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So what happened to the HN server?
81–90 of 133 posts
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#82Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I know about hellbanned, but what are the royals and the plebians?
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#84Here is a curious thing--now that its up, checking http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg times out. And apparently only for PG. Other frequent commenters work fine.
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
:) 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.
F5 addicts will never go away.
They will, once you have a highly responsive single-page site. I think more responsivity can calm down even F5 addicts
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#86Saturday, 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…
Virtual servers vs dedicated servers has not much to do with reliability. Both go down. What you want to minimize the risk of downtime is redundancy, e.g. hot fail-over.
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're using google search, you're paying google in ad impressions.
And what do you think these[1] are? HN has ads, they're just less conspicuous. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs
Aren't those free for Y Combinator companies? Also you could just say the entire site is an ad for Y Combinator.
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#88Earlier 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.
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…
"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)."
I don't think this is strictly true. The comments and reply links simply link to a normal (non-closure) URL on the site and the page is generated from that URL in the normal manner.
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#89I 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…
I am not familiar with "luvvie alert"?
Re: So what happened to the HN server?
#90I 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…
Normal people? I just vomited a little. Thanks for ruining breakfast.