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 abov...
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
Comments
I've been frequenting this site daily for over 15 years now, and I don't think I've had error messages more than a handful of times in that decade and a half. Today was indeed one such time - which is what triggered me to check out this particular post. But at least in my experience it's not what I'd call "often". Maybe you're just very unlucky, or perhaps I'm extremely lucky... Who can tell?
I've been keeping track, it goes down often (checking from US East, US West, Japan, Australia, and NL)
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)
I believe it's just a virtual machine and IP addresses are not anycast; no need to check from multiple locations when you can reach the host and the issue is in it returning HTTP 5xx.
True, I mainly monitor from everywhere as a means of dogfooding my own service (and just incase HN gets replicas)
By SushiHippie 2024-02-2912:21 https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
HN runs on a single core, I doubt they'll get replicas
By rozenmd 2024-02-2915:44 I could make that happen, yeah
For the past couple of months I've had these errors multiple times a day, it's definitely often down now.
Months? I'd say I'm mildly addicted to HN and I noticed this week it was hit or miss, but only this week. Very surprised to hear you say months.
I confirm that “months” seems the right time range for me (accessing from Brazil).
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.
By neom 2024-02-2915:18 Do you have a VPN you can try on? I run a VPN connected to a San Fran server 24/7 on my mac and I very very rarely have issued with HN (or any internet issues at all tbh).
By 7thaccount 2024-02-2911:52 I get it happening every few weeks for a short amount of time it seems. More so recently (also been a site user for approximately 10 years).
By gpderetta 2024-02-2911:51 I had never seen it for more than a decade, but in the last couple of years it has become very frequent.
By acheron 2024-02-2913:30 Maybe somebody bumped the desk: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23472870
By verticalscaler 2024-02-2911:596 reply [flagged]
By huhtenberg 2024-02-2912:26 The message is different. It's explicitly mentions that you are being throttled for posting too much too fast.
By Hellokoloto 2024-02-2912:481 reply Im probably one of the worst people on hn: I create new accounts because i think it helps me to spend less time on hn but actually i just create more accounts... (i know i'm not allowed to, clearly i have a hn issue...)
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.
HN doesn't slow down or speed up based on the content of what anyone posts.
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.
By verticalscaler 2024-02-2920:331 reply What did I post in this thread, about people experiencing error messages and asking about HN being down, that is "off-topic meta drama"?
> as well as breaking the site guidelines in lots of other ways
In what ways am I breaking the site guidelines?
> What did I post in this thread [...] that is "off-topic meta drama"?
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
By verticalscaler 2024-02-2920:581 reply Am I factually wrong to say that the thread was silently disappeared from the front page?
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'm sure that you're asking all this sincerely, but I can't continue this sort of back-and-forth indefinitely. I don't mean to be dismissive - it's just that there are dozens of things clamoring for attention, and only a handful of us. Actually only one of us, since I'm the only mod who posts publicly right now. I can't descend into ever-finer levels of argument about this.
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.
By verticalscaler 2024-03-0112:441 reply > I've done my best to explain to you how you've not been using the site as intended
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.
I'll tell you what: if, out of all of the questions you feel I sidestepped, you'd like to choose one, I can try to answer it.
What I can't do is keep going in a back-and-forth where each response guarantees an even more time-consuming rebuttal.
By verticalscaler 2024-03-028:381 reply Dang, very sincerely, I don't want an argument either.
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.
HN is divided on divisive topics like that one, just as society at large is divided. The most passionate users on either side of the divide always feel like the community is dominated by the other side. That's an illusion, since the mechanism underlying this perception is the same in both cases.
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...
By verticalscaler 2024-03-036:02 That is great. Intelligent reasonable adults can agree to disagree politely about some hot button issue and the resulting discussion could still be good.
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."..every year before, where ramen eating was highly inaccessible & sexist. The article covers how difficult it's been & why this thing that started in 2015 is important, which you seem to scoff at. You know it's 2024 when someone will show up & grumble about 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."This site is a monster. "The crazy-shit capitalist-prick nega-voices are rabidly in control and will rabidly rate limit the shit out of anyone saying good progressive hopeful things. The mods savage any pushback or hopeful voices. Tech should be a place for positivity & health & growth. It should a place for what if. The endless reign of the negative voices is hell. Clipping the good people without any regard endlessly is hell. This site is hell.. There is no accountability for what is silenced here, and what is silenced here is the push for the good, the push for the hopeful." How do we resist this hell? How do we start honest good? Fuck negativity, fuck this hell, fuck these people. Do good anyways, even if these trashweasel crapheels keep rate limiting you for daring to speak for good & hope."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.
Careful of what you think while you are browsing the site, I've heard that they have some new tracking technology that downloads itself into your brain and turns it into a web socket to add delays to your requests, so you don't feel like posting anymore.
Truly scary stuff.
By verticalscaler 2024-02-2912:071 reply I love you too.
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.
By xandrius 2024-02-2919:23 Can you provide sources about this? If it's actually widely discussed it should be easy.
Nope, when you get rate limited there is a different message and it seems to only apply to posting.
No conspiracy needed, it's just more unstable lately, I've noticed it as well the past few months.
By cutemonster 2024-02-2912:162 reply At the same time, interesting that downtime can give rise to conspiracy theories.
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 :-)
By willis936 2024-02-2912:21 It's a bit of confirmation bias and recency bias. Uncorrelated things might appear correlated if you limit yourself to a small sample size.
By verticalscaler 2024-02-2912:221 reply This is a misuse of the word conspiracy. Hopefully a good faith one.
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.
By cutemonster 2024-02-2915:18 Oh sorry I don't think you are. I've probably thought in similar ways some other times, elsewhere about something else. Maybe most do, some times.
(Hmm looking in the dictionary, I think it looks like an ok word choice?)
By verticalscaler 2024-02-2912:112 reply How come I was able to browse HN just fine from another browser?
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. ;)
Were you logged in? When you're logged out, you get a cached version of the page. When you're logged in, the server needs to generate the page for you in case you hid something (or something else that might modify the page).
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.
By verticalscaler 2024-02-2912:281 reply Very good point, I've considered this too. So far I've observed that I was simultaneously logged in with an alt on another browser and it worked fine.
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. ;)
I don't care what people think about $ISSUE and don't track it.
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.
By verticalscaler 2024-02-2920:39 Good to know that you don't track specific posters about $ISSUE.
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.
By piva00 2024-02-2912:21 > How come I was able to browse HN just fine from another browser?
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?
By neverrroot 2024-02-2912:08 This is a tricky one. IMHO I didn't, but I got flagged quite a bit recently, so yeah, this might explain it.
It is not often down, but it's very easy to hit its rate limiter when upvoting or commenting. Waiting a minute usually fixes it.
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.
By bakugo 2024-02-2911:54 I really wish the rate limit was relaxed when favoriting posts specifically. Favoriting a post counts as two requests since it redirects you to another page, so you'll often hit the rate limit page while favoriting, but the favorite still goes through because only the redirected request gets rate limited.
"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.
By EchoChamberMan 2024-02-2913:251 reply I can't find the source, but there is an article that mentions the entire site is moderated by 2 people. Maybe they've added a third since then.
I think the 2nd person in the article you read was Scott Bell, who stopped working on HN around 2019 [1]. Still, dang isn't the only moderator here [2], just the only one who posts publicly.
By EchoChamberMan 2024-02-2914:17 Ah thank you for the clarification!
By w-m 2024-02-2911:46 I've had that same message a couple of times over the last few days, while logged in (EU).
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]?
