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Tell HN: HN was down

news.ycombinator.com

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171–180 of 343 posts

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#171

Post by HanClinto »

randallsquared wrote: post #158
HanClinto wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you using to control this?

It's a setting available on the page you get from clicking on your own username.

Whoa. A website that cares about its users enough to _easily support limiting access to itself_?

That's so refreshing in terms of being a user-focused feature, and yet it stands in sharp contrast against today's engagement-hyperfocused climate. I never would have thought to look on a website's own settings page to limit my access to that same website.

I love it, thank you for pointing me to this!

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#172

Post by embedding-shape »

directmusic wrote: post #160
manbitesdog wrote: post #7

TIL I have a "open Hacker News" hand reflex

I'm glad I'm not the only one. If I type 'n' into any browser it autocompletes to HN.

Save typing hundreds of letters per day, and replace about:newtab with news.ycombinator.com, now you can just do CTRL+T :)

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#173

Post by sunrunner »

dwedge wrote: post #137
squeefers wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so youve got the willpower to do something about it but not enough to just stop doing it?

Have you never suffered from habitual reflexes? I blocked twitter for a while in my hosts file and a dozen times over those first few days I instinctively opened a new tab and typed twitter in

I deleted the YouTube mobile app a few months ago and I still reflexively reach for the app icon every now and then. Thanks YouTube Shorts.

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#175

Post by dang »

shlomo_z wrote: post #163
dang wrote: post #144

Yes, sorry! We're investigating, but my current theory is we got overloaded because I relaxed some of our anti-crawler protections a few days ago. (The reason I did that is that the anti-crawler protections also unfortunately hit some legit users, and we don't want to block legit users. However, it seems that I turned the knobs down too far.) In this case, we also had a secondary failure: PagerDuty woke me up at 5:24…

Crazy that Dang literally manages HN in his sleep! We all knew that but I haven't seen any confirmation before this.

failing to manage HN in my sleep is more like it

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#176

Post by embedding-shape »

1shooner wrote: post #103
manbitesdog wrote: post #7

TIL I have a "open Hacker News" hand reflex

If you're looking to put the brakes on that, I've used LeechBlock to add a 5-second timer to opening a new HN window (along with other block schedules). The timer even fails if it loses focus, so it really helps slow you down. https://www.proginosko.com/leechblock/

    echo '127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com' | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts
Does the trick as well :) For bonus points (and so you can't workaround it with your phone), do it on your router/switch instead.

You'll still open new tabs and go to HN, but you'll be reminded quickly, and every day can be downtime day \o/ (for you, personally)

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#177

Post by commandersaki »

dang wrote: post #175
shlomo_z wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy that Dang literally manages HN in his sleep! We all knew that but I haven't seen any confirmation before this.

failing to manage HN in my sleep is more like it

Do you have nightmares of failing to manage HN when you sleep too?

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#179

Post by dijit »

dang wrote: post #175
shlomo_z wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy that Dang literally manages HN in his sleep! We all knew that but I haven't seen any confirmation before this.

failing to manage HN in my sleep is more like it

We all have our moments, and I personally consider HN to be “best effort”, almost like a volunteer project. I’m not certain I’m correct: but thats the optics I have so my expectations are adjusted to that.

So don’t beat yourself up please.

When I worked for “SaaS unicorn” we typically had multiple levels of escalation, and acknowledging would have done nothing because the alarm would continue firing until fixed. Not sure what’s changed in 15 years of ops, I had assumed it would be better now- I can’t imagine silencing an alert totally by acknowledging it- if its still occurring.

I’m totally fine with how you handled it, if anything I am thankful. But that seems to be a system I would improve if I had the time.

“mute” is different than “resolve” to me, and both should exist. (Where mute is an acknowledgement of an issue as ongoing.)

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#180

Post by MikeTheGreat »

squeefers wrote: post #133
1shooner wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're looking to put the brakes on that, I've used LeechBlock to add a 5-second timer to opening a new HN window (along with other block schedules). The timer even fails if it loses focus, so it really helps slow you down. https://www.proginosko.com/leechblock/

so youve got the willpower to do something about it but not enough to just stop doing it?

To be fair, making a change (particularly changing a habit) takes time. Having something there to remind and nudge you helps make this easier, especially when you're tired, stressed, 'just looking for a short break', etc, etc.

It's like they say: "Your demons will comfort you when no one else will. That's why it's so hard to get rid of them"

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