Many here will recognise the formative childhood experience of having done something forbidden and getting caught doing it by their parents where, for the first time, instead of the usual response - their getting angry - you are taken completely by surprise when they simply say "I am so disappointed in you" or similar, accompanied by some expression in the realm of abject futility. This is one of those. That this cou…
Donald Trump Is Elected President
911–920 of 1001 posts
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#912I'm not a conspiracy theorist at all. But HN has story after story about how vulnerable voting machines are: https://hn.algolia.com/?utm_source=opensearch&utm_medium=sea... The more I look into the issue the more horrified I am. One place had voting machines that ran windows XP and sent votes over wifi, and were hacked with a default administrator password. This computerphile video goes into a number of problems with the concept: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_0x6oaDmI
The fact that the polls were off by such a huge amount is concerning to me. States that weren't supposed to be even close somehow ended up going for Trump. It's known that Russia supported Donald Trump's campaign and had targeted voting systems, which is terrifying. Overall the election seems to be very close in terms of popular vote, and many swing states were won by very small margins or just a few counties. A small amount of fraud targeted in just the right places could perhaps have changed the outcome.
How concerned should I be about this? The fact that the election wasn't close in terms of electoral votes is comforting (if you are rigging an election, it's best to try not to overdo it and draw suspicion.) It would be nice to know that results are consistent across states and counties that use different kinds of voting machines or paper ballots. I don't know if that has been tested yet.
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#913Now that the voices of the disenfranchised blue collar workers have been heard, what actually can be done to help them? I'm less worried about the accusations of racism, etc. because it appears to me a majority are voting because their livelihoods have been lost and, despite economics saying globalization will bring new jobs, they aren't showing up in the critical areas where they are needed. So, what policies can be…
Now that the voices of the disenfranchised blue collar workers have been heard, what actually can be done to help them?
My advice to progressive and left-leaning 20-something, 30-something people in the Bay Area: Stop denigrating that demographic! Donald Trump was a stealth 3rd party candidate, fueled by the dissatisfaction of huge swath of the US public whose fortunes are falling from majority middle class to minority lower class. Denigrating them only serves to divide our society further. The Democratic party needs to think of such people as constituents -- as it had once in the past.
If you dump on them, they're of course going to dump back. It's only the upper 1% that benefits from that. It's called "divide and conquer."
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#914Now that the voices of the disenfranchised blue collar workers have been heard, what actually can be done to help them? I'm less worried about the accusations of racism, etc. because it appears to me a majority are voting because their livelihoods have been lost and, despite economics saying globalization will bring new jobs, they aren't showing up in the critical areas where they are needed. So, what policies can be…
The big northern European takeaway is the principle of "protect the worker, not the job."
Ironically, at this point, the Scandinavians are better free marketers than Americans, because they're willing to let entire companies go under if the market so dictates. The social safety net protects the workers, but not their jobs.
Meanwhile, we get into so many interventionist contortions protecting COMPANIES, that our version of the free market is a sick joke.
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#915What can Silicon Valley do to make America great again? - There will be higher tariffs for China imports. The US needs to make more of its own stuff. Start planning on moving manufacturing to the US for sales in the US. Don't use Shentzen as much. Plan on exporting to China, and expect some help from the Government if China's government gives you problems. The US needs to get its imports and exports balanced. - The w…
I don't get why you think some of these are essential to "make America great again"(as if you could actually reasonably quantify why it stopped being great).
- The wall will be built. It will need sensors. The IoT crowd needs to develop better sensors than the overpriced crappy ones from the last attempt in that direction.
My understanding is that the proposal is untenable for a variety of reasons, so we probably won't see "the wall", but maybe some additional walls in some places.
- Better detection of illegal aliens is necessary. One of the biggest source of illegal immigrants is visa overstayers. For those, pictures are available from when they entered the US. Social media must be searched for them. Surveillance cameras need to be connected to cloud systems which recognize them. Police cars need very high definition cameras and face recognition to find those people so they can be deported. Deep learning systems will be needed to decide if a likely face match is worth investigation. With good automation, people will only be hassled once. Then they're either known as legal or on their way to deportation.
How does this concept not terrify you? Why do we need to go further in this direction? It sounds rational as far as achieving the goal. But the implications of spurring this development are immense. I don't get why you would willing move towards such a pervasive police state.
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#916What can Silicon Valley do to make America great again? - There will be higher tariffs for China imports. The US needs to make more of its own stuff. Start planning on moving manufacturing to the US for sales in the US. Don't use Shentzen as much. Plan on exporting to China, and expect some help from the Government if China's government gives you problems. The US needs to get its imports and exports balanced. - The w…
I have to say a big "I told you so" to everyone in the tech community who said Snowden was wrong to do what he did. As of January 20th the NSA works for Donald Trump.
If Trump actually makes a dent in the low-skill unemployment rates, it could actually fuck with the economics of on-demand economy companies, I think you're right about automation.
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#917Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly I am hoping Donald Trump is more centrist than many people expect. While he touts protectionism to the point of blocking access to the country his other ideas are pretty much down the middle of the road with regards to rebuilding the country itself. A lot of his ideas are not hard right Republican. He openly embraces gays and will make many of them in the Republican party feel more welcome. He has allies of…
> when conservatives want you out of our personal and financial lives Do they really? There are a lot of people that view the Republican Party as their ticket back to an idealized Leave It to Beaver world, which is definitely NOT the government getting out of your personal life (make homosexuality illegal, bring back "separate but equal", make sure that minorities "know their place", etc). Still others see it as a th…
These sentiments come from an extremely-well-organized, but minority faction of the party. If these were majority sentiments, then legislation pushing those sentiments would have progressed far faster than they have.
Back in the 60's, the evangelicals started to learn the ropes of party machinery, primarily crystallizing around the abortion single-issue. During the 70's, they started to take up positions throughout the party and attempt to dominate it, but the Rockefeller Republicans trounced them. To their credit, they licked their wounds, learned their lessons, and kept coming back spoiling for another fight. In the 80's they consolidated their power. Today in the largest state Republican party, they absolutely control all the chokepoints of power, they vote virtually in lock-step, but they don't have the numbers to completely dictate policy and seed their own hand-picked and -groomed candidates at the national level. The parliamentarian is an evangelical, most times the convention chairman is either evangelical or strongly allied to them, and key committee chairmen who have a lot of control over which party members participate in the committees and advance to the next convention level are evangelicals. Your level of participation in the party is contingent upon passing one or more litmus test(s): for certain key levels, you are interviewed to state your positions on their hot button topics (abortion is a favorite).
While small in numbers, they carry a huge stick, and they're utterly ruthless political knife fighters, as many Ron Paul supporters found out. They're very tightly coordinated and highly prepared: as an example, they come to district and state conventions prepared with earbud FRS radios so they can confer upon split-second decisions on the floor. While they don't quite have the numbers to be the party unto itself, they dominate the voting plans of the congregations that send them to the party, so they make a formidable voting bloc.
The end result is they can exert enough pressure to force the Republican party to adopt objectively terrible policy planks (no-abortion-no-exception even in medically-dire situations where both mother and fetus can die, really?), that then don't make it into national legislation. But just like before, they keep trying, learning, and adapting.
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#918As an outsider, it is painfully clear that I should not try to move my business to the US at this point. Europe's looking better than ever now for tech startups.
With the Brexit, many Euro companies near to defaulting and Russia moving troops to its western boarders, you really think Europe is a better place? USA has its fair share of problems, but I would not go so far as to say anywhere else is more ideal for startups (or living). yet. As much bad emotions as their are going around this election, we don't kill buissness leaders who oppose us (russia) kill political leaders…
Really: "With the Brexit, many Euro companies near to defaulting"? Didn't know this was a fact already? Besides, most "Euro companies" are not located in the UK and I doubt the effects of the Brexit is only contained to or affects Euro companies.
I would argue that many countries in Europe is better for living (family time, vacations, work-hours, gender equality, free education, healthcare, freedom of own body (abortion)...) and have been for some time. However, I suppose that depends on who you are and where you come from (and whether you care about/agree with any of these things I list) - home is home after all. Also Europe is not one country: Spain is different (not worse - different) from Sweden (but then again: New York is different from Rockport, Texas too).
There seems to be less VC money in Europe, but maybe that's where we're going either way. Again, some places are better (Geneva, Switzerland VS , Greece) off than others (just like Silicon Valley is better than many, but maybe not all (?), places in the US). But, I'll give you that.
Who's to say it's not going to change though? As you pointed out: Brexit had a huge effect. To me this election feels like a much bigger deal.
Anxious to see how the market in general reacts when Trump either: a) does what he said he'd do (wall, nato, ...) or b) fails to do what he said he'd do. Let's hope it's only me who's anxious though. If not, I suspect there will be a negative reaction in the market: anxiety = uncertainty = risk after all.
In any case: the chance of this happening (market reacting negatively) combined with the effects of it (economically, jobs) >> the chance of Russia invading "Europe" (which I assume is what you're alluding to) combined with the, albeit devastating, effects on the lives of the people living there.
I'm don't even feel like going to the US on vacation anymore before somebody figures how to fix the police violence, the guns, the endless suing and the racially biased incarceration. Being afraid of the people around you, has a crippling effect on my life quality. And I don't seeing it becoming better under Trump. I'm willing to admit I am particular in my views here though.
My point here is that: you might be missing out if you truly believe that the US is an absolute better place than Europe. In some aspects, I'll be surprised if you didn't feel that it was the opposite.
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#919I think we learned that fake news (used to pump up fake issues) is now a legitimate campaign strategy that works even on people who should know better. Trump won on a mountain of fake issues: Immigration: both conservative and liberal economists agree that immigration (illegal or otherwise) does not suppress wages and does not suppress job growth. https://www.cato.org/research/immigration http://business.time.com/201…
Immigration isn't a fake issue. Take a walk around Miami or San Diego. Or New York. Or London. Or Paris. Or Malmö. Gay marriage is just the final nail in the coffin of marriage, which was already basically dead. It's a mind-bogglingly stupid hill to die on, but nobody ever accused conservatives of brilliance. Obamacare is a disaster because it enables still more people to suck still more dollars out of the system tha…
Do you directly pay for your roads? Do you care how much it cost?
Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President
#920My entire family feels a terrible sadness today. We immigrated here to the United States from Russia almost 20 years ago (to the day) and after all the immigration bullshit we were finally eligible for citizenship this year. My dad took his oath and got his US passport literally weeks before the election and this is what he gets for his first vote: a divisive demagogue beat a corrupt career politician. There are no w…
I'm so sorry. Maybe you can use your unique perspective to shine a light on how backwards Trump's support of Putin and Putinesque policies is.
It's not just backwards, it is an existential threat to the United States and the rest of the developed world. We are at a critical time when Russia is only getting bolder and bolder, despite economic hardships and sanctions, and we need to once again provide balance against their power. Unfortunately, the entire military industrial complex was rapidly retooled in the 90s and the defense/intelligence apparatus lost all expertise on dealing with Russia. This expertise is important because Russia has historically placed a lot of importance on human intelligence, espionage, and geopolitical manipulation with long term operations. Any sort of conflict (military or otherwise) with Russia will leave much of the US establishment with their pants down because they are used to manipulating small countries without strong leaders and bombing civilians, not fighting a proxy war against a major power with a comparable (human) intelligence apparatus.
So not only is the US bureaucracy entirely unprepared for such a confrontation, but the US electorate just chose a failed real estate mogul turned reality TV show star to go head to head against a former Cold War operative that trained and worked for the KGB/Stasi. And go head to head they will. You can bet Putin will exploit the Trump presidency for as much as he can and there's little we can do to stop it other than voting Trump out of office next time.