I find pinging localhost a bit more reliable, and faster too.

I blame HN switching to AWS. Downtime also increased after the switch.

When did you notice HN switching to AWS, and what changed?

(Those are trick questions, because we haven't switched to AWS. But I genuinely would like to hear the answers.)

(We did switch to AWS briefly when our hosting provider went down because of a bizarre SSD self-bricking incident a few years ago...but it was only for a day or two!)