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Ask HN: Why do some timestamps on HN have a full stop at the end?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Ask HN: Why do some timestamps on HN have a full stop at the end?

#61

Post by eloisius »

tyingq wrote: post #51
eloisius wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off topic: is it new for HN to elide urls this way? I’ve never noticed it before but it really annoys me. I like that HN is just text, and preprocessing it this way adds no usability. It makes it harder to copy a URL, if anything, and it certainly isn’t prettier.

It's nice on mobile to avoid left-right scroll for long urls. Copying the url is easy enough with right-click for desktop or long press for mobile.

Not nice to me. I like to be able to see what the link is before I click it.

Re: Ask HN: Why do some timestamps on HN have a full stop at the end?

#62

Post by [deleted] »

rendall wrote: post #9

Well done! You have discovered part 1 of The Secret! Congratulations!! Clues to Part 2 of The Secret can be found in this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random Stakes are high! At the end of the trail of clues, the Council of Immortal Wizards will ask you to join their ranks, at which time they will confer immortality upon you. There are only 10E100-1 steps to go! Good luck!

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why do some timestamps on HN have a full stop at the end?

#63

Post by jiofih »

rendall wrote: post #9

Well done! You have discovered part 1 of The Secret! Congratulations!! Clues to Part 2 of The Secret can be found in this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random Stakes are high! At the end of the trail of clues, the Council of Immortal Wizards will ask you to join their ranks, at which time they will confer immortality upon you. There are only 10E100-1 steps to go! Good luck!

Haha, this was great. I arrived at an article about “John Frum” which did sound like a secret, and was quite the rabbit hole [1].

It got me worried about history. The whole story sounds like 90s zine fiction, which I think it is - there is no record I could find beyond the original story from 1995 on Harper’s Magazine [2], yet it is now in Wikipedia, stated as a fact.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Frum

[2] https://skeptichume.weebly.com/the-gospel-according-to-prum....

Re: Ask HN: Why do some timestamps on HN have a full stop at the end?

#64

Post by dorfsmay »

eloisius wrote: post #61
tyingq wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice on mobile to avoid left-right scroll for long urls. Copying the url is easy enough with right-click for desktop or long press for mobile.

Not nice to me. I like to be able to see what the link is before I click it.

On mobile, in Firefox, do a long press and it'll show you the full target URL. Hoover on any desktop browser.

Re: Ask HN: Why do some timestamps on HN have a full stop at the end?

#65

Post by jeroenhd »

OJFord wrote: post #27
Icyphox wrote: post #3

Yeah, this one does. Some others on the frontpage don't. Interesting. If I were to hazard a guess -- it looks like a templating bug. Some template has a period in it.

Except that this one does on the front page too, so it's not like 'front.template' has no full stop and 'submission.template' does. Similarly in 'threads' some comments do and others don't. 'tis mildly curious. Edit: I went back to front, and this submission now doesn't have it. :shrug:

Looks like jn6118 figured it out[1]; the dot seems to indicate that the comment is that user's latest post.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25197967

Re: Ask HN: Why do some timestamps on HN have a full stop at the end?

#66

Post by dottershmidt »

runald wrote: post #38
jn6118 wrote: post #31

Looks like a dot means "most recent post for user". For those with only a single post, these users will have dots. For those with multiple posts, only the latest ones retain the dot.

This one will have a dot. Edit: Seems to be true, but porpoise's comments is a clear counterexample.

If you are to delete your last comment, the preceding comment will not reacquire its dot.

Re: Ask HN: Why do some timestamps on HN have a full stop at the end?

#67

Post by barry-cotter »

johnchristopher wrote: post #15
TimSchumann wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That random wikipedia link is awesome. Didn’t know you could do that.

What's the name of the effect that when you click on something random you still end up on something related to you and you think "it's not that random". Because I got that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbridge

Pareidolia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia

Re: Ask HN: Why do some timestamps on HN have a full stop at the end?

#68

Post by jfk13 »

jiofih wrote: post #63
rendall wrote: post #9

Well done! You have discovered part 1 of The Secret! Congratulations!! Clues to Part 2 of The Secret can be found in this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random Stakes are high! At the end of the trail of clues, the Council of Immortal Wizards will ask you to join their ranks, at which time they will confer immortality upon you. There are only 10E100-1 steps to go! Good luck!

Haha, this was great. I arrived at an article about “John Frum” which did sound like a secret, and was quite the rabbit hole [1]. It got me worried about history. The whole story sounds like 90s zine fiction, which I think it is - there is no record I could find beyond the original story from 1995 on Harper’s Magazine [2], yet it is now in Wikipedia, stated as a fact. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Frum [2] h…

The wikipedia article includes references from a couple of decades earlier, at least; e.g.

> Nat. Geographic: May 1974. "Tanna (Island, New Hebrides, South Pacific Ocean) Awaits the Coming of John Frum (cargo cults of Melanesia since about 1940)".

(See https://georgehbalazs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/TANNA-A... for a scan of the full article.)

Re: Ask HN: Why do some timestamps on HN have a full stop at the end?

#69

Post by vageli »

jiofih wrote: post #63
rendall wrote: post #9

Well done! You have discovered part 1 of The Secret! Congratulations!! Clues to Part 2 of The Secret can be found in this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random Stakes are high! At the end of the trail of clues, the Council of Immortal Wizards will ask you to join their ranks, at which time they will confer immortality upon you. There are only 10E100-1 steps to go! Good luck!

Haha, this was great. I arrived at an article about “John Frum” which did sound like a secret, and was quite the rabbit hole [1]. It got me worried about history. The whole story sounds like 90s zine fiction, which I think it is - there is no record I could find beyond the original story from 1995 on Harper’s Magazine [2], yet it is now in Wikipedia, stated as a fact. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Frum [2] h…

> It got me worried about history. The whole story sounds like 90s zine fiction, which I think it is - there is no record I could find beyond the original story from 1995 on Harper’s Magazine [2], yet it is now in Wikipedia, stated as a fact.

Did you look at the references section in the article?

Re: Ask HN: Why do some timestamps on HN have a full stop at the end?

#70

Post by nkurz »

jn6118 wrote: post #31

Looks like a dot means "most recent post for user". For those with only a single post, these users will have dots. For those with multiple posts, only the latest ones retain the dot.

I think this is right, where "most recent post" is chosen from both comments and submissions. Looking at top of the https://news.ycombinator.com/newest page illustrates this pattern. Almost every timestamp there ends with a dot, except for the cases where the submitter commented on their own submission, in which case that comment has the dot. For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25198319.
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