I think your math is a little off (or maybe mine is).
I'll take a short cut and imagine that you have an 8x8 square with no margins (68% of a borderless 8.5x11), then you have a grid of 600x600 bitmaps, which is 3.6e5. if each pixel is only black or white, than you have 1.8e19 possible bitmaps (64-bit), divide the two and you have 5e13, or about 50 trillion pages. Fix the equation, and you get a grid of 5.2e5, for 30 trillion pages instead of 50.
However, bring that up to 24-bit color or more (even 8-level greyscale is e154), and the exponentiality of the problem goes back to as described by the OP
On the vein of similar books, in the late 80s, early 90's a read a science fiction anthology that had more or less the same exact story as Mickey7.
Humans discover a place (I think on Mars), built by Aliens, but it's a deathtrap. So they send someone in to navigate the deathtrap using a clone, and a sort of remote control (something like Avatar).
Each time the clone dies, the person piloting it survives, but has gained the memory of what went wrong, and can try again (kind of like Edge of Tomorrow).
The point of the story is the very end, when the pilot makes it fully through the space.
Has anoyone every heard of this storay and know the name/author? (Bonus points of you know the anthology as well)
Is it just me, or is what OpenAI is really lacking is a billing API/platform?
As an engineer, I have to manage the cost/service ratio manually, making sure I charge enough to handle my traffic, while enforcing/managing/policing the usage.
Additionally, there are customers who already pay for OpenAI, so the value add for them is less, since they are paying twice for the underlying capabilities.
If OpenAPI had a billing API/platform ala AppStore/PlayStore, I have multiple price points matched to OpenAI usage limits (and maybe configurable profit margins).
For customers that don't have an existing relationship with me, OpenAI could support a Netflix/YouTube-style profit-sharing system, where OpenAI customers can try out and use products integrated with the billing platform/API, and my products would receive payment in accordance with customer usage...
One, if you charge above API costs, you should never police usage (so long as you're transparent with customers). Why would you need to cap usage if you're pricing correctly? (Rate limits aside)
Two, yes, many people will pay $20/mo for ChatGPT and then also pay for a product that under the hood uses OpenAI API. If you're worried about your product's value not being differentiated from ChatGPT, I'd say you have a product problem moreso than OpenAI has a billing model problem.
One of the starting points of this article is that the current president has signed an executive order "making English the country's official language".
I think it's important to remind people what executive orders can and can't do. An executive order is an instruction sent to the government itself. It instructs government workers how to perform their job. It is not directed at the American public (though it can and does have an effect on the American public by way of government policy).
As such, this current executive order effectively does nothing. We've attempted to pass laws that make English the national language, but have consistently failed to do so.
And personally, I'm for having English be the national language of America (as a bilingual American myself), but this executive order does not make that so.
Reading the executive order[1], the only change is to revoke Clinton's executive order 13166 ("Improving Access to Services for Persons With Limited English Proficiency")[2]. There are no specific instructions of what it implies to revoke this order.
My interpretation is that federal agencies will stop providing non-English services, unless these are already happening at 0 cost. (For example, not instructing agents to speak only English, but no longer considering second language proficiency in future hiring.)
IANAL, but there may be legal complications, as order 13166's stated goal is to prevent title VI discrimination on the basis of national origin. However, the revocation explicitly states it should implemented consistently with applicable laws.
> As such, this current executive order effectively does nothing.
That's not true. For example, there was a story the other day of a librarian who was instructed to throw away all passport application forms in Spanish, as they would no longer be accepted.
If you go to the official Spanish page, you can see that the links to the forms are either broken or now redirected to their English version:
Thanks. Feels funny seeing people say this government is doing nothing or nonsense and has no ulterior motives or implications.
Funny in the sense of: are they blind? are they naive? or are they supporters?
Hundred of technocrats and modern nobility cannot be wrong.
There's an effect to be sure. I am, however, talking about legal status. As one of the other commenters pointed out, the actual text of the executive action is about rolling back a previous executive action designed to prevent Title VI discrimination. So, if I were affected as mentioned in the parent post to this, I would be reaching out to the ACLU to find a lawyer to help with challenging this.
As to the stated wording though, "making English the country's official language" (which mirror's wording used in the most recent presidential address), the executive order has no power to do so, because it's not a law.
I do understand. Everybody knows they are not going to ban spanish or put in jail gay-trans writers.
It's all about twisting laws to disserve whatever collective they go after, so their voters (voters believing they are antagonists of the other collective) keep satisfied and vote again.
Meanwhile they give contracts and move money and services towards their friends, the ones that financed their campaign so they can bring the message about the evil collective to the voters.
I assume GP meant as a legal instrument, rather than it's sociological effect. (Otherwise there would be little point to the comment? They mean to prevent the latter by raising awareness of the former.)
But you need to take actions to build that sense of identity and make everyone feel welcome. You also want your citizens to feel like they can share their traditions and participate in others traditions.
So at some point, you’re going to have to make accomodations for everyone, at least in the most popular languages because if you want new talent, you might be dealing with a family that has to bring their aging parents along if they want to migrate, or someone’s spouse.
my great grandpa changed his name when they came to new york because it sounded too italian. I have his modified name as my middle name. Its a cool story to me that everybody in my family knows.
Even amongst the older people of the family it didnt seem like a big deal.
These misinformation needs to end. I'm tired of it. More than 20 years ago, this was true, but today it is certainly not. There are all varieties of non-Japanese working in convenience stores, factories, farms, and hotels all over Japan. Plus there are more non-Japanese attending uni than ever before. Many will stay for work. Plus, getting a skilled work visa in Japan has never been easier. Sure, not as easy as Germany, Australia or Canada, but still light years ahead of 20+ years ago. They even have a special highly skilled visa now that allows people to get permanent residence in 1 or 3 years. Again: 20+ years ago this was impossible to imagine. Today, it is the reality.
I live here. Wish it wasnt but sorry its still true. I wont give too much context because it would make me look horribly racist, but to put it in vague terms: Japanese people are regularly confronted with weird and bad aspects South Asians bring to Japan. These aspects would be funny annoyances in the USA, but in Japan is more serious business.
This happens regularly enough that the average city dwelling Japanese person has to confront these negative aspects on a daily basis.
This seems like the primary basis for the racism.
The secondary basis is just general racism you are familiar with. Women regularly wil take the stares to avoid getting on the elevator with me. I have seen them stop and turn 180° to the stairwell. My friend with a big beard gets lots of wacky suspicion. We are stopped at every single airport in asia for a bag search, japan, korea, and taiwan. Japanese people have told us he looks like a terrorist cultist... Hes literally just a regular fat mexican with a beard.
Japan offers a decent amount of paperwork in English. Not all of it of course but many government sites, applications etc will have both English and Japanese versions.
If you want to become a US citizen, you have to show you're competent in English. [1] It's been this case for quite awhile.
I know that doesn't strictly mean that "English is the official language", but it is an official government body requiring you to know English in order to become a US citizen, so that seems a little official to me.
Just to clarify, "competent" is a long stretch. It's more like "how are you" -- once you can just _read_ that phrase you're passed. There are couple more questions, but civics are much harder than English (e.g. how many voting representatives are there in Congress?).
> I'm for having English be the national language of America
I guess it depends on what that means. I'm for all services being in English at a minimum, that makes sense. I'm really not for removing obligations to translate or interpret.
Non-english speaking US citizens exist and interact with the government. For example, someone that's deaf. Or for reading, someone that's blind. Having access in those cases is important.
But further, there's a humanity aspect as well. Any asylum seeker can get railroaded. Or heck, a visitor from another country. If these people are accused of crimes they should have the right to understand why the government is punishing them if for no other reason than to give their side of the story.
A quick Google suggests that about 22% of Americans are multi-lingual, and roughly 8% of Americans do not have English as their dominant language (though I suspect that entirely non-English speaking Americans are at least one order of magnitude less).
I think only about 2% of countries in the world don't have an official language (America among them), and yet about 50% of the world is multi-lingual, so having an official language doesn't seem like an obstacle for other governments when it comes to support.
I suspect that the lack of of national language has more to do with the power struggle between the federal government and state governments then any issue, which is why I find this latest executive order quite baffling (for a party that is in the process of dismantling federal government, this is very much a federal power grab).
With all of that being said, I see it both as a recognition of the status quo, and a commitment to what is one of the greatest strengths of the United States (a single-language, single-currency market). Our largest economic rival (China) also has an enormous single-language, single-currency market, but that strength is largely focused inwards, since the use of a non-romanised language makes it very difficult for the non-Chinese reading population to adop sub-parts of the Chinese language.
I have never expected a foreign government to provide English-language materials (especially non-tourism related materials) on any of my travels to other countries. Why should that be an expectation?
And yet they do [1]. I'm not saying that the expectation be there for all interactions in the country, I'm saying the expectation should be there if you are about to be charged with a crime in that country.
Why should that be an expectation? Because if you or I am being held against our will, wouldn't it be nice if you had an interpreter who could translate what the officer, lawyer, and judge are telling you? IE, if they tell you "you have to do this to not be locked up for 10 years" wouldn't it be nice to know how to comply with a ruling against you? Wouldn't it be nice if when they asked you questions you could actually answer them?
Nice? Sure. Do I expect it? No. I’ll go to the consulate before leaving my country to ensure I understand the laws of the country in which I’m going to be a guest, and obey those laws. In cases where I’ve needed translations, I’ve obtained them at my expense. I certainly don’t expect them to be provided freely.
Innocent people are arrested all the time. You can't just "obey all the laws" and assume you won't have a run in.
Without the legal protection to get a translator, you are assuming after being arrested you can simply call a translation service. Yet, you should know that most countries and most cops will take your cell phone.
It's a humanitarian principle that before being prosecuted you should at a minimum know why you are being prosecuted.
> I certainly don’t expect them to be provided freely.
I never said they had to (though I think they should). What's more important is that you have access to translation services.
Generally if you are a tourist, on a tourist visa, doing touristy things in a place where lots of tourists go, there will be multilingual (probably at least English) support. If you're going deep off the beaten path into China or Mexico or Russia or some other part of the world where tourists are rare and the local language is all most people know, then you should be think about how you are going to function in both ordinary and exceptional circumstances, including "what if I get arrested?"
I'm not talking about going off the beaten path. You can be arrested anywhere for any reason. Just being in a "touristy" location doesn't make you safe.
Even so, having translation support regardless of how far off the beaten path you are is something that should be consider a human right.
You're also focusing on the low hanging fruit (a tourist getting falsely accused). What about voting materials or passport applications?
I do not expect other countries to make citizen-specific materials available to me in my language. I am also totally against making US-citizen-specific materials available in non-english language.
E.g. I do not want someone who doesn't speak English voting in local elections.
Right, because that's the strongest position for why we should have, at a minimum, translation services for someone facing imprisonment.
Why instead of addressing this case are you pivoting to an argument I did not and am not making? You are straw manning me.
> What about voting materials or passport applications?
Nice to have, not a need to have. With perhaps the exception accommodations made for someone that's blind. But that can literally just be a poll worker that helps someone fill out a ballot. No need to print out braille ballots.
I'm looking at another use-case further down the spectrum. I don't believe you're making an argument for/against those things. On the contrary, I am expanding the argument to what I believe is a more reasonable scenario to analyze this new fed gov policy.
Unfortunately our government does not engage in nuance well, so if I have to sacrifice translation services for criminal defendants in order to secure against ballots, passports, and other citizen-specific materials in foreign languages I am willing to make that tradeoff.
> Unfortunately our government does not engage in nuance well
It certainly does and it's certainly not hard to put in exclusive language. There's no slippery slope here. A simple bill of "Anyone being prosecuted has the right to access translation services" would do (and we already have provisions like that in the criminal code). It can be amended right into our criminal justice legal code.
I agree. If I travel to another country as a tourist, much less live there, I have zero expectation that the people there will speak to me in English. It's nice if they do, but I see it as my obligation as the outsider to bend to their ways, not the other way around. I think that similarly, if someone lives here they should be expected to learn English. They don't have to give up their native language and culture, but the onus is on them to learn our ways, not the other way around.
The underlying contention is that it does not make life easier for everyone. Specifically, that the lack of cohesive American identity actually makes it harder for the people who matter most in the United State of America: Americans.
How does providing government paperwork in Spanish or Korean make life harder for an English-speaking American? And the contention that Americans only speak English is just wrong. Most do, but there are massive numbers of residents and citizens who have something else as a primary/first language.
What ever happened to being a melting pot. And taking on the poor, huddled masses? Growing up in Virginia, we were always taught our variety was one of biggest strengths, not a weakness.
In Spain all (national) government forms, documents, and services are Spanish only. Even in autonomous regions such as Catalonia that has a co-official language (Catalan,) if I want to interact with the national government, it’s Spanish only, even on immigration/residency forms.
In France, same thing. In Korea, also the same. Also China. And Mexico. Canada mandates French and English.
I see nothing wrong with a country having an official language. That doesn’t preclude people from speaking their own languages, but of you want to live in country Y, then learning that language should be a prerequisite.
While that's true, one of the reasons why Spain mandates Castellano in the federal level is a legacy of Franco's push to annihilate the other languages spoken in the country. In a way, forcing a single language and culture is a textbook example of what authoritarian governments do.
Of all the communities I am a part of the assumption of privelege is strongest om HN. I don't entirely understand why because startups themselves irl are not like that in my experience. I actually stopped coming here for a long time because of the way women are normally spoken about, but started back again recently when I wanted to better understand what was happening with DOGE etc.
Telling someone to stop anti intellectual bigotry is aggressive but it’s not name calling.
Nearly everyone is susceptible to spreading bigotry. Telling them to stop is not the same thing as “calling them a bigot”.
I hear you on the tone but I strongly believe people should be able to call out bigotry without retribution. I will continue to do so in a non-aggressive style. If you still want to ban the account then c'est la vie.
"Cut the anti intellectual bigotry" is just way too aggressive for HN comments. If you say you didn't mean it that way, I believe you, but then the issue is that you (and I don't mean you personally—almost everyone does this) are greatly underestimating the provocation in your comments.
You've broken the site guidelines badly in this thread. We end up having to ban accounts that do that, regardless of how wrong other commenters are or you feel they are.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. In particular, please don't post any more personal attacks and please don't perpetuate flamewars.
>And personally, I'm for having English be the national language of America (as a bilingual American myself), but this executive order does not make that so.
What would be the benefit or reason for this? I am also a multilingual person, and in many of the communities where I work, the Spanish speaking population is a significant majority such that to mandate English would be sisyphean. Sadly I can't get anyone to speak German with me, despite that being equally represented among Americans at the founding of our republic.
If people are not forced to speak the official language they never learn and eventually self-isolate within their own communities. This leads to the Balkanization of the country. Canada is currently dealing with this in relation to its Indian population, which is approximately equivalent to the Hispanic population in America in terms of percentage of the population and the occupations they work in.
Canada has two official languages and knowledge of one or the other is theoretically required to immigrate there, but almost all government offices and most private banks provide services in multiple languages (e.g. Mandarin, Punjabi, Tagalog, Hindi, etc.), so it's quite common for immigrants to never bother learning English or French. There's also lots of entry programs which don't require the applicant to speak either of the official languages, as well as a lot of fraud in those programs that do.
This has not had positive effects on Canada's social cohesion.
Another (somewhat ironic) example is in Mexico City, where some local residents are upset about the influx of predominantly American digital nomads and retirees changing the character of the city because they do not speak Spanish.
Aren't individual freedoms and not having having to bend to communal norms core tenants of being American? I didn't expect to wake up to Trump introducing socialist policies today but things just get weirder and weirder.
If precedent is what decides core American tenants... Every immigrant group in history has learned English over time, or at least their children have. Even if the majority of the country were ESL, English would still be the most commonly understood one by far.
Could you quote the parts of my comment where you felt my "negative feelings" were implied? I'm a European and a socialist watching this from outside. The idea of putting individual freedom above the common good is not one that I necessarily agree with, it's just one that I understood as being essential to the American experience, hence my question and surprise.
My point in essence is that I feel like this particular policy comes more from a desire to make life harder for those people who live non-normative linguistic lifestyles rather than to foster strength of community as was implied above. I'm all for community but I also believe in supporting diversity between communities as well as within communities. Hopefully that makes my feelings about the civil rights movement &c. clear to you.
An official language isn't a mandate that enforces the use of English (take as an example India, which is probably the most multi-lingual country there is, but has Hindi as the "official language of the government". It's not the "national language", though in their case the splitting of hairs is probably directly tied to the number of languages spoken).
I know an American who spent several years in Paris, working in English, and never learned more French than was necessary to order her coffee. And this is despite French being the national language of France. (Interestingly enough, France is very multi-lingual as well, with many regions having their own history and language like Provençal, or Niçois, Breton, etc.).
It's more about a recognition of the status quo (as another commenter pointed out, most people acquiring US citizenship are required to demonstrate the most basic level of proficiency with the english language), and ensuring a baseline of support, no matter where you are in the country. Multi-lingualism is a plus, and in no way hindered by having a national language
> has Hindi as the "official language of the government”
First of all, I appreciate that you’ve made sure to draw this distinction between official languages of the central government and national languages.
However, English is still an official language roughly on par with Hindi as a result of indefinite extensions that were provided for in the constitution (as well as protests and uprising). For example, parliamentary legislation is authoritative in English but must also be translated into Hindi.
Of course it's cheaper and easier to deliver services in one language, but the United States is not a monolingual nation, nor has it ever been in its history. It would be a disservice to significant populations to assume otherwise.
Well then, you'll be ok with having Spanish as the official language the because the majority of American citizens in my area speak Spanish. Or would you prefer German, because for more generations my family has spoken German while being American citizens than English.
Benefit to whom? I only see a benefit to the companies and government here (saving money), but it seems to me that you've forgotten to consider the people.
It would be nice if government letters were written only in English. I.e. getting an 8-page letter with only one page in English is annoying for the people. I pay for that with my taxes and would wholeheartedly support a bill to stop doing that and reduce taxes or increase spending somewhere else that matters more, like road maintenance.
Well, I'm sure when your neighbor gets their 8-page letter in Spanish, Vietnamese, Russian, or whatever their language might be, they too find it annoying that the government finds it necessary to send them a letter in English. I mean, what a waste, right?
The logic of how you get from there to road maintenance... my god, the mental gymnastics it must take.
I think the context you’re deliberately omitting is that we’re talking about the US, not Vietnam, Spain, Mexico, or Russia.
If you moved to one of those countries, you’re saying you would demand official government programs be in English? That seems arrogant to me personally.
I actually think it is easier overall for companies and government to provide services in multiple languages than for every individual to have to learn fluent English including businessese and legalese. It is also cheaper to hire some translators and interpreters than to offer free and extensive courses to everybody.
And to refuse to provide services in other languages and then also refuse to offer courses, as in, “you're on your own now, good luck!”, is a real dick move.
Coming from North Europe, I always felt America’s loose definition of identity was its core strength.
No national religion. No national language. No centralized identity registry. Social security numbers that are more like timid suggestions than actual identifiers. Opening a bank account with just two pieces of foreign identity. Enrolling your kids in school by simply showing up and filling some forms.
I grew up in a country where I was assigned at birth with one state religion (out of two), a national language (out of three), and an ironclad digital identity number.
The American approach felt like a breath of fresh air. I — and millions of others — could choose to be someone else than what the computer says.
But the rise of Trumpism disillusioned me. Now I’m back in my home country and happily paying taxes to the state church while my children enjoy free education in four languages. What seemed like an identity straitjacket when I was younger now appears more like a spectrum of cozy options that I know how to navigate. Meanwhile America looks hell-bent on acquiring the straitjacket.
I'm confused. Is the "straitjacket" supposed to be good or bad? You seem to have ultimately happy to have chosen it for yourself but Americans choosing the same somehow disillusioned you?
It "seemed like" a straitjacket when they were younger but now that they recognise the plurality that actually exists around them it no longer seems like one.
I personally believe that the last few decades have shown us that a lack of unifying identity in America is a weakness, not a strength. We no longer have shared values, shared religious beliefs, shared customs, or really shared much of anything any more. And as a result, half the country viscerally hates the other half of the country. People living in cities disdainfully speak about "fly-over country" and how backwards and ignorant people are there. People living in rural areas complain about "big city liberals", and how they think they know everything but have no actual practical knowledge of anything. Both groups try to jerk the steering wheel of government back and forth with every election, and try to give even more power to the federal government so that they can use it to stop the other group from doing things they disapprove of.
In my opinion, this sort of thing greatly weakens us as a nation and will eventually destroy us if we can't figure out how to find common ground again. It should be possible - we've come back from worse (say what you will about modern day US politics, it hasn't come to civil war yet like it did in the past). But I think if we're going to find common ground, part of it will have to involve cultivating a shared national identity like we used to have.
> We no longer have shared values, shared religious beliefs, shared customs, or really shared much of anything any more.
We never had any of these, except for, possibly, just one shared belief: the idea that a constitutional democracy was the best sort of government to live under.
What we did have was a media/cultural environment that glossed over the differences between people, minimized various minority demographics, and worked hard to convince everyone that "we're all Americans and we all believe, do and want the same things". But that wasn't true then, any more than it is true today.
I want our shared national identity to be limited to our belief in our form of government. I don't want to have to know the same songs, go to the same church, drive the same car, watch the same shows as everyone else, and I don't think they should have to do that w.r.t my choices (nor are they likely to want to).
That was the beauty of "American identity", but even the belief in our form of government has been severely eroded. By whom or why ... I'll leave unremarked upon here.
shared religious beliefs, is possibly the biggest lie. As recently as the '60s there were questions about whether people would accept a "papist" president in the form of JFK. at least part of the reason why the separation of church and state existed was because otherwise it would've meant picking one of the many versions of Christianity or otherwise that had sought refuge in the US, which would mean excluding the others. The Quakers, the Puritans, the Pilgrims, the Catholics, the Anglicans, etc. were all very different and had very different opinions of each other.
>that a lack of unifying identity in America is a weakness, not a strength
America's proper and authentic identity always is its pluralism, entailing all the conflict that brings. If America made one unique contribution to the world its that it has shown how identities, plural, can be built from the bottom up and are in constant tension with each other, and that this is a feature, not a bug.
An American government trying to impose identity, by renaming lakes and mountains, mandating language(s) or what have you is so performative it looks more like North Korean state television than culture, it's utterly foreign to Americans and going to fail for that reason. Americans are instinctively allergic to having culture, regardless from what direction, declared on them by fiat.
US currency says "in God we trust" …since the 1950s.
For a lot longer, it’s said “E Pluribus Unum” (“From Many, One”). The phrase has been associated with the USA since its inception. Diversity is a traditional American value.
While I appreciate the sentiment and underlying truth to what you are saying, one of the more sinister, real effects of this order will be that virtually all federal employees who are employed for multilingual reasons, can now be argued redundant. When you consider the racial and cultural backgrounds likely in foreign language speakers, the defacto action is to fire a lot of nonwhite people.
As the law exists right now, you can only specify that people speak English for official work purposes. You can't stop two Puerto Rican dudes from speaking Spanish on their break talking about unofficial topics.
I mean ... you could hassle them, ask for their passports, arrest them at gunpoint ... (all things that ICE has done to US citizens within the past week).
I've always wondered what this actually means in practicality. The NYC MTA is still going to print the instructions for riding the train in 7 different languages. Is Taco Bell in Tulsa not allowed to print the menu in English and Spanish anymore?
Like, what is the point of this. I'm willing to accept that it's just a feel-good for the President's base. Like Gulf of America.
Generally, yes it means that in interactions with the government, there is more of an obligation for a citizen to speak English, rather than for the government to provide services in multiple languages.
It doesn't affect Taco Bell because that's a private corporation. And it doesn't affect transportation because that's also intended for travelers, visitors, etc. Nor would it affect health care.
But a good example would be driver's license exams. California offers those in 32 languages. Almost all states offer them in at least 2. If English is made the official language by legislation, there would be a strong argument to only offer driver's license exams in English.
Well, even more precisely: an executive order applies to federal workers in the executive branch. It doesn't apply to federal workers in the legislative, or judicial branches, and other sorts of workers. It certainly doesn't apply to private citizens or the states.
Basically, the point is to make it more difficult for non-English speakers (or people with limited language skills) to deal with the Federal government. As noted above, it's not a law and has no legal force to make private businesses do anything one way or the other.
> I've always wondered what this actually means in practicality.
It means the Federal government now has a reason to not offer services in any language other than English. Before, they would offer services in Spanish, Chinese(various dialects) and other popular languages. They no longer have funding or a mandate to do that.
I think that your Taco Bell example is strictly off the table. I don't doubt that some people exist who want to make it illegal to use anything but English in the US, but realistically there isn't much political will to make that happen. So we're probably talking only passing laws which restrict the government.
As far as what that means for the government, it's hard to say because of the way government is structured here. Let's put executive orders aside and say that Congress passes a law declaring that English is the official language, and that all government communication shall happen in English and nothing else. Certainly that would apply to the federal government. It shouldn't apply to the states, because the Constitution doesn't grant that power to the federal government - but we've been blatantly ignoring the Constitution in that respect for almost a century now, so it wouldn't be surprising if we ignore it in this case too. It would almost certainly go to the Supreme Court, but it's hard to say whether they would strike the law down or decide to torture the Commerce Clause even more.
If they strike the law down or clarify that it only can apply to the federal government, then you'd probably see some states pass their own similar laws (or amend their constitutions) to achieve a similar effect. But other states would still use whatever language. If they say yes, the law can affect states as well, then obviously it would. But either way I think you wind up at a point where private parties use whatever language they feel like, while government communications are in English only (at least to some extent).
It's the scope. Executive orders only apply to the execution/actions of the federal government. Laws apply to the general public. The creation of laws is a legislative power, and reserved to the legislative branch of the government.
So the story originally started with the cacheless 266 Mhz Celeron. CPUs were delivered as AICs (add-in-cards) at the time, with separate cache chips, so to deliver a budget processor, they shipped the same silicon, but without the cache chips added. Removing the cache drastically tanked the performance, especially on integer work loads (typically productivity software), but didn't really affect floating point workloads. However, it had the side benefit of removing the part of the AIC that was most sensitive to over-clocking (the cache). It used a 66Mhz clock with a fixed 4x multiplier, and upping the clock to 100Mhz got the Celeron running at 400Mhz, which had performance roughly equivalent to a 266 Mhz Pentium II with cache for integer workloads, but for games, it was almost as fast as the fastest Pentium II of the time (which topped out at 450Mhz).
In order to stop the overclocking, Intel decided to add some cache back to the CPU, but to save money, rather than using cache chips, they stuck a relatively tiny amount of cache directly on the CPU die, and released the now infamous Celeron 300A
Because the cache was on-die, it could overclock just as well as the previous celeron, but this time the 300A was faster than the equivalent Pentium because the on-die cache ran at twice the clock speed of the external caches
This is why H1-B visas should have a minimum salary requirement equal to 20% over whichever is greater, median salary for the role in the industry, or median salary for the role in the company (and whichever is greater, US-wide, or local pay scale).
This way, a company is always incentivized to find local talent, but when they are actually unable to, they have a path to find the expertise they need. The U.S. could relax restrictions on H1-B, lowering red tape, and removing a lot of churn that comes with the H1-B program
In general, H1B visas do have such provisions. At least in CA most jobs must provide a salary range. Even if every H1B is the lowest of the range in those postings, that alone means there are many many jobs which fit your criteria.
Sort by salary ascending and you will see what I mean.
These are blatant violations. We know how much software engineers should make. Do the immigrants know they are moving to one of the most expensive cities in the US?
Almost all H1Bs have already been in the US for years on their student visas, so of course they know COL and where they are moving to.
Those you are posting look like they could be violations. But if you just visit your link, you quickly see that most jobs are in line with median salaries in the bay area.
Compared to average workers, software engineers are specialists. H1B holders are often brighter than their citizen counterparts by at least one objective measure: advanced degrees holding. It's very hard to find US citizens with advanced degrees who can code well and understand computer science.
Not all H1B holders have advanced degrees, and the reason some of them do is because that’s one of the immigration pathways —- pay for a 1-2-year Master’s degree so you get a better chance of landing an H1B after you graduate. Most citizens don’t go for advanced degree because there’s no utility in them, and not because they aren’t smart.
I know this. But it is a measurable differentiator in qualification that H1Bs are way more likely to have than citizens. Many young men don't see the utility in college compared to women in the the US, but employers do.
Then it’s all the more difficult to explain why such “advanced” applicants would accept low salaries. Unless, of course, we accept the inevitable conclusion that companies are using foreign labor to suppress domestic wages.
The page you linked is filled with violations. There is no universe where an “AI scientist” shouldn’t be making the median salary at a minimum. The job titles have been manipulated so as to not raise any flags.
It doesn’t matter whether the median in aggregate is inside the range. If one person makes 60k, another makes 150k and another makes 155k you are still not paying someone enough. No American was going to take that job for 60k, that doesn’t mean you can use a visa to fill it.
Someone should put together a package for the new administration with advertisements to target for H1B violations. I’m sure Stephen Miller would want to see it.
“Labour tariffs” in the west are actually a great thing, and I support it. I’m from India. I support this for very different reasons than those expressed in this thread, but I think in the long term this would be good for India and maybe even the US. The global labour market is screwed up and some churn like this is needed to potentially fix things.
Require employers of each H1-B to submit (along with the hire's w-4 that they send to Uncle Sam that already includes the job's wages and benefits), the position description in the job ad, the candidate's resume, and the matching wage band the job purportedly falls into and exceeds by 20% (or whatever the required margin is). It should be trivial to automate the validation process. Then do random checks to confirm those purported facts, especially of employers who hire large numbers of H1-Bs and have past violations.
You actually have it backwards. Your claim is that legacy admissions bias in favor of the predominant race might be true for a school that had race-blind admittance criteria. In the opposite case, however, legacy admissions bias against people of the predominant race (for the general student).
Since legacy admissions come first, schools which practice affirmative action have a heavy bias against the predominant race (because those slots are all filled by legacy candidate). Which means that if you're of the predominant race, you have next to no chance to be accepted by these universities... (I mean, everyone has next to no chance, but for people of the predominant race, they are discriminated against severely).
In general, though, college admissions are pretty terrible... Having spoken with someone who worked in admissions at one of these universities, if you have a bright kid, you're better off moving to the middle of nowhere to make sure they're the valedictorian, rather than trying to send your kid to a great high school where why might only be salutatorian. Why? For smaller schools they rarely take more than one student from that school in any given year, so when the valedictorian who filled out applications to 10 top schools gets in to all 10? The salutatorian doesn't...
It's not a bribe, because the government claimed that Google owed this amount of money, and Google paid it. If this was a check to prevent Government action, you might consider it a bribe. If it had been paid to an individual, you might consider it a bribe. In this case, the law says that there can only be a trial by jury if there is financial damage. With Google conceding the amount claimed and paying it, there is no financial damage, and thus there can not be a trial by jury. The money is not being spent to purchase a trial without jury, it's a fine being paid to change the rules of the encounter.
They claimed Google owed damages and the check is for some amount related to either what they asked for or the damages Google thinks they can prove. If the judge agrees (or the DOJ, which is a lot less likely), this takes damages off the table. From there, they can see if the judge will take a jury trial off the table.
I'll take a short cut and imagine that you have an 8x8 square with no margins (68% of a borderless 8.5x11), then you have a grid of 600x600 bitmaps, which is 3.6e5. if each pixel is only black or white, than you have 1.8e19 possible bitmaps (64-bit), divide the two and you have 5e13, or about 50 trillion pages. Fix the equation, and you get a grid of 5.2e5, for 30 trillion pages instead of 50.
However, bring that up to 24-bit color or more (even 8-level greyscale is e154), and the exponentiality of the problem goes back to as described by the OP
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