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Coming in 2018 – New AWS Region in Sweden

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Re: Coming in 2018 – New AWS Region in Sweden

#61

Post by Flimm »

John23832 wrote: post #58
jnky wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that hard to believe. Wikipedia says its HDI is 0.555, placing it at 146 of 188. Wikipedia also says that 6.3% of the adult population have HIV, while female genital mutilation has a prevalence of 27%. Also some women are seemingly attacked and sometimes killed for witchcraft. I understand there are worse places in Afrika, but for me that makes Kenya a proper shithole.

You obviously have never been to Kenya... But as a retort, in America, gay and trans people get denied rights and are killed everyday because they are "an abomination to god". Women are denied medican support by old white men who know what's best for them. Black people get killed by the police with no recourse. There is human trafficking that goes unaddressed because our economy is basically built on it. There is a h…

No, LGBTI+people are not killed everyday in America for being an "abomination to God". It's a lot lower than that.

Women do get medical support, maybe not enough, it's not true that all women are denied medical support.

Yes, America is not a utopia, but it's not as bad as you paint it.

Re: Coming in 2018 – New AWS Region in Sweden

#62

Post by John23832 »

jnky wrote: post #60
John23832 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously have never been to Kenya... But as a retort, in America, gay and trans people get denied rights and are killed everyday because they are "an abomination to god". Women are denied medican support by old white men who know what's best for them. Black people get killed by the police with no recourse. There is human trafficking that goes unaddressed because our economy is basically built on it. There is a h…

Of course I haven't. But I was quite sure that you would say something along those lines. I think that if I went to Kenya, I would have a great time, see friendly people and come to the conclusion that the country has potential and is on the right track. That may all well be true, but it doesn't change the fact that Kenya - as it is now - is not a country I would build a datacenter in. I don't have to go to Kenya mys…

> I don't have to go to Kenya myself to know if it is a backwards country or not. The facts are the facts.

I don't have to experience something to know anything about it. I'll make my opinion from a far from statistics that have no correlation to whether a datacenter could actually thrive in Kenya.

Re: Coming in 2018 – New AWS Region in Sweden

#63

Post by John23832 »

Flimm wrote: post #61
John23832 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously have never been to Kenya... But as a retort, in America, gay and trans people get denied rights and are killed everyday because they are "an abomination to god". Women are denied medican support by old white men who know what's best for them. Black people get killed by the police with no recourse. There is human trafficking that goes unaddressed because our economy is basically built on it. There is a h…

No, LGBTI+people are not killed everyday in America for being an "abomination to God". It's a lot lower than that. Women do get medical support, maybe not enough, it's not true that all women are denied medical support. Yes, America is not a utopia, but it's not as bad as you paint it.

>No, LGBTI+people are not killed everyday in America for being an "abomination to God". It's a lot lower than that.

What does this even mean?

> Yes, America is not a utopia, but it's not as bad as you paint it.

And my point was that the same could be said for Kenya, if you knew anything about it.

Re: Coming in 2018 – New AWS Region in Sweden

#64

Post by cperciva »

jnky wrote: post #57
John23832 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kenya... It's not the backwoods that the west thinks it is...

I find that hard to believe. Wikipedia says its HDI is 0.555, placing it at 146 of 188. Wikipedia also says that 6.3% of the adult population have HIV, while female genital mutilation has a prevalence of 27%. Also some women are seemingly attacked and sometimes killed for witchcraft. I understand there are worse places in Afrika, but for me that makes Kenya a proper shithole.

The USA has a male genital mutilation rate of 79%, about 5% of African American males are incarcerated, and the vice president wants to defund HIV research in favour of funding "conversion therapy".

It's easy to cherry pick facts to make a country look terrible.

Re: Coming in 2018 – New AWS Region in Sweden

#65

Post by jnky »

John23832 wrote: post #62
jnky wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course I haven't. But I was quite sure that you would say something along those lines. I think that if I went to Kenya, I would have a great time, see friendly people and come to the conclusion that the country has potential and is on the right track. That may all well be true, but it doesn't change the fact that Kenya - as it is now - is not a country I would build a datacenter in. I don't have to go to Kenya mys…

> I don't have to go to Kenya myself to know if it is a backwards country or not. The facts are the facts. I don't have to experience something to know anything about it. I'll make my opinion from a far from statistics that have no correlation to whether a datacenter could actually thrive in Kenya.

> I don't have to experience something to know anything about it. I'll make my opinion from a far from statistics that have no correlation to whether a datacenter could actually thrive in Kenya.

First of all, I reject the notion that only first hand experiences are a valid way of forming opinions. In fact I would argue that statistics and facts are better than feelings and impressions for making business decisions in basically every single way.

Second, I never said a datacenter wouldn't thrive in Kenya. It probably would, as Afrika is in dire need of a datacenter, which is the context of this thread. That said, I wouldn't build a datacenter in Kenya, because I - in contrast to your assertion that Kenya isn't "the backwoods that the west thinks it is" - think that the facts conclusively prove that Kenya is, in fact, a shithole.

Other countries (like America) may have their problems, but not at this scale and severity.

Re: Coming in 2018 – New AWS Region in Sweden

#66

Post by metricodus »

discodave wrote: post #56
metricodus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a nonstarter because of UAE's requirements on censorship and backdoored surveillance ("lawful intercept"). They're at least on the level of China in this regard, maybe even worse.

There are other options in the middle east, like Bahrain.

It's similarly bad:

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/bahrain

https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/united-arab...

Re: Coming in 2018 – New AWS Region in Sweden

#67

Post by jnky »

cperciva wrote: post #64
jnky wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that hard to believe. Wikipedia says its HDI is 0.555, placing it at 146 of 188. Wikipedia also says that 6.3% of the adult population have HIV, while female genital mutilation has a prevalence of 27%. Also some women are seemingly attacked and sometimes killed for witchcraft. I understand there are worse places in Afrika, but for me that makes Kenya a proper shithole.

The USA has a male genital mutilation rate of 79%, about 5% of African American males are incarcerated, and the vice president wants to defund HIV research in favour of funding "conversion therapy". It's easy to cherry pick facts to make a country look terrible.

I agree with everything you said in principle, but I disagree with your conclusion.

I don't have to cherry pick facts to make Kenya look bad, I just picked a bunch of pretty bad ones about Kenya to illustrate my point.

I also find it telling that, instead of cherry picking positive things about Kenya to disprove my point, posters in this thread resorted Whataboutisms with respect to the US.

I really don't like being in this thread, arguing viewpoints that I myself consider borderline bigotry, but the notion that Kenya is somehow on par with the US or even any other developed nation is preposterous.

Re: Coming in 2018 – New AWS Region in Sweden

#68

Post by John23832 »

jnky wrote: post #65
John23832 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't have to go to Kenya myself to know if it is a backwards country or not. The facts are the facts. I don't have to experience something to know anything about it. I'll make my opinion from a far from statistics that have no correlation to whether a datacenter could actually thrive in Kenya.

> I don't have to experience something to know anything about it. I'll make my opinion from a far from statistics that have no correlation to whether a datacenter could actually thrive in Kenya. First of all, I reject the notion that only first hand experiences are a valid way of forming opinions. In fact I would argue that statistics and facts are better than feelings and impressions for making business decisions in…

> Other countries (like America) may have their problems, but not at this scale and severity.

You've cherry picked problems, that you have no actual knowledge of, comment on the "scale and severity", and say that those problems disqualify Kenya from having hosting an AWS data center. However, the problems of other countries (the US, China, Brazil) don't disqualify them. Not to mention that there are other data centers in Kenya, which seem to operate just fine.

I assume that you think that Amazon would be clearing parts of the African Serengeti and protecting it's racks from lions, wildebeest and tribesmen.

In reality, they would buy real estate in Nairobi like every other major company.

>>>But keep living in your shell man.

Re: Coming in 2018 – New AWS Region in Sweden

#69

Post by niftich »

gtsteve wrote: post #30
EtienneK wrote: post #25

When will Africa get a region? Seriously, we have companies willing to pay big money to use a region closer to us.

Where would you propose hosting it in Africa? I understand that the consumer internet situation is not very good over there, are there datacenters and strong fiber links to USA and Europe? This is essentially why my company doesn't target African markets, because our software requires a persistent internet connection.

Pick a spot [1] touched by more than one thick pipe, in jurisdiction known for political and civic stability and a regime with rough compatibility to the ideology and national security apparatus of western allies -- their home base and primary source of customers; receptive and promoting of foreign investment, and having access to multiple reliable, redundant power sources from which to draw energy.

As of time of writing it's a tough proposition.

[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Cable_ma...

Re: Coming in 2018 – New AWS Region in Sweden

#70

Post by solatic »

isotop wrote: post #47
gtsteve wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where would you propose hosting it in Africa? I understand that the consumer internet situation is not very good over there, are there datacenters and strong fiber links to USA and Europe? This is essentially why my company doesn't target African markets, because our software requires a persistent internet connection.

Why not Israel? * We have multiple fiber links * A lot of AWS heavy workloads comes from Israeli companies * Easy connection to other location through Egypt and Jordan

As much as I'd personally love for an AWS region to be built in Israel, the fact of the matter is, Israel is a poor development target for AWS.

* Biggest problem is that Israel is an Internet cul-de-sac - there aren't any overland Internet links to Arab countries because of politics. Which means that the only people who are going to get great pings are Israelis.

* Sure, there are a ton of Israeli tech companies, but if they're going to spin up instances in an Israeli region, they're going to be low-traffic/requirement dev instances. Production instances are going to be located close to customers, and almost no Israeli tech companies sell to the tiny local market.

* Israeli customs infrastructure has a long way to go before it's probably reliable enough for Amazon to risk investment. Imagine a vital shipment of server hardware getting held up at Ashdod because Histadrut went on strike.... shudder

I refuse to believe that the bean counters at Amazon are ignorant - they've more probably come to the conclusion that it's just not profitable.

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