Click Here Introducing kill switch
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Dec 16, 2025 Dr. Corinne Cath, a cultural anthropologist and tech researcher at Article 19, discusses the recent Amazon Web Services outage that disrupted numerous online services. She explores the dominance of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in cloud computing and its implications for democracy. The conversation delves into the real-world effects of cloud failures on vital sectors like healthcare and banking. Cath suggests alternatives like decentralized infrastructures and highlights the increasing political stakes tied to cloud monopolies and corporate control over online expression.
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Single Data Center Can Break The Internet
- A single AWS data center outage in Virginia disrupted huge parts of the internet and services worldwide.
- Corinne Cath explains that one old, default region handled 35–40% of AWS traffic, creating a major single point of failure.
Smart Beds And Everyday Tech Failed
- Corinne Cath and Dexter Thomas describe smart beds overheating and devices like Ring and Signal going offline during the outage.
- The incident shows even consumer gadgets and critical services can fail when cloud infrastructure breaks.
Azure Outage Grounded Flights And Hospitals
- Dexter describes a July 19, 2024 Microsoft Azure outage that grounded flights and affected hospitals.
- He shares personal urgency from that day to emphasize real-world harm from cloud failures.