Ask HN: Why are there so few reviews for coding bootcamps? - <AUTHOR> Search results yield coursereport.com and switchup.org.
With the "top" ones like GA, Hack Reactor, Career Foundry, you are lucky to get more than 50+ reviews.
With some of these being over $10k, am I wrong to think there should be more reviews out there? <comment><USER3> As a relatively recent bootcamp grad who hasn't written a review, here are my excuses/hypotheses for others who haven't:

a) simple laziness. A good review takes time and thought to write, and the time isn't necessarily in the writing the review, but in processing the experience after graduation. By the time you have a more balanced (ie, graduated, employed/unemployed) perspective, you've probably moved on to other things.

b) in my case, it's mostly due to general ambivalence about the experience. There were things I liked, things I thought weren't done well, and the overall effect is to cancel each other out. Ambivalence doesn't encourage taking the time (see above) to write down thoughts the way more extreme positive or negative views do.

c) also specific to me: I genuinely liked the instructors and most of my cohort, and writing anything negative seems impolite - not wanting to hurt someone's feelings or seem ungrateful. Irrational, but there ya go.

<comment><USER4> > c) also specific to me: I genuinely liked the instructors and most of my > cohort, and writing anything negative seems impolite - not wanting to hurt > someone's feelings or seem ungrateful. Irrational, but there ya go.

I was reading Aziz Ansari's Modern Romance. In each of his shows for a tour, he polled the audience with two questions.

How should you let a person who is interested in you know you aren't interested in them: Pretend to be busy, say nothing, or be honest?

Overwhelmingly, most people practice the "pretend to be busy" and "say nothing" methods. Only a small sliver of the audience would say they were honest.

He then asked the audience to pretend the situation is reversed. Someone else is dealing with you. How do you prefer they handle the situation?

Overwhelmingly, the audience responded (with applauds) that they'd prefer the honest approach.

<comment><USER5> One reason we (collectively) might avoid honesty in that scenario is that we're afraid of a meltdown/confrontation/any kind of incident. When we're on the receiving end, we all know that "ourselves" are reasonable, so we'd never get into a fight over it. When we're delivering bad news to others, we can't be so sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Having done an online boot camp I can say at least part of it is not wanting to spread negative feedback that might devalue your investment.

I imagine many people go into these programs to gain skills to get a job. If afterwards you talk about how the program failed to prepare you for that you're shooting yourself in the foot.

As to why there aren't more positive reviews - maybe it's related?

<comment><USER7> > _As to why there aren 't more positive reviews - maybe it's related?_

I would look at the absolute lack of glowing 6/5 star reviews about how amazing these boot camps are as proof of exactly the opposite.

There are presumably thousands of grads from the largest programs. If you can only get 50 or 100 people to write a review about how your $10,000 course helped them land a job, it should be a huge red flag about the actual value.

<comment><USER8> I don't know about that. It's education. I've never written a review for my university experience, although I'm sure somewhere there's a venue for me to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One reason that also explains why there aren't many reviews of universities, relative to the number of people who attend: When your career depends in part upon the esteem of your degrees or certifications, speaking negatively about the source (uni, a camp) is disincentivized.

<comment><USER10> Reviews of individual university classes are prolific. Last time I used one of these websites [1] (years ago), there weren't any compunctions about posting negative reviews.

I know this isn't exactly responding to your comment, but I thought it fit.

[1] ratemyprofessor.com

<comment><USER11> As a total sidebar, my favourite ratemyprocessor.com review (of myself) reads as follows:

"is always willing to help if you need help just make sure that you at least try for a bit before you go for help from Tony otherwise he will not help you."

And yet the student rated me 5/5 for helpfulness and clarity. Makes me very happy inside to know that at least someone sees that that's a plus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A number of employers (at least in SV) are so biased against bootcamps that the only sensible course of action is to pretend it never happened as soon as is feasible.

If you review a bootcamp, you risk a permanent association with having attended a bootcamp.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wrote a fairly detailed review on my blog. [http://logicmason.com/2013/hack- reactor-review-life-at-a-hac...](http://logicmason.com/2013/hack-reactor- review-life-at-a-hacker-school/)

It lead to several sites emailing me and asking me to write a review or to link to their sites. Here is what I wrote to coursereport:

> _By completely ignoring the issue of student outcomes, your resource does > prospective students a disservice. How about listing average salaries, > listing graduation rates, linking to yelp profiles and linking to student > directories for those schools confident enough in their outcomes to share > them?_

I hadn't looked at any of these sites in a long time, but to the best of my knowledge, very little has changed. They offer a comparison only of the costs of the various options, not the value. The person who emailed me did seem to express some vague interest in adding that kind of information later but two years later it's still not there.

At least for me, the main reason I avoided the "bootcamp review" sites is that I didn't feel any would have given me useful guidance as a prospect (whereas Quora, Yelp and HN threads would have if they'd been around when I applied).

<comment><USER14> Disclaimer: I run switchup.org

The reason we don't have average salaries and grad rates is because the only org publishing that is the school itself. Can we trust that number? Has it been reviewed/audited by a third-party? Only one school does that and we report their number on the site.

However, we constantly publish data on industry trends and overall placement rates and job stats to help guide the conversation. [https://www.switchup.org/research/coding-bootcamp- survey](https://www.switchup.org/research/coding-bootcamp-survey)

We do have independent school by school database of job outcomes based on our independent surveys, but sample sizes are generally small and we are not at liberty to disclose school specific info.

<comment><USER13> Yes, I've encountered this argument. Are you aware of the legal trouble a school misrepresenting its numbers would be open to?

It's extremely useful to include self-reported salaries and hiring stats. That's actually one of the key pieces of information I myself was looking at. List the stat and link to or summarize or link to their explanation of how it was calculated.

As for your own independent surveys, they are almost certainly far less accurate than that of the schools themselves. Considering the effects of selection bias on top of those of the small sample size you mentioned before I suspect they're essentially useless for someone making a decision.

Similarly, what good are "overall stats" that average the results of random respondents from world class institutions, low-end operations, experiments and all kinds of other projects? It would be kind of like looking at "overall stats" for a bucket of participating businesses who had taken money from YC, Techstars, unknown funds, crowdfunding, banks or their parents. That would yield some data, but the data wouldn't be useful for an entrepreneur actually considering taking on funding.

I don't think bootcamp review sites (except possibly Yelp) "help guide the conversation". I think they tend to mask the huge gulf between the several schools that a fantastic investment and the many more that aren't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Many of the bootcamps are relatively young with not that many attendees per year. Back-of-the-envelope calculation: ~50 per cohort, 6 cohorts per year is 300 students per year, times 3 or so years is around a thousand total enrollees. 100 reviews is 10% of people reviewing - that seems pretty high to me.

FWIW: I did a bootcamp, loved it, never wrote a review. Just laziness/generally don't write reviews for things. I would guess many people don't write reviews for the same reason.

<comment><USER16> Agree.

++ Second cohort at Flatiron School - it has grown up so much since then that there is a time relevance issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm a grad... and I would say part of the phenomena -- and this might sound corny but I will explain -- is how bootcamps are a personal journey.

By that I mean the entry point for most participants are all different, the expectations for most participants are all different, the experience for most participants are all different (some students work harder than others), and the outcomes are all different.

I felt there was more to learn than there was time (I did a 12 week course), so how I felt after graduating was largely a reflection of my own confidence and ability in contrast to the effort I put in and not a direct reflection of the quality of the instruction.

The Dreyfus model of skill acquisition [0] is a useful reference here. Any program that claims you will gain mastery over a discipline in a dozen weeks is lying to you. The guys that ran my bootcamp were plain about that. They said they would help me help myself learn... which they did but not to the level I really wanted to get to. And that more than anything is why I am ambivalent about recommending them.

\</comment><comment>--

0 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_model_of_skill_acquisition)

</comment><comment><USER18> I loved my bootcamp experience, am still plugged into the alumni network, am not ashamed of it (why would I be?), but I'm probably never going to write a review of it. I'm happy to talk to people about it, but I'm not going to take the time to go write a review. There's no particular pay-off for me, and besides, the program changes constantly; I mentor where I graduated and in the 1.5 years since I finished, tons of things have changed in terms of how they organize things. I'd feel like an idiot if I said, "Oh, this was a part I didn't like," and then somebody who worked there emailed me and said "Hey, that doesn't exist any more." (Which has happened, except in conversational form.)

And sure, I'll freely cop to self-interest here. Bootcamp grads get enough shit from people in tech who want to dick-measure. I'm not going to do anything to further the cause of people who already think I'm an incompetent chimp with a keyboard.

Also, like the SwitchUp person already said in this thread, there's no reliable source of data for outcomes. I can tell you how long it took to get a job and what I made fresh out of the course, but why would you believe me, especially if you're already primed, like a bunch of people here clearly are, to believe that bootcamps are bullshit and their grads are rubes desperate to cover up the fact they got bilked? Maybe I'm just a plant; maybe I get paid a combined $200k a year by DBC/GA/HR/Flatiron to fire up 100 sockpuppets and argue that bootcamps are a good investment to con people on Reddit/HR/wherever. (That actually sounds like a super fun, super immoral job. Maybe I can trick them into actually paying me to do that. OR MAYBE I AM STILL MESSING WITH YOU. ~spirit fingers~)

</comment><comment><USER19> Try yelp. Hack Reactor has 150+ Yelp reviews [http://www.yelp.com/biz/hack- reactor-san-francisco](http://www.yelp.com/biz/hack-reactor-san-francisco)

<comment><USER20> As good as the course sounds, and though it's small fish in the grand scheme, this turns me off:

"Also, you get this hoodie for writing a review so...)"

\- [http://www.yelp.com/biz/hack-reactor-san- francisco?hrid=mVJT...](http://www.yelp.com/biz/hack-reactor-san- francisco?hrid=mVJTsZiT6kT7DkTeI_vT9A)

<comment><USER21> That's shady. Normally, there's a bias such that people who are disgruntled are more likely to post a review than people who had a good experience. If you take that bias into account, a 4 star rating is pretty good, 5 stars is excellent, and so on.

But if you flip that bias on its head, 5 stars becomes a mediocre rating. That's ok if you've disclosed what you've done, but out of 165 reviews only one mentions that people are incentivzed to write reviews with free swag.

<comment><USER22> Disclosure; I graduated from Hack Reactor in October 2013.

The lack of negative reviews may seem strange, but I genuinely believe that everyone who has written about HR does so in a sincere manner (whether it be positive or negative). I can understand how it seems shady, but with a $17k tuition, a "free" hoodie is not enough to sway a review one way or the other.

<comment><USER21> > with a $17k tuition, a "free" hoodie is not enough to sway a review one way > or the other.

That's intuitive but factually incorrect. There's a large body of empirical research that shows that giving away trivial tokens has a significant impact. This is true for everything from charitable donations to sign-ups for services to survey responses. Not to mention ratings for college courses, which are, in the aggregate, more expensive than Hack Reactor.

<comment><USER21> I'm past the edit window here, but it's also not to the point. The point is that, by incentivizing reviews, you skew the sample of reviewers. Even if we didn't have decades of research showing that giving people toys changes their behavior, it would still change the sample of reviewers and make the rating both meaningless and misleading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hmm... there is probably space for a service here. Find out who applies to boot camps, interview them, find out who gets accepted to boot camps, interview them, then interview the graduates and any drop outs/people cut after the program is over. Use questions drawn from standard sociological and psychological surveys like the Grit-S Scale [http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/12-item%20Grit%20S...](http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/images/12-item%20Grit%20Scale.05312011.pdf)

Provide ratings and info to the general public that don't just show rates, but trends, who drops out, comparisons of success rates for different groups, etc. Provide more structured but still anonymous feedback, for a price, to bootcamps as a consultant, or get a grant from a large tech firm. Publish papers in conjunction with academia on a delay.

I think what bootcamps could do, if they were willing to, is be much more agile in changing how they work based on research then a 4 year school, and actually do research and experiments to find better ways of teaching, and improve the industry as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER24> Kind of relevant: Are bootcamps worth it? I'm looking to get into programming, but I have a full time support job right now that I need to be able to live and eat. I can save my money and do a bootcamp, or I could learn how to program in my downtime. I'm not sure which route to go through.

My friend did a local bootcamp and now he's doing ASP.NET work and loves it! I'm just scared of doing that specific one because I don't really have interest in anything microsoft.

<comment><USER25> > learn to program in my downtime

The hard part here is curation of resources and environment setup.

<comment><USER26> It's funny to hear that because I just typed "learn to code" into Google and the first page (ads included!) are all fine and mostly free resources, many requiring only a web browser to start.

Just 10 or 15 years ago the process was completely opaque, a lot of books in your local store had omissions or bugs that made them impossible to follow, it was a seriously frustrating process unless you stumbled into the right community, were a genius, or had lots of guidance.

<comment><USER18> There're enough options that it can be overwhelming. It's hard to see the place to start, because if you're completely outside the bubble, it's hard to even know what the options are, or why you'd pick one of them. Say you type "learn to code" into Google. You go to Codeacademy, because it's the first option and maybe you've heard of it. You log in, then you go the courses page. You don't want to drop $20 on the personalized plan right away, so you skip that; you don't know what "web development" means, or how it's different from anything else, so you skip the web dev stuff. You go down to the language section - that's a good, basic start, right? - and you see six boxes:

HTML & CSS: Learn how to create websites by structuring and styling your pages with HTML and CSS.

JavaScript: Learn the fundamentals of JavaScript, the programming language of the Web.

jQuery: Learn how to make your websites interactive and create animations by using jQuery.

PHP: Learn to program in PHP, a widespread language that powers sites like Facebook.

Python: Learn to program in Python, a powerful language used by sites like YouTube and Dropbox.

Ruby: Learn to program in Ruby, a flexible language used to create sites like Codecademy.

Apparently you can use...all of these things to build websites? And they're all languages? The goals section is better, because those are concrete things that make some of these choices for you, but your rookie who just wants to learn some code and maybe see if they like this is already being asked to make a bunch of choices with relatively little data. And when they start researching, they're going to find a bunch of sites that say PHP sucks, a bunch that say the criticism of PHP is overrated, a bunch that say Ruby is the best beginner language, a bunch that say Ruby is terrible, and a bunch of math nerds (<3 u, python). Plus, they're going to stumble into the CF that is the wide world of JavaScript.

None of this makes it impossible, but choice paralysis is a real issue, and I know a fair number of people who want to get started coding, but can't figure out where to get a handhold. That's one of the benefits of bootcamps - <USER2> make some of the initial choices for you, so you can get started learning the building blocks.

Weirdly, I think that well-written books (huge caveat) might be better, because they do something similar: lock you in a path and then tell you to put your nose to the grindstone and get to work.

<comment><USER25> > choice paralysis

Yes. This is what I'm really getting at.

That, and for environment setup, some choices will genuinely send you down a rabbit hole of wrestling with with unfamiliar tools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I believe there can be legal repercussions if you write negative reviews about some of these bootcamps.

</comment><comment><USER28> I did a GA bootcamp, during which time we were all encouraged to blog about our experience on a weekly basis (and we did). I'm not sure where I'd necessarily write/post a proper review.

<comment><USER29> My GA review: I did GA coworking space before their pivot to full time bootcamp. Startups and an established community that had been there for years were all given one month notice at the end of the year and were kicked out... seats for learning are more profitable than desks for doing. Now all of the grads need jobs, which used to be across the hall. In summary, they're short sighted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Theory: If you disliked it, reviewing it poorly could reduce the credibility of your education. If you liked it, you don't care enough to review it.</comment>


Turns out half the internet has a single-point-of-failure called "Cloudflare" - <AUTHOR> https://easydns.com/blog/2020/07/20/turns-out-half-the-internet-has-a-single-point-of-failure-called-cloudflare/ <comment><USER3> Cloudflare is horrible for blind people.

Screen readers, the programs that use synthesized speech to tell us what's on the screen, cannot read images. Good captchas usually have audio equivalents (which come with their own set of problems), but this one doesn't. If you're blind and flagged by Cloudflare for some reason, you're cut off from accessing half the internet, potentially critical banking/governmental/medical/communications/educational services. We rely on the internet way more than our sighted peers, so this is very important. This has recently happened to me on a few sites, fortunately not critical ones, but it was not a pleasant experience nonetheless. CF engineers, please fix this ASAP. I'm surprised there still isn't a huge lawsuit over this, as this is clearly violating all sorts of laws.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for sharing your experience.

Cloudflare switched to using hCaptcha a couple months ago, I think and I only just noticed that they do not offer an audio-based captcha.

However, hCaptcha integrates with Privacy Pass[0], and you can top up your tokens by solving a captcha at [1] and [2]. What you could do (and I realize this is far from ideal), is getting a sighted friend to solve a couple of captchas so you have enough tokens to last you a couple months.

[0]: [https://privacypass.github.io/](https://privacypass.github.io/)

[1]: [https://captcha.website/](https://captcha.website/)

[2]: [https://www.hcaptcha.com/privacy-pass](https://www.hcaptcha.com/privacy- pass)

<comment><USER5> This is such an out of touch dev response.

The problem is hcaptcha, the solution is stop using hcaptcha. Not placate and evade with work arounds you wouldn't even suggest to non blind people.

Also this ask a friend solution is like telling someone in a wheelchair to ask a friend to help them up those steps instead of just installing a ramp.

You don't get to take over half the internet and just ignore social responsibility.

<comment><USER6> Solutions can't be implemented instantly; a work around is needed until that ramp is installed. As much as the lack of audio solution sucks, you can't expect half the internet to just give up on a piece of technology overnight

<comment><USER7> No. The ramp needs to be built when the thing is built. Accessibility is not an afterthought.

<comment><USER8> I mean, yes, in an ideal world that's true. Yet, here we are.

It's not possible for a dev to go back in time to before hcaptcha was created or when CF decided to switch to them to create said ramp, so until it's built, workarounds are the only real thing a community member can offer someone in the short term.

<comment><USER9> It's not like trying to find the Fountain of Youth or something. It's a company with billions of dollars making it impossible for certain people with disabilities to access the Internet. Let's not pretend that it just has to be this way. A world where half the Internet can't be broken by one company should be the baseline.

<comment><USER8> Nobody is saying it _has_ to be this way. As I said, in an ideal world, accessibility happens when development happens and is not an afterthought. But we don't live in an ideal world, and it's clear here that it wasn't thought out when they did the switch, or other forces caused the switch to happen without this piece in place.

So, with that in mind, knowing where we _currently are_ , not where we'd like to be in an ideal world, what, _exactly_ , do you want to be done right now by members of the community?

It's not like we can all go in and change the Cloudflare code to stop using hCaptcha. The most we can all do is give alternatives and workarounds while pushing on Cloudflare and hCaptcha to support this scenario. Which is all being done in this thread already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Honest question: I've never really understood the back of the napkin math of how Cloudflare functions economically, which I feel would go a long way towards my understanding of why/how they were able to become such an integral and generally positive part of the Internet.

Did they have some crazy in to get cheap bandwidth? Did they bet big on bandwidth prices falling? Did they figure something else out that nobody saw? Do they just to a tremendous job of migrating sites from free to paid plans?

<comment><USER11> Read our S-1, it's all in there.

[https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1477333/000119312519...](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1477333/000119312519222176/d735023ds1.htm)

<comment><USER12> II love cloudflare. It has really helped out with several sites/projects that I have worked on and the service is top notch. I am also an investor. I tend to invest in stuff which I use a lot or trust/respect the employees. Weirdly what made me really invest is the level of geekiness on the company. I remember seeing you guys using a lava lamp wall to generate entropy and just thought "that's awesome". I just wanted to say don't change. Your lz4 implementation, aes gcm golang optimizations have directly benefitted me. Coupled with really high quality post mortem articles, articles on interesting things like compression, encryption, networking, a few random articles (the privacy focussed file system recently comes to mind, written at the same time I was making my own distributed fs) just leave me with a lot of respect for the culture there.

I was worried a bit when I saw the initial IPO that the free tier would leave (despite promises it wouldn't) but that doesn't seem to be the case. Literally the only bad thing I've seen on the site is recently you switched from recaptcha to a new one that I had a real tough time with logging in today - <USER2> was a bit glitchy on my pc. The only suggestion I thought of as well would be a simple "maintenance mode" similar to the "I'm under attack mode" which would allow those of us without super-ha to quickly toggle on something to pop up a "sorry server"/site is down form maintenance page without having to mess with our proxies/web servers.

Anyway I know this comes across as totally kissing-ass but I just wanted to say thanks to someone who actually works there. Everyone fat fingers stuff every now and again,don't sweat it.

<comment><USER13> It's a bit of a sad story, but maybe you'll like this read about one of the guys who laid the foundation for their tech and his sad decline: [https://www.wired.com/story/lee-holloway-devastating- decline...](https://www.wired.com/story/lee-holloway-devastating-decline- brilliant-young-coder/)

I really liked the stories of his skill when he was in his prime. Very inspiring.

<comment><USER14> I dont know how I missed the Cloudflare IPO and this Story. So thanks for posting it. Extremely good writing, though the story was very sad.

I wonder if there are any relationship between FTD and how clever a person or how much brain a person uses.

<comment><USER15> Nothing beyond the normal "cognitive reserve" findings that high education and broad cognitive engagement makes the brain pathology take longer to reduce your functioning to a dementia state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting perspective, but it seems like this is just an ad for easyDNS and their "Proactive Nameservers," though I couldn't imagine a better time than the misstep of a behemoth of a competitor in this space. Not to detract from the more important discussion about the internet's dependence on Cloudflare overall.

<comment><USER17> It may be just an ad for easyDNS' _Proactive Nameservers_ [1] product but it provides a roadmap for one possible solution to this type of problem. From a quick reading of the marketing info, the solution can be summarized as "Provision, Monitor, and Fail-Over DNS Name Servers across multiple DNS-as-a- Service providers". The question I have is whether the following constraint is artificially introduced or not:

> We must be your domain registrar for this to work...

IIRC, Netflix OSS published some tools quite some time ago to support multiple DNS providers but I don't know/remember if they tackled the availability problem. The question comes down to build vs buy and whether the solution is general enough to warrant an Open Source Software solution.

[1] [https://easydns.com/dns/proactive- nameservers/](https://easydns.com/dns/proactive-nameservers/)

<comment><USER18> They want to be the registrar to be able to update your NS records. But ... that's not really important nor needed (So the answer to your question yes, it's likely artificial). Just use two anycast-ed IPs/domains. (Like Cloudflare.)

The magic happens at BGP level.

I considered CF as a domain registrar, but they don't allow setting the NS records. So you must use them. (They basically use sane no-nonsense domain registration as a way to gain leads for their main product. Pretty smart actually, because it's a great high-level add-on for their main product, but they just went ahead and made that the bait for everyone.)

Anyway, ideally, if you add 2 separate sets of NS servers to your NS records then you eliminated this SPoF, great. Sure, it's your job to keep them updated, and in sync (preferably, to avoid problems like half of your users landing on a different CNAME/IP/etc).

And recursive nameservers will handle the failover.

<comment><AUTHOR> easyDNS has to be the registrar because only your registrar can change your nameserver delegation with the registry. This is, in essence, the registrar's job. To maintain your domain record and info, including nameserver delegation, with the registry.

You could do it with BGP, but it is non-trivial and you need your own ASN to do that.

<comment><USER18> But you can just add multiple DNS providers yourself. I mean you can add the namservers of both easyDNS and cloudflare. EasyDNS just automates this.

In theory they could simply create a few subsidiaries, let's call them saferDNS1,2,3 and have them build completely different redundant DNS architectures, and add then add the resulting nameservers.

That said, it'd be good to see an actual domain that uses this "proactive" feature to see what easyDNS is doing.

<comment><USER19> I'm not a DNS expert, so... It's not really that simple is it? If you have multiple nameservers I thought they get equal weight, don't they?

So if you have Cloudflare + (ex:) NS1, and you're using Cloudflare for caching, you need your NS1 records to return Cloudflare proxied IPs normally, but origin IPs under failure conditions. That's a lot of infrastructure.

It also fails completely if you're relying on Cloudflare for DDoS protection and IP obfuscation because a failure means your origin IPs get exposed. That's assuming Cloudflare DNS being down means Cloudflare proxying is down too. It might not be the case, but I think you'd have to plan for it.

Then there's also Cloudflare's detection of nameservers. I haven't tried it with more than Cloudflare's nameservers set for a domain, but if your domain doesn't actively use their nameserver they'll drop your site from their system. So, at the very least, you can't use Cloudflare as a secondary DNS provider (at least the last time I checked).

<comment><USER18> I was talking about just the DNS layer, but ... you can periodically check what IP Cloudflare would return and return that. (There's also the apex-CNAME record type, ALIAS or DNAME, I don't remember right now, but PowerDNS supports it, and you can set up the resolver to use CF's NS.)

Of course CF doesn't support anything like this, but it works well (because they use quasi fixed, static anycasted IPs for the HTTP(S and TCP?) proxying/load-balancing too), even if it's hacky as hell.

If they have any active verification of nameservers, and if they disable the proxies if they detect something bad, then ... it won't work obviously :)

But technically there's nothing amazing in being a registrar of a domain. So both CF and easyDNS are just stubborn in the name of user experience (consistency).

... all in all, working around any SPoF (reliably) will usually require exponentially more resources/engineering/care.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think people are Cloudflare fans simply because so many other services suck more.

I gave Cloudflare a fair shake. But after hearing their lies way too many times, I'm calling them out for being deceptive and unscrupulous.

After being told that sites pretending to host Adobe Flash updaters and pretending to be Bank of America can't be taken down by Cloudflare because of their rights to free speech, I knew their attempts to pretend to be one of us, attempts to pretend to care, were nothing but bullshit.

They claim they don't host. If hosting DNS is not hosting, then what do you call DNS hosting? You literally CANNOT use their abuse web form to report domains which use Cloudflare just for hosting DNS. They do not handle abuse sent to their abuse email address (they simply send a form response saying to spend ten minutes filling out their crappy form that has all sorts of problems).

Of course, their web proxy services are also "not hosting", even though they're protecting all sorts of scammers.

So why should we think they're not bullshitting us when they run 22.214.171.124 and tell us they're not logging? Why should we trust them more than our ISPs by running DoH through them?

They WANT us to be dependent on them, because the more control they have, the more money they can make. It's dangerous, and they've shown they have no honor.

I've genuinely tried to correspond with them on Twitter, and they excel at not answering the question asked but instead just diverting. It's scummy, unprofessional behavior and I encourage everyone to consider whether they deserve anyone's data or business.

<comment><USER21> For me, the biggest disappointment was when they were defending hosting terrorist site for "free speech" reasons:

[https://www.fastcompany.com/90312063/how-cloudflare- straddle...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90312063/how-cloudflare-straddles- its-role-as-privacy-champion-and-hate-speech-enabler)

[https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-and-free- speech/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-and-free-speech/)

> the company serves at least seven groups on the U.S. State Department's list > of foreign terrorist organizations, including al-Shabab, the Popular Front > for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), al-Quds Brigades, the Kurdistan > Workers' Party, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and Hamas.

> CEP has sent letters to Cloudflare since February 13, 2017, warning about > clients on the service, including Hamas, the Taliban, the PFLP, and the > Nordic Resistance Movement. The latest letter, from February 15, 2019, warns > of what CEP identified as three pro-ISIS propaganda websites.

All this while routinely censoring other sites. Their actions are very different than their words.

<comment><USER22> From the article:

" This question assumes the answer. A website is speech. It is not a bomb. There is no imminent danger it creates and no provider has an affirmative obligation to monitor and make determinations about the theoretically harmful nature of speech a site may contain."

<comment><USER23> Are DDOS-for-hire sites "speech"?

Their only use is to suppress speech.

<comment><USER22> Well that would depend on what the target of the DDOS is wouldn't it? Either way the point being we want companies out of politics. They have no business in them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> That is the problem with massive centralization even if it is market level and internally Cloudflare (or any other big fish) does decentralization/fail-over of their own. Many of these companies should have had fail-over to competitors at least for reliability.

The problem with near market monopolization, oligopoly, even the singularity, the fail-case is catastrophic and may even wipe out decentralized, diffused, dispersed, decoupled system solutions that can't make it due to so much relative size from the big fish that it squashes them along the way. The bigger the ship the longer it takes to turn.

This Cloudflare issue is like the recent Facebook SDK startup crashes where everyone has a single point of failure on Facebook SDK where people should be using or able to use the OpenGraph API directly as they need which is more robust to the app that uses it, it won't crash on startup.

In business it is a goal to centralize to grow, in nature and robust systems it is more differentiation and decentralization to survive. There will always be a push and pull between these two forces.

Systems and markets are like gardens. The garden must be maintained, new seeds planted and helped to grow from small to mid-sized, mid-sized plants the bulk of the garden, and then the larger plants need to be culled back when they get too big to not take the mid-sized and then all the resources from the new seeds/small plants. The problem is we have allowed the top end to take over the garden and when they fail they fail spectacularly. The bigger the scale the bigger they can fail.

<comment><USER25> There is no CDN monopoly. There are several to choose from. Cloudflare is one of the new kids on the block.

There is no cloud monopoly either. Customers can choose from AWS, GCP, Azure, and several others.

The problem is not market concentration. There are plenty of options. The problem is customers choosing to put all their eggs in one basket.

<comment> david-cako True, however at AWS at least, customers are specifically told "multi-cloud doesn't allow you to fully leverage the benefits of AWS", whatever that means.

It makes sense that cloud companies are inclined to keep customers from giving money to competitors, but they way they sell it and structure services, reserved instances, and enterprise discounts is such that you basically are putting all of your eggs in one basket.

<comment><USER26> > "multi-cloud doesn't allow you to fully leverage the benefits of AWS", > whatever that means.

One of the selling points of cloud providers is managed services like SQS. If you run a multi-cloud architecture, you either can't use managed services, or have to build abstraction layers on top of them (and only use the features that exist in both cloud providers' versions of the managed service).

If you want to use a managed service that only exists on AWS, then that's obviously incompatible with a fully multi-cloud architecture.

<comment><USER27> > If you run a multi-cloud architecture, you either can't use managed > services, or have to build abstraction layers on top of them (and only use > the features that exist in both cloud providers' versions of the managed > service).

And this is, of course, why they do everything they can do discourage it. Because if you do that, not only are you not reliant on them for availability, you can switch more of your business to the other provider(s) based on current pricing, and they do not want that big time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> What's funny about this outage is I'm sure many of of us (myself included) used this window to analyze large services and determine an increase in major Cloudflare customers and presumably, revenue. Even ISPs like T-Mobile faced issues due to the Cloudflare outage! The situation has exposed just how critical Cloudflare is.

I went ahead and bought calls ahead of NET earnings next month. Cloudflare is becoming an increasingly bigger part of the internet backbone. Purely speculating here, but I wouldn't put it past AWS or another large player acquiring them soon.

<comment><USER29> > an increase in major Cloudflare customers and presumably, revenue. Even ISPs > like T-Mobile faced issues due to the Cloudflare outage!

Careful about this methodology. Some services at my org were impacted despite not being direct CloudFlare customers. They had external dependencies that used CloudFlare.

<comment><USER30> So it's much bigger proverbial 'blast-radius' lest something happen to CloudFlare? Can you elaborate a bit on that part? I'm interested in knowing more.

<comment><USER29> Simple case of dependencies failing. Not much to elaborate.

e.g. NPM.js uses CloudFlare DNS, so services which needed to talk to NPM.js weren't able to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Cloudflare apparently fat-fingered a routing update and sent all of their global traffic to a single POP, vaporizing it almost instantly."

Made me chuckle, as it gave me the image of a large server in some massive server farm glowing red, then bursting in a massive burst of light as dozens of bearded Sysadmins run out of the building screaming.

<comment><USER32> In my experience the sysadmins would be running in the opposite direction.

<comment><USER33> As usual, a relevant one: [https://xkcd.com/705/](https://xkcd.com/705/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Didn't people also say the same thing about AWS a while back when that had a downtime? I guess the internet has multiple "Single-Point-Of-Failure"s.

<comment><USER35> Ironic since the internet (ARPANET) was specifically designed to not have a single point of failure

<comment><USER36> Doubly ironic since in doing this, they created a system where a _protocol_ is the SPoF; namely nonsensical or false BGP advertisements can quickly kill the internet as a whole if done correctly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Many of us don't even know it. My DNS for PortableApps.com is run through Digital Ocean, which uses Cloudflare for DNS.

<comment><USER38> On an unrelated note. Thank you so much for PortableApps.com! It was invaluable at university when studying in the library. To this day, I still use it for utilities that don't need to be installed on my desktop.

<comment><USER39> I am also grateful for PortableApps.com. Along with Scoop and Homebrew, they make using a system without root or admin privileges a really nice experience, in both Windows and Linux.

My sincere thanks to John and all the PortableApps.com contributors.

<comment><USER37> You're welcome! I'm glad it's helping you be more productive!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Okay here's the thing. I'm okay with people bashing other (competing) companies when they do wrong. However, I believe it is somewhat childish and uncalled for to bash another company, because of a mistake.

First of all "I use easyDNS so I didn't notice it at all tbh" is not only a childish assertion, it's borderline a falsehood. You DO NOT offer the same services, nor the same scale. (No, VOD would not work if your VOD provider used Cloudflare's offering.)

Second of all, as some have noted in other comments, you are very welcome to get just as big as them if you can offer similar (excellent) service and similar extremely competitive pricing. Otherwise, keep working on your offer and stop going for low hanging fruit like bashing the competitor for an outage when they literally might handle 1000x your traffic, and perhaps offer 20x the services your offer.

Just a little rant ...

<comment><USER41> Honestly I didn't notice the domain name, and I actually thought the author was being quite understanding by saying things like "This is inevitable and unavoidable and entirely excusable. Everybody blows up, every DNS provider in existence will experience downtime. No exceptions." and that they use Cloudflare themselves.

This is obviously subjective, but to me it didn't come across as "they suck use us" but rather pointing out the inherent flaws in this quite popular SPOF and cautioning to avoid it.

<comment><USER42> I think the root cause (which, IMO, you correctly point out) is lost on many modern developers.

For whatever reason there's this modern idea that if a company A is paying money to company B for a service, that company B will handle all the 'hard stuff' for them.

The end result is we have a lot of applications/infra built with SPOFs, in some cases known, but in many, swept under the rug and abstracted away to passing the buck in case of a large failure (i.e. major AWS/Cloudflare/Azure outages).

You also see this at times when vendors pitch internal software solutions. I've been at more than one shop where a vendor's 'silver bullet' turned into a SPOF time-bomb because nobody considered this company's solution could fail. After all, the sales presentation said it had %nines%!

<comment><USER43> "Your app will go down when half the Internet goes down" is not that big of a deal to most software companies, because:

1\. no one's going to blame me if my app goes down when half the Internet is also down but they are going to blame me if my custom solution to the same thing causes an outage,

2\. there's no way my custom solution is going to achieve the same uptime. AWS/Cloudflare/Azure are not perfect, but whatever I roll for myself is almost certainly going to be much less perfect.

<comment><USER44> They do blame you though, most people won't be aware of the real issue, when cloudflare went down, the trending things on twitter were #spotifydown and #applemusic

<comment><USER45> I suspect customers complaining on Twitter are not the ones cared about to whoever decides to use Cloudflare.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h I build an app. I use CF for my app. Customers use my app. CF has an outage. Customers don't care _why_ I'm down, they care that my app isn't working.

<comment> when_it-rains What is your solution for never going down?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I guess this is off-topic, but the stock photo they're using is _cracking me up_.

Guy at work... coffee cup on a _tablet he 's using for a coaster_... except he's also _drinking whiskey_ from a beautiful crystal glass... there's a folded paper airplane... there's just so much to unpack here, it's pretty hilarious.

<comment><USER47> > except he's also drinking whiskey from a beautiful crystal glass

And he has left the stopper off of the decanter like some sort of animal.

I think we are supposed to believe that the person here was just dicking around online, fiddling with paper, finishing his morning coffee, when all of a sudden he gets an email asking if anyone knows what's going on with the website.

So he stops what he was (not) doing, puts down his coffee, and starts poking around. At which point he realizes he needs something stronger than coffee. As he is pouring his glass he is confronted with the true horror of the situation, drops the stopper on the floor and just holds his face wondering why the Universe hates him.

I wonder if we can get JJ Abrams to option the movie rights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> > We call it Proactive Nameservers, and we're the only company in the world > doing it for some reason.

Wait, why? [0]:

> Proactive Nameservers is a patent-pending system that optimizes the > nameserver delegation for your mission critical domain names.

Oh.

[0] [https://easydns.com/dns/proactive- nameservers/](https://easydns.com/dns/proactive-nameservers/)

</comment><comment><USER49> The solution is the Decentralized Web (DWeb), such as IPFS ([https://ipfs.io](https://ipfs.io)), Freenet ([https://freenetproject.org](https://freenetproject.org)), GNUnet ([https://gnunet.org](https://gnunet.org)) or Hypercore ([https://hypercore- protocol.org](https://hypercore-protocol.org)). We should start using them to avoid centralization and embrace freedom.

<comment><USER50> Can you explain a bit more how this is a solution? Cloudflare isn't facebook. They have plenty of competitors, they don't have a massive moat, and they are almost exclusively used by businesses. Despite all of this, we should ask ourselves how we even got here. Why would companies move to DWeb, when they are already choosing to use Cloudflare instead of Fastly/Cloudfront/Akamai.

<comment><USER51> No salespeople to sell dweb

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> If more companies are willing to provide the same level of service and price as Cloudflare, then they can get in on the game, too.

</comment><comment><USER53> This is just an advertisement for easydns.

<comment><USER54> Bingo. Still a good read, and easydns is just trying to profit over a screw-up from a competitor, but still essentially an ad.

<comment><USER55> > but still essentially an ad.

Compared to the endless content marketing Cloudflare posts [1]? It's an ad, but they're still right. That's just good content marketing (informative, relevant, and perhaps you buy something because of it).

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=cloudflare.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=cloudflare.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Whether this is an ad piece by a competitor or not, the problem with monopolies is that "the market" (if there is one) gets skewed incentives. Cloudflare has received heavy investment by FAANG (+MS) [1] before their IPO, so rather than eg Google or others with a vested interest and capability stepping up the game and invest into new IP control plane-level DDOS protection standards or similar, the situation smells more like a backdoor deal, such as an agreement to not go after a particular market segment.

Let's also not forget Cloudflare in particular have been accused to host/hide the very bad boys that make protection from DDOS necessary in the first place. Whether or not that is the case, a quasi-monopoly leaves customers with no choice.

[1]: [https://petri.com/microsoft-google-and-others-invest-in- clou...](https://petri.com/microsoft-google-and-others-invest-in-cloudflare)

</comment><comment><USER57> If only DDOS attacks were taken seriously and their perpetrators punished accordingly (and maybe if the network had better ways of self-defense) instead of companies and websites having to fend for themselves (or having to resort to solutions like Cloudflare).

<comment><USER58> I am not sure I understand this comment, in the context- cloudflare misconfigured some routes and it was quickly resolved. was this a DDoS?

<comment><USER59> I think the point was that so many companies wouldn't have to rely on anti- DDoS protection from Cloudflare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> What I find really shocking is the abundant use of CF on _piracy_ websites of all things. Not the serious ones of course, SciHub and library genesis are mirrored differently.

But a lot of small torrent websites and such simply won't load without JS and specifically CF code. It's pretty crazy. Luckily I don't use any of those bEcAuSe IlLeGaL but still, I find it really depressing, especially when webtorrent, IPFS etc are available, and frankly many of those pages will never have to bear a load that makes CF a requirement.

<comment><USER61> its not about caching or handling normal traffic. its about ddos protection. sites like that are frequent targets.

<comment><USER60> and there should be enough of them that that shouldn't matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Now that Cloudflare is also a registrar, they could pretty easily implement a nameserver failover like EasyDNS. I hope this event underscores the importance of that to them.

It's worth noting Cloudflare also supports secondary DNS, but only for enterprise customers: [https://blog.cloudflare.com/secondary-dns-a-faster- more-resi...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/secondary-dns-a-faster-more- resilient-way-to-serve-your-dns-records/)

</comment><comment><USER63> Does anyone know a dashboard/list for past Akamai outages. Surprisingly, I haven't seen a lot of news about Akamai downtimes. I searched on Google and the last one I found in a news report is from 2011 when its customers like Facebook, Twitter were impacted.

They were a PITA to work with when I used them in the past but if they are really that good in service availability, you can have some justification for their overpriced service.

<comment><USER64> AFAIK Akamai only makes their service notifications available directly to subscribers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Cloudflare doesn't work without JS, even for static jsless sites. It's a pest.

</comment><comment><USER66> Well, I usually block it anyway, because it is not only a single point of failure, but also a single point of concentration of data, that can be used to track, spy on and profile users. As such, I do not blindly trust Cloudflare. I remain sceptical, no matter how positive their public image is. Especially I would not set my DNS to cloudflare.

<comment><USER67> Who do you use for DNS then that you do trust?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h For lookups, it's not that hard to do your own recursive resolver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> I love all the comments about fail-over for DDOS/DNS protection. What is your budget? Well we are looking at around $0.00 for our maximum allowance. Ok so single point of failure it is I guess we are done here. Companies only say they care when there is a problem, the reality is that they dont.

<comment><USER69> It obviously takes more than $0.00 but not that much more. It's a matter of adding a second DNS provider and making sure you replicate DNS records manually or with AFXR.

What's really puzzling is if the same companies spend money on active/passive failover for application and database servers while overlooking DNS single point of failure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> AWS in 2012, DynDNS after that, now Cloudflare...I wrote about this a few years ago, the threat of the singularity of the Internet. What was distributed will be centralized again. [http://tuxlabs.com/?p=430](http://tuxlabs.com/?p=430)

</comment><comment><USER71> Cloudflare is hell when you need to load scripts and css 403'd by them.

Here's my work around:

1) open developer tools 2) refresh page 3) move tab into a new window 4) find a blocked resource in the network tab of developer tools and open it in a new tab 5) verify humanity 6) repeat step 4 and sometimes 5 for each resource the page requires 7) move the problematic site out of the new window and close all of these tabs at once

It is a terrible experience. CF devs and publishers have no idea how inconvenient their service is. I wonder if they have ever lived in a region where every ISP is both incompetent and listed in the CBL?

I frequently skip sites that use CF. The captchas are obnoxious.

The entire concept of a webapp firewall seems a bit backwards to me. Developers should fix their insecure applications.

</comment><comment><USER72> When I was figuring out how DNS works back 10 years ago, I was told "Why don't you just use 220.127.116.11 everywhere? Why do you need your own DNS server for anyway?" every single time when I asked a very specific configuration question. Some years later 18.104.22.168 was just replaced with 220.127.116.11 with same critical counter questions instead of helping. So, it appears to me, instead of understanding DNS and routing, people and tech-bro businesses take shortcuts by using centralized infrastructure for their systems, creating dangerous configurations. Now, Cloudflare have made a mistake, and half the Internet crumbled down. See the irony?

</comment><comment><USER73> Turns out no one got fired for choosing Cloudflare.

</comment><comment><USER74> "Turns out over half the Internet has a single point of failure called BGP."

</comment><comment><USER75> Is it realistic for a small-medium sized business to have more than one DNS provider?

<comment><USER76> > _Is it realistic for a small-medium sized business to have more than one DNS > provider?_

Yes: as the weblog post points out, you can have EasyDNS as your master with their multiple DNS servers, and then _also_ have (e.g.) Route53 slaved to EasyDNS and have those _in addition to_ EasyDNS in your records.

DNS servers have had replication for decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Question: is it even possible to have DDoS protection without using a provider of it which becomes a single point of failure? Or is it maybe possible to decouple this single feature from everything else that Cloudflare provides that could take out all the sites in the future from an unrelated misconfiguration?

I don't see the centralization as a positive, but I'm wondering what percentage of the websites that were taken offline see themselves as having no choice but to use Cloudflare in order to prevent themselves from being taken down anyway from malicious actors instead of by accident.

<comment><USER69> I think you could use Cloudflare as your primary DNS provider and benefit from their DDoS protection, but also specify backup DNS name servers with a different DNS provider in case Cloudflare fails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Starting yesterday, I have been getting Cloudflare's hCaptcha image identification quizzes on every site that uses them. Googling the issue indicates that the IP address range may have been blacklisted, if say my laptop (a Mac that doesn't visit any shady sites) or my router has been compromised and is now running a botnet or something.

It seems unlikely because my phone can access sites on wifi fine, and again my Mac doesn't appear to have any malware.

Could it be that the outage is somehow relate to Cloudflare putting these captchas up as a precautionary measure?

</comment><comment><USER79> It's interesting to me that Cloudflare doesn't really have any competition with a similar business model. I suppose the free plan requires quite a lot of spending before the upgrades offset it.

<comment><USER80> I don't need a free tier. I just need a "basic bitch" tier for my personal usage. Who are some Cloudflare alternatives for this?

<comment><USER81> Depends on what you want but a very solid free CDN and DNS option is: host your site on netlify and use dns.he.net for your nameservers.

Another good DNS option is dnsimple.com or, indeed, EasyDNS. For even more redundancy, use one provider as your domain registrar and another for your nameservers (and set short TTLs for your zones so you can re-point IPs quickly if you need to).

For the other things Cloudflare offers on their free tier, I'm not sure what good alternatives exist (there must be some, I'm just not familiar with them outside of the obvious AWS alternatives).

Edit: one caveat with above advice, I have no idea if netlify use cloudflare behind the scenes...

Edit 2: For other options, checkout [https://www.cdnperf.com/](https://www.cdnperf.com/) and [https://www.dnsperf.com/](https://www.dnsperf.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> > But if you want to use a preferred DNS provider, such as Cloudflare, who use > their DNS responses to optimize your website proxy. That works best most of > the time, so then you want to go with an active/passive model that will step > back when things are going according to plan, and then when these periodic > network cataclysms do occur (and they will), they step into the breach and > update your nameservers so that you at least stay up until the crisis is > over.

Copy editors are cheap and your reputation shouldn't be.

</comment><comment><USER83> Who at a C-level position is going to tell anybody that the potential risk of Cloudflare (or Amazon/Azure/GCP) going down should be protected against?

I would applaud them, but I wonder.

<comment><USER84> My guess is Wall Street HFT or other financial areas with very strict unscheduled downtime penalties where they are effectively incentivised to be batshit paranoid as it would take decades for any penny pinching to remotely pay off. I don't know if many of them use Cloudflare for their domains though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> This is the 3rd DNS related outage I've seen in a week. Frountier Communications lost their DNS. Trying to recall what the 3rd one was.

My Unbound resolver round-robins DNS-over-TLS requests, between Cloudflare & Quad9. Cloudflare's outage never impacted us that I could tell.

Nevertheless, I am reminded that I ought to add a couple of DoT providers (who aren't Google). Not sure who else came online since I setup.

</comment><comment><USER47> High availability is an insurance game, and perhaps we need to start treating it that way.

Rather than admitting that your customers need to maintain a business relationship with your competitors, _you_ need to admit you need to maintain a business relationship with your competitors. That we need a moral equivalent of underwriting in the cloud space.

</comment><comment><USER86> I am not sure, if I would trust anyone who misuses the term "Single-Point-of- Failure" on matters of reliability.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Why not? It's a single thing, that if it fails, causes your app/website/whatever to fail.

<comment><USER86> Because it isn't a single thing, it is a redundant system. Redundant systems can also fail, that doesn't make it a _single_ point of failure.

You can add another system in parallel as the vendor of the product suggests, or you can improve the resilience in the redundant system.

To make a hyperbole: my galera cluster is failing, its a single point of failure, so I setup a cockroach cluster in parallel.

In a way, it is right, as there are failure modes specific to the individual systems, but I think, it is incorrect, to label that a SpoF.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h That is a fair point; SPoF depends on what level you're looking at. A RAID array removes the SPoF that is a single disk, but still leaves a SPoF in the RAID controller or CPU or power supply; a ceph cluster can withstand the loss of a whole rack but could still fall to certain software bugs. Likewise, "cloud" companies are internally redundant, right up to the point where they aren't. It depends on how you scope the question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> Instead of trusting any DNS provider with your queries, I recommend running your _own_ recursive resolver with Unbound.

[https://nlnetlabs.nl/projects/unbound/about/](https://nlnetlabs.nl/projects/unbound/about/)

<comment><USER88> But then aren't you just trusting your VPS provider or ISP instead?

<comment><USER87> Unfortunately, ISPs can see the domains you connect to, even if you use DNS- over-HTTPS.

[https://irtf.org/anrw/2019/slides- anrw19-final44.pdf](https://irtf.org/anrw/2019/slides-anrw19-final44.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> Maybe it would make sense to have multiple independent sections of backbone at the BGP level. Instead of having one public AS/backbone, break it down into regions at least so that it is more confederated.

</comment><comment><USER90> Similar problems are happening with crypto - yeah it's distributed but so many people are using Coinbase that if they go down it's going to cause a lot of problems

</comment><comment><USER91> If you keep much of a website simple - plain html and css - won't that reduce the need for a CDN in the first place?

<comment><USER92> Yes, but cloudflare reach is much deeper then that.

I am not a cloudflare customer but my all websites failed that day. The reason was digitalocean uses cloudflare, I use digitalocean. So apparently I depend on cloudflare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> > Turns out half the internet has a Single-Point-of-Failure called > "Cloudflare"

The other one is called AWS.

<comment><USER83> So in the end, who cares about single point of failures?

<comment><USER94> Militaries. The internet was created so the US President could command the US military even in the case of nuclear war knocking out many of the internet's nodes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> There are some (research) work on proof-of-human protocol, interesting direction

</comment><comment><USER96> When Cloudflare causes the problem they were built to solve.

</comment><comment><USER97> The other half is on AWS?

</comment><comment><USER98> you can warn people, but they don't listen...

</comment><comment><USER99> What responsibility and reparative measures has Cloudflare taken for Friday's incident? Was anyone fired for the mistake?

<comment><USER100> Why would firing someone make you feel like reparative measures have been taken?

<comment><USER99> Reparations would show an actual sense of responsibility. Firing someone would be appropriate if they were negligent. Other measures might be more appropriate. Is it enough that any time there's a Cloudflare incident, all we get are lengthy blog posts and sorries from Cloudflare?

<comment><USER101> Firing people for making mistakes is a great way to watch productivity dive. The easiest way to prevent mistakes is to do nothing at all.

<comment><USER99> I understand the point being made here, but what are those affected supposed to take away? Cloudflare made a mistake that caused (x millions of dollars of lost online commerce revenues, y number of missed telehealth sessions, etc.) and since we do not punish mistakes, nothing was done. Sorry everyone!

<comment><USER101> Understood. Typically, as a company, you write - 1) what went wrong 2) how did it go wrong and 3) what you have or will put in place to prevent it from ever happening again

It's a learning process for all involved, really.

From the affected parties point of view, well, they should diversify their network a bit better. End users should hold those companies feet to the fire, not Cloudflare's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> Pretty poor form calling out a competitor for something like this. Not the first time a DNS provider has done this, and won't be the last.</comment>


Device mimics black hole event horizon - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/02/13/scispace113.xml

<comment><USER2> Tonight on Rigel News "Distant Planet 'Earth' reduces Milky Way to the size of an atom" more at 11

Has anyone read Our Final Hour by Martin Rees - he talks about this as being one of the possible ways mankind may accidentally destroy itself.</comment>


An easier approach to partial fractions decomposition - <AUTHOR> https://jaydaigle.net/blog/calculus/easier-partial-fractions/ <comment><USER2> I learned this in undergrad calc 1 as the Heaviside cover-up method [1], named after Oliver Heaviside.

Heaviside was a remarkably productive scientist [2], contributing to a range of topics from vector calculus to electromagnetic theory.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside_cover- up_method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside_cover-up_method)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaviside)

<comment><USER3> Didn't Heaviside condense Maxwell's nine (or more?) original equations down to the four we know and use today?

<comment><USER4> And those equations can be condensed into a single manifestly covariant equation:

□A = J

where □ is the d'Alembertian, A is the 4-potential, and J is the 4-current.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As the author presents it, it seems to me difficult to discover the idea of "partially clearing denomninators"; but notice that we can still clear all denominators—we just have to be lazy about what we do next. (This is one of the things that I have trouble convincing my calculus students to do; I'll frequently see them encounter a product of two binomials, reflexively multiply them together, and then spend time factoring them to find the roots of the product.)

Anyway, if we clear denominators in the author's example, then we get:

        7x + 2 = A(x - 1)(x + 2) + B(x - 1) + C(x + 2)^2.

As long as we _don 't_ multiply and re-group as instinct may suggest, we can plug in `x = 1` just as easily as the author describes:

        9 = 0 + 0 + 9C.

As he suggests, we can also plug in `x = -2` (and now it's maybe less mysterious why this is still OK) to get

        -12 = -3B

; and then we can proceed as the author does, subtracting off the B term and factoring out `(x + 2)` from what's left, _or_ (which is substantially the same procedure) we can _differentiate_ :

        7 = A(x - 1) + B + 2C(x + 2) => 7 = -3A + B.

(The differentiation would look more complicated if we had more terms, but notice that we don't actually need to know that the derivative of `C(x + 2)^2` is `2C(x + 2)`, only that the derivative of _any_ polynomial divisible by `(x + 2)^2` is divisible by `(x + 2)`, and so vanishes at `x = -2`.)

<comment><USER6> Another way to find A (which is only another form of differentiation) is not to evaluate, that is reduce mod (x-a), like for B and C, but to reduce mod the higher-order term, (x+2)^2. The C term drops out immediately and (x-1)(x+2) = (x+2 - 3)(x+2) = -3(x+2) so we get

        7x + 2 = -3A(x+2) + B(x-1) => (evaluate at x=1) => 9 = -9A

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This method may work, but the explanation is nonsense.

We start out with an equation that's undefined at x = 1. First we multiply both sides by (x - 1), then we evaluate at x = 1. None of that is valid.

<comment><USER8> This type of method for partial fraction decomposition is commonly taught at A-level Maths (typical end of high school exams in England, Wales & Northern Ireland)

Can anyone explain why it works to use x=1, even though the fraction is undefined at x=1?

Presumably an explanation would involve continuity and limits.

<comment><USER6> You don't need limits. It works perfectly fine as an equation in the ring of rational fractions on R[x]. That is, an equation between rational functions shouldn't be read as saying "if you evaluate these for a specific value of x and the denominators do not vanish the results are equal" but as saying "these are equal as polynomials after formally clearing the denominators".

Concretely the equations he computes with

(7x+2) / (x+2)^2 (x-1) = A/(x+2) + B/(x+2)^2 + C/(x-1)

(7x+2) / (x+2)^2 = A(x-1)/(x+2) + B(x-1)/(x+2)^2 + C

(7x+2) / (x-1) = A(x+2) + B + C(x+2)^2/(x-1)

(7x+2) / (x+2) (x-1) = A + B/(x+2) + C(x+2)/(x-1)

are all equivalent by definition (because f/g = f'/g' means fg' = f'g) to

7x+2 = A(x+2)(x-1) + B(x-1) + C(x+2)^2

Evaluate at x=1 to get C=1. Evaluate at x=-2 to get B=4. IMO it's easier to get C by using the system of equations approach rather than the evaluation method at this point, since the coefficient of X^2 of the RHS is evidently A+C and must vanish, so C=-1.

<comment><USER5> The problem with viewing this as _only_ a computation in the ring `R(x)` (I think that's what you mean, not "the ring of rational fractions on R[x]"—maybe you meant the fraction field of `R[x]`?) is that, while all the equalities _of rational functions_ make perfectly good sense in `R(x)`, there is no "plug in `x = 1`" function on `R(x)`. One must 'promote' the equality in `R(x)` to one in `R[x]` by clearing denominators, and only _then_ plug in `x = 1`.

(Of course this is what you _do_ , and I agree that it's the right, or at least a good, way to explain it; but I think that it's important to emphasise explicitly _how_ the algebraic point of view avoids any concern with taking limits.)

<comment><USER9> You could view R[x] as a subring of R(x). At that point, once you have tranformed the problem into one contained entirely within R[x], evaluation at a point becomes a well defined function.

I suppose you could view evaluation as a non total function on R(x)XR (or rather, a function on the annoying to write domain where it is defined), but I have never seen anyone do that explicitly.

<comment><USER5> > You could view R[x] as a subring of R(x). At that point, once you have > tranformed the problem into one contained entirely within R[x], evaluation > at a point becomes a well defined function.

Indeed, this is exactly the process that I meant to describe by:

> One must 'promote' the equality in `R(x)` to one in `R[x]` by clearing > denominators, and only then plug in `x = 1`.

> I suppose you could view evaluation as a non total function on R(x)XR (or > rather, a function on the annoying to write domain where it is defined), but > I have never seen anyone do that explicitly.

I agree that it would be strange, for many reasons. Mathematicians in the main tend to avoid the language of partial functions. An individual evaluation function, say at `x = c`, is naturally viewed as a function on the localisation R[x]_{(x - c)}; but, if one wants to view the evaluation as (informally) a "two-place" function, then I would say that it lives naturally on R[x] \times R.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zuckerberg, Gates team up to contribute $25M for research into Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://thehill.com/homenews/news/489995-zuckerberg-gates-team-up-to-contribute-25m-for-research-into-coronavirus <comment><USER2> In the recent past, this "team" had an estimate net worth more than 150 Billion and get news coverage for donating 0.016% of their net worth or comparatively nothing. This while Facebook was hoarding literally hundreds of thousands of masks until it was shamed.

For context, this would be dollar for dollar the equivalent of me giving about $200 and I don't have a team of accountants to work my $200 into some sort of tax break. I have given more than this in tips to local restaurants who are pledging to share those tips with displaced staff.

Meanwhile the worlds richest man has essentially started a go fund me campaign to have others pay his contractors. His personal contributions to this crisis seem non-existent as all support efforts seem to be from Amazon.

It is an embarrassment of epic proportions that 9 people control 50% of all of the planet's wealth and still get news coverage for throwing coins to the pleabs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Those two together are worth how many billions? That's such a small amount for them, it seems to send some kind of message...</comment>


Lessons I learnt from porting Diablo - <AUTHOR> http://petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2009/12/three-lessons-i-learnt-from-porting-diablo.html

<comment><USER2> Wasn't this posted to HN almost a year ago? Is there something that makes this relevant again?

<comment><AUTHOR> Was it? Might be nice if someone could find the comment thread for it.

<comment><USER2> searchyc.com found this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=975917>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for finding it. I thought HN doesn't allow duplicate submissions from the exact same URL. Weird.

<comment><USER3> It doesn't, but they expire. So once some time has passed you can submit the same URL again. Some things keep popping up here every few months, and some deservedly so. I do wish there was a way to get an autolink to the old threads though. As it is, someone finds it quickly enough, but why not automate it?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Former FBI General Counsel Jim Baker Chooses Encryption over Backdoors - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2019/10/former_fbi_gene.html <comment><USER2> This is why Tor and onionland is a lawless wild west. All so that journalists can report and trade documents, and so that repressive regimes can't easily censor access to news and information. This is the _cost_ of encryption: you get all sorts of scoundrels in the mix in the name of privacy and security for the masses. Some might say this _cost_ is too high: that scoundrels are running rampant and won't stop their criminal actions. But without this we get a broken backdoored Internet where no such privacy/security exists and could actually cause _more_ damage to society since spying would be rampant.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not to mention that for counter-intelligence the clues aren't the contents of a message but who is contacting whom, when, how often, and from where, most all of which can be determined from network traffic monitoring even if the contents of the message can't be read. In fact, if someone who shouldn't be contacting someone in China/Middle East/etc is doing so using encrypted data, getting a search warrant should be easier. Requiring back-doors to encryption is just laziness on the part of Law Enforcement.

<comment><USER4> May I ask what's your background in law enforcement or the intelligence community, or in counter-intelligence specifically?

<comment><USER4> References to support the claims would also be helpful.

Sorry if that came across wrong. I may have misinterpreted the comment as being from the perspective of someone with work experience in these matters.</comment></comment></comment>


Fake news and false rumors reach more people than truth - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/03/largest-study-ever-fake-news-mit-twitter/555104/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> "By every common metric, falsehood consistently dominates the truth on Twitter, the study finds: Fake news and false rumors reach more people,"

They're comparing average views per factual tweet vs. average views per fake tweet. The problem with this approach is that a huge number of rarely-read factual tweets brings down the average.

To illustrate: consider a world where 90% of the people are sensible and only read factual articles, while 10% of the people are fools who read fake clickbait. Suppose 99% of tweets are factual, and 1% are fake. You would get the same result: average views per fake article are higher than average views per factual article. And yet, in this world 90% of people read only factual articles. So the statistic may not mean what it seems to suggest.

In real life, the long tail of factual articles is much larger than the long tail of fake articles. There are zillions of factual articles about product releases, or city council resolutions, or criminal convictions, or CEO replacements. So I don't think you can conclude from the study that most news being read is fake.</comment>


Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 Beta - <AUTHOR> https://pytools.codeplex.com/releases/view/103101#ReleaseNotes

<comment><AUTHOR> Two highlights from the release notes:

\- Starting with VS2013, we're happy to announce that PTVS is "in the box". This means when you install Visual Studio, there is a an existing "Python" download link which will install PTVS for you.

\- Mixed-mode debugging! Alpha introduced remote debugging on Linux and MacOS. Beta introduces mixed Python and C/C++ debugging. Please refer to the documentation or this video: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJaKQ94lBY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJaKQ94lBY)</comment>


Your photos, decentralized and encrypted – the tech inside Textile Photo - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/textileio/your-photos-decentralized-and-encrypted-a-first-look-at-the-tech-inside-textile-photos-9b0155c25f15 <comment><USER2> Looks like a good alternative to Google Photos and Instagram in one. I've signed up.

I don't have much in the way of technical comments, but wondering: Is(are) "bad content/users/communities" decided by law, majority consensus, or minority consensus?</comment>


No Man's Sky. A game about exploring an infinite procedurally generated galaxy - <AUTHOR> http://www.no-mans-sky.com/about/

<comment><USER2> Oculus support would be awesome</comment>


Tim Draper Gives Details on Initiative to Split California into Six States - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/23/yes-its-real-tim-draper-gives-details-on-ballot-initiative-to-make-silicon-valley-a-state/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=sfgplus&utm_content=FaceBook&%3Fncid=sfgplus

<comment><USER2> This is just an attempt to get attention. States can't just decide to split themselves into multiple states, it requires federal legislation.

The only state that can split itself up is Texas, which was part of the agreement to bring the Republic of Texas into the union. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_divisionism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_divisionism)

<comment><USER3> > This is just an attempt to get attention. States can't just decide to split > themselves into multiple states, it requires federal legislation.

It requires _both_ State action and federal legislation. But the State action is clearly a required step.

> The only state that can split itself up is Texas, which was part of the > agreement to bring the Republic of Texas into the union.

As your own link notes, that agreement _specifically_ cited that it could only be done subject to the requirements of the Constitution, which would seem to mean that Texas can do it _exactly as much_ as any other state can -- that is, with action of the State legislature _and_ the federal Congress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The status quo is just not going to work," said draper. "The existing breadth of industry and various interests in California is untenable."

Are there specific examples of problems that splitting CA would fix? It seems that a split would make many of these new states more extreme than the average of old CA, but perhaps that is a good thing.

<comment><USER5> > Are there specific examples of problems that splitting CA would fix?

Not anywhere in any article I've seen -- just more platitudes about the size of government and vague allusions to California being ungovernable. Particularly frustrating in an article that announces it gives details.

There are indeed some issues that make California difficult to govern, but if I were picking them out, I'd put limits to the power of legislators to make policy without supermajorities and the initiative process itself pretty far above the idea that we just don't have enough state lines in the region ("Hi, I think state government is a terrible problem and to solve it we should make 5 more of them.")

It seems like a good guess that what Draper really means by "ungovernable" is that as the balance of power and philosophy now lies, there are some personal business or political goals that he's unable to bring to pass, despite significant wealth or influence.

<comment><USER6> My guess is that this is all about Silicon Valley secession and the five other states really just serve to make it seem more reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > He expects the citizens to crowdsource many of the ideas around water > rights…

Does that even mean something?

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm curious how much agriculture propped up the California economy during the last few tech busts. As a California native, the divisions are naive bordering on idiotic. A state of Silicon Valley that were to have a tech downturn would have serious problems with a lack of diversity in industry.

But, hey, Tim Draper has way more money than I do and California has a history of letting those with lots of money float silly ideas.

<comment><USER9> Agriculture in California is relatively unimportant, according to 2008 BEA statistics cited at [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gross_Domestic_Product_of_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gross_Domestic_Product_of_California_2008_%28millions_of_current_dollars%29.svg) \- just 2% of California's notional GDP. I think I have read 4% from another source, but either way it is marginal.

I tend to think that the comments on electoral statistics have this right. It is an attempt to tilt the Senate and Electoral College.

<comment><USER10> It may be economically not significant, but its a huge pile of food.

I live on the east coast, and much of my food is _still_ from California farms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really doubt GOP will just lie down and let five more extremely democratic states happen.

<comment><USER3> I haven't done a detailed analysis of the political impacts, but just looking at the map and having some knowledge of the political geography of the State, it looks like it would probably be a win for Republicans in the Senate and Presidential elections -- going from one solid Blue state to a either a 3/3 or 2/4 split of Blue and Red states; the Blue _regions_ of California are largely concentrated in "Silicon Valley" and "West California".

<comment><USER12> Not sure about that. Breaking it down, I think that all six areas would go Democrat - the Republican bastions of San Diego, Inland Empire, Central Valley, and Greater SLO are all jerrymandered into the larger Democratic areas of LA, Sacramento, and Santa Barabara.

Silicon Valley: Strong Democrat

West California (Santa Barabara, right?): Medium/Light Dem

Jefferson (Humbolt?): Strong Dem

South California: Strong Dem

Central California: Medium Dem (because of Sacto)

North California: Solid Dem (?)

<comment><USER13> I ran the numbers based on voting percentages from the 2012 presidential election. I also added a rough guess at expected House members; hard to guess the breakdown given gerrymandering. Anyhow, yeah, this marginally tosses some electoral votes to the Republicans and you have to expect that South California would be more heavily contested so a bit of a tossup. Central California too, but South California is the big deal.

    	                 DEM 	         REP	        DEM %	REP %	 POP	        HOUSE
        Jefferson	         175,551 	 187,898 	48%	52%	 949,240 	1
        North California	 889,742 	 599,778 	60%	40%	 3,742,229 	5
        Central California	 542,933 	 573,944 	49%	51%	 4,124,776 	5
        Silicon Valley	 1,904,135 	 608,154 	76%	24%	 6,597,332 	9
        West California	 2,543,219 	 1,157,864 	69%	31%	 11,335,455 	15
        South California	 1,798,705 	 1,712,320 	51%	49%	 10,504,924 	14

<comment><USER3> > I ran the numbers based on voting percentages from the 2012 presidential > election.

The 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections (that is, the votes for President specifically, not the 2008 and 2012 elections in general) have most parts of the state voting substantially more Democratic than normal (either past Presidential elections or non-Presidential elections in the same period.)

That may be a durable Presidential realignment, but I'd be a bit skeptical of that; even if it is, those last two Presidential elections are probably understate the Republican position for anything _but_ Presidential elections (if its not a durable Presidential realignment, it overstates the Republican position even there.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Incomplete list of things that most certainly won't happen: this.

</comment><comment><USER15> This will amount to exactly nothing.

<comment><USER16> no this is about over regulation massive corruption and complete lack of any in sac or southern to address the real issues facing the people here, its about lack of representation and those who wish to free themselves from the out of control government, liberals = ignore corruption because they worship the institutions of government . The Jefferson State lives here. [http://youtu.be/MMnRZXz51WE](http://youtu.be/MMnRZXz51WE)

<comment><USER17> "Blank is about blank" statements have no real meaning; you'll rarely find them in use outside politics, where they enjoy extreme popularity due to the difficulty of their conversational negation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've thought for years, California needs to be two states, split at Monterey (everybody would want to keep Monterey so split it). The politics of Southern California (ok LA) is completely different from regular California, especially regarding water rights.

<comment><USER19> Those are the Ecotopia borders I believe.

It would not be a bad idea to hand over an area east of Sacramento to be joined with Nevada.

As far as naming goes, Silicon Valley sucks. Silicon Valley is too small to be a viable state economically. A state needs some diversity in it. A coastal chunk from Monterrey Bay north up to and including Napa would be more realistic but that is not Silicon Valley.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is a reason Washington, D.C. Does not have voting rights or substantive representation in congress and that is that republicans don't want to give more votes to democrats. Republicans would never let something like this happen

</comment><comment><USER21> Anyone want to explain the significance of their chosen boundaries to a non- Californian?

<comment><USER22> My best guess as a non-Californian.

Top Blue - I believe this is a mountainous region, not much industry.

Purple - Massive forest area (on the coast at least), also small population and not much industry

Yellow - North Bay, San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Sacramento. Lots of industry, technology and money. Large population as a whole spread out fairly evenly across the region, so lots of medium sized towns and small cities (S.F, Oakland, San Jose, Palo Alto, etc.etc.). Industry includes the big names you know, Google, Facebook, Apple, as well as large research facilities (I believe NASA has a large centre there). Lots of Universities as well.

Red - Some farm-land, mountainous further inland. I believe cattle, cheese, and some fruit orchards.

Green - Great farmland. Grapes and wine region, orchards, lots of cattle land. Moderate populations, towns like San Luis Obispo (great part of California if you haven't visited).

Orange - Massive populations of Los Angeles also medium sized cities of San Diego, Palm Springs/Desert. Massive industry throughout the area serving the population and the industries of Los Angeles. LA is a massive manufacturing hub (clothing, automobiles, the list goes on and on). Massive sea port at Long Beach (there may be others too).

<comment><USER23> For the political side, here is a per-county view: [http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/in- calif...](http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/in-california- growing-diversity-first-made-its-mark/?_r=0)

On the practical side, a division into 6 parts avoids the usual North/South argument, or the less frequent North/Central/South version, and could be walked back to a 5, 4, or 3-way split.

That said, I recall a survey not long after Prop 13 that had Californians liking a 2-way split, as long as the part that each respondent lived in 'got' Disneyland, and the other part got Sacramento. This proposal seems about as likely to happen as that one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Guess he can't let Bezos and his dorky drones get all the media attention.

</comment><comment><USER25> Split into 6 parts? Why not start with 2 and see where you get?

<comment><USER26> Starting with 3 would be a lot more interesting. Los Angeles metropolitan area (Southland), San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland, CA Combined Statistical Area, and then the rest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Any chance us Cascadians can get a piece?

</comment><comment><USER28> > _federal authorities will have to buy more chairs for the Senate floor_

Oh the irony of this statement...

</comment><comment><USER16> rubbish it is possible but require a simple majority vote in both the state legislators and congress</comment>


It's 2016, did we fix the C10K problem? - <AUTHOR> http://idiallo.com/blog/c10k-2016 <comment><USER2> In 1999(!) the earliest version of the C10k paper I tracked down had this to say:

And computers are big, too. You can buy a 500MHz machine with 1 gigabyte of RAM and six 100Mbit/sec Ethernet card for $3000 or so. Let's see - at 10000 clients, that's 50KHz, 100Kbytes, and 60Kbits/sec per client. It shouldn't take any more horsepower than that to take four kilobytes from the disk and send them to the network once a second for each of ten thousand clients. (That works out to $0.30 per client, by the way. Those $100/client licensing fees some operating systems charge are starting to look a little heavy!) So hardware is no longer the bottleneck.

([http://web.archive.org/web/19990508164301/http://www.kegel.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/19990508164301/http://www.kegel.com/c10k.html))

If we haven't fixed the C10k problem with 17 years of hardware advancements, it's a pretty poor reflection on software engineering.

<comment><AUTHOR> When you get the one click wordpress install on some hosting companies, you also get a lot of preinstalled plugins.

These plugins only bloat your website.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention missing and/or poorly configured caching defaults...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The problem is, all those on shared hosting can't handle 100 concurrent > users without crashing.

This is not a configuration problem though, but a shared hosting problem. Most of the modern shared hosting is no longer a shared hosting. Instead, each client gets a tiny slice of server resources and never more, not even for a day. Their rationale for this is to host more clients on the same server. And they seem to be ok with clients leaving if their websites went down because of this. Some even make money selling such solutions, like cloudlinux.

</comment><comment><USER5> There needs to be a shared hosting static page generator solution. WordPress does have a plug in but the average user doesn't even know it's a problem.</comment>