Reddit was down for over two hours • Hacker News Board

Re: Reddit was down for over two hours

#181

Post by ses1984 » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 1:57 AM UTC

joatmon-snoo wrote: post #119

opmac wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh... they could have rewritten the site from the ground up, including any sort of data migration, multiple times over by now. I have never worked there, but outside looking in, it seems like there is a significant lack of technical vision from them. Other big players like Facebook, Twitter, etc, are literally inventing pivotal parts of the modern web technical stack. What has come out of reddit?

> including any sort of data migration, multiple times over by now Someone's never done a data migration while serving 1M+ qps!

But they have had downtime, it's not like downtime for a migration would damage their reputation.

Re: Reddit was down for over two hours

#182

Post by Beefin » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 1:57 AM UTC

mike_d wrote: post #93

dymk wrote: post #12

Reddit is the only major social media/aggregator I can think of that actually has to go offline for scheduled maintenance still. I can’t imagine the kind of shitshow it must be internally. Imagine if Facebook or Twitter had to go down regularly for “maintenance”. Heads would roll.

"We are a startup that inherited a 15 year old website" was one of the things that resonated when I worked there. Facebook is Alexa #5 in the US and has ~40,000 employees. Reddit is #6 and has ~500 employees. Twitter is #17 and has ~4,000 employees. (Numbers taken from quick Google searches) They have some super talented engineers that work miracles with band aids and bubble gum. Edit: Yes I understand not all employ…

500 employees is still alot. Especially given the technology ecosystem that exists for leverage.

The revenue piece is an interesting one because i was an early adopter and remember the revenue struggle. Gold/silver doesn't cut it because it relies on generosity.

FB/Twitter are an ads business. Is that really not too lucrative of a field for reddit?

Re: Reddit was down for over two hours

#183

Post by bitwize » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 2:04 AM UTC

thrownblown wrote: post #61

Sendotsh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sign me up. I’d happily contribute to that as much as I can, whenever my parents aren’t using the phone line.

Don't forget to turn off call waiting. I always forgot to turn off call waiting....

Wait, you didn't add the disable call waiting code to your dial string?

Re: Reddit was down for over two hours

#184

Post by cheez » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 2:08 AM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #27

Y'know, the toll that all this activity takes on Reddit's servers gave me an idea for a sort of distributed Reddit. News links and stories assorted into topic-based groups, with the option for users to comment or respond to others' comments in a threaded discussion. It would be completely decentralized and belong to the users, not some central media company. We could call it Users' Network, or USENET for short. We co…

Mastadon. I was a Usenet user as well but it isn't user friendly to normies.

Re: Reddit was down for over two hours

#185

Post by sethammons » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 2:08 AM UTC

joatmon-snoo wrote: post #119

opmac wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh... they could have rewritten the site from the ground up, including any sort of data migration, multiple times over by now. I have never worked there, but outside looking in, it seems like there is a significant lack of technical vision from them. Other big players like Facebook, Twitter, etc, are literally inventing pivotal parts of the modern web technical stack. What has come out of reddit?

> including any sort of data migration, multiple times over by now Someone's never done a data migration while serving 1M+ qps!

I've come close to that many, many times with zero downtime. It does take planning, more than many folks would think. But it can be done as long as you think it through.

Re: Reddit was down for over two hours

#186

Post by rapfaria » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 2:09 AM UTC

StreamBright wrote: post #64

The productivity of IT teams skyrocketed world wide.

I remember reading that when a judge ordered Whatsapp to be taken down in Brazil for a few hours, the GDP through that small period went up by 2%.

Re: Reddit was down for over two hours

#187

Post by optimuspaul » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 2:10 AM UTC

Klonoar wrote: post #53

manigandham wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except UX is everything. 100s of billions in corporate value are based on nothing more than better UX. If only everyone who talks about usenet, IRC, and the rest could actually be bothered to update the experience to what modern users demand.

Citing UX in a thread about Reddit, the company with an almost universally hated redesign that moved away from a mostly text-based condensed format is... interesting.

I was going to say something just like this... but I think that the entire history of reddit UX has been terrible

Re: Reddit was down for over two hours

#188

Post by seanmcdirmid » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 2:11 AM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #27

Y'know, the toll that all this activity takes on Reddit's servers gave me an idea for a sort of distributed Reddit. News links and stories assorted into topic-based groups, with the option for users to comment or respond to others' comments in a threaded discussion. It would be completely decentralized and belong to the users, not some central media company. We could call it Users' Network, or USENET for short. We co…

How would upvoting work on USENET?

Re: Reddit was down for over two hours

#189

Post by mikekchar » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 2:11 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #55

bitwize wrote: post #27

Y'know, the toll that all this activity takes on Reddit's servers gave me an idea for a sort of distributed Reddit. News links and stories assorted into topic-based groups, with the option for users to comment or respond to others' comments in a threaded discussion. It would be completely decentralized and belong to the users, not some central media company. We could call it Users' Network, or USENET for short. We co…

So, who does the moderation, new group creation, and antispam? Those were always problems.

"'plonk' is the sound of you hitting my kill file" is what we used to say. It worked pretty well at the time. I've yet to see a moderation system that works better.

Re: Reddit was down for over two hours

#190

Post by inferiorhuman » Thu, Sep 19, 2019, 2:17 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #159

ryandrake wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been more honest of them to come out and just admit “yea, this new design is terrible but it juices our metrics and makes us more money so deal with it if you want Reddit to survive.” Also, Protip: in case anyone still doesn’t know, go to old.reddit.com for the previous, better interface. Who knows how long it will be kept alive though.

The problem with that is assuming the new design is terrible for everyone. It very well could be that the majority do like it, and it's a vocal minority that complain.

The redesign is objectively terrible, adding megabytes of bloat to each page load for the sweet sweet ad revenue.