HN Was Down
Key topics
- This status page actually identified the outage: https://hackernews.onlineornot.com/ - Pages by Hund and Statuspal did not show the outage.
- The last post before the outage was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46301823 (1:39:59 PM GMT). The last comment was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46301848 (1:41:54 PM GMT).
- There was an average of ~4 seconds per comment just prior to the outage. Based on this, HN likely went down at 1:41:58 PM GMT.
The community was abuzz when a popular discussion forum went dark, sparking a lively debate about the site's reliability and the users' own habits. As commenters shared their experiences, it became clear that many had developed a strong attachment to the site, with some jokingly confessing to being "addicted" and having an "open Hacker News" hand reflex. While some poked fun at the site's downtime, others praised the site's maintainers for their tireless work in keeping the community thriving. Amidst the banter, a few commenters offered a more nuanced perspective, suggesting that the site's addictive nature is a human problem, not a technological one.
Snapshot generated from the HN discussion
Discussion Activity
Very active discussionFirst comment
3m
Peak period
113
0-2h
Avg / period
14.5
Based on 160 loaded comments
Key moments
- 01Story posted
Dec 17, 2025 at 11:48 AM EST
16 days ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Dec 17, 2025 at 11:51 AM EST
3m after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
113 comments in 0-2h
Hottest window of the conversation
Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Dec 18, 2025 at 4:58 PM EST
15 days ago
Step 04
Generating AI Summary...
Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns
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I know dang basically works tirelessly to not change the format in order to not induce those addictive patterns
but yet here we all are
It's understandable to be addicted. Lol.
I visit this place multiple times a day.
This was especially obvious during Covid, I even stopped visiting because the comment section was batshit crazy.
Nice joke!
At least, I hope it was a joke...
i cant find the link, but there was a post about how to "be nice" and it was a revelation to a worrying amount of "geniuses" on here. bare in mind the sum total of the advice was "be nice, dont be rude"
2. your characterization of the article sounds uncharitable
3. my point isn't exactly that this is necessarily the smartest place
Almost every (non-troll) online community that is relatively peaceful and has some semblance of moderation to remove flamewars thinks of itself as "the best community". Usually as compared to reddit, though if it's on reddit they will compare themselves to some other (hated) sub.
It's a fact of the internet. Every online community thinks of itself as the smartest, thoughtful, more civilized. HN is no exception.
HN is not the smartest or more thoughtful online community. It's ok. Not the worst, not the best. Certainly NOT the place with the smartest people, though some smart people frequent it.
How does that go without saying? Name some others then. As-is your argument is just posturing.
No need, because whether an online community is more thoughtful or smarter than another is very subjective. Almost by definition, HN is not it. Also, by internet law, it (or a subset of it) considers itself to be it.
There are communities I like better, but I've no desire to argue with you.
> As-is your argument is just posturing
Nah. Hard pass. Nice try though!
Wow. Just wow.
The downvotes only prove my point!
PS: there's nothing to "prove", how would one prove a community is not the smartest, anyway? It boggles the mind. Chill, HN!
... but I still cannot tell if the original commenter was sarcastic or not! ;)
But also, people like me. Be careful what you choose to believe on this website
That's so refreshing in terms of being a user-focused feature, and yet it stands in sharp contrast against today's engagement-hyperfocused climate. I never would have thought to look on a website's own settings page to limit my access to that same website.
I love it, thank you for pointing me to this!
https://www.proginosko.com/leechblock/
youd go through that effort when you could have just stopped though.
If I could snap my fingers and break toxic habits and patterns, I would have done so decades ago :)
It's like they say: "Your demons will comfort you when no one else will. That's why it's so hard to get rid of them"
You'll still open new tabs and go to HN, but you'll be reminded quickly, and every day can be downtime day \o/ (for you, personally)
On all fairness though, mine is same for the original comment where just pressing n autocompletes it to https://news.ycombinator.com/
Did it like 5 times during that 1h-ish outage. :(
You mean it's not your homepage?
I suppose you could also just clear your HN cookies in regular browsing window, but then when they fix it you'd have to log in again.
You can just look at them, turn on showdead in your profile and you'll see a bunch of flag-killed comments in this discussion by whatevermrfukz. No need for a plugin or scraper.
Being "voted to -2" doesn't mean you were wrong
I often find it hard to tell what makes people think something I write is not helpful (or sometimes also a comment someone else made) and thus appreciate comments that clarify. It can also help to ask for clarification if you're particularly surprised about the votes on a given post
That’s not what happens in practice.
I believe it's because they accept user reports.
https://x.com/HNStatus
Is there a better place to check, beyond a basic down detector that may provide more insight or signal that the outage is acknowledged?
I didn't read the post text, it's identified there haha, my bad! I wish the text post text wasn't grey, I gloss over it too easily.
Seems to reset it on the web view, too.
(Basically whenever you see an x.com link just change it to xcancel.com and avoid the nonsense.)
It's down about 8.4 minutes per week. On 26% of days it doesn't work at least once, and on 12% of days it has more than one consecutive failed check. The longest uptime streak in the last 2 years was 24 days
After more than an hour I thought, "wow this is pretty harsh" and "so much of my exposure to learning things is directly tied to HN posts". I was lost lol.
Try opening HN -> it's down, better check HN to see everyone talking about a major website being down -> Try opening HN -> loop
That was a few hours ago. I'm glad this loop is broken.
https://relevancerecovery.com/habit-vs-addiction/
/s
"Shit, HN is down! Hm, I wonder if there's anything about it on HN?"
until stack overflow occurs.
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our requests to stop.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
You're "The Automated Status Page Platform Built for Real Reliability and Trust"?
Absolutely not. At least not anymore.
Anyway, glad to see you back.
Paris 1812.
Cheers from France.
Working with full dates in the HTML and doing a tiny JavaScript that calculates the "minutes ago" would actually be a neat improvement.
I'm still impressed nonetheless.
I'm sure it's a coincidence but it started working again shortly after emailing hn@ycombinator.com
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