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Posted by hn_acker 18 hours ago

Despite doubts, federal cyber experts approved Microsoft cloud service(www.propublica.org)
455 points | 208 commentspage 7
ddtaylor 17 hours ago|
The government does most things poorly and with little regard to budget or quality. They can't solve problems that are much simpler than cloud computing, so why should I expect them to perform better at a more complex problem?
Hizonner 17 hours ago||
Sure. Your average private corporation would do much better at sanely evaluating Microsoft's cloud, and sanely acting on that evaluation.

Right.

You bet.

Absolutely.

ContDestroyer 12 hours ago||
Nope neither the public entity nor the private corporation... it should be the market. WE decide with our business who is worthy, or not. Nice try, comrade!
Hizonner 12 hours ago||
Fascinating.

Enlighten me further. How exactly will "the market" decide where the government, or a corporation, or even an individual, chooses to buy computing services? I'm very stupid, so you're going to have to explain step by step exactly how "the market" will do this. I mean, here I thought that choices like that were the inputs to the market.

Let's do it for the corporations first. I'm Microsoft. I need the market to decide for me where I should buy motherboards for my cloud data centers. Where do I apply to get "the market" to tell me that?

ContDestroyer 11 hours ago||
You're right that corporations and individuals make those choices... that's exactly my point. Microsoft's procurement team evaluating motherboard vendors is the market working. What I'm saying is that process produces better outcomes than a government agency mandating which cloud provider everyone uses. The problem isn't who makes the choice, it's when the choice gets made for you.
Hizonner 11 hours ago||
Gee, that's nice, but in this case they were deciding which cloud provider the government itself was going to use, not what provider you could use.
whoknowsidont 16 hours ago|||
I think this perspective has resolutely been debunked at this point.

The government has historically, routinely, consistently, solved problems more complex than cloud computing.

The only way you'd think otherwise is if you had some other motivation to pretend otherwise... some sort of ideology.

ddtaylor 5 hours ago||
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47434383
ContDestroyer 11 hours ago|||
"Things government is great at:

-Running public schools -Running public transport -Running public utilities -Running public radio and TV -Running Amtrak -Running Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac -Running it own budget -Running the military -Running Heatlhcare.gov -Running the Postal Service -Running Social Security -Running Air Traffic Control

...and this is just in the United States. You should see countries where everything (or nearly everything) is government-run. I've been trying to immigrate from the US to Cuba, Venezuela, Laos, China, or North Korea for decades! It's absolutely paradise to be in a place where evil private corporations are not in control. It's been shown time and again that the government is the best at solving problems.

Just imagine how great Germany would have been if all of it would have been taken over by East Germany?

Sure, government run everything is not always perfect, but it's a heck of a lot better than the opposite."

...SAID NO ONE. EVER.

ddtaylor 5 hours ago||
Private schools produce significantly better results that public schools.

Public transport has been disrupted by private transportation options like Uber, Lime, etc.

Public radio and TV is unused by the vast majority of people who use private options daily like streaming services or YouTube.

The public budget is perpetually in shambles and if it was a private company would have had to go bankrupt and cease business by now.

Social security and other support programs are perpetually failing and used as a political wedge.

cptskippy 12 hours ago|||
> The government does most things poorly and with little regard to budget or quality.

That's a common line by conservatives who are actively sabotaging government with policies and laws which they then point to as evidence of such inefficiencies.

ddtaylor 5 hours ago||
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hiddencost 17 hours ago|||
Basically false. They're better at health care. Better at education. Better at feeding people. Better at charity.
MrBuddyCasino 17 hours ago||
Theres no need to be THIS cynical.
hrmtst93837 14 hours ago||
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notepad0x90 15 hours ago|
Suddenly everyone on HN is an expert on Azure infrastructure.

it isn't the best but it's really great at a lot of things feature-wise. top-notch documentation as well (despite what these "experts" said).

Most companies literally run on Azure these days. Persistent hackers will get into any network, that's a guarantee, that's APT 101. It's law of averages. If it truly is "a pile of shit" given how it is probably the most used cloud platform by the most customers, including governments, and endless plethora of features and services it offers, shouldn't there be more compromises? 2-3 in a decade is hardly above what you expect for law of averages right?

Screw ups happen, but if it is systemic, you can't use one instance as evidence, you must establish a pattern of mishaps.

lokar 14 hours ago||
I ran a one of the largest multi-cloud service across azure, aws and gcp.

Azure was hands down, obvious to everyone involved the worst technically. In capabilities, bugs/correctness, availability and support.

notepad0x90 9 hours ago||
I can only speak from the perspective of someone who used/admined in all those 3 environments. I'm surprised you ranked google's support above microsoft. I've also seen bugs that would be unusual in other clouds, but other clouds have other pros/cons as well. GCP for example is capable, but it is tedious to use, and even harder to log/audit.

Of all 3 CSPs azure has the best identity management system. they're the worst in terms of charging for critical security measures that should be free, but when you pay for it, none of the other providers even come close to that capability.

The main reason people use Azure is easy integration. You're probably right when it comes to availability, no argument there, except maybe how AWS region outages seem to be a bi-annual holiday.

In practical terms, different CSPs might annoy people differently, but availability aside, I think they all suck in their own special way from a user experience perspective. AWS had to recently tell their devs/engs to have a senior dev review their vibe code because of all the outages it was causing.

lokar 9 hours ago||
The GCP support was fine, not great. For specific problems that you could provide data for and ideally a reproduction they were very good. But if you had feedback or concerns about how something was designed, or a missing feature they were useless (all of support, sales and product)
notepad0x90 4 hours ago||
Thanks, sounds about right. In my experience too, they're ok, but not great at "hand holding", for better or worse.