Interesting that it will allow compilation of PIE executables. This is a mandatory requirement for any binaries run on newer versions of Android (L+).

Is it for security reasons? I know that OpenBSD uses PIEs so that the runtime can randomized address space locations.

If you can survive a few minutes downtime, then you can use Amazon Route53 failover DNS (with health checks) combined with low TTLs to provide failover between DigitalOcean data centres for ~$0.50/month - this is how we structure our less critical APIs that are hosted there.

I agree though - it'd be great if DO provided a proper load balancing solution.

Mhm, I can do DNS load balancing now with any provider.

DO's main competition atm with price parity is Linode which provides single-dc HA load balancers. If I want to pay more I can use AWS, GCP, Azure, etc that also offer them. ;)

I'd really like to avoid DNS load balancing to failover within a datacenter at a minimum [in the event of a load balancer failure], ideally I'd like to avoid it completely.

I think this is the same content, different MIT URL:

http://engineering.mit.edu/ask/why-speed-sea-measured-knots