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Comment by aynyc | Hacker News Reader

Well, the data is already public. Anyone can technically scrape if they want.

The association of usernames with emails isn't public. But I was responding more to the sheer inelegance and inefficiency of such a solution, and the irony that such a contraption is required on a social media website that's mostly for people who make websites. Shall we have a third party website - and corresponding username/email database - for every missing feature?

HN is a technical embarrassment.

I wouldn't go that far. Maybe lacking this feature was a feature to PG. But if you want a HN clone that has this feature, I'm running one. Look at my submissions.

All that documentation and no commentary on the name of the project hahaha

The name of what project?

HN is a technical pride - if it ain't broken, don't fix it. I like not having "notifications". I like having 5 minute delay between comments, you know, to let the world process that information as well.

Regarding inefficiency, I doubt it takes more electricity than running an average sized social media, content, messaging, notification, whatever platforms. So in a consequentialist approach it works.

Your contentment with the imperfections of an unchangeable status quo is an inspiration to us all, but not everyone is so zen - as of this writing, 2075 HN users think it's "broke" enough to type their account details into a rando third part site. Email notifications - that you can turn off - are an obvious and utterly standard feature of all forum software since approximately ever. It's no wonder people miss it.

Is there a word for this? Defending obvious shortcomings as features because they are not fixable? It seems pretty endemic in hackerdom.

Masochistic minimalism?

I am occasionally guilty

HN probably still runs on a PIII chip (or did until recently) — you nailed it.

Only 2075? and I am one of them. the thing is technical people such as us (HN) tend to strive for perfection, efficiency, etc. when in the real world, practicality is key. HN works, email works, the combo works... Look what happened when Twitter changed their font. I still cringe when I see it.

And regarding a name - "it's not a bug, it's a feature" - these people are collectively known as "programmers".

I was expecting this to be a new account.

Did you buy this handle?

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