Cloudflare announced four major new features that could disrupt industries • Hacker News Board

Re: Cloudflare announced four major new features that could disrupt industries

#61

Post by robertlagrant » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:47 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #60

WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree obviously but I think the message is conveyed about what is interesting. They are competing everywhere CDN, Zero Trust / EdgeSec, Edge Computing, Hosting, etc... Anyone can think of any good historical good case studies on companies doing this in the past? Like becoming oversaturated, not focusing on one thing enough, or just growing like wild fire across spaces?

They seem to be massively diving into anything that can be computed/stored on the edge, and/or can benefit from a high performance network behind that edge. Which makes sense. Also, they make quite smart choices. An example of one very smart choice is that they don't do Docker for cloud computation, only Javascript/WebASM, and that means they can spin up code in Isolates in V8 that's much more lightweight than having…

Having said that, said smart choice is also an alternative source of lockin, given their egress charges are minimal.

Re: Cloudflare announced four major new features that could disrupt industries

#62

Post by nightpool » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:51 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #45

greatsaas12 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think calling it clickbait is too harsh. The right headline would be: "Cloudflare announces 3 changes which have the potential to disrupt 3 industries in the near/long future". So it's somewhere in the middle between "totally describing what's inside" vs. clickbait-y.

The R2 disruption is a reduction in cost. The target of the disruption is Amazon, a company that has decades of experience operating services at break-even or loss to acquire market share. Quite a lot of the coverage seems founded on the idea that the price difference is an unbridgeable moat for Cloudflare. IMO, let’s see. Amazon could lower prices, and/or Cloudflare might need to start charging someone something as…

If Amazon has to remove egress fees to compete, wouldn't that be a pretty significant disruption to the industry as well? The author's argument isn't that Cloudflare is going to take S3 out of business, it's that removing egress fees makes a whole new class of applications viable. I don't see how the S3 removing egress fees as well would change that argument—it would still be Cloudflare that pushed the storage industry to this new place. In fact, S3 having to remove egress fees to compete would be probably be greater evidence for Cloudflare's disruptive effect :P

Re: Cloudflare announced four major new features that could disrupt industries

#63

Post by atdrummond » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:51 PM UTC

nightpool wrote: post #58

atdrummond wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this downvoted? I understand the second paragraph might be slightly aggressive/inflammatory but the first paragraph alone is a legitimate critique. I would really appreciate if those who disagree would provide counter arguments, as both sides here offer the potential for an interesting (and important) dialogue about CF and their role in global Internet/WWW infrastructure.

"What may be asserted without evidence, may be dismissed without evidence". If someone is going to make the claim that Cloudflare is running an illegal protection racket and funds DDOS attacks against their customer's websites, then the burden of proof is on them to substantiate that claim. Otherwise, it's just pointless bad-faith remarks. And we can't just take the first paragraph in isolation—it depends on the seco…

As far as I can tell, he:

1. Never claimed this is actually happening - just that it’s a possibility he’s considered. I don’t think that these kinds of ruminations are so odious and dangerous as to necessitate them being hidden or removed from view.

2. Never claimed it was illegal. In fact, I’m certain the operation as described by OP would be legal (in many jurisdictions) unless there was another component involved, such as identifiable price gouging.

Re: Cloudflare announced four major new features that could disrupt industries

#64

Post by UncleMeat » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:52 PM UTC

atdrummond wrote: post #38

verisimi wrote: post #22

I see Cloudflare as part of the system of control of the internet. They can prevent sites from being seen or users from accessing the internet. I also suspect that their business model is the mafia protection racket - that they may run some of the bots that commit DDOS attacks - it would be in their business interests.

Why is this downvoted? I understand the second paragraph might be slightly aggressive/inflammatory but the first paragraph alone is a legitimate critique. I would really appreciate if those who disagree would provide counter arguments, as both sides here offer the potential for an interesting (and important) dialogue about CF and their role in global Internet/WWW infrastructure.

The second paragraph is more than "slightly aggressive" in my mind and it ruins the post. It is a wild theory based in no information at all. Cloudflare has a pretty coherent business model already.

Re: Cloudflare announced four major new features that could disrupt industries

#65

Post by atdrummond » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:52 PM UTC

verisimi wrote: post #54

atdrummond wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this downvoted? I understand the second paragraph might be slightly aggressive/inflammatory but the first paragraph alone is a legitimate critique. I would really appreciate if those who disagree would provide counter arguments, as both sides here offer the potential for an interesting (and important) dialogue about CF and their role in global Internet/WWW infrastructure.

Thank you. I appreciate you saying that the second paragraph is aggressive, but I think it would be naive to think that it isn't possible, or even probable - if there's money in play. A lot of anti-virus protection companies did do exactly this - create the viruses that made their products sell. Its really not without precedent.

I didn’t personally find it aggressive, I was just attempting to understand the motivations of your down voters.

Re: Cloudflare announced four major new features that could disrupt industries

#66

Post by robertlagrant » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:52 PM UTC

rudian wrote: post #56

nrook wrote: post #35

Cloudflare really is impressive. Who can forget when they disrupted the retro emulation scene, by protecting the website that drove a prominent emulation developer to suicide? Or when they disrupted Isla Vista by serving the sites where Elliot Rodger was radicalized?

One thing that concerned me is that CF kicked a few "bad actors" off their network One could argue that they have the right and/or duty to do that, but being closer and closer to a "internet backbone" provider, this can become scary. Would you like water to be cut off to "bad actors"?

I think as long as they were given State-supplied acting lessons, it would work.

Re: Cloudflare announced four major new features that could disrupt industries

#67

Post by devit » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:54 PM UTC

They claim R2 is only free for infrequent access, and the storage price is still really expensive compared to the cost of hard disks, so the potential for disruption seems quite limited.

There seems to be potential for big disruption only if downloads aren't counted as operation in "Above this range, R2 will charge significantly less per-operation than the major providers".

Based on the release it seems the thing that would be most disrupted is storage and distribution of huge files (one download operation, huge egress bandwidth), which would result in it mainly being used for Mega clones for paid piracy.

Re: Cloudflare announced four major new features that could disrupt industries

#68

Post by acdha » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:55 PM UTC

rudian wrote: post #56

nrook wrote: post #35

Cloudflare really is impressive. Who can forget when they disrupted the retro emulation scene, by protecting the website that drove a prominent emulation developer to suicide? Or when they disrupted Isla Vista by serving the sites where Elliot Rodger was radicalized?

One thing that concerned me is that CF kicked a few "bad actors" off their network One could argue that they have the right and/or duty to do that, but being closer and closer to a "internet backbone" provider, this can become scary. Would you like water to be cut off to "bad actors"?

Those situations aren't analogous: if the water utility cuts me off, my options are things like drilling a well, trucking in water, or moving. If Cloudflare declines not to do business with me, there are many competitors around the world who I can switch to at varying levels of service depending on how much control I want.

Re: Cloudflare announced four major new features that could disrupt industries

#69

Post by aaomidi » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:55 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #52

aaomidi wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because math doesn't break like contracts do mainly.

that doesn't address my point, since you can say the exact same about wherever the site is hosted unless you strictly self-host everything, which the vast majority of sites doesn't do.

To me there's a difference. Probably that terminating tls is base of CFs business model.

Or that I'm just being illogical. No idea, just...don't like it.

Re: Cloudflare announced four major new features that could disrupt industries

#70

Post by wpietri » Mon, Oct 04, 2021, 3:56 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #45

greatsaas12 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think calling it clickbait is too harsh. The right headline would be: "Cloudflare announces 3 changes which have the potential to disrupt 3 industries in the near/long future". So it's somewhere in the middle between "totally describing what's inside" vs. clickbait-y.

The R2 disruption is a reduction in cost. The target of the disruption is Amazon, a company that has decades of experience operating services at break-even or loss to acquire market share. Quite a lot of the coverage seems founded on the idea that the price difference is an unbridgeable moat for Cloudflare. IMO, let’s see. Amazon could lower prices, and/or Cloudflare might need to start charging someone something as…

This definitely isn't a disruption in the academic sense of the term: https://hbr.org/2015/12/what-is-disruptive-innovation

But even in the casual sense I don't think it's disruptive. They've introduced a competing service at a modestly lower cost. This won't put AWS out of business. Customers won't switch away en masse. It even won't make a noticeable dent in AWS's quarterly revenues.

So this isn't disruption. it's bog-standard business competition. Which I very much welcome.