8 ms·

Ask HN: What Happened to the Hacker News Colour Scheme?

96 points by CM30 9y ago

It's suddenly gone all grey, with the logo blacked out as if it's being censored. Is there American event that's happening that I don't understand? Is it a reference to the net neutrality arguments going on at the moment? What's the story here?

dkonofalski 9y ago
Yes. If you click the black bar, all will be explained.
- CM30 9y ago
  Yeah, realised that a short while after I posted the topic. Still not quite sure about how net neutrality ties into the colour scheme and style choice though. Seems like it'd work better for something like the Edward Snowden leaks or what not. Maybe they could have made it feel like the site was only half loaded with a banner underneath saying "please upgrade your internet connection to view the rest of this site"?
  - mjlee 9y ago
    I think it's probably a throwback to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA I don't remember what HN did in 2012, this might be an example of code re-use...
    - dang 9y ago
      Not code re-use, but we decided to follow what HN did in 2012: https://web.archive.org/web/20120118204946/http://news.ycombinator.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120118204946/http://news.ycomb....
      - Tomte 9y ago
        So you decided to block the link to the front page with no way around except typing the URL? Stunning.
        shallot_router 9y ago
        Yeah, I appreciate the net neutrality support but the lack of a front page link has made browsing very annoying today.
        dkonofalski 9y ago
        Isn't that kind of the point? One day of annoyance to educate people that aren't familiar seems like a decent trade-off. Then again, the HN community is probably the one community that is sufficiently well-versed enough in the subject to not need the reminder.
        FussyZeus 9y ago
        I can't tell if this is sarcasm, this took me literally 3 seconds to route around using CMD+L and typing "news." and hitting enter. I'm all for good UX but this seems supremely picky.
        Tomte 9y ago
        I apologize for not having CMD on my iPad.
        Veen 9y ago
        You do have a finger you can use to tap the address bar though.
        FussyZeus 9y ago
        Or the back button?
        Tomte 9y ago
        As I already wrote in my first comment. And now?
        TeMPOraL 9y ago
        It's really annoying on mobile. Fortunately, my Firefox already has HN on the "quick dial", so it's two taps for me - address bar and quick dial link.
      - aruggirello 9y ago
        BTW I think there's a (long standing) issue with your CSS: I'm always writing black on dark gray when I'm on Firefox under KDE with the Breeze Dark theme, and I think it's because you probably specified a black foreground color for form elements, and assumed the background to be always white (it isn't!)...
  - mywittyname 9y ago
    It's a "blackout" not censorship.
  - Theodores 9y ago
    We are experts at UX on HN, every one of us hence the intuitive black bar. I was wondering who has died? It could have been anyone. Fortunately it wasn't.
peterkelly 9y ago
It's a trick to get someone curious enough to make a post asking about the change, thereby triggering an extensive discussion about the important issue of net neutrality.
- aaronchall 9y ago
  Maybe so. If so, here's some thoughts I don't see anyone else saying - The economist in me says that with deregulation of the Internet, we may see net prices, costs, and weight of data-transmission go down, and total value creation go up. Poor consumers may get cheaper options subsidized by firms like Facebook and Google. Wealthy power users will probably wind up paying more to get out of subsidized channels. (Does Usenet already kinda do this?) I stopped watching cable because I hated paying for a service that made me a product that channels could sell for advertising. I really should take more control of my online habits anyways. Maybe this would help me do that.
  - atmosx 9y ago
    I think the internet should be made a public good. Basic access (e.g. a default ADSL of 5 MB/s downstream and 1 MB/s upstream) should be provided without any kind of restraint or caveat (e.g. your data sold to the highest bidder, facebook access only, etc.) in every household or citizen in civilised societies, without any kind of authentication, authorization or identification. IMHO that's truer as more public offices and services offer or will start offering Internet-only services.
    - squidfood 9y ago
      If you'd enshrined those speeds 10 years ago, you would have chosen lower numbers and we'd have a basic uniform service that was slower. Have we reached the "good enough point" with basic speeds that we should draw a line in the sand now?
      - atmosx 9y ago
        > [...] we should draw a line in the sand now? No, we should not. Numbers should be different in every era IMHO.
Jaruzel 9y ago
Oh the bar is grey too?! I have it grey by default, so I know I'm logged in or not, so I didn't notice. Edit: It IS my grey (#969696) - looking at the source, the topbar colour you set in your profile, overrides anything done in the css (which in this case is #828282) - So I don't see it anyway.... have I missed out on great non-orange bars in the past then? /sadpanda
- colanderman 9y ago
  I believe the bar is red every Christmas season.
- gergles 9y ago
  I have a different color set and it is still gray for me, so I'm not sure why you're missing this one.
- dang 9y ago
  An interesting corner case. Maybe we should check for custom topcolor #969696 and make the bar something else for those (edit: 7) users.
  - Jaruzel 9y ago
    I feel 100% special now :)
    - dang 9y ago
      You're not in the 7 though! did you just change it?
      - Jaruzel 9y ago
        Erm... now I'm totally confused! it's #CCCCCC now! It definitely wasn't that yesterday. And TBH I can't recall exactly what colour grey I set it to originally! When I looked at the source yesterday it was: <td bgcolor="#969696"> now it's <td bgcolor="#CCCCCC"> I'm going mad!
EGreg 9y ago
It should have intermittent "hacker news down" pages showing up when you refresh, with a message that this is a show and asking you to refresh a few times, and then the page going away. UPDATE: I see HN just did that. Got the "HN is down" page several times :) That was quick!
clutchdude 9y ago
You must not have the upgraded user account plan. It covers the bandwidth levies that certain high-traffic sites must pay to guarantee the full experience. Otherwise, ISP's have to degrade service for everyone to ensure "optimal" experience. /s It's Net Neutrality and a call to action.
- jbergstroem 9y ago
  This picture - making the rounds on reddit - hits the nail on the head: https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4252153/what-is-net-neutrality-isp-package-diagram.0.jpg https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4252153/w...
lossolo 9y ago
Reddit idea with logo is pretty good too to get attention. If you didn't seen it just visit reddit.
basseq 9y ago
These questions happen with the "black bar" that pays respects to a recently-passed tech luminary. Sure would be nice if there was a mouseover, tooltip, extra paragraph, HTML comment... something to tell the user what was up. This is better than the black bar, as at least the link is changed. Otherwise it's: the bar is black. Somebody passed away.
glitcher 9y ago
It is about Net Neutrality, the black bar links to https://www.battleforthenet.com/ https://www.battleforthenet.com/
rtx 9y ago
Solidarity with government regulation.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
html5web 9y ago
Do click on the black bar!
throwaway7645 9y ago
Net Neutrality protest?
huydotnet 9y ago
Some lazy dev just threw out some error. Corrupted frontend developer #@)%@#*!
seshagiric 9y ago
Totally with the story, I just put in my vote in support. However the blacked out title is confusing. It is noticeable definitely but does NOT tell me to click on it, just looks like there is a bug. In fact I opened HN in another browser to confirm. There should be an icon for net neutrality - like the pink ribbon.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

convolvatron 9y ago

i know its supposed to be a general truth, that regulation raises costs. i mean how can it not, since in the absence of regulation costs would be minimized. but can you explain why forcing Netflix (just for an example) to negotiate transit with every provider large enough to demand it helps lower any costs? presumably transit competition? or how turning 'the internet' from a generic access method into a giant menu with a checkbox by every internet address helps lower cost? maybe because we'd be forced to examine all the options and our spending habits and select only the bundles we need? and what about transitive services...probably need to shift pretty hard away from the whole micro services model, maybe i don't subscribe to the particular oauth channel your application needs. doesn't this additional server and client side provisioning requirement create a huge barrier to entry? doesn't that weaken the whole competition argument? i guess what i'd really love to see is some kind of defense for the cable-tv model of the internet beyond 'regulation bad, free markets good'

Singletoned 9y ago
> i know its supposed to be a general truth, that regulation raises costs. i mean how can it not, since in the absence of regulation costs would be minimized. There's lots of cases where a lack of regulation causes higher prices. Such as monopolies and oligopolies. Remember that companies seek to maximise profit above all else. They only lower prices if it helps them to maxmise profits.
aaronchall 9y ago
We have heterogenous consumers - for example: One user accesses email a couple of times a day. Another constantly views twitter and loads heavy home-pages of their news sites. Another bounces around on sports news and streaming games (perhaps illegally). Another watches Youtube and Netflix, while scanning Facebook. Another mostly torrents. Right now, we have user pays. I think deregulation could/will rebalance these things. - Our emailer will get a cheaper package. - The news sites will get pressure to lighten up - more video compression, more care about image sizes. - Youtube will probably be forced to share ad revenue with ISPs - probably leading to more ads. - The illicit video streamers will probably be very unhappy as their bandwidth goes way down. - The torrenters will probably be asked to pay more. - Maybe we get more infrastructure. - Maybe we get monopolies busted up. IDK, all of this is speculation. So are all the loudly trumpeted possible downsides (of which I am truly fearful as well.) But I just want some non-hysterical even-handed exposition. Is that too much to ask?
- convolvatron 9y ago
  thats kind of what i was asking for (some concrete argument) aren't all the things you bring up solved by usage based billing in the current model? thats pretty different than selective transit.