People get very reductionist about language in these things. I think she is right that the most logical choice was to partner with an existing hyperscale backen

People get very reductionist about language in these things. I think she is right that the most logical choice was to partner with an existing hyperscale backend, they had choices of which and went with AWS for reasons which made sense to them. "no choice" isn't a literal statement of fact, its a choice they made, sure. There may be price, or jurisdictional, or complexity, or understanding, or willingness to sign a specific kind of contract, all kinds of reasons. The alternates all come with their burdens too. They had choices beyond just other hyperscalers. Rolling their own probably would have meant both capex and opex, which reduced to opex in AWS and so made both logical and financial sense. In risk terms you might have said (before the incident) it was also the best way to lay off risk, but it turns out "too big to fail" actually doesn't mean what it says on the label. I still back signal over all the other choices. I wasn't looking for an excuse to leave, and as a strawman if you leave signal because chosing AWS as a backend "was unwise" or "was the wrong choice" I think you're reading the signal wrong (sorry) I would add that "the register" has a house style, and it's not tending to damp down. It likes to be inflammatory, it's tagline "biting the hand which feeds IT" rings true. I enjoy reading it, and I've had work repeated in it, but I also read it with a jaundiced eye. I don't like the comments section it's a minefield of in-group language, memes, bad behaviour.