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0 pointsjavajosh4y ago0 comments

>I'm sorry, do you have any idea of the cost of doing these things?

Oh indeed yes, which is why for years now I've been warning people to not write to proprietary APIs in the first place. It's a faustian bargain and sooner or later the bill is going to come due! If not because of legal requirements, then because MS or Amazon saturates the market, and has to increase revenue somehow. This is an example of where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The upshot is that ignoring the warnings of people like me was a mistake.

(It's funny how people have moaned for years about "vendor lock-in" WRT Oracle. "They charge for every core!" But the cloud providers charge for every invocation, which is infinitely worse. And yet no-one seems to worry about it. It's really odd.)

0 comments

VikingCoder4y ago

So yeah, using HTTP to connect to a server that happened to be in the US... That's the thing that prevented us from selling in France.

But thanks for lecturing me that "vendor lock in" was what killed our 6-developer team that was developing hardware, and computer vision, and 3D computer graphics, while developing a health care product under the tons of regulation that comes with that.

Your arrogance is just stunning.

javajoshOP4y ago

Hey, I feel your pain. Companies are like children to a founder, and you have described the heroic acts you've taken to save your child. It absolutely sucks to be in your position.

I think it's important to warn "parents" (or future parents) to avoid this particular tragedy, which I think is quite avoidable. I want to encourage people to question the orthodoxy around cloud, that everyone is doing it so its fine, and worse is better anyway, yada yada. It may be insensitive to use your situation to illustrate the downside of cloud vendor lock-in, but my motivation is not to look down on you, but to warn others about this very real, very painful outcome that they court when they make the popular choice.

VikingCoder4y ago

I wasn't a founder. I was one of the 6 developers.

We happened to not use any vendor-specific APIs.

And it still killed us to fork our stack, and to teach our kiosks to be able to talk to the right server, and the extra cost of the servers in France, and the lack of support we saw from the provider in France...

salawat4y ago

Many noble efforts fail this way. You are not alone. This is one of those lessons you learn in regards to keeping your audience narrow, and executing on one thing at a time.

It's embittering, hardens the heart, and makes you want to give up, but you've gotta redouble and bust through it.

And by all means, shame the provider if they didn't live up to their end of the bargain.

hda24y ago

Would you reconsider naming the provider?

eecc4y ago

> your arrogance is just stunning.

Sorry if I don’t follow your reasoning, I’m still stuck at this piece of USA policy you seemed to have glossed over:

> Sec. 14. Privacy Act. Agencies shall, to the extent consistent with applicable law, ensure that their privacy policies exclude persons who are not United States citizens or lawful permanent residents from the protections of the Privacy Act regarding personally identifiable information.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2017-01-30/pdf/2017-0...

fsckboy4y ago

"Agencies" refers to parts of the US govt; that is a US govt regulation for its own agencies with respect to its own citizens and the regulation of immigration. It has nothing to do with e-commerce, cloud storage, start-ups, web services, etc.

Just as France accords its own citoyens rights that foreigners aren't entitled to.

jelliclesfarm4y ago

your frustration is justified. azure/aws is the entire environment. i dont think you could have implemented the suggested magical suggestion in any relevant or practical way.

irrational4y ago

Thank you for this response. Calling it a magical suggestion really does feel accurate. I was sitting here trying to think how you would even do this when everything is running on AWS (or Azure).

quocanh4y ago

"Don't make HTTP calls outside of our borders."

"We're not fragmenting the internet."

???

eecc4y ago

A better wording would be “don’t make calls into jurisdictions that violate our legal statutes”.

Ok, let me make a simple “marvel comics” example: what if all your calls were funneled through “Putin servers” or “Iran cloud” or “ People's Liberation Army computers”? Would you mind?

I hear you arguing “but we’re the good guys! We’re USA, flag bearers of Democracy!” but no. Really according to EU law, under USA jurisdiction Pricacy Rights are fair game for people like Zuck. The guy that said “ I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS. People just submitted it. I don't know why. They "trust me". Dumb fucks.”

Now, granted: our politicians likely want to stay on top of the consensus forming media, and make sure it’s within reach of their network. Annoying to see all the action moving to a different platform after all the years spent building relationships with the old media, but that’s the business.

VikingCoder4y ago

I am so delighted I am able to access blog posts from people in Russia or Iran or China. Otherwise, it would be far easier for human rights abuses to exist. (This is somewhat tongue in cheek. My point is that information wants to be free, and we're all better off if there's LESS friction.)

When I found out Parler was being hosted on Russian servers, I immediately informed everyone I knew who was thinking about switching to Parler that it was a really bad idea. And it's their choice whether to use Parler or not.

I think it's great if companies can't hide that they're doing something like routing data through Russia. I think it's pretty stupid to not let someone use a product that routes data through Russia.

I also think that if Facebook stands up servers in France, it'll still be just as problematic as it is today.

Pako4y ago

This sounds really americentric. Have you considered that the every non-US citizen'd PII is fair game for US companies one in the county? As a European I wouldn't want my stuff to be routed through the US the same way you don't want your data going through Russia.

2 more replies

tekknik4y ago

You pay for every invocation of what exactly? Lambda, certainly not fargate or ec2.

Then there’s the cost of your devs implementing the same feature azure and aws already has, which is usually forgotten about.

Also the icing on the cake for oracle was a contract termination fee. No cloud provider comes close to the oracle billing nightmare.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

VikingCoder4y ago

So yeah, using HTTP to connect to a server that happened to be in the US... That's the thing that prevented us from selling in France.

Your arrogance is just stunning.

javajoshOP4y ago

Hey, I feel your pain. Companies are like children to a founder, and you have described the heroic acts you've taken to save your child. It absolutely sucks to be in your position.

VikingCoder4y ago

I wasn't a founder. I was one of the 6 developers.

We happened to not use any vendor-specific APIs.

salawat4y ago

Many noble efforts fail this way. You are not alone. This is one of those lessons you learn in regards to keeping your audience narrow, and executing on one thing at a time.

It's embittering, hardens the heart, and makes you want to give up, but you've gotta redouble and bust through it.

And by all means, shame the provider if they didn't live up to their end of the bargain.

hda24y ago

Would you reconsider naming the provider?

eecc4y ago

> your arrogance is just stunning.

Sorry if I don’t follow your reasoning, I’m still stuck at this piece of USA policy you seemed to have glossed over:

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2017-01-30/pdf/2017-0...

fsckboy4y ago

Just as France accords its own citoyens rights that foreigners aren't entitled to.

jelliclesfarm4y ago

your frustration is justified. azure/aws is the entire environment. i dont think you could have implemented the suggested magical suggestion in any relevant or practical way.

irrational4y ago

Thank you for this response. Calling it a magical suggestion really does feel accurate. I was sitting here trying to think how you would even do this when everything is running on AWS (or Azure).

quocanh4y ago

"Don't make HTTP calls outside of our borders."

"We're not fragmenting the internet."

???

eecc4y ago

A better wording would be “don’t make calls into jurisdictions that violate our legal statutes”.

VikingCoder4y ago

I think it's great if companies can't hide that they're doing something like routing data through Russia. I think it's pretty stupid to not let someone use a product that routes data through Russia.

I also think that if Facebook stands up servers in France, it'll still be just as problematic as it is today.

Pako4y ago

2 more replies

tekknik4y ago

You pay for every invocation of what exactly? Lambda, certainly not fargate or ec2.

Then there’s the cost of your devs implementing the same feature azure and aws already has, which is usually forgotten about.

Also the icing on the cake for oracle was a contract termination fee. No cloud provider comes close to the oracle billing nightmare.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse