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Why I stopped travelling to the US and largely stopped doing business in the US

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Re: Why I stopped travelling to the US and largely stopped doing business in the US

#171

Post by arethuza »

tallanvor wrote: post #79
arethuza wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the more surreal conversations I've had while entering the US was one guy who wanted to know why I've been to Turkey/Egypt/Morocco so many times - he just seemed to refuse to believe me when I said that they are really nice places to go on holiday and that they are very common holiday destinations for Europeans. I actually had to explain what it is that I like about them! Note - I'm from the UK. [Edit: Note th…

If it makes you feel any better, I get more questions from US border control than any other country I've visited, and I'm an American, so it's not just foreigners they treat like crap.

Why do they you anything you go back in? I've never been asked any questions when returning into the UK.

Re: Why I stopped travelling to the US and largely stopped doing business in the US

#172

Post by adrianscott »

jrockway wrote: post #55
wisty wrote: post #6

NegativeK Insurance is for things that could destroy you if you didn't have it. Otherwise, by the law of averages, it's a waste of money. Unfortunately, in the US, lots of things can destroy you: Lawsuits from car accidents, medical issues, not having a car, et cetera. Nice comment.

By the law of averages, all insurance is a waste of money. Insurance companies make money. They do this by collecting more fees than they pay out. In aggregate, they win and you lose. The real question to ask is, "can I afford this insurance" and "is it worth it to me". If you buy a $250 mp3 player and the "insurance" is $300 and lasts for 6 months, it's a waste of money, because you aren't going to break your mp3 pl…

If you're dealing with international travel, you have to read the fine print and be worried about jurisdictional issues, etc. and figure the bureaucracy risk in to your calculations...

e.g. you buy your insurance in France, problem happens in US, and it turns out your insurance only covers you in france. Or you need an apostille-authenticated copy of local police report, plus a certified translation, yadda yadda...

Re: Why I stopped travelling to the US and largely stopped doing business in the US

#173

Post by felipe »

ovi256 wrote: post #39
felipe wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also live in China. 1. In China the system is set-up for that. The little web-cam and the system are integrated with a push of a button, and the process is very quick. In Brazil they didn't have anything. They were taking pictures with off-the-shelf digital cameras, and I read an article saying that they did not even have a system set-up to transfer the pictures out! It was really something implemented overnight, c…

Se my comment above, you completely ignore the reason for that policy.

As a Brazilian, I am well aware of the reason for the policy. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Re: Why I stopped travelling to the US and largely stopped doing business in the US

#174

Post by jdp23 »

cosgroveb wrote: post #169
jdp23 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it seems to me too. This was a very popular post, so most people here don't seem to share your views on this issue. Rather than blustering about how the site has gone to hell because so many people see travel as a legitimate part of startup life, and getting more hacks in the software to penalize the topics you don't want to hear about, maybe it's time to accept it.

There are about a 100 better sources of political discussion than Hacker News. I've only been here a couple years (lurking for the first 1.5) but I feel like the noise is really drowning out the signal for me. So I have to disagree with you here, Jon. I care about politics, I really do, just not much while I'm here.

We shall see. Looking elsewhere in the thread, most of it is international people having a really great discussion about the issue. And it seems to me that they're very interested in talking about the issue and agree with me that this and related topics as a big part of entrepreneurship.

EDIT: downvoted. I wonder why?

Re: Why I stopped travelling to the US and largely stopped doing business in the US

#175

Post by Lewisham »

danssig wrote: post #112
Lewisham wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Americans aren't seeing this stuff. You mean most foreign-travelling Americans, who are a minority in comparison to the Americans that don't have a passport, as only 37% hold one [1]. Domestic flights are way less of a pain than international, if only because you don't have to go through Customs. [1]: http://www.theexpeditioner.com/2010/02/17/how-many-americans... EDIT: My American wife (I'm British) was the sam…

You're trying to get a green card? Do you realize that once you get it you're going to be responsible for filing tax returns as long as you have it, no matter where you actually live and work?

I wasn't aware of that, no, but I don't really have any intention of returning to the UK. I like it here. I get homesick sometimes, but usually it's a combination of childhood nostalgia and watching too much BBC programming. The Britain I see through those rose-tinted glasses is not the Britain that actually exists.

Re: Why I stopped travelling to the US and largely stopped doing business in the US

#176

Post by rue »

rue wrote: post #90

I'm a permanent resident of the U.S., but even with the green card the hassles at the border are just nasty regardless of where I've been or for how long. The attitude is atrocious and I usually feel more like a criminal they've reluctantly had to let back in rather than welcomed back home. Green card holders also get fingerprinted and in some cases retina-scanned at re-entry. The nudie scans have only managed to cre…

(And I'm a white guy from northern EU. My sympathies to those from more targeted regions or ethnicities.)

Re: Why I stopped travelling to the US and largely stopped doing business in the US

#177

Post by poet »

edw519 wrote: post #80

everyone is utterly paranoid Everyone? I have bit my tongue for a long time about this great community's slipping quality, but honestly, how does shit like this make it to the top of Hacker News. Flagged. Any suggestions for how to get back to having hacker news on Hacker News? (And please spare us the lame "situational logic" response of how is hacker news.)

I don't think there's anything to be done TBH. In previous discussions about the community's slipping quality I was always encouraged by the fact that submissions stayed approximately the same. That's not the case anymore. And what that means aside from less useful content is that a critical mass of news users and complacent old ones represent the majority on the site.

Re: Why I stopped travelling to the US and largely stopped doing business in the US

#178

Post by nir »

miGlanz wrote: post #150
nir wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and what useful relevant information did you gather from this submission? That immigration officers are often incompetent? That once they damaged some guy's camera? Let me inform you further: the airplane food usually sucks and US time is, annoyingly, 6-8 hours behind central Europe.

You're clearly ignoring the fact, that it's mostly US-only issue, and it doesn't have to be that way. We, non-US citizens, can't do much about it, and we'd like to get attention of US folks (who often are less affected), because they (you?) can. I'll probably get downvoted for it, and I'd like to be mistaken here, but I'm getting the feeling that some of you get offended by critique, justified or not, of some of US p…

I am not a US citizen, I don't see what TSA or US immigration officials' incompetence (which is certainly real) has to do with US politics - certainly not what it has to do with Hacker News.

Re: Why I stopped travelling to the US and largely stopped doing business in the US

#179

Post by foljs »

edw519 wrote: post #80

everyone is utterly paranoid Everyone? I have bit my tongue for a long time about this great community's slipping quality, but honestly, how does shit like this make it to the top of Hacker News. Flagged. Any suggestions for how to get back to having hacker news on Hacker News? (And please spare us the lame "situational logic" response of how is hacker news.)

The erroneous assumption is that HN was special to begin with...

Re: Why I stopped travelling to the US and largely stopped doing business in the US

#180

Post by tptacek »

jdp23 wrote: post #174
cosgroveb wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are about a 100 better sources of political discussion than Hacker News. I've only been here a couple years (lurking for the first 1.5) but I feel like the noise is really drowning out the signal for me. So I have to disagree with you here, Jon. I care about politics, I really do, just not much while I'm here.

We shall see. Looking elsewhere in the thread, most of it is international people having a really great discussion about the issue. And it seems to me that they're very interested in talking about the issue and agree with me that this and related topics as a big part of entrepreneurship. EDIT: downvoted. I wonder why?

You are getting downvoted for being so strident about something that comes pretty close to contradicting the site guidelines. It is not in fact true that popularity controls what stories are germane to HN.

I think you may think this nerdy Glass Bead Game of connecting the dots between arbitrary subjects and "entrepreneurship" is a compelling argument, but some of us have been here for many years and have seen too many different subjects --- Egypt! the TSA! Unionization! Ron Paul! The War! Red light cameras! Gitmo! Fighting in middle school! Peak oil! Corporatism vs capitalism! Apple murdering the web! Taxation! Censorship on Twitter! Global warming! Homophobia! † -- justified this way.

When you write a comment that acts shocked-shocked! that anyone would question your judgement about exactly how strongly connected a topic is to HN, you run the risk of making people feel like their intelligence is being insulted.

Keep something else in mind. There are people who vote on the front page. There are people who comment. There are people who vote on comments. Some of these groups overlap, but they aren't the same. Most HN'ers would probably agree that the latter two groups are responsible for the site's character more than the former. Which is a long way of saying: nobody's too impressed with the score on this article.

Next time you start feeling the outrage welling up in you about how people are bitching and sniping about stories that most people on HN seem to like, keep in mind: Paul Graham has been having to punch in manual filters to suppress some of the most "popular" stories on HN. He did it for Egypt and he did it for the TSA. The way you want to believe this site works is not how the site currently works. Thankfully.

† Take a guess how I came up with that list.

PS: Because you have a software security background, I'm atypically interested in finding out a little more about you. I'm also a fast reader. It may interest you to know that fully half of the top 10 pages of your best-ranked comments here are political, and that's not counting your takes on DRM or how "bubbly" the startup scene is. Everyone wants HN to spend time covering their favorite issues. I'd love to spend more time talking about cooking and whiskey.

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