Can we stop with the uptime percentages?

Can we stop with the uptime percentages?

The discussion on Hacker News questions the industry’s fixation on uptime metrics such as 99.9 % availability. Participants argue that these figures can be misleading, encouraging over‑engineering and ignoring real user experience. They propose alternative ways to measure reliability, like mean time to recovery or customer‑centric indicators, and call for a broader view of system health.