Twitter was down • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter was down

#91

Post by jachee » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:24 PM UTC

unwabuisi wrote: post #8

I wish they would bring back the fail whale!

Agreed! Their little amputated robot looks too much like the reddit Snoo.

Re: Twitter was down

#92

Post by smhenderson » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:25 PM UTC

maemilius wrote: post #24

anonymousjunior wrote: post #2

the internet is just falling apart these days

The internet is held together with pixie dust and prayers (sometimes duct tape and occasionally spit and rust).

I work for a small shop so we have to use a lot of bubble gum too!

Re: Twitter was down

#93

Post by eljimmy » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:25 PM UTC

lukey_q wrote: post #25

A lot of high-profile outages recently. Can't actually remember the last time Twitter went fully down. Have to confess I immediately assumed an issue with my own connection, even though every other site is working. Unrelated, but for some reason the phrase "I have no mouth and I must scream" just popped into my head

Yesterday, Stripe went down for a half hour, and the later yesterday, Google's Android Payment Validation API went down for more than 2 hours.

Stripe at least acknowledged their downtime. Google was oblivious, made no update to any of their status pages. Really horrendous awareness and support from Google per usual.

Re: Twitter was down

#94

Post by Nightshaxx » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:25 PM UTC

the_af wrote: post #61

lukey_q wrote: post #25

A lot of high-profile outages recently. Can't actually remember the last time Twitter went fully down. Have to confess I immediately assumed an issue with my own connection, even though every other site is working. Unrelated, but for some reason the phrase "I have no mouth and I must scream" just popped into my head

> Unrelated, but for some reason the phrase "I have no mouth and I must scream" just popped into my head That phrase was coined by Harlan Ellison in his classic scifi short story to represent a situation of complete despair and powerlessness. I don't think a lack of Twitter, Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook or Gmail -- however inconvenient -- would fill me with that kind of existential dread :)

I got rid of all of those except Gmail (need it for work, school, etc) and WhatsApp (only use for one group chat) and it is very freeing. I realized social media (Instagram especially) breeds unhappiness with your life, while all of the models and "influencers" on it don't live realistic lives. In fact I've experienced first had that their posts are often doctored or don't acctually portray the situation accurately.

Re: Twitter was down

#95

Post by ssully » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:26 PM UTC

luhego wrote: post #74

I didn't realize how much I like using twitter between tasks until now. Hope it gets back soon.

Noticed the outrage when I opened twitter when waiting for a long (10 min) process to run. What am I supposed to do? Socialize with coworkers?

Re: Twitter was down

#96

Post by indigochill » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:26 PM UTC

sneakernets wrote: post #32

Stuff like this makes me wonder if the Internet really is super vulnerable, and the only reason there isn't a mass disruption of communication all the time is because some script kiddies's Pizza Rolls were perfect today so he held off on attacking a backbone.

Read up on BGP hijacking. The internet really is super vulnerable.

Re: Twitter was down

#97

Post by dmix » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:26 PM UTC

idlewords wrote: post #82

So storytime! I worked at Twitter as a contractor in 2008 (my job was to make internal hockey-stick graphs of usage to impress investors) during the Fail Whale era. The site would go down pretty much daily, and every time the ops team brought it back up, Twitter's VCs would send over a few bottles of really fancy imported Belgian beer (the kind with elaborate wire bottle caps that tell you it's expensive). I would in…

Woo startups.

Re: Twitter was down

#98

Post by freehunter » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:26 PM UTC

victorbojica wrote: post #56

rahuldottech wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed cloudflare, stripe, slack

Reddit too :(

Reddit goes down constantly though, not a great benchmark.

Re: Twitter was down

#99

Post by yomoraka » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

Someone from "youknowwho" administration had made a deployment it appears

Re: Twitter was down

#100

Post by rossdavidh » Thu, Jul 11, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

Ok, this is too many high-profile, apparently unrelated outages in the last month to be completely a coincidence. Hypotheses:

1) software complexity is escalating over time, and logically will continue to until something makes it stop. It has now reached the point where even large companies cannot maintain high reliability.

2) internet volume is continually increasing over time, and periodically we hit a point where there are just too many pieces required to make it work (until some change the infrastructure solves that). We had such a point when dialup was no longer enough, and we solved that with fiber. Now we have a chokepoint somewhere else in the system, and it will require a different infrastructure change

3) Russia or China or Iran or somebody is f*(#ing with us, to see what they are able to break if they needed to, if they need to apply leverage to, for example, get sanctions lifted

4) Just a series of unconnected errors at big companies

5) Other possibilities?