Tell HN: HN was down • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#301

Post by sizzle » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 3:38 AM UTC

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.

What if Dang made an AI agent of himself for when he sleeps?

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#302

Post by sizzle » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 3:39 AM UTC

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

Time to train an AI agent on your moderation activity and get some well deserved sleep!

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#303

Post by mysterydip » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 3:41 AM UTC

phantasmish wrote: post #298

jacquesm wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We pay with content and with the fact that we attract the talent that eventually ends up powering ycombinator investment rounds.

It’s ad-supported. Any post with comments disabled is definitely an ad. Probably a lot of the others are, too.

I assumed the main purpose was to show off the ycombinator batches when they launch.

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#304

Post by fouc » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 4:18 AM UTC

koakuma-chan wrote: post #296

seemaze wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curiously productive this morning..

I took a shower for the first time in one week

looks like a redditor snuck into HN

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#305

Post by yigithan » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 4:55 AM UTC

manbitesdog wrote: post #7

TIL I have a "open Hacker News" hand reflex

I stopped using google.com for Internet access check, I now use HN.

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#306

Post by arnavpraneet » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 5:41 AM UTC

seemaze wrote: post #285

jonny_eh wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your sleep is more important than our work distraction.

I was curiously productive this morning..

came back just in time for me to spend the first hour of my work

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#307

Post by abustamam » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 5:45 AM UTC

phantasmish wrote: post #298

jacquesm wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We pay with content and with the fact that we attract the talent that eventually ends up powering ycombinator investment rounds.

It’s ad-supported. Any post with comments disabled is definitely an ad. Probably a lot of the others are, too.

Your comment makes me realize that I consume HN differently than many others, because I've never seen a post with comments disabled and I've been around here for at least ten years. It's not that I don't think they don't exist — they obviously do because you're mentioning them. I've just never encountered one, primarily because I don't casually browse HN, ever. I subscribe to a pushbullet channel that notifies me when a post hits 500 up votes. That's it. The list of submissions on the home page (even on reddit) is just overwhelming to me so I use the pushbullet channel as a sort of community curated "best of" or "trending" signal.

Not to say that I don't procrastinate or waste time doing other nonsense. I can definitely spend a lot of time reading HN comments, as I'm doing right now.

Anyway,anyone who finds themselves with a problem with HN should try that out :)

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#308

Post by dang » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 5:59 AM UTC

sizzle wrote: post #302

dang wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

failing to manage HN in my sleep is more like it

Time to train an AI agent on your moderation activity and get some well deserved sleep!

We're working on it! well, some of it.

I'm pretty happy with how it's developing—the trendline is promising—but not ready to rely on it in prod yet.

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#309

Post by dang » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 6:00 AM UTC

wkat4242 wrote: post #287

dang wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

failing to manage HN in my sleep is more like it

You're still a miracle worker. Single-handedly managing a well-known fully user-contributed site not just technically but moderation in contentious times like these and still keeping it working well and encouraging a positive user community can't be an easy task.

Thanks, I'll take it! except for the single-handedly part - gotta share the love with https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=tomhow.

Re: Tell HN: HN was down

#310

Post by archon810 » Thu, Dec 18, 2025, 6:01 AM UTC

easterncalculus wrote: post #291

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.

I like hacker news but I don't think this site is worth getting paged over lol

You might be underestimating HN's popularity.