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Comparing Hacker News & the Slashdot Effect
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- revorad 15y agoI'm surprised to learn that as many as 2% of Hacker News visitors use IE. Why? Who are you?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- latch 15y agoAt my investment banking job, which had IE 6 (1 month ago), Hacker News would occasionally find itself banned by the corporate firewall....quit.
- bartonfink 15y agoHad something similar happen at my last job, and although that wasn't the reason I quit, it didn't say very much about the working conditions that led me to look elsewhere. Funnily enough, the same firewall flagged a corporate press release as "pornography" and notified my boss I was looking at naughty bits, when in fact I was looking at something about the F-35.
- mkopinsky 15y agoI've never had trouble (so far at least) with HN, but I frequently need to switch to my filter-avoidance proxy for various HN links. Ironically, I am using proxy-avoidance software to get around a "blocked - category: proxy avoidance" message.
- ilikejam 15y agoAn SSH server outside the firewall listening on port 443, and a copy of PuTTY on your desktop can solve many firewall problems. Yes indeed.
- tom9729 15y agoWell it could certainly solve the problem of him having a job. ;)
- fauldsh 15y agoWindows 7 Phone using IE (was curious and don't regret it)
- josefresco 15y agoDoes it really matter what browser you use to view HN? It's not like it has any modern requirements for proper use. I happen to use Chrome to view HN only because I setup a "clean" Chrome install for a handful of news sites I visit. I could have easily done the same for IE and it wouldn't change a single thing. Maybe I'm grumpy today but this seems like a waste of debate-energy.
- revorad 15y agoIt doesn't matter. I'm just curious. Sorry to offend you.
- josefresco 15y agoMy fault...I was grumpy, thanks for apologizing although you totally didn't need to. I love the debate here but grow tired of the old browser war subject.
- burgerbrain 15y agoUnfortunately, it matters to some degree. The comment indentation doesn't work properly in elinks :(
- freedompeace 15y agoThe indentation is fine on IE7 mobile (WP7).
- burgerbrain 15y agoI sure would hope so.. Kinda a different animal isn't it?
- ghurlman 15y agoAny time I'm using my phone to browse, it's IE - and I use that to read through HN all the time.
- pflats 15y agoMy employer (a public school system) has blocked everything but IE9 on port 80 to keep students from using proxies/tunneling/[other firewall avoidance method].
- AndrewDucker 15y agoI'm curious - do they check the user agent? Or something more complex?
- Volpe 15y agoChrome Frame?
- freedompeace 15y agoSome of us browse HN at work with prehistoric browsers or micromanaging IT departments that won't even let us run a portable version of Chrome. Plus, my beautiful phone is IE.
- Bootvis 15y agoI guess people that work/contract at BigCorp. From 1-2011 until 5-2011 I contracted for a company that had no internet for most and IE6 for some.
- zavulon 15y agoPeople at BigSoulSuckingCO who are only allowed to use IE?
- compay 15y agoTravelers using the computer at an internet cafe or a hotel lobby.
- joebadmo 15y agoIE6/XP. I'm at work at a fed agency. It's frighteningly outdated here.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- veyron 15y agoIs there still a CmdrTaco user? http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=CmdrTaco http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=CmdrTaco says no ...
- krosaen 15y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=CmdrTacoMalda http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=CmdrTacoMalda
- mbreese 15y agoThat isn't the question... The question is, is there anyone squatting in the username cmdrtaco? I hope not, because that's just not cool.
- prawn 15y agoThere was someone squatting the username and they posted in the last Taco HN submission asking Malda to contact them via email (listed in their profile) to claim the account. He may not have seen that or just not mentioned in this write-up.
- antoncohen 15y ago> Is there still a CmdrTaco user? http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=CmdrTaco http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=CmdrTaco says no .. The URL is case-sensitive, I guess the user registration is not: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cmdrtaco http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cmdrtaco
- wgx 15y agoI wrote a similar post a couple of weeks back from my (shorter) stint on HN: http://willgrant.org/hn-traffic-stats-summary/ http://willgrant.org/hn-traffic-stats-summary/
- icefox 15y agoAlmost 10% of us are mobile. On a small screen with slower bandwidth HN is a lot nicer than /. Almost annoying that even though the site is so efficient already the site icon and the logo aren't the same url or that the arrows are not unicode arrows or just one image rotates or ... :)
- wgx 15y agoAgree about "Y", I often tap it and end up at YC when expecting HN.
- icefox 15y agoGiven that it does go to YC it makes even more sense to have it be the YC site icon so if the YC guys ever change that logo/icon HN would automatically get it. Then again a lot of mobile browser don't fetch the site icon so couldn't it just be a 'Y' in an orange box with no icon fetching at all?
- icefox 15y agoLooking at the code one way to speed up the total site load time would be to have the main page be static and completely cachable. onload have it fetch a list of articles and populate the main page. This way it would fetch the articles and images all at the same time v.s generating the main page, and then fetching the resources.
- 0x12 15y agoUse the 'N' instead. That seems to work just fine.
- DiabloD3 15y agoI'm not a mobile user and I have HN loaded as a Firefox app tab. Go figure.
- redthrowaway 15y agoI don't know if I can agree with you about bandwidth. HN has been really, really slow lately. It's a constant and long-lived malaise. Slashdot loads much quicker.
- petercooper 15y agoIn other words, Slashdot sent fewer people, but they stuck around a little longer. His hunch is that it relates to the story. My hunch is that HN users usually have many links to read through on any particular visit, whereas Slashdot's post level is low enough that you can spend 10 minutes on a single item. They're pretty chalk and cheese as far as experiences go.
- CmdrTacoMalda 15y agoThat's a good point, although the question is on HN and SD, what % of items do users actually click on? While HN has far more single news items, Slashdot has a lot of comments, and the articles themselves are longer. Apples & Oranges to be sure.
- Angostura 15y agoOr perhaps it was people like me who had been away for the summer and had missed Taco leaving Slashdot, so when faced with the story when click-crazy attempting to find out what had happened. Are stetsons, really cool? I thought that was fezzes
- dabeeeenster 15y agoI just get "Error establishing a database connection" which is some sort of delicious irony...
- twsted 15y agoAs CmdrTaco says, two things reveals that HN users are a little more 'on the edge': more Chrome users, more mobile users. BTW, HN seems to have also _more_ Safari users, even if he says the opposite.
- dave1010uk 15y agoI see this as /. users prefering open source browsers (i.e. Firefox) more.
- mtogo 15y agoSubjective. I use Firefox because it's a more stable, modern, and featureful browser than Chromium in my opinion. That doesn't make one of us more "on the edge" than the other. You're basically saying that since one community prefers strawberry ice cream to chocolate, they're more modern somehow.
- 0x12 15y agoIt looks as though the HN effect has brought down the site. At last. Maybe 16 cents didn't quite cut it after all.
- jvc26 15y agoUm ... I'm guessing what this says is that the HN effect takes down the site?
- paulsocal 15y agoworst post ive ever read
- jcr 15y agoHey Rob! The person who squatted 'cmdrtaco' on HN claims to be saving it for you, and they put contact details in the profile. http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cmdrtaco http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cmdrtaco BTW, you must be new here ;)