Disruption with Some GitHub Services

GitHub hit a speed bump today, with pull requests — the way devs propose changes to code — slowing down and pages timing out. The company’s status feed said it was investigating, then rolled out a fix, and finally declared it resolved with promises of a root-cause report. But the real show was in the comments. One user groaned about seeing GitHub’s infamous unicorn error page: “Again… Unicorns when trying to view files or PRs,” capturing the vibe of developers locked out of their work. Another quipped that it’s become the “daily HN get together,” turning Hacker News (HN) into a virtual waiting room with memes and popcorn.

Then came the uptime snark. Folks joked GitHub is “struggling to keep their last 9,” riffing on “five nines,” which means nearly-perfect reliability. The spiciest jab? A commenter claimed Copilot — GitHub’s AI assistant — took uptime from “five nines to nine fives,” flipping perfection on its head. Others dropped throwback links suggesting AI features were sidelined “to focus on reliability,” while skeptics called that a reach. In between the hot takes, a calmer crew noted the outage was short-lived (minutes, not days), and urged subscribing to alerts via Slack so the next unicorn sighting doesn’t derail a workday.

For now, PRs are back, and the crowd awaits the postmortem — the internet’s favorite season finale