Usually you can find the reason for why a site is down by reading Hacker News comments, not the article. That's why downtime posts on Hacker News are useful.

Usually you can find the reason for why a site is down by reading Hacker News comments, not the article. That's why downtime posts on Hacker News are useful. I come to Hacker News to read comments about the issue when major internet news breaks, because it's likely that somebody with a technical background intimately aware of what's going on will post here. With one good self post to discuss the issue, there's a hub for discussion and often interesting technical information about the issue that gets shared that the general media won't cover. E.g. when Cloudflare recently had major downtime: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9842302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9842302 People on Hacker News posted explanations of what was going on and how to get around the issue almost right away, beating Cloudflare's own customer support blog by 3-4 hours easily. I remember it well because I had hundreds of customers contacting me immediately during that downtime incident. The information I got on Hacker News was crucial for helping me respond effectively & quickly during that crisis.