Airbnb's entire rating scale is now 4.5 to 5.0
You can't make this up ð
I made a site called http://hotelist.com to fix this, it normalizes ratings from booking sites: for example if it's always 4 to 5, it stretches those ratings to 0 to 5, so a 4 becomes a 0, and a 4.5 becomes a 2.5
It also uses scours the web for actual opinions about hotels instead of booking sites and then rates based on that
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2107055382459732293
Read on levels.io â
You can't make this up ð
I made a site called http://hotelist.com to fix this, it normalizes ratings from booking sites: for example if it's always 4 to 5, it stretches those ratings to 0 to 5, so a 4 becomes a 0, and a 4.5 becomes a 2.5
It also uses scours the web for actual opinions about hotels instead of booking sites and then rates based on that
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2107055382459732293
Read on levels.io â
ð2ðĪĄ1
I analyzed the range of ratings on booking sites and it's pretty crazy
Airbnb goes just from 4.5 to 5 with a median of 5!
But most others aren't better, they all range from about 4 to 5, and almost all have a median of 4.25, with not many scores outside of it!
The best site in terms of honest ratings is actually Yelp, whatever they're doing it's working, it shows an actual normal distribution and ratings you can trust
Hotelist itself is a normal distribution with median at 3.5, which was my goal, most stays are average/okay which I'd consider 3.
From https://hotelist.com/stats#rating-by-site
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2107088849163665717
Read on levels.io â
Airbnb goes just from 4.5 to 5 with a median of 5!
But most others aren't better, they all range from about 4 to 5, and almost all have a median of 4.25, with not many scores outside of it!
The best site in terms of honest ratings is actually Yelp, whatever they're doing it's working, it shows an actual normal distribution and ratings you can trust
Hotelist itself is a normal distribution with median at 3.5, which was my goal, most stays are average/okay which I'd consider 3.
From https://hotelist.com/stats#rating-by-site
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2107088849163665717
Read on levels.io â
âĪ1ð1
Airbnb just responded to "reviewgate"
The replies here are literally hundreds of people who got their reviews removed directly contradicting what Airbnb says here
The "policy" they have seems to be to remove a guest's review and rating whenever a host asks for it
I don't get why they don't just fix this? Everyone would love to see Airbnb have honest reviews and ratings you can trust
Short term you might get more bookings if everything is a 4.5 or 4.99 but long term people discover it means nothing and they can't trust your platform and they leave elsewhere
I think they're in some internal gridlock by MBAs who want to see revenue go up, not realizing that they're destroying a company
I hope they fix it!
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2107417249216679999
Read on levels.io â
The replies here are literally hundreds of people who got their reviews removed directly contradicting what Airbnb says here
The "policy" they have seems to be to remove a guest's review and rating whenever a host asks for it
I don't get why they don't just fix this? Everyone would love to see Airbnb have honest reviews and ratings you can trust
Short term you might get more bookings if everything is a 4.5 or 4.99 but long term people discover it means nothing and they can't trust your platform and they leave elsewhere
I think they're in some internal gridlock by MBAs who want to see revenue go up, not realizing that they're destroying a company
I hope they fix it!
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2107417249216679999
Read on levels.io â
ð1ð1ðŊ1
I own land and property in exactly these areas and will keep buying land and property in these areas
This is exactly my post-AGI thesis too
Scarse coastal or mountain land with clean air
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2107501437135520070
Read on levels.io â
This is exactly my post-AGI thesis too
Scarse coastal or mountain land with clean air
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2107501437135520070
Read on levels.io â
ðĐ4ðŋ3
I discovered that 1000s of bots are actively monitoring X for new links posted, probably not just on my account
I noticed when everytime I'd share one of my sites new features or pages, the page would get a bit slower just after posting, then I asked Claude to analyze it
I tweeted a test URL as a reply somewhere deeply hidden in a thread (so not even a main post)
And within 8 seconds there's thousands of crawlers opening the page!
One is a military intelligence firm, that scans social media for breaking news and sells alerts to newsrooms, banks, companies and government, it specifically follows accounts with many followers
Another one is a social media monitoring company that tracks what people say online
I knew of course high frequency trading firms use online news to trade fast on things, but interesting to see it in real life
Twitterbot (X) of course is first, within 0 seconds of sharing, it opens it (probably when I wrote the tweet)
The first non-X bot arrives just 8.40s later, which I think is pretty fast considering it's a reply by me deeply hidden in a thread somewhere
TL;DR they're watching you!
If it's a main tweet (so not a reply), it's even faster
Within 0.4 seconds there is non-X crawlers opening the link!
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2108196980983795995
Read on levels.io â
I noticed when everytime I'd share one of my sites new features or pages, the page would get a bit slower just after posting, then I asked Claude to analyze it
I tweeted a test URL as a reply somewhere deeply hidden in a thread (so not even a main post)
And within 8 seconds there's thousands of crawlers opening the page!
One is a military intelligence firm, that scans social media for breaking news and sells alerts to newsrooms, banks, companies and government, it specifically follows accounts with many followers
Another one is a social media monitoring company that tracks what people say online
I knew of course high frequency trading firms use online news to trade fast on things, but interesting to see it in real life
Twitterbot (X) of course is first, within 0 seconds of sharing, it opens it (probably when I wrote the tweet)
The first non-X bot arrives just 8.40s later, which I think is pretty fast considering it's a reply by me deeply hidden in a thread somewhere
TL;DR they're watching you!
If it's a main tweet (so not a reply), it's even faster
Within 0.4 seconds there is non-X crawlers opening the link!
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2108196980983795995
Read on levels.io â
ðĨ5ðą4ðĪĄ1ð1ðĪŠ1
Software is dead
It's now the era of personal software and everyone just builds what they need whenever they need it I think
Or their AI chat app or AI agent will just build it whenever they need it!
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2109262337500705094
Read on levels.io â
It's now the era of personal software and everyone just builds what they need whenever they need it I think
Or their AI chat app or AI agent will just build it whenever they need it!
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2109262337500705094
Read on levels.io â
âĪ2ð1
A big % of tech people don't get it
Normies won't ask "build me software"
They will ask "I have this photo and I want to manually edit it" and it will spin up a Photoshop clone
They will ask "I need to know if sales are going up or down this quarter from all different ecommerce platforms we use" and it will spin up an analytics dashboard connecting all APIs with scheduled crons that keeps it up to date forever
They already do!
They won't know they're building software because their AI app/agent will do it for them
And then they'll stop using most regular software!
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2109288526726549822
Read on levels.io â
Normies won't ask "build me software"
They will ask "I have this photo and I want to manually edit it" and it will spin up a Photoshop clone
They will ask "I need to know if sales are going up or down this quarter from all different ecommerce platforms we use" and it will spin up an analytics dashboard connecting all APIs with scheduled crons that keeps it up to date forever
They already do!
They won't know they're building software because their AI app/agent will do it for them
And then they'll stop using most regular software!
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2109288526726549822
Read on levels.io â
ðŊ2
I'd call this a bubble in a bubble
Tech people somehow still think normies are not spinning up personal software already
They're not doing it in Claude Code in a terminal like tech people for sure
But their AI chat app is already doing it for them without them even realizing they're building personal software, like generating PDF reports, full web app dashboards and even entire web apps
That will keep getting more advanced and soon ChatGPT will just spin up a Photoshop clone (but ofc only if they need it, preferring to just do their photo edits for them)
Everyone will mostly use personal ephemeral software inside AI chat apps I think
Some software moats will remain like social media (community), ecommerce (think like Shopify and Stripe), etc but they will just be used by AI to build the personal software with
So maybe that's the point here, become a tool agents use to solve their user's problems and charge agents for it (like many are saying)
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2109268364572913953
Read on levels.io â
Tech people somehow still think normies are not spinning up personal software already
They're not doing it in Claude Code in a terminal like tech people for sure
But their AI chat app is already doing it for them without them even realizing they're building personal software, like generating PDF reports, full web app dashboards and even entire web apps
That will keep getting more advanced and soon ChatGPT will just spin up a Photoshop clone (but ofc only if they need it, preferring to just do their photo edits for them)
Everyone will mostly use personal ephemeral software inside AI chat apps I think
Some software moats will remain like social media (community), ecommerce (think like Shopify and Stripe), etc but they will just be used by AI to build the personal software with
So maybe that's the point here, become a tool agents use to solve their user's problems and charge agents for it (like many are saying)
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2109268364572913953
Read on levels.io â
âĪ3ð2ð1ðŊ1
As I posted before, I've cancelled almost all of the SaaS subscriptions for my business
The only thing I still pay for as a business:
- AI inference
- Hetzner server hosting
- Cloudflare storage
- Backblaze backups
- Taxes
Now I started cancelling personal subscriptions too and just vibecoding my own versions or using Claude to take an open source project that does the same and then customize it for myself
All I still pay for personally is:
- Claude Code
- YouTube (content)
- Spotify (content)
- Starlink (internet)
- Phone eSIM
- Personal cloud storage
- Electricity and water (utility)
- Taxes
So if we summarize it for both, I only still pay for:
- AI inference
- Content
- Cloud storage & hosting
- Connectivity
- Electricity & water
- Taxes
So to summarize all my money now goes to:
- Content
- Data centers
- Power plants + water
- Governments
I think we'll be facing a tidal wave of cancellations once people find out how much money they can save
It's just how the economy works
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2109352968122515681
Read on levels.io â
The only thing I still pay for as a business:
- AI inference
- Hetzner server hosting
- Cloudflare storage
- Backblaze backups
- Taxes
Now I started cancelling personal subscriptions too and just vibecoding my own versions or using Claude to take an open source project that does the same and then customize it for myself
All I still pay for personally is:
- Claude Code
- YouTube (content)
- Spotify (content)
- Starlink (internet)
- Phone eSIM
- Personal cloud storage
- Electricity and water (utility)
- Taxes
So if we summarize it for both, I only still pay for:
- AI inference
- Content
- Cloud storage & hosting
- Connectivity
- Electricity & water
- Taxes
So to summarize all my money now goes to:
- Content
- Data centers
- Power plants + water
- Governments
I think we'll be facing a tidal wave of cancellations once people find out how much money they can save
It's just how the economy works
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2109352968122515681
Read on levels.io â
âĪ4ðĨ3
I'd expand the moats left to:
- Proprietary data or content: data nobody else has, or unique content you can create
- Network effects / community: users make it more valuable for each other
- Audience / distribution: you can get attention on demand
- Physical component: hardware, locations, real-world operations
- Capital: owning assets and investing (esp into the AI companies as they are and will suck up large parts of the economy)
- Regulatory: licenses and legal barriers
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2109653584706990506
Read on levels.io â
- Proprietary data or content: data nobody else has, or unique content you can create
- Network effects / community: users make it more valuable for each other
- Audience / distribution: you can get attention on demand
- Physical component: hardware, locations, real-world operations
- Capital: owning assets and investing (esp into the AI companies as they are and will suck up large parts of the economy)
- Regulatory: licenses and legal barriers
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2109653584706990506
Read on levels.io â
ð4ðĨ1
This is true
You can get very rich on helping IRL businesses with the transition to AI and automating everything for them
They'll have to to stay competitive because if one adapts AI, they all have to!
But again this is temporary for a few years, it's not a sustainable business as once it's automated the AI will exponentially self improve and people will figure out how to do this themselves of course
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2109723310762123704
Read on levels.io â
You can get very rich on helping IRL businesses with the transition to AI and automating everything for them
They'll have to to stay competitive because if one adapts AI, they all have to!
But again this is temporary for a few years, it's not a sustainable business as once it's automated the AI will exponentially self improve and people will figure out how to do this themselves of course
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2109723310762123704
Read on levels.io â
Let's try run Windows XP inside this tweet, tap to open https://pieter.com/xp/x
Drag mouse to move it, X Player doesn't let you do pointer lock so it has to work like that
This is a 100% non-commercial non-profit preservation project part of the @pieter computer museum
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2109949585737052316
Read on levels.io â
Drag mouse to move it, X Player doesn't let you do pointer lock so it has to work like that
This is a 100% non-commercial non-profit preservation project part of the @pieter computer museum
ð https://x.com/levelsio/status/2109949585737052316
Read on levels.io â
ð1