
In the Works – AWS Region in Milan, Italy - kaboro
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/in-the-works-aws-region-in-milan-italy/
======
ttul
I couldn’t help but recall this joke:

Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks are French, the mechanics
German, the lovers Italian and it's all organised by the Swiss.

Hell is where the chefs are British, the mechanics French, the lover's Swiss,
the police German and it's all organised by the Italians.

~~~
register
The usual cliche about Italians. I would like to remember HN's audience that
Italy is the 2nd manifacturing nation in EU and that a big share of our GDP
depends on engineering products and services:
[https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/ita/](https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/ita/).
Package medicaments, pumps, iron based products, cars, trucks, chemicals are
not products that can be improvised without any organization. And in general
Italian engineers are good.

P.S: I am both Italian and an engineer.

~~~
Symbiote
It's a joke, it's not intended to be analyzed or countered.

I may as well point out that Britain has the third-most Michelin-starred
restaurants of any country.

~~~
genofon
According to Forbes (2017) UK is far from be top country
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/11/23/the-
to...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/11/23/the-top-
countries-for-michelin-3-star-restaurants-infographic/#5ba052f6704c)

Aside from that, and I'm sorry is totally tangential, but I live in UK and I
find the luck of food culture here disturbing. Sure there are a lot good
restaurant, but most of the people are not able to appreciate and cook good
food, while in France, Spain, Italy I find the level much higher.

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whalesalad
The front-and-center 'voiced by AWS Polly' dogfooding is great but it sure
does sound like crap. Ironically it struggles to pronounce the word Milan.

~~~
jeffbarr
I am happy to share feedback with the Polly team! Can you be more specific
about what you believe sounds bad?

~~~
int0x80
It is not too bad, but is not 'Maelan' but 'Meelan'.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
In defense of the software, Italian is quite difficult to pronounce. I
wouldn't be too hard on it for now.

Disclaimers: I am Italian, and I used to work at AWS.

~~~
scotu
I'm surprised, how is Italian difficult to pronounce? I'm Italian too. I
understand if you mean difficult for somebody who has 0 knowledge (this is
true for any language). But besides very few exceptions Italian pretty
wysiwyPronounce, no? I feel like I'm blinded by being too close to it :)

~~~
toyg
As an Italian expat: accent positions are very, very different; and English
people associate different "default" sounds to vowels in isolation (e.g. "a").

Even educated persons will struggle if their only source is paper, because a
lot of the Latin words that Italian is rooted on, actually have very different
pronounciations in English.

Also: GL, GH, GN, CH, CE/CI vs CA/CO/CU, double-consonants reinforcing the
sound, etc etc...

~~~
bfred_it
Most Italian words pretty much match their IPA representation, minus the
pretty regular exceptions like Q, C, G, Z and H and the rare irregularity.

It may be difficult to an anglophone, but I'd argue that the phonetic
irregularities of English are much more of a problem to a learner.
"though/tough/through" never happens in Italian.

~~~
puzzle
The biggest problem with reading Italian is knowing where the accent goes if
it's not mandatory to write, in which case you need to know from context, as
in the words at the end of
[http://www.italianlanguageguide.com/pronunciation/stress-
acc...](http://www.italianlanguageguide.com/pronunciation/stress-accent-
marks.asp)

~~~
scotu
agreed, the accent location (stressed syllabe) comes down to knowing the word,
but only a few cases of wrong accent give you a different word... in english
you can change the word by mispronouncing the lenght of the first vowel in
words like sheet, beach... both long vowel, different way to write it...
although I'm sure I'm being imprecise on "long vowel" (don't know anything
about phonetics), but I can't think of an example of non-accent based, italian
equivalent

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ckdarby
Can anyone provide any insights into specifically why Milan, Italy? I see that
AWS already has 3 regions in Europe.

~~~
puzzle
It's relatively well connected to both Southern and Northern Europe?

~~~
eknkc
Yeah, There is a huge internet exchange in Milan and a lot of submarine cables
to Middle East, India etc go through Italy.

~~~
puzzle
On the other hand, Italian courts were the most wiretap-happy in Europe a
while ago (and not very tech-savvy), so perhaps I'd think twice before running
anything there. I bet/hope Amazon got good lawyers to handle that.

~~~
toyg
If you are going to come out in a Middle-Eastern country, that's the least of
your worries.

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sandstrom
Anyone who knows when EU-North-1 (Stockholm region) will open? Supposed to
open by the end of the year.

~~~
WaxProlix
Very soon.

