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Hacker News was offline. Does it need Facebook to work?

by sys_64738 5y ago

gizmo385 5y ago
Hacker News worked fine for me during the Facebook outage.
- erikerikson 5y ago
  Worked for me too. Maybe though, GP is meta, about how psyops efforts moved elsewhere. Probably too silly but I found the thought fun. Hope you've enjoyed it too.
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  I could browse fine, but the one time during the outage that I attempted to post a comment it timed out.
- wil421 5y ago
  Didn’t work for me. The reason I figured out about FB being down was searching for HN being down.
  - patall 5y ago
    I learned on HN that Facebook etc. were down (at that very moment).
jeremyjh 5y ago
It was not offline. It was pretty slow - some requests failed entirely - but only for authenticated users which suggests the problem was server/database capacity as the unauthenticated pages served from cache were still very fast.
- jlgaddis 5y ago
  > ... the unauthenticated pages served from cache were still very fast. Wouldn't those have been coming from Cloudflare, though?
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    Hacker News has not used Cloudflare for some time. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18496344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18496344
lmilcin 5y ago
It does not. But a lot of people flocked to HN to see what is going on or because they did not have their other alternative.
- Permit 5y ago
  I don’t buy this. My impression was that the slowness was sustained during the entire outage and then instantly let up once Facebook came back online. I’m really curious why this was the case.
  - jjtheblunt 5y ago
    BGP side effect, like maybe FB DNS normally is answering (for some geographies) DNS queries reaching out to news.ycombinator.com ?
  - mysterydip 5y ago
    At the time, people were saying the slowdown went away if you logged out. I wanted to comment on things, so I didn't try it.
  - eecc 5y ago
    Trackers?
  - toast0 5y ago
    HN tends to slow down when there are very active discussion threads. The FB is down threads died down quite a bit when their site came back online. The threads for FB is back online had much sparser discussion. There's not a whole lot of mystery here.
    - Permit 5y ago
      Those threads weren't particularly active. They aren't even the most active threads in the last month: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=true&query=&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr... That said, I can't claim that those threads didn't have more readers than other threads. But I can't say they they did either. It also seems uniquely interesting that some people experienced the slowness but others did not.
tinuzzo 5y ago
Hacker News worked flawlessly for me. Maybe your network had an issue/
- jlgaddis 5y ago
  IT'S NOT THE NETWORK! Sincerely, A Network Engineer
- bagels 5y ago
  I definitely saw some error pages with the orange bar.

Hacker News was offline. Does it need Facebook to work?

gizmo385 5y ago

Hacker News worked fine for me during the Facebook outage.

erikerikson 5y ago
Worked for me too. Maybe though, GP is meta, about how psyops efforts moved elsewhere. Probably too silly but I found the thought fun. Hope you've enjoyed it too.
BenjiWiebe 5y ago
I could browse fine, but the one time during the outage that I attempted to post a comment it timed out.
wil421 5y ago
Didn’t work for me. The reason I figured out about FB being down was searching for HN being down.
- patall 5y ago
  I learned on HN that Facebook etc. were down (at that very moment).

jeremyjh 5y ago

It was not offline. It was pretty slow - some requests failed entirely - but only for authenticated users which suggests the problem was server/database capacity as the unauthenticated pages served from cache were still very fast.

jlgaddis 5y ago
> ... the unauthenticated pages served from cache were still very fast. Wouldn't those have been coming from Cloudflare, though?
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Hacker News has not used Cloudflare for some time. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18496344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18496344

lmilcin 5y ago

It does not. But a lot of people flocked to HN to see what is going on or because they did not have their other alternative.

Permit 5y ago
I don’t buy this. My impression was that the slowness was sustained during the entire outage and then instantly let up once Facebook came back online. I’m really curious why this was the case.
- jjtheblunt 5y ago
  BGP side effect, like maybe FB DNS normally is answering (for some geographies) DNS queries reaching out to news.ycombinator.com ?
- mysterydip 5y ago
  At the time, people were saying the slowdown went away if you logged out. I wanted to comment on things, so I didn't try it.
- eecc 5y ago
  Trackers?
- toast0 5y ago
  HN tends to slow down when there are very active discussion threads. The FB is down threads died down quite a bit when their site came back online. The threads for FB is back online had much sparser discussion. There's not a whole lot of mystery here.
  - Permit 5y ago
    Those threads weren't particularly active. They aren't even the most active threads in the last month: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=true&query=&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr... That said, I can't claim that those threads didn't have more readers than other threads. But I can't say they they did either. It also seems uniquely interesting that some people experienced the slowness but others did not.

tinuzzo 5y ago

Hacker News worked flawlessly for me. Maybe your network had an issue/

jlgaddis 5y ago
IT'S NOT THE NETWORK! Sincerely, A Network Engineer
bagels 5y ago
I definitely saw some error pages with the orange bar.