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While I agree with the general sentiment, the problem here isn't developers not being familiar with statistics, it's the simple fact all of this is profit drive

While I agree with the general sentiment, the problem here isn't developers not being familiar with statistics, it's the simple fact all of this is profit driven most of the time. I tried to purchase tickets for an event last week. I had to go through Ticketmaster as it was the only official way. They forced me to verify my account using a phone number, but whoever they were using for messages wasn't able to deliver a code to my number. I tried a few numbers from our household and they all failed. Searching for this issue yielded a bunch of results, so it was definitely a known issue, but there wasn't anything I could do, really. To them, it's simple math. Another SMS provider that covers my (tiny EU) country might be more expensive. They might be avoiding scammers that used my mobile operator in the past. Whatever it is, it would probably cost them more than they lose in ticket sales. Without some government entity to force them, they don't give a shit about me being able to see an event.

Certhas 2mo ago
Infrastructure should not be (purely) profit driven. To improve profits for train operators, the simple option is to cut lines serving small and rural communities. The economics are much worse than serving large cities. Same for cell coverage and broadband internet. Most profitable is to just not cover a few percent of the population. There is a point where technology becomes foundational for participating in society. And then it needs to be regulated to be available to everyone.
- groundzeros2015 2mo ago
  > the simple option is to cut lines serving small and rural communities We don’t see this in practice to though. Three examples: 1. In the airline industry big airlines don’t go everywhere for this reasons but small local airlines fill the gap due to market opportunity. 2. Changes in technology enable big companies to operate more efficiently. See starlink. 3. Big companies know that ubiquity is important for their brand. In practice Amazon will deliver packages across the US.
  - miltonlost 2mo ago
    You cut off the OP's sentence of that being examples for "Rail companies" and then added your own examples. Please be better at comprehesion and editing comments "In practice Amazon will deliver packages across the US." You know they use the Postal Service for last miles often? And the Postal Service is required by law to service far-flung places. So Amazon is only, in practice, delivering packages to those places due to USPS.
    - groundzeros2015 2mo ago
      > then added your own examples. Please be better at comprehesion and editing comments Did you miss the part where the conversation was about Ticketmaster and rails were used as an analogy for understanding the problem? > So Amazon is only, in practice, delivering packages to those places due to USPS. I don’t think that’s true as I can buy many things on Amazon which cannot be shipped via USPS.
  - card_zero 2mo ago
    Meanwhile in Britain in the 1960s, this cost-cutting closure of local rail lines did happen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts ... at a time when the trains and rail infrastructure had been publicly owned for about 15 years already. It doesn't dispel the incentive.
    - groundzeros2015 2mo ago
      I’m not arguing a rail has never been closed. I’m arguing that being a small difficult market doesn’t exclude you from being served by marketed forces. Did nobody ever operate rail to those cities again due to them being rural?
      - card_zero 2mo ago
        Rural cities? Come again? What was demolished remained demolished, yes. Unclear on your point. Oh I see (thanks to that edit). I mean, I agree with you. This is just the additional amusing detail that government-run services are still subject to a sort of dulled and homogenous version of market forces, which can be worse for small local concerns because it's less responsive. Though, admittedly, a giant corporation can simulate government very well, and can be just as crap.
- account42 2mo ago
  Yes, we need to update what is considered essential infrastructure in the digital age.
groundzeros2015 2mo ago
I think when you say “profit motivated” the underlying principle is actually utilitarianism; doing the most good for the most people, for which profit Is merely an imperfect proxy.
- autoexec 2mo ago
  “profit motivated” means taking as much as possible while giving as little as possible in return. The ideal situation for a profit motivated company would be collecting all of the money people have and delivering nothing. Thieves are also profit motivated.
  - groundzeros2015 2mo ago
    And the ideal consumer takes everything and pays nothing. Let’s see where they meet!
- MatekCopatek 2mo ago
  This might be a cynical take, but I doubt Ticketmaster (and most of these other examples) are motivated by doing the most good. Their underlying principle is extracting the most value for shareholders at any cost. Some people argue even that behavior ends up producing the most good, but I cannot accept that level of mental gymnastics.
  - groundzeros2015 2mo ago
    There is a limited amount of engineering resources. Don’t you agree they should try to use them for the benefit of the most people? That’s not to say they should exclude groups. But a small minority path probably gets less work than a main path. Would you agree these prudent or not?
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      Is Ticketmaster bottlenecked by engineering resources?
ryandrake 2mo ago
Yea, when this topic comes up on HN, a lot of the usual excuses appear: It's hard to write software that works everywhere! It takes too long to test on more than one browser! It's too expensive to hire someone to port to X platform! We're trying to bootstrap in a hurry--there's no time to support Y people! Everybody should just upgrade to the latest, why should we test on older systems? These are attitudes come from the privilege of never having been in that 2% of users, and I think we have them until that one day we end up being in that 2% and can't use the system ourselves. When I wrote iOS apps, I was constantly infuriated by the tech lead's and product management's insistence to only support the current major OS version and the previous one. Engineers would take time out of their day to rip out support for iOS X-2 (rather than fixing bugs, working on performance or features)! Code that wasn't in the way of refactors, wasn't really buggy, wasn't harming anything architecturally. To me, it just looked like Griefing The User. I didn't get it and I still don't. Now, I have a 8 year old phone, and lo and behold, half of the apps in the AppStore don't even work on it anymore because of this attitude, so I guess I'm firmly in the 2%.
- HWR_14 2mo ago
  You know this, but Apple also locks you into only supporting so old a phone when you submit to the App Store.

Certhas 2mo ago

Infrastructure should not be (purely) profit driven. To improve profits for train operators, the simple option is to cut lines serving small and rural communities. The economics are much worse than serving large cities. Same for cell coverage and broadband internet. Most profitable is to just not cover a few percent of the population. There is a point where technology becomes foundational for participating in society. And then it needs to be regulated to be available to everyone.

groundzeros2015 2mo ago
> the simple option is to cut lines serving small and rural communities We don’t see this in practice to though. Three examples: 1. In the airline industry big airlines don’t go everywhere for this reasons but small local airlines fill the gap due to market opportunity. 2. Changes in technology enable big companies to operate more efficiently. See starlink. 3. Big companies know that ubiquity is important for their brand. In practice Amazon will deliver packages across the US.
- miltonlost 2mo ago
  You cut off the OP's sentence of that being examples for "Rail companies" and then added your own examples. Please be better at comprehesion and editing comments "In practice Amazon will deliver packages across the US." You know they use the Postal Service for last miles often? And the Postal Service is required by law to service far-flung places. So Amazon is only, in practice, delivering packages to those places due to USPS.
  - groundzeros2015 2mo ago
    > then added your own examples. Please be better at comprehesion and editing comments Did you miss the part where the conversation was about Ticketmaster and rails were used as an analogy for understanding the problem? > So Amazon is only, in practice, delivering packages to those places due to USPS. I don’t think that’s true as I can buy many things on Amazon which cannot be shipped via USPS.
- card_zero 2mo ago
  Meanwhile in Britain in the 1960s, this cost-cutting closure of local rail lines did happen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts ... at a time when the trains and rail infrastructure had been publicly owned for about 15 years already. It doesn't dispel the incentive.
  - groundzeros2015 2mo ago
    I’m not arguing a rail has never been closed. I’m arguing that being a small difficult market doesn’t exclude you from being served by marketed forces. Did nobody ever operate rail to those cities again due to them being rural?
    - card_zero 2mo ago
      Rural cities? Come again? What was demolished remained demolished, yes. Unclear on your point. Oh I see (thanks to that edit). I mean, I agree with you. This is just the additional amusing detail that government-run services are still subject to a sort of dulled and homogenous version of market forces, which can be worse for small local concerns because it's less responsive. Though, admittedly, a giant corporation can simulate government very well, and can be just as crap.
account42 2mo ago
Yes, we need to update what is considered essential infrastructure in the digital age.

groundzeros2015 2mo ago

I think when you say “profit motivated” the underlying principle is actually utilitarianism; doing the most good for the most people, for which profit Is merely an imperfect proxy.

autoexec 2mo ago
“profit motivated” means taking as much as possible while giving as little as possible in return. The ideal situation for a profit motivated company would be collecting all of the money people have and delivering nothing. Thieves are also profit motivated.
- groundzeros2015 2mo ago
  And the ideal consumer takes everything and pays nothing. Let’s see where they meet!
MatekCopatek 2mo ago
This might be a cynical take, but I doubt Ticketmaster (and most of these other examples) are motivated by doing the most good. Their underlying principle is extracting the most value for shareholders at any cost. Some people argue even that behavior ends up producing the most good, but I cannot accept that level of mental gymnastics.
- groundzeros2015 2mo ago
  There is a limited amount of engineering resources. Don’t you agree they should try to use them for the benefit of the most people? That’s not to say they should exclude groups. But a small minority path probably gets less work than a main path. Would you agree these prudent or not?
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Is Ticketmaster bottlenecked by engineering resources?

ryandrake 2mo ago

Yea, when this topic comes up on HN, a lot of the usual excuses appear: It's hard to write software that works everywhere! It takes too long to test on more than one browser! It's too expensive to hire someone to port to X platform! We're trying to bootstrap in a hurry--there's no time to support Y people! Everybody should just upgrade to the latest, why should we test on older systems? These are attitudes come from the privilege of never having been in that 2% of users, and I think we have them until that one day we end up being in that 2% and can't use the system ourselves. When I wrote iOS apps, I was constantly infuriated by the tech lead's and product management's insistence to only support the current major OS version and the previous one. Engineers would take time out of their day to rip out support for iOS X-2 (rather than fixing bugs, working on performance or features)! Code that wasn't in the way of refactors, wasn't really buggy, wasn't harming anything architecturally. To me, it just looked like Griefing The User. I didn't get it and I still don't. Now, I have a 8 year old phone, and lo and behold, half of the apps in the AppStore don't even work on it anymore because of this attitude, so I guess I'm firmly in the 2%.

HWR_14 2mo ago
You know this, but Apple also locks you into only supporting so old a phone when you submit to the App Store.