Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | onetimeusename's commentslogin

Is there a way for someone on h1B to start a company in a roundabout way by doing something like placing company shares into a trust and having a unpaid board seat? Is that pushing luck? Not for me but a friend who I had plans to go into business with but we're facing a chicken or egg problem until she gets a green card or changes her visa status.

There are ways for someone in H-1B status to start a company and not in a roundabout way. The approach will depend in part on whether she will leave her current employer and get an H-1B through her startup, stay with her current employment and get a concurrent part-time H-1B through her startup, or just stay with her current employer and somehow work on her startup.

If she is issued equity (reverse vesting restricted stock) and not paid a salary, does she still need work authorization for the startup?

> or just stay with her current employer and somehow work on her startup.

The first two options make sense but this latter option sounds like a risk. As I understand it, she can't earn any active income from this startup unless see has an I-129 for it. A share grant counts as income.

I mean, yeah you can work on a side project in your spare time that could become a business, but the moment employment and active income enters the picture that becomes something else.


Why don't they just start a company in the country where they are from or why don't you start a company with someone who is a citizen or has a green card?

The entire premise of your question is misaligned with the intention of the H1-B visa. Yes, everyone abuses its intent, but that isn't justification for more people to find more ways to abuse it. The abuse of that visa (and other visas) is why folks just want it abolished outright. I guess the purpose of a system is what it does, but it was sold to the American electorate as a way for companies to get access to talent that they simply cannot find domestically.

Trying to use the H1-B to hire a very specific person instead of any person with the skillset needed for the role would be in contradiction with the labor market test (LMT) needed for PERM status.

An H1-B can only work for the employer on the I-129 petition. There are some forms of passive income allowed but to placing shares in a trust and having an unpaid board seat just seems like an attempt to cheat the process because ultimately the goal is for her to work for this startup. Doing what your proposing puts a target on her head where anyone that is anti-H-1B can report her to USCIS and get her deported.

Moving home, working remotely and then applying for an L-1 seems like the correct approach here for what you're trying to do.


It would be interesting to test that maybe by looking at the disability rate before and after the honor code was changed recently. If there was an increase in disabilities, it might be because other cheating options on exams were limited.

For those wondering, the honor code was changed to make all exams proctored because of a number of academic dishonesty issues that happened allegedly.


White supremacists were responsible for the 2020 riots.


You mean Umbrella Man? https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-helped-ignite-george-floyd-rio...

Yes, agents provocateur are a persistent threat for delegitimizing protests.

An in-depth look at the problem: https://acleddata.com/report/demonstrations-and-political-vi...


What percent of edits on Wikipedia do you think are done by LLMs presently? It looks like there is a guide for detecting them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing . The way Wikipedia functions, LLMs can make edits. They can be detected, but unless you are saying they are useless I don't know what point you are making about an LLM contribution versus a human. That LLMs aren't good enough to make meaningful contributions yet?? That Grok is specifically the problem?


The ADL was caught in a campaign making edits. I remember more details in the past but I simply can't find them now with any search engine.

https://forward.com/news/467423/adl-may-have-violated-wikipe...

But also the ADL is accusing others of covert campaigns: https://wassermanschultz.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?...

So I am sure this is a thing among corporations/NGOs. Note that I picked the ADL because I happened to know this and not because I am trying to make a point about the ADL's purpose. Also I am not really answering the part about progressives although the ADL is arguably a progressive NGO. I think there are astroturfing campaigns on Wikipedia whether progressive or not.


That's how Wikipedia works. People can edit it. People who are members of organizations can edit it. The edits are transparent, and the history is preserved. It is open to anyone. It is like you're saying the whole world is biased and stacked against your point of view. The example you provide doesn't suggest any kind of centralized control or gatekeeping at all. Just some interested parties trying vying to contribute to articles that are of interest to them. What if I told you a single person, soon to be a trillionaire, would like to replace it with one he controls himself. Why wouldn't that bother you more? Honestly perplexed.


No. I don't think I am mischaracterizing it and I did not say the whole world is biased against me. I am not the person you replied to in case you're confusing me with them. I gave an example of an astroturfing campaign and yes, the ADL did not disclose what they were doing until they got caught. I don't think that should be casually dismissed as merely just interested parties. I think it is a genuine problem with Wikipedia. I think it violates the spirit of it and I think a paid campaign could subtly influence or overwhelm pages even though it's perfectly within the rules it should be disclosed the edits were done as part of a paid campaign and not a volunteer effort. I did not claim Wikipedia was centralized either. As far as gatekeeping I don't know. I am neither claiming it exists nor denying it.

> What if I told you a single person, soon to be a trillionaire, would like to replace it with one he controls himself. Why wouldn't that bother you more?

I didn't say anything about Grokipedia. I don't have an opinion on it presently. Couldn't the same argument be applied that he's just an interested party? Grok could be used to edit Wikipedia for that matter in a covert campaign. I think both preventing LLMs and relying on them are problematic but it's probably inevitable and I may already be late to the party because I don't know what percent of edits are done by LLMs on Wikipedia but let's say it's not 0%.


“Couldn't the same argument be applied that he's just an interested party?”

No, that isn’t even remotely comparable. One person having total control over the content and tone of every single article is not the same thing as millions of independent contributors. Especially if your complaint is /bias/, which is the subject of this thread.


I read a biography of a British politician who was later elevated to the aristocracy (although I guess his family was somewhere between commoner and aristocrat prior to that). It said his family took a financial hit because of a decline in crops in the late 1800s. I dug it up and found out that the US was partly responsible for that actually because of cheaper imported grains. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_depression_of_British_ag...

Many aristocrats relied on agricultural income from their property holdings.

Another interesting point is that it seems like the majority of titles were awarded relatively recently as in within the last 120-150 years. That doesn't mean there aren't some older ones but it changes the perception of them from being a centuries old group of warlords or relatives of the king to a group of lawyers, military officers, and politicians.


Yes-ish? I might have linked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Laws#Repeal In many ways that repeal was a direct consequence of the Industrial Revolution, and the IR's "new rich" were often eager to acquire the architectural trappings of the old rich, pay staggering sums to marry into them, and other tricks.


I went to a school that was heavy on immigrants and had lots of 1st gen citizens as students and all they did was advocate against people like me for admissions and for preferential admissions for their own group. So in my opinion, skilled immigration is not a transfer of talent but an expansion of the upper classes who go to war with each other over a small number of seats. Ironically this zero sum game keeps overall skill levels the same. For every immigrant, say, one citizen loses a seat somewhere.


I took graph theory with a professor who talked about Bill Tutte a lot. A lot of theories were proved by him. You could see his name all over in the index of the back of our textbook. This professor always pointed out that Bill was a chemist too. This is a well known graph theorist who was in awe of him.


That has happened and not a lot came of it. Venezuela nationalized American oil projects under Hugo Chavez. If by hell breaking loose you mean law suits I guess so.


Also, no hell broke loose when Argentina nationalized YPF.


What do you exactly mean? I am familiar with YPF nationalization.


Ah yes, Venezuela famously only has lawsuits that happened to them. Maybe look up Guaido, the 3% polling self and US declared president of Venezuela.


"only has lawsuits that happened to them" that is not entirely true. Yes, lawsuits and sanctions happens, but the Venezuelan government played an awful game that they exactly knew what would happen to them. Full corruption and power play that didn't play out well. This is a list of many of the nationalizations Chavez did. https://www.reuters.com/article/world/factbox-venezuelas-nat...


Isn't Venezuela a defacto dictatorship now? Not sure the 3% is correct under these conditions.


It could have maybe gone a bit differently if the US government had resisted the urge to interfere, like in the bad old days of the cold war. They isolated Chavez and then Maduro, which backfired just enough to justify the slide into full-on dictatorship.

People voted for Chavez and then (at least once) for Maduro because the massive inequality was unsustainable. If the US had accepted that and worked with them instead of against them, maybe we'd be in a different place right now. But the interests of oil companies always come first, sadly. (obviously this does not absolve the Venezuelans from their responsibilities.)


'Isolated' Chavez is a bit disingenuous here, they full on attempted to mount a coup against a democratically elected president. See this documentary 'the revolution will not be televised: https://youtu.be/GF4peYCrV6Y?si=EAKdElE6cq7js8aL'


Defacto dictatorship now, but even when there were elections he wasn't exactly popular. In the 2015 parliamentary elections (2 members per district) he actually placed second behind another member of his own party. He became popular during the 2018 crisis then kept proving to be inept.


They left 3% to the opposition? The government won the general elections in Italy with 98.5% 96 years ago.


And the huge American military force currently positioned off their coastline, blowing up boats!


How many decades after nationalization?

The motive for recent boat bombings is supposedly stopping illegal drugs. Though IMO it has more to do with distracting from the release of certain human trafficking records. This US administration seems bent entirely to the will and ego of one person.

(Which isn't to say the US has clean hands. Our list of attempted coups in South America is long.)


There is a little bit more context here in a different article where the sheriff explains how the posts were interpreted as a threat

https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2025/09/23/tennessee-l...


> There is a little bit more context here in a different article where the sheriff explains how the posts were interpreted as a threat

> https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2025/09/23/tennessee-l...

There isn’t anything there that wasn’t in the original article.


The Reason article said there was no reason to interpret this as a threat and that it was entirely just political. The article made it seem like the memes were held completely out of context. It mentioned there happens to be a nearby Perry High School just by chance but the nearby Perry High School is the central reason why this was interpreted as a threat. This was posted in a group that was organizing an event at the high school. I could see how someone might construe this as a threat more clearly from the tennessean article if they were being overly cautious. Also the sheriff mentioned the arrest was not done for legal speech content but more for the coincidental possibility this was a threat. Reason didn't elaborate on this.

The Reason article is making this seem like it's entirely political and unreasonable. I don't think an arrest should have been made, that is too far. This seems like an unfortunate coincidence but someone looked at all this and reported it as a threat. The fact Perry High School's name is highly relevant here was not included.


As someone who grew up in a small town with a not so moral local law enforcement, I almost guarantee this sheriff has a political agenda against someone who dared post a meme about their favorite podcaster who was just assassinated.


> The Reason article said there was no reason to interpret this as a threat and that it was entirely just political. The article made it seem like the memes were held completely out of context. It mentioned there happens to be a nearby Perry High School just by chance but the nearby Perry High School is the central reason why this was interpreted as a threat. This was posted in a group that was organizing an event at the high school. I could see how someone might construe this as a threat more clearly from the tennessean article if they were being overly cautious. Also the sheriff mentioned the arrest was not done for legal speech content but more for the coincidental possibility this was a threat. Reason didn't elaborate on this.

> The Reason article is making this seem like it's entirely political and unreasonable. I don't think an arrest should have been made, that is too far. This seems like an unfortunate coincidence but someone looked at all this and reported it as a threat. The fact Perry High School's name is highly relevant here was not included.

All of this was in the first article. With far fewer intrusive ads.


They totally de-emphasized the point about the name of the high school like it was just the sheriff going out of their way to find memes they were offended by. They mentioned the name as if it didn't matter to the case at all when it clearly did. I couldn't understand why someone reported this as a threat based on the Reason article. I can kind of see why someone might be concerned now but as I said the cops shouldn't have arrested the guy when no threat exists. This whole thread is filled up with people who now think there is a police force looking for offensive memes forgetting that someone reported this based on the name. If you don't think that then go FOIA the sheriff and prove this is corruption. If you don't think the Reason article was trying to portray this as out of control police trying to politically enforce memes and it's totally unbiased whatever, I'm done.


That is in the Reason article.


The officer's fabricated justification there is just as weak as the referenced article.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: