181–188 of 188 posts
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I'd assume companies like Pivotal, ThoughtWorks, and such.
And hundreds (thousands?) of other ones who don't regularly make the front page of HN.
But more than that, I'm pretty sure the point of the question was to get a list of such firms (I'd like one too!), not to be assured "they're out there, even if you'll never know who they are or how to find them".
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This is just another reason why the US has a healthier startup culture. There are a lot of things that take effort to do that US companies can get away with not doing until forced to by law or the market, or when the opportunity costs diminish that they do it out of the goodness of the individuals' involved hearts.
> This is just another reason why the US has a healthier startup culture. I think we would heavily disagree on the "healthier" status.
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Yes to your second question. Maybe the government can offer a tax return bonus to cover it. And pump more money into fully general cures for all disabilities. I'm not against making disabled peoples' lives better, but focusing entirely on the supplier side is a mistake.
What is the cure for having amputated legs while being poor? The cure for a lack of legs is typically prosthetics with extensive therapy. Incredibly expensive and labor intensive. The cure for amputated legs while being poor is a wheelchair; not as easily managed without additional space when parked, and if there are no ramps up to your building, your business is effectively inaccessible. But ramps cost extra money.…
I'm kind of big on cyborg technology and other futurist ideas (like brain emulations). Varying degrees are expensive and not even available right now, but a large part of that is a serious lack of funding which in turn cuts business opportunities. (I would bet if society focused more efforts and money on general human augmentation instead of just helping the disabled, the disabled would come along for the ride since the non-disabled market is so much greater. As I touched on in another comment, the second-order effects often provide more value for these niche markets than targeting the niche markets directly.) While we transition to better tech that even the poor can afford we can still consider forced money bleeding, but I'd like to consider demand side solutions too.
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I've never worked in the restaurant industry, but, I've heard from people who have that it's STILL extremely common for black customers to be considered undesirable. I.e. a server will get upset at a host(ess) if they get "too many" black customers assigned to their tables. Why? Servers claim that black customers - on average - tip less. I don't know how prevalent this belief on the part of servers is. And I don't kn…
I don't think there's a line between machine learning and bias. In the example I gave (black Americans in the 1960s), I'm pretty confident that any working machine-learning algorithm would conclude that this population is economically disadvantaged and therefore a less-profitable target market. Such a conclusion would also reinforce structural racism. And that's the way we treated this in the 1960s. The government di…
It's probably worth pointing out that the restaurateurs didn't have the ability to make those decisions; that was the point of the Jim Crow legal regime. Left to themselves, they kept wanting to serve blacks.
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I don't think there's a line between machine learning and bias. In the example I gave (black Americans in the 1960s), I'm pretty confident that any working machine-learning algorithm would conclude that this population is economically disadvantaged and therefore a less-profitable target market. Such a conclusion would also reinforce structural racism. And that's the way we treated this in the 1960s. The government di…
> I don't think many of us regret the loss of ability of restaurateurs to make these particular economic decisions It's probably worth pointing out that the restaurateurs didn't have the ability to make those decisions; that was the point of the Jim Crow legal regime. Left to themselves, they kept wanting to serve blacks.
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I'm not sure if you're arguing about data or personal comfort. Over half the adult human population is 5.5 feet or under if you recall that women exist and are half the people
I don't forget that women exist. My impression was that they averaged taller than that. But even if they don't, you seem to forget that, if women average 5'4", that still leaves many women at taller than 5'6". I couldn't find a data source for average (better, median) population height and distribution for the US that combined both genders. Do you have a candidate handy?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height has graphs with percentile breakdowns, purportedly based on US CDC data, with median female height at around 5'3" to 5'4". Wolframalpha spits back 5'5" as the median human height though it says "weighted for USA demographics".
> that still leaves many women at taller than 5'6".
I didn't forget that at all, I just don't see how relevant it is, unless you think airlines moving hundreds of millions of passengers per year should be optimizing seat sizes for the long tail of the human form.
Posting an article called "users you don't want" and then using a developmentally challenged teenager as the example of a user that you don't want is so spectacularly tone-deaf that I am left somewhat speechless. I keep thinking this will be the year that the valley types wake up and realize this kind of mentality puts them in existential danger from mobs with pitchforks, but it keeps not happening.
All these valley types need to do is tell the grievance mongers to take a hike, and there would not be anything they could do about it.
It's caving into screechers' demands that does these companies in when the outrage happens.