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'm not against her losing her position, I just think it's a distraction from the real issue. Posters above, like javajosh, think terminating her will act as a catalyst for change; I don't.
At this point, probably the best thing to come out of this so far is Lofgren's bill to decriminalize TOC violations.
"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.
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.
I've tried to warn OUYA countless times that if they're going to launch in 2013, they're going to need a 2013 chip, not a 2011 one (Tegra 3 was initially launched in 2011, and was also delayed a bit). They're probably going to lose points in reviews because of it, and everyone will be overall less excited about it having significantly less graphics quality and performance than the latest high-end (granted, more expensive) smartphones.
I thought Tegra 4 or something in that rage, was a MUST for OUYA. But they didn't listen, either because it was impossible to make the switch at that point, or they couldn't get a good Tegra 4 deal, or they just didn't think it was that important. But I hope they at least expected that this is going to hurt them at least a bit, and they might need a change of strategy.
I think OUYA could still succeed if instead of targeting it against Nvidia's Shield, and towards more "hardcore" gamers, they target it more as sort of a "toy", like something they could sell at Toy R Us on the cheap, and for sub 12-14 year old kids. Another strategy is of course promoting it heavily as a cheap media device, kind of like an Apple TV or Roku alternative.
There's still a way for them out of this, if they do it right, but personally I'm still disappointed it's not coming out with a Tegra 4 chip or something cutting edge like that. Hopefully OUYA 2.0, if launched in 2014, will have Tegra 5 or some other cutting edge 64 bit SoC with support for OpenGL ES 3.0 and OpenCL. This is the sort of stuff that gets "gamers" excited, and they've kind of ignored that. But again, it might not be a huge problem for them, if they refocus on a slightly different market.
And I agree that OUYA, Shield and other such devices will basically help each other, and Android gaming in general.
I don't feel bad about backing the OUYA at all to be honest. Even without pushing boundaries, you can imagine how hard it is for a small team to ship their first device - they have to get a number of things right - controller design, casing, UI, app store etc. Once they get the basic right, it'd be much more straightforward to upgrade the internals.
The nice thing about OUYA is that they aren't bound to the traditional console pricing nonsense - launch a loss-leader, then sell crummy old hardware for a decade to make a profit. They can iterate every year and make some profit both from the hardware and the app store.
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.
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.
