I am sorry about that, it was just a funny experiment.
I thought it was acceptable considering that you accepted a similar post 6 months ago, which stayed on the frontpage for a long time : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19679890
I really like your experiment - but you should put it behind the landing page which explains the consequences for the browsing history and recommends using a private tab. Then its absolutely ok and should be posted again on HN.
Your experiment is definitely fun and interesting but has pretty annoying side effects, like dumping dozens of entries in the browser history and making the back button unusable. Some people don’t mind, others do.
Its interesting to me how many people complain about the history / request a back button / link.
I agree that sites shouldn't break history but tabs have made the back button almost obsolete to me.
Everything is middle clicked for new tab / middle clicked away when done.
I messed around with the site. Middle clicked it away and ended up here as I'd opened the comments in a new tab before I started. Didn't even notice the history issue.
Indeed, in my normal browsing habits, I rarely rely on the back button, as it usually forces a page reload which is very slow. Like you, I am using a stack of tabs instead. On mobile though, I use the back button more, as tab creation is not as easy (why no browser does this with a 2-finger tab, I don't understand).
However, the side effect of this goes much further, it also hoses your browsing history, and sometimes you really need that. So while this is a cool hack, there shouldn't be a direct link on the HN front page.
Please remove the direct link from the front page as it has negative effects on the browser due to screwing up the browser history. This link should be embedded in the post with a proper warning.
Very nice! However breaking the back button is very bad UX (remember ad-stuffed pages that would not let go back to google). I think it should be possible to change the hash without adding a new page by not using history API.
It is a nice game though, and even quite playable. Not to mention it is a great hack.
As for the back button, I would argue that this is a problem that browsers should solve. Even in the wild, it happens often that the first page immediately redirects (via JS) to some other page - good luck using the Back button then. Maybe the page that wasn't displayed for more than ~1s shouldn't exist in history at all, or at least shouldn't be taken into account when pressing Back button? I'm sure even better solutions exist.
