For years people here on Slashdot have complained about H1-B abuse and the need to fix the program abuses that allowed companies to use it to cut costs and lay off Americans. So are you happy they are tightening the program, focusing it on experienced hires, and raising the cost to employers? Or is it bad because Trump?

If you are a nurse, you will resent the US importing nurses. If you are a brick layer, you will resent imported bricklayers. Ditto truck drivers, etc. of course, these policies tend not to effect those at the very top, and trust fund kids never really need to worry about starving or going homeless, so it tends to break down along the usual privileged/working people lines.

Points of view always come down to self-interest, and as a person who grew up very poor, never went to college, but taught myself to code ⦠Iâ(TM)ve done okay over the years, but employers markets when competition is high has always been harder for me, because most of the H1Bs I compete with have masters degrees. And while there are some exceptions, I have worked with some really bright Indian workers, many were pushed into the field by their parents who mandated that they become doctors, lawyers, or programmers, and are not all that into it outside of the income. It is very hard to self-assess without being biased, so this is merely my flawed opinion, but the large majority, despite their far better formal education, do not feel significantly more skilled than myself.

What they cannot do, however, is change jobs easily or make demands, so big corporations have developed a preference for them, and they at times make this clear. For instance, I worked at one very large company that you all know, and one day, out of the blue, they mandated that all workers have a passport. My job required no travel. They claimed that this was for security.

Well, a passport is something that one hundred percent of H1Bs have, while only something only 45% of citizens have. The deadline to get one wasnâ(TM)t very long, but it was not the end of the world. Just an inconvenience for many, and what, a hundred and fifty bucks or so.

In addition, though, Indian works got extra time off, especially in the fall for travel back to India for that holiday. They basically got an extra month off that citizens did not get. Then there were the oncalls for things related to the government that required citizenship to work on, meaning Oncallâ(TM)s for citizens came around far more frequently, no pay differential though.

Again, not a huge deal but we did lose people, and the company was fine with it, especially if they were citizens. Best of all, H1Bs pose not threat to unionization. Itâ(TM)s always American rabble rousers.

So, is H1B a benefit to CEOs, shareholders, executives, their children, and people in their general socioeconomic class? Absolutely. Is it a detriment to workers? Of course. I am uneducated and even I understand how supply and demand affects value. If you increase the supply of people like me, the value of people like me goes down. So unless I am financially secure with a support lifeline, I will likely oppose H1B visas, even if I say the opposite to avoid the insults that people will hurl at me.

To argue that people who oppose their own devaluation are evil, is evil itself, IMHO.

But to the question about being happy about it, then no, no I am not. Not yet at least and likely not ever. Anytime the government proposes something that will ostensibly benefit me, it usually does not. It gets watered down with loopholes placed all over the place, and becomes just a -olitical mirage. I mean did CAN SPAM , can SPAM?

So, I am very skeptical, because the US government has never been interested in helping me or people like me, and they have had this lack of interest for so long, that I am completely unable to imagine it ever changing.

It may be a great political football for everyone to wring their hands over, but there is far too much interest, power, and money aimed at preserving the status-quo for it to ever change. Rather, it is just another dividing point for the masses to quibble over thus ensuring that something like Occupy never, ever happens again.

I assume most of you know that was the genesis of the supposed polarization. Everyone was eyeballing the 1 percent as the source of most evils, Brexit won, Trump won, then BAM, out of nowhere gender identity was the most important thing to happen to anyone, and it was very much not an organic hysteria.

Since then, it has been moral panic after moral panic, and the only winners have been the ruling class.

This is just another one.

I just did a build and got 64GB DDR5 for about $500. Same modules were maybe $300 three months ago. It has gone up quite a bit. I donâ(TM)t know if it would kill a new build, depends on how bad I need the rig, but I feel you.

Yes, a clear troll post, well done moderator. I feel lucky to live in a world in which, of the millions and millions of sperm competing for the lone egg, you won! Not only that, but your clear grasp of the concept of TROLL shows that, when all is said and done, mod points are indeed invested in those who are best able to apply them.

If I may ask one small favor, it is that you give yourself a round of applause.

Louder.

More enthusiasm, please.

There it is, thatâ(TM)s just about perfect.

Theoretically, they can use ChatGPT too, except now, it is going to dispute their status as all-seeing, all-knowing beings, essentially turning OpenAI into one big BlasphemyBot.

I do not think they have thought this through.

Oh you you you. Wah there is a tornado on the ground, wah it might hit my house, wah it might carry my annoying little dog off, wah me me me me me!

Everything is about you, is it not?

Did you think about the wants of the corporation? No you did not, you selfish rat bastard! Retaining control of your property is more convenient for them, and it allows them to use said property for their own interests. You want they should give that up so that you can avoid getting killed by a 200 mph wall of wind? What, exactly, makes you so special?

One could also blame you for living in a country, and accepting the status-quo which allows corporations to retain control of the property you purchase by using nefarious licensing schemes for inseparable parts of the property, thus ensuring you own nothing from now until the end of time, unless that thing breaks at which point it is yours all yours and the corporations now explicitly disclaim any and all responsibility for it.

I mean, when your interests have so overtly been subverted to your ruling class superiors, I hardly think you should be surprised to find that your interests have been overtly subverted to your ruling class superiors.

Anyway, Dorothy, enjoy Munchkinland and tell Glenda that I will catch the next twister and be over there around 11 to tap that good witch puhaho with MY magic wand, if you know what I mean.

And I think you do.

Know what I mean, that is.

It is like my mamma always said, life is like Microsoft Windows, you never know what you gonna get; but chances are, it will be a bunch of unstable, poorly-coded ass candy.

My effeminate yet inexplicably brilliant son (my kinda whorish wife was no scholar either so I do not know where he got it from) installed Linux on all our computers, and I use it to buy shoes on the Internet, but now I cannot run my games. I was getting good at shooting motherfuckers but now all I can do is run.

When I tell people I run Linux they call me stupid because I will not have anyone to blame when my computer crashes, but I tell them that at least I can support Unicode in 2025, and that Slashdot cannot, and they get confused because I changed the sub-jekt. Deep down I think they know the part about Slashdot is true. Even Jen-nays daddies children affection blog could support Unicode back in 1995, so stupid is as stupid does.

And that is all I have to say about that.

How am I supposed to recruit employees for my sweatshops now?

Can attest that autism is way, way, way more prevalent now than it was when we were kids. I live in Seattle, raised 3 kids here, and a third of their peers had autism, Asperger, sensory processing disorder, or something similar. It is more than just more frequent diagnosis, these kids were visibly different in ways that I did not encounter growing up. Never mind that they had food allergies at absolutely shocking rates. It made birthday parties a real landmine as food that at least two kids were not allergic to were rare.

I know shit about vaccine and autism links (knocks wood that my kids were all relatively healthy, by chance, not my awesomeness), and I have no idea what the cause of this massive epidemic is, but it is something, and it would probably help a large swath of future kids to know what that something is.

âoehe discovered that a remote kill command had been issued to his device.â

We read recently where someone did this to their ex-employer and everyone in here was cheering that he had been arrested, found guilty, and sent to prison.

So I guess we know what is going to happen to the vacuum company.

I wonder when the cops will arrive at the manufacturers place of business?

Should be any minute now.

Any minute.

Probably just a tiny bit longer.

Are they there yet?

No?

Not yet?

Are you sure?

Check again.

Still nothing?

Maybe there is traffic.

If the goal is to relieve Californians from a tedious burden of literacy, and taking responsibility for agreeing to and signing contracts

LOL @ contracts. An adhesion contract is not a real contract. Good thing too since nearly 100 percent of them are illusory. Unilateral modification clauses ameliorate even the appearance of a legitimate contract. Damn illiterate consumers keep writing those things in I guess. They should take some responsibility. And pull themselves up by their bootstraps while they are at it!

Of course you can criticize it in realtime, unless you have no brain. Most of us have immediate reactions to media we consume.

So I can rent a movie from some streaming service, play it on my own feed, make a couple of comments while it is playing, and I am good?

I worked for a major tech company that is a household name. In my department of about 60 people, 52 were H1Bs. But, one of our on call rotations required US Citizenship since it dealt with a government client and required a security clearance. Because of this, eight of us had double on calls, and the ITAR one was more frequent. We did not get any kind of bonus for it so that kind of sucked.

The H1Bs got extra vacation in the fall, to go back to India for a month for some holiday that happens, they staggered it so not everyone left at once, though. They got the rest of the normal time off the rest of the year.

Around 2018 the company started doing this weird thing were they obviously tried to trim the US workers. They did things like, required a passport to continue working at the company. They claimed it was for an extra layer of background check. Only 45% or so of Americans have passports, but 100 percent of H1Bs do., so that was an easy low hanging fruit thing, You could apply for one, if you did it immediately, but it took awhile, and they held it against you that you did not already have one. I do not know why it helped a background check, BECAUSE they still could not work on ITAR.

If you work in a majority H1B department, if definitely feels weird sometimes, and like you were not always wanted.

That said, the workers themselves were mostly cool, although they lived in fear of losing their sponsorship, which I think is the bigger appeal to employers than their potentially lower salaries, if they are lower.

They definitely are more obedient and expect and demand less in (they will not balk at coming to the office) some ways, but expect and demand more in others, like vacation.

I was there for about 5 years and as time went on it felt like we were gradually more and more preferring the the Visa holding employees, and even the managers became more and more Indian.

Everybody and everything tries to work every angle to their advantage. That is the one constant in life. If a business spots an angle, they will use it. I guess we all will, but they seem to have more opportunities to do so.

The government does nothing. Companies are constantly making computers owned by other people do things that are against the interests of the owner, including disabling it altogether. Especially handheld computers a/k/a phones. After all, you willfully gave them the right to do so when you used your computer, and the TOS clearly said on page 38 that by using your purchased property, you agree to give up control over it. They can shut it down if they do not like the way you use it, or if they do not like the software you run on the computer that you own. If you have a problem with that, you can sue at your own expense. Watch out for that arbitration clause though. You probably cannot sue at all.

But let an individual citizen do it, and OH MY GOD. The state is more than happy to use your money to investigate and prosecute them. Not to mention the oh so moral outrage that follows. How dare a non corporate entity try to affect the property of someone else!

It is an outrage. And outrage I tell you!

âoeAmerica is really a distopian hellhole when it comes to consumer interaction and protections.â

Hey look at Mr Optimist here. I have lived here all of my life, and for years I have longed for America to become a consumer dystopian hellhole, as that would be a massive improvement.

Alas, it remains a pipe dream.

Credit reporting = extortion for the 21st century.

Most people passively accepted it, so yeah, corporations enthusiastically use it to force you to pay whether you owe or not. You can cancel all you want, but they will still try to punish you for not paying. Especially since the mechanism to do so is already in place, and is so damn easy to use.

Or you can spend who knows how many hours trying to dispute it. Either way, you will pay.

Recurring charges were not invented for your convenience.