Given how large ecommerce has gotten in China, it begs the question, are credit cards truly the necessary pillar? ECommerce even in the US is extremely top heavy, with Amazon having ~40% share, so while the allure of a random ecommerce site is an interesting example, thats not the pre-dominant usage pattern.
This internet kid of 90s fever dream of an internet thats free and federated is just not gona happen. All evidence we have so far suggests that the scale at which internet is at, the larges opportunities will be in solving for the "non-technical" user. In my view this non technical user now understands that if something is free then that means ads. Thus the next age of social media should be about exploring what business models can work that align themselves with user's own interests.
There is 900 million farm acres of farmland in the US. Bill gates owns about 270K acres of farmland. So even though he is the largest private owner of farmland, he owns less than 0.1% of all farmland in the US.
Its such a shame US is considered a great place to live. Sure you can have a good life, but at what cost? Your government props up dictators, goes and blows up a country over imaginary WMDs etc. etc. Is this what you imagined as being an enabler of through your taxes and votes?
This is obviously a good thing from a safety standpoint, but I worry we are increasingly becoming a one strike society. Where one instance of bad behavior locks you out of significant parts of the infrastructure. Moreoever this happens in a "court" with no documented laws/appeals process.
Typically younger working age people are a net benefit to the system. They pay taxes, but their kids dont go to schools, they dont require as much healthcare (which can be publicly funded in some countries).
Rubber stamp? Have you ever tried applying for an H1b renewal? There is constant anxiety over ever changing rules and RFEs. Not to mention the run around to get a visa stamp every 3 years.
Few thousand to get into green card line? Have you ever tried doing this? There is an elaborate over a year long process to get into this line. and even then its a broken broken system that stipulates that queues are country based, which mean a Lithuanian who enters the queue today will get a green card before an equally qualified chinese or indian person who has been in the queue for 10 years!
The H1B can be and does get renewed by 100s of thousands of people. AC21 provision allows for an H1B to be renewed in perpetuity (even beyond 6 years) until an approved green card petition is pending. The approved green card petition can stay pending for a really long time due to country based immigration queues which disadvantage people from large population countries.
We have allowed 100s of thousands of Software Engineer immigrants. Are the hiring prospects of American software engineers impacted? This should be provable with at least a couple of decades of software engineer immigrants coming in.
You do loose status after 60 days in case of employment based green card applications which are approved but the so called priority date is not current. For 100s of thousands of people these priority dates will take literally decades to become "current".
So many folks here with a "its a good thing". The challenge that this rule also creates is that there are people in this country who have a spot in the green card line based on the US government approving their petition who have to provide their H1B worthiness every 3 years. Those people now get weeded out. That green card queue is country based. So a Norwegian person who wasnt qualified for the H1B under the new rules already has a green card, but an Indian person is now going to get locked out. This is discrimination based on country of origin, which should be illegal but unfortunately isnt for immigration law.
I do believe that you perhaps aren't tieing the program to the recipients. But I don't think the distinction between the program and the beneficiaries is clear to the average voter who likely hasn't ever met a person on an H1B. When they read these stories their instinctive reaction is jobs going to "other people" and then they vote for people who are against immigration, who are tacitly for xenophobia. You could have called me pessimistic, but we have clear examples now of how xenophobia can resonate and can be built on labor issues.
It's tiring to keep hearing these stories and tieing them to H1B. Satya Nadella also started on an H1B, Sundar Pichai did too and so did Andrew Ng. Just those 3 combined have created more jobs than were lost here. So please, stop spreading partial info that creates hate against a whole swathe of people who have come here legally, have contributed extremely productively to this nation in the form of taxes and labor, and would like to be treated with atleast the same level of dignity as any European low skilled person who just got off a boat at Ellis Island.
Umm, Both Japan and HK have a lot of people in a small space and have 1/100th of the absolute utter mindless chaos that prevails on the roads in Delhi/Mumbai.
If you agree to the basic principle that scientific ability and thought is equally prevalent amongst men and women, having fewer women scientists means we are not getting and developing the best scientific minds.
Having as many women as men also means a you girl doesnt think science is for boys only which again means we potentially miss out on good/great scientific minds purely because they self-select out.
So if you are in favor of STEM getting the best STEM minds, its important for STEM fields to reflect that STEM is for everyone. Having as many women as men is a step in that direction.