Hipster Sounds Turn Your Office Into A Coffee Shop
Unusual Stuff

Facebook Suffers Its Worst Outage In 4 Years

Posted 9/24/2010 8:30 am by

Facebook might be the most popular social network on the planet and may be starring in an upcoming movie, but it’s far from perfect.  As with anything based off the web, you’re depending a whole lot on coding and servers to keep your site online, and if one piece of code goes bad, the whole thing goes belly-up.  A coding problem is the reason why Facebook suffered what Facebook engineer Robert Johnson describes as its “worst outage in over four years” yesterday.

Here’s how Johnson explains Thursday’s down time, which is not related to Wednesday’s down time the site also suffered for some people.  If this explanation makes sense to you, then you’re a smarter person than I am, because it’s all Greek to me.  “Today we made a change to the persistent copy of a configuration value that was interpreted as invalid. This meant that every single client saw the invalid value and attempted to fix it.  Because the fix involves making a query to a cluster of databases, that cluster was quickly overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of queries a second.  To make matters worse, every time a client got an error attempting to query one of the databases it interpreted it as an invalid value, and deleted the corresponding cache key.  This meant that even after the original problem had been fixed, the stream of queries continued.”

Well, hopefully the problem is solved now.  Feel free to resume using Facebook to cheat on your spouse, post pictures of yourself, and talk to your white friends.  It could’ve been worse Facebookers; you could be using Twitter, which has a history of failure dating back to Shakespearean England.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Share this post, or Subscribe:

More Stuff Worth Checking Out »

Unusual Stuff

Paralyzed By Gas Station Nachos

Posted 5/18/2017 6:54 pm by

I’ve never had a problem eating food from a gas station.  Just two weeks ago, I ate a couple of hot dogs purchased from a gas station.  They were delicious.  That’s not the first time I’ve eaten gas station food, and I doubt it will be the last.  There’s nothing like a fun food novelty. […]

Read »
Unusual Stuff

McDonald’s Lauches The Frork, And Also New Sandwiches

Posted 5/01/2017 6:40 pm by

McDonald’s is a company in transition.  The old favorites seem to be losing popularity; kids these days just don’t want Big Macs anymore.  That means time for a new invention, and it appears that McDonald’s is taking some cues from Japan by getting creative with their hamburgers.  McDonald’s is adding three new sandwiches to their […]

Read »
Unusual Stuff

Raiders Fleeing Oakland For Vegas, Baby

Posted 3/28/2017 8:29 am by

Commissioner Roger Goodell gathered 32 NFL owners for one big question.  One of the league’s most wanderlust-stricken franchises is looking to move again.  The Oakland-Los Angeles-Oakland Raiders, tired of gutting it out in a run-down stadium, were once again looking for greener pastures.  Only the Miami Dolphins refused to cooperate.  With a vote of 31-1, […]

Read »
Unusual Stuff

McDonald’s Blasts Number One Customer Donald Trump

Posted 3/16/2017 7:21 pm by

It’s not every day that a Twitter account dedicated to promoting McDonald’s as a business, but now it’s made a statement that will either increase business or cause a boycott and hashtag frenzy.  It’s all based on how you feel about President Donald Trump.  If you’re a fan, you’re booing.  If you’re not a fan, […]

Read »
Unusual Stuff

Tony Romo Leaving Dallas

Posted 3/08/2017 6:54 pm by

In 2006, an injury to Dallas Cowboys starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe opened the door for an undrafted free agent by the name of Tony Romo to take the helm of America’s Team and lead the Dallas Cowboys to an early playoff exit.  Bledsoe went from starter to afterthought in a season.  Now, the circle continues […]

Read »
Unusual Stuff

Xbox One Adds Netflix-Style Subscription

Posted 2/28/2017 12:21 pm by

There’s a certain charm to having streaming services at your beck and call.  I don’t get to watch as much as I want, but when I get a chance to watch something on demand, I usually take it.  I love Netflix, and I’ve watched more bad movies on Netflix than I have any right to […]

Read »
Unusual Stuff

Whoops, Here’s The REAL Best Picture

Posted 2/27/2017 9:37 am by

For 89 years, Oscars has never had a major mistake.  The last few Oscars might have had a few flubs, but at least they never got the most important category of the night wrong.  Well, that’s now changed, all thanks to OG Bonnie and Clyde legends Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway.  When Faye Dunaway called […]

Read »
Unusual Stuff

Queens Bull Captured After Merry Chase

Posted 2/21/2017 6:40 pm by

There’s the concrete jungle.  There’s the urban cowboy.  There’s all kinds of farm and animal metaphors that concern New York City, but none of them actually reflect the actual animals.  The bull market on Wall Street has little to nothing to do with actual bulls, so any time you see a strange animal loose on […]

Read »
Unusual Stuff

Tom Brady’s Jersey Stolen From Super Bowl LI Locker Room

Posted 2/06/2017 5:41 pm by

Tom Brady has been wildly successful, if controversial.  He’s the first quarterback ever to win five Super Bowls and only the second player to do so after Charles Haley.  Unlike Haley, Brady won all his Super Bowls with the same team, the New England Patriots.  The only thing that seems to be able to stop […]

Read »
Unusual Stuff

Panic! US Bacon Reserves Hit 50-Year-Low

Posted 2/01/2017 7:01 pm by

As of right now, the United States Department of Agriculture has 17.8 million pounds of pork belly in storage.  Pork belly is the delicious part of the pig that turns into bacon when cured and fried.  It tastes good, smells better, and is even good for you!  It seems like a lot, but it’s actually […]

Read »
Unusual Stuff

Ben Affleck Keeps Cowl, Gives Up Director’s Chair

Posted 1/31/2017 7:42 pm by

Ben Affleck, no matter what you might think of him, is a talented actor and director.  He’s got the goods, but he’s smart enough to know when he’s in over his head.  All along, since he took on the mantle of Batman, he’s had his eyes on writing, directing, and starring as the Caped Crusader. […]

Read »
Unusual Stuff

Concentration Camp “Escape Room” Shut Down

Posted 1/27/2017 7:37 pm by

There’s a new game genre out there.  Part simulation, part social game, part physical challenge, escape rooms are really popular.  You wander through a scenario, stuff happens, and you have to try to figure your way out in a certain amount of time.  I’ve done similar things, but I haven’t done a full-fledged escape room […]

Read »
Unusual Stuff

Fired IT Worker Locks College Out Of Accounts

Posted 1/17/2017 6:10 pm by

In May, students for the for-profit American College of Education were running into some problems.  Their access to email accounts and course information was locked down by Google, who had disabled their accounts.  The reason why?  A fired IT worker for the American College of Education locked the school out of their Google cloud account. […]

Read »
Unusual Stuff

Yahoo To Become Altaba With New CEO

Posted 1/09/2017 8:51 pm by

There’s just a constant state of flux in one of the web’s biggest companies and the pre-Google version of Google.  Yahoo, limping along while its former corporate child Alibaba has become a major player in the online world.  Yet poor old Yahoo keeps struggling along, but maybe a new name will yield new fortunes?  Yahoo […]

Read »