Why don't you Ajaxify HN while you're at it??
Why don't you implement AJAX support in news.arc? That way PG won't have to spend the time writing it...
So what happened to the HN server?
71–80 of 133 posts
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#72PG wasn't aware that PetSmart closes an hour earlier on Sundays, so he was forced to wait till opening this morning to get the additional hamsters needed to keep this place running.
amazing... Just amazing... Would you happen to know what breed of hamsters he is using?
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
How can Joe-random-user be certain the server is down?
http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/
http://isup.me/ (their official shortened link).
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The superior results from my browser's back button far outweigh the inconvenience of the expired link. I click on a link from the "Ask" front page, reply to the top comment, and my comment appears in the thread. Next I click "back" on my browser and I'm back at the front page of "ask". I do that much more often than I hit an expired link.
Still, why not link to a page offset and just show what is current? Or include it with the current linking and automatically redirect? Pretty basic ux optimization.
Because the functions which generate pages get garbage collected. Once the function is gone, there is no reference point.
I suspect hindering spam and vote manipulation plays a part in the architectural decisions. It also makes it possible to create different HN's for different users - e.g. the hellbanned, royals, and plebeians.
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#75I have only one portal onto the Internet - this site. I check it first thing and last thing, and when it was down today I had a weird epiphany - I did not mind. HN is not a service, its not a startup trying to get mindshare - its a (luvvie alert) community - and one where the downtime had a known and obvious cause and did not matter - rtm would fix it, I would catch up, I knew this thread would exist and I would stil…
It's curious, isn't it, that we still have "Home" pages. For a while there, Google Reader was my starting point, but nowadays I find myself starting off from HN. This must be what Facebook feels like to normal people, but without the insidious stalking and the dreaded obligations that come from surveillance features like "X is online NOW, you have to interact with him/her!" and "X has seen this (but has neither liked nor commented on it)". Also, I wish my Facebook friends would produce a link and comment stream that is even one tenth as interesting as HN ;)
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#76Saturday, I thought: "This guy (PG) is really brave, everybody is nowadays using virtualized server environments on mulit-core machines and PG just gets some bare metal and puts his app on one core and one thread. WTF, this guy is a genius, single-threaded apps on bare metal FTW, this is so great and I am doing this too." After seeing this thing down for several hours -- and Google hate downtimes, they punish you ins…
how did you know everyone uses virtualized server environments on mulit-core machines..
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#77PG wasn't aware that PetSmart closes an hour earlier on Sundays, so he was forced to wait till opening this morning to get the additional hamsters needed to keep this place running.
amazing... Just amazing... Would you happen to know what breed of hamsters he is using?
Cured djungarian hamsters, I believe.
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#78Fast is one thing. BUT I'd much rather get rid of the "this link has expired" syndrome. Fast is only impressive if the results are modern.
There are extensions that help with that.
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#79Fast is one thing. BUT I'd much rather get rid of the "this link has expired" syndrome. Fast is only impressive if the results are modern.
The superior results from my browser's back button far outweigh the inconvenience of the expired link. I click on a link from the "Ask" front page, reply to the top comment, and my comment appears in the thread. Next I click "back" on my browser and I'm back at the front page of "ask". I do that much more often than I hit an expired link.
That doesn't really have much to do with the expired link issue. That issue exists because the targets of links are stored as closures on the server. What you want is to serialize those closures into the URL itself, instead of letting the URL be a pointer to a closure stored on the server. In traditional web applications, you'd have to do that serialization manually (although if you've never used such a closure based web framework you might not even be aware that you're doing this, just like a C programmer who has never used a high level language might not consciously realize that he is implementing objects or closures or garbage collection manually -- or like an old Fortran programmer who is not aware that he is implementing recursion manually). The problem used to be much worse, but then PG did this transformation manually for the important subset of the site (most importantly for links to the comments section -- these links no longer expire).
Here's an example. Currently if you go to the home page and then click the "More" link at the bottom to go to the next page, and wait long enough, the more link expires. That's because it's currently implemented as something like this (not sure about ARC syntax, I'll use Scheme syntax here, but you get the idea):
(define (show-list-of-posts page-number)
... display the rest of the homepage ...
(link "More" (lambda () (show-list-of-posts (+ 1 page-number)))))
(define (foo page-number)
(show-list-of-posts (+ 1 page-number)))
There are some challenges when you want to do this transformation automatically, but they can be overcome.
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not trolling but just wondering. What added value does Ajaxifying the site bring to HN?
:) I'd instantly know when I get downvoted for saying something stupid ;) seeing submissions in realtime, reducing load on the HN server. Saving F5 addicts.
Good point on the F5.