I'm not sure that skipping SPARC is a bad thing. Who even has SPARC machines sitting around to validate builds? Even Fujitsu moved to ARM for their later cores.
i got a debian maintainer for old IBM mainframes asking me to fix bugs and run tests for that architecture. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ these people exist, but i'm not going to support them. feel free to fork me!
This. How many of us in this thread wouldn't take advantage of legal loopholes to pay less in taxes? How many corporations are doing the same?
I'd guess nearly every citizen tries to pay the least amount in taxes they possibly can.
The NYT article strikes me as disguised envy: "they make more money than us, so let's demonize them for doing something we all do: minimizing our tax burden."
It's not envy; the legacy media have a hate boner for social media because social media destroyed their monopoly on new information transmission and damaged their bottom line. I.e. an extreme conflict of interest.
By extension, Musk is only vilified because he is wealthier than they are. They don't actually mind him for doing the things he is doing, only that he has more money than they do. There is no stopping that level of hate.
OP's point implies that it's a predictable byproduct of the system design because people consistently work to minimize their tax burden and the effort scales with their means. Wielding money to influence lawmakers seems bad, but is also a certainty in a system where your lawmakers are willing and able to legally accept it.
If you want to hold people morally responsible, why hold entities designed to maximize profits to a higher standard than lawmakers who are there to represent the interests of the people?
And if you want things to change, why fixate on moral judgements about legal behavior instead of systemic changes that yield better outcomes within the constraints of humanity's natural tendencies?
> people consistently work to minimize their tax burden and the effort scales with their means
That's ok. Given the tax burden also scales with your means, I find this an acceptable equilibrium.
> "If you want to hold people morally responsible..."
I reject the premise that it's immoral to minimize your tax burden within legal boundaries. And I find this kind of techno-moralizing completely hypocritical: we all try to minimize our tax burden, whether individuals or corporations.
I agree with your first point. On the morality question I generally don't take moral issue with legal tax avoidance, but "it's legal" and "you would do it too" hardly imply "it's right".
Either way the morality debate seems irresolvable, which is why I wish people would debate tax policy and focus on the system instead of calling people evil and hoping they consistently act against obvious incentives.
I got downvoted, but I don't think its evil to work within the bounds of the law to minimize your tax burden. This is the entire point of "doing your taxes" every year. What I do think is evil is using your wealth and power to corrupt the bounds of the law to enrich yourself. Further, however, I acknowledge that this self-interest is inherent in any person/entity and while I have a moral opposition to it when taken to the degree of bribing lawmakers, I don't just throw up my hands and say the incentives can't/shouldn't be changed. These incentives are an expression of what society finds acceptable.
>What I do think is evil is using your wealth and power to corrupt the bounds of the law to enrich yourself.
I think a lot of people (myself included) would agree on this and fail to agree on what qualifies. For example, if somebody earnestly believes they can do more good with the money than the US government, even if they're wrong, is it evil for them to try to legally influence lawmakers? I'm not sure that's evil, but I don't need that individual to be evil to believe you should reform the laws that let them do it.
It seems way easier and more productive to demonstrate that a law is failing to achieve its intended effect than it is to demonstrate that a group of people are evil so we can all be mean to them on the internet and hope it makes them stop.
>The task of government was not to stop selfish striving—a hopeless task—but to harness it for the public good [0]
I agree we should not let the rich and powerful corrupt our government. I don't know your mind, but I have heard this argument before, usually by folks who consider such efforts to be government overreach. This also ignores the placement of burden in such a corrupting influence; that it is the fault of government allowing itself to be corrupted, not the "selfish striving" person/business/organization. I guess amoral sociopathic behavior is permitted behind the corporate veil and there is nothing that can or should be done about it.
[0] From Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton.
>I guess amoral sociopathic behavior is permitted behind the corporate veil and there is nothing that can or should be done about it.
This is such a weak characterization of the argument. What are you proposing we do to sufficiently punish people who have broken no laws? You can't effectively police individuals or corporations according to unwritten rules, so write good rules and fix them when they fail. That's what can and should be done about it!
That seems like it's within striking distance of competitive, no? You get some major advantages in size and production automation. Perhaps it's ok for it to die sooner if you can get it built now and then replace it later.
well aside from being effectively 20 times more expensive over entire operation...
DC switches (as in, just a power switch) are vastly more expensive because while in AC you have 100 breaks in current a second, DC is constant so it is far harder to break. So even if you had device that could use both (not hard with SMPS, they have rectification as first step), it's still essentially " replace everything".
The protections side is a big problem - most HVDC has circuit breakers operating on the HVAC sides of the link so going to full DC transmission presumably wouldn't eliminate that equipment.
Or, alternatively, you switch to DC to get more current capacity over existing wires. (At a given voltage, a wire can generally carry more DC current because it doesn't have the same "skin effect" that AC has.) Even if the hardware at the substation is more expensive, it might be cheaper than upgrading the transmission lines.
We already have had that ossified layer thing multiple times in mathematics. Formalisms change. For example, prior to vector calculus writing out multidimensional PDEs was tedious. Vector calculus has serious issues in its own right, so you get people pushing geometric algebra. In more rarefied domains you have things like categories and sheafs replacing the previous "ossified" layer.
Check out their YouTube channel where they show plenty of interesting features. But just to list some I can think of:
- optional reactivity (i.e. you create chain of cells where editing 5th cells in the past causes update down the stream, pretty neat when working with dataframes). Its reactivity is a very cool feature once used to but you might not want it for something like running heavy ML training task so it can be toggled off
- you can switch notebook to multi-column notebook mode
- notebook is a web app that has sidebar with a lot of menus, there cool sections like Docs, Packages (you can download new packages right away there with uv), plenty of LLM integration with their custom prompts where you can reference dataframes so that it would be able to understand schema, some SQL and other DB integrations as well, cells can even contain SQL instead python code and output query result into python variable
- thanks to reactivity it got a lot of interactive elements like sliders buttons text fields or ability to create entire own widgets, there's even mode where all code blocks get hidden and you're left with complete app
- you can make web export of notebook that will translate python to WASM and publish it as fully working static page (though publishing something heavy complex like torch probably won't go well), this fits well with previous point as you can basically build simple interface hide all the code and publish it (like imagine matplotlib with couple of sliders)
- DataFrames (pandas/polars) displayed as interactive tables where you can filter by columns, scroll through pages of rows etc
- notebook stored in a .py format, unlike .ipynb with its json like structure. So code is very Git-friendly but you don't store computation results anymore
The UK's tier 2 and the EU's blue card are strictly better than the US H-1B to green card mechanism and have been for over a decade. You face no 7% per country capping on naturalization. Has it worked out? These visas look like O-1 competitors more than anything, not H-1B.
The issue is EU salaries (and the subsequent income tax) simply aren't attractive for most Indian, Chinese, and Koreans engineers in the US - the primary beneficiaries of the H1B program.
The only way a European office can attract Asian American talent on a work visa is to offer a salary comparable to the US, just like what the London offices for Google, Citadel, and Bloomberg do.
Otherwise, they can demand EU level salaries in their home market.
For an Indian on an H1B and working for FAANG, the choice isn't Palo Alto versus Berlin, it's the Palo Alto versus Hyderabad, Bangalore, or Pune.
Basically, the H1B change is causing a reverse brain drain back to Asia now now becuase there is an incentive to fully offshore instead of keeping mixed teams in the US.
I know at least 4 partners at the Indian entities of American VC funds already releasing an open call for startups for any Indian American who wants to return to India after the announcement this weekend, or to pair them with their portfolio companies in India.
> These visas look like O-1 competitors more than anything, not H-1B.
Not really. An O-1 is annoying and difficult to process, and does target a different persona than a blue card.
Depends on the kind of candidate. The brain drain already kind of started reversing in the 2008-12 period during those layoffs, and Indian tech salaries caught up with Eastern Europe (and the US at the top end of the bracket) by the early 2020s.
A large portion of Indians who came to the US on an H1B over the last decade basically came to the US in order to use the American experience to paper over issues with their resumes (eg. Didn't major in CS, didn't attend an INI, worked at a WITCH) causing their careers to stagnate.
Being in the US still conveys bragging rights, but increasingly the older generations recognize that someone immigrating abroad will basically almost never meet their parents again aside for a couple weeks a year.
As such, the name of the game now is to work in the US for a couple years and then become a PM Director or Director of Engineering at a GCC in India.
Additionally, Indian founders in the US have started considering IPOing in Indian equity markets instead of the US because the tech IPO market is (edit: relatively) dead here in North America (especially if you cannot show $400M+ in revenue) but showing $50M-$100M can guarantee you a $500M-$2B IPOs like Pine Labs' listing a couple days ago. There are at least 25 Indian startups in the process of IPOing this year [0] and the trend is continuing [1].
So for entrepreneurial Indians, the US is slowly starting to lose it's shine.
And finally, as an Indian STEM academic in the US, you can get a $100K public-private startup grant if you move your lab to India, and INIs in India (the Indian equivalent of Double First Class universities in China) allow academic staff to work with private sector players without demanding convluted IP partnerships. Thus, a lot of American-educated Indian academics in India are also becoming angel and seed investors, and have helped guide startups into YCombinator or raising a round from an Accel.
From a European perspective, the best example would probably be the reverse brain drain Poland and Czechia saw in the 2016-19 period, Israel in the early 2000s, and China in the 2010s.
There were 165 IPOs in the U.S. public markets in the first half of 2025. This was 76% higher than the 94 IPOs in the first half of 2024 and is estimated to be 47% higher than the total number of IPOs in 2024 when annualized for the full year of 2025.
I said just for the tech industry, and the multipliers are extremely difficult if you cannot show $400M in revenue. I'd recommend looking at some of Jamin Ball's analysis.
And comparing with 2024 is not great, because activity is still well below what we saw before the interest rate hike [0]
The IPO window is starting to reopen, but it's still somewhat closed compared to the norm from a couple years ago, and Sailpoint's lackluster IPO has dampened the mood along with CoreWeave's lackluster performance as a public company due to constant misses.
A lot of companies are in the process of building IPO readiness, but ime there is still some amount of hesitancy, becuase no one wants to be the first one to roll the dice, but I think Netskope's performance so far might help assuage worries.
I’ve worked for big tech in the Silicon Valley, worked for big tech in NYC, worked for big tech in Berlin. Though I make way less money here in Germany, I’d never move back to the US.
The money makes up for being far away from family as well as homesickness.
Living in the EU means you are far away from family as well with the added negative that unless you're Vietnamese in CEE and Paris, Fujianese in Central Italy, or Mirpuri in Scandinavia, there isn't a large Asian community in most EU states.
If I want Sikkimese, Pahari, Marathi, Chettinad, Maithili, or some other ethnic group's cultural services, cuisine, and/or goods I can always find that represented in American tech hubs. On the other hand it's nonexistent in Europe.
I think you're of European heritage, so for you your cultural heritage's goods, services, and cuisine are well represented across Europe. That isn't true for Indians, Chinese (China is not a monoculture), and Koreans.
For Indian, Chinese, and Korean nationals on a work visa in the US, you can earn a European salary in the old country while being close to family. This is why Europe is not enticing, because immigration is hard and if the only incentive is to have a lower take home, then there's no reason to go to Europe.
I’m also living a 15h flight away from my country/culture/people and I never felt the need for money to make up for it. Sounds like you just value money?
Also Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam et all are large, diverse metropolises. Not sure where the idea comes from that you wouldn’t be able to find your tribe or your cuisine in these cities.
> Also Berlin, Paris, Amsterdam et all are large, diverse metropolises. Not sure where the idea comes from that you wouldn’t be able to find your tribe or your cuisine in these cities.
Because they do not. The only European country with a large Indian diaspora is the UK, and that disaspora is overwhelmingly just Gujarati and Punjabi. Same for overseas Chinese and the Korean diaspora as well.
What worked for you is good for you, but the culture shift for someone from much of Asia to the EU is severe compared to the US where Asian immigration has been the norm for over a century.
> Sounds like you just value money?
Why leave India or China to earn a €70k salary when you can demand the same in Hyderabad or Hangzhou? Why move from Palo Alto to Paris, when you can move back to Pune or Pudong and earn the exact same, while also not facing culture shock and being close to family.
Also, having to become fluent in a French or German or Dutch or some other European language that isn't English is a severe blocker in much of Asia - where English is prioritized.
> Because Europe offers clean safe cities and good WLB
So does Australia and New Zealand.
And you are much closer to family as a result and in a countries where Asians are well represented and with the added bonus that they are Anglophone countries so no need to learn German, French, or some other European language that isn't English.
Look, Germany is a good country, but it legitimately isn't enticing for the kind of Indian or Chinese national who came to the US on a work visa.
> If all you want is to be in a big Indian diaspora and make a lot of money then I guess California is a good fit for you. Glad you like it
That's what most diasporas want. Look at the statistics of where the Indian, Chinese, and Korean diaspora are clustered. Amongst western countries it's overwhelmingly North America, Australia, and the UK
> then I guess California is a good fit for you
It is. I've been here since I was 1 years old when my parents were part of the initial work visa expansion in the 90s which brought tens of thousands of us Indian, Chinese, and Korean Americans to the US.
If I were to leave, I'd probably go to Singapore because I can take advantage of Asian dealflow while remaining in an Anglophone country where we are overrepresented.
I think if someone forfeits stability for money then that's their choice. I personally think that's an extremely strange one to make, but I'm one of those people who left the US for more stability, safety, so maybe I'm biased.
I really don't know why are you are getting so worked up about this.
At a macro level, the majority of Asian diasporas in the Western world are in North America, Australia, the UK, and New Zealand.
All I'm saying is for the majority of Asians, mainland Europe just doesn't have the same pull factor that the Anglophone has because we have never had a significant population in Europe.
It's the same way a management consultant with roots in Turkiye or Morocco will be biased to work in Frankfurt instead of NY simply because there's a massive pre-existing community no matter where you go in Germany and they will be close to family in Turkiye.
Most Indians in Germany are primarily from Maharashtra or Punjab.
And those numbers are minuscule compared to the diaspora in the UK, let alone Australia, New Zealand, and Canada which are all much more friendly to Asians than Europe.
Are there details on what visas Hyundai needed they couldn't get? L-1A/B for sending experts or management would make sense but I'm not sure there's any real issue getting those, especially not in 2023 when the plant was started.
They keep referring to the workers as contractors, which is a bit ambiguous as it is used for both people doing construction work or people hired for outside technical expertise.
If they were here in the first case of the word, I would say they were definitely in violation. If here for the second case, perhaps not but if they did not get the "B-1 in place of H-1B visa (temporary project visa): Some professionals might be eligible for a B-1 visa for temporary projects in specific scenarios. This option can be viable when an H-1B visa, typically used for specialty occupations, might be challenging to obtain." they may have still been in violation.
That consumption figure is per acre of almonds. But your point is still valid. In total almonds or other crops like alfalfa consume millions of acre-feet of water a year in a dry state like California while a single data center only consumes ~500-1000.
Indeed, that is my mistake. I misread the denominator of the consumption figure. Luckily the orders of magnitude are so dissimilar that mere factors of 100x do not affect the calculation.
3-4 acre*foot per year per acre of almonds results in the data center consuming ~200 acres of almond. ~4500 pounds per hectare results in ~1800 pounds per acre. So, that would produce about 360,000 pounds of almonds or ~720,000 $ worth of almonds.
That is certainly vastly less economically productive per unit of water consumed compared to a 750,000,000 $ data center which probably has a expected payback period of 10-20 years or about 37,500,000-75,000,000 $ of produced value per year.
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