Ask HN: Why is HN so often down?
It's daily now, that I'm seeing "We're having some trouble serving your request. Sorry!", maybe even 10-20 times during different times.
From Europe, especially during the lunch break hours, HN is down again and again. For instance as of the past 30 minutes, I see the above message more often than the expected pages. It's been like that also yesterday, the day before that.
I understand that this happens often based on searching, but I don't remember having it that often in the past.
Honest question: what happens, why do we get that message, especially during these times? Is there something that is going on the the early AM hours in the US? Maintenance work maybe?
Edit based on some comments below:
- could it be this has to do with being logged in or not? I will try to stay less often logged in.
- dang wrote: "but for those who are comfortable logging in and out: HN gets a lot faster if you log out, and it will reduce the load on the server if you do" (source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38309611)
- another reason could be rate limits, especially if not logged in
- rozenmd is monitoring HN, that looks awesome: https://hackernews.onlineornot.com/
- "Did you post something negative about Google/DEI? Or maybe just upvote it? Or skim one of those threads. There you go. Time out for you." <---- this is particularly disturbing IF TRUE
128 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 209 ms ] threadEDIT: I guess confirmation from dang isn't proof enough. Alright.
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On Feb 28, 2023:
> Hi sph
> Yes, you ran into HN's anti-bot software, which blocked your IP. Sorry! Our intention is definitely not to block legit users, but we have to be somewhat aggressive about detecting bots because we don't have much performance to spare.
> I've unblocked your IP. If you browse HN while logged in, that should immunize you against this happening again. Also, if it ever does happen again, you can unban your IP as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html. But you have to do that from a different IP address, of course.
> Let us know if you have any further trouble,
> Daniel (dang)
Emphasis mine.
But being logged out is more efficient for cached responses. The more load the site is under, the more this pays off.
It makes sense that they're both true - it's not a case of which is more recent, it's what problem they're solving.
The rate limiter is even stricter when not logged in — for a period I wanted to take a break with getting into online arguments, so I stayed logged out, which would cause my IP to be banned after a day or two (a bit annoying, though easily unbanned with the self-service system: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4761102) — IIRC dang confirmed that it would be better to stay logged in to avoid this anti-bot measure.
I guess that's the price to pay to have such a popular website that's maintained by a single person.
Why do you think, it is only one? There is definitely help with the moderation for example.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25055115
[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25235720
There was this recently:
A steep rise of Hacker News in Google rankings https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39423949
It's kind of expected behavior when there's a thread with thousands of comments (like when OpenAI shafts their CEO [0]), but the last few days seemed relatively calm.
So maybe the server is crumbling under the increase in traffic from higher HN rankings in Google [1]?
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38310213
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39423949
it definitely shows up a lot more via vpn
I open HN, idk, 10 or 20 times a day, I would guess I see the error message around 5 to 10 times a week.
Truly scary stuff.
P.S. - This is a bog standard moderation mechanism and well known and widely discussed.
Very nice and caring of you to tell people whose opinions you don't like that they are crazy. How kind.
No conspiracy needed, it's just more unstable lately, I've noticed it as well the past few months.
Nothing conspiratorial about it. I can see how it can just be normative moderation and them believing it is for the greater good.
All this talk of correcting bias never seems apply to oneself however. ;)
Logged out experience is different than logged in, others noticed it being unresponsive logged in as well so we can assume it's not related to your user, can't we?
I'm just making an educated guess since I don't know anything about the internals of HN, but it seems likely enough to me.
I also got the message on the same wifi network but not when browsing from a phone, suggesting an IP timeout.
It doesn't have to be nefarious. Dang has told me in his view I am misbehaving deep inside a Google thread that was memory holed from the front page. Maybe he was doing his legitimate moderation and also did the same equally to people who hurl personal attacks at anybody who is negative about DEI, who knows. ;)
What I care about is discussion quality on HN. What I track (or try to) is whether accounts are (1) posting high- or low-quality comments, (2) following or breaking the site guidelines, and (3) getting involved in flamewars.
As I wrote, it doesn't have to be nefarious.
As I also wrote at the top of the thread, seems discussing DEI at all will trigger it by definition as the pro-DEI cohort -doesn't even have to be the mods- will ensure this.
I have no interest in flame wars. This subject is brigadiered to the max. As a direct result I get a lot of personal attacks which you yourself dinged people for, and I avoid those interactions as much as possible. I'm not the only one experiencing this - it significantly hurts the quality of discussion. Whether intentionally or not you are simply letting that crowd very rudely shout down anybody who disagrees with them.
If anything DEI is in and of itself "low quality" or generally frowned upon please add it to the site guidelines.
Hmm maybe people are always looking for patterns (humans as "pattern finding machines"?), and if there's a maybe-pattern, the thoughts start flowing. (A good thing usually I suppose)
Maybe it's good to avoid accidentally creating patterns
Or, could be fun to intentionally create pointless nonsense patterns :-)
I'm fully aware that the pattern as I observed could be a coincidence. At the same time I have been able to browse logged in from another browser or my phone 100% of the time, so HN wasn't down, just for this user.
It isn't a stretch to assume the eye of Sauron fell upon me. Hence I offered people try it out experimentally and decide for themselves. Certainly we can agree more data is necessary, there is no need to paint me as paranoid.
(Hmm looking in the dictionary, I think it looks like an ok word choice?)
I do not get blocked in any way and i do complain about things. Bitcoins is one of my fav.
I originally thought your comment was /s but reading your comments below, you might relaly have an issue with overthinking this or being paranoid.
No one cares about comments in the first place, its not a lot of people. No one cares really about being negative about certain things. There are plenty of people constantly complaining about apple, google or whatsoever on threads.
And how important do you think you are? A discussion happens, people forget about it or move on, mos tof the time discussions don't change the mind of people anyway.
As huhtenberg points out, some accounts are rate-limited, but that doesn't have to do with the server being fast or slow or up or down. These two things are unrelated.
Edit: this is only partly related, but I need to let you know that if you keep posting off-topic meta drama, we're going to have to ban you. You've been doing this a ton over the past couple days, as well as breaking the site guidelines in lots of other ways, and I've already asked you once to stop.
> as well as breaking the site guidelines in lots of other ways
In what ways am I breaking the site guidelines?
For example, this:
"Why was this very thread silently disappeared from the front page? It is about downtime. Let me guess, the flame war thing got trigged again. Seems discussing DEI at all will trigger it by definition as the pro-DEI cohort -doesn't even have to be the mods- will ensure this. Some subjects are just sacred cows here."
Or this from yesterday:
"This thread had 50 points and was top 10 on the front page and going up. It has been silently removed from the front page. Poof. You all good with that? I think it time to get what's left of the press involved about the goings on here. =)"
> In what ways am I breaking the site guidelines?
Examples:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39527188
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39509831
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39509694
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39481796
The discussion in this thread is about HN error messages and downtime. I theorized that threads that trigger the flame war thing get disappeared and posters get a timeout.
How is this "off-topic meta drama"? It is the very topic of this thread.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39527188 (Google's Gemini Headaches Spur $90B Selloff) <- "Yes, you are crazy."
I shouldn't have taken the bait, true. I'd definitely like your guidance about how acceptable you find the post I was replying to that opened with "am I crazy". If I was a mod I'd be critical of it as a very low quality one to say the least specifically with regards to the way it is written and argued, rather than the position taken. Is this not a fair assessment? It passes your threshold for good quality comments?
In that very thread there are countless people who call anybody critical of Google/DEI paranoid and crazy. Why is this acceptable?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39509831 (Losing Trust in Google) - "In what universe is this a strong point." <- It simply wasn't a strong point, it was another low quality comment written in bad faith. Why is calling it out the only thing deserving of a note, it is worse somehow? Should have I used some other verbiage? Why is the comment I am replying to acceptable?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39509831 (Losing Trust in Google) - "He is a loser because he doesn't think like you?" A poster didn't like that thread critical of Google/DEI existing. It garnered plenty of comments and upvotes finding it interesting however.
This person wrote "It's paranoia, but it's also clickbait. We shouldn't give these losers a platform." <- This has no warning and no flag. I'd definitely like your guidance about how acceptable you find that post.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39509831 - (German Bundestag Passes Cannabis Legalization) "You're about to be downvoted and flagged by people who have never been to Berlin."
Subsequently the user got downvoted and flagged. An unpleasant exchange ensued between him and one of his censors who immediately called him a racist and argued in bad faith. I did not participate in any of that. I don't quite understand how calling people racist like that is not a clear violation of site guidelines.
I think you see the theme here but perhaps not. What am I incorrect about? Am I completely and totally off base in your opinion? I am pointing out absolutely nothing legitimate?
I've done my best to explain to you how you've not been using the site as intended. At some point I have to stop and leave you (<-- I don't mean you personally—this situation comes up a lot) to digest that and figure out, with the help of https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, what to do differently. If you sincerely want to do that, it won't be hard.
And completely side stepped all other questions, not about myself.
There's no argument to be had you can simply clarify these issues from your perspective for the benefit of all instead of tip toeing around them.
I don't think you are dismissive, it does appear you are avoidant, to a growing number of users.
That is also said sincerely - I'm sure from your perspective you are trying your best and spread thin - but we can be sure with or without me the thorny DEI/NerfedLLM issue will only grow over time and the lack of clarity only creates more problems.
Food for thought.
What I can't do is keep going in a back-and-forth where each response guarantees an even more time-consuming rebuttal.
The through line is the following:
There appears to be a cohort of posters who are heavily into the DEI philosophies for a plurality of reasons. This mirrors the goings on in various orgs and the rest of society.
It is in full display on the recent Google/Gemini threads for example. Off the charts gaslighting, name calling, and brigadiering. It appears as if you turn a blind eye to it or they learned to walk a very fine line and stay within your guidelines (following the letters, not the spirit of).
Imagine a certain type of bully in class who hits you and gets you into trouble with the teacher, plays innocent, and then mimes at you with a shit eating grin behind the teachers back as you are getting lectured.
Are you stretched so thin that you perhaps missed the intensity of this growing phenomenon? I can understand that.
If you can acknowledge that this is a real problem what is your attitude towards moderating it long term?
Many feel unfairly reprimanded by you for calling it out. You need to be aware of this situation and we all need to be able to discuss it in the open without the threads getting disappeared.
Otherwise tensions run high and you play whackamole with flustered posters and miss the forest for the trees.
I think the reason for this illusion is that we're all more likely to notice (and assign more weight to) the posts we dislike than the ones we agree with. Lots of past explanation about this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Respectfully dang, I think this particular group is really different for two reasons:
- Their philosophies stretch without limits to virtually all subjects and hence every discussion on the site.
- The bundle of rhetorical tactics and behaviors they've adopted to win at all costs (gaslighting, name calling, piling on, upvote rings, downvote rings, strategic flagging abuse)
Recent thread about "Girl Ramen" in Japan: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39574330 (flagged)
Poster auntywundrkind eagerly runs with it:
^ Note, nobody else mentioned wokeness.https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jauntywundrkind created: 8 months ago karma: 1583 about:
^ I know better than to engage with such a user. The ramen thread is flagged and gone now because of people like that. That wasn't an interesting one so no great loss but many threads and discussions are ruined with very little effort by a small number of such users.They don't need to outright dominate anything to trash the website. And your moderation hasn't caught him out in the 8 months this individual has been going wild.
That's all. On HackerNews now if people don't buy into the premise that Ramen is sexist the thread is removed. That's the reality now.
So how on earth could we discuss the controversial goings on in Google? We can't. You got boxed in as a mod, reconsider.
https://hackernews.onlineornot.com/
here's what it looks like on the monitoring side:
https://x.com/RozenMD/status/1763152885892727188?s=20
(HN is slightly more stable if you're logged out)
HN runs on a single core, I doubt they'll get replicas
But it's a great free service with no tracking/ads so I'm fine with that.
The posts for YC backed companies that are hiring (where the comments are turned off) are ads.
If you put it that way, the whole site is a giant ad for Y Combinator. It just happens to be a public service too.
It's also one of the few sites* i frequent where uBlock Origin says it's not blocking anything.
* Tbh the only other is Ars Technica, and there only because I'm logged in as a paying customer.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39506931
This message is a HTTP 500 error page. 5xx are backend unreachability-related, so likely "the app" dies and has a long-ish boot time, or start is delayed by waiting for cron event.