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snprbob86
Every year some people complain about all the april fools jokes "cluttering" HN.

Sheesh people, it's one day a year. It's fun. If you don't like fun, don't visit HN for a day or two. Hell, it's the weekend. Go outside. Come back on Monday. You won't miss anything. And no one will miss you. Promise.

est
Yeah let's celebrate Fourth of July on HN too, because it's also once per year.
mehulkar
the 5th of July only happens once a year too!
demallien
Plus, this year it's _Sunday_! I mean seriously, do we need to be super-productive every single day of the year? And for those that want to make a slippery slope argument, I'd just like to say that April's Fools holds a very special place in geek life - it's pretty much the only day of the year that being original and whacky actually gets us applause anther than condemnation. It's practically the Geek Nation national holiday, so let us have some fun!
three14
This site actually works better than HN for this list, though.
philjackson
Part of the fun is seeing the posts mixed in with serious news. Even more fun, for the subtle jokes, is when you're not sure if something is real or not.
marknutter
But it's not fun. It's played out.
courtewing
Perhaps the fact that such links trend well on aggregators like hacker news and reddit as well as micro-blogs like twitter is evidence to the contrary. You may not, but a lot of people still find it fun (myself included).
marknutter
The same could be said for the endless memes that infest reddit. Popular is not always good.
tripzilch
Are you being deliberately obtuse? Popular Reddit memes are "not always good"* because of their frequency and continuous presence. April Fools is once a year and [apparently] popular on HN, you can't seriously compare that to the sort of memes that "infest" Reddit.

* to some. I don't mind them, personally. And they're easy enough to avoid--as soon as I log in and I get my personal programming/comp.sci/math/netsec related subreddits, my personal Reddit frontpage is about as good as HN, with the exception that one of the two does not constantly shit on the other at every possible opportunity (seriously, and you say April Fools is "played out").

zerostar07
I agree with the sentiment, but this list helps so that you don't miss any good ones that may not make it to the frontpage
shasta
And then there was one more April fool's day link
InclinedPlane
If this page didn't look like something out of geocities in 1998 I might consider using it. :P
michaelbuckbee
I thought this too, but (seriously) wondered if that was part of the joke.
mrtron
Adblock seems broken due to their cat nonsense.
fruchtose
I like the Toshiba joke myself. I didn't imagine that Toshiba would join in on April Fool's Day, but I like the idea of an oblong tablet.
mehulkar
Isn't Toshiba a joke every day of the year?
zarify
The trouble with the Toshiba video is a) you'd really have to check the date; and b) it'd probably sell more than most of the other tablets out there.

(That said, I looked at the Rhombus and thought to myself "hey, that corner makes it look really easy to hold comfortably", and I cried to myself a little inside.)

TwistedWeasel
8 out of 12 entries are from Google. Dont they have anything beter to work on?
mehulkar
One year they're going to come out and have the last X years of their pranks as real products. X years of pranks is actually a huge prank in itself.
Wickk
For as big as Google is, I doubt these all came from the same singular department.
rms
http://www.reddit.com is setting a new standard.
ch0wn
They are basically crowdsourcing their April's fools day joke. Genius.
mistermann
What is it that they're doing? I was there, I realize it's April first, but I couldn't figure out what the he'll was happening.
rms
They're taking live submissions from the community and promoting selectively.
sp332
Try picking a different date from the "timeline".
cm127
I really like the Google Maps gag. I hope it will still be an option after today.
mehulkar
Looks like geeks will make it rain before rappers do...
DCoder
Leave Stack Overflow open in the background for some time to get a special message from a Unicorn Clippy.
guylhem
I for one welcome the new gopher overlords of tuxfamily.org as announced on linuxfr.org (french slashdot like site)! Even better - I opened my own gopher server on guylhem.org as part of a "retro" project a few weeks ago ;-)

Quite fun to do, but good documentation to create a good looking gopher server is still lacking in 2012.

jeffool
Google Tap actually had me laughing. Especially "Todd Smith"'s wisdom. "You can tap in the morning. You can tap it at night."
c16
AdBlock Plus is showing me pictures of cats rather than ads. Not sure how you'd add that to the list.
69_years_and
It got me - I thought Squid had dropped the ball (because cat pics were turning up in the most unusual places and context) and restarted it :)
nextstep
Wow, Google made at least 8 or 9 April Fools jokes this year. I know these are all just for fun, but doesn't this seem a bit excessive? It makes me feel like Google is focusing harder on portraying themselves as a place with a cool culture than focusing on making cool things (like they used to). It would be much cooler if Google really released half the things they facetiously made for today. I can only hope they have something earth-shattering up their sleeves with their autonomous car program.
courtewing
I could certainly be wrong, but I took it as different departments doing their own thing rather than some organized effort by the company as a whole.