themagyar

Recommend using service like clerk to make signup/in easy. (https://clerk.com/pricing). Free for first 10k users.

No, never got email. Auto-marking words makes more sense.

This is a great, and b/c pulling from podcasts, can handle hard languages (eg. Hungarian). Smart. Some thoughts:

- Buttons to click thru examples for words, waiting is slow

- Partial load of podcast screen (for speed)

- Playback controls for podcasts would be nice (skip, ff, 1.5x)

- Define word in hover would probably be faster/more seamless + pronunciation

- Search bar for known words + alphabetical.. (OR if heard N times -> known)

Also, get the avoidance of gamification, but would like some sort of progress tracking (mins listened, lexicon, % of top 1k frequency). Will play some more when signups work.

BonBook optimizes for efficiency. What's your use case?

Maybe; BonBook never will.

Appreciate the context. That's the plan, cheers.

Logs look clear.. what are you searching for?

Beta turns booking into two clicks.

Beta (and sim) intentionally does not search them.

The sim has limited ability to make it lightweight, free from signup and responsive in ~15 seconds.

Beta is much more capable.

GFlights is not used, link is there for comparison.

Depends on the detail. There are a few simple ones (eg flightlab).

Yes, this is a bit more complicated but on the roadmap. Great suggestion.

Yes, the internet did in fact drop the ball. Fix is live.

We had a bug with one of our external provides earier this morning, but its now resolved.

The beta is email-based booking, changes and more. The demo simulates the search experience via email.

Checkout link in beta provides details. But you can request both :)

UPDATE: We're back!

Hi HN: Looks like LLM API calls started being rejected. Working on a solution...

Can't handle multi-date (yet).

Noted re the EU. Though there's another side to it as well.

BonBook does more than just booking (eg. one-email changes) and many budget airlines make this difficult with their restrictive fare rules.

Thanks. Definitely more complicate than originally imagined.

A lot of this can be done automatically with time (eg, already built an auto-seat algo), but there is a reason the beta is focused on frequent fliers solving logistics problems and making repeatable decisions :) That said, think you'll be surprised by how well it optimizes already.

During beta onboarding, you make an account with all travel info (no need to parse this). Travelers also confirm their booking before purchase ("checkout" links to a page with all flight info in a lot more detail instead of 'access' link). And BonBook sends a confirmation email post-booking (required by federal regs).

Can share a bit of background: (TLDR; airlines want to keep more profit so are witholding some fares.)

A system called GDS (Global Distribution System) was built in the 60s as a data transmission standard. Was used by airlines to publish fares (among other things). But it was complicated so aggregators (Sabre, Amadeus, Travelport) were born to ingest all this published data and make it easily searchable.

When travel went online in the late 90s, Online Travel Agents (OTAs) were using this data, and since then most new OTAs have too. (An example; Expedia's first patent minimized GDS searches per customer request, saving them $$).

But, because OTAs take a cut and airline margins are thin, IATA (group of airlines) came up with a new system called NDS (New Distrubution Standard) in mid 2010s. Since its an XML standard that anyone can consume direct, airlines have been trying to push everyone onto NDC by simply not publishing certain tickets via GDS, requiring OTAs to book X% of tickets via NDC and even removing inventory entirely.

Some examples: American trying to go full NDC recently but getting pushback and Turkish Airlines pulling out of Sabre.

Yes, the demo doesn't localize results. And Beta doesn't have currency support just yet but it's on the list.

Beyond the price differences, airlines also grant scoped 'ticketing authority' in jurisdictions (eg. can only sell these tickets in EU or US+Canada etc).

Calling it 'scheduled booking'. It's on the roadmap :)

Worth noting: if you don't specify a time of day in your search, you will see the cheapest flight on that day.

Bots can analyze several thousand flight options (which even the sim does) in a few seconds. So odds are it catches a deal someone might otherwise miss.

Also, because BonBook searches direct w/ airlines, it sees inventory not shared with Google (and regularly has better fares).

The email sim doesn't allow booking but should still work to demo functionality. And it's not geo-limited. What are you seeing?

Yes, its on the roadmap. Zooming out, crypto gets super interesting in terms of industry dynamics.

If you shoot a note to the contact email, will take a look.

Fair, beta isn't for everyone. It's geared towards frequent fliers and people who want to save time. But lets break down the points:

-> cheapest?? Frequent fliers are primarily concerned with time efficiency.

-> shortest/fewest-stopovers/shortest-stops?? These are all synonyms for efficiency.

-> airline preference?? Beta curates based on airline loyalty.

-> lounge preference?? Not handled when booking flights..

-> seat preference?? Furthest forward aisle/window, avoid no-recline, some want extra legroom (beta has an algo that handles this).

-> time of day?? Easy, just add it to your request (works in sim too).

Email sim doesn't have this (can't actually buy tickets).

And haven't built out currency support for the beta yet but its on the list.

Thanks. Built this sim in a few days. Iterating the beta since summer.