Hacker News Reader

Comment by ColinWright | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't work for me, but probably because the machine I usually use to access HN is running Firefox 1.5 on SuSE 10.1. One of the things I love about HN is that it runs prefectly on such an old browser/OS combination.

EDIT: Wow, a downvote despite providing concrete feedback to the submitter? Interesting. I might have to re-think my entire position about the HN "community" as expressed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2660578

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Why an old browser for Hacker News, where fully 70% of the submissions are live demos of new technology, which require the latest version of a modern browser to use? It's like entering your Prius in a rally race.

70%? Really? The front page is right now filled with text articles from wsj, forbes, cnbc, stackexchange, ibm, aljezeera, techcrunch, drdobbs, ....

It's like driving your Prius to watch a rally race. Works great.

Out of interest, why the old browser/OS combo?

Long story. Older hardware, doesn't do flashy stuff, helps stop me procrastinating, runs lots of low priority, background tasks that will get broken by upgrading, and so on.

The fast, whizzy machines with new OSs and up-to-date browsers get used for serious, work-related stuff. Not for HN.

Hasn't Firefox 1.5 lacked security updates since it was discontinued ~4 years ago? Why not Chrome or something?

Yes, true, but I don't go click on much. Anything potentially interesting I actually forward to another machine that's more secure and look at it there. There really isn't much joy in trying to hack that older machine.

It's so old, most attack vectors don't work anymore anyway. And I have other protection in place that I won't discuss.

Don't be butthurt over one downvoter. Here, I upvoted you.

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