

Comcast Decided To Shut Down SearchYC - stevenj
http://searchyc.com/post/6027748746/why-is-searchyc-down

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iheartmemcache
This service is a major component of this community; as such, I'll host this
on whatever metal you need. My contact information is in my profile. Ping me
on G-talk and we can have this sorted out by the morning (if you're in PST).

~~~
mkuhn
I also have some spare capacity that our startup could donate. Something like
one i920 Core and a few Gigs of Ram (and up to a Terrabyte of Traffic). If
that could help, let me know.

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kapitalx
Just guessing, but they might have been hosting off a comcast highspeed line
which Comcast forbids on its residential service.

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NathanKP
Yeah, that was my first thought as well. Comcast (at least in my area) is
primarily a provider of internet service to homes, not a server hosting
company, so if Comcast was able to shut SearchYC down then that means it must
have been hosted from a home internet connection.

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derobert
Comcast does business connections as well. This isn't hard to find: for
example, if you visit comcast.com, its under "products".

Comcast does all sorts of business Internet connections including web hosting.
I suspect they do in your area too, but you've probably never noticed (where
do small businesses in your area get Internet access from?). Their cable
business connections are delivered over similar (or maybe the same)
infrastructure as the residential ones.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
I use Comcast business at my workplace. I get a pretty good deal, actually an
amazing deal compared to fiber with a zero install cost. 22/5 for around $150
or so. Their business support is competent.

Residential service is around $60 here. So for about double that you can get a
22/5 line without caps.

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bkrausz
What kind of traffic does SearchYC get? Is a $40/mo Linode not sufficient? I
would gladly pay that (or be content with some Google ads in the right bar).
Hell, I'd even maintain the site...it's a great service.

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anigbrowl
Well, that wasn't very informative. I suspect an unpaid bill or similar, to be
honest.

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iamwil
I use hnsearch.com, powered by beta backend magic by the Octopart guys. I find
it to be quite fast and quite good.

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synnik
This has always bugged me - as owner of a product, YOU are ultimately
responsible for its availability. If you chose a bad service provider, sure,
you'll have outages. But accept accountability, say you are working on it, and
fix it.

~~~
scott_s
This has always bugged me - the sense of entitlement people have when a free
service experiences an outage. The people behind SearchYC are doing us a
_favor_. They should be thanked, not reprimanded.

So, uh, thanks. I've used SearchYC many-a-times.

~~~
synnik
You misunderstand.

I don't care whether or not there is an outage. I care that people are
professional in their work. Passing the buck is unprofessional. Accepting the
responsibility is what matters, and if they decide not to fix it, then say so
and own that choice.

Service providers are responsible for their service only. Not the products you
layer on top of them.

Doing free favors doesn't mean you should drop your level of professionalism.

~~~
tommi
> I care that people are professional in their work.

I feel the same way. But this isn't work, this is play.

~~~
awj
So it's ok for me to misrepresent a situation and make other people look bad
as long as I'm "just playing"?

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yid
Um...why was it being hosted off Comcast, instead of Linode (for example)?

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mmx
As a user of Comcast Business Class for some hosting, it's more about what's
available near you. I host some of servers in my garage, I like to manage them
manually and Comcast is the only option in my area, I pay $110 for 10down &
2.5up, but some locations they have 100mb connections for that same price.
What I'd like to know is why Comcast shut it down so I can either avoid this
happening to me or drop comcast for a datacenter 110 miles away. Its difficult
hosting a site at my current bandwidth anyways.

~~~
bad_user
Why manage servers manually? I mean I get it, you want control, but for simple
web apps?

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breck
I used to host sites out of my closet for fun. I had a monitor that had tail
running on my server log.

There was something really cool about seeing hits, knowing that someone in
another part of the world requested a file and it was sent from the hard drive
in _this very closet_.

~~~
nakkiel
Get a VPS and you'll actually save a few bucks (no hardware, cheaper Comcast
subscription). Run tail in screen. I think there's a Nodejs app on github that
let you see in real time who's accessing your box and from where (it's an
interactive map thing with websockets).

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shrike
I've got plenty of Linode, prgmr and EC2 cycles to spare, you are welcome to
any/all of them. My contact info is in my profile, please get in touch if I
can help.

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ssamuli
After searchyc went down, I've just used google, adding
"site:news.ycombinator.com" after my query. Seems to return quite good results
too.

~~~
hollerith
Searchyc will arrange the results of a search in chronological order, which I
find very useful since the date I saw the post is one of the most reliable
pieces of information I will typically have on the post.

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joshfinnie
It is funny that this feature has yet to hit google. I am wanting more and
more the ability to sort my google results in chronological order. I recently
got a iMac and would love to see the most resent article on how to do things
and not ones from 2008!

~~~
jamesbritt
You can add a date range filter to your searches and limit the results to,
say, the past year.

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sireat
Unfortunately, that date range filter is pretty limited, i think there are 5
options, year, month, week and so on.

Better would be an option to specify range.

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jamesbritt
_Better would be an option to specify range._

There is a custom range option as well where you can set the start and end
dates.

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g123g
Hopfully you will be able to bring it back soon. SearchYC.com is the best way
to search the treasure trove that HN has become.

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swombat
What's wrong with <http://www.hnsearch.com> ?

~~~
evangineer
Just got zero hits on a search that I know there is at least one result for.
Same search worked fine on searchyc.com a few days ago.

EDIT: Google search using site:news.ycombinator.com just now delivered the
result I was expecting.

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smock
What is the search you are conducting?

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evangineer
I was searching for SML on Stilts

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andres
I'm getting a hit for "SML on Stilts" from 5 months ago:
[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=SML+on+Stil...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=SML+on+Stilts)

Did you get different results? Were you expecting another submission?

~~~
evangineer
When I did my search, I got zero hits, which surprised me.

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thethimble
Why doesn't HN have native search?

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nandemo
Basically pg doesn't think it's important and doesn't want to do it.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1329334>

~~~
cincinnatus
He replied not only that isn't important but also implied that there is some
big data issue here. Which is incorrect.

There are multiple open-source solutions for this 'problem' as many people on
here could attest (not to mention configure). Obviously if it can be done over
the wire it could be done even better (cheaper/faster) local to the server.

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tonyskn
The awesome Chrome extension Hacker News Sidebar, which uses searchyc.com, is
down too. Are there any alternative extensions or bookmarklets for
automatically linking a page to its HN comment thread?

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smackfu
Yet another outage message that says nothing. Is it really that hard to write
a few more sentences, maybe quote the Comcast reason for shutting it down?
Were they running the server on a residential line or something? Using too
much upstream bandwidth? This is a search engine for a technical community, we
can handle it.

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meiji
Like lots of others, I can help with hosting (work at a big hoster). Ping me a
message if I can assist

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nicksergeant
Never knew this existed. Using "site:news.ycombinator.com" in Google works
perfectly fine for me.

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mbesto
Just curious - anyone know why?

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zackattack
WePay needs to transform into something that say, Linode can offer as a
payment option.

