Ask HN: What Happened to Svbtle?
47 comments
It’ll be back later today. Sorry for the downtime!
Thanks Dustin. If you don't mind sharing, it would be interesting to know what caused the outage.
Simply, and without too many details: the load balancer failed to work properly when one server in the cluster stopped responding, causing a cascade of errors which successively crashed all of the other servers (including, interestingly, the RDS database server -- which even Amazon was unable to explain).
the dcurt.is domain in your hn profile doesn't work either.
Don't you think that would be due to his blogging platform being down?
Very nice customer service :D
Yikes. I'm not unsympathetic, but if there's any one recurrent theme I've seen in computing over the 40 years I've been here, it's make backups.
I always had a sort of genial skepticism of Svbtle: I liked the idea, but there was something a bit...for want of a more gentle term, a bit blowhardy about Dustin Curtis's own writing style, and like others, I was bemused by that "forever promise." It's impressive, but how can you guarantee that? In fact, it doesn't guarantee it, precisely, based on the footnote of the linked content:
> “Forever” means until the HTML-based “web” is no longer generally accessible or until Svbtle or its parent company becomes financially insolvent (which we intend to avoid given that users pay for the service).
(Emphasis added.) Many years ago I signed up for the "lifetime hosting" at TextDrive, which turned out to really mean "until the parent company went all-in on managed enterprise hosting"; Joyent's management appeared to be somewhat surprised and irritated that we expected "lifetime" to mean "if not our own personal lifetimes, then at least as long as your company is in business". Svbtle clearly tried to do better, and I don't doubt they meant it, but it's still a big ask.
Having said that, I also suspect it's basically a one-person business, so goodness knows what's up. Is there a customer service email address? Have you tried emailing "[email protected]", which appears to be Dustin Curtis's email address?
I always had a sort of genial skepticism of Svbtle: I liked the idea, but there was something a bit...for want of a more gentle term, a bit blowhardy about Dustin Curtis's own writing style, and like others, I was bemused by that "forever promise." It's impressive, but how can you guarantee that? In fact, it doesn't guarantee it, precisely, based on the footnote of the linked content:
> “Forever” means until the HTML-based “web” is no longer generally accessible or until Svbtle or its parent company becomes financially insolvent (which we intend to avoid given that users pay for the service).
(Emphasis added.) Many years ago I signed up for the "lifetime hosting" at TextDrive, which turned out to really mean "until the parent company went all-in on managed enterprise hosting"; Joyent's management appeared to be somewhat surprised and irritated that we expected "lifetime" to mean "if not our own personal lifetimes, then at least as long as your company is in business". Svbtle clearly tried to do better, and I don't doubt they meant it, but it's still a big ask.
Having said that, I also suspect it's basically a one-person business, so goodness knows what's up. Is there a customer service email address? Have you tried emailing "[email protected]", which appears to be Dustin Curtis's email address?
Yeah I was there for TextDrive too. That was more of a slap in the face because it was Dean Allen's personality that brought us in, but Jason Hoffman was running the thing, and he was really more interested in playing with Solaris than providing a stable service. The whole Joyent acqui-pivot (or whatever that was) was just the final fuck-you to those of us who thought it was a cool indie grassroots thing.
As far as Svbtle is concerned, this appears to just be small operation downtime which is the poison you've chosen if you go that way. Can't say there's any "forever guarantee" that really means much. The best you can get is that if you sign with Oracle they'll guarantee to ratchet up that dependency to charge you more and more over time. Hard to beat that as an incentive for uptime.
As far as Svbtle is concerned, this appears to just be small operation downtime which is the poison you've chosen if you go that way. Can't say there's any "forever guarantee" that really means much. The best you can get is that if you sign with Oracle they'll guarantee to ratchet up that dependency to charge you more and more over time. Hard to beat that as an incentive for uptime.
To be fair to Allen and Hoffman, when Joyent and TextDrive "merged", Joyent's business was basically a SaaS mail/calendar/collaboration system called "Joyent Connector" and TextDrive was the supposedly complementary hosting platform. It was a couple years after the merge that Allen left and Hoffman decided to go full bore enterprise.
Yes, that's a good point. There was a longer window of time here which I had compressed in my mind because the shared hosting was so unstable that I basically wrote it off and stopped paying attention for a few years there.
Joyent did sponsor the work that led to NodeJS however, I think?
While I wouldn't excuse any bad behavior, that is a point in Joyent's favor...
While I wouldn't excuse any bad behavior, that is a point in Joyent's favor...
The Joyent that made Node wasn't really the Joyent that brought TextDrive, afaik. That company has a long history of.... fuckups, maybe ?
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They did not.
It's probably not accurate to phrase it as "Joyent sponsored the the work that led to Node.js", but it was essentially their project in the early 2010s. They were paying full-time salaries to Node and NPM's creators, and Ryan Dahl described Node as being "officially under Joyent's roof".
https://groups.google.com/g/nodejs/c/lWo0MbHZ6Tc
(I remember, after TextDrive fell apart, making a rather sardonic blog post observing that if I were heavily involved with Node, I would be making contingency plans.)
https://groups.google.com/g/nodejs/c/lWo0MbHZ6Tc
(I remember, after TextDrive fell apart, making a rather sardonic blog post observing that if I were heavily involved with Node, I would be making contingency plans.)
the thing is, making backups on a blog is actually non-trivial.
if i host my own then it's easy to just have an automated backup of the database or the static files. but on any online tool it depends on the APIs that are available. if there is RSS i could find an RSS download tool, but if not then it would most likely have to be manual copy-paste which you have to remember to do and is quite inconvenient if you are on the road.
if i host my own then it's easy to just have an automated backup of the database or the static files. but on any online tool it depends on the APIs that are available. if there is RSS i could find an RSS download tool, but if not then it would most likely have to be manual copy-paste which you have to remember to do and is quite inconvenient if you are on the road.
Sure, it depends on your blog software and/or your workflow. I don't know how good Svbtle is in terms of its API, or indeed, if it even has one. I would personally suggest that if you're using blogging software that has no APIs for either exporting or importing, you should carefully consider whether that software is a good choice (and if you are creating blogging software that has no APIs for either exporting or importing, you should get on at least the first and ideally both).
Svbtle's most obvious original competitor/inspiration, Medium, appears to have at least rudimentary export capabilities, and it's has a publishing API for years -- I could write an article in an editor that supports its API, like Ulysses, and publish right to it. Of course, I could also write an article in any editor and just copy and paste the Markdown to Svbtle, and then just...save my articles in their original form. This has been the way I've written anything much more considered than, er, replies on HN for many years, and it doesn't require whatever I'm publishing on to have any concept of an API whatsoever!
Svbtle's most obvious original competitor/inspiration, Medium, appears to have at least rudimentary export capabilities, and it's has a publishing API for years -- I could write an article in an editor that supports its API, like Ulysses, and publish right to it. Of course, I could also write an article in any editor and just copy and paste the Markdown to Svbtle, and then just...save my articles in their original form. This has been the way I've written anything much more considered than, er, replies on HN for many years, and it doesn't require whatever I'm publishing on to have any concept of an API whatsoever!
as a programmer you can probably rig together a script that will extract your content, but for a non-technical person that is to much to ask.
the best solution would probably be a prompt in the web-editor of the site to save your text once you are done writing it. like publish and save in one step or something like that. and a url that exports your content as a zip archive.
the best solution would probably be a prompt in the web-editor of the site to save your text once you are done writing it. like publish and save in one step or something like that. and a url that exports your content as a zip archive.
Most simple blogs today can get by with a git repository and a github action that converts Markdown to HTML and pushes the output to free static hosting.
"but for a non technical person it is too much to ask.”
*Waves hands frantically* over here that's me....and it is just one reason I keep talking myself out of blogging.
*Waves hands frantically* over here that's me....and it is just one reason I keep talking myself out of blogging.
well yes, that's what i meant with hosting my own.
but if you use svbtle, medium or substack or any other hosted platform, how do you back up that?
but if you use svbtle, medium or substack or any other hosted platform, how do you back up that?
IMHO it's as trivial as CTRL-S after you publish the blog post. If you care
the point is, it's manual, and any manual process is messy and errorprone. you can forget to do it or you can be on a device where it is not practical, or simply not have the time.
and saving that whole html page instead of the actual text also produces a very messy result. have fun restoring that.
and saving that whole html page instead of the actual text also produces a very messy result. have fun restoring that.
`0 0 * * * wget -r https://somewhere.svbtle.com/`
that gives you an ugly jumbled mess of html, javascript and your texts interspersed, and it may not even work on sites that use javascript.
Needing to browse a "we guarantee we will stay online forever" page through an archive service is pretty hilarious. The fact that the service has been down for multiple days with no communication about it and no way to reach them shows what that guarantee was worth.
I don't know anything about Svbtle, but ultimately that isn't a promise anyone can realistically make regardless of the best intentions. You need money to run servers. What happens when a company runs out of it or even ceases to exist? What if there's accidental unrecoverable data loss due to a bug or outage? What if the operator gets hit by a bus?
If you have data you care about, hold it yourself (and back it up). Trusting a random free online service with the sole copy of everything is foolish.
I don't know anything about Svbtle, but ultimately that isn't a promise anyone can realistically make regardless of the best intentions. You need money to run servers. What happens when a company runs out of it or even ceases to exist? What if there's accidental unrecoverable data loss due to a bug or outage? What if the operator gets hit by a bus?
If you have data you care about, hold it yourself (and back it up). Trusting a random free online service with the sole copy of everything is foolish.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220128165151/https://svbtle.co...
> We promise to do everything in our power to ensure that any content you publish on the platform will continue to be available on the web forever, at the same permanent link, as long as you want it there. This promise even applies after you stop your subscription to the service. (For more details see the small print below.)
> We promise to do everything in our power to ensure that any content you publish on the platform will continue to be available on the web forever, at the same permanent link, as long as you want it there. This promise even applies after you stop your subscription to the service. (For more details see the small print below.)
It went down svbtly
Wasn't is made by Dustin Curtis? Looks like at least one of his personal sites is down too: https://dcurt.is/
I am pretty sure that this site was hosted on Svbtle as well. His other personal site still seems to be online: https://dustincurtis.com/
I don't see how they can keep that promise. Who foots the bill after the company stops existing? The founder? What if he gets hit by a bus?
Fairly obvious if you read through their "promise":
> We promise to do everything in our power to ensure that any content you publish on the platform will continue to be available on the web forever, at the same permanent link, as long as you want it there.
If the company stops existing, there is no "We" anymore so realistically, they don't have to continue trying. If all of them gets hit by buses (or all by the same bus), I think it's reasonable to say they did everything they could in their power, but their power is now non-existing so probably you content will be soon too.
> We promise to do everything in our power to ensure that any content you publish on the platform will continue to be available on the web forever, at the same permanent link, as long as you want it there.
If the company stops existing, there is no "We" anymore so realistically, they don't have to continue trying. If all of them gets hit by buses (or all by the same bus), I think it's reasonable to say they did everything they could in their power, but their power is now non-existing so probably you content will be soon too.
I think this is a case of 'don't build your castles on other people's land'
This must be one of those lifetime warranty things
It may be a good time to check if your site was archived on archive.org
Maybe something from the parent corp? https://neutralcorporation.com/
That "promise" is pretty laughable. They stick a gazillion qualifiers on it (so long as they're not insolvent, and everything just keeps working without needing any changes, and they'll only try their best) - and then they say that none of it is a guarantee anyway.
But, there's a lesson here. Nothing is a replacement for backups and you'll care more about your own stuff than anyone else will.
But, there's a lesson here. Nothing is a replacement for backups and you'll care more about your own stuff than anyone else will.
Funny reading ppl criticizing the "promise". I decided to Google Svbtle as I recalled liking their default theme "awhile ago"... And there are results from over 10 years ago! I'd call that a pretty run in terms of promises and lifetimes.
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Does the wayback machine not take snapshots of its content?
Looks like their "promise" is worthless.
Dustin travels a lot. Maybe we give him the weekend before we bare our teeth?
[1] https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/svbtle.com
[2] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LXB7R6sD2i4J:https://svbtle.com/promise+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-b-1-d