Yeah, this got me until somebody found my email some other way and mentioned it was difficult. The real issue is that I basically never see my profile as somebody else would see it.
PG might want to add the text "(not shown)" to the user profile template.
I think a "make email visible" checkbox would clear up any confusion here.
I hadn't realized that myself; I'd previously not included my email due to the presence of the separate "email" field. Just added it.
Yep. It both never occurred to me that my email was private, nor that someone on Hacker News would want to contact me.
Also you have to add the email obfuscated in assembler or brainfuck or with some suitably esoteric algorithm; that's the rule!