omarqureshi's comments

omarqureshi | 2 months ago | on: T-Ruby is Ruby with syntax for types

I don't programme much any more but the whole beauty of Ruby that it pretty much heavily relies on #respond_to? / duck typing and thus you don't rely on types or class checking at all.

omarqureshi | 5 months ago | on: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

This is absolutely a mean AF law. This is pure Trump in his element with no depth of thought. However Big Tech does not care about your feelings, there are two realistic options.

To send you back where you came from (severance).

To send you somewhere where you have the ability to keep doing what your doing.

Some may fork out the fee for a year for exceptional staff, thats about it.

Anyway, forget the tech sector. The impact to the health care sector is even worse.

omarqureshi | 5 months ago | on: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

Speaking purely from the UK perspective, London is expensive, however, real estate should not be seen as a cost for a large company, it's an investment. Price increases on office real estate on a year-to-year basis just in London is 5-10% per square metre.

For the UK this is amazing news, it also allows for places like Birmingham and Manchester to get a significant boost.

omarqureshi | 5 months ago | on: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

> Can you elaborate more on hiring and immigration in the United Kingdom and Australia with respect to similar skilled visa work? > When you say South Asia could you expand on what specific countries you mean? I think South Asia could mean a few things to a few different people which is why I ask.

I was in the process of moving one engineer from Dubai to Manchester, probably all in the process is £20,000-£30,000 overall, spread over several years.

South Asia is India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Predominantly this is India and Pakistan though.

> As an American I'm curious about this, can you expand on how this will happen or how you think it might happen?

Best guess, those software engineering departments with predominantly South Asian engineers will cease to exist, they'll buy real estate in London/Sydney which is a much better long term investment because London prices always go up.

Severance is also REALLY easy in the US compared to countries where actual labour laws exist.

Sales and Marketing will stay, they probably need that American presence, they don't need that in software engineering because the Internet exists.

omarqureshi | 5 months ago | on: Microsoft has urged its employees on H-1B and H-4 visas to return immediately

This isn't a big deal for the larger tech companies other than a short term pain in the ass.

This is a large net negative for 3 sectors that I can currently think of:

- American (software) tech workers - Healthcare - Research / Postgrad

Medicine and Research are fairly self explanatory, however, why the American software tech worker?

Let's say you're Microsoft, you have large offices all over the world - instead of hiring in the US and making those departments in US offices bigger, you're going to instead hire in probably the following places:

- UK - Australia - South Asia

It means less focus in the US which eventually will just become sales and marketing only with perhaps some smaller department sized tech jobs.

Another great Trump strategy that appears to be helping the poor whites but actually shafts them.

omarqureshi | 7 months ago | on: A low power 1U Raspberry Pi cluster server for inexpensive colocation (2021)

Similar setup (not in a 1U). I have 3 Pi 5's in my AV rack with M2 and PoE Hats - they actually work fairly well and bonus? Don't need to power them. I could get a 1U enclosure but, it's fine.

The only issue is one of the PoE Hats fan is catching something (though nothing i can see), so on occasion it will need persuasion to be quiet

omarqureshi | 2 years ago | on: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

I work for a hedgehog based studio for their supposedly non existent mobile games arm albeit I don't work in engineering.

For us, it's a huge deal. It's that people have spent the best part of a decade working with Unity, their support and enterprise training is very good. Also we have a game out in December which is also Unity based.

As of yet we haven't made a decision on what to do but legal are looking at it, so, it's business as usual for now.

omarqureshi | 2 years ago | on: Shit life syndrome

The UK is vulnerable to this because the weather is miserable.

Other than last year, I can't remember a year in the last 2 decades where going to the coast wasn't such a massive gamble.

Even I have given up and decided to spend a week in Turkey.

omarqureshi | 4 years ago | on: Ask HN: Coping with cancer in the family

So, I had a few tragedies in a row.

I have a boy who is a 23+2 prem. Who spent around 6 months in the hospital, had brain damage due to the trauma, blindness due to retinopathy of prematurity, severe skin disfiguration of the lower abdomen due to aspergillosis. He's non verbal and whilst mentally a lot easier to deal with than my other kids it is quite physically demanding.

My wife was diagnosed with cancer a few years back, aggressive, but was treated and it seems to be in remission though the side effects of treatment are still taking a toll on her (severe joint pain mainly).

I injured myself a few months prior to my wife's cancer, spinal disc related, was due to have surgery a few months after my wife's cancer diagnosis and ended up putting it off until the pandemic hit and then put it off again until last August.

Suffice it to say, the surgery was not entirely successful and I'm at the point where as a 36 year old person I'm not able to squat, stairs are difficult and it feels like my entire nervous system is on fire constantly. So much that when I have a good day and get used to being pain free for a while, that when I slip into a bad day, I'm just completely irritable and have lost all patience. As such, caring for my son has become borderline impossible without help.

I won't say it's easy and let's be clear I have to be honest and say that this is not about you as much as I know this impacts you and you will feel the mental pressure. The important thing is to do as much as you can for your mother whilst keeping her distracted with things to do.

I took very little leave as I also needed the distraction too for my own pain and just so I didnt have to process my families trauma at that time. My personal opinion is having an idle mind is the worst thing.

Things will eventually change for your mother and hopefully it is for the best. Take leave for the day after chemotherapy and ask for help from other people too (siblings, in laws, friends) and this doesn't have to mean actual care for your mother but perhaps other things in the house that need taking care of (childcare, cooking, etc).

omarqureshi | 6 years ago | on: Software made me loathe my car

You can, however there's three problems.

Firstly from an aesthetic point of view they're hideous, you'll end up having to buy a plastic piece of crap to hold it in and aftermarket stereos are just not great, it won't be flush to the rest of the dash.

Secondly depending on your car a bunch of stuff that used to work with your car (forward/reverse sensors) might not show up any more.

Thirdly stalk adaptors costs a fortune.

You really want a car that has got that experience sorted and after driving a modern VW, I'd say a VW or Audi is probably the way to go. They'll have Carplay/Auto/Mirror and that's what you want. The experience of an aftermarket stereo is just not great.

omarqureshi | 8 years ago | on: After Surgery in Germany, I Wanted Vicodin, Not Herbal Tea

The 500/5 cocodamols will cause liver damage before any codeine kicks in.

What is interesting is that if you really interesting is that a certain large pharmacy does a 200/12 ibuprofen + codeine combo.

I once had a prolapsed lower disc (from sport) and neck spasm (from stupidity) at the same time. Whilst I couldn't take naproxen (lots of reflux even with omeprazole), that and 500/15 cocodes with diazepam was the only way to get to sleep.

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