Yep, just yesterday, Nike removed one leach middlemen called retailers and sell directly through their app. Turns out working out very well for them too.

If you have been following this story for the past couple of years, this has been disastrous for Nike.

Coincidently I was thinking about car wash just few days back, One was bought in 2014, never car washed seems fine so far. Another was bought in 2022 again no wash so far and no plan to.

I used to think everyone does it, I will do at some point but that point never came. Inside we vacuum and wipe every few months. Washed mats once in an year or so but car body wash rain takes care of it.

I used to wash my car once a year, then I just ran out of time ;)

Dunno, for folks around here, Claude is important, Gitlab is important and banal press release is important. So all of them together makes it obviously important.

Hmm, I was expecting it would halve, once gamblers get their fill.

Google did it AlphaGo, AlphaFold etc for bragging rights, now let frontier lab do their thing.

It would be utter stupidity if they keep competing with hyper agile frontier labs. They sensibly moving to big infra provider and that's good niche.

> .. perhaps if it's not helping sell ads,

Perhaps cloud business is also a thing which is making big revenue

You say "keep competing"... the hyper agile frontier labs and Google/MSFT are practically one and the same via circular financing arrangements. Competition on the frontier is kinda a farce, what matters is who comes out of the modern-day Darien scheme as a winner.

At worst Google just need to keep the lights on until the frontier labs file for bankruptcy under the weight of that >$1tn debt they've built up paying for FAANG's data centers. Then Google walks away from all of this with the the best remaining models, best R&D lab, and several hundred billion dollars in infrastructure on their balance sheet.

Well, if this small fee can help brilliant folks to explore their horizons outside US, it would be all worth in end.

Yeah, it is not much worth because issue is not that top talent on H1 matches local talent but how average is the rest but get brought to US in name of high skill immigration.

The debate by supporters is set like: Look at these 5 top guys they are best in class in every aspect so why shouldn't they be here. And now don't look over there 500 guys which are business analyst, basic enterprise coders, testers application support engineers lest question maybe asked how come they are considered highly skilled.

I mean Canada has jumped so many times in last 8-10 years with these express residencies, hiring H1B laid off workers, grabbing people who are stuck with travel restrictions to US I'd have thought they be half way to the moon.

In any case I wish well to people in Canada and Europe and people who are looking to move there. More spreaded opportunities lead to better outcome for everyone including US even if it does not look like one.

> I mean Canada has jumped so many times in last 8-10 years with these express residencies, hiring H1B laid off workers, grabbing people who are stuck with travel restrictions to US I'd have thought they be half way to the moon.

What if I told you the people Canada really want have no issues getting a US work visa/Green Card?

Check out O-1 visas and EB-1/2.

> What if I told you the people Canada really want have no issues getting a US work visa/Green Card?

This is ignorant. Stop pretending like the government is just barring illegals or "low-skill" workers (as you indicate in another thread) and welcome everyone else.

I used to hold O-1. I have approved EB-1A I-140. Yet I ended up surprisingly being denied entry by the US CBP, unable to return to my home in the US, almost losing my job.

The government is targeting all fronts. Those with slightest law violations are prosecuted and deported by ICE. High-skill workers from certain backgrounds are facing increasing visa/green-card scrutiny. International students are barred from internships (see recent regulatory changes for CPT and news about potential 100K fee for OPT as well).

> Yet I ended up surprisingly being denied entry by the US CBP

Did it have anything to do with failing a background check? Often, denials aren't as "surprising" as they seem.

While I feel irritated, I still in principle feel it's a good thing to continue the discussion and share different experiences and viewpoints to open people's eyes. So let me tell you more.

After my wife moved to Canada to wait for her US work permit / visa last year, I visited her every few times. I hold O-1 status in the US but didn't have an O-1 visa. I had been able to return to the US through a program called Automatic Revalidation [1].

At the same port-of-entry, using the same documents, CBP let me in three times. Every time they put me in secondary inspection, ask me for a lot of details about my travel. But they did let me in. The fourth time, the CBP changed their mind. They said a student visa I used to use was revoked a few years ago and wanted me to apply for an O-1 visa to prove my eligibility to enter, which I argued had nothing to do with my O-1 eligibility.

Why was my student visa revoked? I quote the email the consulate sent me years ago: "The revocation of your visa was due to additional information that became available after the visa was issued." That's it. I had sent follow-up emails and requested FOIA but never got any more details. That was a hard-earned visa. When I left the US to a Latin American country to apply for the new visa, I was detained and interrogated by CBP at the airport, presumably because of suspicions of Chinese espionage -- I was also investigated by FBI at some point. I lived in a country that was badly hit by COVID for two months to wait for the administrative processing of my visa. They stamped the visa, then revoked it, and that hit me again after years.

Surprising? Having the same travel documents at the same port, being eligible for entry for 3 times but denied the 4th time is definitely surprising. Not surprising? Yeah I have had a lot of troubles with the US government.

I never technically "fail a background check". Every of my previous visas and immigration petitions got approved after an unusually long obscured process. But how fair is it? Can I even expect an end to this?

And I'm definitely not the only one. I know a community of Chinese students / workers with more or less similar experiences. You can also search on Reddit for stories about long visa administrative processing that ruined people's careers and life.

[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-inf...

Well, even payment is no guarantee that ads won't be injected into service. even these fucking movie theaters sho like 20-30 min of ads before showing movie people paid for.

Yes, there are enough people who still think this won't happen despite very conclusive recent history of this exactly happening.

Just like there are enough people who think if there were no car dealership/ salesman car would become cheaper as if car makers are full of morons who leave extra margins to buyers instead of themselves.

Or streaming service beats the shit of out cable in being cheap, ads-free and all in all better user experience. Once true, no longer.

Also funny that tips will go away when one visits self-serve in restaurants, coffee shops etc.

I guess a lot of folks are too drunk on "This time it will be different".