So I mostly agree with your sentiment, but the facts you're using to justify your sentiment are suspect.

Farmers aren't sued because their crops are tainted. Farmers are sued when they utilize the patented genes. If their crops are contaminated, but they don't actually change their approach to dealing with pests, or change how they harvest their crops, they aren't getting any of the benefit of the genes and so they aren't infringing on the patent and would prevail in a lawsuit.

You're probably alluding to the Schmeiser case here. The key thing to remember here is that Schmeiser (a) suspected that his crop was contaminated, (b) tested the contaminated plants to confirm his suspicions, (c) saved and isolated the seed in question, and (d) used that "contamination" seed to produce something like a thousand acres of crop. That was what got him in hot water, and that's why he lost against Monsanto. That wasn't about the contamination, it was about the exploitation of the (patented) traits of that crop.

GMOs aren't forced onto farmers. Farmers, at any time, can decide to buy "public domain" seed and produce non-GMO crops all they want. Seed from most every conceivable crop is banked and can be purchased trivially from universities and governments. Farmers choose GMO seed because GMO seed produces more profitable crops, either because the traits sell better in the market, or because the crops have higher yields. This isn't about GMOs and patents, except to the degree that these (superior) crops wouldn't exist but for the patents that allow companies to be profitable researching and producing them.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with Monsanto or GMOs. Glyphosate-resistant weeds exist because they evolved to exist, exactly the same way that antibiotic-resistant bacteria exists, and being a customer of Monsanto does not mean you don't have to deal with herbicide-resistant weeds. The problem is one of poor weed control practices by the farmers. If you kill all of your weeds, with a variety of herbicides, the problem doesn't exist. If you rely entirely on a single herbicide, and allow some of the weeds to survive, you end up breeding herbicide-resistant weeds. It doesn't matter if the herbicide is Glyphosate or something more typical.

There is a spectrum of competency among H1B workers just as there is among non-H1B workers. If you are a tech company trying to hire only the smartest candidates (without regard to H1B status), more H1B candidates means a larger pool of exceptional candidates. Don't think that a difference in "averages" says anything about people in the top percentiles.

This isn't necessarily representative of all companies trying to hire STEM people. I work at a large tech company and do a tremendous amount of interviewing. The problem is not finding people with STEM backgrounds, it's with finding good people with STEM backgrounds. While "good" is subjective, and the bar may be different for different companies, if my bar is set so high that I can't hire as many people as I want to, that's still a shortage in my opinion, and one that can be addressed by more STEM education and letting me hire more H1Bs. People can be cynical all they want about hiring cheap H1B workers, but you can't argue with the fact that allowing yourself access to more candidates means you can cherrypick more superstar workers.

Yes, this is absolutely the case. I do a lot of interviewing for a major tech company, and while there is no shortage at all of STEM candidates shoving resumes in our face, very few of them meet our (admittedly high) acceptance bar. So, for us, there is indeed a shortage of qualified workers. More/better STEM education would allow smarter people to enter the industry, as would allowing more H1B visas.

If someone with proven CEO skills has a choice between companies, they're probably going to choose the one willing to pay 400x, leaving the one paying 10x-20x to take a risk on someone unproven. Even if it works out, and the cheaper CEO turns out to know what they're doing, how long are they going to stick around and work for your "intelligent" shareholders when his resume now puts him in the same league as the 400x CEOs?

Lots of people seem to be missing the point here. It's easy to be cynical and point out that companies must be doing it so they can get away with paying less for desperate H1B workers. These people do not work for tech companies trying to hire good people. There is no shortage of candidates with STEM backgrounds and education, which is all this study seems to say. I have done literally hundreds of interviews at a large tech company for software/systems engineers, and meet an endless supply of STEM candidates all the time. The problem is that the vast majority of them do not meet our hiring bar. If you need to hire 100 software engineers, but can only 50 that meet the company's high hiring standards, that kind of sounds like a shortage to me. Sure, we can hire 50 mediocre software engineers to get to 100, but why would I want to do that? I'd much rather see better STEM education and H1B flexibility (in that order) so that I can fill those other 50 positions with good people.

https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy

Of course, I'm generalizing. Even in areas that have relatively free media, there are plenty of people that happily choose to live in an information bubble and lap up propaganda. Life can be easier that way. But I suspect that there are more information skeptics in the USA than North Korea, which was largely my point. That may not be true in the future as Kim's information monopoly starts to wither.

China has indeed done that. It seems to me that The Kim regime knows it's not going to survive forever. Its large military, nuclear capabilities, and "crazy" persona are likely there entirely to keep the regime in power as long as possible. The reason China wants the DPRK left alone is because when the regime does collapse, China is going to be the one left picking up the pieces and dealing with North Korean refugees (and quite possibly an American military presence right on their border). IMO, the right thing to do is press for more free trade, more information in the hands of North Koreans, and eventually a peaceful regime change. In the mean time, Kim should be ignored, except to the extent that we should be prepared in case he does decide to do something stupid.

The DPRK has nuclear weapons and 1.1M soldiers in active duty, who have been slowly massing along the border to South Korea for years. How would you protect South Korea in the process? Keep in mind that DPRK has another 8.2M soldiers in reserve (~38% of the DPRK population is active or reserve duty).

With an active war on North Korean soil, people are going to be fleeing in droves, mostly into China. China isn't going to like that. Possibly, they may not even let them in. How many refugees will die for lack of basic necessities? Do you have a plan to address that?

China is going to be *pissed off* beyond words, mostly for being the one that's going to have to deal with the consequences. They're not going to tolerate an American military presence there. Does your $1bn budget include a contingency for a war with China? How do you plan to avoid one?

Foreign policy is hard.

I think plenty of people would disagree on that last part. North Korea isn't self-sufficient when it comes to food (never having fully recovered from the famine after the Soviet Union collapsed). Stopping food aid would directly result in millions of deaths.

The North Korean government cares more about being in power than they do about feeding their own people. They've demonstrated that repeatedly. Giving the world yet another example by stopping food aid and blaming the regime won't change anything. Further, they view their nuclear weapons as a way of gaining leverage over South Korea and further protecting their power. Without nuclear weapons it becomes easier for someone to say "we've had enough", march in and topple the government.

So, you have a regime that isn't going to take any step that might weaken their position. They have a tremendous military. They can't feed their own population and rely on foreign aid. From their perspective, what options are left? Be belligerent and hold everyone else hostage for more aid. Maybe, provoke South Korea, the US and China into a war that, if nothing else, lets the regime go out with a bang, with fingers pointing squarely at anyone other than themselves.

Up until recently, North Koreans literally had no other sources of information than state-controlled propaganda. While I'm sure there were enough cases where propaganda disagreed with local reality for them to be skeptical of everything they read, if you hear a message stated as fact from the moment you're born through adulthood, and hear nothing to suggest that this might be a lie, why would you (much less the majority of people there) ever seriously consider it to be a lie? In the US we grow up hearing dissenting viewpoints for everything, causing us to be skeptical of everything. North Koreans don't have that.

There have been tens of thousands of people over the last few decades escape from North Korea to tell us about their experiences. Their perception of the world is essentially entirely drawn from state propaganda.

Increasingly, however, a market economy is beginning to fluorish, driven by trade mostly from China. Many parts of the border are largely open between the two countries. With trade in products comes trade in information, and so the propaganda machine is only now starting to lose power. But there are many people still quite insulated from this and who have no reason to believe anything other than what the state tells them.

I suppose it's possible that the company has changed so much since the senior engineers became senior that their ability to discuss the predictive power of VPN logs can't be relied upon. But it's also possible (IMO likely) that it hasn't changed all that much. So, to say that VPN logs can not have predictive power about productivity is false.

What is the alternative? The new CEO single-handedly interviews everyone, comes up with her own system of performance assessments, and makes decisions about thousands of engineers? That obviously can't scale. Maybe the new CEO could fire the entire management structure and replace it? Probably not scalable either, and you'd lose lots of good managers in the process. Just fire everyone? How can you not rely on people that already work there? That's just not realistic. You have to work with what you've got.

Keep in mind that everyone at Yahoo is not oblivious to the problems at Yahoo. It is possible for problems to be known, and to persist, simply because of company culture and inertia. Nobody wants to rock the boat. Nobody wants to be responsible for taking away a perk. But change the culture, maybe some middle management, and bring in a CEO that doesn't mind if people get upset a little bit, and these problems (that everyone knows about) can get fixed while still relying on people that were part of the old system.

First, North Korea is not off-limits to everyone else in the world. Generally tour groups have minders, so your discussions with the populace aren't exactly open and candid, but...

Second, tens of thousands of people have successfully made it out of North Korea in recent history. These people have all shared their experiences and have allowed us to learn quite a lot about how the country works and how the people think and what they believe.

Yes, thanks.