
GitHub had connectivity problems - webmonkeyuk
https://status.github.com
======
kevinbowman
Does anyone else find the Github status "messages" page [0] a bit jarring in
how it's organised? The way that, when read from top to bottom, time goes
forwards within a day but backwards across days?

I guess I normally wouldn't notice, but there are currently some messages on
there from today and yesterday and I found it hard to read as a story (either
forwards or backwards) - I had to jump around a bit to figure it out.

[0] [https://status.github.com/messages](https://status.github.com/messages)

~~~
mahouse
Design looks very, very confusing regarding timestamps.
[https://i.imgur.com/wminZWg.png](https://i.imgur.com/wminZWg.png)

~~~
pluma
It probably uses the local time zone name (for me it shows CEST) and was
written by someone who assumed all time zone names are always abbreviated.

~~~
mahouse
I also live in CEST.

------
kzhahou
It seems a certainty to me that github will be breached one of these days, and
all internal data (i.e., private repos) made public. On that day, so many
companies will inadvertently become open source!

Do we have any info on what steps github takes to prevent this? I ask as a
paying customer (with both personal and corporate accounts).

~~~
vezzy-fnord
_On that day, so many companies will inadvertently become open source!_

Well, no. They would be inadvertently source-available. If the license doesn't
comply with the Open Source Definition, it's not open source.

EDIT: Downvoted as usual for correcting false impressions about how free
software and open source works.

~~~
zo1
" _EDIT: Downvoted as usual for correcting false impressions about how free
software and open source works._ "

Are you seriously suggesting that the OP you responded to was comparing
"stolen" or "leaked" software to open source? That is probably why you're
being downvoted, not because people around here have a false impression as to
what constitutes open-source.

~~~
vezzy-fnord
"Open source" has an established meaning. Even if the poster in question was
using the term facetiously, I feel it must be corrected since there is
legitimately a large body of misconception surrounding the mechanics of free
software and open source, and such humor may fuel it further.

Moreover, it reflects a critical flaw in the open source dogma as compared to
free software. Open source puts source code at the forefront, which is
fallacious. The key elements are the ability to run unfettered, study, modify
and redistribute identical or modified versions. The source code is a
necessary precondition for properly exercising those freedoms, but not a
central focus in any real sense. It is easy to misinterpret "open source" as
being about publicly viewable source code, and many companies have exploited
this to their advantage presently or in the past (GitHub with Atom, Epic Games
with UE4, etc.)

------
mambodog
I wonder if this is related to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10101469](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10101469)

~~~
pravj
I'm nobody to assure this but I can see one thing common in both the cases,
'Dragon'.

------
marinintim
All these ideas like "let's fetch our deps directly from github" sound good
until github is not down.

~~~
ilghiro
Yeh it's definitely preferable to have one of the two developers your small
startup can probably afford spending a good portion of their time rolling out,
securing and maintaining your own infrastructure

~~~
bad_user
GitHub is not meant for distributing dependencies. Maven Central on the other
hand is, the difference being that it is mirrored and if repo1.maven.org goes
down, it's not a big deal and your project can still be built and deployed.

~~~
wereHamster
.. until they become a target of a DDoS.

Also, if GitHub is down you can still fetch your dependencies from somewhere
else.

~~~
JumpJumpJump
You have not understood the concept of 'mirrored'.

------
xedarius
I do wonder why GitHub gets hit, and people say it's a high profile target,
yes almost definitely.

Another thought occurs to me though, I guess one of the problems when writing
a DDoS is measuring how well it performs. The GitHub status screen provides a
lot of useful metrics for tuning such an attack.

~~~
niuzeta
If I may posit...

1\. Github is very well known and cater specifically for the tech crowd. So,
an attack on Github is more likely to be talked in the tech crowd, which I
would assume the people who would try out DDoS attacks be more likely to be
part of. Validation is a weird thing.

2\. In a convoluted sense, taking down Github doesn't harm _as many_
bystanders. If that makes any sense...

3\. As you've mentioned, very clear useful metrics for the attacks.

4\. Crowding effect? Maybe attacking Github has become some 'cool' things to
try in that community. I'm just imagining at this point.

~~~
mightybyte
> Validation is a weird thing.

And bragging rights. Imagine the street cred you get amongst that community if
you take down something like github...

------
codingthebeach
Possibly just Round 2 of the massive DDOS from March:

[https://github.com/blog/1981-large-scale-ddos-attack-on-
gith...](https://github.com/blog/1981-large-scale-ddos-attack-on-github-com)

[http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/04/ddos-attacks-that-
cr...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/04/ddos-attacks-that-crippled-
github-linked-to-great-firewall-of-china/)

------
dsmithatx
I'm getting 500 timeouts on Bitbucket. Didn't Google Code go read-only today?
Don't you guys think Bitbucket and Github might be having issues due to people
migrating off of Google Code at the last minute?

~~~
smpetrey
Possibly, but they are having degraded API performance and high load on their
front-end systems.

[http://status.bitbucket.org](http://status.bitbucket.org)

------
bitinn
Totally speculation, but maybe related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10115641](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10115641)

~~~
ck2
Yeah my first reaction was it is government based and probably China.

I know, we should keep building up their economy by manufacturing nearly
everything there, that should stop them.

~~~
brador
Over the long term, it will. An educated wealthy populace doesn't accept
tyranny for long.

~~~
ninjin
To some extent, most likely, yes. But my perspective on the PRC is that the
powers that be know that they will only remain in power for as long as they
can provide, or rather, the illusion of them providing, a continuous increase
in wealth. This in part would be why information is key in China. Assange had
a very positive view of it when he said "I often say that censorship is always
cause for celebration. It is always an opportunity, because it reveals fear of
reform. It means that the power position is so weak that you have got to care
about what people think." [1].

[1]: [https://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-
Schmidt#996](https://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt#996)

~~~
geomark
You know, the implication of that for the U.S. is pretty disturbing.

~~~
kedean
The US isn't big on censorship, they're big on data collection. The MPAA and
RIAA are HUGE on censorship, but they aren't government entities.

------
axelerator
I'm wondering if there is a corresponding traffic spike on the hn servers ;-)

------
tuxt
And a famous break-through-GFW software called goagent is deleted from github.
*sigh

[https://github.com/goagent/goagent](https://github.com/goagent/goagent)

~~~
bdcravens
You may want to explain how this is related?

------
disordinary
Well that's me not able to work.

~~~
feld
If only git were a distributed version control

~~~
Zirro
It would be nice not to have to rely on centralized servers at all. A
P2P/torrent client built specifically for sharing code from git repositories,
perhaps?

~~~
madez
But there is much less commercial incentive behind a p2p alternative.
Centralized services are easier to monetize.

I look forward to the day governments start to fund free software, for example
through the GNU project. Then we'll all have better tools.

Actually, there were already some fundings. Germany funded GnuPG to port it to
Windows.

What do I care what is the new world record in sprinting? But I very much do
care about a new release of libreboot, libreCMC/openWRT or Debian!

I hope one day we will see peaceful international competitions between nations
of who can provide the best/most used free software.

~~~
dTal
Hear, hear. I've talked about this with people and it's surprisingly hard to
convince them that government-sponsored software is a good idea. While a tiny
fraction of the amount we already spend on commercial software would utterly
transform the free software landscape, it's not politically viable as long as
commercial software vendors have lobby power.

~~~
danieldk
Let's not forget that it is not in many governments' interest to have
distributed tools (with strong encryption). It is much easier to take down
stuff on centralized services.

BTW, it is _hear, hear_ ;).

~~~
chopman
But of your government is at odds with an oppressive government, it would make
sense for it to fund that kind of software so the people could take it down,
or at least make trouble, themselves.

------
fallingfrog
Ugh, how horrible! DDoS'ing github is like kicking a puppy in the face.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Isn't it more like barricading bus drivers inside their homes because someone
you don't like takes the bus to work?

~~~
konradb
I always say that making an argument using analogies is like trying to tie
your shoes with laces made of butter. :)

------
sajal83
[https://pulse.turbobytes.com/results/55dc40efecbe400bf800146...](https://pulse.turbobytes.com/results/55dc40efecbe400bf8001468/)
problems during TCP connect

[https://pulse.turbobytes.com/results/55dc40faecbe400bf800146...](https://pulse.turbobytes.com/results/55dc40faecbe400bf8001469/)
traceroute looks ok..

------
friendzis
I wonder why are they providing time in FLE[S]T (same as EE[S]T)? Are their
engineering team based in Eastern Europe or what?

~~~
viraptor
They're trying to detect your timezone and show the local time. Nice of them,
however additional UTC for vpn users and lines with broken geoip would be also
good.

------
LinuxBender
If GitHub folks are technical in nature, couldn't they simply have a secondary
mirror of their own that they host on their own servers / clouds and then
reference both primary and secondary? Perhaps redirect the secondary to the
primary if it is reachable to avoid bandwidth issues?

------
luck87
About 3 hours in github twitter profile:
[https://twitter.com/githubstatus/status/636159212876361728](https://twitter.com/githubstatus/status/636159212876361728)

------
ElegantGiraffe
Bitbucket is currently experiencing some issues too [0]. Is it related?

[0] [https://bitbucket.statuspage.io/](https://bitbucket.statuspage.io/)

~~~
dubcanada
I'm going to assume yes. And I'm going to assume what ever is the issue has a
mirror on bitbucket.

But I don't think anyone can say for sure.

------
juquinha123
Guys, what's the purpose to attack a service like Github?!

~~~
gpvos
China does not like some of the projects it hosts, namely the ones used to
circumvent its Great Firewall.

~~~
imglorp
That's a clear signal those projects have value and that we should work to
make more like them.

------
nns
What do they possibly get by DDoS'ng GitHub ? Is this out of pure malice or
are there any probable commercial gains to this?

~~~
maxander
There's two common flavors of comment on this post, namely "why would anyone
do this?" and "well, I guess that means I can't do any work this morning."
These _could_ go together somehow. :)

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Indeed.

------
TallGuyShort
Mandrill reported they were investigating system slowness a short time ago,
also.

------
benmarks
GitHub DDoS, pointing out ironic single points of failure since the beginning!

------
lai
Is this because of shadowsocks and China is pissed again?

------
haosdent
China!

------
rorykoehler
I haven't experience any connectivity issues on Github today. Just pushed some
code and it worked fine and promptly.

------
andrewvc
I've always wondered why github hasn't considered switching to a distributed
sub domain layout to help ameliorate this problem. Surely if they spread their
infra out that would make ddos that much harder. A subdomain per user or repo
should work wonderfully

~~~
tvvocold
I don't think that will solve the problem.

~~~
andrewvc
Well if x% of repos remain up that goes a long way. Right now it's all or
nothing.

Also if you're going to respond include a reason why you disagree

------
stonewhite
Title should be "Github _is_ under DDoS and having connectivity problems"

edit: TIL my English wasn't as good as I thought.

~~~
paublyrne
That's subjective. In America companies tend to be referred to as singular
entities, but in the UK they would be referred to as plural. Neither is wrong,
just different idioms.

~~~
OJFord
No, 'are' is, I believe, also incorrect in BrE. It's commonplace here, but not
correct. (Or so I was taught!)

~~~
DanBC
[http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/09/agreement-over-
co...](http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/09/agreement-over-collective-
nouns/)

> In British English it’s absolutely fine to treat most collective nouns as
> either singular or plural – you can say my husband’s family is very
> religious or my husband’s family are very religious.

[http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001874.h...](http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001874.html)

etc.

With something like collective nouns it's probably wrong to make blanket
statements about correct and incorrect, even if you're a prescriptivist not
descriptivist.

EDIT: And while I love (but am hopeless with) English usage this is the least
interesting bit of the submitted article.

~~~
OJFord
Ah but that's different. "Company nouns" are not used as collective, they
refer to a singular entity - the registered company, not it as a body of
people.

~~~
Squarel
But they are.

[https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-
grammar/nou...](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-
grammar/nouns-singular-and-plural)

~~~
OJFord
[http://www.economist.com/style-guide/singular-or-
plural](http://www.economist.com/style-guide/singular-or-plural)

Note while 'just' a style guide, The Economist - like me - seems (note not
'seem' ;)) not to consider "Tesco" _et al_ to be collective nouns _per se_.

    
    
      > A government, a party, a company (whether Tesco or Marks 
      > and Spencer) and a partnership (Skidmore, Owings & 
      > Merrill) are all **it** and take a singular verb.

------
masukomi
i'm sorry but... GitHub _IS_ not GitHub _are_

Examples: GitHub IS a web site. GitHub is a SAAS app.

The only plural aspect to GitHub is its employees and _they_ are not being
DDoSed. The web site (singular) is.

I'm not going to bother explaining the problems with "under DDoS" or the other
issues with this sentence.

~~~
dhimes
It's a British thing. Don't try to understand it- just let it be. :)

~~~
toxican
It makes sense, but "is" is too ingrained in my brain to ever go British.

