As someone who uses (or used to use) Steam Link to be able to use a Windows PC headlessly to game from a macOS machine, I think it's a really compelling argument to consider it before considering a Steam Deck.
However, I'm viewing Steam Deck as a mobile gaming machine, which might be replacing my current Windows gaming laptop, and I can leave my Windows gaming laptop at home (or replace with a tower altogether). And if Steam Link works with a Steam Deck, I can have the best of both worlds (mobile gaming + regular gaming via Steam Link)!
Depending on where you live, check and see if you have Natural Wireless[0] available in your building/residence. Recently moved into an apartment that is lucky enough to get their service, and we get gigabit for ~$70 a month.
Have had almost zero issues, and their support has been tremendous.
Am curious: what made it so difficult to cancel / unsubscribe?
If you subscribed with a credit card, did the option of chargebacks ever come up? (Asking because these sorts of situations seem perfectly in line for disputing with your credit card provider.)
Chargebacks are way harder in real life than people think. It took me multiple calls, emailing evidence/screenshots, and months to get a $300 charge back processed. That was for a completely fraudulent charge at a bar. The way it was explained to me, banks will only process a chargeback when you have provided evidence of trying to contact the merchant and they refused to provide a refund and couldn’t show a valid contract supporting the charge. So in this case you couldn’t just charge back NYT just because their cancelation policy is slightly burdensome. And they don’t stop that business from charging you again, so even if you can charge back a charge, it doesn’t solve the issue of canceling the subscription.
I've only made a few chargebacks but each time it was really easy. I've never had to provide any sort of documentation and have gotten the money back quickly each time.
The most recent time was with a company that wouldn't honor their refund policy. They were awfully rude over email so I made sure to take screenshots of the policy on their website in case they disputed the chargeback and/or changed the wording on their site. Turns out, there wasn't even an option to upload that information when I filed with my credit card, and I won the case without doing anything further.
Where did you get your credit card? Name-and-shame is important when dealing with corporations, but so is name-and-praise for the few that actually work correctly.
USAA credit cards have been fantastic for me over a 31 year period. In that time, I can only recall 3 chargebacks and all were decided in my favor quickly and easily. Other service is also great; cash back levels are just “okay” but I’m not giving up convenience and USAA service for 50bps more cash back.
U-haul charged me three times for the same thing. I spent several hours on the phone with u-haul trying to get them to reverse it. Ultimately they said the agreed I was triple charged but they couldn't reverse it and I had to contact my bank
It took EIGHT MONTHS and SEVEN phone calls with my bank to get them to charge back. And haul fought me every step of the process when they're the ones that told me to go to my bank. U-haul went as far as to straight up lie to my bank. I'm surprised they didn't forge documents with all the shit they were trying
Maybe it depends on your bank? I’ve had to do a couple chargebacks on Chase CC’s in the $200-300 range and I just had to click a button in their web portal.
It was more difficult for me to get reimbursed when I tried depositing $300 in a Chase ATM and then it crashed halfway through. But that just involved a 2 minute phone call to resolve
Chargebacks only delay the inevitable. If the card is still in use they'll simply try again at the next billing cycle.
I had an Amazon subscription charge I could not track down for a year. Every month I would call Amazon, who's CSR couldn't find it, and then my bank to reverse the charge.
Found out I had Amazon Premier still signed up on Amazon IT. The card worked globally but subscriptions displayed locally.
IIRC, each chargeback charges the merchant a nonrefundable $35 fee. So even if you get your $10 back, the person who took your money is out $45. If someone were to keep charging me after a chargeback was won in my favor, I’d just keep issuing more chargebacks to spite them. They also can only lose disputes so many times before Visa or MasterCard looks closer at them.
Had similar problem with The Times in the UK, but it seems it's pretty common for newspapers.
The online subscription could only be cancelled by telephone, on a phone line with small and inconvenient windows of opportunity, with long waits. When you get through, you have the normal retention/upsell attempts, and then are told that it will take at least two months to process your cancellation, and that you will continue to be charged in the meantime.
It was easier to cancel my card, at which point they somehow managed to withdraw access as soon as the first billing failed.
Have you seen any issues lately with H1-B/TN visas being granted to technical employees who don't have a degree in CS or software engineering?
Additionally, what questions/documents would you recommend people prepare in advance to make their immigration lawyers' lives easier?
(I sent over a lot of documents to the lawyers preparing my application, but they took only a few in my initial TN visa application, and I ended up with a Request For Evidence from USCIS.)
Previous work experience also counts towards H1-B education requirements under the degree equivalence provision. The catch is the three-for-one rule, i.e. you need 6 years of relevant work experience to match a 2 year diploma, 12 years of relevant
work experience to match a 4 year degree, and so on.
I worked for 3 years on a TN visa with no degree of any kind. My job was a Software Engineer, and my TN was classified as a Scientific Technician. This was 2016-2019
Interesting! Thanks for sharing that. What sort of supporting documents did you end up having, to prove that you were supporting "a professional in the scientific field"?
It was a stressful process with a lot of uncertainty. We had to show language that my job was a "supporting role", which is fairly easy to spin if you're not a Senior or Principal. We also needed to provide my direct supervisor's qualifications. I believe they had to have a degree in a CS related field.
To be clear, because of the lack of a bachelor's degree requirement, the Scientific Technician/Technologist category is a red-flag category and such applications in this category oftentimes are denied.
I second this question. Does one need a degree in CS or software engineering to get a TN visa to work in tech, or would a degree in e.g. civil engineering suffice?
It's my second go at getting a TN visa (for Computer Systems Analyst designation) and you don't necessarily need a CS degree, but if you don't have one, you will need at least a two year diploma and three years of experience in the field.
My current TN visa application was held up by USCIS questioning my experience in the field, and the validity of the visa for my new role. (Despite having cleared both last year. Figures.)
I wrote about my first experience [0], if you're curious!
Thank you for the write up. So if I understood it correctly, any B.Sc. degree plus 3 years of Computer Systems Analyst experience would qualify one for Computer Systems Analyst TN?
I am definitely not a lawyer, but am someone who has done multiple TNs.
It is really important to remember that the actual written requirements are one thing, but the interpretation of those requirements by whoever you talk to at your POE are arguably more important.
If you end up with a border officer who believes that your degree is not applicable, or your experience doesn't count, it is unlikely that you are going to be able to change their mind in that moment. NAFTA officers can be better (as the post writer above mentioned), but it still always feels like a bit of a toss-up of whether you get a "good" border agent.
The decision to approve or deny is entirely in the hands of the officer, and I managed to get a NAFTA officer who interpreted the agreement in my favour. It's why so much time and effort goes into the supporting documents.
All excellent responses. One potential work-around which is becoming a better and better option is to file a petition with USCIS rather than apply in the first instance at the "border."
If I recall correctly, a petition can only be filed with USCIS for a TN if the individual in question is already outside of the US.
Ie, if you are currently within the US on a TN, and looking to switch jobs, you can not file for a new status with USCIS; your options are either to leave the country and apply at a POE, or leave the country, and only then petition with USCIS.
Is this incorrect? Can a current TN holder petition USCIS for a new TN while still within the US?
Going through this right now! Applying for a new TN through change of employer (COE) while residing in the US. I was given the option to fly back and forth to apply at the border, but figured this would be the safest (and lowest friction) option.
However, it's been a slow process, especially with having received word of USCIS requesting additional evidence from my first application.
Does that issue you a new TN (with a 3 year term), while maintaining your status with the previous employer, or terminate your status with your previous employer, with validity only matching the previous expiration date?
Does the 60 day timeline include the amount of time you need to be approved for the visa, as well?
I wasn't laid off, but am in the process of changing employers with my TN visa. This is probably the least smooth part of the entire interviewing/job changing process, at least from my perspective, as a software dev who doesn't have a degree in computer science or computer engineering.
Wish it were all a little more transparent, and that it wasn't just a big waiting game with lawyers and USCIS!
> Does the 60 day timeline include the amount of time you need to be approved for the visa, as well?
No. You must start a new job within 60 days. Due to H-1B portability rules, you can start a new job as soon as your employer has filed paperwork with USCIS. The H-1B processing time doesn't count.
I recently started a new FAANG job on H-1B, and because I received an RFE it actually took nearly 3 months after starting to get the approved petition.
Oof, that's a long wait. If you don't mind me asking, is it because of the whole H1B status with the current administration, or of additional hoops you had to jump through for the RFE, or something else?
You're in a lotta trouble. It happened to a friend of mine and when his H-1B looked like it was going to be denied his FAANG company moved him to an office in Europe.
I _think_ if you have applied for Premium Processing and get the receipt, you can start working with the new employer. But please check with your employer's lawyers, as these things can keep changing and the rules are too complex for me to keep track of.
The lawyers have not mentioned anything near that, otherwise I'd be working right now!
My application used Premium Processing, and I got an RFE, so I'm still sitting here on my hands. It's frustrating, but is it worth asking the lawyers about being able to start since I'm in the process of the application?
Nearly every lawyer will encourage you to wait for the receipt notice, although interestingly you only need proof that you've submitted a petition to starting working; i.e., a Fedex proof-of-sending receipt.
Just wondering. Can't this time-out be life-hacked somehow with getting e.g. no pay and no show up job just to stop the timer, or just creating LLC and employing oneself?
Not that I would (or have) tried either idea, but you'd still need USCIS to grant you a TN visa that's tied to your employer, and I imagine it would be tougher if it was a no name or self made company.
In fact, for your own company, I think that's a different kind of visa, but I'm not very well versed in immigration law.
As a counter point: the golden handcuffs for startups/companies aren't guaranteed to pay off, so the employee may decide that the options are still worth $0 and not bother with incurring taxes by exercising.
I'm probably okay with losing out on a sale event with a startup I've left, especially if my stake is <1%, if the big tech company pays as well as it's reported. YMMV.
I gotta ask... are companies you're interviewing with expecting you to have memorized particular algorithms? Or to be perfect with syntax?
In my most recent round of interviews, I found almost no one expecting me to recall a particular algorithm and implement it for a solution to a problem, but I did find plenty of questions that involved dealing with data structures, and writing my own code and algorithms to solve those problems.
Maybe I've been fortunate with not having been asked questions like "implement the quick sort algorithm"?
In this case it's a "distance between two employees in an org chart", which is basically a trivially modified closest-common-ancestor algorithm. The complication was that there was no ability to index into the tree at an employee and climb upwards, and they didn't want to incur the overhead of building that at the start.
That's fine in and of itself, but when I'm having a bit of a time pruning the common-ancestor paths, I want to use all 7 brain-registers for the problem instead of devoting 2-3 for communication, or, worse, having to flush everything from cache to analyze and respond to your "hint".
Would you be able to expand on what your setup looks/looked like? I've long wanted to get an iPad to do development work, but haven't been able to find a great setup for JS/Go development.
I've gone through the motions of emailing the book to my Kindle, which allows it to be downloadable on other Kindle devices or the app, and also syncs up reading location.
Doesn't work for huge books, but has been a great boon for most books!
If you fill out the "Sharing books by email" in Calibre's settings, you can just right-click a book -> "Connect/share", "Email to example@kindle.com". It'll do the conversion for you (if necessary).
I'd advise a separate email address for this functionality.
However, I'm viewing Steam Deck as a mobile gaming machine, which might be replacing my current Windows gaming laptop, and I can leave my Windows gaming laptop at home (or replace with a tower altogether). And if Steam Link works with a Steam Deck, I can have the best of both worlds (mobile gaming + regular gaming via Steam Link)!