Hacker News Reader

WildUtahon Incorporating a limited company in Germany

It's not a company's responsibility to pay more than it owes. It's the people's responsibility to elect a government that will write rules without such gross and long standing loopholes. Or at least to elect a government that will close them after a decade or two of abuse instead of keeping them permanently.

WildUtahon Former Norway PM held at Washington airport over 2014 visit to Iran

Since he's not a government official—the story is quite explicit that he's working for a private organization—he's fraudulently travelling on a diplomatic passport. He should have been arrested at the border, interrogated, barred permanently from the USA, and deported.

WildUtahon An Email Thread Between a Developer and Gigster

Don't refuse outright. That'll just set up a primate dominance game with the people tasked with getting you to sign.

Tell them you'll check with your lawyer. It's always considered a basic right in developed nations to ask lawyers questions and it usually takes unpredictable amounts of time and it implies that someone with connections is employed to be on your side of any disagreement. That should be the last you hear about it. There's very seldom any need actually to hire a lawyer after saying it.

WildUtahon Using Vim as a Python IDE

Our host, Paul Graham, talks about his first successful startup sometimes. It's ViaWeb, now Yahoo Stores, and it made him the rich investor he is today.

He edited the code live on the production server sometimes. And he did it in the repl, not by editing source files, so he didn't even have a record of what he changed that could go into version control.

When you're nimble and you need every advantage to compete, sometimes you have to be able to do things the hard way.

Not that I would recommend it; every ethical programmer in the galaxy has denounced the practice. And they have good reasons.

WildUtahon Using Vim as a Python IDE

I'm trying Neovim and it's the only editor I've ever tried that I like as much as Vim. Every other substitute has been inadequate.

WildUtahon New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

We have to compete against millions of our own country folk at our local examinations, which are way more difficult than the american equivalents.

It's much harder in America because it doesn't matter how you do on the examinations. Your fate is decided by personal opinions and relationships and what your local school thinks of you. There is no simple IIT exam or A-level or Baccalaureate or Sooneung where you can just study hard, write a great exam and get admitted.

How we dreamed of the ease foreign students had with their exams! Instead it's a deep dreary slog of obsequiousness, obedience, busy work, group projects, supplication, and being seen but seldom heard. And the results are secret evaluations you're never entitled to see and which are never documented in public.

But that's all for undergrad.

The fact remains that the only exam that matters much in top tier grad admissions for US schools is the TOEFL and that's only for foreigners. Documented research work experience is much more important than any test.

WildUtahon New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

One of the things that annoyed me was the love of multiple choice tests

We said "multiple choice" only to the foreigners and the most uptight profs. They're properly called 'multiple guess' by American students.

WildUtahon Open-sourcing Chrome on iOS

Of the top 100 websites (I got tired of counting) in the USA, the obvious open source ones from a quick review are,

    4. Wikipedia
    6. Reddit
    33. Wikia
    37. Wordpress
    40. Twitch
    60. Github
    61. Reddit Uploads

I'm not counting Craigslist, though its infrastructure is documented and open source, because you can't just download the engine and run it yourself without a lot of glue. Likewise Pirate Bay. There are probably more marginal cases like that among the top.

And there are open data projects like Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow that essentially publish all their content on open source licenses and offer free download dumps. Both are top 100 sites.

Then there are the news sites available without paywall. Those are just basic blogs with photos, video, and text accessible to the public. They aren't open source; you have to pay to republish their content. But there is essentially no special software you can't match with any open source CMS at CNN or the Washington Post or HuffPo or many, many other top sites.

I'd say the solid majority of the top 100 sites don't have any special closed source software, except for the proprietary search engine projects: Google, Bing, Yahoo, their respective mail and document suite projects, and the like.

WildUtahon New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

That's nice. The typical H1-B employer has been breaking the law and ruining prospect for American families for decades and there's no enforcement of the rules in sight anywhere. At this point, we'll take whatever means of enforcement we can get.

This is what blowback from years of privileged abuse of the law looks like.

Heck, the entire Trump phenomenon is what blowback from extended abuse of elite privilege looks like. It isn't pretty, but the elites refused all other means of curbing their exploitation.

WildUtahon New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

The question isn't how much desert or glacier a country has. It's whether a family can afford a place to live and if you can get where you're going in the city without waiting forever in traffic. America is failing badly at both those essential criteria.

WildUtahon New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

In my experience, standardized tests play almost no role in STEM grad school admissions. Why would a math department care about your score on a vocabulary test like the GRE, as long as you speak fluent English?

The keys are, above all, good recommendations from respectable academics and some kind of research experience followed by high undergrad grades. A high GRE score can't substitute for any of those.

Of course, the foreigners can manufacture the grades and recommendations with a little cash. Maybe even the research experience. They probably do have to study English to pass the standardized tests: The one that matters for them is the TOEFL.

WildUtahon New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

If you live in middle America flyover country it's hard to get any tech job. And the H1-B program is making it a lot harder.

WildUtahon New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

and not all locations in America pay the same amount of salary for tech workers either.

Indeed. The $130k limit should be raised to $310k in SF, NY, DC, LA, and Boston.

WildUtahon New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

Scientists used to make a good living in the USA. Now the market is flooded with cheap foreigners and science is a road to poverty. Ending the employment of cheap foreigners, including as TAs and RAs, would go a long way to making science a respectable profession again.

And it would open the field to American women. When math and science professors can't make a decent living to support a family until after their prime child bearing years, any claims of equal treatment and equal opportunity are nothing but a sham. Science careers today practically demand that women permanently give up any hope of a family just to get on the professor track.

And things are just getting worse. It's time to stop importing foreign science grads.

WildUtahon New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

That game is already being played. It's very lucrative for private colleges catering to third world (and second world) kleptocrats that want to plant their children and their dirty cash in the USA.

WildUtahon New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

If you don't qualify for the family-based or refugee route, employment-based immigration is the only viable pathway. The amount of hate I see piled on people trying to come here via the employment-based immigration seems insane to me. These

Clearly the rate of family-based immigration is insane. And the lack of requirements for any kind of skills that would benefit America for relatives is costing America. Outside spouses and minor children, family has no special right to follow immigrants into the USA and privileging unskilled family migrants reduces the chance for a community to assimilate.

That reunification migration program should be regulated and limited severely.

But there is no right for employment based immigration either. There does not need to be a pathway for every single person on Earth to come to America. America is already crowded.

If there's no viable visa category to come to the USA, there are 200 other countries for a person to migrate to. And staying put is a fine option for most migrants as well, though there are exceptions.

The idea that the USA and only the USA is the acceptable destiny for every person is ludicrous and has to stop. We have the highest proportion of foreign born people in hour history already and it's time for a long immigration moratorium to help us absorb the immigrants we have.

WildUtahon New H1-B Visa bill doubles the salary requirements to $130K/yr

This is mostly a SWAT team storming through all doors and killing dogs if any an then taking away all your documents, interviewing all employees. In short that is end of business to you.

Yes. That is exactly what I want employers thinking when the offer of cheap H1-Bs tempts them. Let's have a lot more on-site enforcement, please.

And a few horror stories in the media would be a great benefit to Americans.

WildUtahon Federal judge stays deportations of travelers in Trump immigration order

It's going to get at least four votes for Trump, maybe nine.

WildUtahon Time to Take a Stand

Pretty sure that at the St. Patrick's parade, they just want to get drunk on green beer.

WildUtahon Refugees Detained at U.S. Airports, Prompting Legal Challenges

Of course the USA should support the recognition of the Kurdish state and its success and freedom. And that is where Kurdish aides to the US have a right to live.

WildUtahon Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

The world is ridiculously overfull and Americans didn't make it that way. And the rest of the world is headed for rapid population increases to make it much worse. Americans shouldn't have to suffer for that; we've got a little space left and we should guard it jealously.

And just try driving in any major prosperous city at rush hour or riding the subway. Or renting an apartment in SF or NY. We can't expand housing or infrastructure in those cities and we're admitting millions of foreigners overfilling them even further.

WildUtahon Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

You can be a loyal citizen to only one country. Maintaining two passports is an open declaration of disloyalty and lack of solidarity.

And immigrants shouldn't get special privileges that natural citizens cannot, especially special privileges conferred by foreign princes and potentates.

WildUtahon Time to Take a Stand

But let's not forget that Spencer and various members of his social circle have - for years now - been expressing approval

Actual Nazis liked to be punched by their opponents and even arrested by the cops for their nonviolent activism in the 1920s and early 1930s. They like the publicity for the same reason Gandhi and MLK liked it: It makes them sympathetic by exposing the evil behaviors of those that hate them.

Punching Spencer is a huge win for Spencer and the things Spencer stands for.

WildUtahon Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

I doubt a Jewish Israeli computer scientist poses a threat. But posing a threat isn't the criterion. We don't just take anyone that isn't especially dangerous.

America is a nation and only those that further the aims of the existing nation should come. Even then it should be very few of those because America is already full.

We can't build enough space to live and infrastructure for the people that are already here. And our natural environment is already threatened by overdevelopment.

WildUtahon Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

A patriotic American can simply renounce a foreign passport.

WildUtahon Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

It gives them an excellent opportunity to move to their new spouses' countries and settle down there.

WildUtahon Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

I doubt it will affect anyone with a US passport at the border, but it's about time for the USA to adopt the Japanese policy and simply ban all dual citizenship. If you hold a foreign passport or any kind of documents from a foreign country for its citizens, your US citizenship should be revoked and you should be deported.

WildUtahon Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

How that poll is taken:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfkTwY6aalg

WildUtahon Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

Excellent. America shouldn't take any immigrants that just want to exploit our resources or wealth. Only those who believe in America and love the people and our land so much they would take all the risks of coming because no alternative is good enough should immigrate here.

I wish you the best of good fortune in everything back home.

WildUtahon Iranian MIT student goes home over break, denied return for spring semester

US citizens can visit Iran—at Iranian discretion—with a state minder the same way US citizens can travel to North Korea. You can't travel freely and you can't travel without personal scrutiny ('extreme vetting') from Iranian officials.