This does seem very much like just a press release, but the first thing that came to my mind -- how come the Tolkien estate hasn't sent them a cease and desist yet?
They are probably having trouble figuring out how to deliver a legal notice over a palantír.
Honest question - why is this article #3 on Hacker News? It isn't interesting to me at all; in fact, it seems like nothing more than a press release. Is there something I'm missing?
I think the closure of Djangy has actually aroused interest in dedicated Django hosting - a market with much apparent potential in which there isn't any clear leader. With everyone trying to make 'the Heroku of platform_x' in the wake of Heroku's success it must be a good time to announce anything related to this.
I suppose a lot of people really want there to be a good "Heroku for Django". I follow the companies in this space with interest, and jumped on the link. Especially with Djangy giving up last week, it is good to see some forward progress.
Because "Heroku for Django" is on a lot of peoples' wish lists, and this looks like a serious attempt to provide something like that.
Like others have said, Djangy announcing their closure last week has people thinking about the future of Django hosting solutions. I was very disappointed to learn of this as I had just started a new site there and after weeks of frustrating hiccups with the service it had actually just started to work well. I had plans to move several other production sites there so any news in the Django front is highly pertinent to me and others in the same boat.
Not surprised to see Lord of the Rings references, but it's odd to see a service level named for Barad-dur --- the Dark Lord's HQ. (Why not Minas Tirith?)
More mainstream hosting providers would have called that "the enterprise level" of hosting. So, "Barad-dur" is probably a not-so-subtle joke about the typical geek impression of the enterprise.