AWS Region Coming to New Zealand
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* Microsoft announced an Azure datacenter back in May: https://news.microsoft.com/en-nz/2020/05/06/aotearoa-disclos...
* Larry Page was revealed to be permanent resident of NZ after his child was medievaced from Fiji to Auckland for treatment: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/448544/google-billionair...
* Gabe Newell has been here since the initial lockdowns around March 2020 (he was on holiday at the time) and has since applied for residency: https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/nzs-newest-billi...
11 years ago, Kim Dotcom came to New Zealand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Dotcom#Move_to_New_Zealand
> Immigration NZ said Page is a New Zealand resident.
> It said Page does not have permanent residence and his visa will allow him to travel in and out of New Zealand only for a defined period of time.
Resident is like permanent residence in most other countries (e.g. green card in US, PR in Canada, etc). A New Zealand Resident can live in the country indefinitely, but if they live outside of New Zealand for an extended period of time, they lose their Resident status. This is again like US, Australia, Canada, etc. After two years of living in New Zealand as a Resident, one can apply for Permanent Resident status, which does not expire regardless of the length of absence from the country. In other countries, you have to get citizenship before you can do this. In New Zealand, Permanent Resident is a status between Resident and New Zealand Citizen. What the article says is that he is a resident, he can enter New Zealand for now, but his status is of the expirable kind.
New Zealand Resident ~ US/Canada/Australia/Germany/etc. Permanent Resident
New Zealand Permanent Resident ~ Nothing that I know of, it's unique
New Zealand Citizen = US/Canada/Australia/Germany/etc. Citizen
As far as I can tell, the only difference is that you don't get to have an NZ passport.
My father has lived here for 50 years and hasn't bothered to get Citizenship.
Student Visa -> Residence Visa -> Permanent Residence Visa -> Citizenship can be done in about the time it takes to get a post graduate degree. It's very commonly done.
There is no path to residency that I can see unless you're 1. obscenely wealthy or 2. working for a large, rich company who work closely with MBIE.
And because those companies work closely with MBIE, the Minister's advice gets passed down to HR. So it's extremely difficult to get jobs at such companies without already being a citizen or resident. I still think it's pretty miraculous that I was offered the job now, and barely in time for the case officer!
The solution is for HR to push back, and specifically demand that we have more people from other countries. Right now we're working on translating some software, and it would be much more convenient to have native speakers of other languages working in the company. Instead, we contract it out to a third party, but they don't have the context (and we can't share everything with them due to intellectual property considerations). So we really need to be allowed to hire some more multicultural people, it will help the company and help the world.
My favourite church is where the sermons are convicting and the people are encouraging (and least favourite is the opposite). Global is a really great community, welcoming newcomers, and encouraging humble conversation rather than pushing a view. So please, welcome to join and worship God with us online! (and in person after lockdown's done for the food)
Is there a policy-comparison website? I think I know who I admire most, but I think it's unlikely that they'll ever get elected outside of a coalition. So it makes more sense to vote strategically for the constituency where I'm living.
There are a few comparison sites. https://policy.nz/ is one, but note that there are a bunch of minor parties that didn't get any seats (some of which just popped up for this election), so use the Wikipedia article above to get an idea of who actually mattered in the end.
[0] https://communitylaw.org.nz/community-law-manual/not-rated/d...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/21/it-st...
Aussie Permanent residency doesn't exactly work that way, it depends on certain factors whether you will need to apply for a "returning resident visa" or not.
It does not depend on whether you have been living outside of Australia for an extended period of time. Under certain conditions, you could live outside of Australia for several years and still be able to return without the need to apply for a visa.
I'm not going through the minute details because it would be OT but anyone interested in this topic can look here https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/permanent-resident/ove... and here https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-li...
That is not all one needs to know, there is more than that. It's best to talk to an immigration lawyer in case one is unsure about their travel rights.
It's been my dream for the past 10 years to move to New Zealand, and thank God, I was finally granted a Resident visa in May 2021. If you're thinking about moving here though, please don't get your hopes up too high - the application process is very slow and it would've been faster if I'd moved elsewhere. People here have been wonderful, but the government's approach has been hostile to migrants, and I came close to despair several times on the long journey here.
November 2011 - February 2012 Working Holiday visa. Summer job at FPH.
early 2014 - Wanting to return, Skilled Migrant Category visa requires me to get "2 years continuous relevant work experience". Moved to Taiwan (an approved labour market), worked for a microSD manufacturer.
mid-2016 - NZ changes rules to "3 years continuous relevant work experience". Political problems in UK and US cause mass exodus of English-speaking people to NZ, Canada, Australia. Wait times start climbing.
mid-2017 - NZ changes rules to "3 years and a minimum salary of $70k"
mid-2018 - Left Taiwan. Applying for jobs remotely, getting nowhere. Parents supported me to come to NZ and look for a job.
Feb 2019 - Applied for Skilled Migrant Category resident visa.
May 2019 - Left, waited 6 months for temporary work visa to be processed. Working remotely, unpaid, for IoT startup in Auckland. Living in hostels, girlfriend's family in Taiwan, parents in France. Financially supported by parents.
Nov 2019 - Dec 2020 - working in North Shore, actually getting paid! Company already prepared for remote work, thankfully. But not paid every month because the company was running out of money. Began asking around for other jobs.
October 2020 - Case officer assigned to SMC visa application. Hired McVeagh Fleming lawyers to buy me time so I could try to get another job.
January 2021 - Started new job at FPH!
February 2021 - Resident visa approved!
May 2021 - Resident visa issued. After applying, the processing time took 2 years 5 months.
In theory, I could now have a family! My British passport can't be passed on to future kids, but my NZ Resident status should allow children born here to become citizens. However, it is not possible for my girlfriend to join me from Taiwan. It wouldn't help to get married - partnership visas would requires us to live together for over a year (which is obviously not possible these days). Every day my mind wonders whether it's still worth waiting, then every night we chat, and my heart falls in love with her all over again. She's stood firm through so many ups and downs, how could I turn away from that commitment now? She's wonderful, and worth waiting for, even if I never know when or if that day will come.
Why?
I'm a real doomer when it comes to NZ. Everything I liked about it is disappearing and everything I dislike about it gets worse.
Canadians have a reputation for saying "sorry", let's give NZ a reputation for saying "thank you".
If I stayed in Switzerland (where I was born, but have no citizenship because parents weren't resident), I would have to join the army and kill foreigners. Same in Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Austria... many otherwise nice countries still apply conscription, and I'm a pacifist.
People who want to make more money choose to move away to Australia, London, or California. Likewise in Kaohsiung, career-minded people move to Taipei or Hong Kong. The Immigration department is trying to alter that by preferentially issuing visas to rich people, but that's not how this works - it'll just increase inequality, and the government won't even make more money in taxes because most rich people find loopholes and tax havens anyway.
People who choose to move to New Zealand usually have something more worthwhile in life to hope for :)
If you move to NZ, I hope you're earning a lot of money. Everything is expensive. Housing especially - though you're used to that to an extent if you know Taipei.
Here in Auckland I'm currently paying 130 NZD per week for a room in a house shared with 3 others, about 15 mins bike ride from the office.
Heard the pollution is pretty bad though. And the driving was even worse than Taipei.
It may be the case that it is a necessary condition for remaining a nice country. At least if their neighbors aren't always so nice.
Most civilized countries with universal conscription allow you to do unarmed service (military support tasks) or civil service. In addition there's usually plenty of wiggle room to avoid the conscription altogether: health reasons (or excuses), being a member of certain religions, delaying/avoiding/hiding, or just plain refusing.
It seems to me NZ's main problems are ones it has had for a long time (housing, inequality, gangs, drugs), some of them are getting better (tech industry), and the stuff I like is still good (tramping, food, environment, sane politics).
But the untold story of tech work in NZ is that working remotely for good wages is rapidly getting easier. I started the Mozilla NZ office in 2007 and we were paid adequately, because back then HR didn't have a firm "local cost of labour" policy. Since then I've seen friends find remote work at other companies to get paid a lot more than they would locally for the same job. Zapier is a good one. We can all see that remote work is trending steeply upward in general; it doesn't always translate into location-insensitive pay policies, but sometimes it does.
The NZ governments approach to immigration during the Covid period is disappointing.
Kris Faafoi is a disgrace and should step down.
I'm from NZ but I know other families forced to separate due to the cruel decision to keep postponing resident applications.
This lockdown Auckland immigration office was shut so his visa wasn’t renewed. Basically has to leave the country if immi doesn’t come up with something. All because NZ’ers have exemption for travel and brought back a fucking delta strain.
your sentence doesn't make sense.
And tech SVP Urs is moving there: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/technology/2021/07/new-zealan...
https://archipro.co.nz/project/plasma-house-queenstown-marin...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/28/new-zealand-ra...
Sydney-to-Perth is 3,300 km.
Sydney-to-Auckland is 2,150 km.
Just as how our Kiwi friends are annoyed by high latencies to content served from Australia's east coast, the Aussies in Perth have it even worse.
Not to mention that the fibre doesn't go as the crow flies to Perth. The actual undersea cable length is more like 4,600 km, which is more than double the relatively direct path the fibre takes to Auckland...
All of this pales in comparison to central Africa and all of the former-USSR states, where neither AWS nor Azure have any regions: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regio...
Putting a region into NZ is all about data sovereignty and BS11.
If the beta is a success, I'm sure it will be hosted locally in most capital cities eventually.
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/media/weta-digital-goes-all-in-...
The whole “give us cheap power or we close this plant down” is just a genius power play.
People don’t want to be out of jobs and govt want a good excuse to get the deal done. The politicians look like savvy negotiators keeping this massive corporate begging and rio tinto get discount rate power. It’s really a win win ruse for them.
Incorrect. All of the hydropower is used as present, so any extra marginal load added to NZ causes extra gas usage (or coal sometimes). If the lakes are full and water is being sent down spillways, then perhaps you can get free power, but that is rare.
Also note that lots of people think transmission losses are heavy, but actually they are less than 10%. For example HVDC transmission losses are ~3% per 1,000km (the DC link from Benmore to Wellington)
I did hear that someone is putting in a 10MW cryptocurrecny mining "datacenter" right next to Clyde dam. I'm not exactly happy about that.
They haven't even admitted it's crypto.
All that's really known is that it's a 10MW "datacenter", hooked directly into the power plant, in a part of the country without a commercial fibre backbone, and will allegedly be running workloads that can be turned off depending on power demand.
Reading between the lines, that's a crypto mining operation.
This only spells great things for the tech prospects in NZ which are already very bright. I, for one, am excited to continue to base tech businesses in this country.
0. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-...
You had the capability to build websites for years before now. Just spend the effort to learn how to administer kubernetes.
NOTE: A colleague of mine moved back to Wellington (his home town) from Bay Area at the beginning of 2020. I have done a few Zoom / Facetime catch up with him since, he seems happy, energetic and refreshed (positive), stark contrast to the him back in 2018-2019 (SF / Bay Area). Looking forward to visit NZ once the travel bubble reopens.
You're still restricted by physics with edge computing. If you need to make a call back into us-east-1 to get data out of a data store, it doesn't matter that there's an edge CDN and API layer.
Outside of that, there's compliance reasons too. Partitioning your data by region because storing customer information in say the EU is different than the US. More likely CN is much different than the rest of the world if you do business there.
Those services don't want to be sent intercontinental because it's just an enormous amount of data, and they will incur back-haul charges. Same is true for customer multimedia services.
The other reason is data governance/sovereignty use cases. With a bit of ultra high latency on the side.
In fact, it's critical enough in many applications that clients may want to access the services in the same cloud they use /as well as/ in the same region (or potentially in their own data center.) So that means designing the systems to deploy on any cloud provider.
While this does limit the number of niceties you can use from a single provider, it allows for some pretty amazing flexibility.
My company stores user data and deploys to most AWS regions. It's a big win for some companies to be able to have their data stay in a given area (esp the EU, but I've also heard Canada mentioned).
For example, me-south-1 and af-south-1 still do not support AWS DataSync fully automated transfers. When this feature has been announced, it was put into 16 regions. Why not all regions where AWS DataSync is available?
There is more. This is just last example I've noticed.
As a result, when building cross-region service on AWS, it's not enough to just check whether AWS product is available in desired region, you need to check whether every single feature you need within the product is available in desired region too.
There are significant AWS customers in New Zealand (Xero jumps to mind) that I imagine Microsoft would love to target with that differentiator of a local data centre.
25+8 under construction for AWS[0]
65(some under construction) for Azure[1]
However Azure regions are a single DC, while an AWS region is 3 Availability Zones ( each being at least a single DC), which is much much better for redundancy. Remember that time the whole of Azure's portal and O365 were inaccessible (nobody could log in) because some equipment failed in a single DC in Texas? Design for failure
0 - https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/ 1 - https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/20/microsoft-azure-announces-...
Current employer it's all in ap-southeast-2 because of data sovereignty concerns.
Getting the Melbourne AWS Region up next year[1] will be good for redundancy.
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/in-the-works-aws-region-in-...
If I recall correctly, some dns services are in us east only only u host it in other region.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/r53.html
Name registration is in us east only. DNS resolving is in a few specific regions
(and apart from data governance/sovereignty reasons)
might there be any specific industries that they targeting specific to NZ?
Weta comes to mind, but I can only imagine they're a drop in the bucket.
It's not just customers in NZ profiting from this, you will now have a disaster recovery region for Australia.
What I've heard is that the AUS data centres for Azure and AWS have been getting hammered and have been non stop adding servers/capacity. So from perspective it does make sense to move some of that load off to NZ.
Microsoft announced their NZ data centre first, then because of data sovereignty issues you mentioned stands to gain all that business from govt and AWS is now trying to play catchup.
Another big driver is banks, it is a data governance/sovereignty issue but its a little bit more nuanced than at first glance.
In NZ almost all of our largest banks are Australian owned and are running multi-tenanted systems in AU data centres and are heavily invested in cloud.
Our reserve bank has recently made this policy called BS11 requiring banks to bring all there IT systems onshore.
https://www.hcltech.com/blogs/bs11-impacts-and-its-it-implic...
So I suspect both Microsoft and AWS have picked up huge contracts with banks which are subsidising these data centres to save the NZ banks from rewriting a ton of their systems not to use AWS/Azure.
Don't get me wrong, I'm ecstatic that NZ has 2/3 of the cloud providers setting up shop. NZ and NZ-ers often times punch way above their weight and I imagine this decision will only lower the barrier for many of those resourceful entrepreneurs.
This combined with fiber rollout and starlink availability is really going to do wonders for NZ.
Whatever the reason, it's exciting.
There are 80 cities bigger than that - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities
I wonder what the business case is?
Supply < demand. Why is this even a question?
Many large NZ orgs were "out in the cold". As everyone else in the world moved under the umbrella of "big cloud" they got more and more tempting as targets.
If so, they got the plan together rather fast.
I was trying to express that there's a level of non-cloud datacenter use in NZ (for data sov reasons) that would seem anachronistic anywhere else and this is closely related to the prevalence of DDoS attacks targeting the country.
I still think it is an interesting dynamic that the effectiveness of big cloud in blunting DDoS pushes risk over to countries with no "in region" facilities.