Tesla shares fall on report of a car fire - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24377350 <comment><AUTHOR> Original pictures linked from article, can't submit original as it auto- deaded.</comment>


Ask HN: Will you be mining Coinye at launch? - <AUTHOR>

Launching in a couple of hours. Curious to see who's jumping in or if you think this is a useless gimmick. <comment><USER2> Yep I'm mining.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have more faith in RonPaulCoin.</comment>


Engineer's Guide to US Visas - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sourcing.io/visa-guide? <comment><USER3> I'm Canadian and worked for over four years a software engineer in SoCal on work visas (TN then H1B).

My wife, an Aussie and high school teacher with several years of teaching experience in top international schools in Asia, couldn't legally work in the US. So she volunteered teaching ESL at a local adult school. Ironically many of her students were Hispanics who had originally entered the US illegally. Doubly ironically she got a special commendation award for her volunteering signed by George W. Bush's signing machine.

Eventually I got fed up with the bureaucratic farce whereby US visa regulations provide compliant, indentured foreign programmers to US businesses at below market salaries in exchange for the remote possibility that they'll eventually get a green card.

So I left and now live in Australia, where I am self-employed, can take time off to work on my own side-projects, and pay less than $300/month for private medical insurance for my family of four. American exceptionalism? Sure--if you're a sucker.

<comment><USER4> Similar story here. Indian citizen with a US masters degree. Left after working in the US for a year, travelled around SE Asia ,and then moved to Amsterdam! Can choose to work four days a week, have side projects and take 26 days of vacation a year.

H1B is totally a sucker's game.

<comment><USER5> How did you move to Amsterdam ? Is it like fulltime work or did you sponsor yourself with an EU Blue Card ? I'm always interested in learning about the various possibilities engineers have around the world! :)

<comment><USER4> I applied to a few companies, got an offer and moved with a Dutch residence and work permit. The whole thing took about a month. There is a huge demand for skilled engineers in the EU.

<comment><USER6> Indeed there is, I have a friend (Java developer, early 40ties) who moved to Amsterdam with his wife and two kids. It's pretty easy for in-demand jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the main reason I've given up. It's not an effective use of anyone's time to wade through the US immigration mess. My J-1 visa expired last October. I was in SF for my PhD research on a J-1 and had to suddenly return to Europe last April due to unforeseen family circumstances. I was in the process of filing for a waiver when I was in SF and had a long call with someone at Google about a position I'd applied for. I discovered that I had just missed the H1B deadline, so there was pretty much no way for me to get a job in 2013.

Now that I'm back in Europe, I've been looking into applying for a J-1 waiver and it's just form after form after form. Additionally, you have to pay something in the region of $2000 according to an immigration lawyer I sought out and with that I'd only be throwing my name in the ring, with the possibility that the State Department would reject my waiver application apparently.

I absolutely fell in love with SF whilst I was living there and would love to make it back now that I'm wrapping up my PhD, but I think it's neigh on impossible given the current bureaucracy involved.

Guess I'm just gonna wait it out and hope for immigration reform to kick in.

<comment><USER8> J1 waiver isn't too bad. Yes, it involves some paper-work, but nothing that would need an immigration lawyer. You can do everything yourself, and costs about $200 last I checked.

Also look into the O1 visa that doesn't require a waiver, and has no quotas.

<comment><USER7> Ok, that's good to know. That's an order-of-magnitude less than I was told. I guess I should look into it in more detail. In the meantime I have accepted a postdoc position in Europe, so I'm in no immediate rush to get the visa situation sorted out. Would just be nice to be able to sort things out so that once my postdoc is done I've got a better chance of returning to the Bay Area.

With regards to the O1 visa, I've heard that you have to really stand out in your field of research, as the original article states, and unfortunately, during my PhD I haven't really achieved that level of success.

Thanks in any case for the info!

<comment><USER8> Start the waiver process now. It is multi-staged, and takes several months if everything goes smoothly. You'll need a no-objection letter from the embassy of your home country. This is usually the most tricky part. Once the US Department of State gets this, you can track your status online. Start now so you are done with it by the time you finish your postdoc.

Re the O1, read up on the requirements, and work on publishing more during your postdoc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are two things that give me serious pause about living and working in the USA, and that have made me not pursue or accept opportunities that I've been offered in Seattle and San Francisco.

1) Visas & immigration

2) Health

<comment><USER10> Should also add that if you are married, your wife / husband _cannot_ work if you are on H1B.

I found this deeply disturbing, as my wife is a skilled professional in another field and if I were to accept an H1B offer, she would had to become a house wife more or less.

<comment><USER11> A minor correction, if you are married, your spouse cannot work if they hold a H-4 visa. They are allowed to work if someone is willing to sponsor their H1B, L1. They are also allowed to work on F1-Visa, using OPT/CPT.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> FTA:"However, in my experience, it's absolutely worth it. Moving here was the best thing I ever did. It's an incredible country, and the opportunities here in tech are second to none."

I wonder if given the current political, social and economical situation in the US, whether this (still ?) is the prevalent view within the tech community ? Having been to the US multiple times between 2005-2012, I was completely turned off the country. While I agree some of the best companies are based there, I wouldn't like living there.

<comment><USER13> "The US" is big and non-homogeneous. Even SF and LA are surprisingly different, much less NY, DC, Austin, Orlando, Honolulu, Nashville, Fargo...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "It's for this reason I suggest coming out to SF on your own accord, staying for a short while, and lining up a bunch of interviews with all the companies you're interested in."

I believe this is only for B1/B2 visa holders and those who are part of the Visa Waiver Program (UK/Aus etc.).

You're not supposed to look for work or attend interviews on a tourist visa.

<comment><USER15> And you are not supposed to spy on the emails of all the other countries including their prime ministers and senators... but who are we to judge?

<comment><USER14> Hardly relevant.

<comment><USER15> Please, how is hardly relevant to talk about what you are "supposed to do" based on an institution that does nothing of what is supposed to do?

What you are "supposed to do" must have a good reason beyond the law; like actual victims of some sort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's not worth it

You can get a "similar to H1B" visa in Ireland in 2 months time and a lot less paperwork. Germany (and other countries I believe) has a similar schema.

With some requirements slightly higher than an H1-B you can be a permanent resident of Canada (maybe Australia and England as well, though I'm not sure how the conditions are on the latter today)

So, why bother?

<comment><USER17> _So, why bother?_

Better pay and opportunities, it's as simple as that. Having lived in the UK and Canada, I can say that the tech (and particularly startup) industry in the US is simply much bigger and more advanced than other places I've been.

<comment><USER16> Yes I suppose one can make 100k in the valley. And pay how much again for rent?

The pay and the opportunities are better, but they may not be _significantly_ better to justify it.

In the valley it looks like everything will get an angel round if it stands still long enough or go to enough CV meetings but it is not all there is to life or a career.

<comment><USER18> Rent is a day-to-day concern that does not matter in long term. Opportunities give you access to experience, connections and reputation that will stay will stack up and stay with you throughout your entire career.

To put it other way: resources sunk into cost of living add up linearly over time, the benefits of (exploited) opportunities get amplified and yield exponential results over the years. You want to go for the exponential curve.

<comment><USER19> I disagree. Day to day concerns are exactly what turn into 5-10 year issues. Non-software people get shocked when they hear you make over 100K and can't save much. I do agree that part of it is that what we take for being a normal standard of living is pretty up there. But still ... I find it sad/messed up that after working for 5+ years in a high income, high rent part of the country, I am no closer to buying a house/condo. I just have 50K in the bank. About 100K in retirement. Makes me want to cry :'(

<comment><USER20> Move, save up a whole bunch of money, work remotely with your built up connections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am fairly interested in the rules around Visa Waivers.

I have been working for american companies remotely for a while, I do fairly regular visits to the american offices, generally 'Work Meeting' will get you straight passed, but I have a few times been questioned exactly what I do at these work meetings and once tiredly and mistakenly mentioning programming, was very close to being refused entry.

The other issue I couldnt find any documentation on how long a visa waiver is valid for, it is given for 3 months, but is that 3 months out of the year or just 3 months at a time? over a full year I occasionally get close to this and was mostly curious.

<comment><USER18> If the customs officer admits you to the United States on visa waiver (WT/WB status) you need leave the United States within 90 days or less. In addition to that, you cannot change your visa waiver status to any other non-immigrant status without departing the United States (e.g. you cannot switch to H1B within America while on WT/WB).

<comment><USER22> You can change your visa waiver status to another status without departing the USA. My ex wife was from Italy, she came here on vwp and we got married. She stayed during the AOS process.

<comment><USER18> Your ex wife has changed her status to an _immigrant_ status. The rules forbid changing WT/WB to a _non-immigrant_ (e.g. H1B) status.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > If you lose in the lottery, they'll refund the fees. One caveat to bear in > mind is that applying for this visa shows intent, which may disqualify you > for visas in the future which aren't dual intent, such as the B-1 & B-2 > visitor visas.

(IANAL, but:) This is very wrong on at least two counts: there is no fee for enrolling in the lottery and if anyone charges for it, they are a scammer and you should enroll directly on dvlottery.state.gov site (as explicitly stated in its FAQ). Also, simply signing up for lottery is generally not sufficient ground for immigration intent (though being conservative doesn't hurt).

<comment><USER24> I think he was confused with the situation when you actually win it. If you start the process of getting it, it will show immigration intents and you have fees to pay.

<comment><USER23> That's certainly true: it shows immigration intent at that point, like any application for permanent residence, but no fees will be refunded if for some reason your application gets denied.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Excellent guide; shame the situation sucks.

The H-4 & O-3 mean that I have these options: \- Work at a US startup, marry my girlfriend, she has to be a non-working housewife \- Work at a US startup, live the rest of our lives in a long distance relationship \- Move to work at a big company like Google (not my scene at all) where I could get an L-1 (which has a good spouse visa) \- Go for an O-1 or H-1B & hope that my girlfriend can get one in the same batch. \- Just give up on the idea of living in the US

I love California; wish it wasn't so hard for me to live there :(

</comment><comment><USER26> "When the H-1B cap is reached, large companies like Google often look to L-1s instead, moving new employees to their Canadian offices for a year to make them eligible."

Huh. I knew Microsoft did this in Vancouver but hadn't heard about Google also using it although it makes sense. As a Canadian I'm not sure if the country really benefits from it, although I guess it boosts the Canadian offices.

<comment><USER27> I think the Google location is Windsor, but I know they have an office in Montréal and probably Toronto as well.

<comment><USER28> I haven't heard about a Google office in Windsor but I know there is one in Waterloo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I found this diagram informative (although not comprehensive, and probably a bit politicised): [http://reason.com/assets/db/07cf533ddb1d06350cf1ddb5942ef5ad...](http://reason.com/assets/db/07cf533ddb1d06350cf1ddb5942ef5ad.jpg)

(via [http://reason.com/blog/2008/09/24/new-at-reason-mike- flynn-s...](http://reason.com/blog/2008/09/24/new-at-reason-mike-flynn-shikh) )

</comment><comment><USER30> If you are are fortunate enough to have the liquidity needed (E.g.: you've already participated in a successful exit in a startup in your home country), there is always the EB-5 investor visa. (invest a half a million to a million dollars and create 10 jobs)

Obviously not an option for everyone, but if it is available to you, it may be one of the easiest ways, as you can get a green card relatively quickly via that route.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's missing the H1B1 visa which is very easy to get but isn't dual intent. It's only available for citizens of Singapore and Chile. It requires little paperwork and takes about a week to get. If you're so lucky as having a Singaporean or Chilean passport i recommend you look in to it.

</comment><comment><USER32> "L-1 visa for inter-company transfers

If you've worked for the company in a foreign subsidiary for at least one year in the preceding three years, you may be eligible for a L-1 visa. When the H-1B cap is reached, large companies like Google often look to L-1s instead, moving new employees to their Canadian offices for a year to make them eligible.

The foreign subsidiary must be related to its US counterpart in one of four ways: parent and subsidiary, branch and headquarters, sister companies owned by a mutual parent, or 'affiliates'.

It's a fairly straightforward visa to get if you qualify, and has the added bonus of being dual intent."

Would it be possible to open a US business remotely, then a foreign subsidiary in your country of residence - work for a year there and then be eligible for an inter-company L-1 transfer?

<comment><USER33> USCIS is generally very wary about L-1 abuse. The US company would need a full staff and board of directors.

i.e. Both sides of the equation have to be real companies doing real things who have a legitimate need to occasionally bring employees across. Neither of the companies can exist solely to funnel workers into the US.

<comment><USER32> Well, let's say I own a successful business in the UK, want to expand to the US and expect significant growth within the first year - does a L-1 visa allow me to open a new office in the US, if I hire someone competent to take over UK operations?

<comment><USER34> In your scenario, you will likely (legitimately) qualify for an E-2 visa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is a nice run-down for those looking to swerve into the U.S. for a valid reason (work/study)

If anyone seeks less-than-a-year-long work, J-1 Visas are arguably the easiest to get if one has some affiliation with a university. (i.e. students)

Proof of concept: I have co-run a non-profit program which connected people in Finland with startups in the Bay Area. I wish there would be more programs similar to [http://startuplife.fi](http://startuplife.fi) (sent close to 100 so far and more than a dozen YC companies have signed up for the program last batch.)

Another related blogpost for the J1 track: [http://blog.sendtoinc.com/2013/12/11/silicon-valley- internsh...](http://blog.sendtoinc.com/2013/12/11/silicon-valley- internship-j1-visa/)

</comment><comment><USER36> L-1B (Intracompany Transferee Specialized Knowledge)

"Specialized knowledge means either special knowledge possessed by an individual of the petitioning organization's product, service, research, equipment, techniques, management, or other interests and its application in international markets, or an advanced level of knowledge or expertise in the organization's processes and procedures (See 8 CFR 214.2(l)(1)(ii)(D))."

[http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary- workers...](http://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary- workers/l-1b-intracompany-transferee-specialized-knowledge)

The definition of "Specialized knowledge" is very broad. Can somebody share their experience of getting L-1B visa?

</comment><comment><USER37> To anyone with experience with a H1-B: How closely related does your degree have to be?

I get the impression this is a relatively grey area - I have a BEng in Civil Engineering, in my opinion it's somewhat related, I just wondered if there is a clear guidance on this?

<comment><USER38> Another question regard the H1-B: is it a bad idea trying to file H1-B without a lawyer? I'm working for a startup, and in the spirit of not-wasting-money, we're trying to file the H1B by ourselves, would that be too risky?

<comment><USER39> Do not do anything immigration related without a lawyer. Ever.

<comment><USER40> Except J1 visas and waivers, both are easy enough to deal without a lawyer if you have some help from someone who has done it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Nice summary. I think it missed one important detail, only US-masters can apply to the extended H1-B quota, if you got a master degree outside the US you are not eligible to that quota and falls under the normal cap.

</comment><comment><USER42> Great guide, I'd love a similar one for Green Cards.

For instance, does a Masters in CS qualify you for an EB-2 filing? A search shows that the employer would have to give evidence of the advanced degree being necessary for the job. Usually you wouldn't need a Masters degree for a programmer role but I'm wondering how strict this is in practice.

Concretely, if you were to enter the US on a H1-B for a SDE role with BigCorpA and had a Masters degree in CS, could you immediately file for a Green Card under EB-2 category?

<comment><USER39> Assuming that everybody else performing that role at the company has a Master's degree (or equivalent) there is nothing stopping filing the labor certification on day one.

As with anything immigration related. Consult a lawyer, not the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> What's the perceived benefit of not allowing the spouse to work? Is this a "they took our jobs" situation, or is there something substantive behind that policy?

<comment><USER44> I'm assuming it's 2 things:

1\. These visas are for specializations. This implies that the job is unique and pays well above average salaries so a spouse shouldn't need to work.

2\. They want to be attractive yet not too attractive. I'm sure in the subcommittee negotiations on quota it came down to spouses or quotas, (we can let 35,000 families or 70,000 workers). If you watch the government channel they negotiate endlessly over petty things like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> i'm surprised no one is mentioning the eb-2 visa. if you have a masters or higher in cs and are not born in the india or china the wait times seem to be reasonable. [1]

the h1b is a dangerous game. it's essentially a do whatever i say, and i "may" sponsor your green card "eventually", with an emphasize on the may. not everyone uses it that way, and i would would be leaning out of the window saying most do, but it's definitely enough to be a common issue.

i was brought into a university with an h1b under the premise that i could work on my own startup. what didn't tell me was that that what they meant was that i should work for them for 5 years before they would consider sponsoring a green card application, and that they expected me to work unpaid overtime whenever they asked me to.

i've heard from a friend running a consulting company in the area, that a lot of companies bring in workers with h1b's and then don't even have the decency to sponsor a green card after keeping them for 6 years.

to my remembrance there was a house voting sometime last september about an immigration reform. one side of the table was asking for better accessibility to visa's for specialized workers(including cali afair), and the other was asking for more audits.

sadly i can't tell you how much good came out of it, maybe someone else can elaborate on that.

edit: there is a reference at the end of the ops post, but it's not really prominent. eb-3 wait times can be years, which is why it's not really a reasonable choice, but eb-2 is different

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EB-2_visa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EB-2_visa)

<comment><USER46> I have a MS from a good US university. I am one of the principal software engineers at my company, and I lead the technical development on some of the most critical systems. It is medium size company.

But, I don't do any state of the art research, or highly specialized academic work, or anything worth publishing on academic journals.

How hard is to do the Labor Certification for the EB-2 green card?

Edit:grammar

<comment><USER45> IANAL, but I think in theory you already qualify. The effort is a little on the employers side. They have to post the job offer publicly in a news paper in the area, and then they have to have a good reason for hiring you. In theory I would say it's just a question of having a good lawyer. But then again those things have to be done ANYWAY if you want a green card.

<comment><USER47> Classifying the effort as 'little' for any EB based green card is nuts. Especially for an Indian citizen. In order to apply for EB-2 or EB-3 you need to first do a prevailing wage determination (about 2 weeks). Then your employer has to recruit for the position they want to offer you (30 days posted + 30 days quiet period). After this your employer gets to apply for a PERM (this is currently taking 8-9 months to be adjudicated by the DOL). If you're unlucky enough to be audited in your application you can tack another year on to this step.

After your PERM is approved, you get to file for I-140, which takes another 4-6 months. Then you get to wait until your priority date becomes current which depends on your category and country of origin. This could be anywhere from immediate to 10+ years.

Once your PD is current, you get to apply for I-485 which takes anywhere from 2-6 months and includes doctors exams, finger printing and possible interviews by USCIS. Of course while they're processing this there is no guarantee they wont retrogress your priority date and put you back into the waiting game.

Of course all of this starts again if you change employers (but you do get to keep your priority date if you had an approved I-140).

<comment><USER48> This is terrible, a lot of us are waiting and dont even know if we'll get audited, to make things worst the DOL did not process any perm petitions during the government shutdown. Please see this petition to improve the procesing time: [https://www.change.org/petitions/department-of-labor-dol- to-...](https://www.change.org/petitions/department-of-labor-dol-to-speed-up- perm-processing-as-promised-when-perm-was-established-dol-needs-to-speed-up- to-decrease-the-processing-timeline-of-perm-applications-to-60-90-days- instead-of-230-days)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I'm surprised no-one mentioned the E-2 (Treaty Investor) visa. It allows someone from a Treaty country (which includes a lot of developed countries) to start a business in the USA. It's not an intent visa, though (more on that later).

I'm from the UK, and did the E-2 application myself (having found that it took as much time to explain to a lawyer as to write the application). My initial investment was $100k (enough to start a software business, provably). I have been renewing that visa since 1999, while living in NYC.

Now, however (partly to do with having a 3-year-old), I've moved with my family to Singapore. Visa process took 3 days, and is valid for 12months (and a 12month extension will be very doable, apparently).

One aspect of the Green Card process (which is, I believe, somewhat achievable even starting on a E-2, is that you get caught in the US tax regime semi- permanently. Which is taxation on world-wide income. That would make moving to another country relatively painful (and that's partly why there are so few Americans in Singapore : there's no tax advantage to them).

Happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER50> My parents moved my entire family here on a h1 when I was younger. We obtained our Green Cards about 5 years ago.

I'm about to graduated college and go start working in NYC. My parents are currently starting the process to get citizenship and I'm choosing not to do it mainly because I'm not sure if I want to stay in the country for the rest of my life and didn't want to be stuck in the US tax abroad issue.

You mentioned that getting a green card does in fact put you into the US tax regime semi-permanently. Do you have any links or more information about that?

<comment><USER20> People with green cards or citizenship are subject to the same unique worldwide citizenship-based taxation scheme that the US has. You will have to revoke your green card anyway to escape it so I would just get the citizenship since you can renounce it later with a somewhat more involved process. You can be subject to an exit tax if your 'rich enough' when you revoke your green card or citizenship. Something like $150k annual income for 5+ years or $2+ million in assets. Research it yourself, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This thread seems like an excellent opportunity to ask for some advice.

I'm a British software engineer based in London, while my girlfriend of 3 and a half years is an American working for a publishing company in NYC. We've been trying to work out whether we think the relationship will work out in the long term, but the only time we've ever been in the same city for more than 3 weeks was the 6 month stint we were at university together. She's very reluctant to move to London - apparently publishing jobs are hard to come by, and she's loathe to leave the current one. As a result, I've been tasked with finding a way that I can spend some time in New York. It wouldn't have to be long - 6 months would be plenty - but I would have to be able to earn money since she currently doesn't really make enough to support herself, let alone me.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I could go about doing this?

<comment><USER52> marry her

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is a guide to US visa fraud.

Software developers are expressly excluded from the TN visa program. If you show up at the Canadian border as an American or the American border as a Canadian and announce you intend to work as a software developer, you will not be admitted. Of course many commit fraud and represent themselves as "Computer Systems Analysts" or "Management Consultants."

L1B visas are meant for those who possess special knowledge of "the petitioning organization's product, service, research, equipment, techniques, management, or other interests and its application in international markets, or an advanced level of knowledge or expertise in the organization's processes and procedures." If you announce you intend to work as a software developer you will not be admitted.

<comment><USER54> It's a game of semantics for border services. If you have an engineering degree, it doesn't matter. If you get your employer to change your title from "Developer" to "Engineer" it works out.

<comment><USER53> It isn't a game of semantics.

"Engineers may not fill computer-related jobs under TN classification unless they have credentials as computer or software engineers from institutions that recognize computer or software engineering as bona fide engineering specialties offering full engineering credentials, such as professional engineering licenses."

[http://www.tnvisabulletin.com/nafta-tn- blog/2010/6/21/degree...](http://www.tnvisabulletin.com/nafta-tn- blog/2010/6/21/degree-in-engineering-required-for-tn-visa-status-as- softwar.html#sthash.6Vkvr3XI.dpuf)

<comment><USER54> That's precisely what I mean by it being a game of semantics. Any computer/science-related degree gets you through the border. Anecdotally, I've heard numerous friends claim that the distinction at the border was their title being changed from "Developer" to "Engineer". Mind you, they all had various computer-related degrees but the scenarios were different depending on whether their degree was titled "Computer Engineering" or "Computer Science".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Please note that spouse can not do any consulting for home company. Spouse can do no productive work.

<comment><USER56> You're right. I have been a spouse of an H1B holder and I could not do anything, not even volunteering or starting my own business. Before doing any of this, please get the assistance of an immigration lawyer. Doing something wrong under your current visa can jeopardize future visas you may receive one day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Can someone further explain the dual-intent portion of this? I'm a US citizen and my girlfriend, who is from Iran, is working toward her PhD in CS here in the States. Currently, she's on a F-1 visa(the site says it's not dual- intent), and would like to remain in the states after she completes her studies to work at a US company(most likely in the valley). This caught my eye as a point of concern, so if anyone can elaborate it'd be greatly appreciated:

"If you're not on a dual intent visa then you may be asked to prove that you have significant ties to your home country, and no intent to reside in the US permanently or apply for a green card."

It's worth mentioning we will probably marry before she completes her PhD.

<comment><USER58> Even if you don't marry, after graduation she can get one year of so called Optional Practical Training, during which she can apply for a dual-intent visa. This is the path I had personally taken. If you do get married, I am almost 100% sure her having been on an F1 visa is no obstacle for her green card application.

<comment><USER57> Ok - how difficult was it to get on the Optional Practical Training? She'll be interning at a major company in the valley this summer(assuming the export control process doesn't pose an issue), and will most likely be doing so next summer as well. Basically, finding work shouldn't be an issue for her after graduation.

<comment><USER58> It was a long time ago, but I remember it being totally routine, no queues and no uncertainty. She should go to her school's immigration office, I'm sure they'll be able to walk her through the application and explain any other options while they're at it.

<comment><USER59> One of my summer internships was delayed for two months because USCIS thought my photo was overexposed (it wasn't)... so I definitely wouldn't say "no uncertainty" but all the paperwork was possible to complete without representation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Cool guide, but I think the E-3's dual intent rules are a bit weird:

[http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Laws/Memorand...](http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Laws/Memoranda/Static_Files_Memoranda/Archives%201998-2008/2005/e3polgdnc_121505.pdf)

"An application for initial admission, change of status or extension of stay in E-3 classification, however, may not be denied solely on the basis of an approved request for permanent labor certification or a filed or approved immigrant visa preference petition."

It's not explicitly dual intent but the memo makes it clear that they won't kick you out for pursuing PR.

<comment><USER61> Kicking someone out of a country for deciding that they like working there and would like to stay permanently should fit everyone's definition of weird.

(I am of course aware that it is standard practice in the immigrant fearing bureaucratic world we live in today.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> The article missed pointing out a very important detail about H-1B1 visa (for Chile and Singapore): unlike the dual intent H-1B visa, the H-1B1 is a non- immigrant visa. This means that you must establish the non-immigrant intent to get it. It also means that, should you happen to change your mind after some time, you would have to switch to H-1B visa before trying for the green card.

Also, speaking from the personal experience, the fact that the H-4 visa doesn't allow your spouse to work deserves more emphasis. If there's anything that might drive me and my family back to Chile, it's the H-4 visa.

</comment><comment><USER63> Anyone know about something similar but applied to Canada?

<comment><USER64> NAFTA treaties have options for US and Mexico citizens.

For the rest there is the temporary foreign worker program. Your Canadian company has to do labor market opinions and all that stuff - could be time consuming. It is valid for 4 years. After 1 (one) year of starting your job, you can apply for permanent residency under the Canadian Experience Class [CEC] and it is self directed (no employer help needed at that point). Current processing times if you have applied within Canada is 13 months.

If you have not got your permanent residency by 4 years, but you have applied for and have a reference number, you can get a renewable 1 year open work permit that lets you work for anybody.

Computer jobs are covered by CEC, but not all jobs are.

You are eligible for health care after 3 months of being on the job. Until then you can get private coverage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Here's another one which might help some that want to move to US - <USER2> Visa Program(DV Lottery).

If you are lucky enough(like my wife was) you will have your green card and visa for the whole family.

Some more info: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_Immigrant_Visa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity_Immigrant_Visa)

</comment><comment><USER66> With reference to the Green Card Lottery [1] "if you lose in the lottery, they'll refund the fees", there are no fees to enter the lottery, however if you win the lottery there are fees to start the interview and visa process.

[1] [https://www.dvlottery.state.gov/](https://www.dvlottery.state.gov/)

<comment><USER65> Indeed it's free to enter, just make sure you qualify in the case you win. The required qualifications are minimal but worth reading into it so you don't pay any money and not get the visas.

We went through it and it took about half a year for everything to be ready.

Lucky wife :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67>
      The important difference is that the TN isn't dual intent, and you therefore can't apply for a green card while on it

Is there a path to permanent residency for this specific visa or you're better off finding H1B sponsorship?

<comment><USER68> The information given regarding TN status isn't entirely accurate. I transitioned from a TN to a Greencard directly. There were several conditions that my immigration lawyer prepared me for so I wasn't violating dual-intent and there was a period of several months when I was unable to leave the US while I waited for my "Advance parole" travel documentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Credit History

It would be worth adding a note about Credit history and some simple steps you can do to start establishing a good one. I recall getting a joint-loan with my wife (girlfriend at the time) to get things started. I'm sure there are many other ways.

<comment><USER70> Secured (not pre-paid) credit cards worked for me.

<comment><USER71> Do you know of a no-fee secured credit card that is easy for a foreigners apply for online?

<comment><USER70> This worked for me: [https://www.capitalone.com/credit-cards/secured- mastercard/](https://www.capitalone.com/credit-cards/secured-mastercard/)

There is a fee though. Plus of course, you have to secure the card. I deposited $500 and initially got a credit line of $700. A few months later it was bumped up to $1300.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> "Getting a bank account is fairly straightforward, and most don't require a SSN." I don't know about this. It's pretty much impossible to open a bank account without a SSN or TIN.

<comment><USER39> You can open the account without an SSN. However most banks will generally require you to provide a valid SSN or TN with a certain period of time otherwise they will close the account.

Generally if you are in the US legally you will have one of those numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Thanks for this a lot! I'm planning to move to USA when I can and this helps to see the whole picture.

My best bet would be a company that really wants me to work for them and arranges all of this.

</comment><comment><USER74> > TN Visa

> Processing time: Weeks

Actually for Canadians the visa is usually given at the border at time of entry. I applied at the US embassy in Bangkok and it didn't take more than a couple of days.

</comment><comment><USER75> You should also mention EB-5. Pay $500k and get a green-card. No questions asked. Although, you may or may not get back that $500k (considered an at-risk investment) :).

</comment><comment><USER76> As a UK citizen I am making a living as a software engineer (contractor). Would I be able to get live and do the same work in America?

</comment><comment><USER71> This article is geared mostly to employees. Since this is HN, what do foreigners launching startups do?

</comment><comment><USER77> What is the situation if you are cofounder of startup? So you own some part of US company.

<comment><USER78> With an investment of at least $100,000, you could get an E2 visa, but that doesn't come with the possibility of getting a green card. If you have $500,000 to $1 million to invest in a business that will create at least 10 jobs, you can get an EB-5 visa that would put you on track to get a green card.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Title is deceiving....</comment>


An Introduction to Unix (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.oliverelliott.org/article/computing/tut_unix/ <comment><USER2> I just began reading this, and I don't like it that much. The random attacks against GUI seem unnecessary and distracting. But worse than that there seems to be quite a few factual errors, like:

"Under the hood Windows, unlike Mac OS, is DOS- rather than unix-based"

Last DOS based Windows was released like 15 years ago. At that time Macs had their own weird OS too.

"A general point about unix commands: they're often robust."

Unix commands, robust? You gotta be kidding me, they are great for quick ad- hoc hacks, but robust they are not. Just as an example here is how the common task of handling can fail: [http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/filenames-in- shell.html](http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/filenames-in-shell.html)

"For example, with ls you can use an arbitrary number of arguments and it obeys the regular expression (more about these later) convention that an asterisk matches anything"

How this is an example of _robustness_? Besides globbing is not regular expressions. In regexp you'd use .* to match anything, not a bare *

> However, a file in Microsoft Word's proprietary and unknown formatting is > utterly unusable.

While I'm no fan of Word, it is very much arguable that Word file format not anymore proprietary or unknown.

> I used to use Smultron until I found, unforgivably, that the spacing of > documents when you looked at them in the editor and on the terminal was > different.

Let me guess, tab width difference? Yeah, that is how tabs work and not really a fault in the editor.

<comment><USER3> Great points about robustness.

For the first time ever I had to deal with xargs and find together last week. Bear in mind I've been using Unix for about 20 years now. Telling one command to null delimit stuff and another to parse the nulls is horrible. Especially seeing as this only came about because one directory happened to have a lot of files in it and the 11 year old script just went snap. I'm perhaps lucky I've never encountered this.

The author needs to take a look at powershell. Surprisingly I wrote a job site scraper in it in about 10 lines of code. Html parsing, data access etc are right there at your finger tips. That and it'll quite happily move 23TiB/1780000 files in a single incantation without wincing once.

Colour me impressed (as an old Unix die hard)

<comment><USER4> > For the first time ever I had to deal with xargs and find together last > week. Bear in mind I've been using Unix for about 20 years now.

I'm really curious about this. Do you have a very specific workflow that gets around that need or an alternative that would replace find + xargs? Is your job pretty niche? It just seems like I _need_ it a few times a week minimum, and I'm not really sure what would replace it off the top of my head.

I do agree on powershell being quite slick. Sometimes finding what I want is a process, but so was unix in the beginning.

<comment><USER3> I just don't deal with lots of files really. I tend to deal with a small number of very big ones instead and the paths have always been short. To replace it, no idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those stuck with windows for some reason, note that Cygwin[1] is a not too painful way to get that *nix feeling. Note that things get a little weird if you start, e.g., running python from Cygwin.

[1] [http://www.cygwin.com](http://www.cygwin.com)

<comment><USER6> If I may offer a dissenting opinion?

If you are on Windows, you would gain quite a bit more from learning Powershell, not Unix. Powershell has taken many lessons from Unix, and (dare I say) improved on many things. It's absolutely worth learning, if you are going to work extensively on Windows.

<comment><USER7> This is probably true, if you're mostly only going to work in Windows.

But if you're going to work in *nix and Windows, your bash/cygwin skills/experience will be useful in both locations, and much of your work will be reusable between the two worlds.

Powershell is Windows-only, which is fine if your life is Windows-only or Windows-heavy.

Not that there's anything wrong with knowing and using Powershell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I personally prefer [https://nixsrv.com/llthw](https://nixsrv.com/llthw) \- it's concise and the focus is on more on important details... I also enjoy the attitude and explanations on this site. It forces you to learn to learn and explore on your own - which is essential to learn Linux/Unix.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can people who have the relevant knowledge give their input on how good of a starting-point this is?

<comment><USER10> Seems ok at a glance.

If you want a classic though, check out Unix Power Tools at O'Reilly

<comment><USER7> I have the hard copy and ebook, and it's great. I've been using some type of ∗nix OS since the late eighties, and I will never learn the whole thing. Unix Power Tools is one of the few door-stop sized books that are worth having. A few of the items are somewhat dated, but ∗nix today, at least what's covered in UPT, is mostly what ∗nix has always been.

EDIT: changed ascii asterisk in front of all instances of nix to u+2217, the plain asterisk translates to large bodies of italicized text on HN. Which I knew.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Related: for people who want to write their own Unix commands [1], not just use them :) -- an article I wrote for IBM developerWorks:

[http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/09/my-ibm-developerworks- arti...](http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/09/my-ibm-developerworks-article.html)

And this post shows a practical use of that utility:

Print selected text pages to PDF with Python, selpg and xtopdf on Linux:

[http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/10/print-selected-text- pages-...](http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2014/10/print-selected-text-pages-to-pdf- with.html)

[1] In C, but the guidelines shown are also applicable to writing Unix commands in other languages like Python and Ruby.

</comment><comment><USER12> Taking a glance at this, it seems very unlikley to unseat my favorite intro book:

[http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php](http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php)

I consistently recommend The Linux Command Line by William Schotts. It's available in print through New Starch, or on the web. It's very clearly written, and practical.

<comment><USER11> Yes, that book is good. I had reviewed it for O'Reilly, a while ago, here:

[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781593273897.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781593273897.do)

2nd review from the top (currently), reviewer id is vasudevram.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very related. I was about to write a js to shell script compiler when I came across [https://github.com/BYVoid/Batsh](https://github.com/BYVoid/Batsh) it takes C/java-style code and spits out a bash script. The shell script will run on windows osx and *nix.

</comment><comment><USER14> It is obvious a lot of attention was put into creating this document. I particularly enjoyed the sections on awk and sed. I have seen many others attempt to explain these tools using many more words and circulate much more ambiguity.

Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER15> [http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/](http://blog.sanctum.geek.nz/) has some of the clearest yet most nuanced Unix tutorials I've ever seen

</comment><comment><USER11> Error here:

>(2) it's the most natural port of entry into all other programming languages;

Unix is not a language, but an OS.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's funny to come across this just now...for the past quarter, I've been teaching a basic programming class that focuses on the command-line...the most complicated thing we cover is sed (here's a list of tools we use: [http://www.compciv.org/unix-tools/](http://www.compciv.org/unix-tools/)) and the homework I've assigned generally involves scraping and data-munging, such as writing a batch job to scrape the USAJobs.gov API ([http://www.compciv.org/curriculum/](http://www.compciv.org/curriculum/))...

I agree with the OP that conceptually, the command-line is the best place to start learning programming...the idea that a tool should be kept simple, but that it should be easy to connect things together, and that it's up to the human operator, not the computer, to do this work...this is very powerful, and something I wish I had learned early on as a programmer. The way that Unix tries to think of everything as text is also a powerful concept, because for most beginners, they think of file formats as being "magical" and immutable, they don't have the concept that at the core of it, everything is just binary (everything being "just text" is a nice middelground from OS magic and trying to read binary)

However, the beauty of this philosophy is hard for non-programmers to appreciate or take advantage of. Moreover, things that I love as a programmer, such as silence-by-default and sparse error messages...are massive stumbling blocks for beginners. While I've done enough programming to appreciate silence, it's another thing to be a beginner who has never edited code in a text-editor to deal with "silence"...perhaps the biggest obstacle is the high difficulty in debugging. I can generally pinpoint any error in seconds...but this is only after years of general programming. The way that Bash continues on when an undeclared variable is referenced (via a typo) has led to hours of frustration for my students.

I think next year when I teach the class, if I do Unix again, I'm going to commit the first two weeks to muscle memory and flashcard-like memorization...it's too difficult to get the higher-level concepts of programming while you're stumbling around with recognizing variables. On the other hand, I think I may not try to teach Unix again, and will just stick to Python. One of my goals of teaching Unix was to avoid complexity and especially, things like OOP...I think Python can be carefully taught to fit that route...though I'll miss the ability in Bash to do such real-world tasks as curl, parse, and analyze a webpage in just two lines.

Edit: There was also a practical reason for doing things in Unix...all my students have different kind of laptops and OSes...and Stanford's shared computing runs on Ubuntu. So they did all their assignments on the shared computing cluster. That led to another issue of not being able to easily edit script files, in the way that you can do with Sublime Text on your own OS.

</comment><comment><USER17> The author tells me to 'Please enable Javascript!'

I counter: 'Please enable HTML!'

In all seriousness, it's text, images, links. There are no user accounts, no dynamically updated database of 'favourited' sections, no per-paragraph instant chat, the page is remarkably atrocity-free!

Hence, this page seems very much un-Unix-y: Solve problems at the lowest level of complexity, what?

<comment><USER18> just remove div#container visibility:hidden and it works. Why does it require JS when there's no need for it at all?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For some reason, the author disallows people from viewing pages on his site without running scripts from his domain and from jquery.com.

You can get around this by opening up your web inspector, and disabling the `hidden: true` rule on the top `container` element.

Nothing on the page (or in related linked pages on his site) seems to require JavaScript.

<comment><USER20> The modern web is scriptable and the days of "no javascript" are over. If you turn off javascript, you are one of less than 2% of the web that does so but you know what you did and the consequences so you also know how to fix the problem.

<comment><USER21> > The modern web is scriptable and the days of "no javascript" are over.

But why should we accept this? Why does it justify pages like this one, that _don 't_ need javascript but deliberately fail if you don't enable it?

<comment><USER20> Because the marketing guys want it and to write for fallbacks takes time. While this instance is not about marketing, my point is that turning javascript off makes you one of the few and I would have to determine if that 2% is worth the effort.

Some companies won't target your browser if you have less than 5% market share. Even 10% market share. So imagine when I find out you are less than 2% market share (no js users).

For my web dev company, we have about 10 clients. None of the visitors have ever had javascript turned off that I'm aware of over the last several years.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your self-hosted blogging platform? - <AUTHOR>

I've used ghost before, and it was great, but I'm always open to other suggestions. <comment><USER2> I built my own. It's very handy because I can make my blog do all sorts of customized things very easily. Plus, I'm a tinkerer at heart.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use mynt. I tried pelican lately. It has come a long way. Compared to what it was 3 years back.

</comment><comment><USER4> Loathsxome, which is a cleaned-up blosxom clone.</comment>


Drones Are Speeding Hurricane Harvey Response - <AUTHOR> http://3dinsider.com/drones-hurricane-harvey/ <comment><USER3> I've said in the past, over a few beers, that instead of just switching the doodle over, google should integrate disaster images and video into google maps and allow people to see the damage first hand. The effect of spatializing this information is truly profound. I did not understand katrina until I visited the 9th ward and saw the damage myself.

I've also said over beers that we need a system to aggregate disaster information. In a situation where we have 100+ fires and 1000+ flood related rescues, sifting through the noise is a nearly impossible task.

<comment><USER4> Real time drone control from your browser could have a similar effect, and even help find people who are stranded: [http://cape.com](http://cape.com)

<comment><USER5> Can't wait to try that out when I get back to my laptop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Drones are useful in most unexpected areas. I've recently been involved in a project that is using drones in order to identify possible sites of missing persons after armed conflicts. Missing, unfortunately, here means drones are used to identify possible locations of graves and especially mass graves.

Challenge is that using this tech approach is severely under-funded for now, until it yields (more) results when it can then be shown to relevant places for funding (military and civil sources). It's not my project, I'm somewhat related to it, but I'm looking to connect with drone makers as well as multi- spectral imaging sensor makers which could participate in the project. Project is located in Croatia, but is not limited to it, of course. It's well-suited, unfortunately, for this project though. If anyone knows something, or is a drone or imaging sensor maker, and is interested, shoot me an email - it's in my profile page.

</comment><comment><USER7> At tensorflight.com we are building deep learning model for hurricane Harvey damage segmentation.

We already have 12K instances of partial building damage and 400 of total damage annotated and preliminary segmentation model is just being trained on 4 K80s. If you want to collaborate in any way please let me know at email@example.com

<comment><USER8> Very interested in this work. What imagery source is even available this quick?

<comment><USER9> NOAA has some post storm imagery:

[https://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/storms/harvey/index.html](https://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/storms/harvey/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love how they invent an idealized scenario to come up with the 800% number. Good marketing, I guess.

<comment><USER11> Well, it's also 700% in their specific scenario (2x speedup = 100% etc) so not even an accurate invented story...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My SO helped with the crowdsourced civilian effort to dispatch water rescues of stranded people. The effort is wound down now; it will likely be hailed as a coup of "social media", but that's overhyping the social media aspect. Social media got the word out of where to go online to enter the coordination, but had little to do with the actual coordination itself. The group my SO worked with coordinated mostly through the Zello mobile app, Glympse mobile app, houstonharveyrescue.com (going dark soon, due to PII concerns), and a Google Sheets to track water rescue requests.

TFA is mainly discussing use of drones in the recovery phase, and only tangentially touched upon drones for rescues. Drones were not used much for long-range water rescues, because they were a hazard for the many volunteer helicopters that responded.

This pointed out the need for a solution (preferably as automated as possible) that allocates helicopter and drone flight paths in a disaster area.

The whole experience was very eye-opening for me. There isn't a good solution for coordinating disaster response by civilians, but even just the _ad hoc_ quick-and-dirty collection of apps used by the various civilian groups that responded showed how much leverage Internet-enabled coordination delivered. The latency of civilian response is much lower than government response, but once the government landed resources, the government response had much greater volume. Mix both groups at the right times, and you'd have an admirable disaster response, pretty much what happened in Houston.

Observations from listening in on my SO during meal times (the only times I could break from work):

* Misinformation is rife. This is a difficult problem to address. Example: rumor starts that a rescuer was slashed with a machete. Story morphs into shot and slashed, then slashed-got-sepsis. Turns out a guy stepped on glass and got a nasty gash.

* No good solution to map rapidly-changing road conditions. Piles of rescuers with valuable boats in the first critical hours of response were diverted to drive around to find a way into the right areas of Houston to deploy. Need a way to effectively intake reports from people with just trucks (lots of citizens responding with no boats wanted to help in some way), snapping pictures at a specific location, giving location and time, and reporting road closures due to specified height of water, electrical line, _etc._ Bonus for AR-enabled measurement of water depth, based upon baseline measurement of vehicle. Extra bonus for measuring water speed by tossing a recognized object into the water and tracking it. Then people who pull up the heat map of closures will flood-fill (pardon the pun) out possible routes, avoiding lots of redundant checks of possible routes. A lot of valuable time was wasted on this, the first few hours were filled with civilians an hour from arriving at the area (as instructed over social media) calling in and asking how they can reach where they can drop their boats, because the main routes were all closed.

* No good solution to map flooded areas, how deep, and forecasted levels. People pieced it together by hand and passing along the grapevine. Depth matters: below a certain level, outboards were getting stuck. Below a different level, and all boats had to watch for fences they could get snagged on (had a few that capsized on such obstacles). Ideal: remote-reporting gauges scattered in a grid pattern throughout the area, or gauges that can be dropped down during the initial rescue efforts, and reclaimed later.

* We reached out to Uber and Lyft. IMHO, this was a PR coup sitting around for the taking. You have a system that optimizes for efficiently tracking and queuing requests, matching requests to vehicle capacity, directing the closest vehicle to the request, and showing requesters the live status. This was precisely what the water rescue coordination needed. Uber gave a canned "we're standing down for the safety of our drivers, for those who are outside of the areas of Houston that kicked us out that we can still operate in". Lyft said great idea, but the conversation black holed after that.

* Any app-based solution will have to be very sensitive to energy usage. Rescue requesters ran out of power on their phones distressingly often. Zello was established early on as a bad way to communicate with requesters; it drained batteries very quickly. Instead, requesters reached out to relatives/friends they knew who were safe, instructed them how to get Zello and get on the rescue channels, then put in a request, and then those relatives/friends would periodically query for a status update on the request. Use strongest WiFi if available, fall back to cell data (lowest-tech with strongest signal available), then SMS, then voice.

* These status update requests (see previous entry) took up a lot of bandwidth at the height of rescues, and added to the stress on the rescuers. A queuing system that operated over WiFi if available, then over cell data if not, telling requesters they are number N in line for the nearest rescuer, would have made the coordinating a lot easier.

* A unique ID was eventually established for assigning each request. A voice recognition system could easily listen in on a group and automatically assemble in timeline form all conversations that mention a particular ID, so anyone looking at a particular rescue request could see all historical discussion about that request.

* The Zello conversations quickly got unwieldy when there were too many people vying for "the microphone". Fortunately, people figured out how to manage this somewhat, splitting into Port Arthur and Houston-specific channels, for example. An app to auto-split by role (dispatcher, rescuer, requests, _etc._ ) and density-based geography (bounded by neighborhood boundaries, perhaps) would have helped some of the confusion.

* A voice recognition system to simply assign people to the right channel based upon their initial request would be helpful. There was an opportunity here for someone like Twilio to set up a single phone number that did this. In the first few hours, people did this through their personal lines: "Call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx when you are an hour out on I-10 from Conroe to get the current rally point." Then you hear later: "I'm an hour out, called xxx-xxx-xxxx number as instructed, and it's been busy for the last 15 minutes, what else can I do to find the current rally point?"

* Most useful feature of Zello: historical recording of every single transmission while you were listening. This let people go through them and follow up on water rescue requests, then mark them safe if they were rescued. This was a big problem at first: rescuers were pulling up a map on the web app, rushing to a request, then getting disappointed when they find out the rescue request was long since taken care of by another rescuer. Zello could improve on this: the historical recording was only for the duration you were listening; a feature (even paid) that pulled last N minutes/hours from their servers would be even better. Even better is a solution that tracks a rescuer to a rescue request, then presents a simple confirmation screen (# of adults, elderly, children, disabled, babies, pets rescued, any variation from pre-arranged drop-off point, any voice notes required), and auto-marks a request.

* Need a solution that maps water conditions at a specific location, ideally with tagged input of submitter, time, audio/picture/video, and NMEA data. At one point, the flat-bottomed boats were having a lot of trouble navigating choppy waters as Harvey came back in and churned up the flooded areas. Fold in with weather data, and predictively age out the conditions if possible, displaying that the computer model _thinks_ conditions might be so-and-so but be careful because it could still be the reported condition, until another submission confirms calmer conditions.

* People _REALLY love to help_. But if their efforts go unappreciated, or go to waste (about the same as unappreciated), they will get dejected _very_ quickly. This is why precise, comprehensive coordination is so critical to manage.

* There was initial concern about fake rescuers. This concern should not be dismissed, but as far as we could tell, this didn't happen.

* Need a solution that maps shelter facilities / government resources as they come online, capacity, and current utilization, so rescuers can efficiently forward rescuees to the best available facilities, most of whom are somewhat in a state of shock. Many shelter facilities early on were just school gyms, churches/temples/mosques, warehouses, and retail stores.

* A large number of private helicopters volunteered early. Knowing the most urgently medical-critical requests to prioritize was all manually performed.

* I suspect that the _ad hoc_ , thrown-together approach of apps to coordinate the rescues is close to their scalability limit. About 10K rescues were logged, in round numbers. I don't think the same approach will work beyond 3-50K rescues, because bottlenecks were becoming apparent to me even with what we had.

* Best part of Internet-enabled rescue coordination: anyone now has a choice to actively participate in the rescue no matter where in the world they are. That's incredibly powerful and a game-changer.

That's all I have off the top of my head.

All in all, I'm quite impressed how well this went, despite the difficulties and setbacks I saw, and it shows some of the best humanity has to offer. There are some really interesting, deep CS and software engineering problems to solve in disaster response management and coordination.

Special shame to Joel Osteen: after his weak response compared to the area churches and mosques with far less funds who threw their doors open within the first hours after Harvey hit, he should be ostracized, as if "prosperity ministry" wasn't bad enough on its own. Didn't know who this bloke was before Harvey, other than "some guy who runs a megachurch", but after reading the news stories, I can't believe he convinces so many parishioners into following him.

<comment><USER13> Awesome post! Something tells me a non-profit startup is in the works!

<comment><USER14> Ooooo oooo pick me! We're doing something in this space. Very much early days but we DO have seed funding :)

Https://sempo.ai if you're interested

<comment><USER13> Why do you need "AI" to solve this problem?

<comment><USER14> Yeah good question - we're particularly interested in filtering, categorising and verifying the social media data that published during a disaster - <USER2> volume of this data is absolutely huge, so if you can use some sort classification algorithm (even basic stuff like SVM), then you can potentially massively reduce the workload of responders, who just don't have the time to that sort of manual work themselves - they're too busy doing the actual response.

<comment><USER13> Is that really an AI though or just a bunch of if-elsif-else loops? Is a true artificial intelligence really required?!

<comment><USER14> If-elif loops definitely get you part of the way there;

Lets say we're trying to find the tweets that actually come from people affect by a disaster, rather than just supplying commentary about them.

You could just say "if tweet is not within x distance of disaster, then tweet is likely to be commentary rather than from someone actually affected". However this could always miss a tweet like

"My elderly mother just called me, and she's in trouble but doesn't know who to contact"

So really this is a case of "Given tweet is not within x distance, likelihood of being from affected person is lower", but of course we don't know what the affect on likelihood is (I couldn't even ballpark it for you).

If you had some classified data though, you could start to get and idea of what all these Bayes Factors are. And just like that, you're doing a naive bayesian classifier. As I said, not fancy "Deep learning with CNNs", but ML nonetheless.

<comment><USER13> I guess I see what you're saying.

...couldn't you classify the data with if/elsif/else statements though? And store likelihoods of past records within the database?

Do you need to use a, "Bayesian Classifier"?

Is this all that Artificial Intelligence means now? I thought it was like, "a machine that can pass the Turing test"? Sorry if I'm just naive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The subtle scroll hijacking on this web page makes it almost unreadable.

</comment><comment><USER16> Huh? The article title makes a claim of 8x speed up in disaster recovery through drone use, but the text of the article says the government has restricted all civilian drone use for a month in the Houston area (to deconflict with military aircraft). These two things don't seem to jibe.

<comment><USER17> The insurance investigators appear to be commercially licensed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Aside: This is why speedy regulation of drones will probably cost lives in lost opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why would insurance companies want to speed up payments.

This would cost them millions?

<comment><USER17> Moving from unrealized to realized cost faster, sure is worse to a quarter, etc, but eventually it will all be realized. It is on their balance sheets in some way regardless. The bigger picture is that human capital to assess all the claims is quite expensive and having to spend 8x less on that is a benefit to them.</comment></comment>


UFO Sightings on 1/30/2011 - Faked or not? - <AUTHOR> http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/ufo-sightings-in-jerusalem-and-utah/

<comment><USER2> Well, _that's_ unexpected!

The Utah footage is at least consistent with human aircraft behavior. Could be a high-altitude drone (if it's silent, it probably isn't a helicopter) or perhaps an airship.

The Israel footage... well. You could definitely fake that with an hour in an editor. On the other hand, a flash like that should have attracted a shitload of eyewitnesses... so, there ought to be tons of corroborating reports.

</comment><comment><USER3> My brother spent 20+ years in the Air Force in an area that put him in contact with classified info, aerial/satellite reconnaissance, etc. He's a hardcore patriot and I've never known him to lie.

He recently told me the following:

The US (and probably other countries) have been visited by what he called 'extraterrestrial drones' at many of their nuclear weapons installations since WWII. They don't think the crafts are piloted by beings of any kind and they have absolutely no idea where they are from.

Though I have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea, I did believe what he told me.

<comment><USER4> They don't have to be extraterrestrial per se..

You might want to take e.g. a look at this excellent piece of literature:

Roswell and the Reich: The Nazi Connection

[http://www.amazon.com/Roswell-Reich-Connection-Joseph- Farrel...](http://www.amazon.com/Roswell-Reich-Connection-Joseph- Farrell/dp/1935487051/)

Or listen to some interviews: <http://www.thebyteshow.com/JosephPFarrell.html>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am not a UFO believer but the speed at which the light rises back up into the sky was crazy.</comment>