I remember that app! It sounded so cool but was only available for iOS at the time and when I saw the Android app a few years later by change it was only a weird proof-of-concept where you can transmit folder-icons from within the app to another phone with the app.
As someone who has worked in a warehouse facility as a picker - though not Amazon. I find the 'slave-like conditions'a bit unfair.
Now I can't speak for Amazon themselves, most of the complaints seem to stem from the fact that being a picker IS a skill. Not everyone can be good at it. It's physical - which I personally found fantastic, getting paid to stay fit, and on company time. You need to have somewhat a good memory, but more importantly an analytical brain to process the information on the scanner. Whilst the locations of the items might not have any seemingly logical order, the layout of the facility does. If you can process the bin locations immediately then you save many seconds of your target. Which brings me to the targets. It may seem 'slave-like' to have a timer between picks but each and every one is achievable (through analysis of every other pick ever made), and even if you miss a pick by 5 seconds, you've probably saved 5 seconds somewhere else during that same day/week/month (depending on how they evaluate your performance). Again though that's no to say that everyone has the skill to do so.
The episode you highlighted mentions that employees at Amazon tend to enjoy their work. If you can do the job, there's very little stress, pay can be good - we're talking about a generally unskilled job, certainly more than most retail stores. Decent benefits - vacation, healthcare etc. Shifts can be very favourable depending on the facility - 4 in 4 off can mean long weekends and plenty of opportunity for family time.
I'm not sure if that's going to work when more and more people are using mobile internet. Sure, we can all hope for real mobile flatrates but p2p videodistribution will add more traffic the networks … wait, no it wouldn't, would it?
Yeah, that seems to be the way to go but I'd love a less geeky, n00b-friendly solution (pretty sure it doesn't exist but I can't figure out why. Is that so hard to code/achieve?).
I personally would be cool with that but nobody uses it, I haven't come accross this anywhere except maybe hackerspaces. Restaurant/bar owners would need to set it up, plus you need a computer(the router?) that is always online and tell the people how to enter the chatroom.
I just want a programm that I can fire up whenever I go somewhere with a (Wireless)LAN to see what's going on. Like Firechat for (W)LANs?
Don't take this too personal please but I think this is exactly how privilege works: For you it was funny because it happened to you once when you were on holidays. Now imagine this happened to you over and over, hundreds of times, since you were little in all sorts of contexts, at school, uni, work, on the street, at parties, friends, colleagues, people you don't even now. I think it gets less funny pretty fast.
The point of the OPs anecdote was that if a child who really sees an Afro for the first time does this it's okay. But grown-ups (who even if they only have contact to other white people are able to read up on those things) should know better.
I agree with you 100%, I wasn't trying to argue with the OP point, just reading this make me remember a funny moment that I shared. I wasn't trying to argue or disminish anything.
I grew up with exactly what you mention - people, especially women, coming up and basically feeling up my hair or commenting on it everywhere I went. I never minded it though and I wonder why people do.
Mh, looks like they're still around: https://www.chirp.io/
I really like the concept, would be really nice to have a functional app one day.