I'd guess it will be a harder sell to get software developers in Europe, Australia, NZ, etc. to move to the US.
I had a really bad experience with health care. In New Zealand, I never had to think twice about visiting the ER or hospital, where it's free, very high quality, and there's no long waits. In the US, a few trips to the ER including x-rays cost me something like ten thousand dollars, even after health insurance. My startup's plan might have not been great, but I understand why so many Americans go bankrupt from medical debt. I have a friend who went through cancer, which ended up costing millions of dollars. His family would have literally lost their home without the Affordable Care Act, which prohibits lifetime limits.
Having said that, I do like most things about San Francisco. There's some great food, great people, and so many things to do. It's a great place to live if you are wealthy. I wouldn't go back there as an employee or a startup founder, but maybe one day as an investor.
And I have Australian friends in the bay area now who are reconsidering which country they want their tax dollars to go to.
How have you found London? And where would you recommend a Perthian turned Melbourian dev head to if we have to go overseas to find ourselves?
- Behold, the Australian "IT tax" makes everything 60% more expensive here Just Because™.
- There's absolutely nothing like Silicon Valley here. If there is I've never heard of it, and I live in Sydney, the most population-dense area.
Situation: the two political parties here (Labor and Liberal) have opposing ideas about how to implement our new fiber network. I forget who wants what (which says a lot).
- One wants fiber to the node, where you get a fiber termination box inside your house.
- The other wants fiber to the <some other term I forget>, where the fiber link terminates under the street or on a telegraph pole, and you get VDSL service along existing copper lines.
The problem: both solutions actually work, but the second one is a few million less expensive because fiber cable is a bajillion dollars per meter and it really does add up. (And then there's the problem that installers are nailing the fiber boxes to the first thing that looks like a wall because they have so many installations to do and insufficient resources, and then people are all like "???" when they realize their box is mounted to the ceiling... or at least that's what I think I heard...)
The other problem that nobody talks about: 1Gbps briefly got a "oh hey yeah that sounds awesome, we should look at that sometime around 2187" very early in the discussion a couple years ago, but I haven't really heard much to suggest this sort of capacity is actually going to happen anytime soon. And VDSL maxes out at 100Mbps.
It's a very difficult situation: do you create a technically-1Gbps-capable network capped at 100Mbps, or create a 100Mbps network for a few million less? Remember, there's no established Silicon Valley or similar scene here. Sure, there are tech companies, but it's not the same, there's no startup thing. (Case in point: how many .au companies are on Hacker News? Problem.)
Anybody can go out right now and get 500Mbps fiber for something like $499+/mo (business only - expensive Just Because™ \o/ (see? :/) and also due to SLAs etc) if you have fiber in your area (and the month has a Z in it), but that doesn't put it in the hands of random individuals. To enable the entire country (or at least the urban areas), the 1Gbps connectivity would need to be utterly ubiquitous, unconditionally deployed to everyone.
And so, in amongst all of this, all new dwellings are required (I think by law, or something close to one) to have fiber runs installed, and terminated in the street. Apparently the two new apartment blocks down the road from me have functioning NBN service, and I can see the "NBN" trench cover in the middle of the footpath outside the one I checked, so... it is rolling out, sort of, but all the political wrangling is creating a level of uncertainty that's slowing everything down horribly.
Oh, and the NBN (national broadband network)'s plan for rural Australia? 6Mbps satellite. What's latency? (Not much else they can do though :/)
I'll end on a good note though - this map is a lot more full than I make it sound like. http://www.nbnco.com.au/learn-about-the-nbn/rollout-map.html
They're the only one advocating this. Literally everyone else, from watchdogs all the way up to the EU commission, wants them to do proper fiber networks.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-high-bit-rate_digital_sub...
I'm wondering if it's something nonfinancial, but I (honestly) can't figure out what it could be.
Same reason why all types of infrastructure are crumbling in all of the Western world.
Aims pointopoint microwave link at NZ (if only... they don't work that far away :P)
This is a decent summary of the situation in Australia. The NBN rollout map, however, makes things look better than they are. There are places that have been stuck at “in development” for about three years now, and none of the areas that I ever look at seem to change. NBN has been much hyped, but has fizzled much more than you’d expect. Or hope.
I want to move out of Melbourne to a place in the country with good Internet supply (Stawell vicinity, mostly), but it’s surprisingly difficult to find housing in NBN-connected areas. Take Stawell for example: at a broad level you look on that map and see it’s covered. But it’s not: everywhere around it is covered, but Stawell itself is not covered. I’m not certain why, but I’m guessing there are difficulties in the line-of-sight fixed wireless installations.
OH, that's why I couldn't remember the second one, I confused it with the first one. Thanks.
> There are places that have been stuck at “in development” for about three years now, and none of the areas that I ever look at seem to change. NBN has been much hyped, but has fizzled much more than you’d expect. Or hope.
I see. I've talked to Telstra people (instore tech support) while discussing other things, and my understanding of their consensus was that if a given area doesn't seem to be moving, you could probably use it's stuck-ness as structural support for something.
> I want to move out of Melbourne to a place in the country with good Internet supply (Stawell vicinity, mostly), but it’s surprisingly difficult to find housing in NBN-connected areas. Take Stawell for example: at a broad level you look on that map and see it’s covered. But it’s not: everywhere around it is covered, but Stawell itself is not covered.
I'm in the North Shore area of Sydney myself, smack bang right in the middle of the new Sydney Metro project (a ~20 minute bus ride away from the closest station), and to be honest I do wonder if the NBN service to those new buildings (which does light up green on the map...) is actually live and functioning. There's no cable in this area and my current ADSL2+ is... right now my modem says 13102kbps - 12.79Mbps. My situation is similar: little dots of NBN connectivity (I see where all the new developments are!) but... crickets chirping where I live. Which, to be fair, isn't a major town center, just a suburb like any other, but still. I'm glad I'm moving soon.
> I’m not certain why, but I’m guessing there are difficulties in the line-of-sight fixed wireless installations.
Wait, what? I thought the NBN was all fiber and satellite. How does this work?
Wireless can do 25/5 and now, I believe, 50/20. So it’s pretty good, better than ADSL2+ in bandwidth anyway (no idea about latency).
So is Turnbull, but it doesn't excuse you.
Plus, it appears that Peter Thiel is going to be in some sort of advisory role. That's valuable insight
That's not even slightly true here in the UK.
For these people Hillary and her ilk represent a local minima, and votes for her a stagnation or move away from actual democracy. The harm Trump will cause is indefinite and the claims that have been made are hard to substantiate, whilst he is obviously not an ideal POTUS it is not obvious that Hillary would be better.
People love Obama and they see Hillary as an extension of his presidency.
People are afraid of Trump. He reminds them of the corrupt, self interested, dictator types, which are rampant in this region.
If you thought American image around the world was at its lowest it could reach during GWB's presidency, oh boy you are in for a surprise.
The only people happy about Trump is ultra-right wing/neo nazi panopticon of odd figures - Wilders, Le Pen, Farage, Orban ... Really the "crème de la crème" of Europe. And, of course, Putin.
The rest is worried now - people are seriously questioning what happens, for example with NATO, after Trump's remarks on not unconditionally supporting the allies. Is Trump going to divide Europe between himself and Putin, e.g. in exchange for Syria? Is Putin going to have a free hand to invade Baltics now? What about Ukraine, Moldavia? Are we going to go back to the Iron Curtain era where Soviet "borders" were the ones with West Germany? These are serious issues which you don't feel on the other side of the Atlantic, but for us living there it is a big deal.
What about business? Trump made some remarks about erecting trade barriers to protect American markets. So, of course, this concerns us too.
On the other hand, the misogynist, racist, xenophobic BS he was producing during the last few months is mostly seen as disgusting, but finally mostly your internal problem. I am sure someone like Merkel is not going to be personally happy to have to sit next to him at some official function, but people do respect the result of the election and are professionals. GWB was not seen as the sharpest tool in the shed in Europe neither but everyone survived it.
Clinton was seen as a continuation of the US policies, so naturally people would have preferred her - nobody likes to rock the boat too much when it comes to foreign policy or business. Trump is seen as unpredictable, unreadable and incompetent in this regard, unfortunately.
In the EU. Lots of people in the middle east did not after he started a war there.
As a European, I'm quite scared of what wars Trump will start / cause.
Time will tell if I am right or wrong.
Then the vote for Brexit won a majority. They're not all scum at the extreme end of a political spectrum.
If France goes down the same naive, name-calling route Le Pen will surely be next to capitalise on it.
While individual publications might be exceptions to the rule generally the media are to the right of centre in Europe.
European media are on both sides of the aisle, you will find both left and right leaning ones, including crazy tabloids.
However, what you likely won't find is something like Fox News, with conspiracy theory pushing nutcases being regulars there.
BTW, this theory about a "media conspiracy" is not new, nor something that Trump or Putin invented. Lügenpresse ("lying press") is a term widely popularized by (not invented) and mostly associated with National Socialists in Germany - in Hitler's Mein Kampf, for example.
Most people parroting this unfortunately don't care - anyone having a different view has to be a part of some complot or aiding the "enemy" (whoever that happens to be).
They most definitely are.
Consider the media closely working with the White House now, Obama's "entourage". Not one of them is Republican.
Nigel Farage - former head of UKIP in UK, a party with extreme right wing history and some of the most vile and xenophobic rhetorics during the recent Brexit campaign.
Marine Le Pen - head of the French Front National, another extreme right party, with documented history of antisemitism, racism, xenophobia and outright neo-nazi tendencies. Their former leader (Le Pen the elder) famously said that holocaust was only "a detail of history", even going as far as joking about not enough Jews going up in smoke ...
Geert Wilders - the Dutch extreme right politician, well known for his anti-Europe and anti foreigner views
Victor Orban - the authoritarian prime minister of Hungary, known for his xenophobic policies, coalition government with the neo-nazi Jobbik party and negative views on liberal democracy - which he is successfully dismantling in Hungary.
With Le Pen I am afraid you could be right - here in France she has consistently around 30-40% of support already and a lot of people see her as a saviour against the "Arabs" (mostly people of North African descent - Moroccans and Algerians, both legaly and illegaly here and, by extension, all muslims), which are despised by many. The recent terrorist attacks and incompetent governments didn't help neither, but the animosity goes deeper and longer back than that.
However, the French system of presidential elections works differently than in the US, with two rounds where the 2 strongest candidates qualifying into the second round. She will likely lose there, because the racist, antisemitic past of her party is unpalatable to many. On the other hand, if the major parties don't put forward a sensible and popular candidate, anything could happen ...
Anyway, too many actors, too many variables too many things to come. Just wait and see!
Silencing people you don't agree with by calling them misogynist, racist, sexist, etc. and expecting them to convert to your side does not work.
Marginalizing them does not work.
Not in Europe. (Brexit)
Not in the US. (President)
This strategy is 0 for 2.
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Not only that, but you are also wrong on facts. There is no unconditional support of NATO allies by the US. See article 5:
"It commits each member state to consider an armed attack against one member state, in Europe or North America, to be an armed attack against them all."
Consideration of something is not unconditional support.
Wasn't it Trump who has the been the biggest opponent of the political correctness? That cuts both ways, you know.
No, to 99% of the rest of the world she's just a former Secretary of State and the wife of a former president whose era is often viewed through a nostalgic lens compared to current turmoil.
Fox News doesn't broadcast outside USA, you know.
Remember that the number of people that have voted for Trump only represent about 1/5th of the population.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_federal_election,_2...