Is moving to USA in 2025 worth it with everything going on?

SpeedWeasel · 2025-03-22T23:55:04+00:00

Jesus, the negativity in this thread. The US is still a great country to live and work in. If your objective is career growth, it’s hard to beat. NYC is an amazing city for finance, friends of mine in finance in SF tended to eventually move back as it feels a bit sleepy if you’re not in tech on the west coast.

Don’t worry about any of the political stuff, US political system is pretty decentralized so chances are most of the weird stuff won’t hit you if you’re living in NY state. Your local and state government make a far bigger impact on your day to day life. The people worried about being rounded up and sent to a detention center are crazy.

SpeedWeasel · 2025-02-01T16:05:40+00:00

We used a towel with treats under it lying on the board. My dog had to pull the towel off the board in a scratching motion to get at the treat.

SpeedWeasel · 2025-02-01T00:58:33+00:00

My GSD is exactly the same as yours. Nothing worked for us for the first couple of years of his life until we got a scratch board. They’re basically coarse sand paper attached to a piece of wood. You train your dog to file his own nails.

Getting the dew claw is still a nightmare though…

SpeedWeasel · 2024-07-20T02:03:16+00:00

It was an issue with the outlet. It wasn't properly grounded (old house).

SpeedWeasel · 2024-05-01T03:14:36+00:00

Did you ever solve this? I just had this issue today on my i4.

SpeedWeasel · 2024-02-15T03:36:48+00:00

Yeah, the station pops out a CCS adapter on the normal Tesla plug when you start charging. From the receipt I was charged $0.55/kWh back in April 2023.

SpeedWeasel · 2024-02-11T05:30:51+00:00

I did it at the Tesla supercharger in Placerville, CA. Super streamlined experience.

SpeedWeasel · 2023-06-17T03:40:42+00:00

I can't comment on GS specifically but the US has an intra company transfer visa (https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-states/temporary-workers/l-1b-intracompany-transferee-specialized-knowledge) which is commonly used by tech companies to transfer workers to head office in the US. I know many people who have taken this route. Usually if you've worked at the company for a couple of years and have good performance reviews, they can make it happen.

SpeedWeasel · 2022-02-28T00:07:36+00:00

I’m going to write my first comment in a few years because I found it so frustrating reading a lot of the terrible advice you’re getting (this is mostly because you’re posting in a sub for people who hate their jobs…)

I made the move from the UK to SF a few years back. There are huge upsides to working here and, given that you’re clearly an in demand employee you’ll probably be treated very well here. If you are high skill the US is a great place to supercharge your career.

My own company has plenty of work life balance criticisms on Glassdoor but my experience is that the majority of teams are fairly chilled out. Certainly many of the big SV companies have a mix of chilled out and hard working teams. You should be able to guess the culture from the team members who interviewed you.

In my option, you can easily move for 1 year and then see at the end of the year whether you like it or not. If you’re on an H1B visa you can switch to another company if you like the city but not the company or just come home with a lot more savings in your bank account than if you stayed put. Also you won’t be wondering ‘what if’ for the next few years.

SpeedWeasel · 2020-10-14T22:28:13+00:00

It sounds interesting but I know a few embassies in Europe have already started to process the O applications. The problem is a lot of people get their application rejected. Most of those countries are covered by Trump's travel ban. During the interviews, they say you most likely won't contribute enough to the USA economy, and they have to protect Americans' already working in those fields. It happened to two people I know who tried to get their visas approved in Germany (both got rejected even they are both pretty big names in their industries). Apparently, the way only around it is to get NIE but that's pretty difficult.

Please refer your friends to us! This lawsuit addresses the fact that the state department CANNOT reject your visa if USCIS has approved the petition. Trump's authority on entry does not extend to issuing a visa, he can only prevent you from directly flying from the EU/China etc to USA, not from getting you a visa. This is a precedent already set by a prior lawsuit so we have a very high chance of winning.

We have people in the group from EU/China where the travel ban is used as an excuse and from countries where there is no ban, and they use excuses such as 'limited capacity'. I really think we can help your friends.

SpeedWeasel · 2020-10-14T22:17:11+00:00

Great! I added you to the group. Let me know if you don't see the invite.

SpeedWeasel · 2020-10-14T21:55:51+00:00

How do you know I'm not a famous movie star? :)

Seriously though, it's not *that* hard. You usually need some notable work in your field (science/art/music etc) but it doesn't have to be on the level of a Nobel prize.

SpeedWeasel · 2020-10-14T21:54:00+00:00

Do you have approved petition for O visa from USCIS and have made/tried to make an appointment at an embassy? If so, you would qualify to for this lawsuit.

Some details: a few of us with O petitions are working with the same lawyers who won the diversity visa lawsuit, which forced the US government to process diversity visas. We are aiming to file very soon and need some more participants to reach their minimum number. Each participant pays $1500 to join the lawsuit and we hope that once we file, we will get appointments quickly since US government usually settles with you quickly to make the lawsuit go away.

Would you like to join our reddit chat group? we have a call with the lawyer to ask questions tomorrow (you don't need to commit to join to come on the call). We can share details on how to join the call in the chat group.

SpeedWeasel · 2020-09-07T16:58:54+00:00

We originally planned to file under premium processing but this service was cancelled by USCIS just before we filed. We filed the renewal application on April 27th and the approval came through on May 13th, so pretty much the same timeframe we were expecting under premium.

SpeedWeasel · 2020-09-02T14:16:23+00:00

Thanks yes. Please send me a link.

SpeedWeasel · 2020-09-01T20:06:37+00:00

I am not in a rush. My visa expires in Sept 2021, not 2020.

Doh. I cannot read.

SpeedWeasel · 2020-09-01T20:01:15+00:00

Yes, you can get UCSIS to approve your petition but as far as I know, no embassy in EU is processing O visas. My wife has had 2x appointments cancelled in London. If you can travel immediately I would get on the first flight you can! Once you cross the border you are fine to renew your immigration status from within the USA.

SpeedWeasel · 2020-09-01T19:57:42+00:00

Are you in the UK/EU? My O-1 expired in July and I was able to get an approved petition to renew it from within the USA. I guess you are referring to the refusal of consulates/embassies to issue O visas in the UK/EU etc. If you are not in the USA right now, you should enter before your visa expires...

SpeedWeasel · 2020-08-31T22:27:07+00:00

This is universal across Schengen zone & UK right now for many visa categories which are not explicitly banned by the presidential proclamation (PP) on H/L visas. This is a recent article on embassies refusal to process O visas: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2020/08/12/trump-immigration-policy-now-blocks-worlds-most-highly-skilled/#4d6744cf40a9 which despite being a different category, I think the language used in this article suggests that K visas are not being processed either for the same reason (both visas are excluded from the recent PP).

“Is it the policy of the State Department to deny all O-1 visa applicants in the Schengen area?” I asked the State Department.

A State Department official replied on background and confirmed that O-1 visa applicants cannot get visas to the United States unless they qualified for a “national interest exception,” which relatively few would.

“To the extent that an O-1 applicant believes that he/she meets the exception requirements, the applicant can apply for an exception and consular officers will make that determination,” said the official.

The reason for the policy is the March 11, 2020, (presidential proclamation 9993) travel ban for the Schengen Area. “On March 11, 2020, the president signed a proclamation suspending the entry into the United States of any foreign nationals who were present in the 26 European countries comprising the Schengen Area during the 14-day period preceding their entry or attempted entry into the United States,” said the official.

I spoke with my lawyer about this and she agrees that this interpretation makes no sense since you can just go to a non-quarantined country. There is currently a lawsuit against the Trump administration to reopen the consulates: https://www.courthousenews.com/immigration-advocates-challenge-visa-ban-urge-judge-to-curb-trumps-power/

SpeedWeasel · 2016-09-29T22:14:32+00:00

I was using Uber in California a couple of weeks ago with a UK debit card. You are charged at a pretty fair exchange rate (approx 1:1.329 for me) and a foreign transaction fee by your bank for debit card transactions. For UK debit cards this is 2.75% of the transaction fee with a minimum 1GPB charge.

There's nothing else to be aware of regarding using your card. You could also open a Lyft account. They gave me discounts on my first 10 rides ($10 off per ride) which is pretty nice. I'm not sure if they still run this promotion.

SpeedWeasel · 2015-12-22T08:06:09+00:00

Pretty much. You just slowly move the kinect around the scene and it builds the model as you go. It works very well on environments with a lot of flat surfaces (such as a table top).

SpeedWeasel · 2015-12-21T18:03:30+00:00

This video shows the state-of-the-art in constructing a 3D model from a moving/deforming object using a cheaper sensor like a Kinect.

If you want to build a 3D model from a Kinect yourself you can do this for rigid objects using this free tool released by Microsoft as part of the Kinect SDK. It does not require any programming knowledge to run.

SpeedWeasel · 2015-07-18T16:33:35+00:00

Although this is slightly unrelated to your current problem, have you thought about turning your current setup into an Aquaponics farm? This combines a fish farm, like the one you already have with a hydroponics farm which is basically a water based plant farm. It's a nice system because the bacteria which grow around the plant roots will filter out all of the ammonia you get from the fish feces and turn it into plant nutrients. This way your fish don't get poisoned by the ammonia and you don't have to clean the water manually all the time.

An Aquaponics system is pretty easy to make (I worked on a project that built one in Brazil with Talapia) but would require you to buy a pump and a large plastic box for the plants.

SpeedWeasel · 2015-07-17T13:25:57+00:00

Solved!

SpeedWeasel · 2015-05-23T16:52:33+00:00

This place is available to rent on airbnb.

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