If I were at Cloudflare I'd suggest calling these "geographies" where the magic still applies (any one of those geographies has at least dozens of component POP

If I were at Cloudflare I'd suggest calling these "geographies" where the magic still applies (any one of those geographies has at least dozens of component POPs that are invisible). The fact remains this is somewhat down in the docs because it is automatic and invisible to the point it works well enough where most developers don't know, don't care, and aren't exposed to it in any meaningful way. Contrast this with AWS where the first thing you are presented with is picking a region where everything lives, while not clearly and explicitly explaining that many things are ultimately dependent on us-east. Cue the shock and confusion when us-east has yet another issue and those in all other regions don't understand how and why they are impacted. You are correct about the free lunch, information theory, and physics at the end. I don't think a reasonable person can think when you write data to a pop in Tokyo that it could possibly show up in Chicago instantly. That is fundamentally impossible and always will be. I think CF does a pretty good job making it "magic" for most devs and use cases while explaining these fundamental realities and limitations to those who need to know (potentially) for whatever their application is.