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Comment by rcthompson | Hacker News Reader

Ironically, this page hangs Chrome indefinitely when I try to load it. Luckily it only hangs the tab so I can still close it. I guess I'll fire up Firefox to see if I can actually read the article.

Edit: Actually, it loads fine in a private browsing tab, so it must be a bad interaction with some extension. Oh well.

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I am curious why you find this ironic? What is your definition of irony?

Chrome uses V8. Chrome is the primary user of V8.

Not supporting OP's definition of irony, whatever it is, just speculating how OP could've thought of it.

I have a strange hang-up/interest in people's concept of irony. I am not sure Alanis Morissete would be able to find any irony in this situation.

I think he meant "Chrome uses V8, which is also used by Node.js"

I find the interest in how irony is identified and (mis)used much more interesting than the actual use or misuse itself.

I guess you could say I have a hang-up about your hang-up, or an interest in your interest. ;)

"Ironically" is a word that you see and hear frequently in everyday english. I think its interesting how varied people's concept of irony is for such a common word. From what I can tell most people's definition is something between "serendipity's evil twin" and "partially related." It seems in this case OP thinks the definition is the latter. I think that sooner or later "ironically" is going to have the same fate as "randomly," ("It is so random we ran into you, we were just talking about you.) which I think has zero meaning in conversational english.

To be honest i think most people's definition of irony is largely shaped by Alanis Morissette's terribly misinformed but catchy song and the hipster d-bag that says he has an "ironic mustache."

I think it is the evolution of language that is interesting? It seems like we have a case of the more a word is used the definition becomes less concise until it carries no meaning. There has to be some linguistic jargon for this type of situation.

"Serendipity's evil twin." That made my evening, for some reason. It's exactly how I'd define the term by how I find it used. Thanks!

Before I posted that I googled "define irony" and was surprised to see the first definition as something that sounded like sarcasm. The definition appears to already be changing, making hipsters retroactively correct, which is just another reason we can all hate them. ;)

Yeah, that's pretty much it. I was trying to read about a problem with a javascript engine, and I was prevented from doing so by what could quite likely have been another problem with the same javascript engine.

So your definition of irony is "an event which shares a trait with another event"?

I don't think "ironic" is entirely the wrong word. It can mean a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result

In this case it's more accidental or incidental than deliberate....

Thank you for indulging my silly word fetish. What is the state of affairs that could be identified as deliberately or merely accidentally/incidentally contrary in this situation:

  * There is a discussion of a problem in V8. 
  * While reading the discussion a user stumbles across a problem in Chrome. 
  * V8 is a component of Chrome.
  * The Chrome bug may or may not be related to V8.

For the sake of the discussion we can pretend that "deliberate" is not a key component of the definition you give[1] and substitute incidental/accidental. What is the contrary result? Given the memory leak in V8 we know that V8 is not the first software product to be bug free. So it should not be surprising or unexpected that there may be another problem in V8 or Chrome.

One of the things that I find interesting about the way irony is tossed around these days is that it signals no information. As a result it is never an "entirely wrong word." Because it does not convey anything to the reader it is merely superfluous. Ironically and randomly have become linguistic NOP sleds.

[1] I have no problem with your definition and I realize you were not endorsing OP's conception of irony.

You're right, I have no idea why the scenario in question could in any way be considered the opposite of what the user expected, and that---perhaps making a leap in logic in conflating the causes---he found it somewhat humorous.

I would put it this way: I was expecting to read about a bug, not encounter one myself. So I guess the two outcomes are not exactly opposite, and maybe I'm using "irony" incorrectly here. I'm not sure.

The opposite of wrinkly.

It loads instantly for me. I'm using Chrome 31.0.1650.57 on Windows 7.

31.0.1650.57 on OSX 10.9. Firefox handles it just fine. Could be some interaction with an extension I have installed.

maybe you should upgrade to the latest. I have 32.0.1700.19 (Official Build 235778) beta on OSX and it works fine.

Loads fine with 31.0.1650.57 Debian jessie/sid (235101)

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