I feel like the crowd-sourcing / SEOing / optimization of reviews on the internet has, for all its benefits, made everything too noisy and untrustworthy. I know myself and a lot of other people first search reddit now instead of google because it's impossible to get anything written by a real nonbiased human otherwise.
For similar reasons I've used things like Yelp less and less and tried to use professionally editorialized reviews (Eater, The Infatuation, Bon Appetit, etc) for food, well-known travel sites/bloggers for hotels, etc. There's still some paid incentives there too obviously but I can at least calibrate it to how much I align with the publication.
Heh. The biggest problem I have with Amazon isn't even the fake reviews, it's the people who leave reviews and don't even know what a review is, which is almost all of them.
"My gadget just arrived today and I haven't even used it yet but it looks well-made and I'm sure it will last forever. Five stars!"
I see this ALLOT on AliExpress. I mean what can you expect, but somehow I expected more.
Like why even bother posting if you havn't even opened the package up yet?!
It doesn’t help that google has largely de-prioritized smaller sites.
For better or for worse, my reviews about banks and their products have now been replaced by 10 links in a row to different sub-pages of the bank’s domain.
At least it used to make sure a blog article and a forum would appear on most search term’s top10.
I get it for my “XYZ Bank’s Phone Number - talk to a human now” pages. They probably shouldn’t have out-ranked the bank’s own official site, but the bank’s own website was much less user friendly than my own despite the abuse potential.
Same thing happened with me @ Apple last year. Went through 4 or so interviews with the expectation that it was a remote role. Then the day before the big remote "onsite" I was told they actually wanted someone in-person. So I removed myself from the process. I'll chalk it up to 2021 being a confusing time for everyone - but I felt pretty burned by it.
I take both Jump e-bikes as well as various scooters on the regular. Honestly I prefer Jump Bikes - it's almost always cheaper and faster and safer. I definitely feel more "seen" by cars as well.
That being said, with a scooter you aren't pedaling at all. Even on an e-assist bike you're still getting the adrenaline pumping and sorta sweaty. And a lot of people are afraid of riding bikes in traffic, so while even though bikes are actually much safer, there's a lower mental barrier to entry with scooters. People who almost never ride normal bikes (which is most people) have a harder time adopting the mindset of taking a bike share, e-assist or not.
Plus scooters are straight up more fun to ride with a group of friends - it's a genuinely fun thing to have out of town friends do.
> And a lot of people are afraid of riding bikes in traffic, so while even though bikes are actually much safer, there's a lower mental barrier to entry with scooters.
In LA it's not legal to ride scooters on the sidewalk, so, in theory, people should fear riding scooters too because they're supposed to ride scooters in traffic -- just like the bikes. Of course, in practice, almost everyone rides everything on the sidewalks in LA. Traffic codes are mainly unenforced here.
Oh yeah - I've seen plenty of not-confident-bikers hop on scooters and ride them in the street.
Even though riding a scooter in the street is often fairly terrifying, I feel like there's some kind of easy mental jump that has people getting on without nearly as much reservation as they would have hopping on a bike.
Yeah, taking out-of-town friends to the Emergency Room is fun too. Sorry if I sound snarky, but as a former EMT who has ridden scooters I know the damn things are deathtraps.
Yep, found this out the hard way and almost killed myself. Not clamoring for prohibition though. Also would never climb on one again. My remaining balance on Lime will be forever unused. Best part was the notification asking me to rate my ride which I received as I was regaining consciousness. :)
Wish there was a way to get notified of replies on HN.
Anyway if you happen to see this I was not wearing a helmet, on flat ground. Not proud to say but I was on sidewalk and the rear wheel slipped off the side into soft ground bringing the entire apparatus to a quick halt from prob 15mph. Woke up a few min later with my face on the sidewalk and my legs curled up beneath me. Luckily I was wearing a thick stocking cap which prevented me from more serious injury. Total damage was bruised brow ridge and lip/chin, missing chunk of leg flesh apparently from hitting the handlebars, broken hand, and broken ribs.
It doesn't have to totally replace cars. The ideal is to drop down from a 2 car household to a 1 car household and only use it for bigger errands and trips, or you drop down to a 0 car household and use the money you save on car payments, gas, and insurance to occasionally rent or carshare. The best is for biking/walking/transit to replace daily trips to/from places like work, dinner, downtown, the movies, the park, etc.
Right...I'm somewhat of a "militant" cyclist. I think it has the capacity to radically change how people get to and from work if we can shift people's perspectives regarding using them, and build protected bike lanes/highways/trails that reach all over and access public transportation.
I bike two miles to a train station downtown, and I take the train to a stop in a nearby city, bike two miles to work. Sometimes I bike all the way home (20 miles-ish) for a nice, convenient workout. I also get to work from home two days a week. I read books on the train, I have made great friends on the train. This is the best commute I have ever had, and I will miss it dearly if/when my situation changes.
That said, I can never go completely car free. My wife and I like to go hiking in the mountains or go to the coast with our dogs on the weekend. A car is the only way to get there with our pets.
Yup, our household dropped from 2 cars to 1. We bike & trailer the kid. It may not last forever, but it's worked out pretty well, with the car parked 20+ days a month but ready & willing for travel outside town.
Saved us tons of money, garage space, and if many families in our town did the same thing, traffic would completely evaporate. Yet everyone would still have access to a car for surfing & beach trips.
This doesn't really change much unless you spend much time in/around Philly.
As it currently stands, there is no direct interstate highway between Philly and New York. If you ever take a Bolt or Megabus between the two cities you'll notice it usually takes exit 4 on the Turnpike and drives through suburban Cherry Hill NJ to get into Philly. To get between the two cities you have to exit and take a more local road through NJ for a couple miles. This interchange will connect it so you can go directly from "Pennsylvania 95" to I276 to "NJ Turnpike 95". (Except now all called "95")
If you are driving direct from New York/Boston to DC, you'll in all likelihood never see this interchange and continue take the NJ Turnpike all the way down to Delaware in order to bypass Philadelphia traffic and construction.
This is totally anecdotal, but I (and apparently many other people online) have had pretty terrible experiences with Zelle, moreso than I've noticed with other fintech services.
A family member tried to send me money, which used to work perfectly fine via the bank's older transfer methods (including PopMoney), but once the bank switched to Zelle they somehow lost the transaction completely because my bank had yet to integrate with it.
Zelle's app and help pages were terrible and directed me to create an account and download the app to get the money out. I did that and the money was still nowhere to be found. The bank customer service wouldn't touch it because it was Zelle's fault, and my family member apparently had to wait on hold for an extremely long time with Zelle to get it sorted out and get the money back in their account. I can only imagine how much of a nightmare that could have been for less financially-secure or tech-forward people.
For similar reasons I've used things like Yelp less and less and tried to use professionally editorialized reviews (Eater, The Infatuation, Bon Appetit, etc) for food, well-known travel sites/bloggers for hotels, etc. There's still some paid incentives there too obviously but I can at least calibrate it to how much I align with the publication.