The wrinkle is that it doesn't seem to be tied well to identity. Someone working illegally can provide an NI number that's legit but not theirs. Their work accrues to someone else's NI record, but the person getting the extra years probably never notices and the person working under their NI number doesn't care because they aren't entitled to a state pension anyway, they just want to work now.

The reason might seem odd. But it ocurred to me that if you want to use immigration to reduce crime, including rape, the obvious solution is to ban all male immigration.

That shocked me because it seems so wildly discriminatory. Yes, most violent crimes are committed by men. But very few men commit violent crimes. Banning male immigration would punish a large group for the appalling actions of a few. Making it about "$some_country's men" doesn't seem a whole lot better. It's still unjust to punish someone for someone else's crime.

If anyone is curious about the exercise, I recommend trying it. It was disconcerting to sit with the idea of banning male immigration, really seriously consider it and realise how viscerally shocked I was by the idea.

Edit: for context, in the UK right now, phrases like "rape gangs" are part of the debate/argument about immigration.

The Migration Observatory at Oxford publishes excellent summaries about migration trends, e.g. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/lo...

In 2023 their interest payments were 28% of revenue. They also made the news for dumping particularly large volumes of sewage into rivers.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/dec/18/water-firms-us...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-67357566

I'd widen the frame a bit. People scared of losing their jobs might underestimate the usefulness of AI. Makes sense to me, it's the comforting belief. Worth keeping in mind while reading articles sceptical of AI.

But there's another side to this conversation: the people whose writing is pro AI. What's motivating them? What's worth keeping in mind while reading that writing?

Yes. I'm not the original commenter, but this is what I expect.

From my POV, the OS exists to virtualise the hardware it runs on. I don't want the OS manufacturer to decide if I'm allowed to have a web browser or play games.

Naive in hindsight, but until game consoles and smartphones came along, it didn't occur to me that an OS would forbid me from installing something.

[0] https://bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/59_23_Healey.pdf

"Uh, what?? Air isn't an MLM, it's just the thing we breath. We all need it to live."

"Huh, I guess air is an MLM after all. Wild."

I say "mostly" happy because I almost returned it. The USB connection between mini PC and Terramaster would be fine for a few days and then during intense operations like parity checks would disconnect and look like parity error/disk failure, except the disks were fine. Eventually realised the DAS uses power from the USB port as well as the adapter plug and the mini PC wasn't supplying enough power. Since attaching a powered USB hub it's been perfect.

Explanation of symptoms and solution, in case anyone is considering one or has the same problem: https://forum.terra-master.com/en/viewtopic.php?t=5830

[0] https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(16)301...

If it's September and your budget expires in April (new tax year here in UK), hire a few contractors to make sure you spend all that money. After all, you don't know what next year's budget will look like. And not using your budget might be taken as proof you don't need as much money next year. So hire contractors and do that project now, rather than waiting and taking the risk you can't do it all.

For even more budget shenanigans and org politics, imagine you're a product/project/whatever manager in charge of an exciting new project with a big budget. You do not control any of the dev teams. For some reason the dev leads are not excited by your new project and are reluctant to assign people to the project. They tell you it will be next year and you wonder if they mean never. Luckily, you have a big budget for the project! So you hire contractors and now your project has a dev team. The company doesn't have to keep on the temporary team and the project is delivered. Success!

This scenario kicks several massive cans of worms down the road. But for a while everyone's happy while progress is made on the project. Later the dev teams will be annoyed when they have to maintain code they didn't want in the first place. And whatever organisational problem meant the dev teams didn't want to get involved will still exist. But, by hiring contractors, everyone gets to ignore those problems for a while longer.

(Clearly in the real world the American authorities have decided it's a criminal matter. I just find it odd that a "smart contract" dispute falls under criminal rather than commercial law.)

It reminds me of an article that claimed Britain has become a more civil and less honest place in the last few decades. (The Economist, maybe?) Perhaps some workplaces are like that too. Whether it's a good thing or not, who knows. People clearly have their preference one way or the other.

This specific case is tied to complicated American politics, but I guess small versions of the same debate are happening in workplaces all over the world. Though maybe, ironically, not in the most intensely policed workplaces.

People sometimes think that's a silly thing to ponder: it's obviously obvious! But at most places I've worked, we spend lots of time defining the technical skills required for a job and handwave the rest.

I guess people assume "they'll know it when they see it". But there's a lot of ambiguity. Parent comment suggests that being comfortable sitting in a conference room for an hour is an important part of their job. In some workplaces that would be an odd requirement. I've worked at places where the important thing was being able to go away and make progress on something for a few weeks.

I suspect there are people with autism reading these threads and feeling disheartened. It would be easy to leave with the impression that neurotypical people expect you to make all the effort and they won't try to meet you half way. Some workplaces are like that. But in all the talk about neurotypical vs neurodivergent, it's easy to forget that neurotypical people are a varied lot, just like neurodivergent people. Workplaces are a varied lot too.

I prefer the results of large studies. I think modern methods are better than methods from the Scientific Revolution. But people can't always afford to wait a decade or two for solidly replicated results.

If that's true, I'd say they're very fortunate that the Digital Library Initiative existed and that they could put their research into the public domain to reuse it for free at Google. In another context, I'd call the DLI an angel investor and they'd have wanted a slice of that Google pie.