The craziest thing here is that online gambling has been legal in the UK and Ireland for many years, and it's been such an obvious negative for those countries — and had been optimized brutally like any other tech product. When I moved over to the US a decade ago, I remember thinking 'well at least they're smart enough to have banned online gambling'.
I am very pro personal liberties, but this stuff is weaponized to prey on a subset of humanity. I'm in senior leadership, and have made it clear that anyone who has worked on these products should not be hired.
If you're an employer who has let someone go, you would have to be mentally deficient to mention anything regarding their disability in relation to their employment or firing.
Twitter was not some sort of rest and vest retirement scheme — he worked as a design director there for years. You should read his followup thread for more context. You should also be aware that you can't just fire someone because of their disability getting worse.
It's also worth noting that the design studio he founded, Ueno, was one of the dynamic, talented and in-demand agencies in the world pre-acquisition.
There were admirable things about her as a person, but the concept of monarchy is a stain on humanity. I can't respect anyone who supports the idea of superiority by virtue of bloodline.
Yeah, I live in SF now after moving from Europe. The tax difference is not really that different for me (high earner), but what you get in return in really depressing. Good weather and astronomical wages make it worthwhile.
European here — that is an insane cost for college fees from my POV. I attended one of the most highly rated courses for my profession in Europe and only paid about €3K per year.
One of the fallacies around accessibility is 'just for blind people' — there are all sorts of physical and mental disabilities humans suffer from, at various levels of severity (sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently). It's not just screenreaders—assistive technologies range from grandpa zooming into 8X screensize, to a paraplegic teen using a mix of keyboard nav and trackball.
Accessible design and development improves the lives of more people than you'd expect — and it goes a long way toward guaranteeing better usability for everyone. Gov.uk is a great example to this.
Anyway, if you're working on something with any type of scale, you should be hitting a11y standards as a matter of professional standards. Activist lawsuits in the US are doubling/tripling year over year, and you can expect EU legislation pretty soon too.
If you're just dicking around on a website with minimal traffic, it a matter of personal conscience and intended audience.
I appreciate your viewpoint, but I want to push back on "this just happens in cities". The only other place I experienced this level of criminality was when I was living in South America. (And I'm certainly not saying SF is much better.)
I'm originally from Europe, and have lived in and visited a huge variety of cities around the world. This level of anti-social behaviour / criminality is not normal, or acceptable in most developed countries.
I'm living in one of the nicest neighborhoods in Oakland, and I would definitely not consider it "fine". The area is beautiful, but we're plagued by gunpoint robberies, burglaries, dumping, etc — people coming in and treating us as a place to loot and leave.
I love Oakland, but I'm gone as soon as our rent is up. There's a general lawlessness here that's incredibly frustrating.
The pencil has been iterated upon countless times, by a huge number of individuals and organisations. They also have a huge variety of forms for different uses and contexts: carpenters pencils, steno pencils, charcoal pencils, pencils for users with disabilities, etc.
These factors are influenced by material constraints and opportunities, but don't discount the importance of design iteration in the simplest of objects.
And as someone who has spent a lot of time drawing, the feel and quality of different pencils (wood, graphite hardness etc.) is something people care an awful lot about.
"It eased gently into democracy several hundred years ago"? It's a shame it didn't extend that courtesy to my homeland, Ireland—we were one of those countries that had to wrest democracy through violent revolution, except it was from the British state. As someone who's great-grandfather was lynched by British soliders, I'll thank you not to whitewash your state as a benevolent beacon of democracy and human rights.
I used to have this problem—constant sweating from my armpits drove me crazy, and deodorant ruined so many shirts, despite trying multiple brands/types. Started using Dove+ antiperspirant stick this winter and the problem is gone—one application lasts for up to two days, which is incredible considering the amount I used to sweat!
I am very pro personal liberties, but this stuff is weaponized to prey on a subset of humanity. I'm in senior leadership, and have made it clear that anyone who has worked on these products should not be hired.