
Ask HN: What Happened to the Hacker News Colour Scheme? - CM30
It&#x27;s suddenly gone all grey, with the logo blacked out as if it&#x27;s being censored.<p>Is there American event that&#x27;s happening that I don&#x27;t understand? Is it a reference to the net neutrality arguments going on at the moment?<p>What&#x27;s the story here?
======
peterkelly
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
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.

~~~
convolvatron
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'

~~~
aaronchall
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
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.

------
glitcher
It is about Net Neutrality, the black bar links to
[https://www.battleforthenet.com/](https://www.battleforthenet.com/)

------
Jaruzel
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

~~~
dang
An interesting corner case. Maybe we should check for custom topcolor #969696
and make the bar something else for those (edit: 7) users.

~~~
Jaruzel
I feel 100% special now :)

~~~
dang
You're not in the 7 though! did you just change it?

~~~
Jaruzel
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!

~~~
dang
It's possible that we introduced a bug somehow when we overrode the top color
yesterday. If so, it's likely that #cccccc was what you originally had, since
I can't think of why the software would have put that in there.

------
dkonofalski
Yes. If you click the black bar, all will be explained.

~~~
CM30
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
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
Not code re-use, but we decided to follow what HN did in 2012:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20120118204946/http://news.ycomb...](https://web.archive.org/web/20120118204946/http://news.ycombinator.com/).

~~~
Tomte
So you decided to block the link to the front page with no way around except
typing the URL? Stunning.

~~~
FussyZeus
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
I apologize for not having CMD on my iPad.

~~~
Veen
You do have a finger you can use to tap the address bar though.

~~~
FussyZeus
Or the back button?

------
EGreg
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!

------
rtx
Solidarity with government regulation.

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basseq
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.

------
seshagiric
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.

------
lossolo
Reddit idea with logo is pretty good too to get attention. If you didn't seen
it just visit reddit.

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huydotnet
Some lazy dev just threw out some error. Corrupted frontend developer #@)%@#*!

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html5web
Do click on the black bar!

------
throwaway7645
Net Neutrality protest?

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clutchdude
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
This picture - making the rounds on reddit - hits the nail on the head:
[https://cdn1.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4252153/w...](https://cdn1.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/4252153/what-is-net-neutrality-isp-package-
diagram.0.jpg)

