And given how trigger happy some people are these days, I wouldn't even think about working this job if there wasn't a fairly robust form of address verification.
It is the fact that it is happening early in the morning that worries me. People aren't fully cognizant when they are woken up in general, and also aren't expecting anyone to be ringing the doorbell at that hour. I think fearful and violent people will be more likely to overreact in that situation.
All the cases of shooting food delivery workers for ringing the wrong doorbell that I've read have occurred late at night, and I think early in the morning will be even worse.
We don't answer calls anymore, and a "fake" pizza delivery, doesn't that mean the person get's a free pizza?
Here, you're disrupting someone's most vital health function for a low fee.
No joke, I won the World Sleep Championships a few years back, and received two deliveroo knocks on my door that night. I was modestly suspicious that it was intentional interference to throw me off (of course, there was no money on the line, and I am pretty sure other competitors didn't know where I lived).
That's wild! I thought that would have disappeared with Doordash, etc.
Can you pay a doordasher when the food arrives? I assume that's all through CCs.
I'm sure DoorDash doesn't allow it. But a lot of older people call for pizza the way they've always done for decades, so it's common enough that the pizza places (at least in my low-crime suburban area) have decided to keep allowing it.
They usually have some sort of system where your address is connected with your phone number after your first order, so they must be able to see that you've called X times and paid reliably in the past.
This is definitely a problem to solve. I could even see harassment being the most likely initial use case, until you manage to reach people with the problem seeking a solution. (People are more likely to want to eat pizza themselves than to harass with it. But people who just heard of this door-knocking service, without seeking it out, are more likely to want to harass someone than to want to be woken up themselves.)
A lot of tech businesses try to ToS away liability, but you can't do that in this case, since the harmed party isn't the customer/user. (You can try to ToS away the liability of your door-knocker flaking on you, or the customer thinking they did, and missing an important meeting. But not the harassment of a non-customer/user.)
I don't think zero-knowledge proofs of residence are ready.
If you could find a way to do it in a smooth-UX way, such as by signin-with-Google (or confirmed email) and match that up with physical address using a creepy data-broker service, that might work well. But I'd guess would be a big percentage of your engineering effort, and you'd have ongoing costs, and possibly some upfront commitment to the broker to bother with you at a viable cost rate.
Other ideas that come to mind seem like they'd have significant numbers of rejected legitimate, and accepted illegitimate.
Random idea: One of the times people most want wakeup help is when they're traveling (with disrupted schedules, unfamiliar settings, risk of phone alarm accidentally in DND/mute or out of battery, etc.). Hotels have it covered. Maybe you could integrate with AirBnb, in a way that lets you sufficiently authenticate that the person at the address at that time wants to be woken then. And you can give AirBnb a big cut, for the integration and for advertising your service. Or maybe AirBnb wants to build and own the UI and billing, and you're only a middleperson who supplies and pays the contractor door-knockers (and provides a brand, and lets AirBnb keep a bit arms-length on that and the contractors). (Or "hosts" could provide an unusually good alarm clock on the nightstand. Or there could be an unusually good alarm clock that the people who want it can buy.)
The Airbnb integration idea is brilliant! Travelers definitely have disrupted sleep schedules and unfamiliar settings. Hotels offer wake-up calls but Airbnbs don't. That solves both the verification problem (host vouches for guest) and creates a clear use case. Thanks for the insight!
You could add some kind of recourse mechanism and make customers post bond. Like if the wrong person is woken up they can visit a URL that causes the originator to be fined / lose a deposit.
The more important question appears to be why it seems to difficult to follow the advice?
Personally, I'm well aware of the positive effects of drinking plenty of water, eating vegetables, exercising daily, and going to bed early. However, I buy myself a chocolate bar every day, love pizza, just want to unwind after a hard day at work, and still read Reddit late into the night.
All the healthy stuff has friction: a workout takes time out of the day, the veggies need preparation, while going to bed early means I'm missing out on fun or intriguing things that I would learn about otherwise.
It's probably easier to monetize chocolate bars, pizza and reddit (ads). Easier to slip into "junk" mode and harder to stop.
My exercise equipment is long paid for (10+ years ago), I watch sports while exercising (subscription paid whether I exercise or not) and going to bed early means less need for caffeine / painkillers to get through the day. Veggies are somewhat more expensive, not sure if the margins are as high on them as on ultra-processed food.
And yet, I'm right there with you - I struggle daily with doing the right thing.
Most likely. For me personally, the ADHD medication hasn't helped, and after missing two appointments in a row, I'm now too embarrassed to call the doctor and get a new prescription.
>I've tried this and the temptation to remove the block is too much.
Or circumvent it. I used a blocking plugin, until I've learned it does not affect other/new browser profiles. Some other low-level solutions I've tried could be bypassed Tor mode inside Brave browser. It seems like my brain just doesn't want to focus on the damn work, but rather on how to get that dopamine hit the easy way.
Although I enjoyed reading her book and found most of the information plausible, I always found it strange that the author herself seems so uncharismatic, especially given her claim that charisma can be learned.
The same goes for Robert Greene, author of "The 48 Laws of Power," "The Art of Seduction," and several other books. I've watched a few interviews with him, and he strikes me as completely unremarkable, uncharismatic, and rather unconvincing, which makes me doubt the validity of his books' promises.
