I’ve had a different, but similarly strange, issue with Drive on Mac (after using it for 5+ years without issue). It suddenly started moving tons of random files from deep in my Drive folder tree at the root of my drive. So files that were fifteen levels deep, that I hadn’t touched in years, suddenly appeared at the top of my drive. The only thing I can think of is that it’s related to the incident Drive had a few months ago where they lost data - maybe they’re recovering it, but can’t recover the location and just stick it at the root of the directory.
Is this comment tongue-in-cheek? We all know any increases in the stock price are certainly not going to fund "safety efforts" unless "safety efforts" has become a euphemism for "executive bonuses."
I’m convinced that once a company reaches ~$10m/year in AWS spend it becomes entirely reasonable to hire an in-house engineer whose sole job is to find cost savings opportunities. Literally a “find unused stuff and turn it off” engineer.
I've spent some time doing this. There's always old systems people don't really understand, ownership is poorly defined, and no one knows what happens if you turn it off. It's archeology. Understand what the system is doing and how it interacts with other systems and the business. If it looks unneeded back it up, stop the VM, wait and watch for fallout, and eventually terminate it.
There’s definitely a science to it. To complicate matters, the way you explore those connections, take backups, identify owners, and perform restores is different across pretty much every cloud service.
Google Flights first, and then I go to the airline's site to purchase. I never deal with third-party resellers - they might be cheaper in some cases but a nightmare to deal with if the flight changes or gets canceled.
I like Google Flights so much that I also built a Chrome extension[1] to improve the interface (hiding the third-party affiliate links, putting seat data in the top-level of the results, and making business class searches easier).
In my experience, while these kinds of visas address personal tax liability, many US-based companies are still unlikely to allow W2 employees to participate due to (very real) tax, jurisdiction, and legal concerns (if a W2 employee is working in France, for example, are they required to comply with laws preventing employers from contacting employees on weekends? Maybe not, but even “fully remote” companies are unlikely to want to spend time figuring it out for one employee).
I think countries who want these programs to take off for employees who aren’t contractors need to invest in messaging and legal support for employers as well.
How does this work practically for a US-based company? Since this is a remote work
visa, can they even physically work at a Korea-based office or subsidiary?
Also, there's a 17 hour time difference between Korea and Los Angeles.
It's Friday in US, but Saturday in Korea. On Monday in Korea, you have to wait until the next day for them to work. You only have 1h-2h before the work day in Korea to sync with them in US, only on the West Coast, only 4 days a week.
For “nomads”, I think the more common situation is that the nomad works roughly 2am to 10am Tuesday to Saturday, maybe shifted to 6am to 2pm for half day overlap.
> I think countries who want these programs to take off for employees who aren’t contractors need to invest in messaging and legal support for employers as well.
The logical thing to do is to allow both employee and employer to sign a document saying "we both agree that the employment laws of X will not apply, and all employment disputes will be resolved by the courts of Y country according to their laws".
X country would make an explicit law allowing digital nomads to do such a thing, perhaps with limits on Y (ie. require the company to have links to Y, or blacklist countries with zero employee protections whatsoever).
Employment laws not negotiable by design. One reason is so an employer cannot use their collective power against the individual worker.
An employment contract is not a regular contract and can only be made according to rules otherwise it void and the court will find out the real nature of the contract for you. Even in the US employment contracts mention that all dispositions are valid only when not in conflict with law. The same happens in Europe.
I have a relative who is a work inspector and one case she always points out is the non compete or non disclosure clauses. She says if the contract does not give an obvious compensation for those clauses they will always be voided if tested in court, regardless of both parties having signed them. The threat power often remains though, because people are afraid of falling into such clauses so they self comply without any reason for it. I had work contracts for a developer work where it basically stated I could not have a blog without approval. I found it ridiculous and knew it was likely unenforceable but the tick stays in your head.
> are they required to comply with laws preventing employers from contacting employees on weekends?
Almost certainly they are, as the same is even true with employment across state lines in the US. Labor laws are almost always determined by the employee’s place of residence vs. where the company is located.
Exactly, and most countries promoting these visas refuse to clearly state what the foreign employers are exempt from or responsible for.
I went through this myself a few years ago. I applied for, and received, a Taiwanese Gold Card (a similar program that allowed for foreign employment). I spent months going back and forth with the Taiwanese office attempting to understand what my employer at the time would be signing up for. They couldn’t give a clear answer on whether my presence would create a nexus for my employer, whether my employer would become responsible for health care program payments, etc. They kept referring me to one of the big four consulting companies. In the end I gave up and never entered.
I think they’re mostly designed around wealthy contract workers vs. W2s, which has always been a “figure it out yourself” tax situation. I work for a global remote company on a W2 and looked at a few of these programs, but almost none are designed with this kind of arrangement in mind. You’d have to more or less go through the normal immigration routes as full time staff and your company comply with all the local employment and tax laws.
I don't think this is targeted at large corporation employees. More intended for freelancers, small entrepreneurs, and remote workers of small businesses.
It gets worse than that at some places. I was just in Vietnam and some restaurants offered discounts if you left 5-star reviews. In China, a place actually went as far as confirming you'd left the review by viewing it on their device (literally refreshing until it appeared) and then keying in the discount.
Reading that article would be a start. They could also expand section 8 housing. They could also get rid of the countless nonprofits that siphon money away from the homeless. They could tie Social Security cola adjustments more towards housing and rental prices.
They Institute Medicare for all. They could ban the emptying of large amounts of houses by financial capital firms. Which they are already doing sort of. They could end Airbnb. They could ban making it illegal to sleep in a car or sleep on the street.
Or they can just really care.
I could go on, but again this is not a problem of not having the money, I mean we’re supporting two useless wars right now. This is a problem of people not caring or caring for the wrong things.
These policies are antithetical to everything the current GOP stands for. Voting for them will not address your issues. Just about everything you’ve said is considered opinions of “the left”. So, pushing the Democratic Party more to the left seems like the logical choice.
I’d rather suggest a third-party. Look what happened to Bernie Sanders when he tried to push it to the left. Both the Democrats and Republicans are beholden to corporate interest. I’m in no way going to vote for the Republican but I’m not going to vote for the Democrat either. If they want my vote, they have to earn my vote.
Anyone, I don’t care if it’s Republicans or Democrats. Of course the Democrats are supposed to be the ones who would do this, but they don’t. Obama gave us a head fake of a public option that never happened. Instead what we got is force payments to private health insurance companies.
what i'm asking is (and i think others are too) is: is there any evidence that republicans would support or even propose anything like medicare for all?
for example, is there a draft bill from republicans for such a thing? etc
Yeah they’re not going to give free money to everyone. With the GOP in power you won’t be sleeping in your car, you’ll be in jail because that’s more aligned with their policies.
I just spent two weeks in Vietnam, one in Hanoi. The motorbikes were actually something I could deal with - it was chaos, but organized. Everyone on the road seemed hyper alert and traffic just sort of flowed. The thing I could not get used to was the air quality. The AQI was easily over 120 every day I was there, and it just felt like I stuck my face in the exhaust pipe of a bus every waking moment. If Vietnam could figure out its pollution issue, I feel like it could easily be an incredible place to live.
