[lII1lIlI11ll]

It is not as simple as banking - people tend to want low-latency and high-speed connection which necessitate the data center to be in close proximity. Which basically means that founding a country with strong data protection laws somewhere in Antarctic won't get you many clients in Europe.

[Chris2048]

> people tend to want low-latency and high-speed

that might change is privacy is an option. The real problem is the cost of building in the middle of nowhere, even if you use spare Starlink capacity, where do you get power & personnel from?

[lII1lIlI11ll]

> where do you get power

Wind, hydro, sun? This is 2026 after all.

> personnel

Depends on what that theoretical country would offer. Some kind of strong constitutionally-enshrined protections for privacy and perhaps from tyranny-of-the-majority exploiting upper-middle class like all other western countries and with strong IT jobs market? Are you kidding, sign me up!

[Chris2048]

The original post was "somewhere in Antarctic", what does that offer?

[lII1lIlI11ll]

I chose Antarctic as an example because it is one of few places on Earth with significant uninhabited land where one could theoretically establish a new sovereign state. Are you implying that all popular green energy technologies are somehow unfeasible there?

[Chris2048]

Yes, the "somehow" is that no one want to live there, and the associated expense of building there probably outweighs the benefits. I'm also sceptical you could establish a new sovereign state there.

[AnthonyMouse]

If the premise is that you want to host data for people in Europe who don't want it to be under the control of the US then Frankfurt is a lower latency place to be than Virginia anyway.

[lII1lIlI11ll]

OP had a much stronger premise ("guarantee government respect for data privacy for data centres housed on its soil") than what you described.

[vitalyan1234]

that's a psyop from the cloud evangelism era. a few hundred milliseconds of latency make fuck all any difference for 95% of things, even voice/video calls.

[lII1lIlI11ll]

That is just like, your opinion, man? I personally find it a very poor experience talking to someone over high latency connection when we tend to always start talking over each other.

[valzam]

The question is, is that really only due to data center geo? I am always amazed how low latency and high quality Facetime between Europe <-> Australia is. Seems like good engineering can overcome less optimal geographics.

[lII1lIlI11ll]

I find that hard to believe. Are you implying that Apple is running their own fiber network providing low-latency connection between Europe and Australia? Or what kind of "good engineering"?

[deaux]

I can vouch for GP's exact experience. Facetime does feel much smoother than other videocalling apps for Aus<>Europe. Of course they don't run their own fiber network. The good engineering is making it feel smooth and good despite that. At its core, nothing about computing is smooth. Everything is based on making it feel that way, using countless techniques.

[lII1lIlI11ll]

What "techniques"? Audio/video over high-latency connection is not a computer game where there all all kinds of latency compensation techniques - several meeting participants start speaking at the same time, realize they do only after RTT, stop, then awkwardly wait for a moment and repeat hoping for no "collision", rinse-repeat. Everyone who often has meetings with participants connecting from different continents knows what I'm talking about. But you can have this in beautiful high-definition "smooth" 4K if bandwidth is high enough, yes.