop out.
I feel like you’re projecting your beliefs/values on me. We’ve never met, nor shared any interaction outside of this comment thread. I think it’s improbable that you have any sense for what’s in my heart or what I believe to be true.
That is true and I apologize for the projection. I should have really said “one” instead of “you”.
As in -
“But in one’s heart one knows that isn’t true. There are answers if one seeks. But giving up and not thinking about death is nothing but a cop out.”
But I believe your point still stands, even if it is one we may disagree on.
I’m a total hack when it comes to type design, so, I’m still pretty unsure of this one. I go from seeing all of the problems in it, to thinking: “hey—that looks OK.”
That perspective helped me see that imperfections might be part of a thing’s appeal. This is a very different viewpoint for me. I tend to “need” everything pixel perfect—but I’m not sure that’s as important as I once thought.
