Projects like Ceph and Minio have existed for years, though?
Beyond that, I just don't understand your point of view at all. Do people unironically think there is some super special dark magic being done in the bowels of Amazon, as opposed to just...code that runs on (virtual and physical) machines? The open source community yielded Linux but it's just sooo impossible for it to yield an object storage service? What a strangely shackled view of the world.
> No it’s using an army of extremely well paid engineers, something I guarantee the parent comment has no access to
That's a different argument to the one I replied to, and the reply to "they have expensive infra people" is "you have to have expensive product-trained people to use them anyway".
The suggestion was to replace DBB and S3 with some VMs. Presumably those VMs would be managed by the engineers part of the parent commenter’s organization. They do not have access to as many engineers as AWS, nor do they pay them as well.
Not arguing about cost effectiveness here. Just pointing out how silly it is to suggest that you can replace DDB/S3 with some VMs ran by a midsize organization
Maybe worry more about the organizations that actually have the power to do bad things rather than speculating about something that might happen at some point lol
Saying this about a compute rental service is hilarious
They have the power to do what exactly? Sell you some EC2 instances at reasonable prices? lol
There’s organizations that have the power to openly kidnap and execute people and we’re being melodramatic about a few buildings with computers in them
That's not an ideal tone for here. From my perspective the most incredible thing is the concentration of IO. I might like at some point for elements of my computer usage to remain private, it would be nice if that ability were preserved. A bit hard to accomplish when 1 out of 4 bits processed globally all run through the same network
Wasn’t it just a few months ago that a big tech CEO used his powers to gain access to all the US government data he wanted? Did you forget that already?
Did you see any clips from Trumps inauguration? Weren’t the CEOs of these big tech companies sitting right behind him?
Shall we even talk about Palantir?
I think it’s pretty obvious what the power of these companies are. You have to have your head pretty deep in the tech hole to think this is just about fair ec2 pricing. What I’d do to have that kind of ignorance again.
I see. So your brilliant logic is to reduce the actions and impact of multi billion dollar institutions down to simplified versions of the technical solutions they offer.
“You don’t need to worry bout them Palantir boys, they just make simple harmless dashboards. Don’t worry about the deep involvement in government surveillance, military targeting, and immigration enforcement.”
“Amazon just provides simple VMs. Ain’t no need to be concerned about worker treatment, anti-competitive practices, tax avoidance, and environmental impact.”
When their customers start using those buildings with computers in them to autonomously determine who to kidnap and execute, I suspect you might understand their point. I’d also note we are one refusal away from the US president declaring DPA control over frontier model providers and their infrastructure a national defense necessity and under his personal control.
This is the logical conclusion when you socialize healthcare.
If you’re pro NHS / single payer, you *must* support this. As well as banning drugs, sugar, extreme sports, unprotected sex, and other high risk behavior. Anything short of this just doesn’t make sense.
We can just tax the rich to cover the cost of our personal decisions. Which is their fault anyway because I wouldn't have gotten diabetes if they didn't shove that junk take out food down my throat.
Why must I do anything of the sort? As with all things there is a balance to be found that does not necessarily mean zero.
I can both support healthcare that’s free at the point of access (this distinction is important, because the NHS is not strictly speaking a “single payer” system, as both National Insurance and tax revenues from e.g. alcohol and cigarette sales are used to fund it) and individual liberty, even if that increases the cost of healthcare delivery. The NHS is not evidence of an authoritarian regime, it is evidence of the state playing a role in maintaining baseline standards of health, largely for the purposes of maintaining a healthy workforce.
Americans have such a wildly warped worldview in my experience.
I assume you’re being sarcastic but just in case: the goal of single payer healthcare isn’t to spend the least amount of money on healthcare. The goal of single payer healthcare is to guarantee everyone a minimum quality of life. You can believe that the minimum quality of life includes the option to engage in unprotected sex and sky diving.
I’m not being sarcastic. If you live in a society that chooses to force people to pay for other’s healthcare costs, you must support banning high risk behavior.
Not out of frugality. It’s a simple issue of fairness. 5% of the healthcare consumers will result in 95% of the costs. Why is it fair that the 5% that choose to engage in high risk behavior are subsidized at the expense of the 95% that choose not to?
What is this comment? Yes, society curtails behaviors?
We wear helmets and seatbelts?
Insurance is entirely about paying a small amount so that the costs of being on the wrong side of bad luck doesn’t pauper your citizenry. A single payer system wildly reduces the amount that has to be paid, while increasing service outcomes since now you can negotiate with drug companies.
I would happily pay for that kind of system as well, because I am happy to ensure that the rest of the nation is better off.
But… wait… what? Based on you what you say… why do you put money into an insurance system? It sounds like you want to make the most rational choice, but you are working off of a model of insurance that doesn’t make sense.
The maximally effective version, with the least cost, and greatest coverage is one that distributes costs across the largest pool of individuals. Which is a single payer system.
I put money into an insurance system to diffuse risk away from myself.
> The maximally effective version, with the least cost, and greatest coverage
It would be even more effective to just enslave a bunch of people and force them to pay for my healthcare, but I don’t advocate for that because it’s immoral and unfair.
You are already paying for other people's healthcare costs, whether it's private or public!
If you pay for home insurance (you kind of have to unless you own your home outright or are renting), you're paying for other people's fire or water damage. And one day they might pay for yours.
If there's a lot of fires or water damage, everyone's costs go up.
It's not a perfect analogy because of factors that affect individual policies, such as the replacement cost of the home, moving next to a fireworks store, moving into a flood zone, etc. You pay more when your home is more at risk.
1. Many landlords don’t require tenant’s insurance.
2. If you choose to get a mortgage you have to pay for homeowner’s insurance yes. You have the option to not get a mortgage if you prefer.
Notice how in both of the above, there is no third party forcing me to pay for anybody’s bad choices.
He’s welcome to pay for home insurance if he likes. That doesn’t mean I’m forced to pay for it. It’s like saying that I’m forced to pay for other people’s education because the Starbucks provides it as a benefit. Not really lol
Society is by definition “forcing” people to carry the burden of other’s choices. You’re drawing an entirely arbitrary line at direct taxation. Why is it “fair”? Because society isn’t zero sum. We each give and take in different ways.
Your perception of drug users is woefully out of date. The most “valuable” members of society by your metric (contributing tax dollars) are using a lot of drugs. The U.K. upper middle class are snorting so much coke.
Personal anecdotes and bias. I’ve never met anyone successful who regularly consumes drugs as serious as cocaine. At worst it’s marijuana, with minor experimentation with harder substances in college or on special occasions.
"Regularly" is doing a lot of work here. Plenty of rich and successful people dabble in drugs. People with any level of wealth who can function normally in society while habitually and regularly using any substance are pretty obviously much less likely to develop a habit in the first place.
Not habitual and not anything harder than marijuana no.
I don’t believe that I have little life experience, I live in a wealthy part of the United States and my circle’s median income is in the 300s, so I think I have a pretty solid impression of the type of habits successful people engage in and don’t engage in
Admittedly I have only read of Canadian Healthcare, but, that is not what I have read. Terminal patients and the elderly are offered death as a treatment. Cancer patients are the most common. About 5% of deaths in Canada are from the MAID program.
Taxes as they currently exist are a bandaid on wealth inequality. Getting rid of rich people parasitism would be a better way to balance the budget than either right-libertarian principles or taxing commoners for their stress relief like tobacco.
Though judging by the amount milords in the article I suspect that is far ways off.
Yawn. I think social networks and search engines can do whatever they like, but this kind of histrionic pearl clutching is getting old.
If people choose to seek out entertainment that’s bad for them then there’s nothing wrong with providing a market for it. It’s on the consumer to know their own limits.
I have yet to be given a good reason for banning this sort of pricing model.
To me it feels like a win/win for all parties involved. Faster, more accurate price discovery means fewer instances of an item being out of stock, and it allows a merchant to unload less popular stock at a discount to a lucky (or clever) customer.
The arguments against this seem mostly feelings based.
This unidimensional analysis is so funny to me. When your lens forces you to group together Alex Jones, Bill Gates, and George Soros as part of the same “rich and influential” clique, maybe it’s time to reconsider your dimension.
Alex Jones is nothing. At best he can be described as a small business owner.
What is your threshold for rich and influential? You don't have to have Musk money to have sufficient pull to escape the consequences most people would face for action X. I don't think this is a difficult or controversial observation.
If you're net worth is above $15 million or so in the US, your in the 99th percentile. There are many orders of magnitude between you and Bezos, but you're rich. And if you have a media empire that is watched by millions, you're influential.
The implication for me is that they are aligned with the US system. That is why, for example, when Orban challenges EU sanctions against Russia, there are ponderous articles published about "authoritarianism" in Hungary, but when, say, Romania cancels an entire Presidential election to prevent a pro-Russian candidate from winning, then there are no such ponderous articles.
You have to be aware that Western funded NGOs are important geostrategic players in overthrowing rival regimes and installing pro-US regimes. I am not seeing many articles about human rights in Saudi Arabia, for example, as that is an American ally. They can even dismember a WAPO journalist and the NGOs wont wring their hands.
So what the article means by "Global Freedom" (I actually cringe at the term) is really "pro-Western regime". That is why Putin and Xi are on the cover graphic of the article. In other words, this is just an expression of US soft power. Once you learn to see this stuff, you see it everywhere.
> I am not seeing many articles about human rights in Saudi Arabia, for example, as that is an American ally. They can even dismember a WAPO journalist and the NGOs wont wring their hands.
>>US Should Continue to Pursue Accountability for the Murder of Jamal Khashoggi[1].
[2]:
>>Internet users continued to receive lengthy prison sentences in reprisal for their social media activity.2 A British national was sentenced to 10 years in prison for a deleted post in August 2024, and in October it was reported that Mohammed al-Ghamdi, a cartoonist for the Qatar-based newspaper Lusail, had been tried in secret and sentenced to 23 years in prison for cartoons that were deemed insulting to Saudi authorities (C3).3
>>In June 2025, after the coverage period, online journalist Turki al-Jasser was executed after being convicted of terrorism and treason due to online publications in which he discussed politically sensitive issues such as Palestine and women’s rights (C3).4
>>Jailed online journalists and activists faced torture and mistreatment while in prison.5 Prior to his release in February 2025, Assad al-Ghamdi, who was jailed for social media posts in 2022, was subjected to various forms of psychological and physical torture, causing injuries that in some cases required surgical treatment (C7).6
>>An online IGF panel that was hosted in Saudi Arabia in December 2024 was hacked by unidentified attackers immediately after participants mentioned the 2018 state-sponsored killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi (C8).7
I don’t blame people for being skeptical
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