The Saharan ski shop with no customers | Hacker News Reader

The Saharan ski shop with no customers

bbc.com

34 pointsyctay11 comments

This reminds me of the movie "A Grand Day Out", where a robot stuck on the moon discovers skiing in a travel magazine and hits the slopes. It came out in 1989 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104361/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Interesting that this bbc.com link redirects to http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-27493731 and is therefore readable from within the UK. I don't know if this now happens with all bbc.com urls, but my experience in that past has been that all bbc.com pages have been inaccessible from within the UK.

Interesting that for me this bbc.com redirects [http 301] to bbc.co.uk which redirects [JS] to bbc.com (which redirects to bbc.co.uk which…). I'm not joking.

I'm getting the same thing. Infinite loop.

Spent a while diagnosing my router before I realised what was going on. WTF, BBC?

Still working ok for me. Chrome 35.0.1916.114m on Windows with cache cleared. Also working on IE 11.

BBC.com has advertisements, and is targeted at an international (non-UK) audience. Since the BBC is forbidden from showing ads to UK residents, they have to block you (or redirect you) from any .com pages you hit.

Did anyone notice his rationale for why people should brave the dangers? "Death can find you anywhere, even in Europe"

Yes. Very wise.

As a marketer he is missing the point though...

his competition is not Europe...

it is Namibia.

Namibia is just better than Niger... and the Kalahari a bit more pretty than the Sahara. The Kalahari offers a lot of contrasts in the views it provides. I don't think Niger could ever match that. Then you add the danger on top of it... and it's pretty much game over.

Add Botswana to the list, with very nice game reserves (central Kalahari, Okawango, Chobe National park, Victoria Falls close). Expensive, though, but with a very good security track record for tourists.

There was a shop like this in Merzouga, near Erg Chebbi in Morocco. Great big sand dune, people would hike up and ski down. Looked like fun but I didn't have a chance to try it.

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