I’m almost positive that David Beckham isn’t a citizen of the US. That’s almost definitely by choice, given that he’d meet the criteria for investment several times over.

While I appreciate the offer, I think my wife would probably not be too happy with me taking another lover. 😂

That’s absolute nonsense. Most countries have similar paths to entry. They also have paths that support specific jobs that are required by the country - something the US does not. Finally, many of them have easy and clear paths to naturalisation - again something the US doesn’t have.

Just because unskilled nationals make it into your country, it doesn’t mean that immigration in your country is easier than other countries. Every right-winger moans about the same thing in every country you’ve listed…

Haha, what do you base that on?!

My experience is the exact opposite. I’m a software engineer at a big tech company, and in this climate even they are unable to sponsor a visa to the US from the UK. Literally anywhere else? Sure, no problem at all, whether it be Europe, Singapore, China, Japan, Egypt, Australia, anywhere we have an office - except America.

Americans, welcome anywhere! We’ve got two in my team alone this year, and in 5 years they can get permanent residency. I know managers that want me on their team because I built tooling for them, but they’re not allowed to hire me because it would require a visa…

When I was at school, Sunny D and Vodka was a recommended mix to make you ill enough to throw up and miss school the next day. I can’t believe people willingly drink this shit…

From a company perspective, it’s a common sentiment. Google and Amazon have mantras around trying to stay agile and relevant despite being behemoths, and both have arguably kept into boomer tech territory the second they made a poor CEO hire. Microsoft had their Ballmer era, and while Nadella did a lot of good at Microsoft they’ve had a lot of failures in established divisions to be soaked up by AI and sales.

I think that all of big tech has struggled over the last 3 years. Sacrificing employee skill for shareholder value has ultimately moved them all into IBM territory, whereas the cool tech is happening at startups again. If AI is a bust, and another company comes along and eats their lunch in their established markets like consumer devices, web tooling, or cloud computing, they’re in real danger of another huge set of layoffs and resetting their businesses to only core profit-making ventures. What I think we’ve seen companies shift towards death, Day 2, rotting from the inside, or whatever your business calls stagnation.

Yep!

I’m in the UK, and First basically hold the monopoly in my city. There are so few buses that they often skip stops at rush hour because they’re already full, or because they’ve decided in the moment that your stop doesn’t matter.

Nothing wakes you up during your commute like listening to a woman get fired over the phone because she’s going to be late for work, despite still being 60 mins early for what should be a 20 min journey.

I liked Outer Worlds, but while I do see some “NV magic” there, it feels like both Bethesda AND Obsidian are no longer the same companies that they once were. Obsidian are still quietly putting out some solid games…but not to the same quality of two generations prior.

Tribalism is surprisingly rampant in gaming, especially when a developer picks a side/is acquired by the creator of “their” console.

I can somewhat understand this. I have IBS, and most people with a bowel issue will tell you that IBS is basically your doctor saying ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Instead of getting help from your doctor, you go online and you hear about people finding relief through taking weird supplements, or eating only rice, or taking pre and probiotics of varying types. None of it has any proof, but it’s better to try something than to struggle - and sometimes you’re lucky or you find some short-lived relief.

The difference is that there often isn’t evidence for these things working, whereas there is plenty of evidence out there that says that chiropractors are doing legitimately dangerous practices to your body. The difference is that someone is trying to make a profit from this lack of knowledge.

I’ve told this story before, but newborn chiropractors are a thing, and many new parents will take their BABIES to get their neck and back snapped around. It’s frankly fucking disgusting.

The same goes for pregnancy, where you essentially gain a deficiency because you’re building another person inside you.

Haha, what?

We literally predicted Trump before you voted for him, because of the right-wing populism that caused Brexit.

The show had so much potential, but at times it was an absolute mess of ideas, whether it was weird musical numbers, or bizarre tone shifts. The whole “they’re the chosen one with amazing powers given by birthright/zero effort” trope aside, it often felt like the show was an audition for the actors/writers to show range for future work. I started the show happy, and finished it feels a mixture of confusion and annoyance…

The aunties were great, though - and always great to see Eowyn on screen again.

It’s like this in many countries. In the UK we’ve never had to deal with people being held in contempt of parliament, but in recent years we’ve seen corruption and a blatant disregard for “rules” that would have made politicians sick a decade ago. It’s at a point where the UK has considered a constitution to ensure that anyone caught being openly corrupt or breaking the rules can be arrested.

Many right-wing politicians have shown that the rules have been lax for a very long time, and IMO it’s a sign that perhaps we as a society need to seriously look at how we stop the right (and perhaps even the left) from abusing their power without consequence.

As someone with IBS, I’ve kept an eye on potential remedies or cures for years, and while I’d love to be supportive of this, I’m skeptical that it will actually amount to something until human trials are effective and treatment actually starts to roll out.

I’ve known people at IC level sell outside of windows and barely get a mention. Some people have odd vesting schedules for things like RSU’s, so sometimes it’s unavoidable.

At higher levels, it’s locked down considerably. My old director said that he had to have a meeting to go through a sale of his stock, so that it could be approved to be out of a window of potential releases in the company outside of his own division. I imagine that at VP+ level you need accountants just to handle what is a few clicks for an average corp worker.

Oh, they still do these…

I’ve heard some stories where managers had to lay off most of their team, then put the remaining on performance plans, and then when those people were fired, they had no directs and then had to convert to a IC role they were woefully unable to do, transfer (lol good luck), or leave.

I work in AI.

We’ve known this about LLM’s for many years. One of the reasons they weren’t widely used was due to hallucinations, where they’ll be coerced into saying something confidently incorrect. OpenAI created a great set of tools that showed true utility for LLM’s, and people were able to largely accept that even if it’s wrong, it’s good for basic tasks like writing a doc outline or filling in boilerplate in scripts.

Sadly, grifters have decided that LLM’s were the future, and they’ve put them into applications where they have no more benefit than other, compositional models. While they’re great at orchestration, they’re just not suited to search, answering broad questions with limited knowledge, or voice-based search - all areas they’ll be launched in. This doesn’t even scratch the surface of a LLM being used for critical subjects that require knowledge of health or the law, because those companies that decided that AI will build software for them, or run HR departments are going to be totally fucked when a big mistake happens.

It’s an arms race that no one wants, and one that arguably hasn’t created anything worthwhile yet, outside of a wildly expensive tool that will save you some time. What’s even sadder is that I bet you could go to any of these big tech companies and ask IC’s if this is a good use of their time and they’ll say no. Tens of thousands of jobs were lost, and many worthwhile projects were scrapped so some billionaire cunts could enter an AI pissing contest.

It’s surprising how being stuck on music from your youth is common. While I do listen to new bands, I was reminded the other day that Futures by Jimmy Eat World is almost twenty years old.