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Skip the Tips: A game to select "No Tip" but dark patterns try to stop you
I want to mention another infection happening at payment terminals and ATMs if you're using your credit card in a foreign country: You get a message saying "Would you like to pay in your own currency? Click [Accept] or [Decline]", and there's fine print that says there's a 12-15% currency conversion markup.

To give a concrete example, if you're an American traveling in Brazil withdrawing cash from an ATM or buying something for BRL 500, you'll be presented with an option to pay BRL 500 or pay just US$110.58 in your own currency (with text saying conversion includes 15%).

But the typical American (and Canadian) credit card adds at most 2.5% to the Visa or Mastercard exchange rate, which is at most 0.5% higher than the interbank rate. So basically by clicking the wrong button, you're paying an extra 12% to the payment processor. In the example above, your credit card would have charged you about US$99.04 had you declined the conversion, and saved you $10.

I can't imagine a situation where it's to your benefit to accept the "conversion service" they're offering. I wonder if the payment processor is kicking back some of the profit back to the merchant because this swindle is spreading everywhere.

The worst part is that a couple of people that I've tried to warn don't get it. They still think that they should pick US$ (or whatever their own currency is) because that's what their credit card uses.

Some are even worse than this. When I was in Portugal, the machine said "Press (1) for GBP. Press (2) for EUR.", then on the next screen, after you select "(2) for EUR", it says "Rate will Apply. Please confirm. (1) Accept conversion (2) Reject Conversion". If you select "Accept conversion", it overrides your currency decision and you pay in GBP with their markup fee...

It's a complete con...

Oh, that one is weird.

I see this feature in Poland. The choice is clear. Or there is no choice and it is paid in local currency.

Currency conversion is not only incredibly fraught with traps, but believe me, even for very intelligent and research-savvy individuals, if you're not a professional in this area, you'll struggle to see all the pitfalls and still fall for them. I don't consider myself stupid, but I spent several days seriously researching it, and ultimately, after being exploited by several new tricks, I gave up. I consider those losses as a part of travel expenses and avoid letting it amplify my losses, that ruining my travel. PayPal is even more blatant fraud. You never know how much money is left after a transfer or withdrawal until you're surprised, and then they'll say they mentioned it in some tens of thousands of words of agreement that they would deduct this amount.
PayPal does this too. They will offer to do the currency conversion at an outrageous rate. Not quite 15%, though always substantially more than Mastercard’s rate of the day.
Amazon does something like this too, though I'm not sure of the percent. I just know that every time I select to pay in dollars, any change in delivery options will select it back to pay in euros, where the bank is.

I genuinely don't know if this is good or not, but the UIs insistence on reverting back to another currency after my initial selection leads me to believe that my initial selection hits them the hardest the most

Amazon.com does add a ~2% "currency conversion guarantee" fee when paying in EUR, on top of whatever conversion they use. I imagine that the average cost of that "service" to them is closer to 0%.
The even worse part about PayPal is that they have a whole system of nonsensical fees to fall back to when you inevitably figure out how to evade the obvious ones. For instance, sidestepping their dynamic currency conversion by temporarily changing which currency they bill on your card (which by the way is rate limited to only a few times per month) will result in another "non-foreign transaction but with recipient in foreign country" fee appearing, covering the inherent costs of converting German US dollars to American US dollars or whatever. They will at least hide the fee from you for business transactions, but the merchant still has to pay it.
The rule is always "pay with local currency"

We have the same thing in Euroland

Exactly, who has more incentive to rip you off, your bank or some random merchant/payment processor/local bank that you are probably never going to interact with again either way.
This was being asked as long as I remember (~15 years now?) but the conversion commissions were around 2%-5% at most. 15% is egregious.
At least in Brazil, it was very rare. In the last 3-4 years, it's almost every time you pay. And you have to grab and hold the payment terminal (especially if you're using tap / contactless payment) so the cashier or waiter, trying to be helpful, doesn't click the wrong button and cost you 15%.
> trying to be helpful

Some places they're insistent that you must do currency conversion or the payment won't work. Makes me think the merchant must be getting a chunk of that profit and telling their staff to accept the conversion...

Another more benign reason possibly be the customer's card might be closed to different-currency transactions.

For example, I can choose my bank to do the conversion at the time of purchase, or pay with that currency when the invoice comes.

2% is already excessive and 5% is quite egregious.

Plus, the point is that you're asked whether you'd like to pay more for something, where there is no benefit in it for you nor a public benefit etc.

Speaking of payment terminals.

Payment terminals used to have good UX, they all clearly showed you the price when paying. Tills had displays with the price facing the customer which were clearly visible.

Now traditional POS terminals have been replaced with tap and go devices by the latest fintech, non of them show the price to the customer by design. Instead you tap a small puck and you hope the price charged is the one asked only to find a transaction fee on top when later check your balance.

It's a deliberate design choice to withhold showing the price on these devices. It's cheap to add a small LCD panel to them, the technology previously existed and still exists however the choice have been made not to.

I was in awe of an old vending machine I saw in the Caribbean recently. I didn't want anything but I spent a few seconds just pushing buttons to check prices. The segmented display read out the price the very instant I touched the button for the item. There was no perceptible delay for a bloated software stack running on some cheap processor that waits for too many bits over a crappy cellular internet connection. Everything needed was right there, between the hard-coded logic and me.
> Instead you tap a small puck and you hope the price charged is the one asked only to find a transaction fee on top when later check your balance.

I'm sorry, but it's a mandatory knee-jerk response here: "Is this something I'm too European to undestand?"

Even the the smallest, crappiest devices are required to have a line LCD to show the final price. Goes to show that consumer protection minimums do really set the bar for eventual exploitation.

As others have said, currency conversion has been a well-known "scam" for as long as I can remember. I'm sure Martin Lewis has been talking about this since at least the early 2000s in some form.
When you think about it, it's just another "Tourist tax" of which are are many. Other times you just get quoted a different base price as a tourist vs. native - openly or not.
The fact that people don't believe you when you explain it just shows how effective the framing is
Nowadays banks usually allow you to block DCC (dynamic currency conversion) and it is definitely worth it if you travel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_currency_conversion

Thank you for telling me what it's called!

On the positive side, it seems that Wise must block it because I never see the DCC "choice" when using a Wise card.

As a negative point, I've noticed that AirBnB, which used to use reasonable conversion rates, has just recently started to use exorbitant currency conversion and not allow you to pay in the local currency of the country you're traveling to (so you can let your own credit card do the conversion at a lower rate). I.e., if you try to book a property in Brazil in BRL (literally clicking on the price to pay in BRL), the charge will nevertheless go through in USD (or whatever currency is your own) with AirBnb doing the conversion at the rate they choose.

Aliexpress also shows prices in one currency but then refuses to take payment in that currency and does their own conversion with an unfavourable rate... Seems to be allowed with some combinations of delivery country and currency but not others.
So they charge you for an amount different to advertised? Tell your bank. You might get a refund and at least they'll have the complaint on file so the next victim might get a refund. If enough people complain and AirBNB don't fix it, AirBNB gets banned from accepting cards.
Where do you block it? I don’t see an obvious option at any of my banks or that article.
It is usually an option in your bank's app. It depends on the bank though, obviously. If it's not there, you have to be vigilant while using your card (always select the local currency when given the option).
I checked and it doesn't look like any UK banks have this option - at least I looked at about 5 different banks websites and all have pages suggesting you always select to pay in local currency but none of them have any information on disabling this behaviour

Gemini confirms it's not a thing, and not really possible (the terminals just detect the country from the card number)

I don’t know a single bank in Europe that provides this option

Edit: Perplexity says this:

> cards cannot block DCC offers because the merchant terminal identifies your card’s country of origin from the card number and offers DCC accordingly. Always manually decline at payment to let the card handle conversion at better rates

An especially egregious case I've encountered was at Berlin train station.

Normally in Germany, you've got those distinct card terminals with a display where you see your total before paying. Some of those have started nagging you for tips which you need to explicitely accept or decline first before tapping your card. Not in this case though: after you've ordered your food, they point you to the combined order/pay display and while you awe at the technology marvel of combining both, you tap your card on that and then you notice that 15% tip has been automatically included and charged. You needed to notice some small text and small buttons in the corner of that display beforehand and actively tap on "0%" or something before tapping your card. I'm already furious they've let this tip begging to be added to the card terminals, but charging tips without explicit consent should be completely illegal.

At Schiphol they offer tipping options to presumably prey on Americans, but the attendant physically reached over the counter to reject it after I ordered in (native) Dutch. Can't imagine how much trouble locals had been giving the shop before training staff like this.
  • mpeg
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Happens in Spain too, the card machine will sometimes have tip options but the waiter selects no tip if serving locals to avoid the annoyance
  • mk12
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I’ve seen Starbucks employees in the US do this often.
And wonderfully done in a city where people are usually paid a living wage, and even students don’t have to work for free (hi Belgium!)
I am pretty sure it is completely illegal.
Would the credit card company / bank let you dispute the charge? I imagine that's going to be difficult with a card present transaction.
And I think people don't mind tipping when they feel it's voluntary
I hate that the tipping culture is infecting Germany now
Tipping culture has been around in Germany for a long time, hasn’t it? It’s surprisingly common there
Not to this extent
It is illegal. They're counting on you to be too busy to sue them. That's why you only saw it in a train station. Ask your bank for a refund for the fraudulent transaction — you probably don't have enough evidence to prove it happened, but they'll still put the complaint on file.

Lawsuits and chargebacks are about the only pressure businesses have not to scam you.

All these silly excuses people make: "I tip when the service is good", "I tip when conversation with bartender is engaging", "I tip when the server runs around me in circles, I count the circles and convert it with an exchange rate of $2/circle". Wow.

I'm from EU, so ymmw. I simply don't tip. Why? Because I don't have to. And if I don't have to, then I don't. It is that simple.

Yes but here in France where service is included and tipping is never compulsory (or expected), payment terminals are appearing where you need to select the tip before typing your code. This is usually shoved in your face by the waiter at touristy places, and they're watching you.

Don't fall for it though! Just select "no tip" or "0" like in this game and you're good.

Exactly. Only by selecting 0 this will put pressure to get rid of it

I saw this in two restaurants already and I am pissed

It won't though. A screen on the card terminal is free - if just 1% of people misclick the button and pay a tip, the company still wins.
A restaurant is fundamentally selling an experience. These screens do not improve the experience. Therefore, they have some cost to the business. The question is whether the cost is recuperated.
> A screen on the card terminal is free

... consulting companies developing the terminal entered the chat ...

(just kidding, I agree with you)

This is no pressure. You can exert pressure by saying that you are cancelling the transaction because of the tipping screen and you'll eat somewhere else.
  • bambax
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Yeah that's not possible. When you're presented with the terminal the food is already in your system.

Or maybe you can be like our former Ministry of Culture, Jack Lang, who just resigned from a prestigious, if useless, post in the wake of the Epstein scandal. It was revealed that he never paid for anything in his 60+ years of public "service", always leaving restaurants, hotels, etc. without footing the bill.

For you and me, this would be called stealing and would eventually land us in jail. But if you're a minister in France it's called "living like a prince" and being "a little stingy".

This is too late, at that stage you have already eaten. I am not sure if they appreciate if you give them the food back.
You could tell them that you are very happy to pay them the price they printed on the menu and that they can present you with a payment terminal charging exactly that price, but that you will not do that job for them. Basically make the waiter select the 0% option.

But in the end you'll only annoy the waiter and not the owner of the restaurant who is actually running the tipping scam.

At least in that case you can safely select a 0 tip. It's worse when you pay up front and have to worry about a lower than expected tip resulting in some kind of retribution from the staff.
  • j1elo
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Little known (apparently) thing from Spain is that our tips are not proportional. I see percentages everywhere when going out... 10% here, 15% there, so the quantities seem outrageous to me. In Spain if you want you leave a 1€ or 2€ coin, maybe 3 or 4€ plus some other smaller coins if you are more than 2 people. But that's it.

I've never seen a tip reaching 10€ in a restaurant, even in tables of 5+ people.

The bigger issue, to me, is that the burden is on customers at all. That's what creates all this awkwardness and moral accounting in the first place
  • n4r9
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What's ymmw? Your mileage may waver?
> I'm from EU

Now we know they mean Germany.

Funnily enough Germans do tip, for pretty average service compared to most European countries where waiters are expecting zero tips.
Your mileage may wario.
I don’t tip either, simply because the work done wasn’t worth tipping. The only time I tipped was in a 7 stars restaurant, and the waitresses were up to their names, literally standing and waiting by our table changing utensils and plates and filling the drinks. North America tipping “culture” is out of control, I remember picking up some street food and the guy asked for a tip.. Most restaurants nowadays buy the food from costco, machines do most of the cooking, and the waitress job can be literally replaced by a robot, it’s just a scam and it should be illegal actually.
  • blks
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The actual scam is that restaurants can and do pay wait staff below minimum wage (like 2-3$), because it’s explicitly allowed, with expectation that the rest comes from tips. So not tipping in USA may in some cases be an asshole move.
Wait staff can lobby to change that if they want. Or just get a different job and let supply and demand sort out the wages for the remaining waiters.
Tipping is one of those Moloch coordination problems where if everyone would suddenly decide to make the world better at the same time, it would be, but if only a few people try to make the world better, it gets worse and they're assholes.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

It's really not a binary situation where you'd ever see $2 wages with no tips though. If less people tip then the effective real minimum wage will gradually increase to compensate - either because laws are updated or because the restaurant has to compete with other better paying job opportunities. Sure some waiters may get upset when someone doesn't tip, but that is just that - them getting upset - and not the client being an asshole.
> the waitresses were up to their names, literally standing and waiting by our table changing utensils and plates and filling the drinks

FWIW, this sounds like a deeply unpleasant experience to me

> and the waitresses were up to their names, literally standing and waiting by our table

I hate that. My old boss would book us into 5* places when we travelled for work and his wife was also there. People standing over me just felt “ick”. Like when the security guard decides to fallow you around the supermarket! (the latter has only happened a couple of times that I've noticed, when it did I made a point of spending much longer than I otherwise would meandering back & forth, and gave them a grin on my way out after paying…)

One of the things not discussed here is that for many wait staff wages are far lower than our pathetic minimum wage (USA) so these people tend to make sub poverty to start with on the promise of tips.

I do agree though that the whole culture was broken before and now with payment kiosks asking for tips everywhere it's absurd.

And imagine people bring their own drinks to restaurants in China (for big family lunch it can be even big plastic bags full of many bottles) and nobody even understand the concept of the tipping - why would you tip someone for doing their work and paying for the meal? One of the things I loved about China. They even come running after you if you forget your change.

What I liked much less is smoking in the restaurants which happens in Beijing even in 2026 despite posters on the wall saying No smoking in Chinese and English and everyone is affraid to tell something to smoker. You would think after years of campaigning it will improve, but I don't see much improvement after visiting after many years.

  • hk__2
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You see these things in the EU too.
The service in the US is significantly better than in Europe.

You want to feel like a burden when you go out to eat, eat in Italy.

In the US, the servers are dancing excited for you to be there.

Only if by better you mean annoying.

I've always had good experiences in Italy even though I was a stupid tourist during peak season.

Agreed, not a fan of all the "is everything alright" and "can I get you anything else" and other "helpful" interruptions that many US waiters like to do.
That's a matter of taste.

I, for one, can't stand this fake chumminess you often experience in American restaurants.

I'm also from EU. I tip only at restaurants, only 10% on average. The prices when recently up like 50% or so. So adding the tip on top of that is a hustle. And 10% on the higher price is also higher tip, so I am double assured I do good
  • wellf
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Inflation my man
here in Central Europe (SK/CZ) we never done percentage, we were just rounding up the sum, like 283 to 300, but even 292 would become 300, and if it's bill 300 then tough luck for waiter. But not sure what is the situation in recent years with card payments replacing cash, tips must been hit hard, also raising prices and people going to restaurants less and less doesn't help much.

Personally I pretty much stopped going to restaurants completely during COVID when I was treated worse than dog - dogs allowed (to some places), unvaxxed not allowed to enter.

> unvwaxxed not allowed to enter

This is the correct approach. If you are an asdhole for not caring about others but using the herd immunity znyway, this is the latest that can be done to show contempt.

My wife is immunodepressed and cannot be vaccinated. She avoids plenty of places because shit people like this do not care.

I once physically threw away someone sick and unvaccinated from a place for babies only that are not protected by the mother and too young to protect themselves. It was violent, I called the police afterwards myself.

People don't be dicks with other people life.

Covid vaccines never prevented infection and transmission. If anything, out of the people I know the vaccinated got it much more often because they were more careless.
  • n4r9
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Whenever someone complains about being treated "worse than dogs" I have to wonder how they think dogs should be treated. To be fair, if dogs could catch COVID and pass it onto humans they'd likely have banned unvaccinated dogs as well.
I also live in Europe and tip, specially if I know that the salary of the staff heavily depends on tips. Also, if the service wasn’t great, I also tip, maybe they weren’t having a good day, like when I’m not that productive some day at my coding job.

If I ever find the system too unfair for the workers, then I won’t go to those restaurants anymore.

> I also live in Europe and tip, specially if I know that the salary of the staff heavily depends on tips.

> If I ever find the system too unfair for the workers, then I won’t go to those restaurants anymore.

Sounds like you only tip once at each restaurant then? Not paying a reasonable salary to employees and assuming they'll beg customers for extra money to make up the difference seems unfair to me.

I can't say if it's unfair or not. I would prefer every worker to get a decent salary, but no idea how they feel in countries where tipping is widespread like the US. But, if I go to a restaurant in the US, or, Argentina (where tipping is also a thing), then I'll tip, and consider the price of the food to be 10, 15 or 20% more expensive. Otherwise, I won't go, because then I am complicit with the exploitation of the workers.
The only reason they don't get a full salary is because people keep paying the difference with tips.
No, it's because of crappy labor laws
Those laws are downstream from tipping culture.
Then give your excess money to a homeless person or donate it to Amnesty. We don't want or need the "pressured to tip" culture here.
No, homeless people should not live from tips, they should be helped by the government. I live in Belgium and tip because I'm used to (I'm from Argentina) and I know the staff is happy when I do it.
Fine but a few things. 1) the service at restaurants and bars in Europe is terrible. 2) the employees at US restaurants and bars often make more money than people doing the same job in Europe. 3) it allows the folks with more money pay a larger share and those with less to pay a bit less.

The problem with tipping is tipping in places which aren't restaurants and bars.

  • rb666
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The service in Europe is great in many many places. My experience with US service is that it feels very fake most of the time. Plus, staff having their own table/zone means you cannot ask any other waiter to help out cause "it's not their table". That's one of the many problems with this tip culture.

I agree with the tiered pricing argument, but ehm, you know you are allowed to tip in Europe also right? If you are rich and feel benevolent, feel free to leave cash on the table. You don't need others to be forced into dark-pattern PIN machines or feel guilty for not paying more than the bill for that reason.

>The service in Europe is great in many many places. My experience with US service is that it feels very fake most of the time. Plus, staff having their own table/zone means you cannot ask any other waiter to help out cause "it's not their table".

I'm literally 0 for 3 on those claims. Not sure how you have such experiences. Maybe its a choice of words 'Many many' could be like 20 places out of 10,000. Maybe 'feels very fake' is something that isn't actually a problem, and might be a benefit, so I didn't notice it. And that last line about 'not their table'... I can't say I've ever experienced it.

Service in restaurants in Europe is way better than in USA. I don't want waiter to ask me anything except taking the order. I don't want to be ushered away as soon as I finished eating. I usually do that anyway, but I want to choose so myself and have option to sit and talk with my friend or family sometimes. I don't want to give my credit card to a stranger, who will carry it to some back room without control. An finally I want to pay exactly what is advertised, without scam fees or blackmail "tips".
> Service in restaurants in Europe is way better than in USA.

Eh. Having eaten at plenty of restaurants all over the USA and Europe, they seem equally littered with both good and bad service. Understanding and adjusting to the culture of individual countries helps make your experiences better.

Yes, this isn't a question about the US or Europe.

Some of the absolute worst service I've received have been in the US, yet they ask for tips. I've also received some of the best service at a US restaurant, where the suggested tip was 10% and the prices where pretty low.

The weirdest thing I've experience is the large number of staff in US coffee shops, compared to locally, yet basically not being able to order, and then having a suggested tip at 20%. I've encountered this a multiple locations, and different chains. Four people, one person takes the order, one makes the drink, one continuously mop the floor and the last person just stands around (manager?) You could significantly increase the base pay by getting rid of two of these people.

I know a server and it very much has to do with the client base.

The poor area? Bad tipping.

Middle class? Depends on the person

Upper middle class? Big bucks.

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I totally disagree. The only good service I've found in the US was in very small cities (Fayetteville WV is the only name I remember and probably the biggest one). It also seems like restaurants there don't take their bread from local bakeries, and all their food, even vegetables, even in 30+ dollar meals, are from a food distributor. Here, if I pay more than 20 euros for a meal, I expect that at least the vegetable aren't from Metro, and if I pay more than 30, it's for sure a local fisherman/butcher that provided the proteins.
If I can't tip, I don't go out. Cuz I don't have to.

Granted, I also don't go to the EU if I can avoid it, and most places I make so much more money than the locals I don't mind a bit extra for the worker.

Did you ever work a job or were friends with people who did where tipping is a big part of the income?

You make it sound like a general rule, but I don’t see how it is that “simple”. There are few things if any that you have to do in life. It’s all a decision and a tradeoff. Nobody forces you to breathe. Or to be friendly with your neighbors. Or a stranger.

I worked in the service industry for a while and have literally never cared about tips, in the sense that the default expectation in 99% of cases is no tip and the rare time I got a tip it was a few euros extra at most. Of course, I didn't care because it actually paid an actual wage, vs the weird shit you yanks are up to.

Hell, I know some people who have been working at restaurants as waiters for a long time now, and they live perfectly comfortably with 0 expectations around tips.

I still don't tip, basically ever, my only exception is the rare time I get food delivered, because unlike a regular service job the apps don't pay a livable wage and the cut they take is gargantuan compared to what the drivers get.

  • trosi
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The "tips as compensation for your low salary" system exists only in the US and neighboring countries (Canada, Mexico) as far as I know.

Now that they have started abusing it, it's even less defensible.

You could make that excuse for any dark pattern.
  • djvdq
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> Did you ever work a job or were friends with people who did where tipping is a big part of the income?

In the EU people are paid fair salaries for their work, they don't have to beg for money from clients

> Did you ever work a job or were friends with people who did where tipping is a big part of the income?

The friends of mine who worked in bars were paid living wage without tips. So no, no need.

Most of my friends worked restaurants or bars when I was younger, tips were something some tourists would sometimes do and it would generally go into a pot for throwing a party for the staff few times a year. I have never tipped or seen a local tip in my home country.

Tips weren't a part of my friends income. The restaurant/bar paid them a salary.

Your point is valid because waiters earn more money when they have low salary and big tips than high salary but no tips. The problem is though, I simply don't care about how much waiters earn, just like waiters don't care about how much I earn. I will start tipping the day waiters start honestly caring about the software job market collapse.
Ooooh do the one where hitting ‘payment’ on the app buys $25 of store credit by default rather than just paying and deducts the 9.64 from that credit.

Then when you spend down the credit to $2 any attempt to buy something that costs more refills the credit.

Starbucks app btw. You have to specifically pay with card on the payment screen to avoid buying credit and paying as above.

Toronto Parking Authority is guilty of this. If you pay at a terminal on the street, then you're charged the exact amount needed for your parking session. If you pay using the mobile app, then it charges your credit card in increments of $20, requires your mobile phone number as an account identifier, and keeps track of your remaining monetary balance.
This is how a lot of transit cards work, unfortunately.
  • consp
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Most of those (used to) work offline too, as long as there was money on the card. Not something an online payment system or app needs to deal with.
  • chii
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if i recall, in singapore, the transit card costs are refundable.

I think that's the only place i've seen it refundable.

London oyster cards also offer a refund of your pay as you go balance.
I suspect most people just use contactless nowadays, Especially infrequent visitors.
> Especially infrequent visitors

I don't know a single resident who uses oyster (maybe kids? Dunno, I don't have kids in my social circle), infrequent visitors are actually the only ones I've seen using oyster and that's because they thought that was the only way to use transport

They're refundable in Japan too.
At minimum, the default should be "pay exact amount"
  • ipnon
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This is called a float business in finance. Starbucks has more than a billion dollars in unredeemed balances, and they make ~$200 million per year in interest with this cash. They're basically a bank with a coffee shop side hustle.
How are they getting 20% on a deposit that presumably could be called up at any time, and how can I get in on it when the stupid "High Yield" accounts I can find top out at around 4%?
large businesses have large cash borrowing needs. if they borrow for free from their customers, it reduces the other borrowing they would need to do, so the rate to use is not what interest rate is available to you, but rather how much interest that Starbucks would need to pay for loans that size. Furthermore, whereas dividends are taxed twice (once as profit for the company and again as regular income to the shareholder), interest is a tax deduction to the company (which decreases their taxable profits) and for a percentage of debtholders that interest income is also taxed advantageously.

probably doesn't come up to 20% (unless Starbucks is in junk bond territory) but it's higher than the investment rate of 4% that you're quoting.

Do they include expiring credit in that figure?

Most of the time they have a buried clause that says that you forfeit all of your credit or get charged an inactivity fee if there have been no account transactions or no credit added for 12 or 18 months. Same reason why you should never buy gift cards.

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This may apply in the US but not everywhere. In Canada it is illegal to expire and take back money on gift cards.

So they can keep collecting interest on it forever, but they have to keep the balance for you indefinitely.

They may buy bonds or something like that.
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For a 20% return in a year?

The numbers given have to be incorrect.

Oh yeah I wasn't taking OPs number at face value
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probably 2%, not 20%.
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Yielding a yearly 20%?
If anyone knows of _any_ investment yielding a yearly 20% reliably, I'd certainly be interested. If Starbucks figured that out, I don't know why they're bothering making coffee.
A quick Google suggests in 2016 it was $1.17B, and earned $21M, or 1.79%.

(via https://www.amminvest.com/starbucks-sbux-float/ )

I mean I’d love to have a free $21M a year, but if you’re already Starbucks then somehow it feels like pocket change compared to your actual earnings and would question if it was worth the effort.
But they also have over a billion cash at hand. I imagine at that scale and customers being private, the amount is pretty stable and Starbucks can just do whatever with this since it's extremely unlikely that customers demand all their money back at once.
Sorry, can they (customers) demand it back?

I mean, once Starbucks have it, then the customers get it back via product (that has a margin included), or just leave it forever (free money!)

I have a firm "No vouchers" rule because of this, the vouchers in my part of the world inexplicably "expire" if not used within a certain amount of time, cannot be redeemed for cash, and will not be honoured if the business goes belly up

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According the laws here they have to. Doesn't mean they won't make it difficult. And it needs to be in a separate account and business (to avoid it being drawn into a bankruptcy). Not that this has ever stopped businesses from abusing it anyway. I doubt this voucher option is available in the Dutch app because of this but I didn't bother to check.
That was actually a bad year, as that "free" $21 million represented a loss of about $30 million. $1.17 billion on Jan 1st 2016 is equivalent to $1.22 billion a year later due to inflation. So they would have had to generate $50 million just to break even in actual buying power terms.
Is that based on not investing that $21 million or am I misreading something about how that money was or wasn't used?
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If they're intentionally causing the customer to have an unspendable balance, knowing that it's making them $200m/yr, how is that not fraud (or some kind of crime)? I'd expect atleast CA would do something about it.
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Customers agree to this when they accept the terms of the app. This is also how a debit or savings account at any bank works. Both businesses have sophisticated models to determine how and when customers are likely to make withdrawals, and based on these models they lend out the money based on acceptable risk criteria.
Even if it is in the T&Cs, this one feels like it wouldn’t actually hold up?

Expecting people to read those for most simple sign ups is already a high baseline, and Starbucks is not technically a banks and offers no consumer protections (FSCS or other), so that feels knowingly misleading, even if the total balances held are small per customer.

IANAL, of course.

That is wild
I've been trapped for 15 years!
Einstein's Bagels does this asinine shit, too, like I want to bank with a fucking mediocre bagel joint.
I have a feeling that this HN submission is rather some test run which dark patterns work well on technically affine users. :-)

Having the knowledge which dark patterns even work well for technically affine users while still being "socially acceptable" can be worth a lot of money to specific companies.

Are you using "affine" to mean "for which one has an affinity"? I have never heard that nor can I see that as a wide-spread definition. Just curious!
Maybe non native speaker, here in germany we often say "technisch affin" which means proficient with technology
> here in germany we often say "technisch affin" which means proficient with technology

As a native German speaker, I indeed fell for this false friend. :-(

I’m a native English speaker and I have only ever heard “affine” as a technical term in mathematics, e.g. an affine transformation of vector spaces. I would have had no idea what it means outside of math.

However, OP’s usage seems logical, so I wouldn’t be upset if it became popular!

I was wondering. Maybe "refined", as a derivative of the verb?
I think that poster is saying that here on HN posters typically preserve points, lines and parallelism. Rude, quite honestly.
In fact, odds on someone who was complicit in developing many of the dark patterns that have run billions of dollars from consumers is reading this from their phone, thinking they should go to bed so they can wake up to the acai bowl, cold plunge, and early retirement to hobbies in seattle.
Exactly. We're doing this to ourselves. These horrible patterns are an HN reader's JIRA ticket next week, and they're going to happily implement them.
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Are you actually complicit in this or do you really feel such a part of the "tech community" that you truly consider it as a "we"?

If the former, stop doing it right now and atone.

If the latter, I don't think that's healthy, you have nothing to do with it unless you're at a FAANG or something.

jfc new 'orthogonal' just dropped
This reminds me of a gag voting simulation website from the early 2000s when BushJr was running for president against Al Gore. The (maybe flash?) game simulated voting, but when you tried to click, the buttons would “run away” from the cursor, or change size to avoid being clicked… dark patterns… always fun to “play against”.

More recently though, I must say, YouTube has really jumped the shark in terms of perfecting their dark patterns/algo stickiness. I can’t even go to the site without immediately forgetting my original intent.

Also see The Simpsons, Treehouse of Horror XIX, where Homer tries to vote for Obama using an electronic voting machine:

https://youtu.be/47QZ6PoHl44

i'm old too and remember that, i believe it was javascript, not flash
Tipping culture is properly weird to me as an European, I probably tip much more than the average European and I still find these prompts obnoxious, and they're popping everywhere in Barcelona. No thank you, that's a part of the U.S. culture I certainly don't want to see imported over here.
Buy me a coffee? Jokes on you I just practiced avoiding this.
"But me a coffee" should instantly loose the game forever.
I chortled when I choked an input and accidentally clicked that
I like how at the end the author tries to get you to give him a tip with the buy me a coffee link
I once went to go pick up takeout and they covered the no tip button with a sticker. I was so confused so I put in 10 cents because I could find the button at first. I stopped going to the place since.
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Now more than ever it is against your best interests to tip on any automated platform. The data collected will definitely be used against you in algorithmic pricing.

These days it pays to aggressively demonstrate that you are price sensitive and will delay or cancel transactions at the slightest whiff of additional expense.

I only ever tip off-platform or cash even if I pay with card. Also that helps to enable my gift to go only to the service provider. It fucks me on some platforms but I find that an acceptable cost to not get algorithmically spitroasted. Besides, it also helps to eliminate predatory platforms from my ecosystem.

I help a blind friend order his groceries online from Walmart once a month. He's disabled and on food stamps (EBT/Link). The groceries are all taken care of, but the site always requests a $30 tip for the driver.

I drop it down a bit and pay it on my credit card for him, but what's the right way to deal with this situation?

A 30$ tip? Does this company not give their drivers a wage, or something?
Ironically, they do not. They are the largest employer of employees on welfare.
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Walmart InHome is $40/year and no tips.
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Wow, that's not bad.

"Walmart InHome is a premium service that delivers groceries and essentials directly into a customer's home (fridge/kitchen) or garage, using trained, vetted Walmart associates. As an add-on to Walmart+, it costs an additional $40/year (or $7/month) to provide unlimited, tip-free, and free-delivery-fee service."

Can even do it when you aren't home.

Man $30 can still buy a lot of food at Aldi
is there a name for the phenomenon where a user immediately assumes the smallest and lowest contrast button on an interface is the option they want, before actually reading any of the words?

    Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

    [Matthew 7:13-14]
This reversed cta thing is what I've been evolved to do. Always look for the opposite of a cta button and click it. This reconciles with the fact the incentives have been off for the past few years or decades.
I'm not aware of a specific term, another than just conditioning, but I am reminded of "banner blindness" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness

(I was definitely expecting a level to swap the contrast eventually as a trick.)

I was waiting for the cases where they inverted this. That would really trick me. But it didn't happen in the few cases I tried.
There should be one.
Being conditioned.
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Fun idea but gets boring when patterns repeat in seemingly random order. The timer also sucks a lot of the fun out of it and makes the game too easy, because the patterns can’t be dark enough. I just plowed through without ever even looking at the wrong options, because it was so obvious what the right one was.

I’d much rather the game progressed in a fixed logical order and the choices became less obvious without a timer. In other words, I think this makes more sense as a puzzle game, not a reflexes game.

Nice! I’ve started only tipping on fridays for coffee, etc. I’m a great tipper at restaurants But being hit up for a $5 tip for a $4 drink is way wrong. I’d tip you, but today is Thursday!
I tip great at sit-down restaurants. I don't tip at fast food places, or carry-outs where they don't actually provide and service, or at the oil change place.

Summary: if I didn't tip in a situation 10 years ago, I'm not going to start now.

I tip my barista and budtender a dollar every visit, personally. I love those people though. Restaurants get 20% unless they fuck up, then it's 15%, unless it was absolutely egregious.

That's it. I cut my own hair.

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As a European, I never understood why you'd tip automatically. I get that waiters are allowed to be paid less, but I don't see why that would be the customer's problem.
I also don’t get the logic of tipping a percentage of the cost. Asking for several cheap beers is more work for the waiter than a single bottle of expensive wine, yet the latter earns them more?
Because it's part of our culture and it's an easy way to show appreciation. You don't have to do it anywhere. Waiters also explicitly aren't allowed to be paid less. They must make at LEAST minimum wage. If they don't make minimum after tips, their hourly rate is raised each paycheck to equal minimum wage. It's literally not the customer's problem. You should probably learn how things work here if you're that curious!
You do realize that so called "tipping culture" in USA is literally racism? Are you showing appreciation to racism?
IMO restaurant tips (and other service businesses) are 15% by default, 20% if they do well, 10% if they do poorly. If they do especially poorly (like, completely ignoring the table for an hour while chatting with coworkers off to the side), they get $.02. If they do especially well, more than 20% (I've gone as high as 50% once).
This mentality of doing 20% by default for something you already paid is what got us in this situation.

People should be paid a living wage by default.

Once someone can tell me what, specifically, a living wage is, I imagine this will stop being the most annoying phrase on the planet.
Do you tip your local cashier in the groceries store? Do you tip the bus driver who took you to work? Do you tip a bank clerk who processed your application? If no, then this is a living wage.

Also not having "tips" prevents freeloaders from not paying taxes, which every other worker in the country pays fairly.

There can be a lot of definition but I propose " a wage where you do not need to annoy your customer for tip".
My barber earns his fat tip taming my unruly cowlicks. Barista and bartender? Definitely. Cashier at a convenience store? Oh hell no.
My barber earns his fat tip by being my therapist.
I get it. That's worth the compensation.
Have you taken into account that tips are no longer taxed and adjusted these arbitrary percentages?
I also cut my own hair, but sometimes I’m lazy and just hit up the Barber shop.

She charges me $15! I tip +$25 and it’s still a cheap haircut.

My haircut has to be one of the simplest around, but 9 out of 10 stylists will leave me fixing it myself later. Once I paid $50+tip for the same cut at a swanky joint and STILL went home and fixed it. She doesn’t know what she’s worth.

In the UK the sort-of rule is that you tip for 10% food if you pay after receiving it (and that's pretty much the only situation where anyone tips).

It seems like since the pandemic even that is less expected though, which is nice.

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My current strategy for how much total I'll pay for a coffee is FlOOR(price+.50) + 1, which keeps the bill nice and clean and kicks some goodwill towards someone who makes less than 1/5th the average earnings of my coworkers.
I make my own coffee. It's not hard.
Sometimes I want coffee before I make my coffee
I'm going to charge you $1.50, then.
> kicks some goodwill towards someone who makes less than 1/5th the average earnings of my coworkers.

The coffee shop owners? They're probably making a decent amount of money no?

Where asks you for a $5 tip for a $4 drink? I’ve never seen anything like that.
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The "buy me a coffee" button at the end is :chefskiss:
Really nice game OP. Would you consider making a version of the game with no timer?

I was thinking in sending this link to my family but probably the timer is really fast for them but I think they could used your app as "training" so they know how to spot a dark pattern in the future

https://skipthe.tips/?debug=1
Made by https://vladimirj.dev/
The most shocking part of the game is the price of goods! $14, $17 dollars for one meal to be eaten standing up? Wow. Here in Paris sandwiches cost between EUR 4 and 6 (usually 5), with a "menu" option that includes a can of soda and sometimes a "dessert" for 9-10. Anything above that would be considered extorsion.
Right, at the same time the median salary for a full time job in the US is $5280/month, that €4450. In France it's €2183, half as much.
Your user name being a reference to Coluche you're probably French? As a French you probably know these aren't exactly comparable. Yes, the US are probably richer than France per capita -- but not twice as much.
Are all of these dark patterns seen in the wild? OR are some of these merely a dreadful warning of what may happen?
I hate the tipping culture in the USA and Germany. Instead of being an extra, it feels like an obligatory surcharge I have to pay just to receive the service, good or bad. I usually don’t return to restaurants or bars that nag for tips. In those few places that I like and visit regularly, I don’t give tips. Me being a regular customer brings them more revenue than any tip I’d give otherwise.

Somehow, employers of these establishments convinced the staff that it's the customer’s fault that their wages are inadequate and that they should go after the customers to get the difference. I would much rather pay a higher price and not hear anything about the tips.

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It's one thing to read about dark patterns, it's another to feel your cursor being baited in real time
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I was gonna tip the developer but it feels like losing now
Intentionally and knowingly tipping is winning, no?

Unless we start arguing that gratitude is a dark pattern.

Great game. I squirmed at typing "no tips" the first time but second time was fine. I'm going to practice this a lot more to tonne down some (frequently abused) empathy
Yup, apply 93 kg more than an imperial ton on those thieves.
[dead]
I had food delivered the other day and the suggested tip included tax and the delivery fee in it's calculation.
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Damn I hit that coffee button and paid $100 tip. Expensive game.
How well would an LLM score at this?
Actually doesn't make for a bad reaction time and processing game since you need to think fast and avoid distractions.

Mobile offers a speed boost for taps but heavy nerf to text entry tasks.

The written price is the written price, and that's final. No tips.
It should be illegal to solicit tips when asking for payment.
Easier approach - make tips completely illegal as tax evasion or tax them higher than the meal, let's say 100% tax on tips.
Treat them as bribes. Punish the one who gives one with fine(1% of income/net wealth) and one who takes with mandatory imprisonment. After that they will quickly go away.
Got to round 8 - was too slow with the notifications popping up!

How many of these are real dark patterns? The "new entry suddenly prepended to the list" one I have seen before.

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I'm one of those cowards that always succumbs to the pressure and ends up tipping, but it bothers me enough that I just won't buy anything if I know I'm going to get asked. This is good training.
I've started using cash more again to avoid the question.
It is fun to look them in the eye as you decline the tip.
Should be mandatory training to obtain the ESTA permit to enter USA (even if just for transfers)
Are all these food items real? Some of them sound made up...

and are these California prices? It's totally bonkers.

Made me want to sing that classic song from the animated movie "sausage party"

"Just the tip"

I tried to tip OP 0$, but that wasn't possible.
Are any of these illegal in the US or Canada?
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The one where the options move when you hover over them feels like it should be but might not actually be.
Somebody had to invent it, and a lawmaker had to become aware of it, before a law could address it.
This is where I want a digital wallet on my phone with payment details that I control (no tip, lowest fee possible)
Neat game! Is this called monetary abuse?
"Hold to skip tip" was devilish.
fun idea but a bit repetitive and boring.
This was cool, but I got to one where it would load after every button you click. That's fine, but then I "lost" because it simply wouldn't load a winnable option in time it seems. Maybe I was moving too fast and missed the real button, but I still didn't tip in the end, so eh.
There is a small "skip tip" link below the button
Dark patterns are just polite robbery by corporations that realized psychological manipulation pays better than service. The grift is the product, not the bug.
I hate every bit of this. Well done!
Thank you!
For X-Files fans who might be unfamiliar with the reboot, the reboot has actually one episode dedicated to this - S11E07 - Rm9sbG93ZXJz, Mulder/Scully don't want to tip the robotic self-service and are punished for it.

Available to watch here: https://www.tvseries.video/series/the-x-files/season-11-epis...

The darkest patterns are fees that don’t exist . Like 300% tax fees and nightly parking when parking is free
Instacart has these, or at least it used to. You pay an annual membership, thinking that it gets you out of fees, but the FULL invoice (very hard to locate!) show a mysterious service fee of $3-6.
I enjoyed the restaurant names
Now do one where you have to withdraw your card from the machine before it starts beeping obnoxiously at you but the screen keeps trying to trick you into withdrawing too early.
I've considered going back to cash just to avoid these. The social convention used to be the seller writes a price and if the buyer can meet that price the deal is done. These abusive card machines have brought "tipping culture" to the UK and I hate it.
Superb!
> Every checkout screen has become a guilt machine.

Is bill-paying UI also a guilt machine? If you don't pay, you feel guilty! How about holding the door for elderly people? Going to your kid's event? Not running people over in the crosswalk? Saying please and thank you? Buying birthday presents? It's all so unfair - to me!

"buy me a coffee"
lol, it got me to do 5% more on the first try.. i lost.

souls-like

[dead]
[flagged]
Bot account. Last active with two posts in 2017, then started spamming today with the usual HN spambot formula. As usual, doing the weird thing that only the HN spambots do where it's almost always exactly three paragraphs of 1-2 sentences each. Not sure why they prompt for that formula but it makes it very easy to spot out. For me, I guess. This is voted to the top and the bot has over 50 karma so apparently most people are unable to detect LLM spam even when they make it as obvious as they possibly can.
As a master in commenting I would argue that this is quite smart. Indeed this might be a bot.

Or maybe it's not, who knows? It's sometimes hard to tell with comments.

It's just the times we live in, uncertainty is a given, most of the time we don't know. I guess we'll have to make do.

Gotta try harder than that. There's a certain length to their paragraphs as well, you can see from their post history the general shape of their messages that will cue you off that you're probably about to read spam before you've even read the first word. Also abundant LLMisms. Four "not X but Y" and three lists of three in only five sentences. The sheer density of LLMisms is absurd. Not to mention that vague sense of incoherency despite overall being a grammatically correct series of words. There are so many tells it's criminal people aren't catching it.
I wish I had a super-upvote.

"OP here" or "Author here" in posts is an obvious one when you see it. (In both cases, it's completely redundant!)

As for comments, regurgitating the input too closely and overusing abbreviations are highly indicative, yet many commenters don't notice.

See for instance (slop warning) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46986273 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46965103.

I would suggest sending this as an email to the mods instead of a reply, what you're doing is practically a bug report to the bot owner right now. The resulting discussion isn't super interesting either (IMO).
I am not signing up to a mini-moderator who has to e-mail dang 5 times a day. I want to not see these messages in the first place, and for that to be possible, the community needs to learn and be able to recognise this for themselves so this spam can be flagged and killed on sight.

If the bot owner happens to waste their time reading the responses to the dozens of comments one of their many spambots made, and improves the bots as a result, so be it. They're already winning the war as it stands, not like things can get much worse. I'd like to at least try to make an effort to make things better.

Maybe the actual answer is that I just need to stop using HN, though, since the spambots are taking over the site and yet people are more concerned with the people pointing that out than the actual problem.

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Thanks - this was a good catch, and it makes steam come out my ears to see any account abusing HN like that.

You don't have to email us, of course! But please understand that we're on the same side. We don't want to see HN overrun by generated comments (a form of spam) any more than you, or other users do. Remember that tomhow and I were avid users of HN for many years before we became mods.

All: generated comments and bots aren't allowed here. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... If you notice an account that appears to be consistently pattern-matching to this, and have a minute to let us know, we'd appreciate a heads-up at hn@ycombinator.com. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here, but we do monitor the inbox closely (including fishing through the spam bin for real users) and we take these reports seriously.

As someone very engaged in reading HackerNews comments I observed that your comment and the comment you are replying to have that exact same format of three short paragraphs.

The people behind these bots most certainly found that many engaging, authentic comments follow this clever pattern. It is also worth noting that such comments are remarkably digestible – due to their brevity and decomposition into even smaller logical and lexical parts – and swiftly read, requiring only a very short attention span and little intellectual investment from the reader.

This makes me very curious about the statistics on how HackerNews comments are structured and how well different formats of comments perform in the community. I would be thrilled to dive into the data and might write a neat program to analyze this sharing the results with community.

OK, I sent the email myself. You don't have to do it. Just once, not 5 times per day. Agree about community awareness, but I think emailing the mods is more effective than responding to one of the 1000 comments this account is making.
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Thanks for doing that because I had no idea this was happening. I've banned the account now and flagkilled the 30+ comments they posted today.
you missed one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46998241 ;-P

two actually: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46988519

I just wish they would use bigger models. These ones always write stuff that makes no sense. Like it says "the same principle applies to mobile games" then describes a different principle
There's some bots on HN who write much more coherently and get a decent # of upvotes. I was only able to catch one because the comment started with something along the lines of "Here's a smart response for a technical audience about _____"
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lmao, got a link?
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Any idea what the endgoal of such bots is?

Karmafarming and then astroturfing?

Astroturfing seems to be the goal. I notice sometimes there are threads in which numerous of these bots converge to promote some dubious product being shilled.
Do you check everyone's hn account history?
No, I check account history when the text is obviously LLM-generated. I mostly point it out because if I don't make it abundantly clear how obvious the spambot is by its behaviour, I will get people telling me that it could totally be a human and that I'm making a false accusation.
Might be because while it's not high quality, it is ultimately a constructive comment. So this might be a case of https://xkcd.com/810/
I suppose 15 years ago it would not have been possible to predict how fucking irritating these comments could be. I would rather have the old spambots back at this point. Please, spambots, go back to trying to sell me penis enlargement pills, I beg of you.
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Now this is a definite human comment, shoehorned in xkcd links are a huge human tell.
Just doing my part
Thanks. I upvoted one of its comments yesterday; i.e., it fooled me.
i saw a flagged comment and thought who the hell would flag that? it makes no sense. was going to vouch for it, but i always check the comment history which is where i noticed that all comments had a suspiciously similar pattern, and i found this thread.

some indicator that an account is banned would be nice for those who have showdead active.

one thing that is disturbing is that the comments of the bot are all lowercase. is that a bot feature now? are they doing that to appear less like a bot?

do i have to change my style to avoid looking like a bot? or is changing my style going to make me look like a bot?

i feel trapped.

I've got a local cafe that pre-selects a $3 tip on a $5 purchase.
I try to 'punish' for these and tip less than I would normally.
At an airport once the coffee stand had a girl behind the counter that would just hand you an empty disposable cup. She didn’t even handle cash, it was card only using a self checkout POS system. And it still asked for a tip with the default of 20%.

There should be a way to specify a negative tip.

If you really want to make a deal out of it, you hand it back to the server and ask them to select 0 for you. Mention that you don't think the service deserves a tip, and that you resent being asked.

If enough of us start doing this, it has a chance of applying some back pressure, although unfortunately that force acts through the poorly-paid checkout operator who doesn't directly have the option to influence decisions.

The server isn't the one who configured the UI, and probably needs the money. You're punishing the wrong person.
> it's that calculating a custom amount requires more effort than just tapping accept.

0% is easy to calculate.

Exactly this. Why are you tipping if you’re standing up?
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Why tip someone for a job I'm capable of doing myself? I can serve food, I can drive a taxi, I can and do cut my own hair. I did, however, tip my urologist.
You definitely get the spit-coffee at the diner.
On a separate but vaguely related note: if somebody comps all or part of your bill at a restaurant or bar then you should split the difference on the tip.

As a practical example let's say you take a date to your local trendy sushi place. You both get gold-leafed deep fried Wagyu fatback tuna rolls and some Yuzu duck fat-washed 50-year-old whiskey highballs. The final bill is $100 (I'll use round-ish numbers for this example). The bartender comps you 30% because you all are cool and discuss your shared experience bartending or jetskiing or whatever. Ordinarily your tip would have been 20% for a total of $120. In this case your bill is now $70 plus your newly selected gratuity. Take the difference between the original bill with tip and your current bill without tip and divide it in two. This is the floor for your new tip, in this case (120-70)/2 = $25. This is indeed something like a 35% gratuity but they hooked you up and made that custom drink for your charming new beau. As a matter of fact you should round up from this number because they have side work to do and you make pretty decent money as a software engineer/LLM tickler/product sorcerer. Just make it $30 for a nice round hundo.

If you're friends with the manager and they comp your dinner to do you a solid and impress your date then you should tip 50% of what the bill would have been minimum. This is why you should keep cash in your pocket - shake the waiter's hand on your way out and palm it to them. If that's not possible then go to use the restroom and talk to them on your way back so they can run your card through the POS on a blank check to give them said tip.

This is how you do things with class. This is what I wish somebody had explained to me when I was 20 and kinda broke (i.e. eager to save money that I would have spent anyway) before I embarrassed myself by failing to do such. If you are similarly unaware then now you know too :-)

As an addendum this also applies to coffee and pizza places but the numbers become coarser. Buying them the equivalent of a beer at your local dive ($3ish) is customary.

  • Trufa
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I'm really not trying to hate, I think you method is great and I love that you have rationalized it, but as someone whose mostly find this kind of social interactions natural, there's something "funny" about finding the algorithm for it. I never did the math and always naturally landed more or less there.
The way to do it with class would be the manager asks the price of the service, and pays the servers and tenders their due fair wage. The moment you bring money to a bunch of "ifs" surrounding a social interaction, you lost all class. Thinking of tips at all is actively detrimental to what you're trying to accomplish.
  • bcook
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  • 7 hours ago
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I've only been given 1 free meal (by the manager). I just gave the entire difference as my tip. I was already going to spend the money, so why not make a random waiter happy.
I've never been comped at any restaurant or bar.

I always thought that was a casino thing (to keep you drinking so that you gamble more) but I've never been to a casino. I live in Canada though, so we might have laws against that sort of thing.

Have you tried being really, really, ridiculously good looking?
Ahhh, I see. So the GP's whole spiel was just a humblebrag.
  • ajkjk
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  • 7 hours ago
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you don't have to be good looking. you just have to go to the same place frequently, and be friendly.
You don’t have to be, but it helps not to be bad looking.
I guess you missed the part where I talked about being friendly (or friends) with the waitstaff. Nice to know that you think I'm good looking though!
I recently had an entire meal at Chili’s comped by the manager, because I waited an hour for food. I guess their system flagged it, or they just noticed, because I didn’t complain. I was hanging with my grandson.

I tipped on the full amount but we had to get the manager again to figure out how. I was going to Venmo her but the manager just sent the $0.00 bill to the table.

if you had to wait an hour for the food, what was the tip for exactly?
Perhaps codazoda asked to delay an hour as an excuse to stay longer, so they did well with their part of the plan?
I guess I’m still similarly unaware, because nothing about palming people money on the way out like a magician or doing the restroom trick feels classy over everyone just being super upfront about the bill and tips.
Just pointing out that in your example, the waiter gives themselves a $30 bonus by giving you the option not to pay a tip.
> As a practical example let's say you take a date to your local trendy sushi place. You both get gold-leafed deep fried Wagyu fatback tuna rolls

"Practical example"

> As a practical example let's say you take a date to your local trendy sushi place. You both get gold-leafed deep fried Wagyu fatback tuna rolls and some Yuzu duck fat-washed 50-year-old whiskey highballs. The final bill is $100

Are you a time traveler from like 1980?

Yeah, this is too much nonsense for me.

If a waiter is comping something in exchange for a higher tip, that's not generosity or goodwill at all, it's a dishonest scam.

I will tip what I want to tip (often 0) without remorse and move on with my life.

Unfortunately this cancerous American system leeched into Canada, but we can still stop it, one $0 tip at a time.

I think the procedure is being misinterpreted. This isn't a scam, it's just a common social convention. It's not a scam by the waiter because they have a limited amount they can do this for and they have just chosen to do it for you.
feels like this post was written by a robot trying to act like a cool dude
... So pay your server for ripping off their employer?
Is this how comping actually works? I’ve never worked in a restaurant, but I assumed there was some system for it (if sometimes ill-defined) and not just employees stealing.
The receipt printer in the kitchen is tied to the POS. Anything rung in for prep is saved in the computer. The manager can run reports and see who comped what and if anything has been voided. This has been a thing since the 90s.

Creating a good guest experience is how you get repeat business. Comps are part of that. You are talking about theft and I mentioned nothing of the sort. If you choose to engage in such behavior then that's your business - don't accuse me of it.

Only person who MAYBE should be tipped is the COOK. Bringing plate to table is trivial - cooking is not.

Tipping is a scam in the age of wages and pensions

As someone who's worked in restaurant kitchens but did one single day as a waiter for training, I'd basically never work as a server, even for tips and the extra money.

Cooking was way easier.

I agree the whole tipping system in the US is a mess, though.

I assume that my tip benefits the people who provide the service (Starbucks employees, not Starbucks shareholders). I also assume that the employees' salaries are not “great.” I am satisfied with my income, so I have no problem tipping. I tip little when the service is not good and tip a lot when the service is excellent.
> I assume that my tip benefits the people who provide the service (Starbucks employees, not Starbucks shareholders).

> I also assume that the employees' salaries are not “great.”

The employees' salaries not being “great” benefits the shareholders. How the shareholders get away with paying such low salaries is left as an exercise to the reader.

yeah we all understand the basic premise. But it's applied completely unequally and you subsidizing their salary is keeping starbucks from paying them more. It creates unnecessary friction and decision fatigue for the consumer as well. Those farmworkers doing back breaking work to pick your berries? No tip.
Instead of assuming that - take the amount you wanted to to tip, and donate it to the Starbacks Workers' Union:

https://sbworkersunited.org

or buy their merch to support that worthy struggle.

A guy with short hair should not have to pay more than $20 for a basic haircut, inclusive of tip. If you can't find someone that does it for less than that in your area, invest about $100 in professional grade clippers and cut your own hair. It's easier than it sounds and you will get better at it over time.

Learn to make your own coffee. You shouldn't have to pay more than a couple of bucks for coffee with perhaps some milk in it. An espresso machine and a grinder will quickly pay for themselves.

While you are at it, cancel all those streaming subscriptions, and stream for free in the high seas or YT ad-free with uBlock.

The above "tips" will save your thousands of dollars each year, and most likely also save you time. There are also things like DIY car maintenance that can be fun to learn and save you a lot of money, but you need space (a house) and some tools to get started.

  • pests
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> While you are at it, cancel all those streaming subscriptions, and stream for free in the high seas

Setting up jellyfin+plex (some devices support one but not the other) and most of the arr suite (radarr, sonarr, prowlarr, tunarr) has really been the best choice I've made this year. I have every TV show or movie I ever want to watch, all my favorites, all the classics. And all in one place. And I made sure to keep it local-first so I still have access at home if we lose internet. Started sharing with family and friends and I get a few requests a week to add content, so its being used.

Just removing the "what streaming service is this show on that im watching?" has been a nice improvement.

> An espresso machine and a grinder will quickly pay for themselves.

Or a pour over filter (like Kalita Wave or Hario V60) plus a grinder. That's a cheaper setup to start, and an easy way to get a big mug of great coffee.

Does annybody worry about sabotage if you don’t tip? Eg the cashier does something to your food? “Nice muffin you got there, I’d hate for it to get accidentally sneezed on.”

I recently bought my mom flowers for her birthday. Despite the price showing no delivery fee, the final price included $15 delivery charge, $8 service charge, taxes, and then asked me for a tip.

I chose no tip, expecting the delivery and service charge should cover everything.

The flowers were left on her front porch in below-freezing weather, they didn’t even knock or ring the doorbell. Luckily my mom happened to open the door and saw them before they completely froze.

So was the delivery person incompetent, or acting out because I didn’t add additional tip?