What Is a Dickover? • Hacker News Board

Re: What Is a Dickover?

#21

Post by internet2000 » Sat, May 30, 2026, 1:19 AM UTC

hootz wrote: post #4

DO YOU CONSENT WITH OUR TRACKING COOKIES POLICY? [YES, I DO, THE IMPORTANT TRACKING ONES] [YES, I DO, ALL OF THEM] ⁿᵒ ᵃⁿᵈ ᶜˡᵒˢᵉ ᵈᶦᶜᵏᵒᵛᵉʳ

Thanks, Europe!

Re: What Is a Dickover?

#22

Post by Brendinooo » Sat, May 30, 2026, 1:22 AM UTC

cocacola1 wrote: post #5

Never thought to call them dickovers before, but it’s apt. At a certain point, I noticed my finger reflexively hitting the ESC key because that usually dismisses a lot of them.

The Escape key's effect in the linked article was a delightful detail.

Re: What Is a Dickover?

#23

Post by tardedmeme » Sat, May 30, 2026, 1:22 AM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #19

I have a theory that about 97% of developers and managers completed the cookie consent (or whatever) on their own product 5 years ago and hence never see it again, and they have no idea how bad the experience for new customers actually is. So the developers and bosses all think they're doing a great job and they've got a carefully curated homepage, even though the regular users get a cloudflare captcha, then a cookie…

I wonder if cloudflare is wise enough to always skip captchas from IP addresses it detects are associated with that website's owners.

Re: What Is a Dickover?

#24

Post by tardedmeme » Sat, May 30, 2026, 1:23 AM UTC

internet2000 wrote: post #21

hootz wrote: post #4

DO YOU CONSENT WITH OUR TRACKING COOKIES POLICY? [YES, I DO, THE IMPORTANT TRACKING ONES] [YES, I DO, ALL OF THEM] ⁿᵒ ᵃⁿᵈ ᶜˡᵒˢᵉ ᵈᶦᶜᵏᵒᵛᵉʳ

Thanks, Europe!

Yep. Without Europe, we'd have no idea which websites were trying to sell us out to the highest bidder.

Re: What Is a Dickover?

#25

Post by dfxm12 » Sat, May 30, 2026, 1:33 AM UTC

murderfs wrote: post #15

happytoexplain wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the characterisation of his Apple praise fascinating. It's really not that zealous, unless you hate Apple (which is fine). I think this image of him speaks more of the prominence of the Apple superfan image in popular culture than the actual reality of his position.

It isn't anymore, but if you go back a decade or two, it really was that zealous. He really did used to blindly defend Apple (e.g. things like this: https://daringfireball.net/2006/09/open_challenge ), but I think he's grown more skeptical of Apple lately.

I don't want to split hairs over what constitutes as overzealous, but I will say that Apple ~20 years ago earned more praise than Apple does today. This is probably reflected in the writing.

Re: What Is a Dickover?

#26

Post by rvz » Sat, May 30, 2026, 1:35 AM UTC

I'm sorry but this is such a stupid name. Where did the author get this name from?

Why would I say that in front of any female colleage or any non-technical layman? We already have a name for this and it is a "popup".

Which sounds better?

"Remove this popup" or "Remove this dickover"

Be honest.

Re: What Is a Dickover?

#27

Post by Cockbrand » Sat, May 30, 2026, 1:37 AM UTC

rvz wrote: post #26

I'm sorry but this is such a stupid name. Where did the author get this name from? Why would I say that in front of any female colleage or any non-technical layman? We already have a name for this and it is a "popup". Which sounds better? "Remove this popup" or "Remove this dickover" Be honest.

> "Remove this popup" or "Remove this dickover"

> Be honest.

The latter definitely is the more honest answer.

Re: What Is a Dickover?

#28

Post by abrowne » Sat, May 30, 2026, 1:39 AM UTC

Any site I visit regularly gets a user stylesheet via Stylus that I use to hide anything like this.

Re: What Is a Dickover?

#29

Post by bgun » Sat, May 30, 2026, 1:39 AM UTC

rvz wrote: post #26

I'm sorry but this is such a stupid name. Where did the author get this name from? Why would I say that in front of any female colleage or any non-technical layman? We already have a name for this and it is a "popup". Which sounds better? "Remove this popup" or "Remove this dickover" Be honest.

I agree, but being mildly offensive is kind of the point: makes it more memorable, and clearly differentiated from “popup” which is too broad and has many valid uses in an interface. Dickovers never have a valid reason to exist.

Re: What Is a Dickover?

#30

Post by pooploop64 » Sat, May 30, 2026, 1:41 AM UTC

avaer wrote: post #17

chrsw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the entitlement comes from looking at it from the other way: my employer pays me a lot for my attention. I've accepted the arrangement so now I pay attention to their problems. If you want me to pay attention to your problem, there has to be something in it for me. I've been wondering how we can use AI to clean up websites before they hit our eyes. If AI is as good as they say it is, surely it can clean up di…

> If someone is allowed to shove something in front of my face should I not be allowed to make them invisible? Yes, I'm 100% on the adblock train. Local AI adblock sounds like a great solution. Then maybe dickovers will go away when the market realizes they don't work. That's the only way. What won't help is complaining that the largely free products we get don't work the way we want them to.

>What won't help is complaining that the largely free products we get don't work the way we want them to. This makes no sense and seems bad-faith on multiple levels.