HN user
I don't have a problem with demos, they're great. It's the fact it's not advertised that way that really irked me.
Maybe it's buried in the description somewhere, but the first indication I got that it was a demo was after wasting about 25 minutes downloading, installing, setting up a Nintendo account, downloading more levels, then learning the game mechanics.
I got really turned off when it was listed as "Free (with in-app purchases)". Turns out it's basically a 10 minute demo, after which you have to pay $9.99.
Maybe it's good, but deceptive enough I uninstalled it.
Documentation.
I'm a sort of internal consultant in my company who often interfaces with external customers. I've repeatedly heard that no one else provides as thorough yet easily understood documentation. They value the results, but value truly understanding them and being able to follow how I got them almost as much.
I'm not positive, but I think you specifically have to ask for it. Before I found that the best I ever got was a shipping refund if I paid for the 1-day upgrade.
Now I just quote that line and paste the link and it's always approved. They usually act like it's only done as a customer retention move and at the discretion of the support rep.
There is a bit of compensation available. If an item doesn't arrive in 2 days you can request a free month of Prime:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
"If you received free shipping through Amazon Prime, you may be eligible for a free one-month extension when the promised delivery date isn't met. Prime Extensions are limited to one per free trial and 12 for an annual membership. Free Amazon Student Memberships do not qualify for this extension."
Just contact support about that order and tell them the item didn't arrive in time and you'd like your free month of Prime. Since they switched to the Amazon delivery service I'm about to max out my 12 free months.
It looks like the Focus adblocker they launched last year [1] has been updated to a full browser.
1) https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/12/08/announcin...
I don't think that applies here. According to the FDA Guidelines [1] (page 4) for a dietary supplement:
"Furthermore, a dietary supplement must be labeled as a dietary supplement and be intended for ingestion and must not be represented for use as conventional food or as a sole item of a meal or of the diet"
Soylent is clearly marketing it as a meal replacement which should disqualify it as a supplement.
I count 5 different 3.5mm jacks I use on a regular basis (work headphones, gym headphones, car, girlfriend's car, home stereo).
Now I need to buy 4 additional adapters from Apple for $40 or carry an adapter with me everywhere I go?
For example, the most recent immigration bill: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s744
In addition to what others have posted, it only benefits those who have a mortgage when the deduction is passed. For everyone else it effectively raises the price of the house by the amount of the deduction.
Then what's the incentive to participate at all? Would backing a project be equivalent to a 12 month high interest loan? Or, equivalent to an IPO where "backers" get a certain percentage of the company (which I'm sure opens a massive legal mess).
I don't think most people have a problem with projects failing. It's when creators take the money and don't appear to even attempt to produce the product that something is wrong.
It would have been the same major metro area, but moved about 8 miles in the middle. Same ISP, different IP. Same computer, but there's no way I didn't completely clear the browser a few times in those 2 years.
Facebook does the same thing and it's just as creepy.
I closed my "real" account around 2011. A few months back I created a new blank account because I needed access to a couple organization's pages. The only information on that account is my name (a fairly common one) and an email address which is different from the one on my original account. It's possible they have some geographic info linking the two accounts as I closed and opened them from the same city.
90% of the "people you may know" are correct and from dramatically different social groups. Some how it's picked out a girl I did a family stay with in Germany in '04, a fourth cousin I'm only vaguely aware of, current friends from several groups, and high school friends I haven't talked to in 10 years.
In my experience, the "loyalty" of older generations is largely a myth.
I used to work for a company that had an enormous bimodal age distribution - maybe 45% over 50, 45% under 30, and the last 10% between 30-50. The age gap gave an interesting perspective into generational differences because it was so well defined.
Very few of the "old timers" we spoke candidly with were loyal in any meaningful sense, and many truly wanted to leave. However, they were stuck simply because of the pension plan - they couldn't afford to. Very few "millennials" have any lock-in like that.
The piece that I see ALWAYS neglected is maintenance. I rent and pay nothing additional to maintain the place. Washing machine breaks - landlord fixes it. Carpets wearing out (minus things that are obviously my fault) - landlord replaces it.
Everyone I talk to who owns is constantly upgrading or replacing or fixing something in their house. It seems, on average, home maintenance is about 66-75% of my rent check; and that isn't money they get back. It just prevents their home price from falling.
Definitely agree on the "do something in the gap" aspect. In a lot of technical fields, 6 non-practicing months can be very close to "no experience".
My job responsibilities tend to come in waves of 3 different functions, where I'll focus almost exclusively on one aspect for 4 months, then move to another for 8 months, then hop again. Each time I switch it can take a lot of time to "shake off the cobwebs" - either the software changes, there is new functionality, or just rediscovering some best practices.
I can completely understand reluctance to hire someone in that situation.
Over the years I've evolved the strategy of asking very specific questions like that on forums. Precise code snippets seem to get precise answers. Broader code with the same problem attract many times more answers, but they are almost all junk.
When I stumble on some unusual behavior I pare it down to the simplest case possible, then ask about that problem. If I don't, the top several answers will invariably be "Why are you writing in X?! Y is so much better for this" and critiquing other parts of the code that aren't causing the odd behavior.
It's just a coupling system. If you want to attach Legos to K'Nex, they will work fine in a handful of spots.
Building an entire structure out of an AM construction set would be a disaster. Even professional grade printers aren't even close to 2.5 micron.
I don't remember having any trouble with actually ordering the pack.
I do remember trying to bump the payment to $10 and not being able to. Adding an option to change the amount paid during checkout or making it much more obvious if there was one may have helped your "haul".
I ordered this pack and paid the default $5 by mistake (with a bit of laziness), and would bet quite a few others had the same experience.
When ordering, you had to enter your amount before adding it to the cart, with $5 as the default. There wasn't an option to change it later that I could find. By the time I realized it couldn't be changed, I was through most of the ordering process and didn't feel like starting over.
It would be interesting to see how much better they would have done with either a more intuitive checkout (assuming I missed an option) or had more options in the process.
I'm not sure which part you're asking about. I'm assuming it's that "correcthorsebatterystaple" is only lower case.
I was mainly commenting on the format suggested by the comic - 4 all-lower case words. You could throw in capitilzation, but most people are going to follow some pattern such as capitilizing all the words or the first and last, etc. These schemes only add a couple extra bits. Fully random capitilization would greatly increase the strength but make it nearly impossible to remember.
There are a lot of assumptions in these calculations, chief among them already knowing the format of the password. It's somewhat reasonable to ignore though, because not knowing the format of the password is going to add extra complexity more or less evenly across all formats.
From what I remember of the comic, the point was not the length of the password. The entropy was calculated based on 4 possible words.
Assuming ~2000 common English words, the number of possible passwords in that format is 2000^4 ~= 2^44. If the calculation is based on a completely random string of letters it is far stronger at 26^30 ~= 2^141 but it's safe to assume people aren't going to memorize a 30 character random password.
It's worth noting that the fairly common 8 character upper/lower case, numbers, and symbols they cracked in 6 hours is more secure than "correcthorsebatterystaple" at 72^8 ~= 2^49.
It should be mentioned it's a slightly stretched definition of "unlimited data". From Virgin Mobile [1]:
Once 2.5GB (3.5 if paying for "mobile hotspot") of data is consumed during the monthly cycle, data speeds may be reduced to 256 kbps or below for the rest of that monthly plan cycle.
It was only 200MB last time I looked (although that may not have been with Virgin) which is why I went for a contract plan. Also, outside the iPhone, the selection is really poor.
1) http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond-talk-...
I'm really starting to believe that these "critiques" of Khan Academy are just teachers and professors terrified of becoming irrelevant.
The question shouldn't be "How well does Khan Academy teach" (well, maybe someday). The important question right now is "Is Khan Academy a better learning tool than most high school and college teachers?". In my experience, the answer overwhelmingly is "yes".
I did have some truly fantastic teachers/professors on the way to a STEM degree, but they were rare. Most were terrible to mediocre, even at a semi-prestigious university. Khan Academy has greatly reinforced my understanding of some subjects, and it's been exceedingly easy to learn some new subjects.
So yes, it doesn't stack up to the top tier teachers and probably never will. But that doesn't matter, because there aren't all that many fantastic teachers and Khan Academy is better than the rest.
news.google.com - skim the headlines every few hours for anything breaking
fivethirtyeight.com - unbiased, non-sensationalist US election news. I got tired of other sources reporting a week to week swing within the margin of error as if it is Earth shattering.
The Economist - subscription to the weekly magazine. Great in depth reporting of pretty much everything from around the world.
csmonitor.com - Christian Science Monitor - despite the name, it's a great fairly unbiased news source. Just avoid their recent descent into "Are you an American? Take our 100 question quiz!"
npr.org - Good reporting staff, love Morning Edition and All Things Considered in the car.
True, there will always be a need for immediacy in shopping. However, on three of the four you listed (Not sure if I want to know why you need ammunition at 1 am...) Amazon carries them, and at a reasonable to very low price. Most of the time I know I'll need something a couple days before. Instead of "I'm out of coffee, better go to the store" it's "I'm running low on coffee, better order some and it will be here in two days". Personally, I find that to be more convenient most of the time.
I only picked that because it was the example in the article. Looking at my recent Amazon purchases:
Amazon: Oxo Coasters $9.99 for 8 Walmart: Comparable set, Silicon Coasters $30 for 6
Amazon: DVD Rack $29.99 Walmart: Comparable model from same company, $39.00
Amazon: American Crew Pomade, $21.49 for 2 Walmart: $16.98 for 1
Amazon: 13 Watt CFL, $15.98 for 8 Walmart: Same model, $16.88 for 4
Those were the first 4 items I tried to compare.
> Amazon has long enjoyed an unbeatable price advantage over its physical rivals. When I buy a $1,000 laptop from Wal-Mart, the company is required to collect local sales tax from me, so I pay almost $1,100 at checkout.
This is such an over blown argument. Sure, Amazon is ~7% (where I live) cheaper than traditional stores due to sales tax. But that $1000 Wal-Mart laptop has a $900 sticker price on Amazon, and most non electronic items are 20-40% cheaper than in stores.
If laws change and I have to start paying sales tax on Amazon, it won't change a thing about my buying habits.
Edit: They also have an inventory many times larger than any brick and mortar store. Whenever I go shopping, I have to choose between the least crappy option Wal-Mart decides to stock. On Amazon, I get exactly the one I want.
The distances are relative to a blue marker on the map, which you can drag to your current location. For me, it was in the UK and completely hidden by one of the boxes. I just happened to notice it during the refresh after manipulating the map.
It's a color printer, so there are 4 different cartridges being used at once - cyan, yellow, magenta, and black.