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Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley

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Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley

#71
post #68
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Background: - 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). -…

Come over to NZ, they're rolling out Gigabit to all the cities. I'm on 100mb fiber now, but in a few months should be able to upgrade.

Wow, hah!

Aims pointopoint microwave link at NZ (if only... they don't work that far away :P)

Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley

#72
post #39

Complete uninformed speculation: The stock market doesn't seem to like him. If that continues, the big markets may be less appealing as investments, interest rates may stay low, and so VC may be a (relatively) more appealing place to throw money. That would fuel money towards more startups, but it's a wildly uneducated guess.

I think the market will self correct shortly.

Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley

#73
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Background: - 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). -…

I can relate in a certain way. In Germany, the state-owned Telekom wants to avoid the cost for building fiber networks, and instead squeeze multi-hundred-megabit connections through the existing copper wires with VDSL2 Vectoring [1]. 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/wi…

That's really interesting. I'm guessing they're doing it to save money. The idea of premature optimization comes to mind, but this is one area where the investment really does need to be made, and will be worth it in the long run - once it's set up it's unlikely to be changed for decades (!!).

I'm wondering if it's something nonfinancial, but I (honestly) can't figure out what it could be.

Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley

#74
post #5

I'd guess it will be a harder sell to get software developers in Europe, Australia, NZ, etc. to move to the US.

Or easier. Hillary is a face of western corruption to much of the world. So long as Trump delegates the tech stuff properly and doesn't do anything too unusual the moral choice of the US should be easier.

Not true here in France or most of Europe, for that matter.

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.

Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley

#75

With the GOP controlling both Congress and the Presidency, and a luddite POTUS, encryption, digital privacy, and net neutrality are all in danger.

The US will be moving backwards in a lot of areas.

Many would rejoice in the fact that is actually moving. Backwards and forwards to many in this election is a matter of opinion.

Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley

#76
post #19

No one can reliably predict what it means.

Oh my god, a sane comment in this thread. God bless you.

Really? I think it's fairly obvious that no one knows what it means, and that OP is asking for peoples opinions.

Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley

#77

I think for the most part, Pence would be the most experienced in the Trump/Pence duo. I would look into Pence's government style.

Pence is the VP which constitutionally has next to no power (Lookup VP John Nance) President-elect Trump will be running the executive via his cabinet appointments. It'll be Governor Christie, who's running the transition and finding those cabinet appointments, that you should be pinning your hopes on.

Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley

#78

With the GOP controlling both Congress and the Presidency, and a luddite POTUS, encryption, digital privacy, and net neutrality are all in danger.

How are these things in danger NOW? Did you sleep through the whole Snowden incident, and everything Assange published in the past decade? Trump can’t take away what you don’t already have.

Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley

#79
post #71
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come over to NZ, they're rolling out Gigabit to all the cities. I'm on 100mb fiber now, but in a few months should be able to upgrade.

Wow, hah! Aims pointopoint microwave link at NZ (if only... they don't work that far away :P)

Too much signal loss from pointing your antenna at the ground, I'm afraid.

Re: Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley

#80

I actually think there is a possibility that it could be easier to get into US as highly skilled migrant under Trump presidency because of his anti-immigrant polities. If he raises a minimum income bar for H1B to 150K and keep the same cap, then it would be much less qualified applicants for H1B visas and therefore there would not be cap overflow with annoying lottery process. Of course, I can't predict what Trump is…

>On the other hand, there are pretty strong developers who do not have degree (i.e. smart drop-outs).

I think you might know better than I, but I don't think you have to drop out to be a great developer. Let's be honest, a degree by itself is almost meaningless outside the hard sciences, engineering, and perhaps whatever you would call the 'job-training' degrees (accounting, nursing, pharmacy, etc). There's degrees where you have to figure out how to get things done on your own, and there's degrees that are mostly about learning how to say what's politically correct.

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