HACKER Q&A
📣 eimrine

Why have post numbers become green and red?


Dear HN, I appreciate you for the minimalistic interface that just does not contain anything unnecessary. For what purpose did you start using colors in post number?

Does this mean the beginning of the end of the HN I know and love? Maybe now you will make a mobile app? Hang a banner warning that you store cookies? Forbid to use adblock?

I could not understand for a while what this differentiation means. My first thought was that green posts - being voted positively and vice versa. Now I realized that they are simply alternating. It reminds me Mark Miller's "Tragedy of Common Lisp" story, and maybe the theory of broken windows a little bit.

Thank you for all the wonderful that I discovered because of you.


  👤 dang Accepted Answer ✓
Fear not. It's pg's old "Christmas ornaments, kept in the basement" code that we uncomment-out every year for a bit.

Here it is in 2007:

https://web.archive.org/web/20071225140214/http://news.ycomb...


👤 RayMan1
It is Christmas time, green-red combo is the way to go.

👤 rozab
Is this being upvoted ironically?

👤 wodenokoto
As others mentions this is the Christmas theme.

Another theme change you might notice from time to time is a black bar at the top of the page, which is displayed when mourning for a recently deceased person of particular IT or hard science prominence.


👤 masonic
It's just reminding you to pause every other submit and reflect.

👤 erik_seaberg
In this season of using billion-gate superscalar CPUs to buy socks, we are being encouraged to brush up on EE fundamentals like flip-flops.

👤 aurizon
Half of all Hackers are Red hot, the rest go green with envy 'twas ever thus....