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All / most PDF forms used by the Australian Defence Force are like this - I suspect it’s because it’s all tied into the identity / ability to digitally sign the forms.

It’s very frustrating when you send someone (externally) a PDF and it required them to install Acrobat.

Or maybe it’s just Adobe trying to take the P out of PDF…


The PDF format supports all sorts of insane extensions only implemented in Acrobat and only used by governments and large enterprises.


When I get forms like this I just dump them to jpg, fill them in an a paint program and zip them back up and send them as static images.


That doesn't work. You can't even view the PDF without Acrobat. (There's an example linked elsewhere in this thread.)


They may not be accepted by the form issuer if they have a process to pull the text out of specific fields in the PDF. I have run into that before. They are not just looking at the document but processing it.


I've happily used Firefox on Windows and Linux to access all of my Google services, without issue, for years.

Can you expand on which services don't work with ff?

At Google there is a requirement to use Chrome - due to certain browser extensions - but that doesn't impact any of the services they provide.


This is lie tbh. Chrome was caught with using some shadow dom api in firefox to slow it down. And Google meet transmit more data in firefox than using chrome which means google has added something in chrome. Also google drive doesn't work properly in firefox like it can't download multiple file. But if i use chrome/brave it works properly.

And Gmail wont allow you to login from different browser in name of security reason. They do many thing to shift user from firefox to chrome/chromium browser for many reason.


Same. I use ungoogled chromium for google services.


There isn't a requirement to use Chrome at Google

Source: work at Google and used Firefox until the latest UI refresh


There was when I was there. How does BeyondCorp work with ff?


You can manually configure the browser to point it at the BeyondCorp proxy


I haven't been able to use Hangouts reliably in Firefox in ages. I guess maybe it's better now but I just open Chrome every time I get a Hangout link at this point so I have no idea...which is sort of the point, if it's broken for long enough it's effectively broken forever.


Sheets and gmail were painful for me with FF. Moved to Brave, sadly


I use Gmail and Sheets just fine with Firefox. I haven't had any issues with it outside of the slowness of the app that I already notice in Chrome


You could use two browsers as well.


This is how you append query params to a url - nothing to do with the shell.


The GP complained about shell quoting.


I doubt it is YouTube's intention to require people start quote URLs in shell, though.


I joined MSFT as a manager 18 months ago, and honestly think their remote policy is one of the better ones out there.

Up to 50% remote time with no approval, up to 100% with manager approval. This of course is modulo legal / right to work if you’re moving countries.

I’m not in the US and we’re trying to hire a lot of SWEs right now, and really trying to leverage this for our hiring.

I only have a small number of teams, but we’ve all been remote since April of last year and it has been working well, though I think people are keen to get back to the office for the social aspect.

Those that wanted full remote have already gone that path.


Do you have any advice on applying to msft? I'd love to work for them due to their products and now even more so due to their apparent support for fully remote work.


He may not need a visa, if he is getting citizenship through investment [1].

[1] https://www.newzealand-migration.co.nz/dual-citizenship-serv...


Probably should multiply by a googol for a fair price.


Thank you for the information.

Citizenship by investment (aka golden visas) invite corruption. The European Union has been trying to eliminate these sorts of visas for obvious reasons.

If you want to see a dedicated scam artist who will scam you out of 6 figures to “help” you get a citizenship by investment, check out Nomad Capitalist YouTube channel.

Link to SCAMMER YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/c/nomadcapitalist


You are being downvoted because you did not provide any proof he is a scammer, nor a definition of what you mean by this strong claim. Citizen by investment costs from 150k (montenegro?) to 250k-350k (st kitts, turkey, etc) to 600k-2.5 million USD (USA?), and typically costs 30% less if you're willing to simply pay the money and be done with it, or the undiscounted price if you'd like to genuinely invest (normally in assets that are government-approved and looks scammy/risky to me).

My point with the above, is that it's a high ticket item, and can be massively impactful for the buyer. It's normal when people spend a few hundred grand for those involved in the process to take a high commission. Even a 5% commission could be 15k. Is he scamming people for more? This would be kinda strange because the costs of these programs are very much public. Is he pretending he can get you a citizenship for cheaper and then pocketing your money, knowing you won't go to law enforcement because you intended your money to go towards corruption of a government official?

Please provide evidence.

As an aside, has anyone here purchased a citizenship through investment and not lost money? I'm very curious.


Thank you for the insight--which I missed.

Here is a review site for Nomad Capitalist detailing his scam methods (which has "positive" counterreviews--especially towards the top): https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/nomadcapitalist.com (Control/Command + F = "Just don't do it" to find the gist of his scheme)

Here is a whole website calling out Nomad Capitalist being a scam: https://nomadcapitalistscam.com/

Here is a Reddit page of somebody who was scammed by Nomad Capitalist: https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/ita1i4/a_disg...

Here is another Reddit page where people are skeptical of Nomad Capitalist: https://www.reddit.com/r/digitalnomad/comments/6wl962/is_and...

People on these pages have advised instead to get both accountants and lawyers on both sides (USA and country abroad) and looking into stuff yourself, instead of relying on businesses such as Nomad Capitalist and others. For the lawyer side, especially abroad, you will want both a business and immigration lawyer helping you out. The place to go for that is the US/Canada/Australia/UK/Ireland/etc. embassy to your target country's website, and get those lawyer lists. Obviously the list is not an endorsement of the lawyers, and lawyers can be sketchy. It is important to look for red flags such as painting an overly perfect picture of themselves, or positive counter-reviews (to negative reviews). My lawyer (for Croatian citizenship) was also head of an international commerce association, and therefore it meant that he probably had to deal with complicated laws, had to get along with people, and had to get things done.

I hope this helps.


None of these links have actual evidence that NC is a scam. They are all pretty much “he charges a lot of money for consulting fees and I don’t want to spend a lot of money.”

Typical for Reddit.


How does it invite corruption if it's a legitimate government sponsored pathway? I'm sure NZers are happy to get a piece of rich migrants wealth vs. their money staying in offshore havens


The EU did some pretty thorough research on this.

Link to page: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document.html?re...

Citizenship by investment (CBI) and residency by investment (RBI) schemes in the EU

This study analyses the state of play and issues surrounding citizenship and residency by investment schemes (so-called ‘golden passports’ and ‘golden visas’) in the EU. It looks at the economic social and political impacts of such schemes and examines the risks they carry in respect of corruption, money laundering and tax evasion.

Link to PDF document: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2018/6271...


Are you familiar with Vancouver, BC, Canada?

There is a perception here that housing prices are constantly propped up and inflated because of rich migrants. Or simply because rich people are parking money in Vancouver real estate.

This has been going on since the 1990s.

In the short term people who own property and can benefit from the influx of money are happy. Over time it creates huge resentment from those who don’t see an opportunity to be able to afford owning. This resentment is even found among those earlier rich migrants who are now being priced out by migrants with more money.

I’m sure there is similar sentiment in San Francisco and other places where tech workers have caused prices to increase.

If this is limited in some way, then maybe the locals will be happy to see some additional wealth coming in.


SF has been unaffordable long before the last two or three tech booms, and it's because of limited supply. People just don't go back to read the headlines from the 70s about how expensive it was.


A quick search reveals an article [1] documenting some of the zoning issues that seem to have started in the 1870s.

It mentions many different discriminatory zoning practices throughout the history of the city, and it does show an article from 1978 where people started to voice concerns over pricing.

Thanks for pointing out the longer timeline on affordability!

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90242388/the-bad-design-that-cre...


I would love a feature in Teams that was "never, ever, ever, open a link in teams - use the default browser".

Like you, I can't fucking stand it, and I make the same mistake at least once a day.

Disclaimer: I work at msft etc etc.


I recently moved my passwords from an expired 1Password account to Bitwarden (right at the time they announced linux support actually, which was always the biggest thing I missed). Bitwarden has a FF extension and allows me to use it across mac/windows/linux.


I was looking at Bitwarden yesterday as I've been putting off moving over from LastPass and 1Password seemed weird with importing from it.

Is Bitwarden decent enough? The fact that it has a cli, FF extension etc. on a free plan is pretty tempting.


Bitwarden is ALL what you need. It's much better than all these paid apps.


I've been really happy with a friend's self-hosted version of it. Easy to spin up on a local server if I would ever need to as well. Really nice separation of concerns as it relates to the article too. All around happier than LastPass.


Ive been using the free plan and have been quite happy so far - I couldn’t get my 1Password vault exported (I think you need their desktop app to do that) so I had to manually move things.

But all in all really happy with it.


It's fantastic. I use the Firefox extension on my laptops. On my Android I have the app. It is very convenient having access to the same password store across multiple devices. If you have iOS it's even better as it hooks into the iOS password manager API so apps and websites that present a login screen can be autofilled using Bitwarden. Android has something similar but doesn't work quite as well but it's easy enough to copy and paste from the Android app. Very happy with it.


I’ve been a happy Bitwarden user for 2 or 3 years. Recently upgraded to the family plan for shared passwords and that is working well.


There's no need for a browser extension, you can enable it as a setting in your profile if you're logged in.


I left GOOG a year ago to join MSFT, both have excellent work-life balance.

I also spent 5 years at a well known startup that went public - I think I averaged nearly 12 hours a day over the 5 years there.

In my experience and from a lot of people I talk to, work-life balance is much better at a large Corp than a startup.


I run an engineering group at Microsoft in Australia, we have a reasonable though not (IMO) difficult screening / interview process.

However despite this, we find it hard to get candidates through our pipeline - even to the point where interviewers have been told "I have 15 years of programming experience, why do you expect me to code now". Now, I'm positive we could improve the screening and process we have in place for this - but by the same token it's not terrible... Yes, MSFT is not a FAANG and maybe there is some selection bias in the people who apply - but we also do manage to attract and retain good people who get through the process.

We also offer a competitive package for Sydney, with the ability to take that and work remote from anywhere in Australia, if anyone is looking for a SWE role :)


If you have 10-15 years experience you probably also have commitments outside of work that preclude you from wanting to sink multiple hours into doing toy problems and practicing STAR responses to behavioral questions. Most whiteboarding is just a legal, thinly veiled age filter.


I don’t think it’s an unreasonable expectation to have a candidate write some code in a screening interview for a software engineering position.

When a candidate flat out refuses to, then this is a huge red flag.

It’s not a perfect system, but it’s the best one we have.

I don’t agree with your whiteboarding assertion.


From memory I remember most roles in MS AU are of Solution Engineer types, do you guys have any product development done here in Australia?


Yes we’re only a small SWE office, working on Azure Infrastructure. Though we are hiring and growing :)


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