Me too. perhaps they didn't prepare for the traffic spurt from HN?

That was indeed the root cause of the problem. I hadn't expected the volume of visitors HN sent, and unfortunately I wasn't prepared for it.

Apache hit the memory limits constantly, and in the end I had change to nginx. The service has been working fine for a couple of hours, so if you're still interested you can try it out.

Apologies for not being prepared.