golgappi

It's basically a decentralized, censorship-resistant P2P internet. The philosophy has merit, but the performance sucks and it is currently mostly a venture capitalist funded scam.

You shouldn't believe it. Corporations are where the money is.

We had a perfectly working internal IRC system at work. For some managerial reasons, the decision was made to 'keep up with the trend and adapt to new softwares, firstly by moving on to Slack'.

I am young, in my mid-twenties. I like new. I like Slack too. But I honestly couldn't see any reason why we moved to it. We pay slack probably more than what we needed to maintain our own old tiny IRC box. But money aside, there are real issues with Slack that are just not there with hosting your own IRC.

The major one being privacy. For a field that is almost religiously against abuse of privacy, we sure as heck don't seem to have an issue with all of our work conversations being stored on another company's server.

Another quip I noticed was archiving. While my IRC allowed archiving without any limits, there are limits imposed on how much archives you can have access to on Slack. Of course, its customizable, but for that first time you're looking for something said 6 months ago by an ex-employee, you realize that there is no way to go back. You set your preference and learn to move on, cause well, its a different company after all. And you're paying for it.

Not anymore. H1B lottery is useless now.

The article doesn't say that information from B or C is useful. All it explains is only 2 particles can be entangled with each other. So either A is entangles with B or it is entangled with C, not both. Which means that either Anne's reality is correct, or yours. The whole thing about the decoding machine is just described to oversimplify it for the benefit of the masses.

What's wrong with imagination, hypothesis and a simple analogy that can reach out to the masses? One might argue that your approach to science as only a set of facts based on formula is boring at best. One needs to ponder the meaning behind the formula and results. Yes, we got a number, but what is the implication of it? After all, doesn't science exist to satisfy our curiosity about the world in the first place?

I work for an IT consultancy that has about 40 people and an open office. I have never had any issues. Probably because almost everyone is a developer/administrator and people mostly prefer communicating through IRC. The office space is completely silent, and the desks are in groups, far apart from each other. It is wonderful, looks good and doesn't make me feel depressed sitting in a cubicle with partitions shorter than my height giving a fake sense of privacy.

All I am saying is there is a wrong way and a right way of maintaining open offices. Bashing all open offices for being cheap and unproductive is naive.

I work at a startup and I am 25. I have saved up some money and seriously considering retirement by the time I am 30.

Not that I have a lot of money saved up. I just have a couple of thousand bucks. Nothing fancy. But to me it is a seed money to try out new things, at an age where making huge mistakes wouldn't result in me being 70 and penniless. There will still be enough time to return back to IT once (if) I fail miserably. And it will also be an extended break in the worst case.

I want to explore the world, jobs, hobbies, people. I have realized the 8 hours everyday I spend on my desk is the best time to be out and about. The sunshine is literally gone by the time I get off work. If this is what hundreds of years of progress and planning has led to, I think we have failed.

So yes, I support people who think about retiring early, and actually living their lives when they are still young. If youth is the best time of one's life, it shouldn't be wasted on the desk.

Eh? He is not working for them.

I understand citizens and residents of US have their own valid concerns regarding this issue. However, as a foreigner working on a temporary visa who was denied an H1B in last year's lottery, here's an alternate point of view - Imagine being born and raised in a country that does not have adequate research areas in the the field you love - computer science. What do you do? You move to a place that better encourages your dreams. You know you cannot directly get a guaranteed job in US that supports research and the field of work you love, so you take a hefty loan and come for a graduate degree to US. You live hand-to-mouth (remember that it is infinitely tougher for people from poorer countries to get the total sum needed for a master or a PhD in US.), struggle through all the cultural barriers, loneliness and constantly battle feeling alienated, all to finally one day achieve the life you dreamed of - a job you are passionate about, and a life that respects you as a human being.

Fast forward to job hunting - unlike residents and citizens, you know you don't have the luxury of 'not having a job' for more than 2 months after completing your graduation - imagine the stress it puts on you. But you battle it out and land up in a company. If you are lucky, it so happens that you are doing what you love. But for a lot of foreigners, the deadline to have a job and stay here just so you can at the very least repay you loans in USD is far greater than the original dream they have, and so they accept whatever is offered.

Well, we say "I've completed a graduate degree, taken up a job and now I have to repay my loan before I can continue with the American dream." But then within a year you have yet another deadline - H1B. And unlike previous deadlines, this one is out of your hands - utterly and completely. You are a highly educated person working as a skilled worker in a respected position, and now your whole life is dependent only on one thing - a lottery. A random lottery will decide your fate. At that point it hits home - all your life you thought your hard work was an investment towards a better future, but now you know its no different than if you were buying lottery tickets for the past two decades.

Imagine the helplessness, the crushing sensation of all your dreams shattering. That's what its like to have your whole life dependent on a lottery. Want to limit foreign workers? Make interviews tougher, change laws to reject the possibility of working after a graduate US degree. I mean it - do anything but please do not let our lives and fate be decided by a random lottery. It is humiliating.

P.S. What's funny is to realize that unlike all other categories of immigrants, H1B skilled workers are here on their own merit. I am not married to someone with a green card and dependent on him. I am not here illegally after crossing borders at midnight. I am not here because I have a lot of family wealth. And yet, for a country that prides itself on hard work, it is somehow toughest for people in H1B category to get a visa. I cannot help but wonder if today I decide to get married to anyone with a permanent status here, I will immediately be out of this agony, and can choose to be totally dependent on another person's income, contribute nothing to the economy, and easily get permanent residence. Can't help but chuckle at the absurdity of laws.