You Rename My Lake — I Move My Hosting
You Rename My Lake – I Move My Hosting

Olaf Alders moved his uptime monitoring service PrettyGoodPing from DigitalOcean in the U.S. to Hetzner in the E.U., citing price and political motivations. He connects the move to the renaming of Lake Ontario and the Gulf of Mexico, and his broader efforts to reduce reliance on Google and other big tech. He also notes MetaCPAN is planning a similar migration.
If you lived in a really nice apartment over a meth lab, would you buy your groceries there?
- eddieroger
I was all set to come and give Google the benefit of the doubt that they were just subscribed to the GNIS database[1], and that if the executive branch issued an order, then other governmental agencies were required to adhere to them. But when I popped open the GNIS[2] map, and it still shows Lake Ontario on the map image, even if searching "Lake America" shows a bunch of pins on the US side. Kinda wild.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographic_Names_Information_S...
2. https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/searc...
- bmelton
> The breathtaking speed with which Google Maps happily gets on board with this lunacy
Something interesting I learned at National Geographic is that they have a geographer (titled: "The Geographer", which always seemed impossibly cool to me) and that the geographer maintains several maps of certain areas so that their field photographers and agents are aware of where they are in relation to "the real world", to know when they're in contested territories, and also to be able to theoretically show the wrong map if they get in trouble to show "It wasn't me, blame my shoddy map!" to provide cover
Nothing I know about Google informs me that anyone there is thrilled about the change either, but it's probably one of the easier compliance-swaps they have to engage in, despite how inane it surely is
- talentedcoin
Glad to see this on HN. This Canadian is doing something similar. In fact, anything I do that involves sending money to the USA, I am re-evaluating.
- jonhohle
It’s astonishing to me that no one pointed out what a self-own changing the “O” in the acronym of Great Lakes to an “A” would be. Every school child is going to learn SHAME until this is reverted or further changed.
- petilon
If you want to retaliate against this US administration avoid buying stuff exported by red states. The rest of us can't wait for this admin to be over.