MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by infecto | 2025-09-19 21:35:19+00:00
Sure but most homes in America don’t have a good vent and often with new builds, to have a good vent you need makeup air and you then introduce a lot of annoying issues.

The socializing part feels like an edge case but I guess it depends if you are cooking to entertain or cooking for your daily food. The daily food only a small portion of the cooking requires closing up the kitchen.
by hellotheretoday | 2025-09-19 21:35:22+00:00
Because the political playbook is to argue in bad faith and conservatives are much better convincing their base of that than democrats. Why are many of them convinced that left wing violence is a scourge when right wing violence outweighs it by an overwhelming majority [0] unless you do mental gymnastics after tons of mass shootings (as Kash Patel, who one would think would be aware of related trends to domestic terrorism, so eloquently put it: “I’m sorry. Dylann Roof?”[1])

[0]https://theconversation.com/right-wing-extremist-violence-is... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrkgM9_xOj4
by Illniyar | 2025-09-19 21:35:46+00:00
I mean there's somewhere between 10-20k o1 visas issued a year. o1 is literally the visa for smart and talented people.

There is also EB with National Interest Waiver - including for profession like Doctors and such.

Not to mention a lot of employment based visa, if you work for a US employer - L1, EB1/2 directly etc...

There isn't a permanent resident visa for Driven people - but you can get entrepreneur visas if you run a profitable business.
by SeanAnderson | 2025-09-19 21:35:58+00:00
I've been unemployed for almost three years. It's somewhat intentional - at least leaving my last job was and I've been dragging my feet. Hopefully will have a job in upper management at the start of next year if things work out.

Coping by trying my best to become the type of person that I aspire to be. Quit weed, alcohol, caffeine. Lost 20lbs of fat and put on some muscle. Run 6 days a week, lift 3-4 days a week. Meal prep all my foods and getting into a good routine about those things.

Taught myself Rust and ECS and tried my hand at building a game. Built an Arduino prototype of some hardware a friend wanted to see exist, but ended up not trying to take it further. Built a website to help people play a video game better, it became popular while the game was trending, and made ~3-6k/mo running ads on the site. Went to Burning Man for the first time.

Now I'm kind of out of things that sound fun/purposeful and having a purpose dropped into my lap by working on an ongoing project with an existing team sounds more appealing than it did when I left the work world. So, slowly going back that way and hoping to hold onto all my good vibes and positive habits as I do so.

It's not exactly what I expected to spend three years of unemployment doing. I wish I felt more "accomplished" in how I used my time. But idk. Just kept myself busy with things that sounded meaningful in the moment. Now making money sounds more appealing than having more free time so hopefully jumping back in isn't too much of a shock.
by fair_enough | 2025-09-19 21:36:04+00:00
I'm writing this reply not to the lazy commenter, but to anyone reading this thread...

You're just passing off your own speculation as authoritative, and you didn't even read my comment to comprehension.

I didn't say we need less immigration in the tech sector. I said it hurts tech workers when there's a deflationary effect on their earnings but not the goods and services they pay for, and hence the same immigration practices should apply to every industry.

On paper, you would think this is the case, but in practice 64% of H1-B workers are in IT and 52% are programmers:

https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/reports/o...

Again, it stands to reason that if the deflationary effect on tech workers' salaries is disproportionate to the deflationary effect on all the other goods and services they pay for, then tech workers are worse off from the H1-B program. I've seen claims less ironclad than this accepted as fact in peer-reviewed life sciences-related research.

Your comment is just another classic HN case of speculation masquerading as authority.
by suriya-ganesh | 2025-09-19 21:36:04+00:00
I might.

It's not just this specific issue, honestly. Throwing wrench on all economies, that my wife and I bet on is what's horrible. Research fund cuts on premium institutes, the wonky arrests etc.

Even yesterday, I had to make a case for why all of this certainty might be worth it. And it was not easy. At this point though, I certainly agree that the US is not in a trajectory for appreciating external contributions.
by autotune | 2025-09-19 21:36:16+00:00
I was arrested for reasons I still do not understand for 1.5 years as the charges and reason(s) for my arrest make no sense, so in that sense, yes. Developed intensified bipolar disorder while locked up in jail. Biding my time until the charges get dropped or I get declared innocent by a judge so I can file a lawsuit against the police department. All that's left to do is wait, either for lawsuit time or for job applications to come through and hope there isn't a thorough background check (there hasn't been for most of my positions so far).
by geerlingguy | 2025-09-19 21:38:12+00:00
ServeTheHome has a few videos covering AI servers and interconnects.

And yes, they basically have 1 Tbps+ interconnects and throw tens or hundreds of GPUs at queries. Nvidia was wise to invest so much in their networking side—they have massive bandwidth between machines and shared memory, so they can run massive models with tons of cards, with minimal latency.

It's still not as good as tons of GPU attached to tons of memory on _one_ machine, but it's better than 10, 25, or 40 Gbps networking that most small homelabs would run.
by thaumasiotes | 2025-09-19 21:38:53+00:00
> It seems unlikely that, say, vertebrates are in the future going to "undo" the major evolutionary developments of the past and lose their skeleton, body symmetry, number of limbs, lungs, alimentary canal, nervous system, brain, etc. We see things like these developing in the evolutionary tree and mostly staying in place once created.

Try looking at whale skeletons over time. What isn't beneficial gets undone.
by valkmit | 2025-09-19 21:39:09+00:00
How valid is this premise in an increasingly global world?

Most of the companies that are paying salaries could (and already do!) have offices in other jurisdictions where they could hire the same talent.

Better to bring this talent onshore, where the wages are taxed, than force these companies to hire from satellite offices?

It doesn't make much financial sense for companies to stop sourcing talent globally just because they can't be brought onshore, especially given enough time.

Purely anecdotal, but for me personally this wouldn't change who or how I hire, just the location.
by ssl-3 | 2025-09-19 21:39:15+00:00
> And what case are you putting them into?

Maybe one of the Fractal Designs cases with a bunch of drive bays?

> What if you want it rack mounted?

Companies like Rosewill sell ATX cases that can scratch that itch.

> What about >1gig networking?

What about PCI Express card? Regular ATX computers are expandable.

> What if I want a GPU in there to do whisper for home assistant?

I mean... We started with a gaming rig, right? Isn't a GPU already implicit?
by lazyeye | 2025-09-19 21:39:19+00:00
Why didn't the Republicans do the same? You're asking why the Republicans aren't corrupt like the Dems? I don't know, you'll have to ask the Dems. We just have to deal with the consequences.

And in terms of your "criticism" of their competence, it was just a vague smear with nothing of substance behind it. Not worth acknowledging really, particularly if your benchmark is the Biden/Harris admin where we had an autopen president in the early stages of dementia and a vice-president (the border czar!) so incompetent she was too scared to go on podcasts.

Strange how the Dems always seem to find "justifications" to reduce election integrity whether it's through illegal immigration or lax election laws (promoting election fraud, ballot harvesting etc), whilst lecturing everybody about the need to "protect democracy".
by seec | 2025-09-19 21:39:31+00:00
The ideology of vegetarianism is extremely destructive. Particularly for humans.

It is no coincidence that Hitler was a vegetarian. The roots are extremely similar: a deep hatred for humans, to the point that animals are declared not only equals but even better than humans. Hitler loved his dog more than any human; it just reveals a deep truth about his motivations and behavior.

You may not have researched or thought about it a lot but I can assure you this is a very valid observation.
by bdangubic | 2025-09-19 21:39:46+00:00
> A very large majority of all software engineers are mediocre

I think my HN karma right now would be over 1,000,000 if it wasn't for all the downvotes each time I've said this same thing. I ballpark 95.87% of all SWEs are mediocre-to-less-than-that. I have 30 years of experience behind me to back this up :)

This "10x engineer" jazz is really just someone who is good-to-very-good compared to the rest of the crew
by asdff | 2025-09-19 21:39:55+00:00
The U.S. is where the money is. In canada between public and private sector about 30 billion dollars are spent on research and development. Across the entire EU, this figure is more like 440 billion dollars. In the U.S., the figure is 885 billion dollars.

https://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/publicrandd-aspx/

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20246
by whatever1 | 2025-09-19 21:40:01+00:00
The big tech companies have the financial means to invest in anything. They are essentially printing money.

However, which startup can afford an additional cost of 100,000 dollars for a fresh PhD graduate who is essential for their niche?

The true economic benefit of the H1B visa program for the US economy lies in the long tail of smaller firms that require a limited number of specialized personnel, which, by definition, is scarce.
by tshaddox | 2025-09-19 21:40:07+00:00
> I don't think it follows that preventing that brain drain would have lead to appreciably better outcomes for those countries.

Well sure, it depends what the counterfactual is. If those countries just physically prevented the people from leaving, and nothing more, I wouldn't expect that countries' outcomes to improve. But what the countries suffering from brain drain presumably want is for there to be attractive opportunities for those skilled workers in their own country.
by nitwit005 | 2025-09-19 21:40:37+00:00
This seems to be starting with the assumption that it's possible to prevent people from downloading the videos. That is a false assumption. You can, after all, just play the video and record it. Even if the entire machine playing the content is flawlessly locked down, you can just record the output.

The efforts at DRM done by companies like Netflix is done because the companies that licensed the content demand it. That doesn't mean the DRM works. You can find torrents of all those shows.
by kypro | 2025-09-19 21:40:41+00:00
> Any suggestion that the program is dragging wages down instead of dragging wages up is not just misleading but factually wrong.

The stats you provide here don't support your claim.

H1B visa holders can be paid more on average while still having a downward effect on wages...

Imagine that some car model costs $200,000 to buy in the US. However, an entrepreneur realises they can can import the same car from a poorer country for just $100,000 then sell it in the US for less than the manufacturer themselves. The manufacturer finds out about this and says, "hey! you're selling my car for less", but the importer says, "no, actually, you'll find the median car in the US is $50,000 so I'm technically increasing car prices".

So what you're saying could be wrong in two ways... One you could be wrong in the sense that even if it does increase median wages, that doesn't mean it necessary increases the median wage of US citizens if now a significant percentage the best employment opportunities are going to H1B visa holders instead of citizens.

But secondly, and the point I was trying to make with the car analogy, is that you could be wrong about the average wages going up too if H1B visa holders are taking jobs which would pay even more were it not for HB1 visas. So if the average wage of a SWE in the US is say $150k, but the average H1B visa holder is being paid $120k, H1Bs are clearly not "dragging wages up".

And realistically it's far more likely H1B visa holders suppress wages given how relatively high US wages are.

I'll end this comment by saying that personally I think this idea that giving the best opportunities to immigrants is probably directly wrong for many reasons. Of course, allowing in businesses and individuals who will create jobs makes a lot of sense, but what you really want is the best opportunities going to your own citizens, then to bring in cheap labour to fill the crappy jobs citizens don't really want to do, but are now increasingly doing when they leave university like working in a bar or becoming a barista. If there's a great job a company can't fill with the domestic workforce perhaps they should train someone for that role or take a risk on a recent graduate like in the old days?
by fogzen | 2025-09-19 21:40:42+00:00
IMO the minimum salary should be $0 and Americans should be free to hire whoever they want, without paying a fee and asking permission from the government. Non-citizens should be subject to the same minimum wage and workplace regulations as everywhere else. Whoever wants to come to America should be able to freely come, treated the same as anyone else.

But that would be a free market that respected human rights, and Americans don't want that! Equality? Freedom? That's just marketing!
by guywithahat | 2025-09-19 21:40:43+00:00
This might be one of the smarter things this administration has done/is doing. It will cut down on fraud, and ensure the position they're hiring for isn't just some mid-level engineer. H1B applications should be a source of tax revenue, beyond standard taxes.

I sort of wish it had been done 15 years ago but better late then never.
by saltcured | 2025-09-19 21:41:05+00:00
Sorry, I didn't mean to discount your experience so much as add another microcosm to the mix. I think we're all anecdotal...

But, I do think HN has a cultural fixation on the fabled Silicon Valley experience. This includes an attachment to (nostalia for?) the old university/startup axis. This used to be a more fluid exchange, rather than just the regular enterprise hiring pipeline.
by truncate | 2025-09-19 21:41:22+00:00
>> IMO the problem is that H1B employees are stuck at the employer for the duration of their green card process, and so end up both paid lower and unable to escape abuse.

This is not true. Typically you want to stay until i140 which for me took 1 year or so back in 2020. If I want to switch there are multiple other reasons I'd end up delaying the switch anyway (wait for vest, bonus etc ...)
by dudus | 2025-09-19 21:42:24+00:00
Also unemployed for the last 3 years after a layoff. Partially on purpose because I felt I needed a pause to recharge but I kept extending because money was not a problem due to stonks going up.

I learned react, go. Played videogames and had a child. Things are going well.

Part of me is afraid that too much time off the market will make me not fit for the workforce anymore but tbh I feel like my mental health really needed this.

Now I'm faced with a dilemma. Go back to my home country where I probably could retire now at 40 or stay here and try to get back to work. Trump administration has been making my decision easier by the day.
by nine_k | 2025-09-19 21:42:30+00:00
This is why I say about the median salary across a branch of industry. A company is free to bring in anyone they want, but not free to pay them entry-level salary then. They should rather pay entry-level salary to local folks, e.g. recent graduates. The point is to bring above-average workers from abroad, as you say.

I don't think it's easy to game the median number, or the third quartile number if you prefer. Unless the salary distribution is severely bimodal, it should work reasonably.
by DamonHD | 2025-09-19 21:43:04+00:00
Retired - sort of - when the remains of my last two start-ups died (in the same month!) after the pandemic and were sold for OK money. Now doing a part-time PhD working fixing the climate.

Coping - generally fine - helped by building up a new network of friends and doing things like going clubbing and going to music festivals and giving talks and running voluntary orgs. Just been out for beers with my mentee; he will be giving a talk at a session that I am running tomorrow with the local council.
by ulrashida | 2025-09-19 21:43:12+00:00
Unfortunately if you're asking this of yourself you are almost certainly burned out. Speaking as someone currently thinking the same thing -- all the times in my career where I was powering through this sort of thing never crossed my mind, it's only come up more recently as the hours have begun to climb.

Being middle age is a risk for sure, but also keep in mind you have only one or two big changes left before you're done. It matters more to get into a spot that can take you where you need to go.

Good luck with it.
by delichon | 2025-09-19 21:43:17+00:00
> What I can't get is that so many people get so angry at the idea that poor people, or at least poor people younger than 65, could have access to health care in the US.

That's a pretty glib dismissal for real pain. Before Obamacare, in the nearest major city I could make an appointment with a gastroenterologist on a Thursday and see him on the following Tuesday. Now it is over six months for an appointment, and then for every subsequent appointment ... to see a nurse, not a doctor. There used to be five doctors in my rural county, now there are zero. While insurance premiums have skyrocketed. From my point of view healthcare has crumped. You then summarize my dismay as anger at the idea of poor people getting access to healthcare, like what else could it be other than class bigotry?
by RealityVoid | 2025-09-19 21:43:28+00:00
The discussion is already dead, there's no point trying to convince anyone because the discussion is politicized and the current admin doesn't care about petty things like reality. Whoever is right won't matter in this stage, it matters who's saying it.

I might be wrong, fully willing to cede the point, but this whole thing going on is more than _just this point_.
by volleyball | 2025-09-19 21:44:18+00:00
The lawnmower in question is a big-time donor to the Israel state and the IDF. Regarding the IDF the lawnmover seems to have caught some feelings:

Through all of the perilous times since Israel’s founding, we have called on the brave men and women of the IDF to defend our home. In my mind, there is no greater honor than supporting some of the bravest people in the world, and I thank Friends of the IDF for allowing us to celebrate and support these soldiers year after year. We should do all we can to show these heroic soldiers that they are not alone.

When Oracle opened a data-center in Jerusalem, his colleague and CEO Safra Katz had this to say :

...when you connect with Oracle you understand that we are committed to the U.S. and Israel. We are not flexible regarding our mission, and our commitment to Israel is second to none. This is a free world and I love my employees, and if they don't agree with our mission to support the State of Israel then maybe we aren't the right company for them. Larry (Ellison, co-founder of Oracle) and I are publicly committed to Israel and devote personal time to the country and no one should be surprised by that.

"our commitment to Israel is second to none". Does America fall under [none] here? Something to consider when looking at these acquisitions.
by guywithahat | 2025-09-19 21:45:07+00:00
The H1B really should have just been an O-1 from the beginning. Being a software or genetics engineer isn't really that interesting, we literally have millions of software engineers, and more genetics engineers than we have good jobs. If someone is truly exceptional than they deserve an O-1, and if you truly can't find any engineers in the US at your salary then maybe you should move overseas.
by soganess | 2025-09-19 21:45:22+00:00
Nope. At least in the USA, they were carrier locked not subsidized[1]. The 3G was 199$ when subsidized[2].

According to www.usinflationcalculator.com, 500$ would be ~780$ in modern money. Close to the price of the base iPhone 17 and 300+ dollars difference when compared to the smaller of the pro models. So I suppose its price stability is based on the target you pick. If it were me, I'd target against the 1000$ iPhone Air.

1:My personal iPhone 1 never saw an att sim. It was purchased at an apple store.

2:https://techcrunch.com/2008/06/09/3g-iphone-comes-with-2-yea...
by ericmay | 2025-09-19 21:45:58+00:00
That doesn't seem to be specific to H1B visa issuance does it? This seems to me to be more of a general argument in favor of immigration in general to spur economic activity, which as far as I'm aware is "correct", provided you have to also show your math with things like a potential rise in housing costs/rent, strains on services, perhaps some folks don't actually pay taxes, etc. Some of those items might be short term or temporary, some may not. I don't know.

But if we were to take your argument at face value and I generally do because that's what the economists say and makes sense to me, why don't other countries encourage this specific type of immigration? China, for example, or perhaps Japan or Korea? What about New Zealand or Switzerland?
by martin-t | 2025-09-19 21:46:05+00:00
And this is how corrupt abusive companies can keep thriving. People will tell you "vote with your feet" from their high horse but it just doesn't work. These companies will always find somebody else to fill that role. The person needs the job more than the company does.

EDIT: Oh, wow, so much disagreement. 30 minutes, 3 downvotes, 0 comments. So tell me _where_ I am wrong.
by jasonriddle | 2025-09-19 21:46:11+00:00
I've been unemployed for about 1 year now. I was in SF working in tech for about 7 years, and decided I don't want to do that anymore, so I quit.

It's been tough. The hardest part about being unemployed is it is very hard to structure your days because work is no longer the thing that is forcing you to get up, get out, go to bed on time, etc. It's also a strange feeling having to spend from your savings/emergency fund without money coming in, you feel bad and guilty for doing so, it's weird.

I'm changing careers. I've always liked teaching, so I'm doing volunteer english teaching while preparing to apply to go back to school in order to get a Masters in Education.

In the mean time, I'm also doing other small things. Learning about AI, going to board game meetups, doing some traveling, overall it's not the most fun part of my life, but I'm treating it as I will look back on this and realize this was necessary.