The non-profit is still in crises mode and can use help. The grief and reflection can come when the crises has passed. Whether it is grief or not, how is describing these stages of grief helpful for the situation as it is right now?
Only in the sense of (helping to) "move on".
When you find yourself at the receiving end of monopoly extortion (at least as it appears to you), then best do what you can to get away.
It seems they are on that path now.
Not every non-citizen doing a job in a foreign country does so illegally. Like in this case.
What's wrong with foreigners, legally, with visums issued, building factories that then employ locals?
ESTA is the Electronic System for Travel Authorization, part of the Visa Waiver program.
Generally trying to get the right papers for something is trying to put the closest shaped peg into the oddly shaped hole.
Having once organized a small team across european borders during Covid, I've learned that it's actually pretty tricky to get papers that 100% correctly match what you need on the ground. Usually there's a bit of give and take needed on all sides to make the world turn.
An ESTA is not a visa. The USA publicly announces that Korean citizens have the right to enter the USA for up to 90 days for business or tourism. As we're seeing though, the real rule is "don't look foreign".
They weren't "starting a job" in the US. Their (foreign) employer sent them onto an assignment abroad (to the US) to do their job. That's the difference here.
Even under ESTA, you can do some such activities - call'em "job" - in the US. On behalf of your non-US employer.
The devil may be in the details, but the assertion these workers were "likely" (or even just "potentially) doing a _US job_ (subject to a Visum qualifying for _US employment_) is definitely misplaced.
Correct, they already had the right to conduct business for 90 days even without an ESTA, because that's what the law says. An ESTA is only needed to physically enter the country.
Berlin also invested billions into rebuilding much of its metro system in the 1990s and early 2000s. Now, 25y later, with investment having dropped off, it's occasionally creaking.
That said, to "beat BART" isn't a milestone for any public transport system anywhere. Except ... in the US, where even BART stands out as great. Hmm. Relatively.
(one part of me is kinda curious how the 101 would look like if you didn't do any work on it for 20 years. Mostly because it'd probably be a rather cool setting for some dystopian movie. Anyway ... transport infrastructure, whether public transport or roads, costs a f*ckton of money)
fair enough to notice though that while the Soviet Union may have had agreed to enter the war with Japan (at the Potsdam conference ?), it had not done so by the time the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima was dropped. It did declare war on Japan the day before the Nagasaki bombing. In a way ... Stalin chose the "let's go to war with Japan" date opportunistically. When it was clear there could be much gain without too much pain.
Which is not a dissimilar thing to the US "wavering" over the commitment to an invasion of Japan. The nuclear bombs "resolved" that. We'll never know what would have happened otherwise.
"secrets in env vars" (or program arguments) always triggers squeamy smirks off me.
It's a bullsh*t rule. One that would work is a clear mandate, "if you're found to use env vars / args for secrets, you must demonstrate within four weeks of finding that you have implemented code to clear your process' args/env vars immediately after program startup, for the lifetime of the process (and that you moved all secrets to non-cleartext memory)". Given how frameworky-frameworky much modern software is, such action items make folks think ("how on earth do I get state to openssl&Co without env vars", ...).
But alas, the regulations people shy away from any such precise prescriptions - because then, they have to involve themselves with SRE, SOC, CI/CD, and developers for monitoring, enforcement and training/assistance.
So instead, as you say, byzantine Reuben-Goldberg constructs are created exploiting "every loophole in the book" to comply with the rule but not the spirit; software becomes even more of a performance art.
I think, over time, I have moved into the camp that strongly believes all practical security is security-from-obscurity. Starting with the compliance rules around it.
nuclear never got economy of scale? There were hundreds of nuclear power plants built across the world in the 1970s/1980s. Developed countries went from "no nuclear" to "~20..30% nuclear" or more in less than 20 years.
If that's not sufficient scale to be economical, then I don't know what would have been.
Historical evidence therefore rather suggests nuclear isn't economical at any scale once active subsidies are out.
Current nuclear power plants under construction in the US or Europe, or recently completed there add more than evidence for high cost and major overruns to the pile.
Of course, one can go all conspiracy and claim that's only because of the deep anti-atom lobby, and because the cheap SMRs have always been torpedoed, or because Thorium molten salt reactors have been secretly killed by the military-industrial complex or whatever.
Occam's razor makes me think though, could it just be that nuclear was, is, and likely, at least for quite a while still, will be just so friggin' expensive that pretty much any "alternative" is more economical?
(back-of-envelope calcs say that if ~1.5GW electric from a new nuclear power plant cost ~20..40G$ to build .. between ~13..28$/W ... solar is <1$/W, there's a lot of spare change for batteries in that. Ok, that's pub talk. Still, if I have influence where my money goes, I'd only grudgingly accept nuclear for base load, subsidised as needed. Economics say, build what's cheap capex to build and then gives zero-opex energy when "running". There's no economic alternative to the "alternatives")
The US decision to abandon thorium cycle research wasn't particularly secret. It wasn't some conspiracy, just a policy decision on where to invest DOE money to get the most "bang" for the buck (literally, since plutonium production was part of the reasoning). It made sense at the time, but the decision was never reviewed after Carter's anti-reprocessing policies went into place.
And if economics were the only hurdle for SMRs, the arctic would be full of them. Flying in diesel or jet fuel to run generators is expensive as hell.
As far as the anti-atom lobby, they're like right there, out in the open, proud of what they do and vocal about it. It's no conspiracy.
Economics is a reason for the lack of nuclear after the 80s, but it's far from the only one.
