Why should it be behind AWS or CloudFlare? Can't anybody maintain their own servers in 2024, especially when everything works and doesn't crash after a HN spike?

Not to pick on you in particular, but I hate this laziness trend from sysadmins that are the cause of the whole centralisation of the Internet. If you have the knowledge to build a SAN and entire architecture yourself, teach that to the youngbloods, instead of just telling them to get AWS credits.

Make the Internet decentralised again.

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Don't give a junior dev a cloud server, but teach them to administer a UNIX machine and they won't need free credits from anyone.

- Confucius