While you're making a noble effort not to help AWS make money, one thing they really didn't enshittify is Whole Foods. It used to be known as whole paycheck, but now I frequently find higher quality items than Safeway at a lower price. Whoever buys the beer and cheese for them is an expert, selection is great and prices are good. In the same vein, that also means you can't use Claude code or other Anthropic products, which are all subscription priced. I'm no AI evangelist, it really does speed up tasks ..for example generating mostly usable code and then allowing you to pipe and analyze output into it instantly...a supercharged console. Half day jobs reduced to minutes. So, it's hard to avoid using anything Amazon without losing some benefits yourself.

So you don't ever go to Whole Foods or pay for any SaaS products (or use any that monetize you as a user) that use Amazon Web Services?

Generally speaking any claims of a data breach of any sort without proof, such as extensive samples of the data, is amateur extortion. The thing is cl0p is not a joke of a group with elite Russian backing ..not like the ones you're describing, and has exfiltrated tons of data. But based on the fact that they used compromised e-mails to send a massive spam campaign to many companies, rather than their traditional dark web blog, makes me wonder if this is a double scam here and they are also impersonating cl0p.

Not at all, in many cases it's a plus when you run a liberal California tech company and don't use H1B or outsourcing. I worked somewhere that some major clients were labor unions, they wouldn't even print t-shirts that weren't USA-union-made. Got sensitive, security conscious customers? They love hearing the work is done in USA and not sent elsewhere. Somewhere along the line, as Jon Stewart once commented, Republicans seemed to seize the American iconography and present as more American-y than Democrats, but I assure you I bleed red, white and blue; have created jobs for Americans and was adamant about not doing H1B after my first experience of what a fraud it is. Many liberals feel similarly on this issue.

Liberal here. I'm all for this, if you can't find any Americans to do a job and lay off similarly skilled people you should be allowed to H1B. In my experience, it's the conservative "patriots"...ex-military officer types..that love taking over companies and offshoring American jobs because EBITDA.

Come to California and you'll see every coffee shop has a prop 65 warning posted, as coffee has chemicals in it that may cause cancer. As it turns out, everything does, and the warnings are everywhere. It's written as a well intentioned law but the effect is that everything is labelled as "known to the state of California to cause cancer" and everyone ignores the same warning.

The second link is a far more informative review of the literature and studies in the area. When it comes down to it, tech firms wouldn't do the work of sponsoring visas if it didn't have clear benefits, one as we agree the indentured servitude factor, and two being able to get the work done for less...which includes more work than others would tolerate for the same overtime-exempt salary. About a decade ago I hired an H1B transfer after being given a shoestring budget for a Head of IT hire. I really didn't like the game-ified system such as posting a job as for their exact resume in a literal print newspaper so we could say no one qualified applied. And yes, this person was paid less than we could find anyone else remotely qualified to work for. I actually swore off doing sponsorship after that and arrived at the same conclusion everyone else will now: Either offshore remotely for even less or hire Americans.

It is absolutely not a fact H1Bs are paid more or the same as comparable Americans. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Farti... In addition to being paid less, they are often worked for more hours because of their dependence on the employer for a visa and unwillingness to pushback. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fheather.cs.ucdavis.edu...

That's almost what happened. The people making/selling computers and services did well, but on the whole the working and middle classes have been otherwise squeezed. Their purchasing power today is far lower, especially in view of housing, healthcare and college/education costs. Inequality today rivals the Gilded Age. https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nasdaq.com%2Farticle...

Because an Amendment requires the consent of 2/3rds of the state legislatures of the several states, it would have to be bipartisan regardless of what party was in power, it always has. Things that would make sense would include to abolish gerrymandering, but each side is too dug in to want to change the rules that got them elected. Add that to the belief the Constitution is some kind of revered document like scripture (any student of history will tell you it's a bunch of hacked negotiations cobbled together), and here we are with outdated democratic institutions which favor the rich and the incumbents.

Same way the Catholic Church gets rid of aging Cardinals -- 80 years old and you aren't able to vote (probably should be 70 or 75 for Supreme Court). A great idea for a constitutional amendment but as another poster pointed out, the likelihood of any amendment being passed today is near zero.

The 17th is well intentioned but it needed a two term (12 years) limit. In practice the way it worked out is incumbent Senators almost always win and stay in office until well after senility has kicked in. Repealing it would just give the governors and state legislatures power to appoint whoever their party likes.

Originally in the Constitution, the federal government did not have the power to create an income tax. Revenue depended largely on tariffs and excise taxes. During the Progressive Era (which you can thank for things like the weekend and the direct election of US Senators), an income tax was seen as a way to tax the rich and fund the government while decreasing inequality. They're rolling in their graves over the way it's implemented: The wealthier pay a lower effective tax on average than the middle class. Removing the de minimus exception created an even more regressive tax, as now regular consumers are paying the same in taxes as people ordering luxury goods. The point of the 16th Amendment was to remove the dependence on tariffs and arbitrary levys as a way of raising money for the federal government. Now, we're seeing the triple whammy of a regressive income tax, a regressive FICA tax (caps out at 175k ish), and regressive tariffs. The squeeze of the lower and middle class is now on. The income tax must be changed to be more progressive, and the Constitution amended to require it. Otherwise the middle will continue to be squeezed and the rich get even richer, which was never the intent of the 16th Amendment.

Usually the Board represents the top shareholders, who invest in the company and aren't "hired", they're putting up the money. Early on it's the founders who control the board and in turn the company, with VCs getting seats and possibly veto power on certain issues etc. If you're actually referring to an Advisory Board, those advisors will work for a few hours a month for a few percent to a few tenths of a percent of the company. They're not going to do anything meaningful hands on, do sales for you, code for you, or be anything like a team member...more like a strategic consultant that doesn't execute. They're almost always successful and financially secure..who else works for shares only (aka lottery tickets in a startup)? A co founder can actually execute and is committed to the company with a much bigger interest in changing their own life.

. It is true VCs can divide co founders but I haven't seen it happen, they do a good job dividing themselves in my experience. But to a VC it is helpful if another founder can take the reigns...when you invest in one person, it is a risk. They can get hit by a bus (never seen that), have kids and totally check out (seen that), do too much ketamine and get weird and make bad decisions (seen that). Im

That's totally right in my experience. It's rare one founder has all the skills necessary and there's often a need for a second person to complement them. Perhaps one founder is focused on product and sales and the other on technical and team management. It's rare to find a single person who can wear fundraising, public relations, sales, marketing, operations and technical hats. At an early phase, much of these functions have to be founder led and you can't easily nor affordably hire out for them.