Or even 1 cancellation per year would probably reduce this. Coupled with id checks and lots of shenanigans fixed.
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@KVV, this might be a question to ask further down the road (i.e. after a couple more investigations) but how much of our issues with public golf bookings are due strictly to ForeUp, and is it worth âinvestigatingâ the website itself?
My personal experience is that itâs in an incredibly simple interface that never really works correctly. You need a unique password for every course, it sounds like itâs incredibly easy to break with a bot, but virtually every course uses it or GolfNow. Is it just a shitty, cheap program without a better option? Maybe it takes a much smaller chunk of revenue from courses?
Iâm not sure how much brainpower is worth spending on this, but I appreciate these pods and your work on them.
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My gut feeling is that it all rests in how bad ForeUp is and how itâs somehow become the go to for public golf.
No shot did the developers ever think/imagine their site would need safeguards against things like bots.
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Any info or details? Of course we know why but intrigued at it all.
Sounds like a market opportunity for a half competent programmer
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@KVV is on the case and I believe will be updating in an upcoming pod (I think we have contact with a state senator)
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This is starting to sound like an episode of the office
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Man this was so good.
Question I had was are all these tee times actually showing up and playing golf? The pod said that the Wednesday 2pm tee time is on Green is filling instantaneously 7 days out every time when obviously that shouldnât be happening consistently. Does someone actually show up, pay, and play on those times or do many eventually get cancelled and sit empty? If they end up being empty, these middlemen could be denying revenue for the state on top of the scumminess already displayed.
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Weâre all looking for the guy who would do this.
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Having played 100+ rounds at Bethpage, Iâd say the majority of these rounds end up being played. However, a good amount would often get claimed 7 days out, then canceled the night before. Iâd show up as a walk up on a weekday to a tee sheet full of available times.
While itâs great Bethpage sets aside times to walk ups, most folks donât have that flexibility so if they see nothing online unless theyâre hunting last second cancelations, they wonât play.
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@KVV Itâs not just golf courses either! Thereâs currently a situation going on with people using bots to book the best pickleball courts and times at Life Time locations and reselling the slots
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Finally got around to listen to this one⌠amazing pod, great stuff as always @KVV
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Campgrounds up here too.
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Finally got a listen on my way to work this morning. @KVV this is a fantastic piece. I wonder if local celeb Andrew Svoboda had a take on this? Just curious.
As a born and bred NYer who was dealing with this back in the early 2000s and ended up driving from Manhattan to Shirley/Wading River/Etc at 6AM on a Sat for The Links at Shirley or Tall Grass because I couldnât get on there, I appreciate your work and loathe the gluttonous behavior of NPC.
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âTaylorâ sounds like a goof and I donât care for him.
As a software engineer myself I hope he crashes out and never gets another job.
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Great pod @KVV - really interesting and I the lack of caring from the state is pathetic.
It seems like the easiest way to fix this isnât technology. If they already have a limit to how often you can play the course, physically scan the ids at the 1st tee and kick out the guys who are over the limit.
The next deep dive should be into Sweetens Cove and their abomination of online booking tee times. There has to be bots being used and the guys just donât care at all.
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Anyone else Listen to Lateral with Tom Scott? I was thinking of submitting this story as a question, but Iâm not sure how to make it not too vague.
From the submission form
Question: (50 words or less)
Tony and Frank learned to press buttons, slowly, and sometimes incorrectly. As as result, they were able to participate in their favorite passtime when ever they wanted. What were they doing, and why?
Hints: (3-5)
Itâs an outdoor hobby
The problem they solved still persists today but their solution no longer works.
This hobby became incredibly popular during Covid
(noed help with other hints)
Answer: (2 sentences)
Tony and Frank learned to dial into a Call-in line for Golf tee-times early, and time the gap between button presses, and well as the number of incorrect submissions, to avoid being kicked off the line. As a result, they were the first ones in-line on the phone to reserve a Tee time on Bethpage black, and were able to book times to play golf with their friends.
Further info:
After a lot of trial and error to get the timing right, they Programed an Auto-Dialer to do the work for them every day, or just 7 days before they wanted tee times. The info they were putting in was their drivers license number and tee time request, timing the presses, and incorrect entries into it to last exactly 15 minutes. Eventually, tee time reservations transferred to an online system during Covid. Tee times on Bethpage are still incredibly hard to come by, and is has been reported that there are likely many concurrent bot-networks that snatch up the tee times as they are made available.
Tony and Frank are pseudonyms, their real identities have not be publicized,
source: [link to the pod], 23:30 is when the break down on how they did it starts happening, it was also covered in Golfers Journal article titled âhacking Bethpageâ
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I do! I think youâve got the vibe of the question right. Just vague enough, but once people start talking it out theyâll get somewhere.
Theyâll probably start out thinking itâs something like playing the piano (pressing buttons slowly / incorrectly = learning to play), but once thatâs wrong, the guests will probably start thinking a bit more about about the beginning part of the question and the âwhyâ part. In turn, I think that would lead them to booking / planning the pastime, and if someone is tech-inclined they could get to bots, and from there they would just have to guess itâs booking tee-times. Other guesses could be like playing online chess, buying trading cards.
Other hints:
Itâs a practice thatâs generally looked down upon by others in the pastime.
(This one might be a bit too obvious but Iâll throw it in there) It doesnât have to do with the hobby itself, but planning to do the hobby.
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Congrats @KVV !
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