I've seen this before on an article that hit the HN front page; was it this same blog?
And more importantly, why would anyone in their right mind think this "feature" is a good idea?
Edit: and yes, I could've used Reader Mode of course, but I didn't think of it at the time.
This is just not true, but in any case, don't get your point. The author has all the right to add anything to his blog, it's just that a lot of people will find it annoying and will stop reading, like some people mentioned here.
If the author thinks the cursors are worth the people not reading the actual content, then good for him.
Which part? The second sentence is just my opinion, and you're free to disagree. :)
My point is that somebody will always find reasons for not wanting to read an article. Whether that's because they don't like the color scheme, font, or any other style choice. You can't please everyone with design. I think we can agree that that statement is objectively true.
So given that, a personal blog is the right place to do whatever pleases the author the most, instead of optimizing for metrics that impact engagement, or whatever nonsense KPIs developers are asked to optimize for in their day job. People interested in the content can always choose to consume it however they prefer instead (thankfully, the web is still open in this sense). In this case you can disable JavaScript, use reader mode, a custom stylesheet, or any other barebones browser instead. Considering this article is directed at a technical audience, any of these should work for you.
Ostensibly, the goal of writing a blog post is for others to read it.
Don’t use Chrome then.
But you can easily remove the dom element that displays the cursors if the content is interesting to you and the cursors are the only thing preventing you from reading it..
Use reader mode in your browser.
People lost their bearing about if and when stupid visuals ruin or not their message, derail attention. And they stopped caring as well. They just want to make something funny looking, this is a primary motivation, coming up with stupid ideas and pushing it anywhere and everywhere. I belive this is a problematic attitude in the age of pretension. Which made me to loose my faith in humanity.
If you lose faith in humanity because of this, you should look into it.
Might make me a killjoy but there's a time and place for everything.
The feature is really fun and fitting on dimden's page; it's really distracting on this blog