News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Show HN: Road Trips in Australia by empressplay on Saturday February 23, 2019 @07:42PM (#19236353)
Neat, but misses a number of inland small towns that are in themselves attractions, such as Daylesford VIC or Maldon VIC.
Re:Show HN: Road Trips in Australia by reverseengineer on Saturday February 23, 2019 @07:52PM (#19236390)
Thank you. Possible to enter Daylesford, Victoria as waypoint. You could enter many waypoints, any duration any budget, and the route will be optimized for those desires-constraints. Maldon, Victoria is missing from our Knowledge Graph :-O I've checked it, it's cool: it has been designated "Australia's first notable town". Will improve in the future.
Re:Show HN: Road Trips in Australia by empressplay on Saturday February 23, 2019 @07:48PM (#19236377)
Also, I had to blow out the itinerary to three weeks in order to get a single route between Adelaide and Melbourne that went via the Grampians, which is overlooking a pretty serious tourist attraction...
Re:Show HN: Road Trips in Australia by reverseengineer on Saturday February 23, 2019 @08:05PM (#19236457)
You could enter desired sequence: Adelaide Grampians National Park Melbourne. Easy to visit Grampians in default 2 week duration. Adelaide will be start, Melbourne finish. Grampians travel-thru. But the point that Grampians had to be proposed by AI is useful. Taken.
Re:Show HN: Road Trips in Australia by reverseengineer on Saturday February 23, 2019 @07:54PM (#19236395)
Grampians National Park is present in Knowledge Graph, possible to enter as waypoint. Why it's overlooked (or bypassed)? Good question for us, will investigate... That's why showing it here!
Re:Show HN: Road Trips in Australia by cmroanirgo on Saturday February 23, 2019 @08:30PM (#19236560)
Not sure what your inputs are, but perhaps a rule of thumb (if not there already) is to generate a list of attractions sorted by quantity of reviews on (eg) trip advisor and then compare that result with #of people who actually go there.

It could give you the chance to rank 'must see' weighed against 'off the beaten track'. (Oz has heaps of 'off the beaten track' that the hordes of tourists don't know about)

Re:Show HN: Road Trips in Australia by reverseengineer on Sunday February 24, 2019 @12:19AM (#19237264)
This is tricky. We don't know who landed on the page. How to propose Paris in France without Eiffel Tower? OK if user explicitly checks "avoid 'must see'" or "avoid overtourism". Then possible to propose different stuff. One traveler told me exactly this, a week ago. Maybe we will implement this feature.
Re:Show HN: Road Trips in Australia by cmroanirgo on Saturday February 23, 2019 @08:23PM (#19236528)
It's also strange that Katoomba/ Blue mountains (& then Jenolan caves) are missed.
Re:Show HN: Road Trips in Australia by Sendotsh on Saturday February 23, 2019 @08:42PM (#19236611)
It seems to do mostly capital cities so far, and the paths between. There's not really a capital-to-capital trip that passes through the Blue Mountains.

I would really like an option that is something like "7 days around NSW" and it gives you a circuit passing through a variety of areas throughout the state. Eg:

Sydney - Wollongong - Goulburn - Wagga - Forbes - Bathurst - Blue Mountains - Sydney.

Edit: I take it back about my first point, it does do Blue Mountains if you plug it in, but it was being weird for a bit and kept showing me the same Syd - Melb trip no matter what I plugged in, so I thought it wanted a capital-to-capital connection.

Re:Show HN: Road Trips in Australia by reverseengineer on Sunday February 24, 2019 @12:25AM (#19237277)
Just saw the sequence in your comment: Sydney - Wollongong - Goulburn - Wagga - Forbes - Bathurst - Blue Mountains - Sydney. Type those names one by one and you will get a cyclic trip from/to Sydney. But the order of waypoints could be different, optimized for max curiosity within time and budget.

We have a version in the lab, where you could define durations in locations (e.g. 2 days at Wagga Wagga), even pin location to specific date.

Re:Show HN: Road Trips in Australia by reverseengineer on Saturday February 23, 2019 @08:36PM (#19236587)
Those locations are definitely present in our knowledge graph. You wanted them proposed by default, without explicitly entering them? Katoomba pops up pretty frequent in our lab (but Jenolan caves don't). I promise if you specify Katoomba and Jenolan caves as start or finish or travel-through points, you will get good routes via them all.