> A U.S. official confirmed the full list of countries will include Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bhutan, Bosnia, Brazil, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Colombia, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominica, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Fiji, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Liberia, Libya, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, Russia, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Uruguay, Uzbekistan and Yemen.
Grenada is here because the US asked to install radars here for their Venezuelan operation("drug boat interception") and Grenada declined. They also raised the The Level 2 advisory for US citizen.
Russia I presume is on the list because of geopolitical tensions.
I am not familiar with every country in that list but in my experience, what looks like an anomaly is Morocco, which produces a fairly large elite compared to the size of the country (worked with lots of highly educated / highly paid (and therefore net tax contributing) moroccan nationals). I have hardly worked with any other nationality in that list in my professional life (Bangladesh and Tunisia maybe).
I think this move could harm US in two ways: It will reduce the immigrant diversity which might make the population skew towards the biggest immigrant population such as from India and Mexico which are not in this list. Second it will remove USA as top destination for talent, which will help stop brain drain from these countries causing their local industry to benefit and thereby reducing the edge of US companies.
The State Department said[1]:
"The State Department will pause immigrant visa processing from 75 countries whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates."
Whether or not that's a good/true reason is another discussion.
Trump and his whole administration is extremely pro-Israel, even by the standards of US administrations. Jordan is 95% Muslim and around a quarter of the population are Palestinian refugees, so I suspect that has something to do with it
And the second Arab country to recognise Israel [1]. (After Egypt. Also on the list.)
In June, Amman was probably "intercepting some of the missiles and drones en route to Israel, with debris from those interceptions causing damage in some instances" [2].
The Israel hypothesis does not hold for this list.
The Jordanian government is reluctantly pro-Israel by necessity, but the vast majority of the population (and especially the 25% that are Palestinian refugees, for very obvious reasons) are not
No matter if one is pro-israel or not, there are reasons to not want your country to become an islamist country ruled by sharia (Jordan is partially ruled by sharia law).
I think it's strictly for financial reasons. A different profile of people from Serbia comes to the US.
I'm from Montenegro, but also lived in Serbia for a sizeable portion of my life and have family there.
Many people from said countries work in the US illegaly. I can speak for Montenegro, but the exact same pattern plays out in Bosnia and Albania.
Sure, there are some people who go to the US to study for a bit, and there are short-term seasonal work arrangements for students like "Work and Travel", but those are short.
I know 20+ people from Montenegro who went to work in the US in the last decade, illegaly or semi-legally. Two things come to mind first: driving trucks and picking marijuana. Usually they go there for a seasonal job or simply as tourists and overstay their visa.
My schoolmate even has a company that facilitates such schemes and sends people to the US as seasonal workers, who then overstay their visas and do shitty jobs. He's a millionare now, not that you'd know. Of course, it's also the diaspora in the US who actually facilitate this scheme and exploit the workers. I've heard the same thing from Albanians.
Every person I know who went to work in the US from Serbia (10+ people) is either a (good) dev, or an expert of some other kind, engineer, maybe a doctor (even though that's a tough path), PhD or something similar. All the best serbian devs and PhDs are overwhelmingly in the US.
There are several reasons for that, main ones being that it seems to be somewhat harder for people from Serbia to go to US to work illegaly, so the US mostly gets the best ones who are a net benefit to the society and pay a surplus of taxes.
Because it's harder to get to the US from Serbia, fo less qualified workers it's much easier to go to Israel and Saudi Arabia (both hugely popular nowadays) and the Emirates. Western Europe used to be popular, but it barely pays off nowadays, you can go there to live an average life, not to make big bucks and come back to flex on your neighbors.
Serbia is also quite a desperate place, but still has enough people to produce a sizeable chunk of professionals and academics, who don't want to put up with the kleptocracy and leave.
Braco! I come from Macedonia too and yeah I am quite familiar with the schemes and reasons people go and stay, I know a few folks who've immigrated that way as well. But I thought people in Serbia do that too, didnt know that its harder for them. In fact I've also met a few folks from Montenegro inside the US that clearly overstayed, but they were doing quite well, opened up a restaurant etc.
P.S. I go to Montenegro every summer I have a place there its amazing!
Yeah, a lot of people who went to the US illegaly now own businesses. A highschool buddy went to drive trucks in like 2014, now has his own trucking company, several trucks, bunch of employees (Montenegrin and otherwise).
When I say semi-legally, there are people who do kind of get the green card through marriage, but it's fake marriages. A lot of truckers do it and it seems to be tolerated.
BTW apparently (I searched online) now people from Serbia also go to the US to work illegaly, but it's a recent trend, in Montenegro it was commonplace since at least 2010 and in Albania since the 90s.
Yep, I also know of some stories where they became truckers in the US and after a while opened a few business from Macedonia into the US trucking industry (insurance, dispatchers, etc), and theyre raking in millions every year. One of the companies here declared 20 mil in profits last year. Imagine the undeclared profits :D
Not only Azerbaijan, but the whole Caucasia is included (Armenia and Georgia too). Given Trump's recent peace middlemanship between Azerbaijan and Armenia, this is actually somewhat surprising.
I pulled the latest overstay data from the CBP website (2024) and compared it to the list of countries. Some of the countries have high overstay rates (Haiti and Laos >24%), but others don't. Barbados (0.44%) has a lower overstay rate than France (0.48%). Libya (1.59%) has a lower rate than Portugal (1.68%). Some countries with high rates aren't on the list entirely, like Malawi (22.05%). Also, the hypothesis fails a chi square test. It's not that.
Their justification is interesting too, because if the threshold is "citizenship must require personal attendance", then Canadian citizenship is almost certainly invalid too if you obtained yours over Zoom, which is how most new Canadians obtain it.
I'm surprised that you can get non-attendant citizenship in Canada. They don't even give automatic citizenship to children of Canadian parents born outside of Canada (maybe if both parents are Canadian they do, but my experience is with one Canadian and one American). US citizenship for a child born outside of the US to US parents is as simple as bringing their birth certificate to the consulate. And if you marry a Canadian, they won't give you residency unless you physically reside in Canada.
The linked repo has a pretty good rundown of possible reasons:
> If non-square screens on Macbook Pros make your blood boil with rage
> If you can't afford or don't want to pay for a Macbook Pro (smart choice)
> If you have ergonomics concerns with shrinking laptops and one size fits all keyboards
> If you like your systems to be repairable and modular rather than comprised of proprietary parts shoehorned in to a closed source design available only from a single vendor for a limited time
> If you are blind (and don't want to carry a screen around)
> If you want to use AR instead of a screen and therefore prefer to be untethered
> If you are on a sailing ship, submarine, mobile home, campervan, paraglider, recumbent touring bicycle, or otherwise off-grid
> If you want a capable unix system to power a mobile mechatronic system
I'd add in not having to deal with a Macbook in clamshell mode doing stupid crap like forcing you to double-tap the touchID button sometimes, refusing to connect to external keyboards and mice on wake, and some of the other annoyances I have dealt with.
Also, a Mac Mini is small, and a MacBook is not, at least as a function of "desk area" vs "area consumed".
> If non-square screens on Macbook Pros make your blood boil with rage
> If you are blind (and don't want to carry a screen around)
> If you want to use AR instead of a screen and therefore prefer to be untethered
You can just remove the screen! My M1 Air works just fine at least. (I’ve broken the screen, but if you just don’t need screen at all, you can sell the top half assembly and save some money.)
MB Air ($1100+ / >1.8x) is only available 15" which is IMHO too small for long term comfortable use.
MB Pro ($2300+ / >3.8x) is 16" which is IMHO still a bad ergonomic experience. I'd sooner buy a mini, trash it, buy another one 4 times. Especially given they are improving annually.
1. cheaper 2. different form factor 3. more choice of battery/kb/mouse/screen/camera 4. not landfill when you have to replace battery/kb/mouse/screen/camera 5. doesn't have an annoying chunk out of the screen 6. doesn't have a video camera pointed at you all the time 7. keyboard that suits large hands 8. keyboard in preferred layout 9. not subject to apple tax on most components/upgrades
Might it not be possible to "harvest" carbon from sources on e.g. the moon [1], thereby requiring less effort to launch those resources into orbit? Feel free to point out if I'm talking (thinking) nonsense here...
Entire fields are based upon the existence of crispr now, it demonstrated its impact. It has been 2? 3? years, people who were making papers anyway have implemented AlphaFold, it hasn't exactly spawned a new area.
My two cents having formerly worked in perovskites trying to upscale the process:
Perovskites are exciting (or were exciting) because they have a high theoretical efficiency, are relatively simple to prepare, and the "worst" component in them is lead (an incredibly abundant material). The big problem with them is that they are famously horrifically unstable in ambient conditions.
Roll-to-roll processing means that you can fabricate them in mass scale. Ambient means that they claim to have solved issues like working in glovebox conditions.
Even if the price of solar panels has come down below labor, the fact that they are produced from rare earth minerals goes (in my opinion) underreported.
Consider the relationship between perovskites and multi-junction solar cells similar to the comparison between sodium and lithium ion batteries. Lithium will always have a higher capacity, but sodium is so abundant that for many applications it just doesn't matter anymore.
Solar panels "produced from rare earth minerals" is "under-reported" because they are not made from rare earth minerals, and further: the minor metals they are dependent upon are byproducts of refining base metals, ie there isn't much additional impact from using them; we already make them.
I'm not really sure how someone who supposedly worked in solar panel research would think rare earth metals are used in solar panel construction.
Solar panels have decades-long lifespans (their rated lifespan is based on when they drop below 80% efficiency, not when they become useless), there's a growing recycling chain to sell complete aged panels to other markets (typically underdeveloped nations where daily equivalent hours of solar are very high and land is plentiful so efficiency doesn't matter), and the panels themselves are highly recyclable for the materials to make new panels.
Ever notice how the people 'concerned' about the environmental impact of mining rare earth minerals, which go into durable goods that are highly recyclable/recoverable, don't seem to have a problem with oil drilling, fracking, coal strip mining, etc - for something that is usable once, maybe twice?
This is true: i.e. they use rare metals not rare earth metals.
On HN, I hope we can share a correction like that respectfully: after all, they gave good info, except for a one-word slip of the tongue.
The critique seems to extend beyond correcting that error, becoming confrontational, questioning motivation and honesty with phrases like "supposedly worked in." and the long bit defending lifespan and enviromental impact against people who "don't seem to have a problem with oil drilling, fracking, coal strip mining, etc" - they didn't even touch on that subject.
Which rare metals do they use? Silver for contact wires? If silver supplies were inadequate (they're not) these could be substituted for with copper, if a barrier layer was included between it and the silicon.
Maybe indium in ITO for those fancy transparent front contacts. Or tellurium in CdTe, supposedly still costeffective compared to “thick” Si cells. I would still give GGP a break it can be tricky to venture even small steps outside ones specialty these days
And, maybe in the future, gallium as a dopant in silicon cells, since it doesn't experience nearly as much light induced degradation as boron does. But dopants are used in very small amounts.
I think some power electronics uses europium silicide (or was that erbium?) as a gate material, so maybe in inverters? Again, the quantities would be small.
Tin based perovskites have been studied for almost as long as the lead based ones but they have been less efficient and much less stable. Work continues to increase their efficiency and stability, e.g.:
"Efficient tin-based perovskite solar cells with trans-isomeric fulleropyrrolidine additives" (2024-01-29)
A simple search of the 'net will answer the question far better than this attack on Shellenberger. It will show that rare earth minerals can be used in PV panels as doping elements. Interestingly enough it is especially Perovskite PV cells which seem to benefit from the use of these additives [1,2]:
(1) Recently, use of rare earth (RE) ions doped nanomaterials in PSCs, has been identified as an effective means to address the aforementioned issues by expanding the range of absorption spectra minimizing the non-absorption loss of solar photons, enhancing light scattering and improving operational stability.
(2) Rare earth ion doped nanomaterials can be used in perovskite solar cell to expand the range of absorption spectra and improve the stability due to its up conversion and down conversion effect. This article reviews recently progress in using rare earth ion doped nanomaterials in mesoporous electrodes, perovskite active layers, and as an external function layer of perovskite solar cell.
That's just in the lab. If you buy PV modules right now the cells will not be doped with rare earth elements. And almost everything demonstrated in the lab doesn't progress beyond there (which is fine; that's how technology R&D works.)
I think the closest one could come to making the "REE in solar" claim make sense would be decoloring agents for the glass. Cerium could be used for this, but I think manganese is cheaper.
They produce 60-80 milligram of calcium carbonate 'per fiber', per 30 hours. I'm interested to know how they keep the bacteria alive over time, through the concrete curing process (high temperatures, high level of carbon dioxide, making any liquids in the vicinity highly acidic), and how the bacteria remain viable over time. Concrete we consider to last over decades, or a century?
Can you elaborate about what you define as "used against you" even if it is entirely inaccurate? What is the use case of inaccurate data with which you are concerned?
> Can you elaborate about what you define as "used against you" even if it is entirely inaccurate?
Hypothetical: $company you're trying to use needs to "verify" you using $inaccurateData from $vendor.
You're absolutely screwed if the verification questions you're asked are relying on the "polluted" answers
Similar vein: if the "polluted" data indicates you might be gay or replublican or musilim or into some seriously unhealthy lifestyle choices like smoking and $someCompany decides that you're a smoker and therefore your too risky to insure.
Serious question: Who is using browser data for verification?! It's alarming to me that this is even a hypothetical scenario. All identity verification systems I have ever used in the US have been through a credit agency or something similar. I can't imagine any use case that would use your browser history or ad data for these purposes. Do you have a real-world example?
Or, if state level actors are looking at your data they are buying from companies, the appearance of intentionally corrupted data could invite more scrutiny.
If state-level actors are looking into your data with any amount of individual scrutiny you are already fucked, this is a ridiculous reason to not use ad nauseum.
Imagine being in China where they tend to watch you and make profiles on you. Then suddenly the profile of who you are goes completely random. Is it possible this gets the attention of state-level actors where you had none before?
Poisoned data would be useful in the fight but yeah, "garbage data looks like someone else's" is certainly superior to "garbage data looks like it's yours".
I guess in the long term it depends how good the profile builders get at anomaly detection, and at which scale we're talking about.
While many states in the US have laws against it now, for awhile there companies were basing if they would hire you based on your social media profile. Having no profile at all may exclude you from getting a job. Or, when I went to get credit for my the first time in my later 30's. I had always been a cash buyer before then, and proof of my existence beyond my ID was sparse, the guy on the other end of the line was like "Did you even exist before yesterday?"
Another example that I think captures the spirit of autoexec’s point is credit fraud.
Are you the one taking out credit cards and potentially tanking your credit score? No.
Does it still negatively impact your life? Yes, because the information landlords/banks receive from credit unions only shows the low credit score.
Do the banks/landlords care about the fact that it’s fraud? No.
It’s ultimately YOU who has to do all the leg work to report the fraud, make sure that your credit history is fixed, and that your credit is frozen as a deterrent to for future fraud issues.
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