What's the downside of flywheels? Looking at wikipedia, the comparison to batteries is very one-sided, offering zero downsides.

I would imagine that there must be some, or we'd all have flywheels sitting in our basements. Is it cost?

You are extrapolating based on a very limited window. With the current priority date for EB3 from India being 11 years, there's nobody out there who's waited more than 11 years.

We'll see how it moves going forward, but even it moves only 4 months per year, it'll be another 14 years before the priority date falls behind 20 years, making it "decades".

Europeans can get out of H1Bs into green cards much much faster. The US diversity law only allows at most 10% of the immigrants every year to be from one country and so, Indians and Chinese nationals have to wait in line for their turn to come up. There is no line for Europeans.

It's a little misleading to say "Europeans"... *Every* country except for India and China has a shorter waiting list, including all other Asian and South American countries, as well as Canada and Mexico.

And even China is only about 3 years behind the rest of the world. Only India has a real problem where the current wait is 8-11 years (*not* decades).

It's good and easy to get, but has a few bad downsides... First, it offers no direct path to immigration -- it's there for your to do the work and leave when you're done. That's fine for temporary jobs, but not a good way to grow your company. There is no real time limit, however if it looks like you've used it to permanently move to US, the renewals could be denied.

The second is that because it offers no path to green card, the spouses are never allowed to work (unless they get their own TN visas independently), which is not very attractive to families.

Because of these issues, many TN holders apply and transition to H1-B while working in US.

What makes science and technology different? Why do we need a large specialty VISA program specifically for what we do? "Normal" immigration is fine for every other sector of the economy.

"The best" foreign people in science and tech are more likely to be here on a different program anyway. I just did a round of interviews for my company. Three of the top applicants were foreign born. One was in the real "exceptional technical ability" temporary visa program (O-1), one was a greencard holder (EB-2), and one was a naturalized citizen. These program work a lot better than H-1B (they have more protections for the employee as well), why don't we expand those instead?

You are quite misinformed about immigration works. What is this "normal immigration" you speak of? There's only two ways to immigrate into US -- through a family petition, and through employment (there are a bunch of other very special cases, but they are minor in numbers... such "visa for victim of human trafficking", or "iraqis support US military"). Naturalization and EB-2 green cards are the end-result of employment-based visa programs such as H1-B, L, and O visas -- they are not some separate programs that work "better".

Your EB-2 and naturalized citizen candidates most likely got in through H1-B or L-1 (inter-company transfer) originally, which are the two most common employment-based visas that allow eventual transition to green card.

So we need to restructure out of wasteful mass consumption and shift to more sustainable with a focus on quality, durability and fit for life (products that last your lifetime, rather than fad or disposable products).

That only works for things like furniture and other simple solid objects. For everything else, the technology advances too fast to make this practical. Why make a car that works for 100 years when in 10-15 years the cars will be much more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, and we'll be better off having everybody switch to them? If the Nokias from 10 years ago were made to last a 100 years, would that make any difference in how quickly they disappeared?

The kid is a serial offender. Previously disciplined for referring to another kid as "black", and for bringing a book to school depicting pregnancy.

I thought you were joking. But that's really what he's been suspend for the previous two times.

That's insanity...

Any links to back that up? The Oxford dictionary says that both are correct.

No, no they won't. 1080p is already really good.

When it comes to TVs, yes... but projectors would see a huge benefit. When you project 1080p onto a 120+" screen, things definitely start getting a bit fuzzy.

Of course, that's a niche market, but it could be enough to drive the prices down into somewhat reasonable category. Projectors themselves have gotten cheap enough that way..

Comets are discovered by (obsessed) people scanning the sky every night for a fuzzy dot that shouldn't be there.

I'm completely ignorant on this topic.. but that sounds like something that computers should be able to do easily, no?

I did, too.. Then I read somewhere that if you wipe your phone and reinstall it could eliminate a lot of the problems. So, I backed up my data, wiped it, installed the new OS and it's been running perfectly ever since.

There's something in the upgrade of Nexus 5 that goes wrong with some units, it seems like.

Aside from the fact that it's fundamentally incompatible with democracy, wasn't a huge part of the American revolution the idea that there should be no taxation without representation? Those felons are taxpayers, aren't they?

All of non-citizens that work in US and pay taxes are also getting taxed without representation... and there are likely way more of them than felons.

I second that. That recipe yields the juiciest turkey I've ever had.

The ones who actually make the team better dont consider themselves to be rockstars. There is a correlation between humility and talent (otherwise known as the Dunning-Kruger effect). ... This is how they like to imagine they are, but not what they're like in reality. In reality they are childish and petulant. If their authority and awesomeness is not recognised they will make everyone else's life hell until it is.

Like I said, I don't think you've worked with them before. What you describe is most definitely not what people consider a "rock star developer". And, they don't go around calling themselves that, either. Other people do.

The two I've had a pleasure to work with were both very humble, and incredibly good at what they did. Everybody who worked with them got better for it... I know I did.

Largest organisation I worked for in that capacity was 80 staff with 20 developers (most in a consulting capacity). In fact that's why I ended up managing the dev teams, we didn't have enough of them to justify their own manager so it fell under my jurisdiction as IT manager.... I had a pair of senior devs who could keep the team together and moving and were great at it, I considered it my job to keep things out of their way so they could do their jobs.

Ok, not a big company, but still very bottom-heavy. One senior dev per 10 developers, and one manager for a group of 20... it explains why you do have values of a manager in a big company -- since your team works like one.

If you had 4 senior devs that could "bang out" high quality code, each could do that and still lead 2 more junior developers, and your team would be almost half the size and finish in the same amount of time. And, with that smaller team, you might actually be able to dedicate some real time to individuals you manage.

I hate managing with "rockstar" developers because they're always too arrogant and full of themselves. They detract from the team, argue and refuse to listen to others.

Those aren't rock-star developers. As another poster said, you likely have never worked with a rock-star developer. They are great at what they do, *and* they make the team better. They are rare, but it's awesome when you see somebody that inspires others around them by what they can do.

They help the junior devs and often their time is better spent doing this than banging out code even though their code is a lot better than the juniors. Someone who can manage a team is valued for more than just their coding skills, if they've got people skills they are definitely a force multiplier.

You sound like you work in a big company, on big teams. This is certainly true there, and in order to have a large team productive, you need a lot of good people keeping those juniors productive.

Several times, though, I've seen those similar good people bang out their much superior code and finish the project in the same amount of time, while have a team that's 6 or 7 times smaller, with no juniors.