fhkatari

I want to share a couple of stories of immigration.

1. Personal. In the aftermath of 9/11, a simple switch from F1 Student Visa to H1 work visa became a perfect Kafkaesque nightmare. The consulate denied the visa without giving a reason. After two months of non-response, my company reached out to the congressman's office. Apparently, the consulate wanted a copy of my transcript and they reached out to my university, but did not tell me that. The university would not release my transcript without my permission, but did not tell me that DHS was asking for it. It was an infinite loop that left me out.

2. In 2006-2007, I was consulting for Hormel Foods (this time with a legit green card). There was a raid at one of their plants, and I was talking to a couple of middle managers who commented how difficult the jobs are, and people only last for a short time. Only migrants are willing to do the job. I would later learn that meat packing jobs used to be unionized, and that put limits on the number of animals processed per shift. The deregulation of the eighties did away with unions and regulations, and created an untenable work situation. This can ONLY be done by disposable labor, which happens to be immigrants.

A simple solution to the immigration problem would be to arrest the CEO of the company employing illegals. Perhaps that will percolate down to the line level to make the jobs humane.

Here is a thought experiment, especially for people with pensions (unlikely on the HN comments board). PE's are being funded by pension funds. So, as a pensioner, maybe you get a slightly better return. However, the services you will need as a pensioner (hospital and nursing home care) are significantly degraded by private equity. Would it not be better if pension funds pulled out of PE entirely?

RFID is a possible solution. Tags are now about five cents, and likely to drop further in price with volume. Newer tag designs can be sewn in the seams of garments and shoes.

This: "Important caveat: I’m discussing only the implications of LLMs for software development. For art, music, and writing? I got nothing. I’m inclined to believe the skeptics in those fields. I just don’t believe them about mine". I want to emphasize this. AI seems like a great 'first draft', but not a 'finished product'. In the hands of a programmer, a first draft is a great start. But pushing AI to frontline workers or customer support fails, as Klarna learned, because a first draft is not good enough.

You move all the tools to debug and inspect slow queries, in a completely unsupported JSON environment, with prompts not to make up column names. And this is progress?

I used to live in Oakland, and am really sad to see continued failures of BART. They had started significant expansions right before the pandemic, allowing a long (but no traffic) ride possible from Oakland to San Jose. A key challenge for BART is that they depend a lot more on ticket sales than subsidies, and as a result, have been hit much harder with lower ridership.

I recently learned that my neighbor works for Partners in Health (pih.org). They have built an open-source EMR, which they use in far-flung regions like Haiti. I suggested that they can maybe sell their software under commercial terms in the US, to subsidize their international work. Her comment was that EMR systems like Epic are actually a billing system, less a medical record system. The whole system has been built to be opaque.

I am surprised this is getting so little traction on HN. I posted a similar link.The page views just went past 1 million.

As a non-Christian, I highly recommend the writings of Franciscan priest Richard Rohr, and his metaphor of 'Two Halves of Lives'. The specific title of the book is 'Falling Upward'.

I work for a company, headquartered in the Mid West, that has been very public in their support of LGBTQ rights, among other things. Do you think corporations should take a public stance in support of abortion rights? Will tech companies continue to flock to Texas, in what will become a very difficult environment for abortion?

Factfulness by Hans Rosling

I was forwarded Sacha Baron Cohen's facebook critique (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/nov/22/sacha-bar...) by a friend, as an argument to outlaw facebook. I brought up how Bush swiftboated Kerry and won the election. Media has always been used as a political weapon, it seems. Is FB much worse?

Not sure why you got downvoted. Upvoted

This strikes a personal chord. Shortly after 9/11, I had taken a short trip back to India. I was transitioning from a student to work visa, and got held up indefinitely by the US consulate. It was a grueling experience, but what I remember most is how my employer stood by me. They contacted our local congressman, kept me employed, and even paid me for the time I could not work (two months), at a time when they were a struggling start-up. I know I am not the only immigrant who has experienced the incredible generosity of this country. For beneficiaries like us, it is all the more important to speak up, and take actions to welcome and support the next generation that wants a shot at the American Dream.