Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Many PS4 units dead on arrival

amazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 136 posts

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#91

Post by threeseed »

sgift wrote: post #87
threeseed wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"PS4 blue light of death" returns 101 results. If you mean searching without the quotes then that is just stupid since Google will return results that match only one of the search terms.

PS4 "Blue light of death" ~ 18k results.

Seriously ? Do people not understand how Google works ?

Search for PS4 "Blue light of death". Click on Page 10. You will see results about Wii U / Epic 4G blue lights of death. Google stopped requiring pages to have all search terms a long time ago now.

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#92

Post by ludzone »

arh68 wrote: post #66
mashmac2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would make a fascinating study of reliability - can you determine statistically if a product will be reliable based on rating distribution. You could study Amazon, App Store ratings, etc. Cool insight!

I wouldn't take any rating metric seriously unless it accounted for how long they've owned it. Plus there's the difference between "I've owned 12 lawnmowers and this one's pretty okay, only broke down after 1.5yrs, 3 stars" and "this is my first lawnmower, used it once, it's amazing, never going back to cutting my lawn with scissors, 5 stars". Plus niche sites sometimes have better reviews for the same products (newe…

Good point about niche sites and the length of ownership. I've noticed that a number of starts on products like top rated power supplies goes down after a year an a half or so. While you might be getting a newly released power supply with 500 reviews averaging closer to 5 stars, after 2 years, you will notice that same product with 1600 reviews averaging at below 4 stars, because owners probably came back and updated their reviews.

It would be interesting to see a trend line of change in sentiment about a products over time, using existing data.

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#93

Post by threeseed »

MichaelGG wrote: post #83
threeseed wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"PS4 blue light of death" returns 101 results. If you mean searching without the quotes then that is just stupid since Google will return results that match only one of the search terms.

I doubt Google is that dumb. The estimate without quotes for "PS4 blue light of death" is 34M. For "Xbox One blue light of death" is 2.7M. Although requesting the highest page (990) shows ~288 pages, so estimates are probably not that accurate.

Of course Google is not that dumb. If you don't put quotes in then it will return results that have any of the terms. They do this because they are an advertising company and so it is better to have lots of SRPs returned than none.

What you are doing by not using quotes is dumb.

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#94

Post by anonymousab »

threeseed wrote: post #79
Lagged2Death wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently it's an overheating issue[0]. The 'red line of death' is not a sign that your PS4 is dead, but a sign that it needs to shut down to cool off. The Amazon reviews are complaining of a blinking blue "light of death," which I don't see described in the manual you linked to. "PS4 blue light of death" returns over 2 million Google results already. I'm no EE but I wonder if there is something really strange at pl…

"PS4 blue light of death" returns 101 results. If you mean searching without the quotes then that is just stupid since Google will return results that match only one of the search terms.

"ps4" "blue light of death"

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#95

Post by jjoonathan »

brownbat wrote: post #38
idProQuo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has always bothered me, both on Amazon and the iTunes app store. No lie, when I published my first app, one of the comments was "I'd rate this zero stars if I could." and my first thought was actually "wait, why can't you?" Overall, I think YouTube was on the ball by switching to a "Thumbs up, Thumbs down" rating system. "Out of five star" rating systems are always sabotaged by the fact that most people think in…

I wonder if a five star rating system could secretly count only the 2 and 4 star reviews without telling anyone, sort of filter out anyone passionate enough to try to game things...

I'd guess that moderation (as measured by 2-4 as opposed to 1 or 5 stars) is a worse predictor of an opinion's relevance than even the most simplistic automated classification of textual or behavioral feedback.

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#96

Post by gbvb »

mikeash wrote: post #88
silencio wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man. I live on Market too. OnTrac has done that same exact thing before, and sometimes I only discover it because someone passing on the street or a neighbor rings my doorbell to let me know I have a box outside. They also don't seem to be able to read, as they will accidentally deliver packages to xx30 when we're xx20 and vice versa. I hate them so much. I go out of my way to leave terrible feedback for shipping…

Here on the East coast we have LaserShip, which sounds like pretty much the same deal. They once delivered my package to a city 30 miles away to a family with a completely different name. Amazon loves to use them here too. It's a bit distressing that they don't exercise better oversight over their shippers, given how central that is to their business model.

I have had lasership make mistakes couple of times (dropping of at the neighbors, claiming no answer when never attempted).. I complained to amazon about the shipping and I have not received any shipment from them via Lasership after that. I am a prime member though. (not sure if that changes)..

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#97

Post by santadays »

mcpherrinm wrote: post #46
idProQuo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has always bothered me, both on Amazon and the iTunes app store. No lie, when I published my first app, one of the comments was "I'd rate this zero stars if I could." and my first thought was actually "wait, why can't you?" Overall, I think YouTube was on the ball by switching to a "Thumbs up, Thumbs down" rating system. "Out of five star" rating systems are always sabotaged by the fact that most people think in…

I find the 5 star system on Amazon useful. I don't always look at the average rating, but rather the distribution graph of ratings. For example, one common shape looks like this: 5 stars: ||||||||||| 4 stars: |||||||| 3 stars: |||| 2 stars: || 1 star: ||||||| There's way more 1 star than 2 or 3. That usually indicates the product shows up DOA for a lot of people, or is otherwise probabilistically totally unsuitable f…

The other common pattern being shill reviews:

   5 stars: ||||||||||||
   4 stars: ||
   3 stars: ||||
   2 stars: |||||
   1 star:  ||||||||

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#98

Post by nitroburn »

lostlogin wrote: post #65
whalesalad wrote: post #62

Apparently it's an overheating issue[0]. The 'red line of death' is not a sign that your PS4 is dead, but a sign that it needs to shut down to cool off. If that is happening immediately on boot, then hopefully the temp sensor or overall temp system is flawed and can be fixed either by a Sony patch or really quickly in their manufacturing process. Hard to believe something like that slipped through the cracks. Reminds…

I laughed at this due to the bad home wiring thing. I agree this may be possible, however its what my ISP would always say regarding crap speeds. In a fit of rage I paid someone to cat 6 the house - everything we own is brand new. The way we are running it, it is one wire from the side of the house to the router, no joins, shortest possible run, away from all power cables and makes crossings at appropriate angles. No…

Why would you do all that and not just connect something directly to the router? Could have saved quite a bit of money and hassle.

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#99

Post by nsomaru »

threeseed wrote: post #93
MichaelGG wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt Google is that dumb. The estimate without quotes for "PS4 blue light of death" is 34M. For "Xbox One blue light of death" is 2.7M. Although requesting the highest page (990) shows ~288 pages, so estimates are probably not that accurate.

Of course Google is not that dumb. If you don't put quotes in then it will return results that have any of the terms. They do this because they are an advertising company and so it is better to have lots of SRPs returned than none. What you are doing by not using quotes is dumb.

If you search Google with a quoted string, you will receive only results with a string of those words, in the order specified.

However, if you do not quote the string, Google still searches for all non-common words, but they can be distributed variously around the document. Thus, the white space between search terms can be considered to be an 'and' construct.

Re: Many PS4 units dead on arrival

#100

Post by IvyMike »

jsz0 wrote: post #89

If the failure rate was as high as the Amazon reviews suggest it seems like there would be more news about this even from the mainstream non-tech media by now. Lots of people get pretty fanatical about video game brands so I personally wouldn't trust any of the Amazon reviews good or bad. Remember Amazon allows anyone to write a review of any product -- purchased or not.

> there would be more news about this even from the mainstream non-tech media by now.

"By now"? It's one day after release on a weekend.

Post reply on HN