On: Ask HN: Is HN slow today?

[xwdv]

Doesn't HN run on a single computer under some desk? I heard this one time but never verified. Maybe it's time for a proper cloud deployment?

[dang → xwdv]

It's on a single computer, with a second as failover, but it's in a colo center, not under a desk. Well, I suppose it could be under a desk.

[TimWolla → dang]

I remember something about the database being a flat file / flat files. Is that (still) true? How are the two machines being synchronized?

[908B64B197 → TimWolla]

You can always run it over NFS.

I'd be curious to peek at HN Source code. I recall there was a version posted online but it's several years old.

[julianlam → xwdv]

Maybe dang deploys to HN using ftp ha ha ha

[xwdv → julianlam]

Deploy what? Hasn't HN been the same for years?

[easton → xwdv]

There are new features/changes added often, many are documented here (not with dates, but you can get an idea of when things change based on the commit history): https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented

The most recent change I remember was when Twitter and GitHub posts were split based on the user the link belonged to (i.e. GitHub.com/dang is different than github.com/torvalds now).