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Well either it's down again or you're really lucky or it's some sort of regional thing or something. I tried again and confirmed with this:

Rh2Qe.png
 
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website is down. FC is still mia....

Would have been nice to use GT to learn viruses, but no option to review individual categories.

Would be nice to use my num pad to rate questions. How hard can this be to implement?

Pro tip for GT/FC whatever: No one uses your product as a QBank replacement. People do it to have FA/other review books in smart flashcard format.
 
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Pro tip for GT/FC whatever: No one uses your product as a QBank replacement. People do it to have FA/other review books in smart flashcard format.
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This, right here. The MCQ's are infuriating. Why won't they listen? Do people actually say to GT, "keep the shoddy mcq's coming!"
 
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My week...I work hard at banking into Firecracker and I get the constant loading sign, I lose it all. Then I work at banking everything back into Gunnertraining until FC is working without glitches and the website goes down...
 
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Zenfudge said:
3rd year here, former GT user, trying to use firecracker for clerkships.

So, I flag a question and I answer the question once, and then the question disappears and doesn't show up in my schedule. Maybe I don't understand this platform. Basically, is this supposed to be like GT where the system automatically gives you questions to answer in the future based on how you rank your recall? I grade myself a "1" on everything and the system never shows me any questions in my schedule. Is the entire thing busted? Bottom line, I can only view the questions once and then they disappear never to be seen again. Surely I am overlooking a simple fix, but I can't figure out this program.
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at

reallllt i am getting frustrated between the using the both
i transeferd to firecraker i was happy but i noticed that you cant review the next day what you ve done really (you can review after 3 days ...) really if this option still disabled really firecraker is usuless and now and returning back to gunner :meanie::meanie::meanie:😡😡
 
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Argh! Down again.
You guys need to hire some more engineers and give us advanced notice for scheduled maintenance.
 
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DAMNN haha just perfect.

I went on a rampage banking micro viruses and setting the custom review date to today so I can be ready to rumble for tommorow and have everything fresh and reviewed front to back tonight and the damn thing goes down LOL - F M L

Time to wipe the dust off the microcards, I hope they aren't totally different in terms of content, that will really mess up my night.
 
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And to think I felt bad for my rampage last month... I hope all the staff and PR people that GT/FC have on staff realize the striking similarities their product has to Netflix's pricing fiasco a year or two back. No, this is not a pricing issue. However, the two scenarios are akin in that it is Marketing 101 not to piss on your original customer base when trying to expand.

GT, you are killing us and your product.
 
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Try emptying cookies and cache on your default browser.
If that doesn't work try a new browser.
 
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Back up for me as well 400 questions as well, cute. I have a double exam on Monday too... Gunna be one hell of a weekend.
 
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You guys need to just stone cold delete all the MCQs, add daily question cap + days off feature (made mathematically possible by the fact that we won't be bogged down with MCQs), slap a "Firecracker" banner /URL redirect on the GT site for a brand name upgrade, and call that sh** a day. I guarantee you will not even have one whiny kid email you "why did my daily question load pleasantly drop by 20 for every day this month?? where'd all the multiple choice questions go?! WTF"

That would be enough of an update for us to never even mention what happened with FC. And your programmers will be off by 4pm on Monday.

GT was about to hit critical mass, at least at my school, until recommending it to new students became complicated (GT or FC, not working today though, might have to migrate, it used to be like FA on steroids but now there's a bunch of MCQs, etc).


Side note, no one ever does MCQs twice. It's totally different from spaced learning, as I'm sure you guys realized shortly after programming and testing them. In med school, we study old tests for school exams and such all the time -- we're trained to memorize MCQ answers like hobos catching cigarettes. You give anyone here an MCQ today and ask them the answer ten years from now in their practice office, and they'll remember, "B," without thinking for six seconds and bet their house on it. Explore a separate qbank feature if you like, but get them out of the main GT program, stat.
 
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ScottD, I completely agree. I also think they need to be more transparent, not on here, not on facebook but EMAILS or BANNERS on GT/FC itself. Maybe give us a heads up (if they can) as to when their sites will spotaneously crash. Let us know when we can migrate again (fat chance I will at this point though). I appreciate what their reps are doing here on SDN and FB but they need to take their communication to the next level.
 
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Not working...again...why am I paying for this month again? That's a serious question by the way if you could answer that for me Ventulus.
 
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What the hell is this **** GT/Firecracker team. Get your act together. This **** is unacceptable. I'm sure your competitors at Doctors In Training or Kaplan would love to take some of us frustrated GT users.

I need to do my review questions now dammit. Not tomorrow. NOOWWW. I've got so much freaking work to do, I cannot schedule my time around when your website will be down or up.
 
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anonymous56 said:
What the hell is this **** GT/Firecracker team. Get your act together. This **** is unacceptable. I'm sure your competitors at Doctors In Training or Kaplan would love to take some of us frustrated GT users.

I need to do my review questions now dammit. Not tomorrow. NOOWWW. I've got so much freaking work to do, I cannot schedule my time around when your website will be down or up.
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x2. Sitting on a Saturday night trying to do my questions as well. I guess that's what I get for trying to be a good student.

But honestly, doesn't surprise me really. I knew something was up when they let their domain name expire a couple months back. Let me say that again, a web based product let their own domain name expire.

This product is clearly someones afterthought side project.

Unfortunately, I am too far invested in this thing to just stop. Regret starting...
 
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crazyozone said:
Not working...again...why am I paying for this month again? That's a serious question by the way if you could answer that for me Ventulus.
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At least you were smart and paid monthly. Some of us were dumb enough to pay lump sum 😳
 
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ScottD said:
You guys need to just stone cold delete all the MCQs, add daily question cap + days off feature (made mathematically possible by the fact that we won't be bogged down with MCQs), slap a "Firecracker" banner /URL redirect on the GT site for a brand name upgrade, and call that sh** a day. I guarantee you will not even have one whiny kid email you "why did my daily question load pleasantly drop by 20 for every day this month?? where'd all the multiple choice questions go?! WTF"

That would be enough of an update for us to never even mention what happened with FC. And your programmers will be off by 4pm on Monday.

GT was about to hit critical mass, at least at my school, until recommending it to new students became complicated (GT or FC, not working today though, might have to migrate, it used to be like FA on steroids but now there's a bunch of MCQs, etc).


Side note, no one ever does MCQs twice. It's totally different from spaced learning, as I'm sure you guys realized shortly after programming and testing them. In med school, we study old tests for school exams and such all the time -- we're trained to memorize MCQ answers like hobos catching cigarettes. You give anyone here an MCQ today and ask them the answer ten years from now in their practice office, and they'll remember, "B," without thinking for six seconds and bet their house on it. Explore a separate qbank feature if you like, but get them out of the main GT program, stat.
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👍👍👍

Lets just state some facts here:

1. The majority of GT content is ripped straight from excellent review sources. I own many review books/flashcards and I often see direct word for word rips.
2. Your users do not care that you Rip content from these books. This is a GOOD thing. In fact, this is why I and many others bought your product to begin with. Putting these review sources into anki style flashcards is an amazing service!
3. You are not going to replace UWorld or Kaplan/USMLERx Q banks. Your product is a flashcard service. Get rid of those dam paragraph long MCQs. If I wanted those I would hit up a QBank.
4. Your product is a web-based service that requires users to spend significant time EVERYDAY. For this reason, unexplained/unplanned downtime is simply unacceptable.

Bottom line: You have created killer premade paid Anki decks that help people memorize facts for Step 1. This acts as a springboard into the QBanks and a subsequent great Step 1 score. For the love of god, why is this so hard to understand!

In the words of peter lynch: Stick to the strength of your product, adding all these long MCQ is not improving your product by diversification, it is Diworsification
 
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You have to walk before you can run. Having a reliable, functional website when you're a 100% web-based service is absolutely essential. As someone said above, it was embarrassing to lose your domain name last year, but other than that major hiccup, things seemed to be running pretty smoothly until Firecracker was rolled out. Not only was that product not ready, but it has really hurt a great, established program. Getting your program to work all day every day should be only priority, not adding features to try and take on the established major players like UWorld. It's a web-based program: what's more important than having a website that works?

I've recommended GT to a lot of people, but as it stands, I've stopped. I'm not sure if referrals will be getting GT or the work-in-progress FC, and even if they do get the original product that I've found so helpful, will it actually work?

An offline verson that could be synched up periodically with the servers would be phenominal, both because it would avoid the frustration we all have with the inconsistency of the service, and so we could do them when we didn't have access to WiFi. This was proposed some time ago too. But now you have to fix this problem.

It's unfortunate. It's a pretty simple concept that's very effective. However, it's constantly mismanaged. I definately get the feeling that the creators of GT either have a lot of other things on their plate or just aren't very good at the business and maintenance side of things, but they're unwilling to pay the money to have someone make sure all the t's are crossed and i's dotted with basic things like renewing their domain name, and for either an adequate number of coders and IT-types, or more competent ones, to keep the program stable and to implement the things they're trying to do effectively and time-efficiently.
 
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Druggernaut said:
I definately get the feeling that the creators of GT either have a lot of other things on their plate or just aren't very good at the business and maintenance side of things, but they're unwilling to pay the money to have someone make sure all the t's are crossed and i's dotted with basic things like renewing their domain name, and for either an adequate number of coders and IT-types, or more competent ones, to keep the program stable and to implement the things they're trying to do effectively and time-efficiently.
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It's quite clever on their part actually. If you've already got money in your pockets from the current GT user base, you really don't need them anymore. Might as well use this year as a rebuilding year. Shunt attention away from GT and get FC up and running for next year's batch.

What can we do? Stop promoting this product. Stop giving referrals. Refrain from signing max contracts.
 
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Has anyone actually tried to get a refund? I was dumb and bought a lump sum contract but am beginning to wonder if I can get at least a partial refund. The customer service and support is absolutely unacceptable.
 
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jhamaican said:
👍👍👍

Lets just state some facts here:

1. The majority of GT content is ripped straight from excellent review sources. I own many review books/flashcards and I often see direct word for word rips.
2. Your users do not care that you Rip content from these books. This is a GOOD thing. In fact, this is why I and many others bought your product to begin with. Putting these review sources into anki style flashcards is an amazing service!
3. You are not going to replace UWorld or Kaplan/USMLERx Q banks. Your product is a flashcard service. Get rid of those dam paragraph long MCQs. If I wanted those I would hit up a QBank.
4. Your product is a web-based service that requires users to spend significant time EVERYDAY. For this reason, unexplained/unplanned downtime is simply unacceptable.

Bottom line: You have created killer premade paid Anki decks that help people memorize facts for Step 1. This acts as a springboard into the QBanks and a subsequent great Step 1 score. For the love of god, why is this so hard to understand!

In the words of peter lynch: Stick to the strength of your product, adding all these long MCQ is not improving your product by diversification, it is Diworsification
Click to expand...

In addition to the above, another medical student (achamess on SDN) created a set of anki decks from robbins and a number of other review sources (available here - http://drwillbe.blogspot.com/). The advantage GT has is fit/finish, organization, and ease of use. The emphasis for future development in GT should be optimizing the cards and interface so that it could not possibly be more user friendly.

I've previously been told by GT staff that they're in the process of reviewing all of their cards to improve them. That type of thing would be a step in the right direction. As far as other progress that's already been made toward expanding GT (qbank style q's, etc.) - let it go. It's a sunk cost. Don't let loss aversion continue to lead you down the wrong road
 
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GT is killing me by the fact they are down a lot these days. Oh and I agree with everything ScottD said. GT REALLY needs those features asap.
 
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Memory algorithms pioneered by neuroscientists at Harvard!

What a year. I know I didn't used to be this jaded. I just wanted to congratulate the GT team for running their product into the ground so spectacularly since I last used it.

You had an awesome product for the duration of my MS2, until September 2011 where everything went completely off the damn rails. Irrelevant feature creep and letting programmers do their own QA is a story as old as time.

I am somewhat satisfied to know that the abrupt switch to a different (broken) platform without any warning in the final few days before my step 1 exam more than a year ago was a clear sign of things to come, and I was justified in swearing that I would never give you guys any more money. You said all the right things and pretended that you cared, but when it came down to it, it was all crap.

Keep taking the site down to redesign the back-end, guys. That's what web 2.0 is all about. Start a blog and a twitter account so you can NOT tell people about what in the **** is going on on several different media platforms. Check!

I also applaud your clear determination to never actually use your product. Cards written in a clear post-call amphetamine haze or straight ripped off from review books? Money, baby.

Definitely don't hire anybody who actually knows what they're doing, either. Interns and fresh graduates make the world go round. And they're just so cheap!

Here's to Firecracker in 2013. I look forward to at least another year of vague updates that you're finally going to fix things at some undetermined future date.
 
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Questions regarding GT, help is appreciated:

1. Any advice on how to integrate GT with FA during dedicated board study? Or should I mainly focus on GT when I would have been studying FA? I don't see myself using both resources simultaneously as that would be REALLY time consuming, I'm wondering how to approach this intelligently (I am still considering using FA since I've noticed it has better charts and pictures than GT, and of course because of its track record). I'd like to consolidate my resources as much as possible.

2. My main problem right now is how time consuming GT is...I barely have time to bank flashcards before using up a lot of time (I can bank maybe 10 or so flashcards in 2 hrs if it's a low content subject, 5 if it's a dense subject), forget about doing the daily review cards, which are usually 100-200 per day. Haven't really been able to do those at all - and they are stacking up. The thing is I obviously don't want to use up the whole day doing GT material that is unrelated to my current medical school coursework because I don't want to fall to far behind and do poorly on exams. How are people allocating their time to complete GT flashcards + daily review questions? Waking up a 5am? How much time are you guys giving to GT each day? Do you do it every day?

3. If you mostly remember the material asked for a quiz question at the end of a flashcard, but forget maybe a bullet point or two, what do you rate it?

How are people going about these issues?
 
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I was going to sign up for GT or FC but after following this thread for a couple weeks no way will I give them my money. Seems like a sinking ship.
 
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Still down. Terrific. What a joke:laugh:

I know you guys read this thread. Get it together.

My guess is it probably got sold or passed off from the original creators.

Gonna take a couple weeks off and hopefully its fixed when I return...
 
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premedmind said:
Questions regarding GT, help is appreciated:

1. Any advice on how to integrate GT with FA during dedicated board study? Or should I mainly focus on GT when I would have been studying FA? I don't see myself using both resources simultaneously as that would be REALLY time consuming, I'm wondering how to approach this intelligently (I am still considering using FA since I've noticed it has better charts and pictures than GT, and of course because of its track record). I'd like to consolidate my resources as much as possible.

2. My main problem right now is how time consuming GT is...I barely have time to bank flashcards before using up a lot of time (I can bank maybe 10 or so flashcards in 2 hrs if it's a low content subject, 5 if it's a dense subject), forget about doing the daily review cards, which are usually 100-200 per day. Haven't really been able to do those at all - and they are stacking up. The thing is I obviously don't want to use up the whole day doing GT material that is unrelated to my current medical school coursework because I don't want to fall to far behind and do poorly on exams. How are people allocating their time to complete GT flashcards + daily review questions? Waking up a 5am? How much time are you guys giving to GT each day? Do you do it every day?

3. If you mostly remember the material asked for a quiz question at the end of a flashcard, but forget maybe a bullet point or two, what do you rate it?

How are people going about these issues?
Click to expand...

1) I'd cut GT when you start your dedicated study period. Read FA once through at the start, do UW, read FA once more at the end

2) If you have 1-200/day, you're honestly not at the point where GT is crazy time consuming. What made me stop using was when I averaged ~4-500/day for about a week and a half (coupled with it being our supposedly hardest block of med school). I was able to work fastest doing cards in timed blocks of 50, shooting for the fast time I could. I would average ~180-200 cards/hour, with blocks of cards going faster if my mastery was higher obviously. The 4-500 a day period was a high % of unmastered cards. I also used the hotkey program someone mentioned earlier in the thread so I just had to press space to see the answer and a number to rate and move on.

3) Depends how important I think that information is, but don't waste much time thinking about it - it'll come up again and you'll be able to decide again then. Choose a number and move on, or you'll waste your life away debating it
 
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3+ weeks ago my firecracker stopped working and i just get the loading sign and can't click on cards.. so i contacted FC they told me it is still beta to switch to GT since my boards are in a week. rebanked the HYs as i had reset everything and i had been using FC so my schedule was wack. Now GT is down. i am exclusively using it for bugs and drugs since my exam is in a few days. not to mention my self exam material only on FC i stopped doing. ...fustrating. 🙁
 
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frezz219 said:
I was going to sign up for GT or FC but after following this thread for a couple weeks no way will I give them my money. Seems like a sinking ship.
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It's a shame, because I found it really, really useful. Many times on a test or in hospital I knew something only because of GT. For the first time in med school I felt like I was actually learning things for the long term instead of just cramming for tests. It just seems like they got away from what makes them great (spaced repetion flashcards of FA).
 
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i paid for GT thru my 4th yr because of how much it helps on 3rd yr rounds.. i wish i knew FC was "on us" until further notice. i just opened a new trial FC account since my real FC account is locked in loading forever status.. and GT is down
 
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Ridiculous. You realize some of us rely on you .. this is why we pay $ = this is not a free service that you are you doing us a favor with. Imagine Kaplan or UWorld going down - all their customers would be refunded and people would not use it anymore. You are a business with obligations to paying customers to at the very least be a RELIABLE source - whether or not we think you are 'good' is up to our own discretion and will determine IF we use you guys, but if we are using you - then you have the duty to be reliable.

Your publicity on SDN has become terrible. I doubt people are recommending you guys over the last couple of months among classmates. I'm not sure how you think you are advancing ..... you're going to have to do a lot of work to reverse this image. I know and truly believe the intentions are good - but you have to come to terms with it and change your game plan when the actual results are not matching up and it is harming your business. That's the key of business, the key to success is constantly being able to accommodate changing scenarios and reworking your business plan if it is being ineffective.

AKA - I don't make my own flashcards for class because of GT, and now I have an exam tomorrow for which I'm reliant on your flashcards for ... and you are down. WTF?! Completely unacceptable. There is a reason I didn't make my own flash cards and also spent time creating my GT schedule in such a way that I could go over those cards today specifically.(oh again, because that is not a feature you have accommodated for without us manipulating the system).

If you can't figure out how to manage GT and firecracker - then don't balance both. either do both right or don't half ***** either.

I'm willing to stay on a functional GT for as long as it takes for you to get firecracker up and going well, but the key is - at least keep GT functional.

Not to mention, in Firecracker you're not even fixing the core areas that most of your customers have the biggest complaints with, which are also the reasons we stop using GT and you don't have long-term customers. I don't get it - not a single one of the most asked for things is incorporated into this Firecracker.

GT becomes too overwhelming and we can't cater our questions in a targeted manner:

- Figure out how to give us question caps per day - I don't see this in FC

- Figure out how to let us take 'vacation' days without screwing up your entire schedule - lets be real, we all burn out after exams and can't get right back into GT immediately after, and then by the time you do you're perpetually already screwed to the point where you can barely keep up with all your rolled over questions, let alone adding new cards in. Most of us use it side by side for class - so once we log back in after a 2 day hiatus after an exam - the goal is to start adding new cards right away, but this is made impossible if you have accumulated a schedule of ~500 cards because you missed 2 days. Oh, and god for bid we actually need a random day off for a non-academic reason

- Figure out a way to make it possible to review certain sections in a targeted manner (and not like Firecracker - I don't mean by unflagging all of the rest of your cards and only flagging the ones you want in your schedule - that's the point, this is spaced repetition, this is why I use it, this is why you created it, and this is why it works, I don't want to unflag every other concept (let's say 50% of the bank) that I have in my schedule in order to review 5% of my bank - it doesn't make sense, I just want to sometimes particularly focus on a specific topic/that 5% of the bank, while not ruining and resetting the rest of my schedule. Before an exam, I want to specifically target my studies for a few days and take a break from my typical 200+ question review schedule, but ultimately I want my entire spaced repetition schedule still there!!! Again - a couple days before shelf exams, as a super busy M2 student, I don't have time for anything but remaining focused to my upcoming exam - ***I WANT TO UTILIZE MY GT CARDS FOR THAT SPECIFICALLY, AND I WANT TO NOT SCREW OVER MY ENTIRE GT SCHEDULE BECAUSE OF IT*** - I think that is a fair request. I'd even go as far as saying - let me pick not only what 'cards', but what specific questions within the cards that I want to focus on - a lot of times a card may have some questions that are just not relevant to your *focused pre exam time period*, BUT I'll concede this point - I think that is too much to ask for right now.

- Questions in GT are great - but don't mix them with our review schedule without giving us the option/shorten the questions substantially, again - not why we use it - if you one day get on the level of Kaplan Qbank and Uworld - we will come to you for that reason, but it's not today. If you pride yourself in you USMLE style questions that is great, make that available in your system but don't integrate it that with the other 'quick' cards. Give US the option, instead of giving us no option.



If you want your business model to work - I'd make these things and reliability priority, everything else is secondary and details you can figure out later. But these are key things. Get the big things resolved, help your publicity and angry customers, then work on tweaking things. It only makes sense. Otherwise by the time you figure out the stupid details, you won't have anyone who cares for it, and all trust will be gone. How can I be sure I can rely on GT come my boards focused study time?

People keep saying the same things over and over again - and I just don't understand why this of all things is not priority. You guys have tons of stuff happening 'backstage', that seems to be bringing your system down instead of up, and yet none of what we are asking for is happening. All we hear is empty promises of how your engineers are working hard and you believe everything will be better - but nothing is materializing for a long time now and while I respect your positivity - it's been dragged out too long for anyone to care. Not a damn thing has changed in the last year other than a non-functional firecracker that has also now brought GT down. Not only have you crippled what was once a good product, you have nothing to show for it - and realistically there is no way a 'good' firecracker will be up anytime in the future, it is going to be beta for a long time - so make sure GT is up to par first. Keep moving, keep advancing, but resolve the BIG, GLARING, EVERYONE AGREES upon problems FIRST.

You have to let go of your pride in the bigger and better product that has yet to arrive (and 100% is going to be beta for a longggg time - no one who relies on GT is going to take the risk of migrating ANY time soon until it is fully proven and maintained as functional, and you're certainly not attracting new customers with your recent reputation) and face the reality of the non-functional product that you are putting out today. No one ever got a 45 on their MCAT without learning how to get a 30 first. You guys are way over extending yourselves and your engineers without the means to do so.
 
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