techcode

Indeed it's both not ethical not legal in most parts of the world.

My educated guess it that only reason it happens anywhere at all - is within "smaller" websites/companies which:

a) don't know better because they are mostly just tech people that didn't heave to deal with big company bureaucracy, they have no legal/ethics team - or (hopefully not big chunk) they do know it's not legal, but count on ...

b) they are small enough that no one bothers to deal with until amount of money company is making suddenly makes it go over whatever amount makes it worth the effort

AFAIK none of my own work, nor work of the people I was team lead off was unethical, harmful or illegal. Neither in EU or elsewhere.

Before jumping to further conclusions - I would encourage you to look at actual differences in website before and post that announcement you're referring to. Wayback archive should work - though some of this stuff might have not be shown, or shown differently to bots; otherwise over years there have been a bunch of articles covering persuasive techniques with examples/screenshots of Booking.com.

And then perhaps even ask specific questions based on those observations - and maybe, just maybe someone can answer them without actually breaking the law.

Though since it would be against the law for me to give too many technical and business details (employment contract, regulations related to publicly traded companies ...etc). Only way I can think off for you to get a peak into implementation - would be to become a colleague.

And finally - I will agree with you on that last sentence. It's never too late to reflect on things. That includes not acting surprised (or in denial) to hear that some "big company" you thought is doing bad things - is not.

Oh and definitely keep up with the good fight. Based on news with actual specific details of lawsuits and outcomes (some of which I initially only found about when they were used as examples in internal ethics workshops & trainings). There's a lot of companies out there that should be getting more scrutiny both internally and externally.

That's really good thinking - and both wishlist and "bought x times" are nice representation of the real world "social proof" where you're walking next to a store or bakery and see a long queue of people waiting to enter and making you notice they are selling something good/cheap/etc.

Generally going from those towards the "X other people are considering it", and even further towards "only X left" (on their own, and especially both in combination) puts you more towards different effect of "scarcity". And that's what seems to be more polarizing with people.

Besides majority of people not noticing/caring/etc ("bell curve"). Two opposite camps are where one is really not liking it (especially when they think it's not real and just fake scarcity) and vocal about it. Meanwhile on the other end are people finding it valuable info to know, and they tend to be much less vocal. (Which, yeah - is actually same with just about everything else)

Those that find it valuable seem to be people that want specific things. Not just specific apartment/hotel, but also think of cases like parents with school age kids being limited to specific dates due to school holidays or things of that nature.

For smaller websites the "send ping every X seconds", and/or combo of that with "onLoad do +1, onUnload do -1" might work.

Though for really big websites - with millions of users making requests to 1000s of web/api servers spread across DCs in different continents ... It's indeed a variant of what you said.

Analytics can give you confidence to say that X percentile of people spend at least Z seconds/minutes on given page. So you can use initial request + TTL value of Z.

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PS All of the above is at least order of magnitude (if not even bigger) more complex when your page is not simply one physical product, and instead you've got "product x between Start and End dates" since that's millions of products x millions of combinations.

I hope you realize that picking out only bits and pieces that fit your predetermined view is basically just reinforcing your personal biases, and not bringing you to see the bigger picture.

Though as long as someone doing that is impacting only that person - I don't mind.

However, I would appreciate if you didn't follow taking those bits and pieces you've selected. And then taking them out of context that I've said/wrote them in - re-combining them in ways that would bias others reading just your "curated" version.

If you go down that route of thinking - any online marketplace (e.g.: Amazon, mobile app stores, Steam ...) and even offline your local green market and groceries store are all screwing everyone over.

Not sure what illegal consumer practice are you talking about.

Reading through the points from the page you posted - I think internally only actions related to that were basically to add more info (e.g. popup/hover or just "on our site") to clarify to people that same as every other marketplace on the Internet ... coughAmazoncough ...

Things we show are just things we know about and have in our "inventory".

And actually after some of those changes - I believe some customers started to complain that reminding them how "X other people are looking at {name of hotel} for your dates" felt much creepier than "X other people are looking at {name of hotel}" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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PS. Only reason I wrote a quoted "inventory" is that unlike physical goods with real stock. When you're renting accommodation - on top of physical rooms, there's extra dimensions due to different dates, meals (because in many hotels restaurant can't support everyone having breakfast, half/full board/meals) ...etc.

Thanks ♡ And imagine that our mission is to have everyone feel that same way.

Obviously as middle man you take some part of the pie - though idea is that it's worth for everyone.

BTW - it's not that common to meet customer with 100+ reservations. So excuse me for asking - what do you think of the changes in the account area (My Trips)?

I was part of "Consumer Psychology Team" at Booking.com for years. That team was/is one way or another involved in pretty much every functionality you mentioned (among other things I did in particular latest version/implementation of "X other people looking at this") and TL;DR: All of it is real - and majority of people don't find it as annoying as you, many even find it helpful

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While I can't really give too many details (BTW I still work at Booking - just moved teams).

I did the real time (it's a stream so technically that's "near real time") processing back-end which collects all the "views events", uses anonymous unique user identifiers to make sure it's truly not counting duplicates, bots are also excluded ...etc. And result is a reverse index of sorts.

On the FE side (technically still BE so think backend for frontend) as part of producing message (or not) we literally do a real-time query on that reversed index to be sure that even if looking only at count it's "1" - we want to be sure that it's not you.

As of things like "Only X left" - that's literally how many rooms we've got left to offer to you for the dates you've entered.

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And speaking generally. Booking.com being 25+ years old global company, one can imagine that company is basically constantly under microscope of various regulators and consumer protection agencies. So even if there was someone that wanted to fake this type of stuff (and that would be going against what they've learned in various mandatory ethics, privacy, legal ... training). Well something like that would've been very short lived.

And with so much money on the line - companies (at least those that don't have walled garden ecosystems and such) actually do look into long term effect of things like Marketing/Sales/Persuasion - because they don't want to annoy potential customers so much that they never come back.

This totally skipped the fact that some (or most of the world?!?) a while ago started to split applied from theoretical sciences/studies.

So in that circle - they would go into slightly different directions.

Being dad of 2 y/o and 9 y/o. Where during lockdown younger kid was strategically getting "screen time" so older kid could study & wife and I could work...

After opening new or commenting on existing similar bugs/features reports to YT/Google, trying things mentioned in other comments (e.g.: /etc/hosts, router or OpenDNS filtering...) as well as (being software engineer) also experimenting with writing something myself.

Somehow accidentally I've ran into https://account.microsoft.com/family/about. And I couldn't believe how something that was produced by company that just "a couple of years ago" was the prime example of how bad big-tech can be (also forced employee performance bell-curve, "Developers! Developers! Developers!" and many other :facepalm" things)...

That M$ company produced something that literally "just fucking works exactly as you would imagine/hope it does".

Seriously - last email I got from M$ is: "Hi {my_name}, {kids_name} wants more screen time today. How much extra time would you like to give them? 15 minutes 30 minutes 1 hour 2 hours 8 hours I don’t want to give more time today"

And the one before that was: "Hi {my_name}, {kids_name} wants more time on this app today. Extra time starts right after it's added.

Roblox

How much extra time would you like to give them? 15 minutes 30 minutes 1 hour 2 hours 3 hours I don’t want to give more time today

To change the daily limits for Roblox, you can go to App and game limits."

For context - to earn "game time" he first did some reading and math today. So latter his "Roblox time" for today (weekend) was first to run out, followed by overall "screen time".

And really the only thing I've been wondering is should we ditch Android devices/tablets and get M$/Windows stuff instead?

Meanwhile the whole "Should we ditch Sony/PS for XBox (which plays along because it's M$)?" is resolved by simply not getting next gen game console and instead kid starting to play and appreciate PC gaming \o/

And yeah - while I didn't have luck with other ideas (e.g. DNS, /etc/hosts ...etc) because of that accounts.youtube.com or say wanting to still allow youtube for the other (toddler which was "home daycaring" because that was closed too) - somehow this Microsoft & Edge thing just works exactly as you would expect it.

And for the occasional "But teacher assigned us to watch this YouTube video" - kid can ask for permission to view particular URL.

That said - at that point we've usually went the route of just opening that particular youtube video on one of parents computers/phones and watching it together (or streaming to living room TV).

The only reliable way I've found to block YouTube (and other things) while still allowing kid to use Google Classroom/Hangouts/etc is:

1) Use Windows 10 with Kids/Family features 2) Switch my kid to use Edge instead of Chrome/Chromium

Nr 1 allows you to block apps (e.g. Calculator, Chrome, Roblox ...) as well as websites - either completely and/or during specific days/times. There's also "screen time" feature - both for the computer/OS itself, as well as per application.

So you can allow kid to have "unlimited" screen time on week days between 8am and 3pm (during "home" school) while block all apps/games except Edge. Then say in the afternoon allow 2 hours for Minecraft/Roblox/etc. Or not allow any - so when they try to launch it you get email/notification and can allow it for the next 5/15 minutes ... 1/3/8 hours.

Nr 2 is mostly because Chrome doesn't care/use Windows block/filter rules. Luckily Edge is basically Chrome that does honor those rules.

The disadvantage due to pregnancy leave is tricky stuff - even with best intentions. (Actually same for any other longer term leave).

Especially if in the X months you are away, someone needs to step in as temp replacement because you're the only person of that role in your team/unit.

Basically - where does that replacement come from? And where does replacement go afterwards?

It's slightly less problematic if you're 1 of say 3 or more people in the same role in the team/unit.

Though even when it works out (say if not temp backfill then you have another place/team/unit to join once you're back, or you weren't only person of that role).

Various changes/pivots likely lead to you coming back to something completely different from what you left, if it's even determined what exactly will you work on once you come back.

As others hinted https://wanna-joke.com/parents-after-a-long-weekend/ is what just about every single parent will confirm.

And to expand on also hinted growth of skills. Having kids - gives one abundance of opportunity to practice growing others.

Obviously you won't be around your kids all the time, nor be there for them forever. So after initial "micromanagement" phase with babies. With toddlers and older you start switching towards mentoring and coaching.

Which overlaps (not specific things, but concepts) with managers/leaders growing employees.

I'm wondering if there's similar type of analysis for renewable electricity sources like solar panels and windmills?

There's been criticism regarding longetivity and degradation of performance of solar panels.

And windmills have been criticized for amount of concrete (and with that CO2) that base requires, and same as for solar panels about longetivity, being hard to recycle ...

Ah crap - and it's exactly those French and German speaking countries that generally don't speak great (or like at all) English.

As the other commenter already said "Puno uspeha!"

Oh wow...

While being Serbian, with family from Croatia (some of which are now there dealing with corrupt government employees accepting faked papers to transfer land ownership). Means I totally get the pessimistic and corruption focused view of the world/governments/etc.

We just don't have enough info to go into such tabloid level direction for this guy.

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Maybe his wife or one of grandparents came from N.Z. and he can live/work there without visa?!?

Maybe it's intra-company transfer (like how many Googlers from "east" start in EU/Canada, and then get transferred to USA after a year or two) there?

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Either way - it's still pretty shitty "Do as I say, not as I do" behavior from the guy, and Google itself (Hey, here are great tools for remote collaboration with your team - as long as you're not a Google employee).

Then you have to go further back in order to find instances of fun/excitement/engagement.

While I haven't been keeping a detailed log - I did recall last time (and then several more before that) when I was able to put important/urgent project or work on hold to do something else that's more fun and has been itching for a while.

Literally last time was 3+ years ago - when I said to my team/manager "I know this project is behind/urgent, and to continue for a while longer on it, I'll take 2-3 days to work on this other thing that's not in our scope".

Since then it's been a stream of such behind/urgent/huge/important projects - and only now I realized that I didn't do those "breaks" of working shortly on something else.

How much of your burnout do you think came from kind of flywheel where you feel bad/guilt/stress for not delivering 100%, causing even worse stress so you can deliver even less?

And perhaps also guilt from being behind on work/projects preventing you from relaxing/enjoying previously fun things ...etc

As OP wrote - even things that were previously fun/engaging recently haven't been.

So reevaluating such deep life questions (Do you believe/like what you do) during early stages of burnout is a bad idea.

While there are many potential reasons someone burns out - one thing I've heard/learned from therapist is that almost universally everyone burned out is in a state where your judgement/evaluation/estimation is off. In "fight or flight" and "tunnel vision" type of off.

And due to that you shouldn't make any drastic and far reaching decisions untill you get that somewhat "recalibrated".

I mean sure - decide to overdo exercise for the rest of your life. Just don't decide to get a divorce, sell the house and spend all the money in short amount of time.

And yes it's rather weird to find yourself (temporarily) not working. And instead of going like "Yay I finally have time to do all (or at least some of) those things I always wanted/postponed/did-tiny-chunks-of/etc". Not feeling like any of those things are engaging, recharging or fun.

The best advice I've got is do something more physical and away from screen. Like make/build something (small or bigger), plant some fruit/vegetables, fix some stuff around the house ...

Oh and make sure you get up at same time each morning (having school age kids helps). Early in the day (ideally even from day before, though coming up on during morning) have some specific plan on things you'll do that day. Not necessarily achieve some output - just say "3 hours planting tomatoes in the garden".

Focus on following through with the plan - but without stressing that things take you longer than you expected (hence not plant X tomatoes in 3 hours).

And for relaxing/fun stuff - keep trying a mix of new/different stuff, as well as old things that used to be fun.

Found it - https://eu.usatoday.com/in-depth/opinion/2021/03/22/why-covi...

Does anyone recall/knows/can find an article (blog post) written by USA based investigative journalist that previously looked/reported on various problems/viruses/deaseases accidentally released by CDC and such?

I can't find the article/post now ... I recall it was written just as initial international investigation happened and released statement that "It's highly unlikely Covid-19 originated from Wuhan research center".

Guy mentioned things like lab technician carrying box with vials (with faded labels made using type writer) from one building to another and some of vials breaking (luckily not the one containing smallpox).

And there was also something about specific room/lab (I think in CDC) in new/rebuilt building where door didn't quite have a good seal - being fixed by duct tape.

And we'll the gist of it is - there's a long history even within USA/CDC to downplay/hide such accidents.

That stuff might be part. Though in some combinations the phone (and battery saving settings or such) haven't changed.

And although on one hand going from being at same place for hours if not days (home during covid), and then in just 10-15min reaching another place without any or with really bad cellular reception could be messing with optimizations of location sharing.

I recall few situations where both wife and I were next to each other, both phones running google maps at the moment, each hitting on refreshing/retrying getting the other ones location - and thing still showing us as currently offline.

Actually I just realized that from lock screen of my phone, tapping on emergency also shows "What's my location".

Besides GPS, it sadly also needs/uses internet connection and then shows street address.

Oh and last time our car died in some small town with unpronounceable German name - once I called insurance (with roadside assistance module), operator sent me SMS, shortened URL opened up web browser and page asked for permission to get GPS access, and 10 seconds later she had exact Lat/Long on her screen.

If someone wants to get idea of how hard it can be, without leaving house ...

Playing Death Stranding comes close.

Obviously game has realtime location/map, with isometric/topographic view also available, which makes it much easier than it would be in real world - reading off a paper map and guestimating where on that map you might be.

So basically try to check map and plan the route (e.g. reach a river/canyon/house/junction and then go left) ahead, and then either don't check the map (because it shows exactly where you are), or have a screenshot of it from before you left one of drop locations.

Did you notice it started to work worse over last ~2 years?

I shared problems in another comment here - TL;DR: worked seemingly good some 3+ years ago, started being flaky before covid, and seems much worse since covid.

So even if remote area was covered with cellular network, I would not rely on location sharing to show where I am not even where I was.

At some point personal/family emergency meant that instead of "regular" 1800km of both wife and myself driving across Europe - I was about to drive that on my own, all in one go/day. And then few days later back.

To ease her mind - I turned on family/emergency location sharing in Google Maps.

Afterward we realized it's supper convinient way to avoid those "How long before you (and one of kids that either one of us would pick up) are home?" calls.

Although starting shortly before Covid the functionality seems to have taken a nose dive. Like randomly showing one of us is in different city (e.g. Amsterdam vs Rotterdam), or now during Covid often saying "Offline, along with last known location from 1h ago (which tends to be home) and what was battery level at the time".

Actually it seems like some engineer (pre covid) though of optimizing refresh time for Google Maps location sharing based on how much it changes over some recent time.

And now combination of WFH meaning it's same place for majority of the day and that TTL being high, and literally all grocery stores we go to having no cellphone signal (I mean not even SMS can make it) putting us in edge of an edge case.

Just to be sure I'm getting the question - you want to use rsync(1), and you're wondering if there's a good way to guard your code that's using/calling it from underlying changes in rsync options and output, how to read status/progress and such?

Here's an example of library that wraps rsync https://metacpan.org/pod/File::Rsync - you can provide callback functions that will be called for each line of stdout/stderr.

Granted it's in Perl - and chances are your code isn't written in Perl. So if you can't find something similar for your language of choice, and if you can't be bothered with checking out implementation in Perl and rewriting it...

I would suggest searching & checking out "Inline::" namespace (e.g.: https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/Inline-Java/lib/Inline..., and there's also JS, C ...etc).

And next to those - Perlito can "Compile Perl to Java/JavaScript/Python/Ruby/Go/etc" https://github.com/fglock/Perlito. I think we had/have some Perl code running in production Hadoop/JVM.