Usenet 的回春?

看到「Usenet, the OG social network, rises again like a text-only phoenix (theregister.com)」這個討論,原文「USENET, the OG social network, rises again like a text-only phoenix」這篇標題講 Usenet 的回春?

我是覺得 Usenet 要真的回春一定有困難... 但有些客群跑到上面倒是不太意外。

主要是文末提到這幾個 newsgroup 好像可以去看看:

As a big science fiction reader, this vulture enjoys dipping into rec.arts.sf.written and rec.arts.sf.fandom. The computer history group alt.folklore.computers is still pretty busy. There is life in several retrocomputing channels, and we've been enjoying talking about Acorn RISC OS and Fortran among other things.

我自己是因為興趣,所以搞了一個 news server 跑 (在 newsfeed.hasname.com 這邊),然後去接了幾個 peer,架了一個 BBS site 抓一些群組,像是 comp.lang.c 這種很經典的群... 但這也是自己弄起來玩玩而已。

Anyway,也許晚點去看看上面提到的群?

用 ChatGPT 評新聞文章分數後產生的 News Minimalist

看到「News Minimalist – Only significant news (newsminimalist.com)」這個,把新聞網站所有的文章都丟進 ChatGPT 裡面評分,然後過濾出最高分的產生 newsletter:「News Minimalist」。

It uses AI (ChatGPT-4) to read the top 1000 news every day and rank them by significance on a scale from 0 to 10 based on event magnitude, scale, potential, and source credibility.

然後有 feed 可以讀,所以除了用 RSS reader 讀以外,也可以用 /feed add https://rss.beehiiv.com/feeds/4aF2pGVAEN.xml 的方式掛進 Slack 裡面。

整個服務看起來是 Vercel + beehiiv 搭起來的。

前陣子 Hacker News 很慢的一些背景知識

看到 Ask HN: Is Hacker News slow for anyone else? 這邊的討論,dang (Hacker News 的管理員) 在 35157344 這邊就有出來說明:

All: our poor server is smoking today* so I've had to reduce the page size of comments. There are 1500+ comments in this thread but if you want to read more than a few dozen you'll need to page through them by clicking the More link at the bottom. I apologize!

Also, if you're cool with read-only access, just log out (edit: or use an incognito tab) and all will be fast again.

* yes, HN still runs on one core, at least the part that serves logged-in requests, and yes this will all get better someday...it kills me that this isn't done yet but one day you will all see

另外比較特別的是,Hacker News 是用 Arc (Lisp) 寫的,不過看起來沒有考慮到 optimization,加上那天 Reddit 也掛了,的確帶動 Hacker News 這邊更新的頻率比較高...

用 GPT-3 產生 Hacker News 上熱門文章的摘要

看到「Autosummarized HN」這個工具,算是一個組合技的應用:

All summaries have been generated automatically by GPT-3. No responsibility is claimed for their contents nor its accuracy.

透過 GPT-3 解讀並產生出摘要,目前頁面上是沒有 RSS feed,但可以透過一些工具直接拉出來 (像是 PolitePol),然後就可以掛到 Slack 或是 RSS reader 裡面...

Hacker News 前幾天炸很久的 root cause

前幾天 Hacker News 炸了很久,如果是從 Twitter 上的資料來看,是從 2022/07/08 14:08 UTC 這篇:

中間還原失敗 (2022/07/08 17:35 UTC):

到最後恢復 (2022/07/08 20:48 UTC):

Twitter 這邊的資料看起來差不多是六個小時多,以一個應該是只有 database 需要還原的站台來說的確是蠻久的,所以後續在「HN is up again」這邊就有在討論原因,裡面 HN 的老大 dang 也有提到 downtime 是七個小時多:

8 hours of downtime, but not data loss, since there was no data to lose during the downtime.

Last post before we went down (2022-07-08 12:46:04 UTC): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32026565

First post once we were back up (2022-07-08 20:30:55 UTC): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32026571 (hey, that's this thread! how'd you do that, tpmx?)

So, 7h 45m of downtime. What we don't know is how many posts (or votes, etc.) happened after our last backup, and were therefore lost. The latest vote we have was at 2022-07-08 12:46:05 UTC, which is about the same as the last post.

There can't be many lost posts or votes, though, because I checked HN Search (https://hn.algolia.com/) just before we brought HN back up, and their most recent comment and story were behind ours. That means our last backup on the ill-fated server was taken after the last API update (HN Search relies on our API), and the API gets updated every 30 seconds.

I'm not saying that's a rock-solid argument, but it suggests that 30 seconds is an upper bound on how much data we lost.

另外大家就在找 dang 的回應是什麼 (畢竟是第一手資料),用 Ctrl-F 找一下就看到有趣的猜測,從 32028511 這個節點可以看到這串有趣的討論,首先是 mikeiem

You are never going to guess how long the HN SSDs were in the servers... never ever... OK... I'll tell you: 4.5years. I am not even kidding.

然後是 kabdib 的回應:

Let me narrow my guess: They hit 4 years, 206 days and 16 hours . . . or 40,000 hours.

And that they were sold by HP or Dell, and manufactured by SanDisk.

Do I win a prize?

(None of us win prizes on this one).

接著就是 dang 說他覺得這個猜測很有可能:

Wow. It's possible that you have nailed this.

Edit: here's why I like this theory. I don't believe that the two disks had similar levels of wear, because the primary server would get more writes than the standby, and we switched between the two so rarely. The idea that they would have failed within hours of each other because of wear doesn't seem plausible.

But the two servers were set up at the same time, and it's possible that the two SSDs had been manufactured around the same time (same make and model). The idea that they hit the 40,000 hour mark within a few hours of each other seems entirely plausible.

Mike of M5 (mikiem in this thread) told us today that it "smelled like a timing issue" to him, and that is squarely in this territory.

後續他也從自家的 /newest 裡面撈了相關的資料出來,依照他撈出來的關鍵字,看起來是用 HPE 出的 SSD:

It's also an example of the dharma of /newest – the rising and falling away of stories that get no attention:

HPE releases urgent fix to stop enterprise SSDs conking out at 40K hours - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22706968 - March 2020 (0 comments)

HPE SSD flaw will brick hardware after 40k hours - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22697758 - March 2020 (0 comments)

Some HP Enterprise SSD will brick after 40000 hours without update - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22697001 - March 2020 (1 comment)

HPE Warns of New Firmware Flaw That Bricks SSDs After 40k Hours of Use - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22692611 - March 2020 (0 comments)

HPE Warns of New Bug That Kills SSD Drives After 40k Hours - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22680420 - March 2020 (0 comments)

(there's also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32035934, but that was submitted today)

這次 downtime 看起來很像是中了 SSD firmware bug,目前看起來先搬到 EC2 上面了:

$ host news.ycombinator.com
news.ycombinator.com has address 50.112.136.166
$ host 50.112.136.166      
166.136.112.50.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer ec2-50-112-136-166.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com.

看討論串應該是暫時性的?

在 Hacker News 上看到幾個 Key-Value Store 軟體

Hacker News 上看到「Redis vs. KeyDB vs. Dragonfly vs. Skytable」這篇,裡面介紹了四套 key-value store 軟體:

  • Redis:這個應該不太需要介紹...
  • KeyDBSnapchat 搞出來的 Redis clone,主要的賣點是 multi-threading。
  • Dragonfly:宣稱地球上最快,但作者跑不出來,下面的討論有人提到 Dragonfly 在更多的 CPU 資源效能就會更好。
  • Skytable:作者測出來最快的。

裡面看起來都蠻有趣的,可以追起來看看發展的情況,但如果真的要的用的話,應該還是先以 Redis 為主,穩定度以及功能還是重點...

BBC 這次拿出短波廣播...

Hacker News Daily 上看到的,BBC 這次戰爭拿出短波廣播發送訊號,讓烏克蘭地區的人,以及一部分俄羅斯的人可以收到 BBC 的新聞:「BBC resurrects WWII-era shortwave broadcasts as Russia blocks news of Ukraine invasion」。

The BBC says its shortwave broadcasts will be available on frequencies of 15735 kHz from 4PM to 6PM and 5875 kHz from 10PM to midnight, Ukraine time. News will be read in English, which the BBC says will be available in Kyiv as well as “parts of Russia.”

主要還是用到短波廣播可以傳很遠,以及難以封鎖的特性,相較於 internet 容易被牆掉所以被拿來用...

另外 BBC 也提供了 Onion 的版本,讓俄羅斯的人可以翻出來看 BBC 的新聞:

The BBC’s current onion domain is: https://www.bbcnewsd73hkzno2ini43t4gblxvycyac5aw4gnv7t2rccijh7745uqd.onion.

不過有 Tor 的話基本上可以直接從 exit node 看,好像沒有必要特別用 Onion 位置...

新世紀福音戰士的字型

沒想到在 Hacker News 首頁上看到第一名居然是這個連結:

2019 年的文章:「Neon Genesis Evangelion」,找資料的時候發現有簡體中文版的翻譯:「末世感叩击:《新世纪福音战士》的文字世界」。

這些字型是由日本的 Fontworks 所開發出來的 Matisse EB,在片尾的 credit 也可以看到「株式会社フォントワークスジャパン」:

主要是沒想到會在 Hacker News 首頁上的第一名看到這個...

SendGrid 意外的被幹翻...

看到 Hacker News 上的「Ask HN: Great tools for solo SaaS founders?」這則,在討論有哪些服務好用的,有人提到了 SendGrid 做為 email 發送服務,結果沒想到下面一堆人幹翻 XDDD

蠻多人推薦 Postmark 的,另外有人提到 SparkPost

另外可以看一下「Hacker News Tools of the Trade」,之前要找工具都會往這邊翻翻...

Hacker News 拿到 hackernews.com 了

Hacker News 上看到「Hackernews.com (hackernews.com)」這則消息,有人注意到 hackernews.com 被指到 news.ycombinator.com...

一開始有人猜測只是第三方指過來:

LeoPanthera 1 day ago

With a different registrar to ycombinator.com, this is likely not owned by Y Combinator, and therefore difficult to trust that it won't start being malicious in the future.

不過後來 dang (Hacker News 的管理員) 有出來證實這個網域名稱目前是在他們旗下了:

dang 1 day ago

It's owned by YC now. We got it earlier this year. That's why it redirects to HN!

以 Hacker News 的性質來說不是太重要,算是有機會拿掉就順便拿下來...