Ask PG: Is the saved function not working?

4 points·eugenejen··5 comments

Hi PG,

I used HN for bookmarking. I found yesterday that when I click my own account's saved link and I only get a blank page in Firefox browser.

View on HN

It times out. This is an old bug in the HN code and the source of a lot of frustration.

Ok. Then it seems like the number of my bookmarks just reached the threshold to trigger this bug. It is really frustrating experience.

It works as long as you have a short list.

It can make it very hard to find stuff you know you posted for reference. Searchyc or google work better for this, sadly.

Or try again when the site is quiet, that definitely improves your chances.

SearchYC and Google are indeed the easiest ways to get back to items you posted as long as you remember some keywords from your submission.

Sometimes you can "cheat" the system by trying the link, letting it time out, and trying again in 30 seconds or so. iirc it loads the data off of disk and it may complete later - if you catch it while it's still in memory you might have some luck getting it.

The only other workaround that I can think of is to make a comment in your post and then find it via /threads.

I definitely agree about it being frustrating.

Sorry; it times out for a few people who've upvoted a large number of stories. Will take a look at fixing it once I get done with applications.

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