I can fully understand that.

Not arguing here, but is there reliable information about the salaries of H1-B and L1 compared to residents and citizens? All my coworkers are immigration visa - India and China. I assume we are paid salary commensurate with title and salary band (i.e., staff engineer might have 2-3 tranches of salary range).

I've always wondered if it's true or not that the mostly Indian workforce in US is paid way below.

Why don't you ask them? Discussing salary with your coworkers is a protected right (your boss cannot fire you) under the labor code for now.

Being open about salary is the only way you'll discover pay discrepancy. People think they don't want to share because they feel they may be overpaid and discussing will result in a pay cut, but that's also a good way to get a constructive dismissal.

I'm not sure online sales were ever part of Walmart's core competencies; I suspect they contracted all that stuff out to third parties.

The reason I suspect that is that one of my relatives bought a product from Walmart.com and needed to return it, so she called the number listed on the front page of the Walmart.com web site (and dialled it correctly; I later double-checked the call record on her phone against the walmart.com web page), and the representative who answered put her on hold, then forwarded her to a scammer who tried to trick her into allowing him to TeamViewer in to her computer remotely. When she refused, he got increasingly abusive and eventually hung up on her.

So whomever Walmart was contracting for online support, they were at least bribable, and arguably criminal.

I grew up under the (basically) Soviet education system. I can tell that it's waaaaay better than the average K-12.

One easy fix? Have a high stakes gaokao-style exam for the US students. SAT/ACT are about as tough as a wad of toilet paper.

The K-12 system in the US has failed. The conservative fix here is absolutely right: institute a voucher system, with the Federally guaranteed funding level, and let parents choose schools. With obvious allowances for students with special needs, rural areas, etc.

It's quite clear that regulation is getting nowhere fast. Even the milquetoast Common Core requirements resulted in a revolt from schools not able to teach even basic literacy.

The knowledge is free.

The skilled professionals to persuade the pupil whose civil rights include refusing to learn to absorb it are not.

You can lock a kid in a library but you can't make her think. When ignorance is virtue we have lost.

There is a real, for-true Lord Sugar in England. He's got the Donald Trump role in their version of The Apprentice.

Good point, but I don't think that's even hit its stride yet. We're talking about 2020-present, and it's not a hockey stick.

I suspect unintended consequences more than AI. That and regulatory capture of some kind. That's the usual suspects.

I don't see this as a troll but an honest opinion. Why is this being downmodded as troll? Do you suspect it was posted by Jimmy Kimmel?

Mod abuse right here. Mod parent up to 2 at least.

Yes, because he's just saddled taxpayers with 10% ownership of Intel. And by offering suggestions to Nvidia to "invest" in Intel he's trying to show the world he's a good businessman that doesn't make poor investment choices, like casinos, airlines, hotels, and other things he's lost money on.

I dunno. China is a "market socialist" system -- which is a contradiction in terms. If China is socialist, then for practical purposes Norway and Sweden have to be even *more* socialist because they have a comprehensive public welfare system which China lacks. And those Nordic countries are rated quite high on global measures of political and personal freedom, and very low on corruption. In general they outperform the US on most of those measures, although the US is better on measures of business deregulation.

The only 32-bit Windows version currently supported by Steam is Windows 10, and I doubt you're going to have any better compatibility with old games running the 32-bit version of Windows 10 than on the 64-bit version.

It makes no sense to claim Chinese courts have a lot of power, although it may seem that way â" itâ(TM)s supposed to seem that way. One of the foundational principles of Chinese jurisprudence is party supremacy. Every judge is supervised by a PLC â" party legal committee â" which oversees budgets, discipline and assignments in the judiciary. They consult with the judges in sensitive trials to ensure a politically acceptable outcome.

So it would be more accurate to characterize the courts as an instrument of party power rather than an independent power center.

From time to time Chinese court decisions become politically inconvenient, either through the supervisors in the PLC missing something or through changing circumstances. In those cases there is no formal process for the party to make the courts revisit the decision. Instead the normal procedure is for the inconvenient decision to quietly disappear from the legal databases, as if it never happened. When there is party supremacy, the party can simply rewrite judicial history to its current needs.

An independent judiciary seems like such a minor point; and frankly it is often an impediment to common sense. But without an independent judiciary you canâ(TM)t have rule of law, just rule by law.

Hereâ(TM)s the problem with that scenario: court rulings donâ(TM)t mean much in a state ruled by one party. China has plenty of progressive looking laws that donâ(TM)t get enforced if it is inconvenient to the party. There are emission standards for trucks and cars that should help with their pollution problems, but there are no enforcement mechanisms and officials have no interest in creating any if it would interfere with their economic targets or their private interests.

China is a country of strict rules and lax enforcement, which suits authoritarian rulers very well. It means laws are flouted routinely by virtually everyone, which gives the party leverage. Displease the party, and they have plenty of material to punish you, under color of enforcing laws. It sounds so benign, at least theyâ(TM)re enforcing the law part of the time, right? Wrong. Laws selectively enforced donâ(TM)t serve any public purpose; theyâ(TM)re just instruments of personal power.

Americans often donâ(TM)t seem to understand the difference between rule of law and rule *by* law. Itâ(TM)s ironic because the American Revolution and constitution were historically important in establishing the practicality of rule of law, in which political leaders were not only expected to obey the laws themselves, but had a duty to enforce the law impartially regardless of their personal opinions or interests.

Rule *by* law isnâ(TM)t a Chinese innovation, it was the operating principle for every government before 1789. A government that rules *by* law is only as good as the men wielding power, and since power corrupts, itâ(TM)s never very good for long.

From what I've read, you use a pair of tin snips to cut out the bar code of the original filter and tape it over the third-party replacement filters to trick the sensor, and apparently that works quite nicely and saves a bundle over GE filters.