[peterwwillis]

Assuming the problem originates from something relating to eatabit's infrastructure, the important takeway (for me) would be: Depend as little on 3rd parties as possible.

I know this is not a popular opinion among the HN crowd, mainly due to the entire web's love of linking to some other site's js/css to offload cost from their own site. But this makes no sense; you're not really reducing costs, you're just delaying them.

People talk about how 3rd parties speed up development or (potentially) reduce costs. But if the success of your business depends on providing a service all the time that has to be reliable, the reliability of your product is directly proportional to the reliability of the 3rd party. And each 3rd party adds additional points of failure. If you don't control whatever service or product the 3rd party is giving you, you will be unable to even attempt to isolate and fix it yourself.

Typically the answer to this problem is 'buy a better service contract'. But if the 3rd party doesn't provide 24/7 365 support along with multiple contact methods and harsh penalties for failing to supply you with timely service, you're wasting your money. You don't want to be the guy who has to tell the CIO "Sorry, I can't get a hold of our service provider or they aren't giving me timely updates, so I do not know when our product will be up again."

[stevewilhelm]

> Depend as little on 3rd parties as possible.

This attitude has many a startup reinventing and supporting commodity infrastructure instead of focusing on developing unique products and value for their customers.