Why is that so hard to believe? America is run by Donald Trump.
The problems with these companies is that developers aren't making technical decisions, it's executives who know nothing about computer science. That's why Windows 10 is such a mess with spyware and adware.
Now they have some FOSS advocate who doesn't really know anything about software or VCS but saw that an internal problem they were trying to solve was making their code base work with git. So he decided it would be really cool for Microsofts image to develop an open source extension of git, instead of actually solving the underlying problems (because he didn't recognize them). Now he's probably got a promotion at Microsoft for "fixing" their problem with git.
If there's something you need to talk about, by all means find a place to talk about it. But if what you want to talk about is how other people are stupid, maybe this is the wrong place for that. I hope that you find the healing that you need.
Out of Jobs, Gates, and Torvalds, Jobs and Gates are some of the worst people to become part of the tech industry. Microsofts anti-consumer practices lead to it's world dominance and now the world is ruled by closed standards. Here is the Bill Gates copy pasta (and it's all true):
Disable spyware and adware. I don't think you can really disable all the spyware though. We're talking about a company that participated in the NSA PRISM program. That means that Microsoft has an agency within it that works closely with the government. I like to think of MS as an extension or a branch of the NSA.
looks a little longer, but if you notice they both use the same back end tools. I see that VSC has partial delve integration, but vim running inside tmux makes delve (and every other CLI tool) feel like it's already integrated. I don't use debugging that much with Go though.
Yeah, I know they all make use of godef, guru etc. but the way VSCode allows you to see declaration/documentation or full implementation on hover, integration with dlv etc. make it a nicer implementation for me than vim-go, but that's probably because I am not a ViM person myself.
It looks pretty bad on Linux too. Somehow they managed to transport the crappy font rendering from Windows to Linux. It really feels like it's not built for Linux, but just shoe-horned in.
On Linux, it renders fonts the same way Chromium or Chrome do. If you're getting "crappy font rendering from Windows", you probably need to change your fonts.conf to change font hinting from full to slight (or none, if you like it more like Macs).
Edit: And also note that, for whatever reason, GNOME does its own thing where you also have to edit the GSettings in addition to the fonts.conf settings depending on what app you're running.
>The business world has been even more recalcitrant. In a recent study by Softchoice, an info-tech consultancy, corporate computers were found to be running a whole gamut of legacy versions of Windows. Fewer than 1% of them had been upgraded to Windows 10.
One thing I've learned over the years: you don't need a high IQ to run a successful business. Without a lot of smarts you're never going to compete with google, but you don't need to compete with google to make a living running your own business.
>Chromebooks are now outselling MacBooks in the crucial education market, where long-term preferences tend to be established.
It's unfortunate that proprietary software ever came to dominate schooling. Hopefully ChromeOS will open things up just enough so that cross platform tools become the norm. Schools using both Windows and Chrome will be more aware of proprietary/incompatible software and file formats and choose to use open formats.
>It is impossible to retrofit older Windows versions with the sort of defense-in-depth that has been built into Windows 10. Nor would Microsoft do so even if it could. If anything, it is about to do the opposite. Windows 7 users will soon lose access to a stand-alone toolkit for mitigating zero-day exploits.
Another reason why Windows is a joke OS for serious tech enthusiasts.
>A word of warning, though: such upgrades do not necessarily go without a hitch. A Windows 10 tablet your correspondent relied upon for much of his mobile computing was broken irreparably when a recent update corrupted the display driver, rendering the touchscreen useless.
......... makes you wonder why they lock these things down, are tech enthusiasts even designing them?
>But he has also dusted down his four-year-old Apple MacBook Pro and upgraded his Windows 7 desktop to the latest version of Linux Mint rather than Windows 10.
Yes I prefer Linux to Windows in most cases too. I never have good long term experiences with Windows.
>It used to be that only free software came with advertising; users paid a fee, if they chose to do so, to get the software free of advertising. Microsoft charges top dollar for Windows 10 ($120 or $200, depending on the edition) and now wants to bombard users with sales pitches to boot—without so much as by your leave, let alone the option to turn the nuisance off. Despite their idiosyncrasies, Macintosh and Linux have never looked so attractive.
Yeah these days pretty much the only people who are using Windows are people who don't know any better. Most people aren't even exposed to Linux except those of us in the tech sector, and it seems to be just as popular as windows and OS X at the shops I've worked at.
What makes a serious tech enthusiast? I consider myself one and I enjoy using Windows 10 as my desktop PC. I have had almost no issues or qualms with how Windows 10 has performed for me since launch.
Obviously we can't know what the organisation doing the hiring is like in this fictional scenario, but $100k would be a huge, huge amount for non-senior staff in rural Alabama no matter what.
The problem with a hard salary floor is that it doesn't account for differences in cost of living at all. It would very quickly become the visa of coastal cities and little else.
Then they can't afford to run. I'd also love to bring say professional 3D modellers and animators from Eastern Europe or Brazil and pay then 20k CAD/year, but thats not how reality works. All of these programs (hb1/etc...) are basically wage arbitrage schemes and have little to do with presence/absence of talent.
There is no universal H1B salary. Translators do not earn as much as developers, in general. People living in Alabama do not earn as much as those working in Silicon Valley, in general. H1B applications go through a "labor condition application" for this exact reason - the government approves the salary, based on industry and location. Therefore, you can't bring 3D developers to Silicon Valley and pay them $20k. But you might be able to bring a translator to rural Alabama.
If the aim of the H1B program was to bring in the highest possible paid workers, you'd be correct. But it isn't. These programs are designed in such a way that all states can benefit from them, and a variety of professions.
It is to make it possible for foreigners to provide work to US organizations when no local person is available.
I have hired many many people on H1s. It was always a hire of last resort: when we could not find someone local. It always cost us a lot more than a local person: in both legal fees and procedural fees (you need to verify that the salary you are paying is not lower than the prevailing wage, which is totally fair) not to mention that it takes a while to get the person so while you're messing about you have nobody to fill the job. Some people are unusually distinguished (perhaps expert in a particular machine or language) but lack the appropriate degree, and they are even harder to bring in.
I have a hard time complaining about that (and I'm an immigrant myself). I think it's totally fair that the system should be biased towards locals. But the system does need an escape mechanism when nobody local can do the work.
There are problems. The big outsourcing companies (not just Indian ones but IBM) flood the lottery early. Also somehow they apparently/allegedly pay below market rate, which I don't understand. As usual it's the startups that get screwed.
Note this H-1 is to bring someone here. If I could outsource I would (to Alabama or Amadebad, it would be all the same to me). When we can get away with a distributed team we hire people where they already are.
>But the system does need an escape mechanism when nobody local can do the work.
I submit that there is no work in the US that can't be done by a US citizen. The problem isn't "finding someone" the problem is "finding someone at the below-market-rate wage we want to pay"
> I submit that there is no work in the US that can't be done by a US citizen.
In another thread to this article I gave an example of a teacher for a German school -- native speaker, experienced in teaching the German state curriculum. A few such people have moved here and indeed we hired them, but mostly they had to come in on H-1.
There are certainly medical specialties for which there is a shortage of available doctors or nurses, in particular outside the cities.
And you really believe that there is a US citizen expert in every possible discipline in every possible location?
> The problem isn't "finding someone" the problem is "finding someone at the below-market-rate wage we want to pay"
In the very comment to which you were replying I just said we pay more for H-1 workers, in both time and money (and salary -- the labor conditions verification makes sure that's the case. Why do you assume they come in at below market wages? Have you ever hired one? In my experience it's impossible to do, at least for a startup.
I would agree that US experts in obscure foreign culture might be hard or impossible to find. Otherwise I do think that there are experts in the US on nearly every topic - and if the labor market is demanding a particular topic with high wages people in the US will pick it up.
I don't have a problem with hiring foreigners as long as they pay a fair sum to the taxpayers for thier diminishment of citizen's welfare. This is because immigrant is a potential drain on the welfare state and also uses resources that otherwise would be enjoyed by citizens.
Also I do believe most h1bs are paid below market rate because they are hired by large IT contractors like Infosys. They have the people and presence in India to make hiring in H1b cheap- they contract to US firms and pocket the difference.
For small business in the US I would agree that h1b is expensive.
Luckily for me, you, and the internet at large, Google lets you look up information on large government programs. Not sure what is "bizarre" about me "shying away" from duplicating publicly available information.
"The H-1B program applies to employers seeking to hire nonimmigrant aliens as workers in specialty occupations or as fashion models of distinguished merit and ability. A specialty occupation is one that requires the application of a body of highly specialized knowledge and the attainment of at least a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent. The intent of the H-1B provisions is to help employers who cannot otherwise obtain needed business skills and abilities from the U.S. workforce by authorizing the temporary employment of qualified individuals who are not otherwise authorized to work in the United States."
It says, "or fashion models," amusingly. I guess not only is there a tech shortage, but we're too unattractive to find our own fashion models, too.
Unless fashion model is a legal euphemism for someone at the top tier of new tech or skills? edit: Like, some sexy new JavaScript framework or some ancient functional language.
I think they're referring to real fashion models, though, amazingly.
Not really, because quality software development generally requires teams to be in close proximity. As has been discovered by many firms, moving operations overseas is "penny wise and pound foolish"
For example, Disney of Florida replaced 250 American IT workers in US using immigrants with H1-B Visas. They in theory could have saved more money by sending that operation overseas but they chose not too.
Computer operations today are way too mission critical to most organizations to risk problems by moving tech overseas at least in operational settings.
> The problem with a hard salary floor is that it doesn't account for differences in cost of living at all. It would very quickly become the visa of coastal cities and little else.
Americas "tech dominance" threatens the breadbasket.
The coastal areas, mostly certain cities, have become "international" and any worker from a rural area who wants to earn a living wage doing a technical job (e.g. STEM) now not only has to compete with other Americans, but everyone in the world.
What exactly do the elites expect people in the breadbasket to do? If America is an international country then we're going to see wealth distribution change. The coastal tech cities may accumulate all the money and have an average wage of $100,000, some of the highest wages in the world, but the inverse will happen to the rest of America. If you aren't in a tech city near the coast you're going to be on the lowest rung, not in America, but internationally. Think about the poorest communities in the world, and as the poor of America merge and become the international poor, we'll see incomes fall to well below poverty levels. Some of the lowest wages in the world.
Look at China, they already have a similar situation where all their wealth is accumulated in their big international cities.
Let China become the world international tech center. Their "breadbasket" is already use to being poor.
The thing about these tech centers is that they are international, it doesn't matter where they are.
As long as the rural areas get a vote and as long as the coastal areas continue to concentrate all wealth in smaller and smaller areas, the more we will see people like Trump get elected. Corporate tech-elitists living on the coast are in a huge cultural bubble. All of our news and media come from these areas too btw.
What I think would really help America (and the world by proxy) is if for every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural American workers from a community that's average income is less than the national median.
This "rural communities don't need tech" narrative is tiring and false.
"Tech" is more than Google. How many engineers do you think John Deere hires? How many scientists does Monsanto have on staff? How many lines of code go into the average modern factory?
If I had a dime for every time I talk to a farmer/laborer who plants fields full of GM crops and/or harvests those fields with impressive machinery, and then insists that "tech" is a useless industry. Or CNC mechanics who insist "tech" is a fad. Talk about cognitive dissonance.
Rural america needs tech more than ever before. They'll learn to leverage tech built in coastal cities, or they'll become so irrelevant that not even high tariffs can save them.
> is if for every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural American workers from a community that's average income is less than the national median.
I came from rural America. So do lots of software engineers in coastal and especially non-coastal cities. There's nothing stopping those people from getting an education and joining a big tech company. Literally. Nothing.
Seriously. Even in poor rural communities without high school CS courses, you can sit your ass down at a computer, learn to code, then fill out college applications.
The one exception is maybe lack of access to higher education. And the GOP is an odd choice if that's your primary problem...
> There's nothing stopping those people from getting an education and joining a big tech company.
"There's nothing stopping somebody from the ghetto from getting an education and joining a big tech company".
In both cases, sadly there is. And I think what the OP is suggesting ("for every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural American workers") is a step towards remedying this.
If you read further, I state the obvious: "The one exception is maybe lack of access to higher education. And the GOP is an odd choice if that's your primary problem..."
> And I think what the OP is suggesting ("for every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural American workers") is a step towards remedying this
Huh?
Google et al. already do this. If you're a competent programmer, you can find a tech job. Tech companies don't discriminate against rural hires...
Is your suggestion that Google should hire a bunch of completely untrained and totally unqualified rural folk as software engineers, purely because they're from a rural part of the country, and train them on sight?
Wouldn't improving K12 STEM education and making college more accessible make a lot more sense? Google isn't a school, and education isn't their core competency.
It's one thing to say "we should be more supportive of STEM education and make college more accessible".
It's completely another to insist that Google over-look college educated immigrants because some rural Americans weren't given the opportunity to attend an IIT.
Would that be some sort of like economic affirmative action? There is some truth to the idea that we're born into an economic class in America. Its also probably less morally hard to swallow than racial affirmative action while having somewhat of the same effect.
As a former Kansan, I have to agree. We need more technology investment in the Great Plains and sooner rather than later. I can't see how anyone assumes there's no need for it out there.
>What I think would really help America (and the world by proxy) is if for every immigrant a tech company imports, they must hire two rural American workers from a community that's average income is less than the national median.
There's a big problem with this idea: you seem to be assuming that rural Americans want to live in the international coastal cities. I'm quite sure this simply isn't the case for most of them (it is true for many young people, who do in fact move to the coastal cities on their own volition). So are you proposing requiring tech companies to open satellite offices in rural areas, where there's no concentration of workers at all? And what are these people going to do for the tech companies anyway? If they had relevant skills, they'd already be working in tech, not living in rural areas and working at Walmart.
It's a bit presumptuous that everyone living in rural areas is unskilled. I've got nearly two years in the tech industry, hold several certifications, and almost have a BS completed. But because I live in a rural area & all the tech jobs are becoming more and more centralized, it's nearly impossible for me to find work. I don't want to move because my wife is in school and my family also lives in the middle of nowhere. I'm willing to bet there are many people like me.
Ok, then how exactly do you propose tech companies hire you when you absolutely refuse to leave this rural area? You think they're going to set up a satellite office just so they can hire one or two people out in SmallTown?
Of course you can't find work, if you choose to live in the middle of nowhere. It doesn't make sense to locate companies in places with very few qualified workers. If it did, companies would be locating in places like that all the time because the cost of living is so much lower, and they can pay a lot less. But they don't, they locate in high-CoL areas.
>they must hire two rural American workers from a community that's average income is less than the national median.
What makes you think two rural Americans per one non-rural want to work for a tech company? Talk about condescending. Rural Americans don't need the charity of American tech workers on the coast. They can figure their livelihoods out themselves just fine, seeing as they've been doing it for centuries.
Wealth has gravitated around massive city centers since time immemorial and China is even more hostile to foreigners. If you think America is the only one artificially gating wealth within the border then you are in for a rude awakening.
Coastal cities in America will continue to be a melting pot of culture but the wealth won't be siphoned off unabated.
The rationale behind the policy is ending the indentured servitude experienced by foreign workers and the hollowing out of the middle class.
I think there's a more important metric: productivity has concentrated in the coastal cities. Our workforce is more productive than ever before. Much of our economic gains year after year are due to productivity gains: we produce more goods per worker.
In our current economy, if you want to have a high-paying job you have to have a highly productive job. The best way to do that is to be in a city that has high network effects. Centralization and computerization is allowing people in cities to be more and more productive. This is why even Walmart has fewer regional managers and employs more people in cities managing logistics or even doing research in programs like @WalmartLabs.
Being in a city helps you be more productive due to network effects in contacts, opportunities, leads and education. If we want to help people out, we need to help them get those benefits elsewhere or help them move to the coastal cities that already have these networks.
>Wealth has gravitated around massive city centers since time immemorial
Well yeah, but there were times when wealth was more evenly distributed within America.
When we first started taking in immigrants (when America was founded), we were in a state of high-economic entropy, meaning that there were so many jobs and things to do (and no minimum wage) that we NEEDED to import people from around the world.
Times have changed and the world is changing faster and faster. America is now in a state of low economic entropy, and having a free-for-all international jobs market is not helping that situation.
Is the goal to move the entire world into a state of low economic entropy? We can have big wealthy countries running the world like we're use to, or we can have big wealthy cities running the world like we're aiming toward.
I think concentrating wealth in these big tech centers makes it harder for people in the US to work their way out of poverty. It will be great for the people in Africa living on two dollars a day when their wages go up to 15 dollars a day, but it's going to be hell for people in the US who are use to 50-100 dollars a day going down to $15.
Everyone will be equal though (well, all the poor will be equally poor, and all the rich will be equally rich).
The problems with these companies is that developers aren't making technical decisions, it's executives who know nothing about computer science. That's why Windows 10 is such a mess with spyware and adware.
Now they have some FOSS advocate who doesn't really know anything about software or VCS but saw that an internal problem they were trying to solve was making their code base work with git. So he decided it would be really cool for Microsofts image to develop an open source extension of git, instead of actually solving the underlying problems (because he didn't recognize them). Now he's probably got a promotion at Microsoft for "fixing" their problem with git.