Caner isn't out of your control, it's usually caused by being fat and eating bad food. It's sometimes caused by genetics but that's a minority of cancers.
What is the life expectancy and maternal mortality ratio for lean white people in New York and Massachusetts? I'll bet that it's better than most European countries.
Only fools pay for healthcare with insurance. If a doctor can't convince you to pay directly, don't use his services. Find a better doctor and pay for it yourself.
You need fewer friends. Join a Luddite group or be a loner, it's a better life. As you age, more people will become like you and you'll gain more friends.
Socialism isn't the solution, it's the problem. People deserve to be paid for work and the better the work that they do, the more they deserve to be paid, even though that can be much more than the average person earns.
Capitalism seeks rent from having capital, so the obvious optimization is to squash the ability to demand higher wages (original Marxist argument about "ownership of means of production" was how big capitalist controlled access to machines you needed to the work, thus being able to depress the wages)
I don't think you understand socialism and capitalism.
Suppression of wages is very much a feature of capitalism (the company's mission is to acquire capital for shareholders; technology that lowers costs by reducing the need for labor, or reducing the payment for labor, is a goal); whereas socialism holds that those who do the work should benefit from their labor (workers should own the means of production).
A "socialist" company in the U.S. would be an employee-owned company or a co-op (like REI) though they would never call themselves that because Americans don't understand what socialism is (and have been taught that it's "evil").
Ironically, other countries (former British colonies) have more access to US "specialty occupation" working visas than the UK does -- none of these are H1-B.
Canadians and Mexicans have TN, Australians have E3, Singapore and Chile have H-1B1 (a subcategory of H1-B but with its own quotas).
I have to correct myself slightly -- the Brit engineers I do meet in the US often come here on an L1A/L1B intra-company transfer from a British subsidiary. So that's one path.
But yes, the visa path for UK citizen to accept a direct job offer is much more limited.
I'm a British-American hardware engineer, I've lived in the UK nearly all my life. I've a home, and a family with kids here, I'm very settled. I've had plenty opportunity to move to the US, even before I had a family (with my current employer or under my own steam as a citizen) and I've no interest. I visit the US every few years and by the end of the trip I'm very much done with it all. Other than the much larger job market, I don't think there's a single US thing I want. Everything we have here is either better, or I'm sufficiently used to it. American is an unappealing place to live for many social reasons, I'd much rather move to France or Germany if I had to leave (and wasn't worried about the language barriers).
It's practically very difficult to move to the US. Getting a visa is hard even in the best case (with a helpful sponsor). And if you're in any way settled in the UK (partner, house, possessions, etc) then you've got multiple other problems to solve.
I'm under the impression that tech people working in the US on visas are exploited. The end of year review / firing round which is so popular in the US means you can lose your job, which means you lose your visa, and you get something like 4 weeks to land a replacement or have to move out of the country.
At 20? Sure, who cares. If you've got a house, kids in a local school? The level of stress about being abruptly thrown out of the country seems untenable.
I would expect that dynamic to suppress wages for immigrants (as you have fear to keep them in line instead). Healthcare seems to be similarly set up to frighten people into staying in their current employment.
This perspective might not be accurate, but it's why this British engineer is unwilling to move to the US.
You're not wrong, but immigrants from other places are willing to take that risk with their families. This insecurity, for better or for worse, selects for a type of hungry immigrant who are also risk-takers, for whom the push of their own country overrides the risks.
(Don't get me wrong -- I'm not condoning it -- US immigration is really wanting. I'm just remarking on its 2nd order effects).
If you grew up with European norms, it might feel like exploitation. But for others seeking opportunity or fleeing poverty, it's a good trade off.
I've been studying the history of early emigration lately. Seems to me that outside of those who didn't have the means to leave, the Brits who were more upper class stayed home because they were happy enough with the status quo. It's the more blue collar Brits who had less to lose that went over to the new world. And America was built by the latter group.
(Canada OTOH was initially populated by the Brits who went over to the new world, but were happy with the status quo of being Brits i.e. the United Empire Loyalists. That's why Canadians today are just a little more risk-averse than Americans. Source: I'm Canadian).
Immigrating to USA is hard, probably one of the hardest because competition is so high. Tbh I'd recommend going someplace like Hong Kong whose government is starved for talent and pays similar when balancing for tax but similar social services.
Hardware engineer here, from a qualification perspective. I worked for a large American defence company and was invited to work in the US. I declined.
The work culture, social and economic stability are terrible. Education is expensive or poor. Regulation and standards are poor. Not a good place to bring up a family.
My cousin (an American living and working in France) married a guy originally from Morocco. After eventually realizing that they might want to move to the US, they couldn't, because he couldn't get a visa.
It would have taken quite a bit of time- my cousin would have had to move back to the US first, established residence, and gotten a job and some other requirements. Only then could they have qualified to apply, and the wait time for the application to be approved would be in the 9-14 months range.
Once they applied, he could have moved here with her, but not gotten a job, I think, until the application for the visa was approved.
> It would have taken quite a bit of time- my cousin would have had to move back to the US first, established residence, and gotten a job and some other requirements.
That's strange. A spouse green card doesn't require the residence and there is no wait time for the spouses of US Citizens. However, the processing time (especially via consular processing) is ridiculous, around 2 years now.
Some people don’t focus primarily on the money. When that’s the case, many things (love, pride, comfort, dreams, fears, etc) might keep someone from moving.
The author claims, "Internet surveillance, the algorithmic polarization of social media, predatory app stores, and extractive business models have eroded the freedoms the personal computer once promised, effectively ending the PC era for most tech consumers."
I'm not required to use social media and extractive business models. Intenet surveillance is lamentable but I don't see why he thinks app stores are predatory. The PC is still mostly a force for freedom. The privacy losses are more than offset by the gains of communicating with everyone on the planet.
App stores are middlenen who dictate what users get to see and consume, while taking 30% from what's approved. I think thars eye predatory part.
Apple is the much more obvious offender, even for stuff not traditionally stigmatized against. Microsoft struggled to release Xcloud becsuse Apple didn't want a game streaming service on IOS. Meanwhile, steaming music, videos, and anything that works on its purposefully botched internet was fine.
>The privacy losses are more than offset by the gains of communicating with everyone on the planet.
Definitely a contentious take these days, given recent events.
That's kinda what I was thinking too. There is a privacy loss for sure, but the average consumer also gained things for that loss.
Maybe Amazon in 2000 wasn't so icky but there was also no free same day shipping. Apple II could be repaired without "special tools" but those machines were huge, heavy, mostly empty space, and gap and glass alignment was way worse. I wish I could say something smart about Windows 95 but I've worked hard to erase it from my memory, so I can't. :)
Electronics things, just in general, did a lot less in the past. With that comes good and bad.
Privacy is a trade-off and right now the general public doesn't place a high value on privacy so they're happy to trade it away for anything. Honestly I understand it. I'm convinced I'm going to get bombarded with marketing nonsense regardless so I might as well get something for it.
> I wish I could say something smart about Windows 95 but...
Remember how its uptime was limited to 49.7 days because of a timer's numeric overflow (and in something like an audio driver, too, it shouldn't have been system critical). Good times.
A lot of computing in the 90s and earlier was terribly unstable. And that was without considering how prevalent viruses were in the 90s, too.
> Maybe Amazon in 2000 wasn't so icky but there was also no free same day shipping.
And that was absolutely okay and would still be okay. We don't need free same-day shipping. Free same-day shipping is basically a drug that people have gotten addicted to.
You're equating avoiding mass-market social media with becoming a hermit on a remote island.
But you're here, saying that on HN.
I've seen people say similar things on Reddit, in IRC channels, on blogs, Gemlogs, Mastodon posts, and other similar venues, without realizing the irony of it.
The previous comment was complaining that we can't improve the situation, as there are no viable alternatives, in a discussion that is taking place on one of the alternatives. That's the irony.
Bizarre stretch of logic to extract an irony. Meta platforms in particular (facebook and whatsapp) are in many countries an almost exclusive intermediary to any online communication. You are basically incapacitated if you do not use them.
Thats true, but its theoretical. As an individual you frequently face a take it or leave it option. Have you ever tried to move an existing community e.g., from Whatsapp to Signal or can you do anything if an entire country has chosen to reside on Facebook? In the short term, you either accept defeat and learn to love the adtech bomb or you withdraw into the digital wilderness. In the long term... we are all dead.
> Have you ever tried to move an existing community e.g., from Whatsapp to Signal or can you do anything if an entire country has chosen to reside on Facebook?
What does an "entire country" have to do with it? People move online communities between platforms all the time -- and many communities have presences on multiple platforms.
> In the short term, you either accept defeat and learn to love the adtech bomb or you withdraw into the digital wilderness.
I'm just not seeing the argument here. Suppose you've got 50 users on Discord and would prefer to move to Matrix. So you post a link to the Matrix channel on your Discord server, lock stuff for further posting in Discord, and update external links and documents. People do this sort of stuff all the time without being "defeated".
yeah, thats pretty clear. Because you choose to focus on cases where you do have agency to do something, e.g. its my discord and I am moving us to matrix - and goodbye to those who will not migrate.
Now think about an established group where you are a simple member and you say, "hey folks, why don't we move to something that is better for us, no ads, no data collection, etc."? And they look at you with glazed eyes, and... shrug, and that is the end of the conversation. Now what Don Quixote?
> What does an "entire country" have to do with it?
In countries with high facebook/meta adoption if you want up-to-date information about an event or an establishment it may only exist on meta platforms. Only larger entities can afford to have an independent website, and many such sites are typically in a state of disrepair and neglect.
As an individual trying to go against so-called network effects most of the time you have very little leverage. Its really fighting against wind mills.
> Because you choose to focus on cases where you do have agency to do something, e.g. its my discord and I am moving us to matrix - and goodbye to those who will not migrate.
I guess I'm not sure of what scenario wouldn't align with this in terms of an extant community?
> And they look at you with glazed eyes, and... shrug, and that is the end of the conversation. Now what Don Quixote?
I think I understand what you're getting at now -- you're looking at it from the perspective of a user who doesn't manage the community or administer its technology.
But I'm not sure this is really on target. The relevant arguments, and the call to action that applies here, are for the people managing online communities. And one of the calls to action should be to listen to and consider what users are saying when they propose alternative technologies.
> Only larger entities can afford to have an independent website
> I'm not required to use social media and extractive business models.
Most people do use them though.
> The privacy losses are more than offset by the gains of communicating with everyone on the planet.
I completely disagree. Most people aren't actually communicating. At least not in any form that matters. The drastic increase in loneliness and depression that correlates with the increase in connectivity should at least show that more social media doesn't mean more happy.
Sadly relatable to a lot of real life. Modern people don't talk "to" each other some portion of the time. They talk past each other in this mimicry of discussion.
Congratulations to Trump to standing up for freedom and against all 9 Supreme Court justices that refused to enforce the First Amendment. People should be free to speak as much as they want on TikTok even though it's mostly useless chatter. In the Koramatsu decision of 1943, legalizing concentration camps for Japanese-Americans, there were 3 dissenting justices. I wish we had some this time.
