I only use Uber/Lyft in Boston for routes where the T would be inconvenient or if the weather is really bad and I don't want to walk home from the T station.
I just hate Uber Pool and Lyft Line - the routes they take are often side streets with lots of congestion and turns, there's a lot of frustration when you're almost to your destination or to a major road and then the driver turns around to pick up another passenger. Drivers often play music I find annoying.
I worked with one person at Amazon who had a significant physical disability. I can't speak for him, but he is highly valued by the organization because of the quality of his work.
As an Amazon employee, I tend to think Amazon's reputation is overstated. Some teams definitely have very high operational loads, but in general my hours have been comparable to friends in similar tech companies and certainly less than friends in industries like medicine, management consulting, etc.
It's very strange to describe Amazon (at least engineering roles) as a sweatshop considering how well compensated employees are.
I think this highlights a big difference between media and tech (or at least big tech companies). In tech, leaking is a cardinal sin. Foer chose to send information about a customer pulling an ad campaign to a friend, who then "excitedly" forwarded it to the New York Times. Foer was using internal company information as a weapon in a personal crusade.
I think his point is that standards are inherently arbitrary and inflexible and that these specific standards are only beneficial to a "small group". My point is that these standards aren't arbitrary, but well-reasoned, and that they are broadly beneficial (see my post elsewhere for some more examples).
Some standards are enforced by law - fire codes for instance, or food handling standards. Do accessibility standards merit similar treatment? I'd argue that most people now need to use the Internet for basic functions in their lives. For instance, you can't even get a job at a chain grocery store around here without filling out an online application. Given that, there's a strong social interest in making sure that everyone has access. That interest has to be balanced against other interests - costs to businesses for instance. I'm not necessarily suggesting that we should treat WCAG the same way we would treat a fire code (which a government agency enforces) or as we treat ADA building compliance (where customers can sue to force compliance), but I do think that a debate on this issue should look at what these standards actually do, and try to balance the interests. I don't think the parent is doing that.
> using the law as a bludgeon to force people into obeying arbitrary design policies
They're not arbitrary design policies at all. They're standards that exist for a reason. For instance, if you have some text, display it as text, not as an image of text, because a screen reader won't be able to read it.
> The inevitable effect of this kind of legislation is that technology gets worse for everyone, rather than better for a small group.
Actually, complying with accessibility standards makes the web better for everyone. Here's an example. The giant green table on this website used to just be an image[1]. That made the page useless for screen readers, but it also meant that you couldn't copy the data in the table, couldn't resize the text, etc. A common sense change to display this table as text made the page more useful for everyone.
My experience is that WCAG compliance can actually be beneficial to the company. For instance, an employer of mine saw a very significant jump in sales (as measured by A/B testing) by increasing contrast of certain important elements on a page to meet WCAG standards. I'm not saying this is always the case - the percentage of customers using screen readers is very small - but in a lot of cases, thinking carefully about font, color, or contrast choices can help more than just the disabled.
[Edit] To take another example, 10% of men are colorblind. If you're using color to convey information, you may be making your website very difficult to use for 5% of your customers. If you're operating at any kind of scale, the gains in making your website easier to use for 5% of your customers are going to outweigh the costs of making a change by a wide margin.
The Helsinki Metro was built in 1982 and has 17 stations, of which 6 are underground. The New York City subway system has 472 stations, almost all of which are either underground or above grade. It was first opened in 1904. The difference in cost and complexity of providing universally accessible service is massive.
This bill is under the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to overturn rules enacted by the executive branch in the last 6 months. A joint resolution of disapproval under this act can't be filibustered.[1]
I just hate Uber Pool and Lyft Line - the routes they take are often side streets with lots of congestion and turns, there's a lot of frustration when you're almost to your destination or to a major road and then the driver turns around to pick up another passenger. Drivers often play music I find annoying.