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Adrian Hornsby

@adhorn.me

Former Principal Engineer at AWS | I help software organizations anticipate, withstand, respond, and learn from failures using resilience and chaos engineering principles. Views expressed here are my own.

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22.10.2024
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Latest posts by Adrian Hornsby @adhorn.me

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Beyond Root Cause: A Better Approach to Understanding Complex System Failures Discover why traditional root cause analysis and 5 Whys frameworks fall short in complex systems. Learn practical alternatives and the 'Trojan Horse' approach to implement meaningful change in your or...

Just Out! "Beyond Root Cause: A Better Approach to Understanding Complex System Failures"

I'm excited to share my latest article, which explains why traditional root cause analysis and the 5 Whys approach fall short in complex systems.

I hope you enjoy it!

www.resiliumlabs.com/blog/beyond-...

21.05.2025 06:51 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Resilience Bites #9 - LinkedIn Rewind (week 14) β€” adhorn.me Discover the latest insights, innovations, and discussions about resilience engineering. Stay ahead with Resilience Bites.

Resilience Bites #9 - LinkedIn Rewind (week 14) is out!

I've discussed a few key concepts, including Sherlock Holmes' "Dogs Not Barking", the tension between high standards and adaptability, and why sometimes "turning it off and on again" contains hidden wisdom.

adhorn.me/posts/resili...

06.04.2025 09:11 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Holly smoke .. .I hadn't seen it. Now I can't unsee it.

26.02.2025 10:52 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

That's not what I mean. I just think it isn't easy as that :)

26.02.2025 07:47 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

(last) Anyway, thanks a lot for the feedback and for making me think :)

25.02.2025 13:26 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

(7/n) I'm not saying teams shouldn't be responsible, but I am just wondering if our traditional ideas about accountability need to evolve as these systems become more autonomous.

25.02.2025 13:26 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

(6/n) It's like trying to hold someone accountable for the weather. Yes, they can build the forecasting system, but at some point, the complexity makes understanding impossible.

25.02.2025 13:26 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

(5/n) But here's my struggle. As these AI systems get more complex and their decision-making more opaque, can we honestly say the teams fully understand what's happening anymore?

25.02.2025 13:26 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

(4/n) Your point about responsibility really got me thinking. While I love blameless postmortems too, the accountability question gets tricky with these systems. In theory, yes, the human teams should be responsible.

25.02.2025 13:26 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

(3/n) And good catch on the redundant "famous" - definitely missed that one in editing!

25.02.2025 13:26 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

(2/n) Yea, I should've been clearer about the difference between regular AIOps (where humans still make the final calls with AI help) and what I'm calling "meta-operators" (where the AI is actually making the decisions itself). Thanks for picking up on that while still following my main points!

25.02.2025 13:26 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

(1/n) Thanks so much for the thoughtful feedback, Dave!

25.02.2025 13:26 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Let me know how you like it or not please :)

24.02.2025 08:25 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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When AI Makes the Call Questions About Meta-Operators and System Responsibility

πŸš€πŸš€πŸš€New blog post! πŸš€πŸš€πŸš€

I have been thinking a lot about AI meta-operators, which are AI agents that will manage our systems and make operational decisions.

In this blog post, I am sharing some thoughts and asking questions.

I hope you enjoy it!

medium.com/the-cloud-ar...

#AI

24.02.2025 06:32 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Chaos Engineering in the Age of AI: Surfacing Hidden Complexity The rise of AI in software development presents a fascinating paradox. While AI tools make it easier than ever to generate complex systems…

πŸš€ New blog post out! πŸš€

This post discusses the 70% problem with AI-generated code, Bainbridge's automation ironies, and what chaos engineering can teach us about managing complexity in the age of AI.

I hope you enjoy it!

Happy weekend!

adhorn.medium.com/chaos-engine...

21.02.2025 13:35 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

In every system, something works.

Rather than asking what's wrong and how to fix it, ask what's working and how to get more of it.

13.02.2025 06:55 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

The best time to test your runbook is before the incident, not during it.

30.01.2025 10:04 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

"A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving."

- Lao Tzu

16.01.2025 05:16 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

β€œIn a wicked world, relying upon experience from a single domain is not only limiting, it can be disastrous.”

― David Epstein, Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

15.01.2025 05:16 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Yes, really good piece indeed.

14.01.2025 16:20 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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The Canva outage: another tale of saturation and resilience Today’s public incident writeup comes courtesy of Brendan Humphries, the CTO of Canva. Like so many other incidents that came before, this is another tale of saturation, where the failure mod…

@adhorn.me - another one stacked with greatest-hits: surfingcomplexity.blog/2024/12/21/t...

14.01.2025 09:24 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

That is pretty scary.

09.01.2025 09:33 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Will 2025 finally mark the rise of the Chief Resilience Officer?

01.01.2025 14:10 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

Right. The years and billions of dollars spent preparing are why Y2K didn’t β€œlive up to the hype.” They *fixed* it. Before it happened. Which is good. Yes.

28.12.2024 20:44 πŸ‘ 1498 πŸ” 267 πŸ’¬ 62 πŸ“Œ 25

😱 r/where/were

27.12.2024 13:05 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
James Cameron: The Lessons of Titanic and other Reflections Excerpt from: β€œRisk and Exploration: Earth, Sea and Sky” NASA Administrator’s Symposium September 26-29 Naval Postgraduate School Monterey, California I am also honored to be part of this august panel...

"Luck is not a factor. Hope is not a strategy. Fear is not an option."

spaceref.com/status-repor...

26.12.2024 15:30 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

β€œSome problems are better evaded than solved.”

Tony Hoare

26.12.2024 08:18 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Tony Hoare - Wikipedia

"There are two methods in software design. One is to make the program so simple, there are obviously no errors. The other is to make it so complicated, there are no obvious errors."

Tony Hoare

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Ho...

26.12.2024 08:17 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

"Awareness is the greatest agent for change."

- Eckhart Tolle

21.12.2024 09:13 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Amazon ECS now supports network fault injection experiments on AWS Fargate - AWS Discover more about what's new at AWS with Amazon ECS now supports network fault injection experiments on AWS Fargate

New HUGE Launch - AWS FIS now supports networking actions on AWS Fargate!!!!

Network latency, Network blackhole, and Network packet loss are ready to be used!

Long awaited. I'm super happy to see this one out for the end of 2024!

Have fun!

aws.amazon.com/about-aws/wh...

20.12.2024 05:50 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0