All I can think, smugly, is that DNS, SMTP, HTTP, etc. don't "go down". Twitter should be a protocol, not a website.
Twitter was down
341–350 of 544 posts
Re: Twitter was down
#342Ok, this is too many high-profile, apparently unrelated outages in the last month to be completely a coincidence. Hypotheses: 1) software complexity is escalating over time, and logically will continue to until something makes it stop. It has now reached the point where even large companies cannot maintain high reliability. 2) internet volume is continually increasing over time, and periodically we hit a point where…
>July 11, 2019 7:56PM UTC[Identified] The outage was due to an internal configuration change, which we're now fixing. Some people may be able to access Twitter again and we're working to make sure Twitter is available to everyone as quickly as possible.
Seems #4 is the winner
Re: Twitter was down
#343All I can think, smugly, is that DNS, SMTP, HTTP, etc. don't "go down". Twitter should be a protocol, not a website.
Yes, I agree, and I invented a Netsubscribe protocol with a similar use. (There is also ActivityPub, but Netsubscribe is much simpler.) (And then there is other stuff where there are already suitable protocols for too, such as SMTP, NNTP, IRC, etc)
Re: Twitter was down
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
#4 I work at Facebook. I worked at Twitter. I worked at CloudFlare. The answer is nothing other than #4. #1 has the right premise but the wrong conclusion. Software complexity will continue escalating until it drops by either commoditization or redefining problems. Companies at the scale of FAANG(+T) continually accumulate tech debt in pockets and they eventually become the biggest threats to availability. Not the ne…
Can you clarify what redefining problems would mean (with an eg)?
Think of computer vision tasks. Until modern deep learning approaches came around, it was built on brittle, explicitly defined pipelines that could break entirely if something minor about the input data changed.
Then the great deep learning wave of 201X happened, replacing dozens/hundreds of carefully defined steps with a more flexible, generalizable approach. The new approach still has limitations and failure cases, but it operates at a scale and efficiency the previous approaches could not even dream of.
Re: Twitter was down
#345Ok, this is too many high-profile, apparently unrelated outages in the last month to be completely a coincidence. Hypotheses: 1) software complexity is escalating over time, and logically will continue to until something makes it stop. It has now reached the point where even large companies cannot maintain high reliability. 2) internet volume is continually increasing over time, and periodically we hit a point where…
> Just a series of unconnected errors at big companies
Except that "at big companies" is basically selection bias, problems at little companies don't get noticed because they're, well, small companies.
And the underlying issue of the "unconnected errors" is that software is rather like the airline industry: things don't really get fixed until there's a sufficiently ugly crash.
Re: Twitter was down
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another possibility: US (or other) authorities are requiring some sort of monitoring software or hardware that where disruption of service is unavoidable during install
Keeping that many mouths shut seems impossible.
Most people won't be directly involved in assessing or fixing the fault. "Sorry the network link went down, here is the after analysis report," seems like a reasonable cover. There are many espionage activities which are covered up, only to come out decades later.
But really, I don't have any evidence that this possibility is any more or less likely than any other.
Re: Twitter was down
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
idlewords, the user you're replying to, was listed as a consultant on the show
For a later season. This was one of my favorite scenes on the show.
Completely unrelated, but I find myself reading your post about Argentinian steaks at least once a year. It's perfect. https://idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_day....
Re: Twitter was down
#348The real question is, if twitter were to go down permanently, what social media tool would the president use? Would he switch to something else or not use anything at all? I can imagine whatever tool he were to choose would become popular over night.
I was gonna make a joke about how much hate Trump generates ruining a brand like that but then I remember Hugo Boss, BMW, IBM, VW and Bayer among others were all knuckle deep with the Nazi's and every single one is still a popular brand to this day.
Re: Twitter was down
#349Ok, this is too many high-profile, apparently unrelated outages in the last month to be completely a coincidence. Hypotheses: 1) software complexity is escalating over time, and logically will continue to until something makes it stop. It has now reached the point where even large companies cannot maintain high reliability. 2) internet volume is continually increasing over time, and periodically we hit a point where…
1/2) These are web apps. Big web apps but web apps none the less. We know what can go wrong theres nothing really new here. How would you quantify "too many pieces to make work". Is 1000 too many , 10000 ???? There are millions pieces of data on your harddrive and they work fine. In general the idea of variance can be solved with redundancy. Maybe there are not enough backups at twitter.
5/4) Incompetent people lead by incompetent people surrounded by yes men and a drug culture. Also having a company that demonizes conservatives which are some of the best engineers (scientist are squares naturally)
Human error is bound to happen and software is complex but so are rockets and supply chains. Things can go right and things can go wrong. Usually when they do go wrong there is a human error reason.
Does twitter foster a place where human error can occur more frequently that other places? I dont know. I have my bias about the company and any sjw company but thats very anecdotal.
Twitter worked yesterday and it doesnt work today. Doesnt really have to mean anything really important except for the fact that there is a blind spot in their process which they need to harden.
I guess the first person to ask is the dev op , then the developer. Something wasnt tested enough. That happens in commercial software, deadlines cant wait.
3)Russia / China / Iran ... stop watching CNN. You are parroting talking points. If twitter is crushed America could care less and would probably turn up sanctions, not lift them. Taking down twitter wont cripple anything in America except for certain marketers budgets.
Re: Twitter was down
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a later season. This was one of my favorite scenes on the show.
Completely unrelated, but I find myself reading your post about Argentinian steaks at least once a year. It's perfect. https://idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_day....
I just found and read that article yesterday. The writing is on another level.