Sukotto

Thank you for your suggestion tsuyoshi.

Hi Peter

I'm late to the party. Posting on the off chance that you are still around. Any reply appreciated, even a couple of words.

Question:

How should I think about entering the US and gaining permission to work?

Background:

Canadian citizen, married to a (naturalized) US citizen (10+ years, kids), and am the breadwinner in our family.

Worked on System Analyst TN1 for 5+ years, switched to H1B until the renewals ran out, then back to TN1.

Moved out of the US in 2012, now living in Japan.

We're considering to move back but don't have a clear idea of what doors are open and which one to aim for.

TN work permission seems unlikely because I've had so many of them and hard to argue "temporary" when I have a US wife and kids. Greencard, on the other hand seems unlikely because they disregard my current income and earning potential and want my wife to prove she can support me. What is the smart approach?

This is a topic I find really interesting, so I caught myself writing a whole essay about it. But I have to get back to work.

So let me just say that yes, you are right that gasoline prices better match price and demand.

  Change the price of electricity from moment to moment

This already happens. It is called the "Spot" price of electricity.

It's not just supply though, the demand, ability of the infrastructure to carry the power, the relative costs of the power plants, etc are also factored into the price.

As per the quote from Goering which I'm sure you already know, but I will paste here for today's lucky 10,000.

-----

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”

“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.”

“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.”

-----

Gilbert, G. M. The Psychology of Dictatorship: Based on an Examination of the Leaders of Nazi Germany. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1979. Print.

Yes. Modeling the load on the grid and anticipating supply/demand is basically what energy commodities traders do.

If you can provide superior guesses about prices, then you'd have traders lining up to buy your service.

Ad networks can track you without cookies. Cookies are just an easy first step.

Any time any user hits any page with your javascript[1] in it: record ip address, referer (sic), locale preferences, available fonts, what's in their cache, what extensions they have, and anything else you can get. You can even track if they have certain 3rd party sites blocked.

Then it is a matter of bayesian guessing about who they are. Given that a typical person spends most of their time in only a few specific places (home, commute, work, favorite coffee shop/pub, etc) you can make very good guesses about which person is visiting your page after only a few visits... even if they have cookies disabled.

[1]And if they have js disabled they can't really use your site because js is basically required now. And you can still track that information and advertise to that cohort. How many people hitting the site from these 5 ip addresses, who use chromium, and have no cookies, and have js turned off? One? Well, then they just identified that person

I used Backblaze for several years before closing out my account in 2012.

Initial backup took a long time. There was no easy way to prioritize, for example, my photos over system files. I ended up manually prioritizing by disallowing pretty much my entire filesystem, and gradually allowing folders to sync. First, photos, then documents, then music, etc.

Eventually it all got synced up and it was trouble-free... until I tried to get my data back out.

The short version of the story is that a power surge fried my local system. I bought a new one and had some stress when it appeared the BB client was going to sync my empty filesystem (processing it as a mass delete of my files). I managed to disable the sync in time.

Then I discovered there was no way to set the local BB client to pull my files back down. Instead, I had use their web-based file manager to browse all my folders and mark what I wanted to download. BB would then zip-archive that stuff which would then only be available as an http download. There was no Rsync, no torrent, no recovery if the download failed halfway, and no way to keep track of what I had recently downloaded. Also, iirc, they were limited to a couple of GB in size per file. (which didn't matter because at that time, the download would always fail it the file was larger than __MB (I don't remember the exact number. 100MB? 300? Also hazy on the official zipfile size limit)

So I had to carefully chunk up my filesystem for download because the only other option BB offered was to buy a pre-filled harddrive from them (that they would ship to me).

I felt like Backblaze was going out of their way to make it hard for me in order to sell me that harddrive of my data. I felt angry about that and stubbornly downloaded my data one miserable zipfile at a time until I had everything.

Once I was reasonably sure I had everything I cared about, I closed my account and haven't looked back.

[Edit to add] This was at least 5 years ago. No doubt their service has improved since then.

As a rule of thumb, I have learned that Onyomi is usually when a kanji is part of a compound word and Kunyomi is usually when the kanji is by itself.

Yes, I typoed that and it's too late to fix it. り is "ri", not "ru".

>Surely Japanese characters should not be treated the same as Mandarin ones

No. In Japanese, how you read/pronounce a character depends on context. Sometimes they are the same as Chinese, sometimes not.

Take mountain (山) for example.

Using the Chinese pronouncation it is "san". 富士山 (Mount Fuji) is ふじさん "Fuji san"

Using Japanese pronouncation it is "yama". 山登り (Mountain Climbing) is やまのぼり "yamanoboru"

(and don't call me Shirley)

Here in Japan your neighbour can build pretty much anything they want (within zoning constraints) and there is little you can do about it.

The zoning here is pretty different than in the US though. The government created a national, unified zoning standard consisting of 12 zones.

Local governments can split their land into more-or-less arbitrary regions, and choose which zone type they want each region to have. They also have some control over how large the resulting buildings can be in each region by mandating the maximum ratio of floor space to land area for each region.

The main difference between Japanese and American zoning rules is that in the US, the zones are exclusive where-as in Japan they are (mostly) inclusive.

There's a fascinating writeup about it here: https://urbankchoze.blogspot.jp/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

Neat coincidence to see this on the front page today. On the train this morning I was re-reading David Brin's "The Deadly Thing at 2.4 Kiloparsecs". His 1984 article examining Earth's fairly regular mass extinctions and what might be causing them.

As a new forward to the story, Brin mentions the OP-linked theory.

Imho, the article still holds up well and you can read it here: http://davidbrin.blogspot.jp/2015/07/the-deadly-thing-at-24-...

If you want a 1K ~ 2DK [1] for 1 ~ 3 people I think you are right.

For larger families? I dunno. We're a family of 5 (1 in jr high, 2 in elementary) and really struggling to find a place to move up into from our current 2LDK. :(

I admit, we have a bunch of constraints, but I don't think they are too unusual. (want to be reasonably near to work, school, and in-laws)

[1] For those that don't know, apartments here are typically listed by number of rooms, plus if the space includes an "L" living room, "D" dining area, "K" kitchen. So "1K" would be a single room with a place to cook. 2DK would be 2 rooms, with an eating area and a kitchen.

I read your comment as strongly sarcastic. Do you mean it that way? Because it looks to me like they are very up-front about how iffy some of this stuff is. So what's the problem?

  The trouble with self-help advice is that it’s often based
  on barely any evidence. 
  ... [however] we’ve found that there are a number of
  evidence-backed steps that anyone can take to become more
  productive and successful in their career...

  So we’ve gathered up all the best advice we’ve found over
  our last five years of research.

  In many cases, the evidence isn’t as strong as we’d like.
  Rather, it’s the best we’re aware of. We’ve tried to come
  to an all-considered view of what makes sense to try

  the "best doctors" in my eyes are the ones with the best outcomes,
  lowest utilization, highest efficiency and highest patient 
  satisfaction. 

As a lay-person, how can I tell which institutions or doctors have the best outcomes, and patient satisfaction? How can I make smarter choices about where I take my family for medical help?

  I think those are the best doctors and it's what I'm striving to be.

As a doctor, how do you measure this? How do you know you're becoming better and in which areas you need to focus?

Also, have you seen this article? It might interest you: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/03/personal-best

You don't have public contact info in your profile so I'll post here :)

I don't want to spit on you (ew), but am interested in meeting some of my fellow Canadians living here in Japan.

If you (or any other Canadians reading this) are in Tokyo and interested in comparing notes over coffee, please drop me a line (email in profile).

> just want basic security against your average smash and grab criminals

If this is the attack vector that concerns you, then you should probably start by installing secure doors and windows.

IMO, cameras don't get you much beyond giving you some after-the-fact information. And smart-locks don't get you much of anything.

   you could go into the dungeons out of order, even with a wooden sword

Or without one if you want. You can play almost the whole game without a sword (You just need it to beat Gannon): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n2_gJjrKio

It's a very friendly, engaging event and well worth your time. Jay and Paul are great hosts, and there's usually a nice mix of new people and regulars.

A few tips:

- You'll probably want to eat dinner before you go. (Drinks and light snacks are served but they're not substantial)

- Wear comfortable shoes since you'll be standing on concrete most of the time

- Most conversation is in English (in case you're worried it will all be Japanese)

- The entry of "Super Deluxe" looks sketchy and you might feel like you're heading downstairs to some kind of creepy strip club. Don't worry! It's not.

# You want a human #

Humans quickly get a reputation among the interplanetary alliance and the reputation is this: when going somewhere dangerous, take a human.

Humans are tough. Humans can last days without food. Humans heal so fast they pierce holes in themselves or inject ink for fun. Humans will walk for days on broken bones in order to make it to safety. Humans will literally cut off bits of themselves if trapped by a disaster.

You would be amazed what humans will do to survive. Or to ensure the survival of others they feel responsible for.

That’s the other thing. Humans pack-bond, and they spill their pack-bonding instincts everywhere. Sure it’s weird when they talk sympathetically to broken spaceships or try to pet every lifeform that scans as non-toxic. It’s even a little weird that just existing in the same place as them for long enough seems to make them care about you. But if you’re hurt, if you’re trapped, if you need someone to fetch help?

You _really_ want a human.

source: http://iztarshi.tumblr.com/post/145107805571/inspired-by-var...

...

I'll also link this here because I found it simultaneously hilarious, and troublingly insightful: http://www.tor.com/2016/10/17/the-answer-to-why-humans-are-s...

...

And also this: http://prokopetz.tumblr.com/post/57702943181/mikhailvladimir...

This is a report by the "Children's Commissioner" in Britain. I don't know what bias they bring to their report. Also have no idea if they are a legit governmental agency, or some kind of partisan "think tank" so take it with a grain of salt.

However, I found the simplified terms on page 10 interesting and plan to save it as a discussion starter for when my kids are old enough to start agitating for access to social media (regardless of how the real terms might change between now and then)

I'm late to the party on this discussion, but did want to say this brings to mind the similar troubles popular authors can have with their readers.

... and which prompted this wonderful essay/rant from Neil Gaiman "Entitlement issues" (aka "George R.R. Martin is not your bitch")

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/05/entitlement-issues.htm...

Trading or Physical? Where are you based?

I was once a Front office dev (Microsoft Stack) for commodity trading house. If you are in USA, Canada, or Japan, I'm interested in learning more about your business.

[rot13 spoiler]Gur ebobg qvfpbiref gung vg unf ab frys. Vg vf whfg gur pheerag fgngr bs gur pbzcyrk, culfvpny fgngr znpuvar vafvqr vg'f urnq.[rot13]

... which is not precisely an argument against free will. Imho it's a close cousin though.

I recently started reading through his work. And although I've enjoyed his stories in general, they have all been solidly in the "depressing" category for me.

So far I have read "Story of your life", "Exhalation", "72 letters", "Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate", "Divide by Zero", "Understand", "What's Expected of us", and "Hell is the Absence of God". I am about 50% through "Lifecycle of Software Objects".

So far, the stories all seem built on the foundation that we reside in an immutable clockwork universe and that the notion of "Free Will" is a complete illusion. It is this combination of absence of free will and "the future is already set and there is nothing you can do about it" that I find depressing. That I am merely a meat robot programmed to act in specific ways and that my actions therefore have no real meaning (because they are no chosen, but simply a result of my program).

The only real exception so far as been "Hell is the Absence of God" which was a black comedy exploration of "what if there really was a God, and he was a complete asshole?" which was depressing in it's own special way :)

That said... On the whole I find Chiang's stories engaging, imaginative, and well crafted. Recommended reading if you like near-future science fiction, AI, time travel, or genetics.

Try:

    $ brew update # get latest version of Homebrew
 
    $ brew cleanup # Homebrew housekeeping
 
    $ brew cask cleanup # Cask housekeeping
 
    $ brew --version
    #Expected output: Homebrew 1.1.0

Compare to "RISUG" (Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance). Which appears to be completely safe and 100% effective. Requires a single, out-patient procedure (two injections, not counting anesthetic). And is easily-reversible.

Article: https://www.wired.com/2011/04/ff_vasectomy/

Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2602785

And for anyone who hasn't seen it, his short essay "Dongly Things" is worth the reading time: http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/980707-03-a.html

  When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a
  scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean
  —neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, 
  “whether you can make words mean so many different 
  things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which 
  is to be master—that’s all.”

-- LEWIS CARROLL (Charles L. Dodgson), Through the Looking-Glass, chapter 6, p. 205 (1934). First published in 1872.

:D

The Plimpton Project sponsored a song contest to raise awareness of George Plimpton and their efforts to raise a statue in his honor.

The winning entry: Jonathan Coulton "A Talk with George" https://youtu.be/-YMcqNc4nSY?t=1h33m20s

ref:

- http://thingaweekredux.com/post/3564224482/thing-a-week-23-a...

- http://www.plimptonproject.org/ (warning, flash site)