Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter Is DDOSing Itself

sfba.social

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

681–690 of 1001 posts

Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself

#681

Post by jjulius »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #474
impissedoff1 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be time to reflect on how much useless information we consume

So many things are useless, but still entertaining in one way or another. And then Twitter is used for "relevant" information as well, from emergency or transport authorities using it for quick information instead of having their own system to news of any kind or discussions and information exchange in different peer groups. Considering that they count all tweets being loaded towards the quota (for instance replies t…

>And then Twitter is used for "relevant" information as well, from emergency or transport authorities using it for quick information instead of having their own system to news of any kind or discussions and information exchange in different peer groups.

I really don't think it's wise to be putting so many eggs in one basket, convenient as that might be. This right here is a strong example of that.

Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself

#682

Post by oddevan »

AbraKdabra wrote: post #660
Topfi wrote: post #126

Speaking from very painful, personal experience, few things are more agitating than being forced to execute on something you fully know is a horrible idea, especially when you tried and failed to communicate this fact to the individual pushing you to go against your best judgement. Even more so when that person later loudly proclaims that they never made such a request, even when provided with written proof. I can of…

> I feel very sorry for the people forced to work at that company under that management. Forced? You know slavery was abolished a long time ago no?

"Forced" could also mean holding someone's visa hostage, threatening consequences in addition to losing a job, or just in general being in a situation where, while they are not physically or legally required to keep a job, they have no other viable options.

Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself

#683

Post by jjulius »

rsynnott wrote: post #440
sakopov wrote: post #359

What I find more ironic than this bug is is that all of these Mastodon evangelists still have Twitter accounts after their Elon meltdown. So much so that they even use it after Twitter stopped public access.

I’ve been off Twitter since naughty ol’ mr car started his war on the journalists (I did return briefly to make a silly joke when he briefly banned mention of the dread term ‘mastodon’). I’ve kept the account, because, well, I’ve had it for over 15 years (back when they had a visible auto-incrementing numeric ID it was six figures), and maybe at some point he’ll lose interest and Twitter will return to semi-competent…

Because maybe it'd be better if we stopped giving him attention. He thrives on it in a negative way.

Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself

#684

Post by IntelMiner »

FranksTV wrote: post #658
lolinder wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 80% of Twitter was laid off or quit. I think it's a reasonable supposition that a good number of those were critical personnel who felt they could get a better deal somewhere else.

"But the code is self-documenting!"

No matter how good your documentation or comments are, that doesn't mean whoever is left holding the bag will understand it. Or at least not in the amount of time it would take to keep it from exploding

I understand the abstracted theory of how a nuclear power plant works (uranium heats water -> makes steam -> drives turbines etc) but if you sat me down at the control console and asked me to restart a reactor? Yeah I'd have no idea where to even begin. Even if I had a manual as thick as a fridge to (slowly) flick through

Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself

#685

Post by BeefWellington »

andsoitis wrote: post #578
tadfisher wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a non-sequitir. You can be at the top of your field and not completely understand a complex system. Also, the right people may not have even been involved in the implementation of this "feature".

> You can be at the top of your field and not completely understand a complex system. The tweet reads: "Twitter is firing off about 10 requests a second to itself to try and fetch content that never arrives because Elon's latest genius innovation is to block people from being able to read Twitter without logging in." Does that strike you as complex? I mean, surely they had the context (need to log in) because it was…

It's not obvious. Per Mudge's whistleblowing, Twitter didn't have a test environment so it's entirely possible they had no idea this would happen.[1]

[1]: https://www.wired.com/story/mudge-twitter-whistleblower-secu...

Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself

#686

Post by lanstin »

chris_wot wrote: post #648
sigzero wrote: post #622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people at Twitter who understood the system and could predict the side effects were all fired or left. You have zero idea if that is true or not.

It’s likely. The number of people predicting degradation were wrong only on the length of time it took for the degradation to start occurring.

I think most experts were fascinated by the whole experiment as it is essentially gathering data on a subject we had theories on but no experiments.

I used to work at a company where both the main data center and the main dev office were in the flight path of a major airport. We joked that if the data center had a plane hit it we’d go down quickly but recover but if the office building got hit we be fine for a while but long term in trouble.

Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself

#688

Post by vba616 »

beebmam wrote: post #675
drekipus wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unions are for the people, not the company

This fundamentally misunderstands unions. Hospital unions often strike for the safety of patients, to stop unsafe policies by the hospital leadership.

On the other hand, some unions (mine) sign contracts that say they will not strike and do whatever they can to prevent one.

I haven't witnessed what happens if the members were determined to anyway, or read up on the circumstances of past wildcat strikes.

Also, the last time I saw something about my local hospital nurses' union in the news, they were alleging that the recruiting and employment of foreign nurses violated human trafficking laws. Basically, they signed people up from another country with a huge penalty if they quit early as "compensation" for the cost of importation.

To me, that strongly suggested the union was not playing a strong hand, when it comes to "unsafe policies".

Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself

#689

Post by wnevets »

ikrenji wrote: post #519
lmeyerov wrote: post #329

Apparently their 5-year cloud contract failed to renew today So, there may be a much simpler explanation for why their new rate limits on regular users to can-barely-scroll levels, and how that has all sorts of unintended consequences they weren't ready for

google wouldn't just shut off services for a big customer like that...

Don't you have to pay your bill to be considered a customer?

Re: Twitter Is DDOSing Itself

#690

Post by jrm4 »

sigzero wrote: post #622
martincmartin wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people at Twitter who understood the system and could predict the side effects were all fired or left. My guess is Elon said "the site's too slow!" Engineers noticed that the home feed request was slow. They didn't understand how it worked, had no tools to profile it, and were given an unrealistic deadline to fix it. So about the only thing they could do was issue multiple, parallel requests and hope that at leas…

> The people at Twitter who understood the system and could predict the side effects were all fired or left. You have zero idea if that is true or not.

Zero idea is a bit much. Seems like an entirely reasonable assumption.
Post reply on HN