
Ask PG: Is HN Expired Link Eventual Fix Planned? - baldajan
I believe the expired link issue came from using a new lisp feature, but I&#x27;m curious if there is any plans to fix it?<p>It&#x27;s a little annoying since I constantly pickup tabs that are a day old, and have to start from the beginning. Hopefully I&#x27;m not the only one on HN with that issue.
======
pg
It's not a single thing. There are multiple places that use dynamically-
generated links. They make the source very simple. I've gradually replaced
them in the most common situations. Replacing more is not in my top 10
priorities for things to fix. The reason is that it's not really what users
want. What people come here for is good stories and comments. I doubt we have
ever lost a single user over expired links. Whereas stupid or uncivil comment
threads have probably cost us lots of users, and indeed, some of the ones I'd
least like to lose. So that's the sort of issue I spend time thinking about.

Incidentally, for those of you working on startups, this is a good example of
why making something people want is not a simple matter of making what they
say they want.

~~~
credo
_> >The reason is that it's not really what users want. What people come here
for is good stories and comments. I doubt we have ever lost a single user over
expired links._

Yes, you probably haven't lost any users over expired links

However, I think you have inconvenienced a lot of users through the expired
links. Sometimes, I think it is good to spend a little bit of effort on
helping a _large_ number of users.

I'm assuming among readers (who attempt to go past page-1), an overwhelming
majority has hit this problem multiple times (and lost time because of this
problem)

~~~
SiVal
Amen. What a nuisance. You can keep clicking the next page button to see what
other stories there are until you actually read one, after which the next page
button will fail, and you'll have to start over again. What's the point of
even having more than about three pages? The only way to reach those pages is
to keep clicking next while carefully avoiding the temptation to read anything
along the way, lest you get sent back to Level 1.

I'm not buying the argument that if HN has good stories and comments people
will keep coming back and if they come back, it means they _want_ a next page
button that fails. A doesn't imply B.

If frequent expiration is to remain a _feature_ , would it be possible to have
a preference setting allowing us to put the first four pages or so on our
front page? Then we could read whatever looks most interesting among the first
120 items instead of the first 30 before we get that expired next button we
supposedly don't mind.

~~~
nazka
To avoid that I use this website: [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/)
Maybe you should take a look. Just simple and useful.

And to share everything I also use a theme for HN. It makes the design a
little more as a flat design and with bigger letters which is especially what
I wanted. [https://github.com/gabrielecirulli/hn-
special](https://github.com/gabrielecirulli/hn-special)

~~~
wanda
There is also [http://hackerbra.in](http://hackerbra.in)

but I always use vanilla HN because I'm fond of it and the UI is pretty much
the best for me.

That said, it would be very cool if users could implement their own custom CSS
natively like you can on [http://yayhooray.net](http://yayhooray.net)

I personally detest browser extensions and I don't like how they slap custom
CSS over the top of sites like make-up. Even those who aren't up for fiddling
with style sheets could share in what others make.

~~~
nazka
Thank you to share. For extensions, I do like the good old design of HN but I
really prefer to have bigger letters. That's mainly why I use the other one.

~~~
SiVal
Thanks for your suggestion, too, nazka.

------
ilaksh
They are not going to make improvements to Hacker News. They have proven that.

They don't have to fix it or make any improvements. They can run a very poorly
performing site with no features and a horrible appearance, because they are
entrenched, and they literally own quite a large portion of their userbase.

Unfortunately no matter how many people invent software that does the same
thing as Hacker News but works much better and offer it up for free, nothing
will be done.

The owner of the site has too much invested in its technology stack (Lisp) and
its particular implementation and appearance. The improvements necessary
probably require going back on some of those fundamentals, which is never
going to happen, because they are too proud.

~~~
asveikau
I upvoted you because I like seeing people who go against the grain here, who
hold combative viewpoints and are willing to be blunt about faults, regardless
of whether or not I agree.

However, after seeing this:

> ... because they are entrenched, and they literally own quite a large
> portion of their userbase.

> Unfortunately no matter how many people invent software that does the same
> thing as Hacker News but works much better and offer it up for free, nothing
> will be done.

... I have to say, if you are disappointed, have you thought about testing
this theory? This website has not been around forever. It isn't the first of
its kind either. I'm probably not the only one here who came to this site
after having frequented a bunch of others that were essentially the same
thing. So I don't expect it to be the last one, either. If someone has the
interest and the skill set, I say, please do make this. Worst case you waste a
few weekends or something.

~~~
ilaksh
There are a number of Hacker News clones, i.e. people got fed up and even went
ahead and figured out how to mirror the Hacker News content. Far as I know
very few if any gained any popularity, but its not because they weren't
better.

~~~
sehr
I quite enjoy lobste.rs. Despite the lack of discussion, the majority of the
topics posted are interesting and turn over pretty fast (in comparison to some
of the other replacements).

~~~
tomcam
Thank you for pointing out lobste.rs. I like it. Can you issue me an invite?

~~~
sehr
Of course, email me at creamapps@gmail.com

------
pchristensen
They are continuations stored on the server (not a Lisp-specific feature).
There is a limit on the number of continuations stored, which is why older
ones come up as unknown or expired.

This has been there since Day 1 and will probably never be changed.

See also
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=163696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=163696)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2677469](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2677469)

~~~
pg
Closures, not continuations.

~~~
elwell
Could you give a quick explanation or a link that explains how that is set up?
(closures stored on server)

Just curious.

~~~
wlievens
A closure is a function augmented with implicit references to the context in
which it was created. In case of an upvote link it would hold references to
the post you could upvote. That reference exists not in the URL but in the
closure at the servers side. If you keep these objects in memory indefinitely,
you'll run out of ram.

~~~
elwell
Oh, I was assuming some sort of custom implementation for doing that. If it's
just hanging around in RAM, fair enough; can't see how that has scaled so
well, but hey.

~~~
wlievens
Well, a closure can't be more than a couple hundred bytes, I guess.

If he wants to continue with that technique, I'd hack it like this: use
reflection to crawl the closure, isolate the variables bound to the closure
context, serialize those (the user id's, post id's, etc). Then the closure
code, which will be one of only a few "templates", can be put into a global
dictionary. The serialized state goes into the URL parameters. The closure is
collected, and "reified" from the global dictionary and URL state once the
user performs the action.

I don't know if LISP's reflection can pull this off, but I'm pretty sure it's
no biggie.

------
codex
Visible signs of entropy considered harmful:
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory)

------
makecheck
Although this is a significant problem, it’s probably better to use the
bottom-of-page links:

\- “Bugs” (in this case, already seems to be known and talked about; see [1]).

\- “Feature Requests” for anything that isn’t a bug.

[1]
[https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues/11](https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues/11)

------
vl
For practical solution: Install "Hacker News Enhancement Suite" Chrome
extension, it solves this and godzillion other problems.

~~~
sikhnerd
I loved this extension, and is really the only thing I'm missing now that I've
moved back to Firefox :(

------
11thEarlOfMar
No, you are not. It is annoying.

------
SamReidHughes
What sort of data structure do you recommend they use to efficiently
reconstruct older story orderings?

~~~
recursive
No one's asking for older story orderings. I'd prefer newer story orderings.

~~~
dsuth
Much like every other paginated site with constantly updating content in
existence. Just link to the next page with whatever the current content for
that page is. People can figure out that items they're looking for get bumped
from one page to another semi-frequently.

------
btbuildem
I think it falls under "Not important enough to fix even though everyone
complains about it all the time" \-- luckily there exist browser extensions
that fix what authors of this site couldn't. (CTRL-F for said extensions)

------
diminoten
This site isn't actively developed, and hasn't been, as far as I know, since
it was established in 2007.

This is intentional. I forget the specific rationale, however.

So no, to answer your question (though I'm not pg), it likely won't be fixed.

~~~
pg
Actually we change things almost daily.

~~~
umanwizard
Any recent examples? (Just curious, not trying to debate you)

~~~
fblp
I'd guess it'd be under the hood tweaks related to building and maintaining
the community (comments and stories)

------
slashnull
I was about to post about it.

I would definitely like to see this one sorted out.

------
DanBC
It is a useful feature, not a bug.

People need to refresh the thread before they respond to ot, especially if it
is a day old. This ensures they have an uptodate version of the thread and
allows them ro see if anyone has already made their point.

People clicking next to read past the first page is good. Open any comment
pages you want to read in new tabs, and refresh those tabs just before you
comment.

I strongly agree that there are other problems with HN that need fixing.

------
jijojv
From a UI perspective is it too much to ask that instead of showing a FU
expired message, just client side redirect the user back to the homepage -
should be trivial to implement.

On a desktop it doesn't save much due to bookmarks bar but on mobile it saves
a lot of effort on starting over.

------
wglb
_expired link issue came from using a new lisp feature_

I don't think this is the case.

This fix would have a low priority on my list. I would rather have work done
on improving the quality of comments and unfortunate high ranking of
middlebrow comments.

------
dded
One of the worst things about expiring links is that they punish you for
taking the time to _read_ articles and long discussions. If I'm just skimming
through, there's no problem with expiring links.

------
dserban
The issue at hand never annoyed me too much. It can probably be fixed with a
browser extension (I'm using HN Enhancement Suite, maybe contact the author
and start a discussion?)

------
IvyMike
I'd just like it if the "expire links page" said "Expired link, sorry. Here is
a link to a fresh top page"

------
thekevan
The word "fix" assumes it is a problem. You load a page and after a certain
amount of time, the next page is expired.

I am not saying, "it's not a bug, it's a feature!" I'm just saying that's how
it works.

~~~
jacquesm
It is a problem.

