What'd you do while HN was down?

I did far more work than usual and now my product lead is going to expect this to happen every sprint.

They'll be so disappointed.

A while back I changed my search engine's crawl data to be ZSTD compressed JSON. It's a bit finnicky to work with, but I'm beginning to realize just how powerful this is.

Could literally just do

  find -name \*.zstd -exec zstdcat {} \; |
    jq 'first(select(.doc|select(.!=null)|.[].headers|select(.!=null)|test("[xX]-[aA]dblock-[kK]ey")))'

and it spewed out samples of domains with a header like X-Adblock-Key. (I'm not great with JQ, so there's probably a better way of doing this, but this unga bunga approach works too)

Specifically, today I did some research on a few tags and headers supposedly associated with "Acceptable Ads" (a standard for showing ads through complicit adblockers), and ended up with a fairly reliable fingerprint for a network of domain squatters that have been a nuisance in my search engine database. Turns out they're basically the only ones that use the headers and tags I was looking at, so now I'm onto their IP-ranges as well.

Opened reddit, got disappointed, opened new tab, typed "n", hit enter, and then my brain caught up with muscle memory and I got more disappointed.

I watched a lot of progress bars and actually watched the CLI output for things building.

Curled up in the corner, hugged myself and rocked back and forth, sobbing inconsolably.

I started reading Crafting Interpreters [1]. It's great so far!

[1] https://craftinginterpreters.com/

I read half way through this free book by Sven Yrvind called “WITH FOUR SQUARE METERS OF SAIL AND ONE OAR” which is sort of a manifesto about building small boats and living simply. He’s a super interesting guy, I don’t even know how to sail and I was pretty glued to it. Not sure why I decided to latch on and go deep on the subject but you can find it here if you’re interested: https://www.yrvind.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ex_lex_eng...

Pulled two solar panels off one of my arrays, because a few of them have hot junction boxes from bad connections. Replaced those with spares and got the array back fully online (one of them has been bypassed for arc fault warnings that, digging into the junction box, look legit).

Then I replaced all the fancy, spring loaded, "replace the back of the junction box for new functionality!" interface stuff with some vintage, 1980s style soldering and bypass diodes. Because I don't care about the optimizers on my well-sited array with no shading, and I don't need rapid shutdown for a ground mount array, etc.

And then proceeded to short the leads, put them in the sun, and ensure that the junction box guts didn't get hot, while observing just how brutal on panels doing this is - you really highlight the difference between cells thermally, when in "normal running," you don't see any differences in the array.

And now I'm writing all this up as a blog post. :)

I rode my motorcycle to the beach where I helped a little girl build sand castles and capture mole crabs in a bucket. Then we released the mole crabs and I rode back home to hackernews.

I created this unofficial Hacker News status page so I could subscribe and get notified once HN comes back up :) https://hacker-news.statuspal.io/

I smugly commented "Dang" on one of the status updates on twitter and spent time with my girlfriend. Now HN is up again and I spend time consuming meta-content regarding the outage (such as this thread).

Have a great weekend everyone!

Listing out all the HN systems I could check, for example API stayed up whole time. _________

Obviously, the homepage: https://news.ycombinator.com/

HN’s official status page: https://mobile.twitter.com/hnstatus

This URL checks if the API is up: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/1.json?print=pret...

HN Search Engine: https://hn.algolia.com

AWS Route 53 status, it is the service that manages HN’s DNS: https://cloudharmony.com/status-of-dns-for-aws

YC DNS record: https://whois.gandi.net/en/results?search=ycombinator.com

HN’s official email: hn@ycombinator.com

Note: Intentionally left off YC, since it appears to be unrelated beyond the DNS.

_________

Forgot something, let me know. Thanks!

Discover OCRmyPDF (embed an OCR layer into a PDF from the command line), and then repeatedly check if HN was up so I could submit it

https://ocrmypdf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Cleaned up my desk and started backing up my (recently passed) brother in law's Surface. It got an expanding battery and we're worried it'll break and we'll lose all of his logins and pictures and docs.

I got some work done for once. There's my 2.35 hours of work for the month!

Went for a walk with my toddler. We found bits of broken glass on the playground.

There was an attempt to ingest them, but I prevented that from happening.

I recorded a song on my guitar. It is so bad it makes me sick to my stomach.

Restarted my phone thinking something wrong with it. Then changed to Cloudflare DNS instead of PiHole thinking it maybe pihole issue. Because when does HN ever go down :D

I released the first version of a status page driven by uptime monitoring an hour before the first outage.

Figured I'd point it at Hacker News to get an update when my uptime monitoring detected it was up again.

The second outage gave me time to dogfood it a bit: https://hackernews.onlineornot.com/incidents/0LB6mQLmkozD

Nothing in particular. I checked HN in the morning. Hmm, it's down. I went ahead to have breakfast, played a round of games, called up some hotel to resolve some reservation issue, checked up on the various ways of embedding 3D model in html, watched some short Youtudes I meant to catch up, and went out of the house. In the evening when I checked again, it's up!

Worked on updating and improving Caddy's documentation. We're releasing v2.5.2 today or tomorrow!

I walked to the gas station, drank an iced coffee, ate a sandwich while listening to a book and enjoying the forest. Wrote a README for a project I've been working on the past week. Then I noticed HN was down :(

Rocked backward-and-forward with my arms crossed.

I had to resort to unabated onanism during the outage. I am now 30 pounds lighter and when I walk it sounds like two dried beans rattling round in an empty coffee can.

P.S. This is one of those comments where I debated 'should I or shouldn't I post it' so probably not a good idea to do so but meh, what the heck. Dan & co did a sterling job and it sounds like the CEO of M5 gained some useful insight so every cloud has a silver lining etc

I did my usual (probably excessive) amount of news/periodicals reading, but grew frustrated frequently that I couldn't post to HN to get comments/input from others. One notable example (during the first of yesterday's outages) was an NYT article [1] The Robot Guerrilla Campaign to Recreate the Elgin Marbles. This hadn't been submitted to HN at the time (as far as I could tell), but it's there now [2] - sadly, with no comments at the time of posting this.

Anyhow, the article referred to "3-D printing" to make copies of the marbles, but the writing was confused and to me it looked like automated carving, so I wanted to post it to see what others here thought. As it happens, having just checked the article again, the original copy has been amended to read "3-D machining" rather than "3-D printing" - but there's no correction notice to say that the article was changed. Mind you, the clue is still in the url: ... science/elgin-marbles-3d-print.html

Without HN, then, I read my stock sites as usual, but felt deeply that I missed the sanity-checks/informed input from HN commenters. It was lonely, in a way, and also made me fret about my missing issues with articles that usually others at HN would point out; different perspectives, questions about credibility or robustness of stats/data/methods of obtaining info on which articles might rely.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/science/elgin-marbles-3d-...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32026156

Install a uptime-kuma[1] at my home server... Then get a Telegram notification while hacker news is up again. Actually I self-host more service myself and it was use to monitor those services.

https://github.com/louislam/uptime-kuma

Watched HugoConf https://hugoconf.io/

I lived life and was able to escape my addictions of being on here talking about mostly useless stuff all day and worrying about the future.

It was nice and I wish there were more outages.

I went to the Art Institute of Chicago and was blown away by the collections there. I didn’t have nearly enough time to see everything, but I particularly enjoyed the Architecture and Design gallery. I would have had less time there if HN was up because I tried to check it before leaving.

Checked HN, watched it spin for about 10 seconds before going elsewhere, then trying again 8 seconds later out of habit mostly. Rinse and repeat.

Went to the liquor store.

In a fit of irony, read the book Deep Work by Cal Newport.

Handed out a couple grams of nicotinic acid, explained the flush, taught some people how to surf, explained how wifi radar works, how to hack various devices, how to avoid getting a speeding ticket, explained how a chemical in 1 litre of grapefruit juice is enough to slow up the liver metabolism of some medication which can put you in an embarrassing potentially life threatening situation if one is a male who has taken 50mg of sildenafil and more...

I spent some time watching some stuff on YouTube, including Part 1 of a documentary about Oracle and how they changed the database world. I can't wait for the SQL...

I went and checked https://brutalist.report/ to see what the latest HN posts they had, read the headlines and then moved on. A few hours later I went to HN and they were back.

I wasn't worried about it, I figured dang and others were working on it and would have things back online.

I do depend on HN for taking a break from coding though and it was tough not getting my fix on demand :D

I got existential crisis and withdrawals. Looks like I am addicted to HN :)

I actually opened slashdot.org, first time in like 10 years, probably. Still there...

I visited San Francisco in June 2013 and worked at an office for a month. I had a habit of browsing HN and Twitter during the working hours and from the work computer. I was also very productive. Always got things done. Days go by and I observe people working. I realized that many people would spend time on social media only when they were having lunch and were extremely productive the rest of the day. I thought to myself “If I am working then what these people are doing and if they are working then what is it that I am doing?”

I seriously questioned myself and made a decision. No more social media on the work computer and during the working hours. Ever since then I am only reading HN and Twitter when I am on my phone when I am on a break. I haven’t even realized HN was down.

Gave me time to take my annual shower and comb my greybeard.

Me and my partner walked the town in the sun, had ramen soup at the pier, checked out an art gallery then had some coffee. After coming home we opened up some nice german weissbiers and watched Brazil.

This morning the forecast was rain, and I expected the day to turn out much worse.

Started doing the Jetpack Compose tutorial(s) for like the 3rd time and thought: "Everything changes, but nothing changes. I am paid to stay atop this schizophrenic elephant of an industry." Then took another gulp of ItsGonnaBeBetterThisTime KoolAid.

Refresh.......refresh....... refresh...........

I did a lot of work on the company I am bootstrapping.

I also read about the pcg random number generator, and a bit about the feuds between its inventor and a competing research group that invented the Xorshift random number generator.

Continually refreshed until HN was back.

I got confused and thought something was wrong with my internet

I replaced the LCD assembly on a MacBook someone gave me with one I bought of eBay. Somehow I succeeded and I didn't even break any of the ribbon cables.

I didn't even notice. I only check this site via RSS.

I prepared a spreadsheet of the approximate amount of karma I would’ve received had HN not been down and will be submitting a reimbursement request to dang.

Looked up alternative ways of castling in chess because I'm very bored of the standard kingside and queenside castling so, I was trying to find strategies using the old style of play like before the two-piece-one-move castling of today was formed. Right now it seems a lot of games I play online end up with the same openings. Chess 960 helps with that, but I don't like to play that all the time either.

Reddit. Fuck Reddit.

Reloaded https://mobile.twitter.com/HNStatus

I got most of the way there to hosting a small site from a pi. Got hung up on port forwarding on Fios. I'll figure it out though.

I kept wanting to talk about the outage on HN.

I wrote ad copy for an Unreal Engine based, data visualization course that is hosted online. Details at https://www.whiteowleducation.com/courses/data-visualization....

Wonder why Rogers is down. Oh, and it's still not up and I'm still not getting verification codes :)

There's a material analogous to permanent magnets for charge... called an Electret. They are one of the reasons N-95 masks work.

They also might shield gravity a bit. Now I need to get a 50kv DC power supply to make my own in bulk, and find out. I expect it to be interesting, but no new physics.

Blind. There are some trolls like with anything, but sometimes there is good content from tech workers.

There might be an overlap of demographics... largely Indians under H1B

https://www.teamblind.com/

By the time I finished reading the articles already opened in other tabs, HN was back up.

I have read some beautiful articles and pdf from HN which were in my browser bookmarks.

While waiting for tests to run, I was directed to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

Wept savagely and uncontrollably

I cleaned my office and moved furniture while waiting for compiles to finish. Got the keyboard next to my desk now, hopefully this encourages me to practice more often.

Also cables are organized under my desk, never thought I'd see the day

I've fallen a bit deeper into a clickhole and ended up at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler_spiral

I opened Lynx and went there : gopher://hngopher.com:70/1/

Solved the Riemann hypothesis

Slipped under my radar.

How long was it?

Is there any post-mortem?

>Where'd you go?

Depends on how long it was out.

>What'd you find?

Now I find if you spend too much time away from the internet, you'll never keep up with what's happening in the real world.

Or something like that.

Wondered how HN might best implement mandatory offline periods during the day. I’m thinking something like it’s offline for an hour every other hour so only a total of 12 hours uptime a day.

I hope Hacker News is never down because knowledge is never down.

I browsed old tools, stationary engines, and motorbikes I will never buy on Facebook marketplace.

Start a rubbish piece of software, proving again that reach is the most important thing these days

I tried to refresh the website to check if it finally worked again

I waited in line for four hours at a Canadian passport office.

Finished mastering my latest EP and uploading it for release on Monday. Also did a bit of compiler warning cleanup on multiple UNiXes for next release new code work.

I didn't realise it was down. It depends on for how long it was down. Gardening, cooking and eating dinner, getting the children ready for bed, watching TV.

Watched the latest Shut Up and Sit Down board game review video. Now I’m wondering if I should get the Air, Sea, and Land expansion and/or Space Station Phoenix.

Nothing. I was useless

Repaired a bicycle. Thankfully Shimano's site was up.

Read whatever was up on HN before it went down on https://remix.hnclone.win ha ha

Eh… Duolingo? Or other bite-sized language material. I personally like Beelinguapp. Its readings are small enough yet are quite fun to read for a beginner

Practiced a speedrun for a weekend event my friends and I hold every so often. Nowhere near the world record, but we don't care!

I first go on Twitter to notice people about the down. Then visit the Is it down? website every few minutes to see the status.

I hacked a couple of Ansible playbooks around and made them do things in an arguably better manner than they did before

Got the second to last module finished on the theatre of mind focused VVT I'm building.

We're launching in Sept.

I read a Brian Krebs article I had missed made two phone calls and got some paperwork done. Quite a productive Friday. ;-)

Glad to know I wasn't the only one literally experiencing withdrawal symptoms as I continuously hit the reload button

https://i.imgur.com/GpmUla5.png

Hit refresh more times than I should admit.

I did more work lol mostly taking care of the bottom of the list Improvements a few small PRs here and there..

Donated blood. This donation was tagged to be delivered to a neonatal unit. Please give blood if you can!

I went for a long walk to the cemetery.

Hit reload like crazy. I was desperate.

Kept refreshing the Google news suggestions thing (swipe left on my Android phone's homescreen)

Annoying friends with lengthy discussions about gun politics, tech ethics, and the latest gadgets...

Was going through the who is hiring thread then noticed it was down, took a nap than got supper

Didn’t notice. Head down for work in the AM, spent the PM installing gutter shields. Good day!

Still didn't do much work :D

Slept right through it. Funny thing about being in a completely different time zone.

HN was down?

Called my ISP and complained that internet was not working as HN didn't load.

Took a nap. Read Your Local Epidemiologist and A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry.

I wrote a little toy library for tracking magic the gathering boardstate changes.

Wondered if I had been banned.

I actually worked, amazing what you can get done if there’s nothing else to do

Lol. There was actually a lot of work so it really did work out well for me:P

I was working too much, so glad it's back too. Needed a break asap!

I figured out how to set up an AWS ecs cluster (without fargate) manually.

I was sick, so I slept a lot and didn't even noticed HN went down.

Lol I was trying to reach the site every 20 min when I take my 30s break.

Hit F5.

I have a good night sleep.

HN was down? For how long?

I “discovered” Destiny 2… and now I have two addictions! :D

I missed it, must have been working or something silly like that

Wore down the F5 button.

I ran some errands, then did watercolor painting with my wife :)

I was at the beach today and didn't realize it was down.

I worked. For once :(.

I set up a bookshelf and finally unpacked all of my books.

Checking out Blind ....

I love HN but Blind is more entertaining for sure.

https://lobste.rs/

Kinda heads down in PR reviews today. Didn’t notice.

I took the kids to the water park. Great day for it.

It felt like a void that was difficult to replace.

I made a linting plugin and learned about ASTs

Escape from Tarkov

Took a little break ;) Played some Rocket League

Founded a startup

I went to the fourth dimension while sleeping.

I took up smoking

I flew across the Atlantic so didn’t notice

I found that Twitter still exists :))

Didn’t notice it. Was with relatives.

Didn't realize it was down...

Started coding a replacement /s

Played with lua as a kernel module.

Called it a day and went to sleep.

I went to Reddit and lobste.rs . Was horrible! (Not really ).

I worked out and took a long walk.

Learned how to program NES games

Walked outdoors in the sunshine.

Turned my PC off, then on again.

I read a book. Went to the gym.

Didn't know it was down :D

Touch grass

I found a job and got hired.

I went and cried in a corner.

Work :(

assumed my internet was out and read a book for once

"masks of the illuminati"

worked, tried to figure out why my elasticsearch cluster went bye bye

To be facetious... work.

Wrote tickets in Jira

I was hella bored.

Worked. It sucked.

HN was down? Huh.

_WHY_ is it down?

I would cry.

Learned Svelte!

Kept refreshing

I was sleeping.

Tour de France

It was down?

refresh...

ok, now refresh...

It won't be up that quick, you have to be patient!

...

refresh...

Press F5

My job lol

Not notice

Work.

Prayed.

my job :)

worked.

The same thing we do every night, Pinky.

(What is this, reddit?)

I checked news sources more directly from the websites i am personally familiar with instead of using the hacker news front page as a filter + expanded domain