HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

egourlao

99 karma · joined December 11, 2016

submissionscomments
egourlao··on Y Combinator website no longer lists Canada as a country it invests in
> The only benefit Canadians get compared to others is the opportunity to work for employers on TN status which is a temporary non-immigrant-intent work visa.

That doesn't strike me as "not at all" when the TN status is 1/ effectively a work visa, whether you like the strings attached or not, and 2/ a foot in the door that lets you move to a more permissive status down the line. A Waterloo or UofT grad can go from applying to a US job to their first day in a few weeks, and the only interaction they'll have with the immigration system will be getting asked for paperwork at the border. Compare that to a British or Japanese new grad, for whom there is essentially very few options unless they have excellent connections or that they display enough extraordinary abilities to be eligible for O-1.

egourlao··on Don't Call It a Substack.
> Everyone else stops coming because they don't want to hear Nazi shit, so, it's a Nazi bar now.

There's plenty of non-Nazi writers enjoying a good amount of success on Substack, though? Or at least, as a casual Substack user, I'm not sure I've been exposed to any Nazi content…? So I'm not sure if this analogy holds up that well in this case.

egourlao··on Don't Call It a Substack.
> Substack is, just as a reminder, a political project made by extremists with a goal of normalizing a radical, hateful agenda by co-opting well-intentioned creators' work in service of cross-promoting attacks on the vulnerable. You don't have to take my word for it; Substack's CEO explicitly said they won't ban someone who is explicitly spouting hate, and when confronted with the rampant white supremacist propaganda that they are profiting from on their site, they took down... four of the Nazis. Four.

I understand that content moderation online is a nuanced topic, but… my impression of the Substack stance was that it boiled down to "one of our main values is free speech, and while we understand the desire for content moderation, we're going to lean towards letting people use our platform even if we disagree with what they're writing". Characterizing this as a "radical, hateful agenda" seems like… a stretch? Maybe I'm missing something here.

egourlao··on Startups Are Scooping Up Big Tech’s Cast-Off Workers
I mean yeah, that's one way to spin it. But it's interesting to observe the dynamics in the work force and how that benefits some smaller companies that were having a hard time hiring before.
egourlao··on Yes, of course we should ban TikTok
China bans platforms because they give access to information that embarrasses those in power. The US, here, is planning to ban a platform because it's a propaganda vector, and because its popularity has gotten to a point where we - as a society - at a serious risk of propaganda campaigns. All the information on TikTok is still available elsewhere - but we mitigate the opportunity for the Chinese Communist Party to mold what information is serviced to our constituents, and how that information is shaped.

I just don't think those two are the same.

egourlao··on Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says layoffs will continue into next year
Has the denial rate for all companies gone down? Or could it be that companies that were getting the most denials have submitted less petitions for H-1B workers?

Sponsoring an employee on an H-1B has become significantly harder in the past few years, especially because of the odds of the lottery decreasing year over year. Another theory could just be that with the increased cost and uncertainty of attempting to sponsor an employee on an H-1B, many companies are resorting to alternatives, clearing the field for companies that have a more genuine need for H-1B workers.

egourlao··on 4,797 Builder's Remedy housing units have been submitted in Santa Monica
Because Santa Monica's housing element is currently out of compliance, the city will have very limited options to veto or block those projects. The decision to approve or reject those projects will fall to the State of California.
egourlao··on Musk admits he announced Hyperloop to get California’s high-speed rail canceled
From reading the excerpt of the book Paris Marx quotes [0], Musk's criticism of the California HSR project seems focused on its cost & effectiveness (i.e. that the bullet train would be too slow, especially considering modern tech that's now available).

Another way to frame his comments would be to say that Musk wanted to suggest a better alternative to the HSR project. I'm not sure which framing is the more accurate (not that well versed on trains), but seems valuable to point out ; I'm not convinced by the framing that Musk unveiled Hyperloop because he secretly wanted _no train at all_.

[0]: https://twitter.com/parismarx/status/1557707438786330629

egourlao··on A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek
Besides the benefits or drawbacks of the 4-day workweek on its merits, it's worth remembering that behind the headlines such as "$COUNTRY tests $SOCIAL_CHANGE", it's usually some entity in $COUNTRY on a mission rather than an organization that's representative of the opinions of its population. Same thing has been happening with Scandinavian countries too – there's always a rotating cast of Sweden, Finland and Norway making such headlines. Usually, though, it's a smaller organization or a government agency that wouldn't have the power or influence to turn this pilot into transformative social change.
egourlao··on Ask HN: Are there any rural tech communities?
Culdesac? https://culdesac.com
egourlao··on Fed announces details of new interbank service to support instant payments
FWIW the app for my ING bank account in the Netherlands allowed me to move up the slider allows me to move up the slider for daily transfers up to 50k euros. A little scary, but thought it could be handy if I need to move money around one day. Probably a different regulatory context, though.
egourlao··on Software will eat software in a remote-first world
My dad loves to tell this story about him going to engineering school in France in the 70's. He was suggested to stay away from CS or software by his guidance counselors - the reasoning? "We'll soon enough have programs able to write themselves - studying to be a software engineer is a dead end".

I'm not sure that some common engineering problems now being solved doesn't just mean that we can now redistribute that workforce on other unsolved problems, or to build new products on-top of those solutions.

egourlao··on Launch HN: Dex (YC S19) – personal CRM that reminds you to keep in touch
Do you have a privacy policy? I don't see anything on your landing page, or in the web app.
egourlao··on Deliveroo users are getting defrauded
I agree. I'd also add that my experience with fintech services, in regards to fraud detection, has been excellent.

I've been using Revolut for the past year. Just 2 weeks ago, they detected a potential fraudulent transaction with - you guess it - Deliveroo, for an amount of £25 (I don't live in the UK). The transaction, as well as my card, was immediately blocked. I then received a push message asking me to confirm whether the transaction was fraudulent - pushing "Confirm" triggered the expedition of a new card to my address. In contrast to legacy banks for which it is still recommended you call on the phone to notify you're going abroad, this is excellent service.

egourlao··on Living and working in Sweden as engineers
> Americans have the best care in the world

I've been reading that a lot, but I can't find any decisive evidence supporting it - what leads you to think that?

egourlao··on A foreigner's guide to WeChat payments in China
Many places in NL only accept Maestro and Visa Electron cards (pin payment cards, as they call them), and won't take any other regular major debit/credit cards. Including UnionPay.
egourlao··on O-bahn Busway
It might have been an inspiration for the Busway in Nantes, France: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nantes_Busway
egourlao··on UK government's battle with Apple over EU citizens app
From the article:

> The Home Office has also [planned] to set up computer terminals at 56 local libraries around the UK to help those without smartphones, or without the necessary digital skills, to apply to stay in the UK.

egourlao··on Ask HN: What are some of the best technical talks you've heard?
The Scandalous Story of Dreadful Code Written by the Best of Us - by Katrina Owen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp_ST9nbf5M

This talk made a strong impression on me when I was figuring out how to write more beautiful, and more readable code.

egourlao··on École 42, a free, teacher-less university schooling programmers (2017)
> It's one of the best IT schools from France

According to whom?

egourlao··on Ask HN: What are the things that you have automated in your personal life?
Look up PSD2 regulations.
egourlao··on Ask HN: What are some great books that are relatively unknown in the US?
Also noteworthy, from Georges Perec: A Void (La Disparition), which was written entirely without using the letter "e" (and which the translation reproduces brilliantly well).
egourlao··on Ask HN: What are some great books that are relatively unknown in the US?
Usually not into fantasy, but La Horde du Contrevent is a French fantasy classic, written by Alain Damasio, which was published in 2004. He went later on to collaborate on a few games that might be more known in the US (Life Is Strange, Remember Me). Damasio has a creative use of the language, but which must then make it hellish to translate into any other language. According to Wikipedia, it has only been translated in Italian.
egourlao··on Sweden Tries to Halt Its March to Total Cashlessness
Is there a reason why you don't have a Swedish bank account, even though you are living there?
egourlao··on Unroll.me to close to EU users saying it can’t comply with GDPR
Article 83:

> When deciding whether to impose an administrative fine and deciding on the amount of the administrative fine in each individual case due regard shall be given to [...] the degree of cooperation with the supervisory authority, in order to remedy the infringement and mitigate the possible adverse effects of the infringement.

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-83-gdpr/

egourlao··on Stripe to donate $1M to California Yimby
Not if there isn't significantly more demand that supply. Rent control has worked well to mitigate housing issues in Paris during the last few years. It didn't solve everyone's problems: more and more students are moving to the close suburbs, and getting an apartment can be highly dependant on whether your landlord deems your income stable enough. But it has also prevented rent escalation - which we're currently seeing now that a court has repealed rent control [1].

[1] https://www.lemonde.fr/logement/article/2017/11/28/apres-lil...

egourlao··on French Universities Cancel Subscriptions to Springer Journals
That's also what the French are doing ; first paragraph of the article:

> [...] an impasse in fee negotiations between [Springer Journals] and Couperin.org, a national consortium representing more than 250 academic institutions in France.

egourlao··on US may tie social media to visa applications
It's happening soon, with the ETIAS: https://etias.com/
egourlao··on Macron condemns 'massive' hacking attack
En Marche! was only founded within the last year. Although they attracted a considerable amount of donations, not sure we're talking about the same scale of money.
egourlao··on H-1B visas mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms
The applications aren't made by people, but by companies willing to employ a foreign worker. To apply for an H-1B visa, you must have a company ready to employ you and to sponsor you.

Indian outsourcing companies flood the applications with Indian nationals, because there is an enormous demand in India (AFAIK). On the other side, Europeans usually don't apply to outsourcing companies, but to tech companies themselves - for whom it is expensive and uncertain (will they get a visa? in how much time?) to make an offer to an European worker. So visas don't exactly go to Indians because they're Indian, they go to Indians because they benefit from (but also, are victim of) the outsourcing companies system - whereas an European worker has to convince an employer to go through the uncertain visa process to hire him/her.

Most tech folks I know over here pretty much gave up on getting hired in the US until things quiet down, or change in their favour - especially since the express lane system was shut down.

Page 1 of 2Next →