I don't post here often, but I hope someone at Apple is reading this as this is one of the worst designs I have seen from this company. Even in their own presentation they shows text hard to read, text on top of text. It's an accessibility and usability nightmare. I really don't want to give up iMessage but if what ships looks as bad as this I may jump ship.
They are probably used to the outrage. Apple removed the floppy disc drive, optical drive, headphone jack. Most people don't care. I don't think that buttons people pressed a thousand times before that are now slightly less readable are a big issue.
truly contender for the worst redesign of the decade. It's hard to see how a trillion dollar company would stumble so bad here. They must be real zealots on AR to even go here.
There's "doing accounting work for clients as part of a contract" which is not that dissimilar to being an independent contractor on the software side except for 1/3 the pay or less. The work is "easier" but less intellectually stimulating as you're doing the same thing over and over again with different numbers.
Then there's "doing accounting work for a company as part of an accounting department" which is much more likely to be 40h weeks, punch-the-clock type of work. However there can still be crunch time there as the deadlines are real deadlines not VP-pulled-out-of-a-hat deadlines (e.g. tax filing deadlines, SEC reporting deadlines).
I live near some accountants for the city government, so maybe my viewpoint is skewed by the pace of public work. Then again, a lot of jobs can have long hours and most jobs have lower pay than tech.
Early years in Big4 as an auditor yes. As you climb the ladder it gets better and you make good money. Once you become partner you can earn high six figures or more in big cities and the pensions are extremely generous.
You can go to industry and climb the ladder and make good money with less crazy workload.
I know a chief accounting officer at a public company and she earns 7 figures. She works a lot but also goes on vacations and has free time.
Glad I held on to my kitchen utensils. Given how broad the hype cycle was and how I was getting push notifications on my phone about it from multiple "news" sources it felt like hysteria. Likely helped black friday sales at Sur la Table though.
And the person who found the error nevertheless agrees with the original conclusion, FTA:
“As Schwarcz points out, it appears the study’s hypothesis is correct, that black plastic recycled out of electronic devices, mostly in Asia, is getting back into the American supply chain for household kitchen items, including spatulas.”
This is the perfect article for HN because the problem is still real and the recommendation to avoid black plastic around food is still good. But because there was an error that affects but does not undermine the conclusion, the entire premise is rejected.
I think of this as "too technical to be correct." It's a really good example of how when writing for HN as an audience, it's best to use as few concrete details as possible. They will be scrutinized endlessly, and any flaw or inconsistency in them no matter how trivial or spurious will be taken as refutation of the entire statement.
It's not hype. The FDA regularly issues guidance on "how much plastic" they allow in our food. I know someone who works in a lab that measures the chemicals transferred in such conditions. The results from his lab are used to certify food processing equipment.
Basically, all plastic has chemicals that, given enough time, will leech into your food and cause contamination. The question is; how much do we tolerate as a society while still enjoying the cost and convenience of plastic?
For me, I try to minimize plastic contact as much as possible. I only use metal utensils. I also use cast iron or stainless steel cookware with no coatings (other than seasoning the cast iron).
I wonder how big is the risk of having a dishwasher with plastic components? Or a silverware drawer with plastic bins? Or meat and vegetables that come in plastic bags?
Dishwasher; Will contaminate each dish a predictable amount, consistently. A tiny amount on each dish that correlates to about 3% of the surface area of each dish sitting in the rack for a couple of hours. So the max contaminant is n% of [surface area of each dish] per wash cycle.
Silverware Bin; Will contaminate each utensil a predictable amount per unit of time, consistently, up until a saturation point where the utensile cannot contain any more contamination. So the max amount of contaminant is 1x[surface area of utensil].
Meat and veggies; Will be contaminated based on the amount of surface area in contact with plastic, and the amount of time time they spend in contact with plastic. So the max amount of contaminant is [surface area of food touching plastic]x[duration of exposure]. An important note, the food is usually refrigerated. Heat is what releases many of the chemicals from the plastic.
A cooking utensile will contaminate food a highly variable amount based on; The amount of surface area that touches the food, how long the utensile touches the food, the temperature of the food, the fat content of the food, the temperature of the cookware/utensile, the age and quality of the utensile, and a slew of other factors.
Additionally, we both have to deal with the three things you brought up. We all have dishwashers, and plastic bins, and plastic packaging. But you are ALSO using plastic utensils. So you invariably will have more chemicals from plastic than me, despite any other factors.
> “However, it is important to note that this does not impact our results,” Liu told National Post. “The levels of flame retardants that we found in black plastic household items are still of high concern, and our recommendations remain the same.”
What I find crazy is we the people are taking sides and investing emotion into two corporations, neither of which have the best interests of their customers at heart. At the end of the day the only winner is who makes more money from this, we as users will continue to lose no matter the outcome. We have all become corporatists.
