11–20 of 142 posts
When the HN server starts running out of memory, it drops entries from this table. When your browser asks for an entry that is no longer in this table, you get the "Unknown or expired link" error.
This is a crazy design, but unless someone would like to patch the source code and get PG to accept it, we're stuck with it.
You get that when your session expires, which takes just slightly less time than writing a well thought out comment.
(= dead-msg* "\nUnknown or expired link.")
(defop-raw x (str req)
(w/stdout str
(aif (fns* (sym (arg req "fnid")))
(it req)
(pr dead-msg*))))
(def flink (f)
(string fnurl* "?fnid=" (fnid (fn (req) (prn) (f req)))))
The use of closures in this manner means that the code needed to handle say a form submission is really compact and set up when the form itself is generated.
This happens to me a lot while reading HN. I hit "More" and by the time I am done reading a few comments on a handful of entries, the next "More" has expired, and so has the current. This only happens on HN (at least to me).
It's an artefact of the way in which news.arc (actually srv.arc) uses functions for links. Here's the key code: (= dead-msg* "\nUnknown or expired link.") (defop-raw x (str req) (w/stdout str (aif (fns* (sym (arg req "fnid"))) (it req) (pr dead-msg*)))) If the fnid (function ID) isn't in the fns* list then you get the dead message. (def flink (f) (string fnurl* "?fnid=" (fnid (fn (req) (prn) (f req))))) In many place…
The HN server uses a table of closures to implement those links (the id code for the closure is the bit after fnid= in the url). When the HN server starts running out of memory, it drops entries from this table. When your browser asks for an entry that is no longer in this table, you get the "Unknown or expired link" error. This is a crazy design, but unless someone would like to patch the source code and get PG to a…
Perhaps one visitor is no great loss -- I'm hardly the personality around here that someone like patio11 is -- but I hope my contribution is constructive, and my comment scores have always suggested so.
However, subjectively, it seems like the quality of posting and voting has taken a sharp nosedive since the "Unknown or expired link" problems have become a several-times-per-session occurrence over the past few weeks. I can't help wondering whether long-standing regular contributors are being put off as a result. If positive contributors can't even log in to refute an objectively incorrect post with a verifiable link or downvote Redditesque diversions, a downward slide seems inevitable, and then the loss of high quality posting and voting becomes a self-sustaining decline.
I've been wondering about this for a long time, but just as a data point if anyone cares, it has reached the point recently that HN is basically unusable for me a lot of the time, and I really am starting to give up on trying and spend more time elsewhere instead. Perhaps one visitor is no great loss -- I'm hardly the personality around here that someone like patio11 is -- but I hope my contribution is constructive,…
The first complaints are from 1575 days (over 4 years) ago, including about the more button breaking, so I am guessing pg has no interest in fixing it.