Most/many government services use the standard design architecture and, although it is not perfect, it is several orders of magnitude better than I've seen elsewhere.
mikeyouse · 48m ago
As mentioned in the piece - the designers at 18F were explicitly following the UKs lead here and were attempting to do just that before being DOGE’d in favor of some political hacks with no understanding or appreciation of the task at hand.
infl8ed · 45m ago
Thanks! Guilty as charged of not fully reading through the piece before commenting :)
ChrisMarshallNY · 54m ago
One of the things about the Apple Store, is that folks want what it sells. Because of that, they put up with it.
Personally, I find the Apple Store to be a pain in the ass. The online version makes me a clickaholic, and the IRL version is very confusing.
Government sites are very different.
I have no opinion on the new position. I don’t know the guy, and don’t use AirBnb. I just find that the insistence on making govt sites “like the Apple Store” to be weird.
In a local mall, we have an Apple Store on one end, and a Microsoft Store on the other.
Aesthetically, they are quite similar.
But the Apple Store is always packed, and the Microsoft Store is always empty.
bigDinosaur · 28m ago
AirBnb has one dark pattern that I'm aware of, that I absolutely despise: the search listings don't display the actual price, but instead the price minus the fees (so not what you'll actually pay). Thankfully some jurisdictions made this illegal (e.g. if you use the Australian AirBnb website you'll get the actual prices), but it's a horrible pattern presumably designed to get people to commit to initiating a booking and thus less likely to not proceed when they see the final total.
I have zero faith that anyone who was okay with that should be in charge of anything for the public good.
2arrs2ells · 1m ago
This has changed - at least for me, in the US, Airbnb shows all-in pricing.
lotsofpulp · 22m ago
> In a local mall, we have an Apple Store on one end, and a Microsoft Store on the other.
I had to check if I had opened an old thread. Microsoft closed all of its stores in Jun 2020.
Why would I ever go to a Microsoft store? To buy a Windows CD?
fakedang · 42m ago
> But the Apple Store is always packed, and the Microsoft Store is always empty.
Perhaps because more people associate Microsoft with software and Apple with hardware? Also there are way more stores selling Windows-based hardware equipment compared to Apple stores.
enobrev · 31m ago
> They realized money could be made, and built a website to let other people do the same thing, through them, not [Craigslist]. This is important: the very first act of creation was an act of piracy.
Unless Craigslist owned the building they lived in, this is a ridiculous assertion.
wahnfrieden · 22m ago
It's poorly written but you've misread the intended meaning. It says that they learned from illicit transactions on Craigslist. And then wanted to replicate that on their own platform.
They've edited a correction:
> They realized money could be made, and built a website to let other people do the same thing, through them, not Craig. Good on them, but renting a space is regulated differently than selling a used couch for many good reasons. What you could once attribute to the same quaint naivety of setting up a lemonade stand, you can no longer. The people who funded them knew better, and eventually, so did they.
This is important: the very first act of creation was an act of piracy.
It usually is, as with Spotify, any AI platform, Uber. While you're under the radar, do the illegal shady stuff to bootstrap, then scale, then regulatory capture (fight piracy).
titanomachy · 27m ago
> President Trump’s appointment of AirBnB co-founder Joe Gebbia as “Chief Design Officer” of the United States is a sickening travesty
Can we reserve words like “sickening” and “travesty” for things a little more serious than this? A war crime is a “sickening travesty”. This is, at worst, a pointless waste of resources.
argomo · 1h ago
The swamp overfloweth. How do we cure the intractable corruption of Trump and his administration? Will the nation be worth a fragment of what it was once we do?
bongodongobob · 56m ago
Sites like these that bury articles like this sure aren't helping. What our administration is doing is beyond just political, it's immoral, dangerous, and plain old fascism. This submission will be flagged within the hour.
hackyhacky · 28m ago
1. It's flagged not because it isn't true, but because that's not what HN is for.
2. Increasing the visibility of articles like this anywhere, but especially on HN, is unlikely to change anyone's mind. At this point, I don't think anyone is going to change their opinion about the current administration no matter what.
3. There are more effective ways to mobilize voters.
Edit: typo
3ternalreturn · 53m ago
It's already been flagged and un-flagged. I'm sure that will keep happening.
wahnfrieden · 51m ago
Unflaggers generally cannot win. The flagging kills vote momentum and when it reemerges unflagged, it's already dropped from the front page and from the new list, its only chances for revival.
loeg · 34m ago
It's on the front page.
delaugust · 48m ago
I still see it on the New list.
3ternalreturn · 1h ago
absolutely savage. no notes.
Mallowram · 1h ago
the disintegration of the federal government.
munchler · 51m ago
Proofreading nit: "soundbyte" should be "soundbite".
wolfcola · 47m ago
hero
havaloc · 46m ago
"AirBnB’s present dominance isn’t the product of real innovation. He and his friends stumbled upon an idea after listing their apartment on Craigslist for under-the-table sublease during a popular conference."
Does the author wish he thought of it first?
delaugust · 43m ago
envy isn't necessary for legitimate critique you know
Pedro_Ribeiro · 21m ago
This barely qualifies as a critique; it's a hit piece with no constructive criticism and some anti-capitalist rhetoric thrown in.
> The National Design Studio is a clear case of nepotism, and they're greatly overpromising. Dismantling 18F was a massive mistake.
There, I just said the same thing but cut out the personal attacks and the ridiculous take that Airbnb was somehow built by thieves (does anything actually believe this?).
I'm surprised this article has stayed up this long. Have the mods read it? It's low signal-to-noise ratio.
erulabs · 41m ago
If you even remotely agree that Airbnb is a simply a clone of Craigslist, I think it’s perfectly sane to absolutely disregard every other opinion you have on running an organization. Absurd thing to imply, and especially absurd that it’s being digested at all on HN.
3ternalreturn · 40m ago
the author didn't write anything like that
anon7000 · 35m ago
Direct quote from article:
> They realized money could be made, and built a website to let other people do the same thing, through them, not Craig[slist]. This is important: the very first act of creation was an act of piracy. What AirBnB does today is no different
Most/many government services use the standard design architecture and, although it is not perfect, it is several orders of magnitude better than I've seen elsewhere.
Personally, I find the Apple Store to be a pain in the ass. The online version makes me a clickaholic, and the IRL version is very confusing.
Government sites are very different.
I have no opinion on the new position. I don’t know the guy, and don’t use AirBnb. I just find that the insistence on making govt sites “like the Apple Store” to be weird.
In a local mall, we have an Apple Store on one end, and a Microsoft Store on the other.
Aesthetically, they are quite similar.
But the Apple Store is always packed, and the Microsoft Store is always empty.
I have zero faith that anyone who was okay with that should be in charge of anything for the public good.
I had to check if I had opened an old thread. Microsoft closed all of its stores in Jun 2020.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Store_(retail)
Perhaps because more people associate Microsoft with software and Apple with hardware? Also there are way more stores selling Windows-based hardware equipment compared to Apple stores.
Unless Craigslist owned the building they lived in, this is a ridiculous assertion.
They've edited a correction:
> They realized money could be made, and built a website to let other people do the same thing, through them, not Craig. Good on them, but renting a space is regulated differently than selling a used couch for many good reasons. What you could once attribute to the same quaint naivety of setting up a lemonade stand, you can no longer. The people who funded them knew better, and eventually, so did they.
America by Design Fail
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45032186
Can we reserve words like “sickening” and “travesty” for things a little more serious than this? A war crime is a “sickening travesty”. This is, at worst, a pointless waste of resources.
2. Increasing the visibility of articles like this anywhere, but especially on HN, is unlikely to change anyone's mind. At this point, I don't think anyone is going to change their opinion about the current administration no matter what.
3. There are more effective ways to mobilize voters.
Edit: typo
Does the author wish he thought of it first?
> The National Design Studio is a clear case of nepotism, and they're greatly overpromising. Dismantling 18F was a massive mistake.
There, I just said the same thing but cut out the personal attacks and the ridiculous take that Airbnb was somehow built by thieves (does anything actually believe this?).
I'm surprised this article has stayed up this long. Have the mods read it? It's low signal-to-noise ratio.
> They realized money could be made, and built a website to let other people do the same thing, through them, not Craig[slist]. This is important: the very first act of creation was an act of piracy. What AirBnB does today is no different