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coffeedoughnuts

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Apple Just Lost Me 4 months ago

Just to add a little bit of context, when I hit the same problem today the flow offered me the option to scan my driving license or 'national id card' (whatever that is - we don't have those in the UK)

So despite the claims in the article, it's not credit card centric.

However, they did not accept my passport as a scannable ID, and so luckily I had a credit card somewhere that I have used recently for a single large purchase otherwise I'd be stuffed, as I don't drive

Some people discussing how Trump/US could intervene to calm this situation - why would they? Presumably part of the US state would very much like access to this data, and with the security services of the US and the UK sharing lots of their intelligence (and with other five eyes nations) this would mean the UK becomes a one-stop-shop for gathering data on your own citizens without the need to trouble your own domestic legal system.

The UK's demand for access to _all_ apple users, not just UK citizens (a la China) indicates to me that it's at least possible this action has the backing of the US (though, obviously, there is not evidence for this - it's just hypothetical)

My point was that it seems you are critiquing the design of the page as if it's purpose is to display sales data, and I was suggesting that it's purpose is not to display sales data, but actually to simply advertise Stripe. When judged by this outcome, the design is (arguably, it seems) more successful.

Regardless, I find no joy or purpose in talking to someone that tells me I'm incorrect when I tell them my motivations for doing something. It betrays a certain ignorance on your part. I think let's just leave the thread there. Have a good rest of your day.

The design isn't crashing their browser, the implementation of the design is. You could argue that the design is simply not implementable with current technology to serve the widest array of users (this is doubtful), and possibly Stripe's marketing team made a judgement that they just didn't care about that - but you seem to be laying quite a lot at a designer's door there. I would guess that they are prioritising standing out to a niche audience of developers with expensive laptops over casting a wide net, which would be reasonable for this kind of campaign. Perhaps what you dislike is the marketing campaign and it's goals, rather than the nebulous "bad design" of the page?

And, for the record, I clicked the link because it was at the top of HN and I was bored. How did it get to the top of HN? because a lot of people saw it and thought it was cool. If they took a more utilitarian approach, would that have happened? I guess we just don't know.

with respect, I disagree that the function here is to show information. the (primary) function here is to advertise Stripe, and they obviously believe the aesthetic will increase the chance that viewers of the advert with share it with their friends and coworkers, increasing the effectiveness if the advert.

if this was a page they provided to all their customers, all year round, as their means of monitoring their own sales then I agree that this is a terrible design. but they have a fairly utilitarian dashboard UI for that function.

If I’m going to need to install and open specific software just to use Teams, then it’s probably going to be the Teams app itself.

The purpose of having it browser based is that I can have it quickly open in a tab in the window I’m already in and then close it again.

Other MS products work in my browser (Outlook for example) so why not Teams? I suspect because the Teams team is pretty understaffed.

We use Teams for group calls at work, but Slack for all other messaging. This is because Slack's video calling feature has always been a pain, particularly for our Linux team members. It could have improved, but we moved to Teams for calls so I wouldn't know. Because I only open teams when we have a meeting and then immediately close it, my experience is generally positive. I _wish_ I could just use the browser based version to save opening the slow-slow-slow-to-open desktop app but: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/safari-browser-su... says I need to disable cross-site tracking which is, frankly, an insane ask.

I think that sort of poor engineering is a sign that the team behind teams must have very limited resources. It's hard to prioritise a desktop browser with such small market share, especially when a work around of 'just use the app' is there - but this is hardly a lean startup here.

Ok, but you do need to be accountable for your opinions. If you’re talking about the need for redemption that I 100% agree that people change and need the opportunity afforded to them to be able to change.

But if Person A asks Person B for help fighting discrimination and Person B says ‘nah’ then my opinion of Person B will change. I don’t feel I’m wrong for that.

If Person B then goes and makes a podcast calling out Person C, D and E for doing the exact same thing then Person B can expect quite a few others to change their opinion of them also

that would require a coherent definition of what "wokeness" is. From my perspective it's a catch-all term which in most contexts could be replaced with "the left" or "social-justice-warriors" or "young people"

In the context of this thread, it's being used to describe people who want to fight for the formation of a union and against racial discrimination in the workplace.

If someone is on the other side of that argument it must be for one of two reasons; either they are anti-union (which, as a personal belief it is their right to be, but they don't have the right to limit others from forming a union) or they are pro racial discrimination in the workplace.

If I met someone that was either of those things, I would lose some respect for that person. Apologies for the "cancellation".

In what way is 'cancel culture' different from 'the opinions of, and respect held by, other people'?

If you do something, or say something, and when I hear about it I feel less respect for you then I had done previously - is that cancel culture? Am I cancelling you?

If you're a musician or film maker or author who I appreciate, but it's then revealed that privately you have expressed racist views, and now I feel less respect for you and decide not to listen to your music or watch your films or read your books - am I cancelling you? Am I morally obligated to keep supporting you financially?

Fear over being "cancelled", in my opinion, is simply fear of a boycott. It's nothing new or scary.

[Edit: typo]

Not sure if this is true wherever you're from, but here in the UK unions are very commonplace all over different industries and have been a recognised part of society for quite some time now. The same with our laws on racial discrimination in the workplace.

Not sure what your (or any) definition of 'woke' is, but I gathered it was a fairly new phenomenon that is often used as an excuse to belittle people who hold different views to your own (see also: 'political correctness') - I hadn't realised that my 60-something union-rep father was so woke! I'll call and let him know!

you can never be sensitive enough

just a complaint about “the culture”

this is dumb ... is this really the place to grind the diversity and unionization axe

race to the bottom for wokeness

It's a workplace dispute that has become public because the show they produce is critiquing another workplace that had a similar dispute. The hypocrisy involved there is the reason for this being reported so widely. Every workplace has a dispute at some point and sometimes these disputes result in people moving within or away from the company. The parties at Gimlet involved surely could see the parallels between the story and themselves, but didn't address this publicly in the first episode so it strikes me that they either hoped it wouldn't come up or didn't feel it was hypocritical, both of which feel naive and this result would have been avoided if they just addressed this obviously-forthcoming controversy head-on.

But sure, paint this up as "woke-millienials-coming-to-cancel-your-life-choices" if it makes you feel better. That's not what's happening, but it sounds like maybe you need it to be.

The Big Scoop 7 years ago

I didn’t say all ice cream vans or hand car washes are run by slaves.

I said that they carry modern slavery risks in our country at the moment. There is plenty of data to support the claim that hand car wash businesses carry this risk; there was recently an initiative to help identify known problem businesses with an app: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-47829016

I recently found out that the ice cream van near us that I have used before is part of a network of vans all around my city that has been linked to modern slavery. It’s not an isolated incident in my part of the country.

I don’t think my statement in regard to the modern slavery risks denigrated the ice cream van industry. If I said ‘don’t use ice cream vans because they are all run by slave masters’ then I would have been tarring the whole industry with the same brush. But I didn’t say that.

The Big Scoop 7 years ago

ice cream vans (and hand car washes) carry modern slavery risks in the UK - this company still have an ice cream van parked every day next to the park near my house: https://thebristolcable.org/2019/05/ice-cream-boss-lopresti-...

Personally, I dislike them as they specifically target play parks, school gates and areas where children gather frequently, and often they leave their diesel motor running constantly next to these areas. I understand that they carry a sense of warm nostalgia for some (particularly the generation prior to my own, who grew up when ice cream vans were popular), but I see no sense in them myself.

I can confidently believe that this album was never meant for ‘real’ release and therefore that this is not a stunt.

While the archive has some gems and recordings that many in the Radiohead fan community have heard whisper of but certainly never thought they would hear - it also contains some very rough recordings, some poor playing and singing and some pieces that I’m sure the band find embarrassing and would never choose to release themselves unless forced into a corner like this.

Python at Netflix 7 years ago

I used to work for a major vfx house who did much work on Netflix original shows

there will be a certain amount of sharing needed between vendors, and so Netflix will need to have some vfx expertise in-house to coordinate that (similar to how a film will have a vfx supervisor that works for the film production company, who liases with supervisors at each vendor company)

but it would be very sensible for them to have an in-house asset library (which may included work written in python, not just images or textures) so that if they want to switch vfx vendor between seasons of a show it's easy to do so

in general, python rules in the vfx world. there's some c++ too. Sadly, because it's been this way for so long, many houses are still stuck in a python 2 world with huge legacy codebases

I found myself constantly copy-pasting the same utilities to make `history`, `react-router` and `qs` all talk to each other so that I could store state in the url (something I think not enough web apps do); so finally took the time to put a few of them into a library. Really these are just the basics but it would be good to get any feedback on what kinds of things people thing would be useful in a library like this

I worked at Double Negative (the VFX company mentioned) during the production of Interstellar and had the pleasure of sitting in on an in-house lecture he did for the artists and R&D teams - incredibly good teaching skills. He was able to explain some very complex subjects in a 90 minute session.

For any non-scientists that are interested in this subject, he published a book about his work on the film that was quite interesting.

Most cities require you to show ID to use internet.

Complete nonsense; aside from cities in the UK not having any powers to control a thing like that (they are no way near as devolved as big cities in the US, for example) there is no legal obligation to provide ID to access the internet. I think you might be referring to a recent proposal to legislate online activity through access cards; but that was a proposal that has no backing at the moment.

Source: I'm writing this from an internet connection for which I have not shown any ID or registered in any way, and I live in a major UK city

"That bit"? That was their whole comment! I'm afraid you accused me of 'trotting out a line' when in fact the 'overall sentiment' was implied entirely by yourself.

My advice for next time - less pouncing on comments to shoe-horn in some great ideological stance. Specific discussion is better than generic argument in my book. Good day to you :)

well if we're talking about straw men, I didn't actually say it needed to fund a political ideology of any kind. Or say anything about it being compulsory, though in fact I do think it should be.

Moreover, my comment was on the slightly silly notion that 'it's sad this is a thing now' when it has been a thing in Britain since Roman times.

Perhaps the original commentator is harking back to the good old days of pre-Roman occupation? Back when we were truly free. Never had it as good as we did ~30AD. It's gone to the dogs since then ;)

Is it sad? I'm quite proud to pay taxes of many different kinds, and I think that the (admittedly quite imperfect) tax system is necessary to a functioning society.

I'd also mention that it's been part of British society since the Roman occupation, so not sure when in time you allude to with your comment but if you're sad about it I suggest investigating a move to one of the functional libertarian nations with no taxes.

From the article:

Migrating from webpack 2 to 3, should involve no effort beyond running the upgrade commands in your terminal. We marked this as a Major change because of internal breaking changes that could affect some plugins. So far we’ve seen 98% of users upgrade with no breaking functionality at all

In my opinion, what makes this closer to sexism than bad manners is the fact that the same person seems to have conducted himself with good manners for the rest of the event when talking with the male members of the panel.