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Cloudflare's AI Psychosis

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Re: Cloudflare's AI Psychosis

#81

Post by halJordan »

majke wrote: post #28
reisse wrote: post #11

> There was a time Cloudflare just made the internet better There wasn't. Cloudflare is a cancer grown too big. And it was always positioned to become one, the middleman between users and the Internet. It is already painful to browse web sometimes using the non-"standard" tools (that is, not a Chrome with Google account signed in, not an EU/US residential IP). What if tomorrow Cloudflare checks will require attested…

>> made the internet better One of the measures of "making The Internet" could be looking at RFC contributions: https://www.rfc-editor.org/search/?q=cloudflare

It could be but proposing a standard and getting it adopted by everyone else is its own monopolistic behavior. Everyone here shits the bed when google tries to do it for ad measurement and decloaking

Re: Cloudflare's AI Psychosis

#82

Post by minraws »

orf wrote: post #51
minraws wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bugs happen all the time yes, outages don't. If outages are increasing with scale you get 1 or maybe 2 free passes. After that you either have in-ept Engineering or just in-ept leadership. I used to be all in on CF a while ago, now I am moving off them almost entirely. Same issue with GitHub, I can understand if you can't build for the scale when you couldn't predict it but if after over 12-18 months things don't see…

To put it bluntly: that is complete nonsense. AWS has had more than 1 outage a year - is it not worth investing in? Are they not serious? Outages are just a specific kind of bug, often surfaced by the interactions of several discrete bugs. Saying “you’re not serious if you have more than 1 bug a year” is silly.

This might be rude but this is the reason we have shitty software everywhere. The "there can always be a bug, get over it mindset" is the reason software sucks, everything needs a dozen patches to even work and no one can have any peace in this business.

I honestly don't even want to debate this because I see no point, as honestly the side that would have said outages shouldn't happen is dead buried and out of a job at this point.

But,

> Saying “you’re not serious if you have more than 1 bug a year” is silly.

> Outages are just a specific kind of bug, often surfaced by the interactions of several discrete bugs.

Several bugs or 1 bug? you decide and tell me, when you have made up your mind.

Outages happen as a result of the system's design being shoddy in the first place, and an attitude where bugs shipped are acceptable because it's only a single component, rest of the system shouldn't fail.

It won't go down was the entire thing with microservices and "the cloud" I could link some blogs and brochures if you want me to.

I am honestly over the moon with these conversations on HN, really proves the point why AI is rightly replacing engineers in software, because there wasn't any engineering to begin with.

Imagine if a civil engineer said bridges fall it's fine for a few bridges to fall because bugs happen, and honestly bridge falling is just a kind of bug where several discrete bugs happened at once.

I am certain there is some room to argue about it, but what is clear is that if it was happening every single month you would have stopping using bridges unless absolutely necessary.

I am not sure if there is ever a reply for this honestly, I honestly don't even blame the people just the culture at this point. If that's what software is to some, "something that can fail at any time" and cloud's selling point is just fewer "switches to flip" I am sure I can't change that.

But I won't be deluded into thinking that software outages are just an everyday "bug" and it's fine to have several outages a year, it is the normal mode of operation in-fact no harm done.

Re: Cloudflare's AI Psychosis

#83

Post by password4321 »

Cloudflare failed pre-AI with Cloudbleed, which could have been alright except for how they initially handled it. In addition, a few checks & balances have retired or stepped back so there's nothing stopping AI amplification of that company culture.

They may succeed or not, but right now it's hard to stomach as a former fan. I see where a blog post like this could be coming from.

Re: Cloudflare's AI Psychosis

#84

Post by shepherdjerred »

reisse wrote: post #11

> There was a time Cloudflare just made the internet better There wasn't. Cloudflare is a cancer grown too big. And it was always positioned to become one, the middleman between users and the Internet. It is already painful to browse web sometimes using the non-"standard" tools (that is, not a Chrome with Google account signed in, not an EU/US residential IP). What if tomorrow Cloudflare checks will require attested…

> What if tomorrow Cloudflare checks will require attested and signed browser binaries?

I would take it off of my site

Re: Cloudflare's AI Psychosis

#85

Post by jokethrowaway »

aleda145 wrote: post #33

Hard disagree. Sure their docs are bad, and it's sometimes buggy. But to me cloudflare is actually innovating and trying to offer "new" infrastructure. Durable objects and workers are super cool. R2 has free egress, isn't it insane that they could pull that off? If what you want is a VM to run postgres then there are other offerings that would be much better. Not saying they aren't evil though, they probably are, but…

They have cool tech but they can't do product, like most of big tech.

Have you tried wrangler? holy

Hire enough product owners and that's what happens.

That's why they need to buy startups every once and then, to bring some good bacteria in their messed up corporate gut.

Re: Cloudflare's AI Psychosis

#86

Post by orf »

minraws wrote: post #82
orf wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it bluntly: that is complete nonsense. AWS has had more than 1 outage a year - is it not worth investing in? Are they not serious? Outages are just a specific kind of bug, often surfaced by the interactions of several discrete bugs. Saying “you’re not serious if you have more than 1 bug a year” is silly.

This might be rude but this is the reason we have shitty software everywhere. The "there can always be a bug, get over it mindset" is the reason software sucks, everything needs a dozen patches to even work and no one can have any peace in this business. I honestly don't even want to debate this because I see no point, as honestly the side that would have said outages shouldn't happen is dead buried and out of a job…

> Outages happen as a result of the system's design being shoddy in the first place, and an attitude where bugs shipped are acceptable because it's only a single component, rest of the system shouldn't fail.

This is correct for some classes of failure but not others. If your authorization system goes down, should you just let any request pass? No.

You also need to fail correctly. If we extend the civil engineering analogy, then that would mean fail safely.

Two trains derailed in the UK last week. Should we all abandon trains? No? Why do plane crashes happen? That’s the most safety conscious area for software and hardware.

Because failures happen. Everyone expects them. Bridges don’t last forever, they know they will fail after a specific time frame and so they design around that. Planes have triplicate systems everywhere. And yet, despite all this, failures still happen.

And the fact they know that bridges have specific failure modes and lifespans is the result of a long, long history of bridges failing.

Re: Cloudflare's AI Psychosis

#87

Post by daishi55 »

GPerson wrote: post #78
daishi55 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not directing this at you personally. But I've heard a lot of mediocre engineers whine and complain about PMs, MBAs, C-suite, etc. The best engineers I don't hear complaining much at all. Just a thought. And sorry but I don't agree that launching AI products in 2026 is not related to the market. I think that's the whole basis for the decision.

Do you think people whose circumstances are favorable to them are more likely to succeed and less likely to complain?

I think that as soon as you start viewing certain groups/categories/etc as bad and blaming them for everything, as many engineers do to the non-engineering staff at tech companies, you have stopped thinking logically and are just reacting emotionally.

"PMs bad, engineers good" is such a common idea in these spaces and it really makes me think less of the thinking skills of anyone who espouses it.

Re: Cloudflare's AI Psychosis

#88

Post by daishi55 »

ajkjk wrote: post #80
daishi55 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not directing this at you personally. But I've heard a lot of mediocre engineers whine and complain about PMs, MBAs, C-suite, etc. The best engineers I don't hear complaining much at all. Just a thought. And sorry but I don't agree that launching AI products in 2026 is not related to the market. I think that's the whole basis for the decision.

I didn't say that AI products aren't related to the market. The problem is not that they're AI it's that they're badly done.

Every cloudflare product I've ever used has been a legit delight to use. I use it for lots of stuff on my homelab. Everything works well and is simply pleasant. Maybe if you use it heavily for enterprise that changes, but it just hasn't been my experience.

Re: Cloudflare's AI Psychosis

#89

Post by minraws »

orf wrote: post #86
minraws wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be rude but this is the reason we have shitty software everywhere. The "there can always be a bug, get over it mindset" is the reason software sucks, everything needs a dozen patches to even work and no one can have any peace in this business. I honestly don't even want to debate this because I see no point, as honestly the side that would have said outages shouldn't happen is dead buried and out of a job…

> Outages happen as a result of the system's design being shoddy in the first place, and an attitude where bugs shipped are acceptable because it's only a single component, rest of the system shouldn't fail. This is correct for some classes of failure but not others. If your authorization system goes down, should you just let any request pass? No. You also need to fail correctly . If we extend the civil engineering a…

If trains were having fatal crashes every month I will and I think I speak for everyone of my friends in UK, they should stop using the train.

Same with airplane, but often thats the only solution if cloudflare is your only solution in your engineering problem I would much rather you re-review and reframe that problem.

Re: Cloudflare's AI Psychosis

#90

Post by orf »

minraws wrote: post #89
orf wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Outages happen as a result of the system's design being shoddy in the first place, and an attitude where bugs shipped are acceptable because it's only a single component, rest of the system shouldn't fail. This is correct for some classes of failure but not others. If your authorization system goes down, should you just let any request pass? No. You also need to fail correctly . If we extend the civil engineering a…

If trains were having fatal crashes every month I will and I think I speak for everyone of my friends in UK, they should stop using the train. Same with airplane, but often thats the only solution if cloudflare is your only solution in your engineering problem I would much rather you re-review and reframe that problem.

There is more than 1 fatal airplane crash per month, FYI. Same for trains. Same for cars as well for that matter.

How do you propose we travel safely?

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