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US Amazon.com Website Down For Over 1 Hour

CorporalKlinger writes "CNET News is reporting that Amazon's US website, Amazon.com, has been unreachable since 10:30 AM PDT today. As of posting, visiting www.amazon.com produces an 'Http/1.1 Service Unavailable' message. According to CNET, "Based on last quarter's revenue of $4.13 billion, a full-scale global outage would cost Amazon more than $31,000 per minute on average." Some of Amazon's international websites still appear to be working, and some pages on the US Amazon.com site load if accessed using HTTPS instead of HTTP."

6 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. So, it finally happened... by geekgirlandrea · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Believe me, if you've seen the code that runs that site, it's impressive it runs as well as it does. Try to imagine 900M static binaries that take almost an hour to link because of some tiny little code change, because they can't be fucked to make their deployment system deal with dynamic libraries reasonably.

    1. Re:So, it finally happened... by geekgirlandrea · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Um, I used to work there. Believe it or not, there are some people here with real jobs and stuff.

    2. Re:So, it finally happened... by pclminion · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Believe me, if you've seen the code that runs that site, it's impressive it runs as well as it does. Try to imagine 900M static binaries that take almost an hour to link because of some tiny little code change, because they can't be fucked to make their deployment system deal with dynamic libraries reasonably.

      Fuck up a dynamic library and you fuck everything. Fuck up one of those 900M programs and you've fucked 1/900M'th of everything.

      What does Amazon's back end compile for? If it's Linux, that's an issue right there. The GNU linker has pathological behavior when linking large numbers of static libraries. I work on a relatively small (~1 million line) codebase and it takes about ten minutes to link. Link it on another platform (e.g. Solaris) and it links in about five seconds.

      The problem isn't the huge number of libraries. The problem is that the linker blows.

  2. Re:This will surely help by Goaway · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You think traffic from SlashDot would even be noticeable on Amazon's servers? You have some delusions of grandeur there.

  3. thinks I am a robot by hloo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    tried to access it from holland just now, got this message: We're sorry! You have been denied access to this feature because we believe you violated the terms, conditions, rules, guidelines or policies of our site in the past. If you believe we have taken this action in error, you may contact us at ad-help-us@amazon.com. We apologize for the inconvenience. Frequently Asked Questions Q: Why am I seeing this page? A: This page is usually shown when we believe that the request is coming from a robot or other automated source of requests. If you are not a robot please contact us immediately by emailing ad-help-us@amazon.com and we will reinstate your access to our website.

  4. Cost of outage by sugarmotor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    a full-scale global outage would cost Amazon more than $31,000 per minute on average.
    I don't trust this; some people may buy later if there is an outage, no?

    Stephan

    --
    http://stephan.sugarmotor.org