REI has a 100% satisfaction guaranteed. About a year or two ago I purchased a few different bicycle parts. I kept them without using them for a few months and decided I didn't really need them after all. Since they were a few hundred dollars worth of parts I didn't want to just keep them or get rid of them, I wanted to return them. Even though their policy is "satisfaction" guaranteed, I felt like I was abusing the good faith of the policy--knowing just how heavily discounted their garage sale items are.
What I ended up deciding to do was returning them but asking for an 80% refund. The guy behind the counter gave me a really weird look and told me he had to ask if that was even allowed. Luckily for me, it was. They refunded me 80% of the total amount and I called it fair.
As an Android developer, I love that Google is doing this!
Android has come a very long way in the last few years in terms of usability and design. A large part of this has been due to an increasingly uniform design language and feel. That, and the new distribution model for what are basically Android updates (Google Play Services) has made Android feel more polished and actually allowed it to stand on its own against iOS. It also means that developers like me don't have to spend nearly as much time worrying about fragmentation in the traditional sense. Each day the percentage of people using sub-ICS phones falls, and we all get one step closer to the day we can support ICS+ only.
However, companies like Amazon would force me to rewrite the maps integration, the sign-in portion, the wallet, etc... Amazon did a great job of replicating Google Maps API V1 but they have yet to mirror V2 and don't mirror the other components I mentioned.
Aside from fragmentation and developer sanity, the article mentions another key point here:
"[M]any of Google's solutions offer best-in-class usability, functionality, and ease-of-implementation."
Exactly! Google APIs are not perfect, and there's bugs (like when Google Maps broke map markers on high resolution phones like the HTC One). But generally speaking, I'm really happy with the quality of the APIs and services. In an ideal world, Amazon and Google would work together to provide great and uniform single-sign-in APIs, great maps, etc... As it currently stands though, I don't believe either party is interested in doing so. Prisoner's dilemma?
You know, I'll take you up on that. Is @bunsen Twitter? My family will never move--I've come to peace with that. So it'd be nice if I could at least tolerate Miami a bit better and maybe seeing it with someone from the HN community is what is required.
I was raised in Miami and my family lives there still as well! We should meet up some time and complain about Miami together, haha. I agree with all the points you made.
Miami has quite a shallow population. I've also found as time goes on that as I develop new interests, there is poor community around most of them--the little things like rock climbing or playing ping pong. It's even extremely difficult to find a coffee shop to work out of when I visit family.
This article makes points that sound fine on the surface, but ignore reality. There's a very good reason why a lot of sites do this and won't stop any time soon--it works. The article claims some effects to "conversions, usage and how people feel about your product" but is very light on the details of how it actually affects those things.
Getting a user to sign up facilitates a whole range of options (promotional emails being just one of them) that help drive user retention and engagement. I am not advocating making your product obscure until they sign up. The value proposition of your product should be clear, regardless of whether someone signs up or not. But it is not clear that making them signup before they can actually use it for themselves decreases conversion or usage.
The complaint made here will become ever weaker as "Sign Up with Google" and other single-sign-on services become more widespread. Signing up in those cases takes a single click, and my experience is in many cases instantly personalized with my data from other services. This might make some HN denizens cringe, but the average person seems to not mind.
Don't like how they use one image at the top which is from a completely different event, as explained at the bottom. The image seems to be chosen to generate a specific emotional response but I'm not sure it actually represents the events covered in the story very honestly.
I'd say it's more than fine. I just spent three weeks in Europe and I was underwhelmed by the beer everywhere except Munich, Berlin, and Copenhagen (Mikeller was great). Foreigners seem to think of American beer as PBR, Bud Light, Miller, etc... and they have a good reason to--it's what most Americans drink.
But the strong microbrew renaissance going on right now is producing some of my favorite beers. Beers with the same depth and complexity as the finest of wines--he said, opinionatedly.
Now, I've learned that this experimental attitude towards beer is highly American. I don't think I've seen anywhere else in the world, except maybe Belgium, that is quite as crazy and experimental with what they put in their beers. After all, who in their right minds would like sour beers?
If you think the beer situation in the US is poor try out some Russian River, Boulevard, or Elysian brews and come back to me.
Something for everyone out there to keep in mind. Reactions are always negative when you talk about doing something risky in the future and are much more likely to be positive when you decided to actually do it.
I dropped out of college a few months ago. Through the different talks I've had with family and friends about it in the past year, you would have guessed that everyone would have criticized the decision tremendously. But the day that I went from "dad, I want to drop out" to "dad, I signed a full time offer and I'm dropping out", I received staggering amounts of support.
Suddenly people knew I was serious about what I had been saying for a while. At least that's what I think the difference was caused by.
Another good reason to do this is for example the android tag. Most of the top results are Android documentation for basic classes like ASyncTask and Activity. If I could filter out google domains I'd be left with interesting links related to Android.
The car stopped roughly where the men are standing.
I am always very thankful for people with EMT training. When I climbed Mt. St. Helens last year a man had a medical complication and passed away on the mountain. There were about 20 of us who spent about 45 minutes helping him out until the helicopter arrived.
That experience really solidified for me the importance that we all get some basic medical training. Even something as simple as CPR certification can really save someone's life.
I get a little bit nervous for you cyclists. On the motorbike at least you have thick leather protecting you from road rash. I can imagine that that part can't have been fun.
About five weeks ago I fell of my motorcycle into the path of an oncoming car on my way to Skyline/Woodside. The motorcycle went in front of it and lifted the car into the air. Then I slid underneath it. One of the rear wheels landed next to my head and I came out of the rear part of it.
The outcome was a broken left wrist. That's it. Literally nothing else happened to me.
There are things that happen to you that make it clear how close we all are to death at all times. I am glad to hear your injuries weren't too bad and hope you recover from them well.
Edit: I have to add, it's also times like these that you will oftentimes show you the best of people. The girl who was driving the car was very nice about everything and even offered me a ride into the city (more than 45 minutes) even though she lived in the opposite direction. The tow truck driver charged me only half the normal rate because "we gotta stick together" and he rode bikes too. Lots of people who were around near the accident helped immobilize my arm after the injury. The friendly folks down at Motoshop unloaded the bike and removed some of the ugly bits sticking out. Friend came to pick me up and take me to hospital. It was pretty inspiring. People are amazing.
Hacker News isn't just strictly news anymore than the New York Times is strictly about New York.
We do live in boring times. The 24/7 media cycle may have taught us otherwise. But day-to-day, not that much new events happens. The way I see Hacker News, it's a place for smart hackers to post interesting articles. If other hackers find the article interesting, that's all that matters.
"The other great unfairness has to do with the preferences that elite American universities give to well-connected children, either because their parents went to the university themselves or because they have given money."
"An educational institution should focus on attracting the best people, and then work out how to finance the poorer people in that category."
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Legacy admissions usually come with legacy donations. These donations can be in the millions each year for an organization like Harvard, which in turn pays the tuition of the poorer people in the category.
The issues of legacy admissions and affirmative action are pretty closely linked. So to address one part of the issue without looking at the other is not quite fair.
Banks are typically the worst. All sorts of gimmicky password requirements. 8-12 characters. Must have one capital letter. Must have one number. No special symbols.
So "I can't believe it's not butter!" won't work, yet that would probably be a pretty secure password, and be entirely rememberable. In fact I could come up with a silly pun-filled sentence for each site I visit and make passwords fun again.
I've found that it's sometimes the case that you will officially get offered a fixed amount of vacation time, but informally you can take more than it if you want.
The unwritten rule seems to be "you're working really hard to get a featured shipped, if you need extra vacation to decompress after, feel free".
What I ended up deciding to do was returning them but asking for an 80% refund. The guy behind the counter gave me a really weird look and told me he had to ask if that was even allowed. Luckily for me, it was. They refunded me 80% of the total amount and I called it fair.