Hacker News: jacquesm

New comment by jacquesm in "Silicon Valley misreads science fiction and undermines democracy"

jacquesm — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 08:55:14 +0000

You evaded the question.

Daily global sea surface temperatures break records for the time of year

jacquesm — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 03:58:08 +0000

Article URL: https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-marine-and-copernicus-climate-change-daily-global-sea-surface-temperatures-break-records

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49239057

Points: 9

# Comments: 0

New comment by jacquesm in "Fastmail offers EU data region"

jacquesm — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 12:30:56 +0000

Let me tell you about that time when I walked around in a DC in NL and ran into an unaccompanied FBI liaison officer...

I don't think any of us have the total picture, but the bits that I do have are sufficient to worry me about the degree to which I am automatically breaking the NDAs I sign by using a computer, email, online data rooms and so on.

New comment by jacquesm in "Fastmail offers EU data region"

jacquesm — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 10:48:43 +0000

Canadian judges can rule whatever they want, it isn't going to make a difference in practice: if Canada or a Canadian entity wants data from an EU company they're going to have to go through the proper channels to do so. Taking shortcuts like this, even with the backing of a judge just isn't going to fly.

New comment by jacquesm in "Fastmail offers EU data region"

jacquesm — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 04:47:05 +0000

Technically, the US president is also not elected by the people but by the electors, which in many ways is comparable to how the EU elected the EU Commission President.

New comment by jacquesm in "Fastmail offers EU data region"

jacquesm — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 04:43:57 +0000

Because everybody on HN is most likely aware that Google is an American company and that by using them you pretty much can assume that your data can be compromised without your knowledge or recourse. Post Snowden there should be zero doubt about that. Fastmail is worthy of scrutiny because people might believe that they are materially different when in practice they probably are not.

New comment by jacquesm in "US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide"

jacquesm — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 00:24:24 +0000

There is a Godwin in there somewhere.

New comment by jacquesm in "US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide"

jacquesm — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 23:53:56 +0000

The times are wild enough that I first checked if Trump had been making any moves on Iceland, just in case I had missed something...

New comment by jacquesm in "Fastmail offers EU data region"

jacquesm — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 23:51:57 +0000

You're right, just the other day our MP lined his pockets to the tune of a couple of billion, pumped his shitcoin, tipped off his friends about about the stock market movements he was going to cause, sent a couple of good deals to his kids and threatened war on a couple of countries just to please his buddies. And that's just the last couple of months... /s

New comment by jacquesm in "US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide"

jacquesm — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 22:15:22 +0000

I think you meant to write Greenland.

New comment by jacquesm in "Fastmail offers EU data region"

jacquesm — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 20:54:01 +0000

Sorry, I don't agree with that. The amount of corruption in the USA right now is simply off the scale.

New comment by jacquesm in "Fastmail offers EU data region"

jacquesm — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 19:52:37 +0000

The harder problem here is that any real EU sovereign platform would have to come with ironclad guarantees that it isn't going to be directly or indirectly sold to a US party. And when enough customers move that marketshare is affected the bags with money tempting shareholders will get larger and larger.

New comment by jacquesm in "“Code was never the hard part” is an insult to all programmers"

jacquesm — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 19:50:46 +0000

Knowing what to write in the first place is the hard for me, and always has been.

New comment by jacquesm in "Fastmail offers EU data region"

jacquesm — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 19:47:30 +0000

You can strike at least four of those.

New comment by jacquesm in "Fastmail offers EU data region"

jacquesm — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 19:30:54 +0000

I hope Airbus is large enough for you?

https://thenextweb.com/news/airbus-scaleway-aws-sovereign-cl...

And many others besides, pretty much every company I've looked at in the last year is either acutely aware of the problem or they are already executing on it. With Trump and his merry band of criminals repeatedly stating they're going to take Greenland by force you can't blame them either, that would effectively put the EU on a war footing with the United States (I still can't believe I'm writing this sort of thing and it is not entirely fiction), the end result of that would be that there would be an absolute run on EU hosted capacity. They're just trying to beat the rush and hope they'll never be proven to be right.

New comment by jacquesm in "Fastmail offers EU data region"

jacquesm — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 19:27:46 +0000

Well, for sure they can pressure them but I highly doubt Hetzner would break the law in Europe to satisfy the US government, they are a lot more to lose here than there. I realize that that is not proof.

New comment by jacquesm in "Fastmail offers EU data region"

jacquesm — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 19:26:30 +0000

That's true but the EU still has a - mostly - functioning legal system. See 'Schrems' and other lawsuits that came out as they should have.

New comment by jacquesm in "Fastmail offers EU data region"

jacquesm — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 17:37:28 +0000

EU data regions are a reflexive action by companies that try to hold on to their EU customers (and more and more are leaving, surprisingly the larger ones seem to be leading here). Realize that as long as you are still hosted on US owned infrastructure or that if there are US (or: five-eyes) owned companies anywhere in the stack your data can still be forcibly pulled and often without you being aware that this happened. There are only very few such stacks that are 100% owned by EU entities.

New comment by jacquesm in "DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731"

jacquesm — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 03:07:01 +0000

Almost every service provider in the AI field is subsidizing their token cost to some degree, they're all shooting for marketshare and lock-in (and they're not really achieving the latter).

New comment by jacquesm in "DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731"

jacquesm — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 03:03:08 +0000

They can do the same thing in the US. What are you going to do, sue OpenAI or Anthropic?