If you paid via a credit card you could try doing a chargeback with the bank that issued your card. If plastic is unable to refund you, their payment processor will likely be on the hook instead.
That's what I did the moment the "lol sorry preorderers are screwed" email came in. As far as I'm concerned, this was fraud, and I'm hoping I get my preorder (not "investment", not "bootstrap", not "kickstarter") money back.
Usually the payment processor (square in this case) is responsible for chargeback/fraud costs. The acquiring bank will only end up paying those costs if square goes under and is unable to.
It is reliable! Growing pains happen. Downtime happens. Expecting five nines from a little startup, even when it's out of beta, is silly!
I've built three companies now and it is really hard! Balancing up-time, product development, customer support, and bug fixing is difficult. I'm sure interfacing with legacy banking systems made it even worse. If it were down all the time (the way Reddit was during their major growth phase) then I would agree, that is an issue. But they are not and were not - insignificant downtime is not something to criticize, there are other more constructive things to criticize about the product which is consistently evolving anyway.
It upsets me to see people on HN get up on their soapbox and say demoralizing things about trivial issues (that are part of the life of a growing product) of little startups that are doing well, continuously improving, and doing their best.
Come on, we are all developers here I want to think If I see a feature is just for aesthetic reasons with little purpose, then I could be considered as code sanitization, nobody really needs a transparent terminal, in the contrary, it may be contra productive.
I don't agree that aesthetic features have little purpose in a desktop application - they are a major part of the user experience. In this case the transparency feature is clearly something that a lot of people consider worth having.
Yes, they do - there are lots of them in this thread. Either you are not paying attention, or you are making assumptions of the validity of other peoples experience that you have no basis for.
Everything in life is not about productivity. But even if it was, the aesthetics of your environment does impact productivity. Personally I do continuously tweak the appearance of my environment because being relaxed and at ease makes a big difference to my concentration, which makes a big difference for how easily I get in the zone and is productive.
To presume that a feature that is "just for aesthetic reasons" has little purpose is arrogant and/or implies a lacking understanding of other developers.
Based on Tesla's past claims against Top Gear (that turned out in favor of Top Gear in court), I would give the NY Times the benefit of the doubt here. Especially since Tesla hasn't produced any evidence yet.
That court case does not mean as much as you think it does. Just because Top Gear won, does not mean that they were truthful. The judge merely said that even if Top Gear lied their lie would not be legally actionable.
