What better time to kick him? The point is not to make the guy feel bad, it's to drive home the point that even people of inordinate intelligence can and will get this stuff wrong. Hand-rolled crypto is like catnip to a certain class of programmer, since we all like to think we're brilliant enough to do it right if we just apply enough brainpower. This is a good object lesson we all need to learn from.

Hackerne.ws has a real panache for comedic timing.

The canonical URL is actually news.ycombinator.com

// Just thought you might like to know.

I know what the canonical name is, but that's not a name, it's a url.

This community is a 'thing' in and of itself and merits a name independent of a rather sterile subdomain.

Sure. But the canonical name is Hacker News, HN for short. (Or Innocuous News when PG is feeling cheeky). And the canonical URL is news.ycombinator.com

I pointed it out because some people don't realise that is the URL.

But you piqued my curiosity. - http://hackerne.ws is regered to Yiannis Volos, (who seems to own about 100,000 domains --- http://whois.domaintools.com/hackerne.ws ) http://ycombinator.com is registered to Paul Graham (who seems to own about 46 domains http://whois.domaintools.com/ycombinator.com )

whois.domaintools.com isn't following the WHOIS delegation for .ws, so it is the GoDaddy email address (dns@jomax.net) that appears to own 100,000 domains.

aha. That makes a bit more sense. I was thinking 100K URL's was high even for a domainer.