[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Is HN slow today?
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Ask HN: Is HN slow today?
What's normally the snappiest site on the web has been consistently
taking ~5 seconds for each page load today. Extra traffic due to
Slack being down, perhaps?
Author : brundolf
Score : 146 points
Date : 2021-01-04 17:50 UTC (5 hours ago)
| xwdv wrote:
| Doesn't HN run on a single computer under some desk? I heard this
| one time but never verified. Maybe it's time for a proper cloud
| deployment?
| julianlam wrote:
| Maybe dang deploys to HN using ftp ha ha ha
| xwdv wrote:
| Deploy what? Hasn't HN been the same for years?
| easton wrote:
| There are new features/changes added often, many are
| documented here (not with dates, but you can get an idea of
| when things change based on the commit history):
| https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
|
| The most recent change I remember was when Twitter and
| GitHub posts were split based on the user the link belonged
| to (i.e. GitHub.com/dang is different than
| github.com/torvalds now).
| dang wrote:
| It's on a single computer, with a second as failover, but it's
| in a colo center, not under a desk. Well, I suppose it could be
| under a desk.
| TimWolla wrote:
| I remember something about the database being a flat file /
| flat files. Is that (still) true? How are the two machines
| being synchronized?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| You can always run it over NFS.
|
| I'd be curious to peek at HN Source code. I recall there
| was a version posted online but it's several years old.
| brd wrote:
| My guess is theres some sort of yet to be identified global
| issue. Seems Comcast has been spotty in parts of the US, slack is
| down, youtube was briefly inaccessible for me, etc.
| [deleted]
| peter_d_sherman wrote:
| It's not just you...
|
| I posted the following in the "Slack Down Completely" article
| (before this article was posted):
|
| >"For some reason, today, HN seems exceedingly exceedingly slow
| (to me) after logging in...
|
| Without being logged in, things are as fast as they usually are
| -- but post log-in, SLOWWWER THAN MOLASSESS...
|
| I tried this several times; why this is, I can only wonder...
|
| To quote Bill and Ted... "Strange things are afoot at the
| Circle-K..." "
| smoyer wrote:
| What if SkinWalker Ranch had become well-known before Bill and
| Ted?
|
| In any case, I thought it was just me ;)
| codetrotter wrote:
| > Without being logged in, things are as fast as they usually
| are -- but post log-in, SLOWWWER THAN MOLASSESS...
|
| > I tried this several times; why this is, I can only wonder...
|
| That is to be expected. Non-logged-in pages can be cached
| aggressively server side. When you are logged in much more has
| to be done dynamically.
|
| The fact that non-logged-in pages are still loading fast is
| testament to the fact that the HN devs have done their job
| properly with implementing caching.
|
| In the bad old days it would be slow for everyone whether
| logged in or not. In general I mean. I have only been on HN
| since 2009 and have been logged in (other accounts in the past,
| changed name) pretty much always so I don't know when HN got
| good at caching. I would kind of sort of expect that HN was
| actually like that from the beginning, given that pg came from
| having used Lisp in production at Viaweb and they got a lot of
| experience there early at how to do things fast (in terms of
| time to implement) and presumably proper (since they were able
| to compete with others).
| simplecto wrote:
| Lol. Circle-K indeed.
|
| I also had some craziness on LinkedIn earlier. I'm not saying
| it is related, just correlated maybe.
| Havoc wrote:
| >I also had some craziness on LinkedIn earlier.
|
| Sounds like a normal day on LinkedIn
| jolmg wrote:
| The log-in page before logging in is also slow to load.
| 1f60c wrote:
| HN caches pages for logged out users (since they'll obviously
| be the same for everyone).
| ibraheemdev wrote:
| Yeah, it took 5+ seconds to load this page.
|
| Edit: And 5 more to edit this comment
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Yup; consistently 7, 8, 9s to load every page.
|
| EDIT: 19s for that comment :/
| jgwil2 wrote:
| Oof.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| And now it's fast again.
| joshxyz wrote:
| Yea the slackers are not slacking today lol
| dang wrote:
| Yes, 'Who Is Hiring' days strain our server in general and there
| are a lot of other things going today, like Slack being down and
| the holidays being over. (Edit: and one mammoth 500-comment
| subthread that I've since split in two.)
|
| Sorry. I hate slow software.
|
| Edit: for the time being, I've lowered the number of comments
| that get rendered per page. That's helping some. It means you'll
| all have to click more More links at the bottom of threads to see
| all the comments. One day this will all be better.
| gist wrote:
| > Yes, 'Who Is Hiring' days strain our server in general and
| there are a lot of other things going today, like Slack being
| down and the holidays being over. (Edit: and one mammoth
| 500-comment subthread that I've since split in two.)
|
| You have access to both highly qualified people (that read HN
| and would most likely be glad to help you engineer a system
| (paid or unpaid) that would not be strained by usage) AND
| access to money if that was needed to improve things (and pay
| for a solution).
|
| Does HN still run on a server colocated in a data center?
|
| Is there a budget that you need to adhere to? YC certainly
| makes money and can afford to pay for a better setup.
|
| A bit embarrassing HN should not run as if if it was operated
| out of one person's basement, budget, or expertise. (And it's
| not 1996 either it's 2021 and HN does not even have anything
| but text).
| deeblering4 wrote:
| On the contrary... Running a site like this with the hot new
| rube goldberg stack and drastically overpriced VMs would be
| embarrassing.
|
| I find the simplicity here quite comforting.
| majewsky wrote:
| > A bit embarrassing HN should not run as if if it was
| operated out of one person's basement, budget, or expertise.
|
| To me, this is a hopeful message. It is still possible to run
| a website out of one's basement and have it become a staple
| of internet culture.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's single-threaded, isn't it? If so I'm sure the hardware
| is fine and not the bottleneck.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > Does HN still run on a server colocated in a data center?
| Is there a budget that you need to adhere to? YC certainly
| makes money and can afford to pay for a better setup.
|
| Why is a colocated server considered a bad setup? I think
| that actually getting the resources you pay for (instead of
| being on an overprovisioned VM host) and not being scammed on
| network data transfer fees is a great setup.
| js4ever wrote:
| I'm super curious about HN metrics like number of visitors, RPS
| at peak hours, details about the db, is it still flat files?
| jjice wrote:
| This is the first time I've ever had a slow experience with HN,
| so there is no need to be sorry. A damn fast website can have a
| few slow downs once in a while in my mind. HN is the opposite
| of slow software, and even at its slower moments, it still
| beats the majority of the modern web (looking at you, Reddit
| redesign).
| dang wrote:
| It's all relative. I find it too damn slow!
| hu3 wrote:
| It's still pretty fast for me. I wouldn't have noticed if not
| for this post.
|
| You guys rock!
| EpicEng wrote:
| No need for the apology I think. You guys do a great job
| keeping this place simple and fast for us.
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. Page loads about 10 seconds, posts about 20 seconds.
| EsotericAlgo wrote:
| I've had some applications down today. The initial reports are
| date related issues with the New Year. I suspect that's incorrect
| given it's Jan 4, but an anecdote nonetheless.
| [deleted]
| jgwil2 wrote:
| Noticed this as well.
|
| Edit: 7+ seconds to add a comment.
| samizdis wrote:
| Markedly slower than usual here - South Wales, UK - and has been
| for a couple of hours.
|
| Edited to add: as per comment by @peter_d_sherman all slowness
| disappears if using the site without being logged in.
| 1f60c wrote:
| Not sure if this is related, but a traceroute is showing a lot of
| hops between my router and HN.
|
| Me -> My ISP -> (Cogent: AMS -> PAR -> BIO -> PAR -> BIO -> DCA
| -> JFK -> DCA -> ATL -> DCA -> IAH -> ELP -> PHX -> SAN) -> HN
| cure wrote:
| That seems a bit excessive. I have me -> My ISP -> (Level3:
| BOS, SAN) -> HN
| 1f60c wrote:
| Yeah... But now HN is fast again, FWIW.
| tyingq wrote:
| I think there may also be a general surge for HN since it's the
| "back to work" day after the holidays. Perhaps some largish
| portion of HN users didn't use it much over the holidays and are
| catching up on reading.
| [deleted]
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| I'm definitely betting on the slack outage factoring in here. HN
| is my go-to to see if I'm the only one having an issue, and slack
| being down is distracting enough, and disruptive enough, that I'm
| definitely guilty of browsing HN more than I normally would, even
| for the first day back after a holiday break.
| monkaiju wrote:
| Issues like this might be DNS related...
|
| If anyone needs to check the state of their DNS on a bunch of
| servers at once check out dug: https://git.kaijucode.com/matt/dug
| Triv888 wrote:
| I haven't noticed it being slow but it is better then failing
| completely at rendering the page (when it's under a heavy load).
| jedberg wrote:
| Yes, same here. I'm wondering if it is the post holiday rush?
| Everyone back to work and getting on HN (and Slack and YouTube
| and everything else that seems slow today)?
| Frost1x wrote:
| Would also throw in the pandemic factor.
|
| Whatever post holiday peak back-to-business load was before the
| pandemic probably just got a lot higher given the amount of
| people now working remotely opposed to before the pandemic.
| SllX wrote:
| Alternatively: HN is everyone's Slack fallback and we're just
| hard at work here.
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| Notion is sending out emails that their outage/slowdown is due to
| AWS outages but AWS status board is green and I haven't seen
| slack or anyone else claiming aws issues.
|
| > For the last couple hours, Notion has been down. This is
| related to some difficulties Amazon Web Services is experiencing
| today. As of right now, our engineering team is all hands on deck
| working to restore service. We're confident these issues will be
| resolved soon, but in the meantime I'm so sorry for any problems
| or inconvenience this has caused. I know this is not ideal as
| everyone returns from break, and we'll be thoroughly
| investigating how to prevent outages like this in the future.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I saw some errors on HN yesterday, for what it's worth.
| apta_ wrote:
| Does it have anything to do with what's going on now?
| https://downdetector.com/
| astroalex wrote:
| What is going on, exactly? Are there any theories?
| ct0 wrote:
| Though to pinpoint an exact issue, but i'd say that the
| return to work from a holiday weekend exacerbated whatever
| problem exists.
| Havoc wrote:
| Jikes. AWS, Google and Azure all spiking.
| SN76477 wrote:
| it isnt just HN. Slack is down, Notion (who is already slow) is
| somehow even slower today.
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| Notion emailed me saying it was because of AWS experiencing
| problems but no update to aws status boards yet...
| afloatboat wrote:
| The same question was asked when Google was down. Apparently this
| leads to a surge of traffic to HN because everyone wants to know
| what's up and this causes the slowdown. The recommended
| 'solution' is to log out so that HN can serve you with the static
| version of the site.
| ksec wrote:
| I think this is normal, when ever a crucial Internet services or
| Network is down. That could be Azure, GCP, AWS, Verisign,
| Cloudflare, DNS attack etc.
|
| A huge number of people comes to HN to check status. To the point
| HN report network / services condition earlier than any
| mainstream or social media. (Including their own Status Update
| pages ) Last time it was Google ( Storage Limit )
|
| This time it is Slack.
| tootie wrote:
| I haven't seen any issues with AWS. Slack seemed to be having
| it's own issues. Notion is having an outage as well. But
| otherwise, it's not widespread and none of the AWS services my
| group runs are having any issues. Sometimes these are
| coordinated DDOS attacks, but I can't imagine who would target
| Slack, Notion and Hacker News.
| mst wrote:
| I don't believe anybody's suggesting Slack and HN are being
| targeted, more that Slack being down means HN is being hugged
| to death by actual users.
| yreg wrote:
| ksec didn't imply hn is a DDoS target. They pointed out that
| hn is usually rather slow when there are largescale
| infrastructure issues, because people come debate about them
| here.
|
| I've noticed it many times in the past year.
|
| E.g. when Google services had the big outage, or when AWS US-
| EAST-1 was down, or when Facebook SDK broke all the iOS apps,
| etc.
| rozab wrote:
| When google went down recently, HN went completely offline for
| a while. I suppose this is a side effect of lying status pages.
| jgwil2 wrote:
| Slack seems to be back. Will be interesting to see how long
| slowness on HN persists.
| ksec wrote:
| And HN is back to normal as well :)
| austinl wrote:
| I use Hacker News as a quick benchmark for "how fast is the
| Internet here?" because the speed is so consistently good.
| Typically slow Hacker News load = slow Internet.
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Commenting seems gone now, too, links to search wtf?
| imperialdrive wrote:
| I see yours, and am able to reply. ...and edit... a second or
| so of lag perhaps. via Xfinity/SF
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Seems like I posted a comment to a withdrawn story.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| For me it was fine an hour or so ago when someone mentioned it in
| the Slack discussion, but it has steadily gotten more laggy as
| time goes on. It's sluggish now.
| josefresco wrote:
| Plenty snappy for me, although I wasn't on much this morning.
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(page generated 2021-01-04 23:01 UTC)