Readit NewsI predict we'll get a few research breakthroughs in the next few years that will make articles like this seem ridiculous.
It actually makes sense to have a paid service that makes this abomination less painful. Though they work with VFS Global for collecting the applications and relevant documents, the VFS Global itself is an abomination and doesn't help with the handling of the form filling anyway.
Recently EU streamlined the Schengen visa application process for Turkish citizens as those "visa agencies" that are the official agencies and the only way to apply for a visa for many countries don't actually help with anything and are scamming people by selling the "good hours" for the visa appointment on the black market. An agency was dropped for this and the scams by agencies were listed among the reasons to streamline the application process.
Both with US and EU people are losing scholarships etc. due to outrageous wait times that are sometimes are years ahead or there's an issue with the systems handling the applications.
I guess there must be an opportunity there to fix all this together with smaller stuff like handling transliteration and character encodings, I wonder if some of those scam site are not scams and actually help with it. An AI agent can be useful here.
The bonding machines are crazy. Definitely look it up on YouTube, the machine puts down bond wires super fast.
The other part of it is sheer scale. Once you start making thousands or millions of something, economies of scale drive the costs way down
Yes, it's a GNU extension, but it's also supported by various BSDs [1][2][3], and yes, Musl has it too. It's present in pretty much any sane C library.
[1] https://man.openbsd.org/man3/printf.3
[2] https://man.netbsd.org/vasprintf.3
[3] https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=vasprintf&sektion=...
We have a depressing state in America where you can predict the parents’ income based on whether their kids’ school bans smartphones.