c0nsilienc3's comments

Ah you are correct. It was Starbucks' decision after the following incident:

>"In April, two African American males were arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks after one asked to use the restroom but was told only paying customers could use them. After he sat down with his friend while waiting to be joined by a business associate for a meeting, the police came and arrested both, sparking national outrage.

Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson subsequently apologized to the victims and reached an undisclosed financial settlement."

As you said, it's an anecdote. And it's nice that it works out in that one location.

Alternatively, I've seen how this has affected Starbucks in the nicer parts of San Francisco and the East Bay. Some Starbucks locations smell horrible, some of the restrooms are trashed and there is toilet paper everywhere. In one Starbucks on Market Street, a homeless person decided to hole up in the restroom and take a nap on the nice, cool floor with the a/c going.

I can never support forcing a private business into offering a public utility.

The article's opening paragraph might have been a somewhat accurate depiction of reddit 12-13 years ago, but it's changed a lot since then. It's hard to take the author that seriously when the bias against reddit is that clear in the lede.

My girlfriend is a design strategist and I don’t see that at all amongst her colleagues and friends. I think that’s a very outside perspective on what designers must think like. Good designers are a lot smarter than that, and I’ve seen first hand how bad your example can end up. Usually, it’s not the designer’s fault, but the client.

Often, a client or your company has an idea about how something should look or function regardless of research, prototyping and testing. I’ve seen the process take place over wasted weeks just for a client to say, “Yeah, but that’s not what we wanted or envisioned. Make it like this or make it fit somehow.”

That’s when I’ve seen products and services fail spectacularly while the designers and researchers ask themselves, “What was the point of all that work then?”

Edit: There’s also kind of a branding problem with design strategists where, as someone else pointed out, a lot of them are just good at packaging and presenting mediocre ideas into really slick powerpoints and presentations. And many of these strategists even present themselves as very artsy and slick and can spout off very woo-woo lines of magic and dazzle with their charisma. It gives people who are exposed to these designers the impression that they’re all just a bunch of snazzy consultants who offer no real value.

My girlfriend got a design strategy MBA several years ago (her family thought it was a bullshit degree) and has worked for two of the largest companies in the U.S. (one of those jobs is still current). These companies are taking design strategy VERY seriously based on the projects I see her working on, and the outrageous salaries they’re paying her and her cohorts.

In the end, they are in the business for profit. So of course it is always just to “sell more stuff,” but in order to do that you have to fix deep-rooted problems within the company, its culture, its customers and products. She works on all those things.

If the trend continues as I’m observing it from the outside, more companies will be hiring design strategists and researchers in-house and these design consultancies will have a lot less work in the next 10 years.

I skimmed the whole thing, but I don't agree with the author when he says subscription fatigue should really be called spending fatigue. Nor do I agree with the burden being irrelevant whether you do a subscription or a one-time cost.

The first example that comes to mind is what Adobe did, causing it to lose some business, but overall increase profits: switching to a subscription model. I think around 10 years ago or so I paid about $150 for Lightroom. For the last 4-5 years, since Adobe switched to subscriptions, I've paid more than quadruple that just to have access to Lightroom and Photoshop.

Well, it's not called survivorship bias for no reason. This kinda reminds me of that show Halt and Catch Fire. Their computer, their next video game platform, their next search engine... all of it was poised to become the next big thing. Except it didn't. They were beaten by Apple, Nintendo, Yahoo, etc.

Lots of people have the same ideas about what can be successful--some idea about some underserved market or whatever. They're all working at it night and day on little to no sleep. They're all extremely smart and talented. Many of them are willing to play dirty. Only few get lucky.

I think you guys really ought to read about the lawyer that was only briefly highlighted in the article:

https://www.almanacnews.com/news/2019/07/07/judge-finds-witn...

Exotic locations and good light make a better photo than simply having the newest iPhone--I think everyone here can agree.

Brian Chen, whom I respect, from NYTimes reviewed the newest iPhone and compared all his notes, photos, and videos to his iPhone reviews in the past and said there was hardly a difference in quality and performance.

I'm not saying the camera advancements aren't nice, but as a working photographer I have pretty strong opinions about some of the new features like night shot. There are already apps that exist for iOS that do this (take multiple photos and average them out to produce a brighter image with less noise). Also, I believe that if it's really too dark to take a good photo, it's not worth taking a photo at all because even the night shot image won't look that great (and of course they look great when you see them because they are side-by-side comparisons with the darker, more crappy photo, but as standalone photos they look like garbage). I'd rather find or make good light if I want to take a portrait.

This really depends on a lot of things, like the person I'm talking to, when we're talking, time of day, etc. I have one or maybe two friends now that I call, and even then it's sporadic. We spend most of our time texting.

There are other situations when I'm frustrated with texting and would prefer a phone call. One example is when my girlfriend is out and she'll text me something like, "Hey, I decided to stop for coffee on the way home. Do you want something?" This can go a number of ways. First, I won't see the text at all, and she'll come home and say, "Well, I tried to text you!" Then I'll look at my phone and it'll say something like, "Anything? I'm the next one in line. Let me know ASAP." The second way this can go is a back and forth. They don't have that option. Anything else you want? Yeah, they're all out of that.

Any situation where you need to know something right away, like the right kinds of nuts and bolts to grab from a hardware store or if your friends are making a food run, etc. don't text.

JUST. CALL. ME.

I would add medical bills to that as well. Some emergency room bills have asinine charges, and many aren't itemized very well. For example, you could have a bill that says:

Emergency room: $5,000 ECG: $300 Radiology: $600 Laboratory: $750

And maybe you just went in with chest pain from asthma where they took some quick labs and an x-ray, sent you home after breathing treatment and no prescriptions for anything, and now you have a $7,000+ bill after spending 13 hours in the ER. Most of that time was spent sitting around staring at a wall.