In SF I literally walk past a grocery store every day, I enjoy the occasional grocery shopping, but I can't get enough of these services. I work long enough hours that I rarely have time during the week, so that may account for my view point. But I'll say, once you start using one, it's hard to go back. With a company like instacart, if i'm at that point in the week and I don't have what I need to make dinner, instead of getting take out on the regular, I can get what I need dropped off immediately without dropping what I'm doing. With amazonfresh, I no longer need to do a week long or two week long shopping trip. Fresh produce every day. There's way less waste, at least than what I used to go through. I do still see value in the occaisional trip to the grocery store for reasons you mentioned, but when I do stop now, it's fast, and never on one of those extremely busy weekend days where half of the trip is me standing in a line trying not to block the cereal aisle. In addition, there's one major convenience other than getting large amounts of time back, and reducing waste, I can order what I purchased previously. No thought needed, there's enough duplicate items that going through the mundane process of picking up the exact same carton of milk every week, becomes pointless.
Yeah, I agree with the consensus thus far. To me the sign-up ruins this. Anything that gets this to the point where that's not required, adds a lot of value to your service.
I completely agree with the thought process here, and changing the incentives.
Not sure why you seem so against her losing her position though. As much this is the sort of thing prosecutors do on a regular basis, they shouldn't be. Why is she more infallible than you or I. I don't think her losing her job will send a wave of change through the system, a lot more has to take place in order for any of that to come to fruition. As much as I think people are focusing on the wrong issue here, seeking retribution through ending her career. Her callous attitude toward the case and toward punishments in general has not helped. But even if all prosecutors act the same, this is just a case that opened a lot of eyes to it. Is there no grounds or merit in the thought of letting her go. If I fuck up at my job, I could be on the chopping block to. As much as letting her go will do very little in the grand scheme of things. Leaving her there and doing nothing would also send a message to other prosecutors and to the current angry mob of people.
"I refuse to live in a state with such a dysfunctional government"...so you picked Texas..hahahah
You can absolutely do tech anywhere. But it is a very different experience. I had the exact same rationale before moving to the bay area. It was a tough decision to make, even loving the city, was it really worth it. Here, you're surrounded by tech. It is literally everywhere. When you have conversations with people, you no longer have to change your stories, your talking points, your vocab, people actually understand what you're talking about here. Sitting in a coffee shop, or on the bus, almost all you hear is tech conversations. If it's a passion, if it's what you love, it's worth every single penny to be in the heart of it. I've never been more motivated in my life.
haha totally is. I moved to SF from Pittsburgh, a home of cold winters, hot summers, and greasy foods. I felt like I didn't see an obese person for the first 6 months of living here, but it was all relative to what I was used to seeing on a regular basis.
With that logic, no one should write anything. Living here for a year, I was happy to read this piece. Everyone knows the cost of living is sky high. But unless you have to pay it, research it, live it, it's higher than most people expect. I knew i'd be paying up the ass, but when i saw the 2k+ for my studio, it was still an eye opener. Things like the divisidero being the fog line is actually pretty important. Muni having to step down, and china town being a bottle neck, may be picked up quickly, but it's still nice to know if you're moving here. Majority of article is accurate, and half of it were not known to me before moving here.
I don't think it works that way, honestly. The majority of people at that level are so well off that they don't get hit that hard. They don't really get hit at all. They have a million opportunities after being let go. Even looking into someone like Nixon, where do you go from there. He received 2 millions to write his memoirs, was paid millions for interviews etc. I don't doubt it would drastically alter her career, at least from the path she was on. But she has a certain right to uphold a set of ethics, when prosecutors overstep their power, they are no more infallible than you or I. In that role, it's always on the table as a consequence. People keep referencing how she's one of the "good guys" without any real knowledge of her previous work. Her entire career may of been built on top of prosecutorial overreach. When you put away bad people, people don't care how you do it. She finally picked the wrong person to make an example of. But even if she's let go, believe me, she'll do just fine.
I definitely agree with that notion. I think the problem we're facing is that the general public at this time knows most of what was going on. She's had a good reputation to this point. But she finally picked the wrong person to make an example of. Prosecutorial overreach is a funny thing. In that, her career may have been built on it. If the number of previous people we're actually bad people, the same tactics would of been far more accepted. Since this was a clear abuse of her power, even if it's something prosecutors generally get away with. The idea of making an example out of her seems vengeful and almost hypocritical. But it's not without its grounds.
I 100% agree with you. Ouya currently is falling in a very strange place in the market. I think they priced themselves correctly, but it falls between a roku and a toy as you mentioned. Where that leaves them is beyond me. The point that matters, is I think if someone was looking for a media device, they'd end up with a roku or apple tv. If they wanted a gaming system, right now the shield is far more appealing. A huge issue with crowdfunding these projects is keeping them relevant. If I buy something this year, and get it next year, it's very difficult to stay relevant. In order for an Ouya 2.0 to be possible, I think they will have to sell a number of post-kickstarter consoles. In order for that to happen, people are going to have to love it when it hits their door steps. They will have to get excited about it. Right now, on launch day, the ouya will not be able to play the newest games on the android market. Despite it having it's own market, if my friend is playing a better quality game on his phone next to me, there is a significant issue there. Even just a mental one, where my new shiny device, doesn't feel all that new and shiny. I don't think it's too late for the Ouya, but think a lot is going to have to go their way in the next year in order for them to succeed in that space. And I think this is going to be yet another eye opening experience for everyone with regards to crowd-funding and how it currently works--The realities of it.
I give credit to their team, I can hardly imagine how hard it is to reach goals and deliver a hardware product while driving a martetplace and partnerships to deliver content to your new device.
That being said, I think you're making too many assumptions before it exists. Hardware is expensive, I have no idea how much profit they make per device, or if all the seed money from kickstarter is completely gone. But I know that their future depends on several things. Aside from future sales being a must. In order to iterate, they need to get a lot right -- now. I don't think Ouya is that much more free than any other piece of hardware. They will not be able to iterate that fast, fix bugs that fast, push updates that fast, or sell consoles every year, easily. There's always hope that a random assortmant of people will hack it to the point it's constantly relevant, or that the games that end up getting launched on their marketplace all hit a home run. But it's completely unclear to me at this point. In the age of crowd-funding, a funny thing happens. Backers are already invested in products before they are even created. Speaking much further than just monetarily. There's a fake sense of success and security even knowing that projects can and will fail. Ouya's massive funding only proved the idea, not the implementation.
That being said, when it's finally here, it still has to get people excited. People will still have to want it when it arrives, and when they plug it in, it still has to essentially be awesome. Right now, its too much speculation, if you pick up the real thing and say -- hey, aside from the shit controller, and the lack of power, i still love it. Than, that will mean something significant. As it stands now, Ouya is kind of floating aimlessly in the market, they got too big too fast, haven't really carved out a dedicated chunk of the market. And is already falling far behind as far as the technology used. It falls between a media device and a toy, but in kind of a bad way. If I wanted a media device, i'd buy a roku or build one. If I wanted an android based gaming system in 2013, as of right now, i'd probably end up with a shield. I think that says something. I think the ouya will be a nice little device for sometime, but i'm having a lot of doubts about it's future and it's ability to grow in the competitive and expensive space they opted to jump into.
Ouya, on launch day, will not be able to handle the newest games on the android market. That is a significant issue, one crowd-funded projects are going to have to solve or abandon in the next few years.
Such a strange twist to everything. While everyone was already second guessing their ouya backing. Nvidia essentially releases a much better device months before the ouya is due out. The major complaint of everyone buying the ouya is there was no screen. Not sure why people are saying this will fail. Ouya raised 8.5 million for a non portable version of this with a worse controller. I think initially this will help out everyone, including android in general, and the ouya. The only thing that would kill this is a high price tag which i'm at this point kind of expecting. 199 or 169 the retail 3ds prices are a bit high imo. The $99 price is what sold the ouya. I'm pretty curious where this will fall in the market.
As much as typing one sentence and hearing the sounds wasn't bad, and thank god the toggle is actually in the sidebar already. I found it pretty ironic that a distraction free writing interface included obnoxious sound effects.
Same, too little too late for me. Kind of figured they'd find themselves in a big enough pickle to have to revert back. But the tos changes gave me the spark I needed to escape. Instagram is no where near essential enough to my life to pull shit like that. I like how everyone started posting articles like, "you wouln't do it"...About how everyone makes empty threats about quitting in times like this but never does. I found the decision easy. And i'm probably better off for it. A stack of burnt out 612x612 images was useful 10 years ago, the novelty is far past gone.
The blogosphere will always make things sound worse than they are. But was it really that exaggerated this time. I don't think there intentions were as bad as it came off, but they made a huge mistake. There response was honestly not all that fast considering the instant shit storm this caused. If a million users complain about something immediately after it hits the feeds, and it takes them literally hours to say much of anything about it, there's an issue. The apology was not heartfelt, it wasn't sincere, and came off far more like like, "we're sorry you didn't understand."
I think instagram/facebook should be able to monetize, but I think today marks a gigantic mistake in their history, they went down in myspace fashion. Users dropping like flies, the amount of traffic on services like instaport.me and http://freethephotos.com/ is phenemonal.
Not sure why people think they deserve more of a chance to explain themselves. Even after they already tried. They knew what they were doing when the changed the TOS. It wasn't an overnight decision. They did not take any real blame for the stupid decision to change it. It came off as more of a, i'm sorry you misunderstood, than an i'm sorry we did this. There is a good chance there intentions were not bad, but it was a very poor decision on their part to jump to this level. They are not back peddling hard enough in my useless opinion. I don't think consumers owe it to companies to hear them out. This isn't a tiny app developer who made a mistake in legalese. A team of lawyers just tried to eat our free lunch. Even if their intentions were not evil, if it disagreed with the users, they have a right to walk away.
Your view just plain scares me, there wouldn't be so much heat over this right now if it was something the majority of people including app developers thought was the right thing to do. There's plenty of examples of things that I feel is uncool, but I can understand it from the business side. A few weeks ago, when people went nuts over the possibility of ads showing up in peoples instagram feeds, I was like, fine. In every single terms of service that I have ever read, that line, "we reserve the right to alter these terms of use at any time", appears in some form or another. That is not an end all, and it's not an important distinction. What you alter the terms to still matters, especially on this big of a scale.
You make it sound like if they did this and didn't tell anyone about it, just opted everyone in, and started selling off photos. That you'd be ok with this. Not sure where you draw the line, but facebook/instagram finally decided to cross it. Users of products do have rights, and honestly app developers should head this as an important warning/lesson. You should always have a right to protect the interest of your product, but sometimes, when you decide to monetize a service years after its conception, you mess up. Even facebook/instagram can make huge mistakes. Instagram is going to take a gigantic hit from this.
Great insight! Think you nailed everything head-on. The precise specs, I envy you on that though. I've unfortunately never worked somewhere where precise specs we're handed over. I've either had to build my own specs to the problem, or am given partially written specs and had to fill in the gaps. Which ends up in a lot of back and forth, so the point being made in the initial comment about the specs is accurate everywhere I've worked.