Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson (Preview) Understanding the AWS Outage, Resiliency Realities and Innovation Urgency, F1 Heads to Apple TV
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Oct 24, 2025 The hosts kick off with a celebration of the NBA's return, criticizing ESPN's outdated broadcasts. Then, they dive deep into the recent AWS outage, exploring the complexities of US-East-1, the role of DNS in failures, and the challenges of maintaining network resilience. They discuss the trade-offs between efficiency and innovation, using Twitter as a cautionary tale. The conversation wraps up with insights on F1's new deal with Apple TV, and Ben shares his karaoke favorites and his experience learning Chinese.
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Outage Learned At Starbucks
- Andrew discovered the outage when his Starbucks app and The Wall Street Journal were both inaccessible.
- He only realized it was widespread after restarting his phone and confirming the app failed at the cafe.
Regions Reduce Latency And Operational Complexity
- AWS regions group services to reduce latency and complexity for applications.
- Keeping everything in a single region is cheaper and operationally simpler but concentrates risk.
Colocation Trumps Distribution For Many Apps
- Closely colocated infrastructure reduces hops and failure surface for complex, low-latency apps.
- Cross-region or multi-cloud setups add latency and operational complexity that many avoid.