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1. fallou+(OP)[view] [source] 2025-12-06 03:24:58
"My architecture depends upon a single point of failure" is a great way to get laughed out of a design meeting. Outsourcing that single point of failure doesn't cure my design of that flaw, especially when that architecture's intended use-case is to provide redundancy and fault-tolerance.

The problem with pursuing efficiency as the primary value prop is that you will necessarily end up with a brittle result.

replies(1): >>lockni+op
2. lockni+op[view] [source] 2025-12-06 09:30:03
>>fallou+(OP)
> "My architecture depends upon a single point of failure" is a great way to get laughed out of a design meeting.

This is a simplistic opinion. Claiming services like Cloudflare are modeled as single points of failure is like complaining that your use of electricity to power servers is a single point of failure. Cloudflare sells a global network of highly reliable edge servers running services like caching, firewall, image processing, etc. And more importas a global firewall that protects services against global distributed attacks. Until a couple of months ago, it was unthinkable to casual observers that Cloudflare was such an utter unreliable mess.

replies(2): >>fallou+T81 >>kortil+Xk1
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3. fallou+T81[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 16:55:40
>>lockni+op
Your electricity to servers IS a single point of failure, if all you do is depend upon the power company to reliably feed power. There is a reason that co-location centers have UPS and generator backups for power.

It may have been unthinkable to some casual observers that creating a giant single point of failure for the internet was a bad idea but it was entirely thinkable to others.

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4. kortil+Xk1[view] [source] [discussion] 2025-12-06 18:34:53
>>lockni+op
You do know that data centers use backup generators because electricity is a single point of failure right? They even have multiple power supplies plugged into different circuits.
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