Cloud Chronicles
Insights on cloud engineering, DevOps, platform engineering, FinOps, and AI — delivered with clarity and a dash of wit.
Browse All Articles
65 articles
Everybody Built a Robot Shopper. Nobody Agreed Who Has to Let It In.
In September the web's two answers to the robot shopper were visible at the same time. Shopify's default enrols merchants in AI channels that do not exist yet. Amazon blocked Meta's agent and then said why. The agent, in a test published on 9 September, could not order a pizza. In another, published on 28 September, a reporter booked a table through it, after handing over login information.
The Spacecraft That Will Ignore Its Own AI
AstroForge is about to put a transformer model on a spacecraft and then ignore everything it says. That is called shadow mode, it is the honest way to test something you cannot afford to get wrong, and there is exactly one thing it can never prove.
The Photo That Can Prove It Is a Photo
Apple's new iPhones can sign a photo inside the camera sensor, an industry coalition prefers a label that travels with the file, and two hobbyists hid the seal in the pixels. All three can prove where a picture came from. None of them can say what was in front of the lens.
The Morning All the AIs Went Down
Three AI chatbots fell over in one morning and the internet picked a single villain, but the boring truth is about shared buildings and what 'redundant' really promises.
The Internet's Politest File Just Got a Doorman
Since 1994, the web's oldest defense against unwanted robots has been a text file politely asking them to leave. On 21 August, Cloudflare started writing that file for you. And on 15 September, for new ad-funded websites behind Cloudflare, the default answer to "may I train on this?" flips to no.
Everyone's Editor Tried to Help at Once
GitHub went down on 17 August for seven hours and forty-seven minutes. The thing that broke was fixed in about three. The other five hours were millions of code editors, all politely asking again, forever, because nobody had taught them to wait.
The Switch That Was Already On
Twitch added a switch that lets you stop Amazon from training generative AI on your channel. The switch arrived already on. And one line in the help article, which nobody quoted, says that whether your chat in someone else's stream gets used is a decision that stranger already made for you.
The Chip That Can Only Think One Thought
AMD bought a company whose pitch is four words long: The Model is The Computer. Not a slogan. They etch the model into the metal, and then you cannot change your mind.
Your Cheap Streaming Stick Has a Night Job
You did not buy a cheap streaming box. You took in a lodger who works nights. Researchers found generic Android TV boxes that rent out your home internet while you watch, then click ads on machine-written news sites once the screen goes dark. The fraud engine was built in a coding tool made for children.
The GPU Money Merry-Go-Round: How the Same Dollar Gets Counted Three Times
Nvidia invests in the garages. The garages spend the money on Nvidia chips. Nvidia promises to pay for whatever capacity nobody else rents, through 2032. The same dollar rides the AI carousel three times, and everyone claps.
Neocloud, Explained: The Cloud That Sells Exactly One Thing
A hyperscaler is a supermarket. A neocloud is the guy selling one incredible thing out of a garage. There are now more than a hundred garages, and the category passed $25 billion in revenue in 2025.
The Tool on 20 Billion Devices Just Closed Its Inbox for the Summer
curl runs on an estimated 20 billion devices, maintained by a handful of volunteers. A flood of AI-written bug reports just closed their inbox.