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.
Personally, I find the 'free demo' model far preferable to the two alternatives, upfront payment and microtransaction hell. The former is problematic on iOS where there are no refunds (more or less; at least, Apple's refund process is cumbersome with no guarantee of acceptance) - I've purchased countless apps for a few dollars (after looking at the description and screenshots) just to realize, literally seconds after opening them and actually being able to try them out, that they were either poor quality or otherwise not what I was looking for, followed by deletion from my home screen. And the IAP option, well, it encourages designing the game mechanics to be as dissatisfying as possible, i.e. exactly the opposite of how game design is supposed to work, while constantly tempting you to leap ahead in the game by just paying a small fee. This is what most mobile games do, and it's horrible.
But in Super Mario Run's case, the problem is just that the game's too short. After all, what you call a "10 minute demo" (for anyone reading, it's not actually time limited) is 1 of the 6 worlds in the main game mode; the later levels are harder and thus more time consuming, but not that much. I got halfway through it today in maybe an hour, while collecting all the pink coins for each level.
EDIT: But not the purple and black coins. I just tried collecting those for the first two levels and it takes quite a bit longer. Still not a huge game but they clearly designed for replay value... I wonder why they didn't just add more levels, though. As Super Mario Maker has shown, it doesn't take that much work to create Mario levels when the tileset, mechanics, etc. are already in place.
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'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.
"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.
I am aware of that. The fact of the matter is that I don't mind too much (small towns are great for lowering your expectations when it comes to quality of service...). I can afford amazon prime annually and even just not having to care about making a 20 buck order for free shipping (let alone the video on demand stuff) is worth it to me.
I just recall doing a quick chat to ask where my video game was when it was a day after release and getting offered a full refund and blah blah blah. And now? It can be three or four days outside the window and I just get a "it'll be there eventually"
And I know it is definitely regional as I have had a few friends back where I used to live who still got the borderline obsessive offers of refunds.
Huh, interesting. I (and my wife) have contacted Amazon a number of times about shipping estimates being off/wrong and have only ever received the same form response (even when we respond to the form response, CS reps just mail back the same form response again). I'll keep this in the pocket for the next time it happens.
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.
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.
It depends how they're structuring everything. They add Omega-3s derived from algae to their product, so that algae is regulated via the supplement standards. The product making people sick appears to be algal flour, which probably falls on the food guidelines.
In either case, the essential standard is whether or not it's substantially similar to a product already on the market. The standard is "GRAS" or Generally Recognized As Safe. If you want to sell milk or vitamin C or whatever, you don't need to conduct your own safety studies since both have been sold for years without issue. You just have to ensure that your product is similar enough to the GRAS product to qualify.
I actually worked for an Algae Biofuels / Omega-3 company in the Bay Area for a period. The GRAS process wasn't onerous but was actually fairly regimented. We conducted uptake tests and enzyme tests on rats over several different period lengths to ensure that the algal omega-3s we were producing had the same impact as other sources of omega-3. Ours were a slightly different form (Ethyl Esters instead of Triglycerides) so our standard to meet was a little higher.
I was on the business side but have an undergrad science background if anyone has any questions.
EDIT:
Forgot to add a link to the GRAS status of the Algal Flour that Soylent is using:
They did a fair amount of safety testing to determine its status.
> In a published 90-day subchronic toxicity study, Hsd:Sprague Dawley rats, (n=10/sex/group) were fed diets of C. protothecoides S106 flour at up to approximately 4,800 mg/kg bw/d for males and 5,400 mg/kg bw/d for females; no adverse effects were observed. In a published 28-day study, Hsd:Sprague Dawley rats, (n=10/sex/group) were fed diets of C. protothecoides S106 flour at up to approximately 7,600 mg/kg bw/d for males and 8,100 mg/kg bw/d for females; no adverse effects were observed. The results of a published bacterial mutation study showed that algal flour (5000 microgram/plate) is neither genotoxic nor mutagenic. Additionally, a published study showed that algal flour did not induce a clastogenic response as evaluated by the bone marrow chromosomal aberration test in mice after a single oral dose (2000 mg/kg bw/d).
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.
>> "Then what's the incentive to participate at all?"
Someone believes they can create a product you want. They can only create it if you give them some money to get going. The incentive is a product you want getting built. Do you want this thing enough that you're willing to risk $10 backing it? I think for a lot of people that's enough incentive.
A VC invests large amounts of money (which isn't their own) for financial gain. That's very different to chipping in $10 of your own money for something you want to see built that probably won't be built otherwise.
I disagree. VC's put money in enterprises to get more money out. But their transaction is just money -> time -> more money. Kickstarter isn't the solution (there needs to be a platform that has legally binding contracts that the funded party deliver within some time frame or face fines / reimbursement of funds for fraudulence or negligence, the same way some investors can go after their interests if they abuse the money) but what people want is money -> time -> thing they want.
And I think it is the only way to produce information anyway, so refining the technique and recognizing its value is economics is huge.
The NPR model where they may or may not stay on the air regardless of your donation is a much better long term model for kick-starter than pre-orders. IMO, the best way to keep the idea alive is to make the retail versions of the product cost significantly less than those pre-orders.
Something like: Support Baldur's gate III, donate 100$ and get a retail version of the game when it comes out. (estimated retail value 50$)
The idea being your making it clear your doing something other than shopping when you donate to a kick-starter project.
There are plenty of kickstarter projects that people fund because they want to see it happen, with the 'gifts' being just an extra spur.
But NOT the technology ones. The technology ones are pretty much all pre-sales, with people spending money only to get a product, indeed.
But they're presales on something that doesn't yet exist. With no contractual obligation to actually deliver it.
I suspect the tech projects have a much higher rate of failure (==not getting delivered) than the 'art' projects. But also that the tech projects take in much more $$ than the 'art' projects, meaning more money for kickstarter's 5% cut too.
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.
I set up a test Facebook account while doing a Facebook app that uses an e-mail address that has never been used for anything else.
Yet it keeps suggesting people I actually know.
The second account also does not have my full name (if it had my full name it'd be less weird, as my name to my knowledge is globally unique - there's only a few hundred people with my last name worldwide)
The account has not been used for anything related to me. I've never searched for anyone from it. Never given my e-mail address there...
The only thing connecting the two is that the "fake" e-mail address is a "real-user-part+something@gmail.com" address, and that I've logged in to them from the same machine.
It took less than a day before that account started getting friend requests from people I know (clearly the "TEST" instead of my surname did nothing to dissuade them)
> The only thing connecting the two is that the "fake" e-mail address is a "real-user-part+something@gmail.com" address, and that I've logged in to them from the same machine.
So, to summarize, a simple regular expression matching emails against /\+[^@]+/ and replacing with '' is some 1984-level creepiness?
The technology to do any of those is little more than a few database joins and some fuzzier matching logic like you are suggesting. What's creepy is just the extent to which they match. In the email contacts theory, for example, it's not hard to remember an email address that was in a user's contacts list and then suggest they connect when that email address is used. It's only creepy because you personally had no control over giving them the information that allows them to make that leap.
If you can't log into Facebook from a public/shared computer without them disclosing your relationships to everyone else who uses that computer, they should make that very very clear.
I'm sure this is the case. They probably keep track of all the accounts that have been logged into from your computer via a cookie, and then suggest friends based on those accounts. Creepy, but understandable.
My guess is that the same machine is a big giveaway. There's a difference between leaving a trace of your presence on a shared computer accessed by many people and a computer accessed by one or two.
However, if people you know found the account, then that's also something that Facebook uses - I've had "do you know X?" suggestions from people with whom I have no traceable connections (not in my address book, don't even know their email addresses) - turns out (when I asked one of them) that he had been looking at my profile (without friend-requesting me) a few days before.
What is worse is that
1. There is no way to actually delete the data. From what I can see, they only disable the account if you ask them to delete.
2. Even if you didn't give any of your data to FB, your friends/family etc can - there is simply no way to prevent this (a friend takes a picture of you at a party, tags it with your name etc)
Are you logging in from the same locality, perhaps the same building, perhaps from the same computer and perhaps still using the same IP as you had when you closed your account in 2011? It doesn't take a lot of work to come up with some new-user-matching-old-user algorithm with a decent success rate using geographic/IP data.
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.
I suspect LinkedIn remembers people who looked for you but didn't try to connect, or you didn't have an account at the time. It has definitely suggested that I connect with the odd stalker with whom I have no other ties...
This profile was a "fake profile" of a person I knew, from the description it was clear it was this person, can't tell which email was being used, and if I remember correctly it had no friends as well (or maybe only one unrelated friend)
Most of that knowledge is likely due to people importing their address books. From there they can link you to other email addresses and combine the identities. Creepy yes, but relatively easy to explain.
Maybe it's good, but deceptive enough I uninstalled it.