#33 –Living in the future is nostalgic

Justin's been following the election news closely, and the president's covid case in particular. In contrast, the issue dominating Mark's social circle and former co-workers has been H1-B visa changes. In his opinion the effects of the new regulations raising the minimum salary will be fairly nuanced and minor. The minimum salary requirements are going up, but not to nearly the level they initially were (adjusted for inflation). The number of applications in the lottery will probably decrease total number won't change. Most importantly, and unfortunately, H1-B holder's residence permission will still be tied to their employer. tldr; small win for skilled applicants and the largest tech companies, and a huge loss for low-end outsourcers who were flooding the system. Using WASM feels like living in the future to Mark, but Roblox development feels nostalgic to Justin... because it's rapidly developing and booming. Having been around computers and the web as they've exploded over the past few decades, rapid change itself is nostalgic! Speaking of Roblox dev, Justin's never done this kind of of dev work before but has gone from zero to a playable and mostly "finished" graphical game. Of course with this kind of thing there's a lot of work to polish a game until it's profitable, but it's looking really good for such a new project. Justin says this is a counter-intuitive market where it's better for a bootstrapper to build the actual thing instead of selling picks and shovels. Sometimes the best language updates don't add much in terms of syntax or functionality. They just make things faster and improve the tooling. Today's Topics include: Presidential covid H1-B visa changes and who wins and loses Humble Bundle WASM Roblox Micropayments Mentioned H1-B discussion on HN Programming Web Assembly with Rust Shanda Heyhi Elixir 1.11 Mark's goals for next time Record 4 screencasts Do a full-day fast Justin's goals for next time Get Slider built to where levels are unlockable (with in-game keys) Resume the trampoline workouts Video version at https://youtu.be/tUYd6xTWLjU Comment at https://reactor.am/podcasts/33 On Apple Podcasts at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/reactor/id1500109358 Recorded on 2020-10-07