"Modern" URIs don't have to be unusable. Discourse is a good example of this done right. If HN used discourse style urls, the example you gave above would look

"Modern" URIs don't have to be unusable. Discourse is a good example of this done right. If HN used discourse style urls, the example you gave above would look like this: news.ycombinator.com/item/21867994/Kutt-a-modern-open-source-URL-shortener/ Further, several redirects are created, so you can access it at any of these uris: news.ycombinator.com/item/21867994 news.ycombinator.com/item/Kutt-a-modern-open-source-URL-shortener/ news.ycombinator.com/item/21867994/arbitrary-text-here The last form means that when the title changes, the canonical uri can be updated without breaking links to the old location. The only unstable form is the second, without the id.