On mobile Firefox, the app captures the gesture to go back to the prior page, so I couldn't come back to here until I typed in the URL box to navigate to Hacker News
Fun app. You can have that cool go back functionality without actually preventing people from going back.
This site is an example. Choose another question a few times then click the back button.
If you're gonna hijack the back button for the purpose of your app, folks, at least make it eventually go to the previous page. Don't make it circular.
Sorry that my only comment is a criticism, I guess being a SW engineer turned me oversensitive to bugs/unexpected behavior. Like an allergy caused by overexposure, haha.
Or, in the spirit of the site itself... they can fuck the fuck off. Not sure if it's lazy or hostile but it ensures I won't visit again.
Far more evil comes from misunderstanding or just plain old ignorance (not in a deragoratory way - we all learn new things every day). So in practice, it's a useful heuristic.
I'm not sure about Firefox but on other browsers you can hold the back button to see your history - then you can navigate back to HN (or wherever) from there.