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Hi Peter, thanks for doing this AMA!

I'm a US citizen and my girlfriend is Iranian. She's been in the states for 7 years, first on a student visa then applied for her green card 1.5 yrs ago on NIW, currently "pending status change".

She's a jeweler and metal artist and owns a jewelry brand in the US. Never had any legal problems in the US, and nothing in her background of social media that would be a detriment to her review process.

Curious about your thoughts on the outlook for green card processing for Iranian citizens in general, given the administration's recent movements.

In her specific situation, would marriage provide a more robust chance of having her GC application approved? Is it even possible to re-apply for the GC while she's in the current "pending status change" state?


> If you know CSS, you also know the style framework. If you understand JavaScript, TypeScript is not a big problem for you. And that makes you a Senior or Principal.

Mastery of the languages/frameworks you're working in does not make some a Senior or Principal.

While deep expertise in a language is important, true senior and principal engineers combine this mastery with many other skills.

They demonstrate strong architectural knowledge, guide and mentor others, and champion best practices.

They communicate effectively with colleagues and partners of various levels and roles.

They take ownership of complex initiatives end to end, balancing near-term needs with long-term goals.

Their value lies in how they combine technical excellence with leadership, problem-solving, and the ability to align technology decisions to broader business objectives.


did you mean to comment here? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43227303


"Transformers for Natural Language Processing" by Denis Rothman on Packt is a good one.

Make sure to get the 2nd edition for the coverage of newer models, particularly the ones from Hugging Face.

Everything I've read from Denis is really good. He's great at explaining complex topics in ways that are straightforward and digestible.


I think OP was referring to the LLVM compiler tools, not the LLM (Large Language Model)


If I remember my high school biology correctly, algae is the old kale.


I started playing around with GPT-3 and it led me down the rabbit hole of NLP and Transformers. I'm kind of blown away by these tools and what they're capable of, particularly when woven in with the other languages and tools I work with. It brings back the feeling of curiosity and exploration from my very early days of programming.

A couple weeks ago, I started exploring Pu Erh. I ordered a few different teas from white2tea and got a little gong fu set. So far my favorites have been 2018 "Flapjacks" and and the 2022 "Pretty Girls". I just ordered a few others from Yunnan Sourcing which should be arriving any day. This is after years of only drinking matcha. I still start my day with a good sized matcha ~3-4g which seems to smooth out the effects of the Pu Erh nicely.

Somehow a late-night Amazon shopping session led to me buying an Ocarina. It's been a lot of fun leaning a new instrument, particularly one that's melodic and super-portable. The first one I picked up is a "Night by Noble", which is great for the money (~$35) but only hits its higher notes when played pretty loudly. So, I just ordered a Polygon from STL Ocarina which from what I've read has a mellower high-end that can be played more softly. I make up different melodies when I'm out and about, and then record loops and hooks on my Akai Force in my studio at home.


I suspect you already know the answer here.

The organization, culture, and fit with the role are massively important to your success.

What you're describing in Company B sounds like a failure of hiring process, management competency, or both.

A well-designed hiring process should give both the company and candidate a clear idea of how well they will match with the role. While there are people who interview well and underperform, a good hiring process should really catch most of those. This is one of the things that distinguishes true HR professionals from the amateurs.

As a candidate, you want to ask the right questions to understand what's expected of the role. This can include examples of the kind of projects/tickets you'd work on, as well as the overall pace and vibe of the team.

Provided that the new employee is in the general ballpark of what's expected for the role, their managers should help them succeed, communicate clear expectations, give specific and constructive feedback, and provide the resources for them to adjust to, and succeed in the role.

I think you're also discovering the differences that can exist in leveling between companies. What is expected of a senior engineer at one company could be intermediate at another and so on.

It can be worthwhile to reflect on this experience to look for clues you may have overlooked in the hiring process. Sometimes those clues can be subtle and other times they can be hard to miss. Similarly, it can be beneficial to think of questions you could ask when interviewing in the future to help identify dysfunctional or toxic culture.


Sorry to hear that you going through that. Not and MS patient personally, but I've been going to a special clinic in Mexico for more than 10 years and MS is one of the conditions they treat. I've met quite a few MS patients there who achieved life-changing results after doctors in the states and EU had failed to help them.

This clinic helped me overcome a toxic mold exposure that was producing autoimmune and neurological issues that various doctors in the states were unable to effectively diagnose or treat. (They were happy to take my money though) A few year later, I was hit by a drunk driver in Nicaragua and doctors in the states told me I was going to need multiple surgeries and need to adjust my expectations for what healing looked like. With help from this clinic, I was able to recover from that with no surgeries and have no residual issues whatsoever.

The important thing here is that you keep a mindset that healing is possible, and keep exploring options until you find what works. Don't get bogged down envisioning worst-case scenarios. Be vigilant of your thoughts and any time you find yourself going into those fear-based scenarios, do a pattern interrupt and replace them with positive thoughts. For me, the visions I used to replace those fears was seeing myself hiking in the mountains with my dog, feeling healthy and strong. A few years into my healing journey, I found myself doing exactly that. Hiking above the treeline on Mt Shasta with my Malinois, feeling strong in my body, with clean mountain air in my lungs. I sat down and wept tears of gratitude.

Keep pressing forward. It gets better.

Sending you an email.


I'm sorry to sound negative, but what you are saying about this "clinic in Mexico" sounds too good to be true. And everybody knows that when something sounds too good to be true ...

More concretely, are you suggesting that US and European doctors are ignoring science about MS and just take the money? And the Mexican doctors at this clinic somehow magically have a cure which the rest of the world, at least the western world, ignores to ... enrich themselves?

Seriosly, this sounds very dubious. I'd caution the poster to get into fishy recommendations and blindly trust a stranger on the internet based on hope. Especially out of desperation.

And I find it deeply unethical to get the hopes up for somebody so desperate for a solution as the poster is. Their condition and outlook are bad enough, they don't need to be tricked on top of that. One of the huge red flags is the hush-hush "I'll send you a mail" Why this secrecy?

I urge you to either put evidence if your claims on the table or stop posting this kind of thing.


While I agree with you with my alarm bells, I found out too that our medical system is way more a money extraction machine than an health machine.

We are chronically deficient in infrared light, it’s killing people, it’s well researched yet there no pill for that: no money, no reach.

https://youtu.be/5YV_iKnzDRg


While I agree with you with my alarm bells, I found out too that our medical system is way more a money extraction machine than an health machine.

But that’s exactly what a lot of clinics doing stem cell therapy are doing themselves.

No evidence the therapy works but happy to accept you as a patient as long as you can fork over $100k.


True, if there is that amount of money involved they should have solid proof.


If you know anything about the history of science generally, you know that most genuinely new research results are ignored for decades before being embraced. Simple ego suffices, greed isn't the usual reason for this. I agree that more openness would be good, but as seen here the amount of flak that can result is daunting. MS research over the last century is a particularly gasp-inducing litany of tunnel vision and refusal to try (or acknowledge) more than one narrow research approach at a time.


Being in empirical research myself, I'm well aware of the obstacles that new insights in science sometimes have to face.

It's rare though that the breakthrough comes via an obscure secret clinic in Mexico though which is only spread via "I'll email you".


But it is not at all rare that such fly-by-night clinics grab someone's obscure result at third hand, rather randomly. They're a crap source of information, but not a disconfirmation.

Where there's an ick factor, or a safety factor, as with infecting oneself with worms to reduce allergies, the effect is perfectly real. The Mexican clinics are either are either ahead of their time or unsafe; ya just don't know which.


Yes, and it's closer to a 1:99 ratio than 50:50, making it pretty irresponsible to promote any if them here.


I have a medical condition (highly comorbid with MS) for which I've tried, probably 1,000 or more approaches over decades. About ten of them worked (better together.) Three or four were key. Would recommend.

Some of the things that worked best would have sounded too ridiculous for any Mexican clinic to try to sell to anybody. In my position, I think you would have been glad for any new (and safe-ish) ideas to try out, too. I just wasn't interested in paying the fly-by-night clinics, I don't advise that. Openness (not of the wallet but the mind) worked very well for me. Just really, really slowly.

So I'm more of the "don't sit still" and "bring out the ideas," sort. 1/99 odds sounds damn good next to what I went through. So I don't mind people posting ideas here, it's an adult forum. Ish.


Did you try infrared light therapy? Did wonder for me, cost almost nothing, cured my eczema (quick visible result!)


I understand it might not be relevant for MS, but could you share what worked?


Agree with you about the magical mexican clinic sounding a little too good to be true.

However, I can totally see doctors in the US and Europe ignoring or not knowing about the latest treatments for conditions. As I've aged and watched my parents age, We've dealt with several conditions where doctors have no idea and at some point they just think you're making it up. It feels like most doctors are just barely showing up to work mentally. If you don't fall within the dozen or so conditions/treatments they are familiar with they throw their hands up.


> If you don't fall within the dozen or so conditions/treatments they are familiar with they throw their hands up.

Absolutely true in my experience. They just throw various treatments at the wall and hope one sticks (though I find this more true for psychiatry than perhaps other fields of medicine).

I seriously think more people would benefit from a more holistic approach to medicine. I do not mean holistic in like woo-woo essential oils, but rather trying to treat all aliments as piece of a greater puzzle than each disease needing a different doctor per disease which never communicates with one another.


Hey, I appreciate both of you; I wouldn't characterize the parent as unethical, he seems like a real person with a story, on the surface I have doubts it could work for me, but I won't rule it out, if only I had the financial means to try. You're not entirely wrong about your assessment, when I first got diagnosed I was quick to believe anything that would promise help, and even followed through with some (pricy and ineffective) treatments like CCSVI procedures (which were even discussed here on HN back in the day).


> but I won't rule it out, if only I had the financial means to try.

Here is the problem: OP doesn't have the time. In such a situation, even if you have the money, you can afford to try one or two things long term, maybe three if you are lucky. If those turn out to be nonsense, that's it, you're dead or paralyzed or demented. You can't afford some esoteric nonsense in the bush because some stranger on the internet recommended it and a sketchy website pushed it.

It's really sad that dubious actors are making a buck off of desperate patients and that's just as immoral as a dysfunctional health system.


I am OP :). I really hope the future isn't so grim, I mean, to be honest it's me rejecting what is the most common outcome for people with MS, slow degradation. It pains me because just 3 years ago I was feeling so good, my brain was working great (due to a mix of circumstances, financial windfall, low stress, and pretty certainly a great mix of diet and exercise), I had so many product ideas and the energy to pursue them. Anyway, I digress... The thing is, as far as I know, no non-esoteric options provide what I'm seeking. As I've replied elsewhere, my initial intention was to collect (even very speculative) hints to future research and treatments that might do what current ones don't: restore, repair.


Oh I missed that, sorry. All the best to you!


Could you not do this? Medical vacations are a thing—and for precisely this reason.

> More concretely, are you suggesting that US and European doctors are ignoring science about MS and just take the money? And the Mexican doctors at this clinic somehow magically have a cure which the rest of the world, at least the western world, ignores to ... enrich themselves?

I guess you’re too young to have experienced having or to have known someone having an ailment that had a wide variety of ways it was understood and treated.

What a disgustingly rude post.

Maybe you don’t have the experience, but emphatically yes, doctors in the US at least WILL take your money without knowing how to alleviate your issues.

Do you not know how copays work? Do you think physicians say, “Oh, sorry this is beyond my expertise. Here’s a refund for your time.”

No. They’re getting paid.

I know it sounds crazy but there’s this phenomenon in life where people have different abilities and knowledge. It has nothing to do with what nation you live in either.

> One of the huge red flags is the hush-hush "I'll send you a mail" Why this secrecy?

Yuck. Like a preteen who can’t handle a private conversation.


This is a highly controversial topic, but I would be cautious about dismissing the OP out of hand simply because it's not in the US/EU.

The medical system in the US wholly rejects non-pharmacological remedies, primarily because Pharma has a stranglehold on the medical profession, but also because such remedies are not easily reproducible in clinical trials (which are incredibly expensive and have to be funded by someone, ergo, Pharma). That's not to say that homeopathic remedies all work, but the body is an extremely complex system with a great deal of variance from person to person. There are non-pharmacological remedies that have worked for certain people where pharmacological remedies failed, and the results can't always be scientifically explained. There's also a plenty of times that they don't work. And there's plenty of quackery. But to say that the US medical system has monopoly on medical knowledge would be foolish. (One example is that ketamine is slowly becoming accepted as a positive tool in treating certain mental health conditions, whereas for decades you had to go to some "clinic in Mexico" to find a doctor who could prescribe it to you.)


> I'm sorry to sound negative, but what you are saying about this "clinic in Mexico" sounds too good to be true. And everybody knows that when something sounds too good to be true ... More concretely, are you suggesting that US and European doctors are ignoring science about MS and just take the money? And the Mexican doctors at this clinic somehow magically have a cure which the rest of the world, at least the western world, ignores to ... enrich themselves?

I’m assuming you aren’t aware of the Dallas Buyers Club.


Dallas Buyers' Club was a thing because of governmental/societal prejudice against HIV/AIDS victims which itself stemmed from Christian bigotry towards gay people


In that case society and government were widely opposed to helping and considered the plague a positive and much-deserved thing. There isn't the same level of stigma around MS.


“toxic mold exposure”

Red flag!

This is among the constellation of fake, unlikely, or exaggerated conditions concocted by the alternative medicine industry so that they can sell more sham treatments.


I also got a chronic MS-like illness from toxic mold exposure. You are not alone. This is definitely a real problem. I have multiple lesions in brain MRI that I’m sure are the result of mold exposure because they were not there before the exposure. I don’t seek treatment because I know the mainstream medicine would probably kill me. Steroids are not the solution when the body is full of molds.


Would love to hear more about the clinic. I’ve heard they can do more treatments than outside the US. All of interest to me since I’ve got a myeloid condition.


What’s the name of the clinic?


Sometimes it's as simple as your chakras being out of alignment.

Sometimes it's more complicated though.


I primarily use mine for content creation, reading/learning, and as a machine I can take with me when I'm out-and-about for those times when I need jump online and fix an issue.

On the content creation side, I'm using Scrviner for writing, Snapseed and Lightroom for photo editing and LumaFusion for video production.

I watch a lot of online courses on it and use it as my primary kindle reader.

For those times when I'm out in the city, I keep it with me in case I need to jump online and troubleshoot an issue, do code reviews, etc. I'm using Terminus and Shelly for SSH, Github and Jira/Confluence apps, and of course, the AWS management console.

A couple weeks ago I picked up a Surface Go2 and put Debian on it. So far, I'm finding that to be a better machine for taking with me while I'm out in the city. Being able to run VS Code and Linux CLI apps on a portable device is an big advantage over the iPad Pro. Also, as a lower cost machine, I'm less worried about it getting stolen or damaged relative to the iPad. I never would have imagined that one of my all-time favorite Linux devices would be made by M$...

On my MacBook Pro, I have rules in my /etc/hosts that remap Facebook and Insta to a local page that reminds me to get back to work. So, I do all my social media from the iPad and prevent time-wasting and doomscrolling from my workhorse machine.


For pseudonymous ones I usually farm old Ice-T and Opgezwolle lyrics. (Ice-T in the case of my HN username).

https://www.thisworddoesnotexist.com/ can also be fun for this.


Wow - https://www.thisworddoesnotexist.com/ is a really useful resource. I would use this not only for usenames, but from brand-names. They are quite a few whihc can be registered as .com


Thanks for Opgezwolle! New to me, like it already.


Indie Hackers has a "partner up" section:

https://www.indiehackers.com/group/looking-to-partner-up


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