Hacker News: sparkling

EU Cloud Comparison Matrix

sparkling — Tue, 12 May 2026 09:08:59 +0000

Article URL: https://eualternative.eu/eu-cloud-comparison/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48105910

Points: 32

# Comments: 2

New comment by sparkling in "Red Hot Chili Peppers ink $300M deal with Warner Music to sell catalog"

sparkling — Mon, 11 May 2026 22:04:05 +0000

In a world full of endless AI slop, wouldn't original recordings become more valuable over time?

New comment by sparkling in "Building a SaaS in 2026 Using Only EU Infrastructure"

sparkling — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 17:41:49 +0000

Check out Scaleway (France). They have by far the broadest range of managed services with full permissions/IAM integration etc. - it is the closest EU match to AWS. Yes, if your entire existing setup depends on once specialized AWS service (i.e. DynamoDB) you still will need to go with AWS, but when building from scratch it's a different story.

New comment by sparkling in "Building a SaaS in 2026 Using Only EU Infrastructure"

sparkling — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 17:07:15 +0000

The AWS Sovereign Cloud is still owned 100% by Amazon Inc. in the US. Not saying that rules it out for all use cases, but something that should be mentioned. "Sovereignty" is a somewhat vague term.

Building a SaaS in 2026 Using Only EU Infrastructure

sparkling — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 16:33:19 +0000

Article URL: https://eualternative.eu/guides/building-saas-eu-stack/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47741634

Points: 194

# Comments: 62

The Case of Soham Parekh: Detect Employees Using a VPN

sparkling — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 17:01:54 +0000

Article URL: https://focsec.com/blog/the-case-of-soham-parekh-detect-employees-vpn

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44562487

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by sparkling in "Happy 20th Birthday, Django"

sparkling — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 16:44:45 +0000

What made you choose Litestar over fastapi (which seems to be the most popular choice right now)?

New comment by sparkling in "Proton announces release of a new VPN protocol, "Stealth""

sparkling — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 18:36:31 +0000

When they talk about detection, they are most likely referring to protocol level detection by ISPs forced to block VPN traffic, hostile local networks, corporate firewalls and such.

The actual service you are connecting to (example: website, game server etc.) most likely uses a IP-based detection service such as https://focsec.com/ or similar. In such cases, the protocol will not make a difference.

New comment by sparkling in "T-Mobile introduce fines from Jan 1 for "Code of Conduct" violations"

sparkling — Mon, 25 Dec 2023 12:54:39 +0000

These are B2B contracts. You can put pretty much whatever fines and fees you want in there.

Rolex fined $100M for preventing its watches being sold online

sparkling — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 22:44:00 +0000

Article URL: https://usa.watchpro.com/rolex-fined-100-million-for-preventing-its-watches-being-sold-online/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38714650

Points: 226

# Comments: 263

New comment by sparkling in "Ask HN: Why haven't we seen a race to the bottom in SaaS pricing?"

sparkling — Sun, 10 Dec 2023 23:14:43 +0000

When we are talking about medium to large enterprise customers, there is significant costs of switching a SaaS provider.

Vendor assessment, legal concerns, data privacy concerns, talks about SLA guarantees, talks about 24/7 support plans and much more. There will likely be several departments involved. Technical folks, legal people, data privacy experts etc.

That new deal could pass easily thru 50 peoples desk before getting signed eventually. For what? A 15% saving that could be wiped out with the next round of price adjustments from the new vendor? Simply not worth it. That is why SaaS revenue tends to be so sticky.

New comment by sparkling in "OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman"

sparkling — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 21:37:53 +0000

Sorry i assumed you were talking about Github CoPilot (also owned by MS via Github)

New comment by sparkling in "OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman"

sparkling — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 21:36:17 +0000

Correct. Strike "buy" and replace with "massive investment"

New comment by sparkling in "OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman"

sparkling — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 21:33:37 +0000

> Because the fact that Copilot is free and ChatGPT is not should be a red flag...

I'd assume that running a model that only needs to deal with a single programming language (the Copilot plugin knows what kind of code base it is working on) is _a lot_ cheaper than running the "full" ChatGPT 4.

New comment by sparkling in "OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman"

sparkling — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 21:04:23 +0000

> The fact that the CTO is now CEO makes me think it's probably not a lie about their tech.

Agreed

> This makes me think it's either financial or a scandal around Sam himself.

I can't imagine it being about fake financials. This isn't Microsoft's first time doing due diligence on a acquisition. That is both technical and financial due diligence.

And clearly they didn't buy the company because it was super profitable, but for the tech.

New comment by sparkling in "OpenAI's board has fired Sam Altman"

sparkling — Fri, 17 Nov 2023 20:51:09 +0000

From the website:

> "[...] If someone — correction, if generally a white, cis man — presents himself with enough confidence, then venture capitalists, media [...]"

I stopped reading right there. This kind of race-baiting adds zero context to the story (which may or may not be true).

New comment by sparkling in "Apple unveils the new MacBook Pro featuring the M3 family of chips"

sparkling — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 08:06:21 +0000

Honest question: What tasks are you doing that require 128GB RAM?

New comment by sparkling in "HMRC (UK Tax Authority) Persuing Uber for £386M (~$487M) Vat"

sparkling — Wed, 02 Aug 2023 10:23:31 +0000

From the Thread:

>Until last year, Uber said this meant it didn't have to charge VAT. It was just the agent for its drivers. So - the argument went - don't look at Uber's £2.5bn of revenue... look at each driver's own small revenue. Too low for VAT.

Doesn't this come down to what entity actually issued the invoice? When a UK customer gets the invoice for a ride, is it issued by Uber or by the individual driver/transport company?

Not sure about the UK, but in most jurisdictions they operate the invoice is coming from the driver/transport company, not Uber. My understanding is that any fees or comission that Uber collects are handled in the background between Uber and the driver/transport company.

New comment by sparkling in "Meta is blocking EU-based users from accessing Threads via VPN"

sparkling — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 12:51:44 +0000

Very possible. VPN detection technology like https://focsec.com/ is widely available nowadays.

New comment by sparkling in "Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share for First Half of 2023"

sparkling — Wed, 05 Jul 2023 11:55:30 +0000

Why are people so obsessed with "solar roadways" or "solar train tracks"? This is a joke, a gimmick, it makes absolutely no sense. Well, except for the startups that are getting massive subsidies and grants for these clown projects.

There are still millions of open-space square meters all over the country. Think of flat-roof warehouses, supermarkets, parking facilities and more. Those places are easy to access, easy to install, easy to maintain. These train track installments however.... hard to install, require non-standardized panel sizes, non-standard wiring, special equipment, are in a dusty/dirty uncontrollable environment, maintenance is only possible in coordination with the train company. My guess is that these things are 4-5x more expensive on a per kwH basis, if you consider the total cost of ownership.