Show HN: I built a stock market game based on the top 50,000 websites - <AUTHOR> http://linkdaq.net <comment><USER2> This actually would have a lot of value, if it were executed slightly differently.

Online trading markets are excellent at exposing 'insider information', but the prices have to be informed by (a) availability of stock and (b) the ability for traders to negotiate prices between themselves.

In this instance, the valuation is based on:

 _"...a simple formula to give each domain a daily price."_

So, what does this achieve? It rewards the user(s) who can best approximate the formula, gather the requisite information and act on it. In other words, the best performers are those that can best emulate the workings of the site.

Ok, it is called "LinkDAQ" for a reason - but there is an opportunity here to build something linked to real value.

It would be better to seed initial stock values from such a formula, but then leave users to trade between them. Stocks "cash out" during [real] funding rounds, dividend payouts or difference in actual stock valuations. If you can refine the market sufficiently, you should have a reasonably informative prediction engine.

I've been a long time user of the iPredict prediction market in NZ (ipredict.co.nz) - but that's small biscuits next to InTrade, for example.

<comment><USER3> Do you think it would make sense to issue X shares for each site, and then split the shares at Y value?

And in real stock exchanges, companies issue shares of the company, so they have real value. InTrade links its share value to the likelihood of something happening - but the goals of websites/startups vary greatly, so it's difficult to set a fixed standard that way.

You might also be able to set up a market in which shares only have value because of scarcity, but I think it would be difficult to convince people to buy them in the first place, which is why starting with funny money might actually be a good move in trying to establish this sort of market.

And should sites be allowed to apply for the exchange? Do you think you could allow the companies that own these sites to sell actual shares to accredited investors using a Funders Club model?

<comment><USER2> Could do. The biggest problem with the whole thing is, you really need to link the stock price to cash, and that makes it a futures market, with all the regulation it comes with.

If it were bitcoin based tho....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, this weekend I built a stock market game based on a dataset of the top million sites (ordered by the amount of links pointing towards them)

It needs quite a bit of tweaking but that will come as I get more data, reaction so far as been great but I'd love some comments from HN :)

<comment><AUTHOR> The base price will update once a day (on average) but I'm hoping to build something based on facebook likes and twitter tweets that affects it and we can check that a few times a day without doing affecting the endpoint servers

<comment><USER4> I think you're thinking about this a bit backwards.

In the study of e.g. prediction markets, the idea is that if the price is too low, lots of people will try to buy it. Then the price gets raised up to compensate. If the price is too high, lots of people will try to sell it, and the price gets lowered to compensate.

What all this means is that __the traders don't learn info from you, you learn info from them __. You shouldn't have to put any information into the prices. If you have a supply/demand matching algorithm, then the prices will _give_ you the information.

<comment><USER4> I should've added, the prices have to be tied to some value.

So for example, what you could do is give everyone 10,000 play dollars at the start, and they can buy/sell whatever "sites" they want at the going prices. But every day (week?), there's a payout -- if you own one share of site X, and site X is #n in the rankings, you get a dividend of say 50,000 - n cents.

Then if I think that site X will be in 1000th place, I should be willing to pay up to $490.00 for a share, because that's how much I expect it to pay off for me. Something like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No vanilla registration? I don't really want this linked to my Facebook or Twitter account. I also didn't see what the prize for "winning" is.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm happy to add that but this is the first request :) the prize is a mystery prize (but I also own a sweet shop so you could take a guess ;) )

<comment><USER6> I'll make the third request in a comment since you can't see the upvotes.

<comment><USER7> And a fourth

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks similar to Urladex (<http://www.urladex.com>), which uses the Alexa API.

I used to have a lot of fun designing my own naive trading algorithms and terminal based dashboards, so I'd love to see an API!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to talk about how I can take the factors and make a decent stock price with someone who actually knows a bit about stocks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> As of 6:30ish p.m. EST, this (<http://linkdaq.net/sites/247vicodindrugstore.com>) is one of the top "movers and shakers"... Can that be where the prize comes from? ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> if you play your cards right ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I noticed that in the url when searching there is a parameter "?utf8=✓". I just thought the use of ✓ was a little odd, and was wondering why this choice was made.

<comment><USER11> Because it can be—UTF-8 is enabled. It's kind of cute to use a character from the extended set to indicate that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Related idea time!

So this is really great, and for a while I've been thinking about what a stock market game for pop culture would be like. It'd serve as a great discovery tool, like searching for that penny-stock that's going to blow up, and it'd be a great way for fans and haters of particular celebrities to duke it out in the market place (think of the 50 Cent / Kanye competition, or the rabid fans of Chris Brown and those who detest him). You could gather information from across a whole host of resources (imdb, movie ticket / record sales, tabloid sites, twitter, spotify plays) to come up with predicted performance forecasts for each celebrity. Something like that would make people feel they played a direct part in a particular success story. Early "investors" would be considered more loyal fans, you could incentivize using concert tickets and schwag, etc, etc - there are lots of ways to 'gamify' it.

<comment><USER13> Sounds a bit like Fat Dog Exchange. Does anyone know what happened to that site?

<comment><USER14> Also similar to Hollywood Stock Exchange: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_Stock_Exchange>

<comment><USER15> Hollywood Stock Exchange also holds a patent for the core principles behind prediction market games like these (<http://www.google.ca/patents?id=n2sXAAAAEBAJ>).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You can buy a negative number of shares, resulting in you gaining ludicrous amounts of money very quickly (although my fraudulent purchases seemed to be removed after a couple of minutes.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep I was emailed and tweeted this a few minutes after the first one was spotted.. that's fixed and deployed now :)

I'll look for you in the database and reset your dollars

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice, years ago I used to enjoy playing with Blogshares. I also started coding something similar to this years ago, while I was wondering how one could make money from it. I toyed with the idea of a virtual currency which would be a share in the total real money value market, adjusting upwards and downwards based on your share performance. I think the main issue against this is that it's not like trading on a market, it's making a bet and this could probably be considered a form of gambling.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah to be honest I haven't thought like that at all, if it gets popular I thought of selling a sponsor slot on the shares.. or doing some sort of promotion within the daily stock update emails..

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is fantastic! I've been considering this idea for a while - it 1) could become a legitimate way to invest in tech startups, and 2) could inform smarter investment - the best startups can get spotted faster. Great job making it!

EDIT: it is fairly easy to game it, might want to carefully pick a set of sites (news/blogs/etc.) to scrape to impose some controls?

<comment><USER18> If you can't wish for unlimited wishes, wish for unlimited genies. Or in this case, unlimited Twitter accounts earning $10,000 of funny money per account.

<comment><USER3> ask for socials? square does it..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So I'm interested but I have neither a Twitter account nor a Facebook account. What do I do?

</comment><comment><USER20> Nice site. How did you manage to get the data? what are API used?

</comment><comment><USER21> <http://www.blogshares.com> has been around for years. I used to play that regularly.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think this would make a really neat mobile game! If you're interested in building it into one, drop me a line (email@example.com)

</comment><comment><USER23> Just bought $10,000 worth of Hacker News shares!

<comment><USER23> And another $5,000

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Very fun and good idea :) Prize can never be too lucrative though as it would be easy and fairly cheap to game it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I run a hack day where the main prizes are from the pound shop.. I know how to do a cheap prize ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting concept and nice site. But, built in 24 hours? If you did actually accomplish that, props.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've got a video I'll be uploading onto youtube of the first 12 hours coding, I'll comment with a link tomorrow as its 2am now :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> You gotta trim the string upon searches. Very good design and idea, hope it gets to be a good game.

<comment><AUTHOR> just patched that locally, will deploy it next :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Good way to monetize DoS attacks ;-)

</comment><comment><USER28> Japanese characters in username doesn't seem to work when connected from a twitter account.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks I'll add that to the list

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think this is the closest thing I've seen to valid use of the marquee tag.

</comment><comment><USER30> I built the same concept for viral videos. Http://vvx.io - we should talk.

</comment><comment><USER31> Very interesting idea. Do you mind sharing what language/db was used?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure It's Ruby / Rails + MySQL

<comment><USER32> How did you implement order matching?

<comment><USER33> I would like to second this question. Is the implementation based on a market where users buy and sell shares from each other, over some kind of exchange, or are we buying and selling shares from the site itself?

Great idea. Look forward to having a go.

(I ask because I am writing up an exchange as a side project just for fun :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Requires facebook or twitter login -> nonstarter

<comment><USER35> especially unfortunate timing since i deleted both my twitter and facebook accounts this evening (SELL SELL SELL!). too bad, looks like a fun site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Would be nice if you added the ability to short...

</comment><comment><USER37> Neat idea, great implementation. Kudos

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Another one was alexadex iirc

</comment><comment><USER39> would love the ability to short some sites

<comment><AUTHOR> Your not the first person to request that, looks like I have some research to do

<comment><USER31> What about buying and selling options?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Wow! Fun!

Any hope for an app?

<comment><AUTHOR> if the site actually gets used I'd probably just create an API and let others play..</comment></comment>


Why Yahoo's Not Going To Steal The Search Default For iPhone Away From Google - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/yahoos-iphone-away-google-189322

<comment><USER3> I found the idea hilarious. Yahoo should stick to what it does best: holding shares of Alibaba!

EDIT: I like how this has been picked up by a fashion industry rag[1]. Great PR effort!

</snark>

[1] [http://www.fashiontimes.com/articles/5151/20140417/yahoo- rep...](http://www.fashiontimes.com/articles/5151/20140417/yahoo-replace- google-apple-ios-devices.htm)

</comment><comment><USER4> In the short term this seems unworkable - Google have a better product and, let's not forget, deeper pockets (being the default search provider being something Google pay handsomely for).

In the longer term I could see Apple quietly partnering with Yahoo! to see whether anything can be done - possibly something with product tweaks Apple might want which Google won't provide - but that feels 2 - 5 years away minimum.

There feels an implicit assumption here that Apple will do whatever it takes to shaft Google but that feels highly questionable - Apple and Google don't hate each other as much as is sometimes made out. Google happily support their apps on iOS because that aligns with their core mission - <USER2> gathering and indexing. Apple happily have Google's apps on iOS because that supports their core mission - a better experience for those using Apple products. Google is the default search provider on iOS and OS X. Google staff happily and openly use Macs. These aren't the actions of mortal enemies.

Even iOS vs. Android doesn't feel the thing it once was. Apple got the top of the market and the associated revenues and margins, Google got the rest of the market and the associated data and both have workable, seemingly sustainable ecosystems. Sure they probably both want more but for now they seem relatively content with what they have.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't think Apple would willingly switch from Google, but they need an alternative in the back pocket so they can't be held hostage if Google starts to make onerous demands (like quit the patent warring against Android) as conditions to renew the deal.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been trying out Bing for a month now and it's pretty much equivalent to Google for me. I search less and less on search engines already and what I do search for, Bing has been able to deliver. The only thing that made the transition difficult at first was the UI of the search pages on desktop. For mobile that won't really be an issue and I think Apple could easily default to Bing.

Losing iOS users to Bing/Yahoo would be terrible for Google just because of the demographics of iOS users. The Oracle trial revealed how much more Google earned from iOS than Android, and that probably hasn't changed much. Google is already experiencing margin compression because of the broader shift to computing on mobile devices, losing the most valuable users would only accelerate that.

<comment><USER7> > The Oracle trial revealed how much more Google earned from iOS than Android

Oracle trial didn't show that, that was made up figures

And, by the way, perhaps Bing is good in USA, but here in Europe is really bad compared to Google search

<comment><USER6> The figures weren't made up, they were estimated based on a settlement offer made to Oracle prior to the trial.

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/mar/29/google- ear...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/mar/29/google-earns-more- iphone-android)

<comment><USER7> Those figures are made up, they don't have anything to do with how much Google earned from iOS or from Android and they aare explained [1]

[1] [http://marketingland.com/no-google-doesnt-make-four-times- mo...](http://marketingland.com/no-google-doesnt-make-four-times-more-off-the- iphone-vs-android-9017)

<comment><USER6> >The figures weren't made up, they were estimated based on a settlement offer made to Oracle prior to the trial.

We have different definitions of what "made up" is. The estimate The Guardian made was based on the court document which is linked to in the article.

<comment><USER7> Wrong, The Guardian couldn't estimate anything because the court documents didn't were about what The Guardian made up.

Past damages were not a royalty percentage, 2.5 billion were not mobile revenue.

So, they made up their figures with wrong assumptions, wrong revenues and wrong damages

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If they want to _remain_ in the search business then they definitely need their own search engine. Ever since they made the "partnership" with Bing, they've lost a lot of their market share to Bing, because people think "why not just use the original, instead of the clone?"

I don't know why Yahoo hasn't bought Blekko yet, which last I checked (a while ago) was better than DDG, for example. It probably won't even cost them that much.

</comment><comment><USER9> Yahoo ... Anyone here still using any of their services in even a semi-serious manner?

<comment><USER10> Yahoo Mail is still by far the largest worldwide mail provider, counted by active users.

Moreover, in e.g. Japan, Yahoo is the start page of almost every PC, in addition to being the commonly used weather, maps, mail and news web pages. One does really see everything through a very distorted lens from the own perspective.

yahoo is still far more relevant than one might think!

<comment><USER11> Keep in mind that Yahoo Japan is not wholly owned by Yahoo! Inc. Similar to its shares in Alibaba, The global company holds a minority stake in Yahoo JP (about ~35%, which puts it in second place on ownership [0]).

[0] [http://ir.yahoo.co.jp/en/holder/status.html](http://ir.yahoo.co.jp/en/holder/status.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apple has pretty high capital spending, but hasn't translated that into an ecosystem as attractive to customers of iPhone as Google's. Apple has easily got the money. What they need is a plausible plan to match the results Google gets from that effort.

Having a competitive search/geodata suite is such a high-value goal, I'm a bit surprised that none of the also-rans have been turned around and re- capitalized to really go after Google. Nor have any of the regional players to partnered-up for out-of-region expansion. With the exception of DuckDuckGo there's nobody competing on features.

So it makes sense for Yahoo to give this a try. Having killed their own search engine operations, they are going to have to be very clever about how to catch up.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't get this: Yahoo uses Bing so why would Yahoo be able to pay more or offer better service than Microsoft? Seems just like a middleman to me.

Maybe it's more palatable to IOS users since the "evil empire" is not involved _directly_?</comment>


Is college worth it? One professor says no - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-higher-education-has-little-incentive-to-deliver-better-value/2018/03/08/a02684e0-224a-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html <comment><USER2> The title exaggerates Caplan's conclusion. As the article says, "Caplan calculates that while those who stick it out and earn a degree earn a good return on their personal investment, that doesn't apply to the half of poorly performing students who drop out."</comment>


My Pixel has a manufacturing defect - <AUTHOR> https://9to5google.com/2016/12/09/google-pixel-screen-peeling-support/ <comment><USER3> Google support and customer relationship is horrible. One day I enabled Youtube partnership out of curiosity (it was enabled for my country so I enabled it than on my account to see what it is about). Few days later I tried to login to my adsense account only to find it disabled! Problem is I have never enabled adsense on any website, I do not have or post youtube videos, or have done anything to violate the terms.

I am paying customer of gsuit, gcloud, google music, adwords, etc. I first tried with adsense complaint form, there are 2 of them, one if your account is disabled for invalid activity and one if you violated policies. I tried with invalid activity form because that is what my adsense login page says why my account is banned (evene when I do not have adsense enabled anywhere), but I get automated answer every time that the account is not disabled for invalid activity but for policy reasons and that is that. When I try the policy form, it sends automated answer that the account is disabled for invalid activity and that they can not investigate further...

Because I am paying customer of gsuit I tried support there. Guy from support tried for almost a week to get any human support from google regarding my case and he could not!!! Imagine that, support guy for a paying customer could not get help from inside his own company. That is such a fail for Google. He directed me in the end to the Youtube team to appeal there and wished me good luck.

Google must do something about it, this customer relationship is so bad. Why would I continue to pay for their other services if I can expect that they can ban me from them for no reason and without explanation or support?!

<comment><USER4> I've had excellent experiences with Google on the hardware warranty side (Nexus) FWIW.

<comment><USER5> Cannot confirm that. Google denied warranty for my Nexus 7 because I was in Germany and not in the UK until I got EU customer protection authorities involved.

Note: I bought the Nexus 7 while in Germany through the Google Play Store website.

<comment><USER6> For me, they required me to send it in (and pay for shipping), then refused to fix it, required me to pay for them to send it back, and when it came back, it was entirely broken (motherboard was snapped in half, before the screen had only a few stuck pixels).

I still bought a few Google devices later on, but I won't let their customer support handle anything ever again. Fuck Google.

<comment><USER4> They sent me a replacement phone next day air before I returned the defective one, so I would not have to be without a phone.

<comment><USER6> This was an original Nexus 7, in 2012, a week after launch. It was the worst return policy I'd ever seen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If Google wants to charge Apple iPhone prices, they can't continue with Google level service.

<comment><USER8> Implying Apple service is any good. (See: bendgate)

<comment><USER9> Apple service is next to perhaps only Amex, if any. Perhaps.

<comment><USER10> Along these lines, Discover has also been fantastic in my experience. One of the only no-annual-fee cards that gets you a person on the phone with no automated button pressing.

<comment><USER11> I've moved all my banking (credit card, checking, savings) to Discover and I've had great experiences any time I had to call them - except they refuse to lower my APR despite great credit. Oh well, I don't carry a balance so it's just the principle of the thing. And for no annual fee, the cash back is quite nice, and it has extended warranty and purchase price protection too!

I'm not a shill, I promise. I just really like my Discover relationship.

<comment><USER10> As a student currently building credit, they've also been quite helpful with increasing my credit limit when requested or giving me useful feedback on what I should work on before I request another increase.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> First google is no apple. Don't expect that level of service. They simply don't care.

Second it's not just with their new phone the pixel they support poorly. Try having problems with google fiber. The stories of them taking a year and a half or over two years to deploy fiber 400 feet or to a house next to a house with it or an apartment already wired for it is insane. I don't think they have they really care about supporting their services or products. They just want you use them so they can monitize your data. Beyond that they aren't interested and it shows.

Their core soul is how to make money off data. That's it. Making the pixel was just another finger to capture more data. Android is a tire fire IMO. Google fiber is fast but pray nothing goes wrong. Any of their other services and you're pretty much on your own. I don't think google deserves to be anywhere as large as it is. But time will tell if they are able to stay relevant.

<comment><USER13> > First google is no apple. Don't expect that level of service. They simply > don't care.

In my experience, Apple support isn't great either, unless you are a paid customer. When I bought the Iphone 3G, it had dead pixels upon arrival, I got a replacement, same thing, then went for another replacement, but at this point they started to argue, talk about "half-dead pixel" (a new concept), etc .. I had to insist heavily and make a bit of a scandal in front of other customers to make them replace my phone, which they did (finally, my 3rd phone also had a dead pixel, this time I gave up).

I also remember dropping close to $2k for a macbook pro 2 years ago, upon arrival the hinge of the screen was loose, this time tech support told me that 'unfortunately', that kind of stuff requires a screen replacement, and that's not going to happen for such a small thingy.

I've always assumed that for the kind of money Apple charge, I deserve perfection, the reality is kinda different. Best way I found to prevent insulting myself too much when I order from them is to falsely claim I am a student and pay with a discover credit card. It's still a robbery but 15% cheaper.

<comment><USER14> Interesting. I've always had a very pleasant experience with support for my apple devices. To the degree that I've had two laptops repaired for free that were out of warranty. Getting an iPhone screen officially repaired on the spot is something that still amazes me.

In the end, googles lack of support is one of the major factors I'm willing to pay the extra cash for Apple devices. That plus privacy and thought out security.

<comment><USER12> Same here. The fact the above poster got two replacement phones for free is proof they have good service. You think a dead pixel on a google pixel phone will get replaced? Let alone twice. I don't think so.

Apple has good service but they won't repair/replace everything. But i find them more than reasonable when something goes wrong.

<comment><USER15> > The fact the above poster got two replacement phones for free is proof they > have good service.

Not it's not. A replacement for a hardware problem is only good service if the new one does not have the same hardware problem. Replacing a broken part with a broken part is slightly worse than doing nothing at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a persistent story: Google reliably has the worst customer support of any large company, to the point that Comcast or your local DMV starts to look good in comparison. It's impressive, in its own way.

And as long as their consumer facing products were things like free webapps, they could get away with it.

...but if they want to sell a premium-priced handset, they can't get away with it. It's a USD$750 phone, come on. Telling the user that it's probably just a non-existent screen protector?

<comment><USER17> Very true. I use Google Fi, but am about to drop it because the support has been horrible. They're friendly, but I constantly miss calls and their support's solution is to ask me to get another working phone to test with and spend a couple of hours filling out diagnostic tests and bug reports. They are also unwilling to do something as simple as send me a new SIM card until I do this.

This, along with they they gave the middle finger to the Nexus line, has turned me from a strong Google supporter into someone who will give a second thought before considering using their services.

<comment><USER18> Google Fi support is extremely friendly and often almost zero hold time. The actual substance of the support however is very much lacking. Google Fi sent me somebody else's SIM card with my Pixel. It turns out Google Fi pairs a SIM to a specific Google account. So when I booted my Pixel for the first time the email field was pre-populated with someone else's email address (but not the password luckily) and I got a "B010" error trying to activate. This is a very specific error code which I later found out means that I was sent the wrong SIM card (or trying to activate someone else's SIM card). But they didn't have this properly documented so they spent a long time on the phone with me factory resetting it, clearing data for certain system apps, booting in safe mode, etc... before escalating the issue and saying someone will get back to me later. A _week_ later they contact me and say I was sent the wrong SIM and send me a new one. It was a terribly frustrating introduction to using their service. Also seems a needlessly frustrating experience if their support documentation and call back times were better.

<comment><USER19> _A week later they contact me_

I really don't understand how people tolerate this. I can't be without a cellphone for a week, my family and I use ours to coordinate many of our activities.

I've not been disappointed when I've walked in to an AT&T or Verizon or Apple store and said "here's the problem ... fix it". And they fix it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Waiting to see when this crops up here, and how it'll fly considering Consumer Rights [0]. It falls into minor, so Google will have to:

* free repair, (with a repair notice describing the fault)

* replacement (must be the same condition as the purchase, so no second hand!)

* refund (the same amount you have already paid, provided in the same form as your original payment.)

And of course, the kicker:

> You are entitled to return a product if you believe that there is a problem.

And the business you purchased from has to foot the costs of said return.

All of these things are things Google has tried very hard to avoid, but they're selling the Pixel here, so they have to play by the consumer-oriented laws.

It'd be interesting.

[0] [https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/consumer-rights- guarantees...](https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/consumer-rights- guarantees/repair-replace-refund)

<comment><USER21> You probably could mention where "here" is.

<comment><USER20> The link points to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Sorry if that wasn't clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a counter data point, my Pixel XL's speakers started malfunctioning about 3 weeks after I bought it. I called customer support, waited on hold for about 10 minutes, went through a series of debugging steps with the guy on the phone ("Have you tried restarting the device?"), and then they shipped me a replacement for free.

Also important to realize that the denominator matters. Seeing a murder on TV every day doesn't necessarily mean that the world is in chaos. And seeing a couple of anecdotes about an issue doesn't necessarily mean it's widespread.

That said, if I were the OP I'd be pissed and blogging about it, too.

<comment><USER10> This was about equivalent to my experiences with the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5, which is why I was also mildly surprised with this post. They even adopted an unofficial one-time accidental damage replacement policy after a while.

<comment><USER22> People with good experiences don't write angry blog posts, so those data points are often left out of the discussion.

<comment><USER23> Those data points don't matter.

A customer service organization that only wastes the time and money of _some_ of its customers, with no escalation path to get a proper resolution, is still horrible. It doesn't matter that it worked for you.

<comment><USER10> (Not the user you replied to.)

I agree, but I think that it's difficult to accurately evaluate the quality of a customer service department with these anecdotes because every large company will have the occasional misstep. I have personally heard of bad stories from every company mentioned in this thread that supposedly has good customer support. What's less obvious is whether there is a bias between different types of users. I'm just throwing out a theory here, but perhaps Pixel users are more technologically minded than iPhone users (this wouldn't surprise me) and so they are more publicly vocal about their issues because they are more invested.

For instance, Nexus devices were probably more common among Android developers and reporters on blog sites, so Nexus problems were important to them and were popularized by the online media more than an equivalent problem would be in a more mass-market phone that might be popular in a different country.

tl;dr Every company has had missteps, and I don't think anecdotes provide a clear picture by which to rank them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Would love to hear if someone actually has had a positive support experience with Google.

My company has faced a bug in their location dashboard for over a year. We support local businesses and often get asked to update their Google business details. We're unable to delegate location dashboard access inside our Apps domain. My partner can send the invite to any gmail account, but can't send access to me inside the company. I can't even access my own company's panel through my paid Apps account.

We've had calls, emails, sent tweets. Repeatedly asked for supervisors or for the issue to be forwarded to an engineer. The typical response is to get blamed or deal with support confusion in India over what we're trying to achieve.

The end result of 'partner' support? They gave a 2 hour notice over a major rebrand to GSuite. The only way they could do it better is send us a postcard simply saying 'FUCK YOU!', and in smallprint 'but thanks for your money and information'. As said in other threads on this topic, Comcast offers better support. That's telling.

<comment><USER25> I have had mostly positive support experiences for Google Cloud. Granted, my employer is a big customer so Google is making a lot of money out of the relationship, and gcloud is a new and growing platform that you can tell Google is actively investing in (unlike say, Gmail).

High-priority support tickets typically get a very fast response, although it may take several days to debug the issue and fully resolve it. The technical support people are very open about infrastructure issues on their side (although sometimes they don't publicly announce them as early as I'd like). They sometimes even help debug issues in our code when we determine that the problem isn't on Google's side.

We get invited to participate in user feedback meetings (through Google Hangouts of course). During these, we make feature requests that often eventually show up in releases and help prioritize features that are already planned or under development. I've even had one-on-one meetings with gcloud product managers.

Google BigQuery's public issue tracker[0] is also pretty decent.

All that being said, this is a (very welcome) exception for Google. Every time I've had to interact with the support system of a non-gcloud Google product/service I've walked away disappointed.

[0]: [https://code.google.com/p/google- bigquery/](https://code.google.com/p/google-bigquery/)

<comment><USER24> To be fair, I'd expect Cloud to have better support since they are competing (and losing) against AWS and Azure.

We won't be in a rush to use Google Cloud, even with the savings.... just knowing they are waiting to pull the rug out from under us once they start to gain market dominance or change course is a massive turnoff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm not saying that he's necessarily dropped it or that it's okay for the CS rep to have accused him of that, but my 4+ year old Galaxy S3 has the same sort of bubbles in two corners on which it has been dropped so I get why that was the first question asked.

<comment><USER27> Isn't there a burden of proof to claim the device was dropped ? If there's no visible damage from a supposed impact, then any company can just use this as an excuse.

<comment><USER28> No they cannot under EU law, they have to demonstrate damage came from an impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Anecdotal of course, but my one and only interaction with Google support was a positive experience. This was on the retail hardware side rather than in software/services (IDK if there are different support depts., I would assume so). I bought one of the v2 Chromecasts direct from Google Store when they came out. FedEx delivered it to the wrong address. Called support (which was, to my surprise, easy to find an actual phone number for, and I was speaking to an actual human being. Probably because this was 'retail' related), and after 1 phone conversation and 2 email exchanges he filed a case with FedEx - <USER2> required no involvement from me - and i was sent a replacement free of charge. About a week later my across-the-street neighbor knocks on my door and gives me a FedEx package with my name and address on it, it was the Chromecast. Turns out the FedEx delivery driver mistakenly delivered it to his house, which has only a 1-digit difference in Address. Honest mistake, it happens. I e-mail the support guy I talked with before -- to my surprise again, this was a direct e-mail address of his, not a randomly generated 'post only' email, so he actually responded. I explained the situation, and asked where I should ship the replacement one they sent back to. They tell me to just keep it and do whatever I want with it (the guy even specifically said "give it away, sell it on eBay, do whatever"). Granted, it's only a $35 device, and it likely costs Google far less than that, but still - I did appreciate it, and my sister does as well because she got a free Chromecast.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is something I cannot understand about Google and I think definitely needs to change. Here's the absolutely great thing about customer support that Google hasn't grasped yet: You let your customers talk to you and in turn you get the chance to remedy their problems and allow them to love your brand more. If you're getting a lot of support calls then you can know customers want something fixed and aren't happy. It's a feedback loop that in the end strengthens your brand. Apple has proven this. Since Google has the money, I cannot understand why they don't get this.

</comment><comment><USER31> If Google won't repair a manufacturing defect, consider a chargeback (assuming you bought it from Google).

Services like American Express have purchase protection, but the limits I believe won't be enough to cover the Pixel. If you were sold a lemon and Google won't hash it out, go ahead and let the card company fight that battle for you.

If enough people start doing this, you can bet Google will double down on customer service as proper cost avoidance.

<comment><USER32> Initiating a chargeback is tantamount to terminating your Google Account at a random time in the future when they find in your favor.

<comment><USER31> ...hmm, you're likely right, but I'm actually quite curious to see if anyone's willing to challenge that in court if it happens given that Google doesn't really give anyone an easy way to migrate an entire life to another service.

<comment><USER33> Google will let you export all your data. Google "google takeout".

<comment><USER31> Nice. My google-fu's failing me on finding any services which can import some amount of it and re-establish equivalent services, which suggests either some important details are missing (e.g. account configs) and/or no one's seen a business case for setting up that kind of migration service with any of the other major platforms e.g. Microsoft's cloud apps.

Heh

<comment><USER34> The latter I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> That phone was dropped.

Deep scratches are clearly visible, as are bits of concrete or asphalt that are embedded between the glass and the bezel.

The coloration of the plastic bezel is changed where a /buff-job/ was done in an attempt to remove said scratches.

That is a human error problem, not a manufacturer defect issue. I hope they take you to task for lying so blatantly and attempting to stir up trouble. If you've damaged their brand, I certainly hope they sue you for libel.

\---

In case OP deletes the original pictures:

[http://imgur.com/a/PN2CV](http://imgur.com/a/PN2CV)

\---

<comment><USER23> Oh, bullshit. That's lint or something, and those scratches are totally normal. Buffing leaves circular scratches.

It looks better than most phones that have been in use more than a week or two.

<comment><USER36> To my eyes, they don't at all look "totally normal". That is the wear and tear you would develop after several months (or even years) of normal use.

In this case, the phone does look as if it had either a hard fall, or a hard hit against something.

<comment><USER23> The person I was responding to was claiming that the guy had buffed the plastic, which is obviously crazy. All I can say in response to your claim that it looks like the phone has had rough use is that I'm pretty sure most of my phones with plastic edges were worn more than that very quickly, through normal use.

In addition to the defect the guy called them about I see unscratched glass, unscratched metal, lint, and some abrasions on one of the three edges of plastic that don't go deep at all (I bet you couldn't feel them) which are probably only visible because the phone is being lit from above. None of this is a big deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It's not the first bad story of Pixel support I've ready, and for the money you have to pay for a Pixel, I think it's a deal killer for me.

I will say that I had my Nexus 5 replaced twice, the last time was on the last possible day of the year warranty (I didn't realize it until the guy told me I'd called a few hours before my support ran out).

Both times I got a new unit (refurb that was like new?) sent to me, before I sent my 5 back. Once I got the new 5, I boxed up and send the old one back. I would have had to pay for the new phone had I not returned it after 30 days.

My question: why don't they do this with the Pixel? Was this part of the Nexus support plan?

<comment><USER38> My understanding is that the Pixel is different than the Nexus: it's not a "developer" device, it's in the standard consumer channel, so return policies are typically based on the carrier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I don't know how many times I've heard of people going to Apple for a defect or problem and Apple will just switch the phone out; it doesn't cost them much to fix it and resell it. Google on the other hand still seems like amateurs that are treating their products like experiments, not professional products people rely on. Until they realize they need to put customer satisfaction first, they're going to keep stumbling and pulling us through this small-time garbage they think is good enough for their products and customers.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is one of the most practical reasons why I always intend to own an iPhone. If I have a problem I can walk down to the Apple store in my local mall and get it fixed.

Recently, the battery in my old iPhone 5 was starting to swell. I got it replaced in a few hours. If I had an Android phone, I have no idea the hoops I'd have to go through.

A cell phone is an essential at this point and it's not worth using any brand but the most reliable and easy-to-get-fixed.

</comment><comment><USER41> The "easy" part of great support is top down commitment, and investing good money. The hard part is spending it optimally so it produces real value.

For example, do Google call center reps make $20/hr like Apple reps or close to minimum wage? Hire a little less, and pay a little more to avoid cable company quality.

How to make do with less reps? Use a fantastically convenient online system and drive people to it. Use machine learning to detect when a ticket should be immediately escalated to a real supervisor, or actually to an exec or the product team.

Constant social media scan and preemptively open tickets or escalate based on content.

All reps required to maintain a satisfaction review score of >= x. This rule would require empowering them to make good faith decisions as in case above.

</comment><comment><USER42> Friend I work with has this same problem. Will pass this on and ask him to post pictures here. His phone is white, bubble is smaller and harder to notice but you can see it if you tilt the screen just right.

He was complaining the other day because he took it back to where he bought it and they told him that he must have dropped it -- similar story -- and so they wouldn't let him exchange it.

</comment><comment><USER43> Take it to some store I've never heard of? This is why I will only buy a phone from a brick and motar, or online from a place with a brick and mortar presence (Apple, Verizon, Best Buy)

<comment><USER44> Why don't they have some kind of postal address where the phone can be send to? The phone was send from one, why don't they have a return address for RMA? And, (FWIW, in NL) if it does fall under warranty, the additional S&H costs would be on the seller; not the buyer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I have to add an anecdotal counter point to the Google support is so terrible line.

My Nexus 6P had a screen defect (couldn't detect touches anymore). I called support and 20 minutes later they were shipping me a new phone and a box to send in my damaged phone.

I also had to contact them for support on their DFP product. Received an email back a couple of hours later with a detailed explanation of what was happening that answered all my questions.

Maybe I'm just an outlier, or maybe people don't write about their good support experiences.

<comment><USER23> The good experiences don't especially matter in evaluating the quality of a support organization, the outliers do. It kind of goes without saying that any support organization will not completely hose everyone who calls. Most cases are easy, most people on the front lines know what they're doing well enough to handle the easy cases, most supervisors can spot a mistake and fix things. That's not excellence, that's the baseline.

The difficulty involved in the outlier cases getting a proper escalation up the chain of command to someone empowered to make the right decision is how to measure the value of a support organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is certainly an area where tech companies can learn from retail. You've probably heard of the Nordstrom employee who allowed a customer to return a Bloomingdale's purchase. And it's no isolated accident - stores, hotels and other experience-oriented businesses give their employees a per-incident budget to make things right for the customer, even if it's entirely the customer's fault.

It's another question how to do that at scale and over the internet.

</comment><comment><USER47> Just like everything related to Google their support sucks ass. It's why I won't use their new Domain registration service, why would I pay money to hop through automated support hoops.

They are automated to a fault, and people still fall for it.

</comment><comment><USER48> The Pixel also has a major camera problem: [https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/?utm_medium=email&u...](https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/phone- by-google/9W8AiqBIg3c/RlUdQngRDQAJ)

</comment><comment><USER49> This is pretty disturbing. I have a nexus 5x on Fi and would love a Pixel, but because of stories by this I haven't upgraded. Since I'm on Fi, I'm kind of stuck with Google phones unless I switch. But Fi is too friendly for international travel and data rates, and it's cheap generally.

<comment><USER50> I am an Apple user primarily for support reasons, but I have never heard of someone having this problem with a Pixel. You are probably safe from experiencing this problem if you decide to buy it. If you buy the phone with a good credit card, you can get an extra year of warranty service too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> "but in fact had never taken the plastic "screen protector" off of the display when I received the device"

Notwithstanding the awful condescending tone from the CS rep, I once did actually have this issue.

I purchased a cheap smart phone for an around the world trip since my CDMA/Sprint phone would not work overseas. I knew that the camera would not be iphone quality, but I felt that the images (8MP) could have been better. A couple of weeks into my trip, I discovered the thin plastic protector on the lens. Images were much better after it was removed!

<comment><USER52> I've seen devices where there was no mention in the "unpacking and setting up" section of the manual that you should remove the protector, and there was no tab or flap sticking out to make it obvious to do so.

Given that there is a thriving market for third party screen protectors, it is not unreasonable in such a case for the consumer to think, "Cool! They included a screen protector so I don't have to go buy one myself!" and leave it on.

<comment><USER51> People read the manual? ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Scary This days i rather pay a good premium if it has better support.

On the good side my Nexus 5x broke 1 week before it's 1 year warranty expired. Apart from the hassle of them not shipping replacement to Puerto Rico they sent me a 1 day replacement. After forwarding from Florida to Puerto Rico +4days. it was a brand new phone and didn't give me any trouble I did have to spent like 5 days without phone while I did their troubleshooting steps.

I missed the days I had sprint where I would just go to the store and be out with a phone in a few hours.

</comment><comment><USER54> My droid Turbo 2 (with the 'indestructable' screen) is doing the same thing.

I thought it was a defect, but I had to replace the phone for a different reason(went swimming with it) and the new replacement is doing the same thing. It seems like the top layer of the screen is not adhering well.

I can make it go away for a couple of weeks by just pressing it back on with a fingernail and a good bit of pressure. Verizon told me to call Motorola, but I haven't bothered yet.

</comment><comment><USER55> Compare this to buying a Samsung TV (exactly the same product only the screen is larger) - they answer the phone right away and are at your house with a friendly service guy in 1-2days.

They should obviously just take the phone and give him a replacement. If they saw obvious signs he dropped it they could just send him the bill.

This is a premium product (on the sticker). The service doesn't feel premium.

</comment><comment><USER56> Some tablets also have this issue.

We had it with the Iconia W700p tablet line from Acer. Bubbles form at random under the digitizer (months to years, single small bubble to multiple large bubbles). They move when heat is applied and over time, hinting that it's a digitizer glue issue as the product produces heat it is not capable of handling.

</comment><comment><USER57> My experience with Google Customer Support in Germany:

I had a Nexus 5 with a broken dispaly (my fault), that also at one point after about 1 year and 9 months of usage got that nasty sticky on/off-button issue where it would be stuck in a bootloop with no means of me accessing it. The broken on/off-button is clearly a manufactoring defect. German laws demand that all stuff has to work properly for at least 2 years, if used correctly by the user.

So when I phoned Google about fixing that button I also mentioned that I had a crack in the display, but the display was working perfectly fine, and what I want them to fix is obviously only the button that's been a big issue on the internet and not related to the display crack, and not fix the display. Google then proceeded to tell me, that their warranty would not cover that, I need first to get the display fixed on my own cost, before they would fix the button (which they admitted is definitely a manufacturing defect). This is absurd. Here's a shitty analogy: Imagine you buy a toaster, and it's button stops working. You also made a minor scratch on it's hull. So the company making the toaster refuses to fix it's button unless you fix that scratch first. Ridiculous.

German legal stuff: In Germany, you have two choices when your product shows a manufacturing defect before the two years are over: Demand a brand new product, or a demand a repair from the dealer (not the manufactorer, thank god I bought my nexus at the play store and not at some shitty dealer). If two repairs don't fix your product or the dealer declines to fix/give you a new product you may demand the (usually) full price back.

Let's call this German 2-year-protection the legal warranty. There is some minor stuff involved about proving that it actually is a manufacturer defect (first half year the dealer has to prove it isn't, last one and a half years you have to prove that it is), but this wasn't an issue as Google had already confirmed to me that it indeed is a manufacturers defect, which I had asked them to confirm me in an email. Some dealers may try to trick you demanding expensive 3rd party surveys of the problem during that second phase where you have to prove it, thus scaring many customers away from executing their rights. Sadly this works in many cases, while the only 'proof' you would actually need is to say that you always used the device to its specifications, an expensive 3rd survey is just overkill.

So, what Google does is, they offer an additional, voluntary guarantee (I'm gonna call it like this because in German it is called "Garantie", while it usually in English is called warranty, to differentiate from the legal warranty which we call "Gewährleistung"). That's that little booklet that you usually find in the original package of your phone saying something along the lines of 'warranty for some stuff, but not water damage and not broken displays'. German laws say that additional, voluntary guarantees like this are super awesome and totally allowed and stuff but they may never touch any rights that you have from that legal two-year-warranty.

So, Googles process of executing their additional guarantee is usually that they immediately send you a brand new/refurbished phone, while you have a couple of weeks to send them your old one. They require you to provide a credit card, and it will be charged full price of a new phone if you don't send your old one in/it happens to not fulfill their requirements for their additional guarantee (this is pretty brash imo btw, personally I used an empty prepaid credit card in case they were going to bitch about my phone when I finally was allowed to send it in).

Note that they do not have implemented a process to handle repairs. You will always get a different, brand new/refurbished phone than your old one. And this is where they clash with German law. While I theoretically could be a bitch and demand them to repair my specific device, and get the full price back because they wouldn't be able to, I did not. I said I'm willing to adapt to their existing processes, and allow them to send me that brand new/refurbished phone instead of doing a prefered repair. This conveniently would also mean I get a crack free display as a result of the process. But that is not my fault. I'd have been happy to have only the button repaired, but it's entirely Google fault that this was not possible.

So, the clerks at the phone were trying to keep me from sending that phone in, because Google doesn't want to eat all these probably very frequent display damages, while it is their own fault that they do. Also not a single of the phone clerks I reached (3 calls in total over several weeks) did knew of that legal two-year warranty, they were always refusing to give me a retour label or even an address to manually send the phone in referencing their additional guarantee that does not cover display damage (which, again, I was always emphasizing, was not what I wanted to be repaired). All of them admitted that they had not been taught about the German law of legal warranty, not even the supervisors.

So what I did is I set up a registered letter citing all the paragraphs by which I demanded a repair, or if not possible a new device, or if not possible my money back. Weeks of phoning did nothing, but two days after sending the letter I had that retour label without further comment in my inbox and everything went smoothly after that (with additional precaution of mine using an empty prepaid card; pretty sure that practice of Google is illegal by German laws too, but I had my low effort work around).

This happened during the fall of 2015. Refurbished phone is working alright. Additional benefit for the customer of getting a new device instead of a repair: your legal two-year warranty is reset.

<comment><USER57> To clarify the display was not "broken", it was really just a crack, it's performance was not hampered at all.

<comment><USER58> This should be a Verbraucherschutz court case in Germany. A lot of them disregard the 2yr warranty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> To contrast, here's my experience with the Moto G4 I bought from Amazon:

1) Ordered a G4, free 2 day delivery, see that occasionally when it gets hot, it freaks out and registers false taps. RMA'd to amazon. RMA'd to amazon and a replacement arrived in about 2 days.

2) Replacement G4 spontanously reboots every day or two. RMA'd to Amazon and a replacement arrived in about 2 days.

3) New replacement works fine.

I'm honestly a little worried about the fact that the first two devices had defects (they arn't supposed to be refurbished or anything), but given a 1 year warranty and ease of RMA, I'm still a pretty happy customer

</comment><comment><USER60> My friends Grandpa (I know, hearsay) couldn't wear a regular watch, because the innards would become green goo in a couple of weeks and the watch would be ruined. So some people may just be out of luck on this one.

<comment><USER61> Please expand further?

<comment><USER60> Not a lot more to say. Was it skin Ph? Some kind of acid sweat? He apparently didn't sweat a lot or anything. He didn't work in a manual labor job that exposed him to anything - he was a publisher (Garden Way magazine).

The works of the watch would corrode green and that was it.

<comment><USER62> I know at least two people who have a similar issue, including one who can't even wear most jewelry except very pure precious metals because her skin corrodes it (i don't mean the usual "turns your finger green" thing, i mean black and pitting). I've seen the results, it's amazingly weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> To be fair, I've had the opposite experience with Google Play Store support for my Nexus 5. I'm on my 4th Nexus 5 chassis, the previous 3 were taken back by Google (one broken glass, one sticky power button, and one water intrusion taken back due to a one time courtesy replacement policy). I don't feel great nor terrible about the phone, but clearly Google has spent substantial resources supporting my purchase. My phone calls with them were always very fast and to the point. (Their new hardware division in charge of Pixel may be doing things differently though.)

</comment><comment><USER64> This seems to be cultural at Google. Apart from this, there are many instances that I've been hit by their "we know best, just deal with it" mentality. AMP debacle comes to mind.

</comment><comment><USER65> While I can't say anything about Google consumer service (all the Nexus products I've had performed flawlessly and admirably), there is one advantage to getting a device on-contract - they often have replacement plans which are quite abordable (and even cover damage), and take away the hassle of dealing with the manufacturer.

</comment><comment><USER66> A manufacturing process which produces millions of phones manages to produce some with defective covers. Owner of one of these defective devices tries to rectify the situation through google's awesome customer service process because that is what google is known for. Results are less than stellar.

</comment><comment><USER67> Mine does too, I'm on the phone with Verizon ordering a replacement. My problem, the audio just went out all of a sudden with a pop when I was on a call. Now none of the audio works. I started with Support on Google, they were good, then I transferred to Verizon, they were good too.

<comment><USER68> I had a Pixel which literally slipped half an inch to the floor and the screen cracked. Verizon told me that it was damage that I did and thus they wouldn't replace it. I complained that no phone should just crack from such a small fall; that the phone isn't made right if that happens.

No dice. Had to replace the screen. Which I did. Then I returned it for an iPhone SE. And that iPhone has survived much harder drops with no damage whatsoever.

<comment><USER69> How much did you pay to get it replaced? Did you use ubreakifixit? My Pixel died in a similar way, fell out of my hand while pulling out of my pocket, fell on the floor, screen dead. I went back to my iPhone 6s but the day after my Pixel died my Daydream headset arrived and I'd really like to try it at least once...

<comment><USER68> ubreakifixit is the only place that can do a glass replacement and keep it with warranty. If your screen is dead, and not just your glass cracked, I don't know. A screen replacement was $160.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> martin-adams Microsoft did a similar thing to me with the Surface Book. It wouldn't charge properly and they tried to blame me.

Fortunately for me I got a free Surface Book out of the mistake!

[https://youtu.be/xShbqpPW65I](https://youtu.be/xShbqpPW65I)

</comment><comment><USER70> >don't like cases because it takes away from the premium build and feel

One forsakes a case at one's own peril. No matter how much you "baby" your small, fragile, expensive phone, it's an accident waiting to happen if you don't have a case.

<comment><USER71> Or you just mishandle your devices. Never had a case/screen protector or anything on every device I've ever owned and they're all still spotless (my iphone 6 is 2 years old and I still get comments regarding how new it looks).

Look after the device and don't go throwing it around.

<comment><USER70> Sure. But my point is that "accidents" happen. Would you choose not to have health insurance because you never "mishandle" your body?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Wonder what the odds are a phone review blogger receives a defective flagship device.

</comment><comment><USER73> Moxee has the EXACT same problem. The glass is so thin and not secured on properly, so when the phone heats up, the glass cracks where the adhesive failed.

So looks like the lesson to learn here is do not buy Google or Moxee-branded products.

</comment><comment><USER74> You guys need an ACCC like we have in Australia. Refund or replacement for defective product is the law.

[https://www.accc.gov.au/](https://www.accc.gov.au/)

<comment><USER74> I didn't realise this was happening here in Australia! Hope to hear the follow up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Would a small claims court suit be a reasonable way to get relief here?

</comment><comment><USER76> Something about the story doesn't smell right. The defect is probably genuine, but comparing "I baby my phone" against the weathered-looking edging?

<comment><USER35> The edge directly under the bubble looks heavily scratched/scuffed and it appears a different tone coloration than the rest of the plastic edge, which suggests a failed buffing to remove said scratches.

The edge of the bubble also appears as if there was contact with an abrasive surface, IE concrete or asphalt.

I do not believe that this was a manufacturing defect, not after viewing those photographs of the affected area.

[http://imgur.com/a/PN2CV](http://imgur.com/a/PN2CV)

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> > single defect

lucky you!

my nexus one had a dozen or so. Half could have been fixed in software, like everyone claims google is good at, but never were.

</comment><comment><USER78> Can't you take a Pixel phone to Verizon for replacement? I thought Pixel was exclusive to Verizon.

<comment><USER79> No, Pixel is not exclusive to Verizon. Verizon may be the only carrier with a promotion for the Pixel, but on other carriers (or on Google Fi) you can just buy a Pixel from Google and put your sim card in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> This is what happens when you do business with a company who views you as the product.

</comment><comment><USER81> Why don't phones have accelerometer telemetry? Tesla's cars do!

<comment><USER82> Phones do have accelerometers, they're generally MEMS devices and are quite tiny. Many games use them as controls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> Well, next time just buy an iPhone, the price is the same...

<comment><USER84> and get screwed by Apple when they have a manufacturing defect and want you to pay for the fix. See [http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/18/technology/apple-repair- touc...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/18/technology/apple-repair-touch- disease-problem/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> From the image at the top of the article, to me at least, it does look as if the phone had a hard fall or a hard strike against something. The upper edge of the phone looks quite chequered.

</comment><comment><USER85> Sorry for my pessimistic views, but I think big companies always have had the power to screw over anyone they want. This is especially the case in the US, where it seems to be quite accepted for companies to screw you over. Almost all countries lack an easy option for non-billionaires to take action against big companies. If you go to court, they will deliberately make the costs too high to pay for normal people, and even when the company is wrong, they will usually win the case. In the best case scenario, they will settle, and you become rich by being screwed over.

<comment><USER84> Well, considering Apple wants me to pay to fix a manufacturing defect in the iPhone 6, I have to agree. I will say HP was cool with fixing a lot of netbooks when we had 100 out of 120 failures.

Basically, American consumers yell on social media or popular boards, wait for the class action suit to force a fix, or go without.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> And now, after the PR shitstorm for reaching HN's frontpage, all will be solved in a couple hours...

<comment><USER87> The sad part here is that these phones cost like $200 (edit: sorry, read $20) to manufacture per unit. The $750 price tag is mostly in the SW and supporting infra. The guy talking for a couple of hours with customer support actually soon becomes _more_ expensive for the company than just taking their word for it and shipping a replacement. And that's before you count in the brand devaluation when the guy finds out their 'premium service' is just thin air, and especially the PR damage once you happen to screw a tech reporter over.

Where I live most home insurance companies have adopted a better approach to customer service. They maintain a central registry of claims. Most of the time if you submit a claim they just pay you without requiring any proofs of damage or receipts. But once you start abusing the system (unusually large or high number of claims), they will get difficult. But for the honest, average guy the customer service experience is just phenomenal most of the time (submit claim online and receive insurance to bank account only hours later.) The brand value for having a 'nice' insurance company exceeds the small number of invalid claims that happen to slip through in the process.

<comment><USER88> It $20 a typo there? The bill of materials alone is likely in the $250 range. Then add the actual assembly cost, shipping the products to the US, etc, and the basic "manufacturing" cost per unit is likely somewhere around $300.

<comment><USER87> Sorry, meant $200.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Customer service people aren't experts (even the higher level ones). They have scripts, list of defects and how to help you resolve them. This "bubble" is obviously something they have never seen before, unless a 1% of the phones start having this issue they will just blame you for it.

</comment><comment><USER90> Very sorry to hear anyone going through this kind of trouble, but at least for US users and most readers of HN, they should be getting up-to-date iPhones on the Verizon network.

The costs are minimal and it helps to avoid hassles. I've had iPhone 5, 5s, 6+, 6s+, 7+, ever since iPhone had LTE on Verizon.

Each phone version is an improvement on previous models and the Verizon models are now much improved over the ATT/T-mobile, using the Qualcomm baseband modem over the Intel version. But Verizon has more spectrum in NYC at least and they have been investing in their network whereas AT&T has not been so much.

There are yearly upgrade programs offered by Apple and Verizon and perhaps others.

That said, I've had to bring iPhones into the store and they were replaced 3 times. The store is 10 mins from home and work and the service is excellent.

The only time there are problems with getting phone support generally is after they release the new iPhones in late Sept.

I've also had great service on Mac laptops since 2011.

If for some reason, you must use Android, then by all means....

But if for some reason, you do not absolutely have to use Android, then iPhone on the Verizon network is the way to go.

As for shopping, at least in my local store, it is very easy to just purchase something. If you want, you can also purchase things for in-store pickup.

In NYC where I live there is an Apple Store open 24/367 which shows Apple's dedication to service.

<comment><USER90> Instead of down voting, why don't you state specifically why you don't agree???

<comment><USER15> You're stating a product preference like an objective fact, ignoring the many many reasons to want different hardware, OS, or network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> Yes, I agree the service was terrible, but if you can afford a $750 phone, you can afford to buy another one, and if you can't then you shouldn't have purchased a $750 phone. I buy my tech (esp. phones) cheap and hold onto it for years.

</comment><comment><USER92> That's quite a first sentence. I always felt that cases are expected and the design is based on letting the user decide what the case will be like.

<comment><USER93> I am in the same camp as him actually. I dislike using a case and prefer to use the phone as it was (afaik) intended to be used. Cases change the weight and feel of the device.

I also would like to add that in all my years of smartphone usage (probably about 4 years, quite late adopter) I never broke my phone or screen.

<comment><USER94> I did break a phone scene once by dropping it. But, running the numbers replacing it was actually cheaper than buying a new case for every phone, so IMO they are simply not worth it.

A simple plastic screen protector might be, but those always get bubbles.

<comment><USER95> Tempered glass screen protectors have been out for _years_ now. Applied correctly, they don't have bubbles, and they really do help with impact damage. They also help with keeping the screen protected against key/other sharp object scratches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> I'm a pixel xl 128 owner too. As long as we're going down this route, has anyone else noticed weird 'refresh' lines drawing over top of images? They appear very briefly and very faintly (and only in chrome as far as I've noticed, may be a chrome(ium) bug).

</comment><comment><USER84> At some point a NTSB style part of government is going to be created to issue recalls on defective electronics if companies keep this crap up. I expect it to happen after the first IoT device defect affects a politician directly.

I don't want to see that because of possible affects on open source, but I get the feeling that won't matter.</comment>


Gatekeepers or Censors? How Tech Manages Online Speech - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/07/technology/tech-companies-online-speech.html <comment><USER2> Having been censored multiple times by tech firms, I fall squarely into one camp.

During the Snowden Disclosures, I took to Facebook with the documents getting published and started to do my own summaries.

Facebook implemented a policy in which it would not let any post that contained a link to a Snowden Document. In some cases they would let the content get posted, but I confirmed with a friend's account that it was not visible when scrolling my feed from another account. Posts about other content were all visible and otherwise had no problems.

I complained and Facebook got back to me with a customer relations paragraph about keeping their platform free of unwanted or questionable content.

Not long after I discovered through media, and then some friends from Turkey, that what I experienced was identical to state sponsored censorship that Facebook extends to the Turkish government.

This lasted for close to the entire duration of public attention on the global and domestic surveillance scandal.

(Other links and content in other scenarios, for example May Day protest organization, was similarly blocked by Facebook - at least in Seattle for the organizers that I was in contact with).

<comment><USER3> I love the unspoken sentiment behind your experience.

"I took to facebook to post links to grey legal documents rather than hosting them myself because I wanted facebook to be liable; Im shocked when they told me they didn't appreciate the transfer of risk. It's literally censorship I tell you!"

Freedom of speech is not, and hopefully never will be,"freedom to post on other people's servers unmoderated".

<comment><USER4> > It's literally censorship I tell you!

It literally is. Most people would say that is justifiable given that Facebook owns the platform, but that dosen't change the fact that they're censoring what users say.

<comment><USER3> Moderation != censorship. When facebook can send you to jail for your speech, then we can talk about censorship. I don't want to live in a world where I can't ban bad actors from my own servers (thus violating my freedom of speech).

<comment><USER5> When a moderator removes one of your comments because they disagree with the content, that is censorship. When a moderator removes your comment because it breaks a well defined rule, then that is moderating.

Trying to moderate "hate speech", which is highly subjective, is a losing proposition.

<comment><USER2> When well-defined rules include "content that the government wants to suppress because it criticized them" the rules provide censorship via moderation.

In this case, Facebook - presuming what they did was "follow the rules" \- is following censorship rules.

So perhaps the thread should be about the US government forcing companies to censor free speech for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the reddit and 4chan model. Content is clearly compartmentalized by topic with different rules for each subcommunity. Of course they are not totally free of moderation but it still allows a greater diversity of opinions with seemingly diametrically opposed groups existing side by side.

Many of the big social networks lack compartmentalization. On the other hand twitter demonstrates that it's not necessary, just helpful.

<comment><USER7> > _Of course they are not totally free of moderation_

If there is one thing I wish I could beat into people's heads with a stick about online discourse, is that any place free of moderation is not going to be a free speech haven, but a cesspit where the people with the most free time will dominate and drive out others.

It's _incredibly cheap and easy_ to shit up a conversation, but quite costly to have an engaging dialogue. By having no moderation, you're actively choosing to reward shitposters, and punish quality contributors.

And, no, adding an up/downvote mechanism _does not_ solve this problem.

<comment><USER8> > If there is one thing I wish I could beat into people's heads with a stick > about online discourse, is that any place free of moderation is not going to > be a free speech haven, but a cesspit where the people with the most free > time will dominate and drive out others.

It depends. One forum where I spend some of my time has very hands-off moderation and it does have a) some quality conversations b) diversity of opinions. Of course it descends regularly in low-quality drivel, insults and/or shitposting, especially on controversial subjects, but it works.

Edit: But I can't say that it works everywehre, just that it can work.

<comment><USER7> It can definitely work in certain cases, especially when there's a single very clear focus or purpose for the forum, or some sort of accountability for your opinions.

<comment><USER8> > single very clear focus or purpose for the forum

It's the case on that forum and the off-topic discussions (religion & politics) are accesible only to accounts older than 1 year, so it helps to limit shitposting in those discussions. Accountability for your opinions in that case just mean getting mocked by other people (I said free speech, not nice speech).

I just wanted to show an counter-example disagreeing with your (apparently) absolute position.

<comment><USER7> > _Accountability for your opinions in that case just mean getting mocked by > other people_

Yup! That's one of the good ways of holding people accountable.

<comment><USER8> Also they have tags that will appear above the user portrait, to indicate the more troublesome members. They are applied by the few moderators. They include shiposter, idiot, edgy...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps this is a stupid question but why should e.g. treat these things _so_ fundamentally different than things we already have rules and regulations for?

Going back in time, what about newspapers and letters to the editor? Those had a clear range of what was allowed and acceptable.

Is there really anything stopping us from using these rules except for being afraid to not post bullshit everywhere unsanctioned any longer?

<comment><USER6> Because a lot more communication is done over private platforms these days. When working from home even informal work conversations are done over some cloud-hosted chat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's been this way since the establishment of state-sanctioned copyright with the Statute of Anne in 1710. Only now, in the USA, the experiment to privatize everything has continued on.

Proponents will argue you can own your own site, so long as the hosting is okay with what you say, you can run your own hardware, so long as the co- location center is okay with what you say, you can run the server from your home so long as your ISP is okay with what you say, and it will be delivered, so long as the various individual ISP of you readers also find what you say okay.

The end result is the American population of free-er and free-er from the government (which won't, almost, anymore do something against an individual for being the wrong X,Y, or Z. Why should they expend the effort? All they have to do is enforce Right To Work laws, and private enterprise will do it for them.) (The US Post Office may no longer seize copies of Fanny Hill, but I will wager it couldn't be posted on Facebook.)

</comment><comment><USER11> The product is getting restless, the customers aren't happy with their brand being next to all of this inflammatory content. This was bound to happen in an ad-supported internet.

<comment><USER12> Howard stern. It doesnt matter that people are angry. People who hated him listened to howard stern more/longer than his fans. Facebook doesnt care that people are screaming mad. That emotion is just proof of how connected they are to the platform.

<comment><USER8> Hate clicks are important for media companies, since they will generate more shares, links, discussion and controversy, which, in an ad-funded business, is good (in the short term)

<comment><USER12> Short term is all that matters in media when platforms can rise and fall within a few years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> HN voting is a groupthink censor

<comment><USER14> Society is a groupthink censor. If your beliefs are too extreme in any number of directions, society will eventually shun you. Whether you think this behavior is wrong or not usually depends on how closely your beliefs match the beliefs that are currently being shunned.

<comment><USER13> Sucks for folks like Socrates doesnt it ?

<comment><USER14> Sure, the standards change over time. You would likely be shunned 200 years ago if you said whites and blacks had equal intellect. You would likely be shunned today if you said the opposite. Society generally moves in the right direction. "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

I was simply pointing out that this phenomena is not new or limited to the internet. It is inherently human. It also is neither completely negative or positive. It just is.

<comment><USER15> > Society generally moves in the right direction.

Does it? Because it's currently ok to say that "white people suck" and various other overtly racist statements that would have been interpreted as such by society as little as 10 years ago.

<comment><USER14> Firstly, the context of the quote from my next sentence is that things must be viewed from a distance to see the bend toward justice. Individual setbacks might make it seem incorrect over short periods, but history has generally showed it to be correct.

Secondly, it is not currently ok to say that "white people suck". The huge uproar over that is evidence of such. However, society has decided that saying "white people suck" is inherently different than saying "[any historically repressed minority] sucks". Society has also decided that context of those statements matters. Saying that offhandedly on Twitter as a joke is different than saying it in a campaign speech.

<comment><USER15> > _However, society has decided that saying "white people suck" is inherently > different than saying "[any historically repressed minority] sucks". Society > has also decided that context of those statements matters._

I think that debate is far from settled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In some ways i envy the governments that block facebook. The threat of blocking is the only thing that changes facebook's behavior, normally by causing them to implement censorship. But western democracies cannot block facebook, and so lack real power. Facebook may scream about burdens and taxes, but those arent a problem if you have customers. Saudi Arabia controls access to customers and so is more important than any western legislature.</comment>


Time Travelers - <AUTHOR> http://inference-review.com/article/time-travelers <comment><USER2> This was Gödel's gift to Einstein on his 70th birthday, certainly one of the coolest birthday presents ever.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Closed timelike curves are intrinsic and irreducible features of Gödel space- times.12 If they are possible, so is time travel. And with time travel, certain paradoxes arise. Imagine a traveler arriving in the past and killing his own grandfather.13 Would he survive the encounter if he broke the causal chain leading to his own existence?

There are two popular views about how these kinds of paradox might be managed. The first is committed to an ensemble of equally concrete but different versions of the physical world. Travelers into the past arrive in worlds that are distinct from those that they left. They are free to kill their grandfather secure in the knowledge that their grandfather is not really their grandfather, but something like his counterpart. David Deutsch and Michael Lockwood think that restrictions posed by classical systems on the actions of time travelers imply that time travel must must displace travelers into different worlds.14 It is by no means clear that time travelers under such a scheme are really following a closed timelike curve. Closed timelike curves are paths that return to, or very close to, their own spatiotemporal starting points.15

On quite another view, time travel really does return an agent to his very own past. A temporal rerun is possible only if everything he does in the past is already in place in his history. This means everything. Consistency might be maintained through the most ordinary of physical processes: the gun misfires, or the bullet dribbles out inconclusively, or at the very last moment your grandfather ducks to tie his shoelaces. Your efforts can make the past what it was but they cannot make the past different from what it was._

There is a third, which is that you would arrive in the past only to find that you had no agency at all, no free will. In this formulation you would never attempt to kill your grandfather, and no faulty guns or lucky grandparents are needed. If the present is a hypersurface sweeping through spacetime, leaving the past in its wake, and the past is a set structure... you're an automaton if you travel to the past. Presumably in this kind of natural order, the future doesn't exist except as a word and concept. There is the fixed past, and the hypersurface of the present.

 _Or_ the future and past are both fixed, and the hypersurface of the present is some strange artifact we perceive. Or... who knows?

<comment><USER4> > There is a third, which is that you would arrive in the past only to find > that you had no agency at all, no free will.

Or perhaps it's only the _illusion of agency_ that is gone.

<comment><USER3> Good point, and I'll freely admit that I try not to think about that too much.

<comment><USER4> That's probably a good strategy. Either it doesn't work that way, and you can go happily about your life, or it does work that way, and you're happier not knowing because knowing only allows for the possibility of negatives. Ignorance is literally bliss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Amazing.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del_metric](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del_metric)

</comment><comment><USER6> Slightly off-topic but after reading Douglas Hofstadter's books the one thing that I never managed to grok was Godel's incompleteness theorem. It's implications are fascinating but my math background never allowed me to completely understand it's proof.

<comment><USER7> I'd highly recommend "Gödel's Proof" by Ernest Nagel and James Newman ([https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6dels-Proof-Ernest- Nagel/dp/081...](https://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6dels-Proof-Ernest- Nagel/dp/0814758371)). It'll probably require a bit of patience to go through, but should be fairly accessible to reader without an extensive mathematics background.

<comment><USER8> What are the practical implications of the incompleteness theorem?

<comment><USER9> You cannot ever know for sure that your software is bug free, because no finite system of logic is both true and complete.

At least, that's my understanding of it.

<comment><USER10> Not exactly.

For any sufficiently powerful system (Turing completeness is definitely powerful enough) there are statements which are true but cannot be proven by that system. Secondarily, no system can demonstrate its own consistency.

However, if you limit your software enough, you can prove that every possible input is handled correctly _. That involves removing Turing completeness. E.g. once you accept a language as a configurator, you can no longer prove that. CSS3 is Turing complete. JSON is not.

_ One requirement is limiting the size of inputs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple Has Removed Launcher from the App Store - <AUTHOR> http://al.cromulentlabs.com/thanks/ <comment><USER2> This is what happenes when you write apps for a walled garden.

It's a risky business. This is a good lesson for investors as well. When you have a sole company deciding your fate, stuff like this will happen.

This isn't the first time this has happened, and it won't be the last.

I feel bad for the guy, but this is the risk we take when writing apps for apple.

</comment><comment><USER3> The most glaring thing that stands out to me in this situation is how mismanaged the review process is that one person allows the app into the store, no problem, and another yanks it after it's been featured on tech blogs and made a solid number of sales. Their review process is disorganized and determined by the arbitrary whims of random, individual reviewers.

I'm glad I managed to snag Launcher on Friday evening before it was yanked, but by the time I had it set up and decided I wanted the pro version it was gone.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can't the author sell the app over his own website and process the billig over fastspring?

At least that is what Peter Borg does with Lingon ([https://sites.fastspring.com/peterborgapps/product/lingonx](https://sites.fastspring.com/peterborgapps/product/lingonx)).

<comment><USER5> For OSX apps, yes. iOS, not possible AFAIK, since sideloading is not possible on iOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pigs! Apple should be enforced to carry a non-closed app store. Apple would bow if the alternative were to loose European market. Don't understand that Europe accepts such huge /closed/ application ecosystems. (Android is open, fine; Microsoft is tiny, not relevant (yet?)).

<comment><USER7> That would be nice. But didn't Europe try to force Apple to use standard chargers and they just ignored that too? I don't think Apple cares very much. For the charger issue they made some sort of crappy adapter no one will use. So if you forced them to make an open app store it would probably be a similar joke.</comment></comment>


The C Word - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2013/02/the_c_word

<comment><USER2> Bloviation of the highest order!

Save yourself 5 minutes:

After stumbling over the near-insurmountable pile of quotes, I believe the crux of the message is this tweet: <https://twitter.com/stop/status/299019199030886400>.

Otherwise it's that Microsoft tried to meld laptop and tablet ahead of Apple, and (implied by the author) failed.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a bit difficult to argue with his premise with the 'tech journalists of note' have made the argument for him.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, that's so deep. And here I thought computing devices came with a free lunch.</comment>


Lessons from the past, present, and future of animation - <AUTHOR> http://www.michaeldempsey.me/animation/ <comment><USER2> > In 1995, with the release date of Toy Story nearing, Katzenberg visited with > his old friend John Lasseter and asked him what Pixar's next project would > be. Lasseter told Katzenberg about a film surrounding a group of insects and > the world they inhabit. This film would eventually become A Bug's Life.

> Later that year, Katzenberg and Dreamworks announced that it would be > releasing Antz, the studio's first 3D animated film about... a group of > insects and the world they inhabit.

I always suspected that there was something going on between those movies. There it is.</comment>