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.
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.
"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 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.
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.
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.
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.