5 ms·

HackerNews' hug of death hitting a site with normally 4k active users. Not that surprising...

by red_trumpet 4y ago

endisneigh 4y ago
it's plain text. it can be cached. it's embarrassing.
- blowski 4y ago
  Perhaps they've optimised for the normal levels of traffic they receive, not unanticpated spikes. That's hardly an embarrassing choice.
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    I'm not talking about the administrator of this instance, I'm talking about how mastodon is fundamentally designed. Even an iPhone could probably serve the (static) text of Tao's post to a million people on a 5G connection. Computers are fast.
    - blowski 4y ago
      I run Mastodon on a $5 VM. If I hit HN homepage, my site will probably be slow as well. I don’t see how that reflects on Mastodon though.
      - endisneigh 4y ago
        what am I saying is that there's a way to design a site on a $5 VM that serves static text that wouldn't be slow even if it was #1 on HN. if you disagree with that then we'll have to agree to disagree.
- shakow 4y ago
  Feel free to share your know-how https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    Mastodon's architecture inherently does not prioritize speed of first page load. Any PR would be rejected :D
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- patates 4y ago
  I thought what and when to cache was one of the hardest problems in computer science.
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    Something like Mastodon is likely 90% reads, or even more. How often is the OP editing their post? When they post, cache it. Kind of like what I did by including it in my original post. Caching is a hard problem because sometimes invalidation results in serious consequences, therefore knowing when to invalidate becomes potentially intractable. In this case there would be few, if any.
  - jibe 4y ago
    it was cache invalidation, and naming things. Just throwing stuff in cache is easy.
  - CyberDildonics 4y ago
    Why would it be difficult to cache static text?
drstewart 4y ago
The joys of federation
moffkalast 4y ago
Wow I didn't know Mastodon failed that massively in converting people from Twitter. Then again, maybe it's not that surprising.
- proto_lambda 4y ago
  That's not how the fediverse works, Mathstodon is just one of many servers in the network (running the Mastodon software).
  - shawabawa3 4y ago
    yes, and unfortunately almost all of the servers are unable to cope with even a moderate amount of traffic Twitter is a far better user experience in that respect, to the point that I actively avoid clicking mastadon links now because they fail so often

HackerNews' hug of death hitting a site with normally 4k active users. Not that surprising...

endisneigh 4y ago

it's plain text. it can be cached. it's embarrassing.

blowski 4y ago
Perhaps they've optimised for the normal levels of traffic they receive, not unanticpated spikes. That's hardly an embarrassing choice.
- endisneigh 4y ago
  I'm not talking about the administrator of this instance, I'm talking about how mastodon is fundamentally designed. Even an iPhone could probably serve the (static) text of Tao's post to a million people on a 5G connection. Computers are fast.
  - blowski 4y ago
    I run Mastodon on a $5 VM. If I hit HN homepage, my site will probably be slow as well. I don’t see how that reflects on Mastodon though.
    - endisneigh 4y ago
      what am I saying is that there's a way to design a site on a $5 VM that serves static text that wouldn't be slow even if it was #1 on HN. if you disagree with that then we'll have to agree to disagree.
shakow 4y ago
Feel free to share your know-how https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon
- endisneigh 4y ago
  Mastodon's architecture inherently does not prioritize speed of first page load. Any PR would be rejected :D
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
patates 4y ago
I thought what and when to cache was one of the hardest problems in computer science.
- endisneigh 4y ago
  Something like Mastodon is likely 90% reads, or even more. How often is the OP editing their post? When they post, cache it. Kind of like what I did by including it in my original post. Caching is a hard problem because sometimes invalidation results in serious consequences, therefore knowing when to invalidate becomes potentially intractable. In this case there would be few, if any.
- jibe 4y ago
  it was cache invalidation, and naming things. Just throwing stuff in cache is easy.
- CyberDildonics 4y ago
  Why would it be difficult to cache static text?

drstewart 4y ago

The joys of federation

moffkalast 4y ago

Wow I didn't know Mastodon failed that massively in converting people from Twitter. Then again, maybe it's not that surprising.

proto_lambda 4y ago
That's not how the fediverse works, Mathstodon is just one of many servers in the network (running the Mastodon software).
- shawabawa3 4y ago
  yes, and unfortunately almost all of the servers are unable to cope with even a moderate amount of traffic Twitter is a far better user experience in that respect, to the point that I actively avoid clicking mastadon links now because they fail so often