Tell HN: HN was down - Hacker News

Posted by uyzstvqs 12/17/2025

Tell HN: HN was down

- HN errored on all authenticated requests with 502 Bad Gateway. It did still respond to a limited amount of unauthenticated requests with presumably cached pages, which did not get updated. The last post on /newest claimed "0 minutes ago", but was actually much older (1:32:57 PM GMT) and not the newest post.

- 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.

599 points | 327 commentspage 3

PurpleRamen 12/17/2025|

In other words, productivity in tech skyrocketed for hours..though it seems some work was flavoured with irrational anger.

Aperocky 12/18/2025||

During that time I couldn't load HN web page, but my HN CLI tool could connect to HN: https://github.com/Aperocky/hnterminal, but only read.

ajdude 12/17/2025||

I was able to view the site without being signed in (i.e. private window) but any browser I was logged into wouldn't load.

I'm sure it's a coincidence but it started working again shortly after emailing hn@ycombinator.com

chistev 12/17/2025||

It was the first time since I started using this website (August last year) that it was down.

I'm still impressed nonetheless.

I'd like to know what caused the outage and how it could have been prevented, for learning purposes.

stevenjgarner 12/17/2025||

https://www.stevenjgarner.com/HN-Down-2025-12-17-07-48-UTC-0...

whynotmaybe 12/17/2025||

I Still found it funny that we have downdetector, downdetectordowndetector, downdetectordowndetectordowndetector,... (I lost count) but downdetector doesn't detect HN's status.

fatty_patty89 12/17/2025||

I got irrationally angry when it refused to load the website

DonHopkins 12/17/2025||

You handle your irrational anger much better than whatevermrfukz who keeps pooping his pants.

fatty_patty89 12/17/2025||

Interesting that you mention that, how do you keep track of his comments? Some sort of plugin/scraper?

Jtsummers 12/17/2025||

> how do you keep track of his comments?

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.

fatty_patty89 12/17/2025||

thank you

imvetri 12/17/2025||

you could refuse to be angry to mock it

zelphirkalt 12/17/2025||

Yep "having trouble serving my request" or so.

khaledh 12/17/2025||

It was down if you tried to access it while authenticated (i.e. you have a cookie). It was loading fine for unauthenticated sessions (e.g. incognito).

numpad0 12/17/2025|

Could have been accidental flagging of sorts. Didn't work on PC for few minutes while showing fine on phone.

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