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Sunday is the best day for HealthCare.gov to go down for maintenance. Only 1-2% of your traffic through-out the week is done on Sunday for any healthcare. Plus

Sunday is the best day for HealthCare.gov to go down for maintenance. Only 1-2% of your traffic through-out the week is done on Sunday for any healthcare. Plus the system has trouble scaling when Obama was in office. So planned down time seems reasonable to flatten data and process files to and from the Exchanges.

croon 9y ago
They could phrase it better though. The downtime is announced as "Sundays, 12am-12pm ET". If there is, I'm not aware of any standard as to what that means.
- gberger 9y ago
  Uhh.. It means 00:00 - 12:00, every Sunday. From midnight to noon. The first half of the day.
  - yeukhon 9y ago
    More specifically, Eastern Time, for those not familiar with U.S. timezones.
  - croon 9y ago
    > Uhh.. It means 00:00 - 12:00, every Sunday. From midnight to noon. The first half of the day. Perhaps likely, but it's not as obvious as your phrasing makes it out to be. > To avoid confusion in, for example, an insurance certificate, it is always better to use the 24-hour clock, when 12:00 is 12 noon and, for example, 24:00 Sunday or 00:00 Monday both mean 12 midnight Sunday/Monday. It is common in transport timetables to use 23:59 Sunday or 00:01 Monday (in this example), or 11:59 p.m. or 12:01 a.m., to further reduce confusion. > There are no standards established for the meaning of 12 a.m. and 12 p.m. It is often said that 12 a.m. Monday is midnight on Monday morning and 12 p.m. is midday. http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/faqs/is-midnight-12-am-or-12-pm-faq-time http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/faqs/is-midnight-12-am-or-12-... It wouldn't cost them anything to be more explicit.
    - astura 9y ago
      We are talking about America, not the UK. "Sundays, 12am-12pm" has a well established meaning in the US. It's ambiguity in the UK (or elsewhere) is irreverent to a US audience. We should all move to 24 hour time, yes, there's absolutely no disagreements from me there. AM/PM confusion is completely unnecessary. However, 24 hour time is not used for anything in the US outside of a few industries (military, aviation, probably transportation). Not even train or bus schedules are given to the public in 24 hour time in the US (in my experience). If you used 24 hour time for anything at all while communicating with the general public you will confuse people. Especially the elderly. 00:00 is complete jibberish to the average American, so in this case they did the right thing given the audience. We do some (paper) logging at work and a (larger than I imagined) percentage of the workforce (including most people older than 50%) were very, very confused by it. (Even though the instructions are the very simple "if it's after noon add 12 to the hour.")
    - DonHopkins 9y ago
      It would cost them confusion to be more explicit, so they were as inexplicit and confusing as possible. And the more confusion, the fewer people will sign up, because confused people will plan their schedules around the wrong time. It's a brilliantly executed dark pattern! You'd think Karl Rove was still calling the shots.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  There is some international confusion, but every American will know what it means; 12am is always midnight.
  - comicjk 9y ago
    If you did a survey on this, what fraction of adults do you think would get it right? 80%? Remember, this system is supposed to be used by anyone, including the poorly educated and recent immigrants.
    - akvadrako 9y ago
      Well anyone who has ever encountered another 12am or 12pm before, which is fairly common. I would guess 99.9%
      - comicjk 9y ago
        If you assume that people remember the solutions to every problem they've ever encountered, I would not like to use the kind of user interface you would create! Here's the Wikipedia entry on the subject, which describes how 12am/12pm is actually a common confusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock#Confusion_at_noon_and_midnight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock#Confusion_at_noo... Incidentally, 99.9% is going to be a bad guess for almost any survey answer because of the "lizard people effect" (4% of US adults say that the country is controlled by lizard people, 7% are not sure).
        akvadrako 9y ago
        Dude, yes, more people will believe the Earth is flat than 12am in noon. The first time I worked outside the USA I was also pointed to that wikipedia article, but it in no way reflects reality on the streets.
        croon 9y ago
        > The style manual of the United States Government Printing Office used 12 a.m. for noon and 12 p.m. for midnight until its 2008 edition, when it reversed these designations.[14][15]
spdustin 9y ago
That is incorrect. It was running effectively without nearly that much maintenance even last year, and there is no earthly reason for a site to need 12 hours of weekly downtime. It's not as if there are floors that need to be mopped or shelves that need to be stocked.
modriano 9y ago
- What's your source for that statistic? - Is that for all Healthcare.gov functions or just for signups? - How do the scaling issues that were solved over 4 years ago matter now? - Has the lack of this extreme and unheard-of level of "maintenance" downtime lead to prior problems large enough to make this a legitimate action rather than another disgusting attempt to sabotage the American healthcare system by making it harder for Americans to sign up?
twobyfour 9y ago
For some sites only 1-2% of traffic is on weekends. But weekends are the only time many people have to research and select complicated health plan offerings.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Sunday mornings tend to be a convenient time for churches to do things like help people navigate the exchange. I'm not sure how much churches have done in past years though. Some information about how the site has been used during the announced downtimes in previous years would be a courageous act of journalism. Maybe some hero will tweet it so that all the online journalists can toss something up.

croon 9y ago

They could phrase it better though. The downtime is announced as "Sundays, 12am-12pm ET". If there is, I'm not aware of any standard as to what that means.

gberger 9y ago
Uhh.. It means 00:00 - 12:00, every Sunday. From midnight to noon. The first half of the day.
- yeukhon 9y ago
  More specifically, Eastern Time, for those not familiar with U.S. timezones.
- croon 9y ago
  > Uhh.. It means 00:00 - 12:00, every Sunday. From midnight to noon. The first half of the day. Perhaps likely, but it's not as obvious as your phrasing makes it out to be. > To avoid confusion in, for example, an insurance certificate, it is always better to use the 24-hour clock, when 12:00 is 12 noon and, for example, 24:00 Sunday or 00:00 Monday both mean 12 midnight Sunday/Monday. It is common in transport timetables to use 23:59 Sunday or 00:01 Monday (in this example), or 11:59 p.m. or 12:01 a.m., to further reduce confusion. > There are no standards established for the meaning of 12 a.m. and 12 p.m. It is often said that 12 a.m. Monday is midnight on Monday morning and 12 p.m. is midday. http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/faqs/is-midnight-12-am-or-12-pm-faq-time http://www.npl.co.uk/reference/faqs/is-midnight-12-am-or-12-... It wouldn't cost them anything to be more explicit.
  - astura 9y ago
    We are talking about America, not the UK. "Sundays, 12am-12pm" has a well established meaning in the US. It's ambiguity in the UK (or elsewhere) is irreverent to a US audience. We should all move to 24 hour time, yes, there's absolutely no disagreements from me there. AM/PM confusion is completely unnecessary. However, 24 hour time is not used for anything in the US outside of a few industries (military, aviation, probably transportation). Not even train or bus schedules are given to the public in 24 hour time in the US (in my experience). If you used 24 hour time for anything at all while communicating with the general public you will confuse people. Especially the elderly. 00:00 is complete jibberish to the average American, so in this case they did the right thing given the audience. We do some (paper) logging at work and a (larger than I imagined) percentage of the workforce (including most people older than 50%) were very, very confused by it. (Even though the instructions are the very simple "if it's after noon add 12 to the hour.")
  - DonHopkins 9y ago
    It would cost them confusion to be more explicit, so they were as inexplicit and confusing as possible. And the more confusion, the fewer people will sign up, because confused people will plan their schedules around the wrong time. It's a brilliantly executed dark pattern! You'd think Karl Rove was still calling the shots.
akvadrako 9y ago
There is some international confusion, but every American will know what it means; 12am is always midnight.
- comicjk 9y ago
  If you did a survey on this, what fraction of adults do you think would get it right? 80%? Remember, this system is supposed to be used by anyone, including the poorly educated and recent immigrants.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    Well anyone who has ever encountered another 12am or 12pm before, which is fairly common. I would guess 99.9%
    - comicjk 9y ago
      If you assume that people remember the solutions to every problem they've ever encountered, I would not like to use the kind of user interface you would create! Here's the Wikipedia entry on the subject, which describes how 12am/12pm is actually a common confusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock#Confusion_at_noon_and_midnight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-hour_clock#Confusion_at_noo... Incidentally, 99.9% is going to be a bad guess for almost any survey answer because of the "lizard people effect" (4% of US adults say that the country is controlled by lizard people, 7% are not sure).
      - akvadrako 9y ago
        Dude, yes, more people will believe the Earth is flat than 12am in noon. The first time I worked outside the USA I was also pointed to that wikipedia article, but it in no way reflects reality on the streets.
        croon 9y ago
        > The style manual of the United States Government Printing Office used 12 a.m. for noon and 12 p.m. for midnight until its 2008 edition, when it reversed these designations.[14][15]

spdustin 9y ago

That is incorrect. It was running effectively without nearly that much maintenance even last year, and there is no earthly reason for a site to need 12 hours of weekly downtime. It's not as if there are floors that need to be mopped or shelves that need to be stocked.

modriano 9y ago

- What's your source for that statistic? - Is that for all Healthcare.gov functions or just for signups? - How do the scaling issues that were solved over 4 years ago matter now? - Has the lack of this extreme and unheard-of level of "maintenance" downtime lead to prior problems large enough to make this a legitimate action rather than another disgusting attempt to sabotage the American healthcare system by making it harder for Americans to sign up?

twobyfour 9y ago

For some sites only 1-2% of traffic is on weekends. But weekends are the only time many people have to research and select complicated health plan offerings.

maxerickson 9y ago
Sunday mornings tend to be a convenient time for churches to do things like help people navigate the exchange. I'm not sure how much churches have done in past years though. Some information about how the site has been used during the announced downtimes in previous years would be a courageous act of journalism. Maybe some hero will tweet it so that all the online journalists can toss something up.