4 ms·

I don't mean to be inflammatory but what's the purpose of HN postings regarding sites being down? I've never actually been to nsa.gov and would have never know

I don't mean to be inflammatory but what's the purpose of HN postings regarding sites being down? I've never actually been to nsa.gov and would have never known it was down. I'm sure most of the readers are in the same boat. Even if I did access the site on a regular basis, I'd realize it was down and come back later when it might be back up. Sometimes my favorite coffee shop is closed. I don't walk around the neighborhood carrying a poster stating that fact. I've just never understood the purpose of these postings. "facebook" is down, "netflix" is down, etc. It doesn't actually accomplish anything.

wavesounds 13y ago
Well for the NSA it could be related to the most recent news (maybe its a DDOS by the Germans?!), thus its 'breaking news' about a hot story a lot of HN readers are interested in. For the other sites, its very rare they go down and its the best and brightest working to keep them up so if they went down the reason why is probably something that would interest the whole community.
- migrantgeek 13y ago
  "maybe its a DDOS by the Germans?!" That would be newsworthy however no evidence of this was presented. It was simply "this thing is down now". If a large site goes down, I would like to know what happened. I'd be interested to learn from the mistakes of others. This isn't the case with this posting or others like it. Posts of this ilk rarely have any more information than I could have received from a curl command.
  - wavesounds 13y ago
    I get your point but perhaps theres a sys admin monitoring a DNS server somewhere and realizes theres a bunch of unusual traffic then on his break he checks HN and realizes the NSA site is down, he then does a little investigation and wolla he connects the dots and has something he can teach the rest of us. It's collective intelligence if you will :-)
dmazin 13y ago
It's exciting for people. To them it's news, not a call for discussion.

wavesounds 13y ago

Well for the NSA it could be related to the most recent news (maybe its a DDOS by the Germans?!), thus its 'breaking news' about a hot story a lot of HN readers are interested in. For the other sites, its very rare they go down and its the best and brightest working to keep them up so if they went down the reason why is probably something that would interest the whole community.

migrantgeek 13y ago
"maybe its a DDOS by the Germans?!" That would be newsworthy however no evidence of this was presented. It was simply "this thing is down now". If a large site goes down, I would like to know what happened. I'd be interested to learn from the mistakes of others. This isn't the case with this posting or others like it. Posts of this ilk rarely have any more information than I could have received from a curl command.
- wavesounds 13y ago
  I get your point but perhaps theres a sys admin monitoring a DNS server somewhere and realizes theres a bunch of unusual traffic then on his break he checks HN and realizes the NSA site is down, he then does a little investigation and wolla he connects the dots and has something he can teach the rest of us. It's collective intelligence if you will :-)

dmazin 13y ago

It's exciting for people. To them it's news, not a call for discussion.