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Happy birthday.
RMS, is that you?

I came here to say that I really like the design of this web site (despite of what some others say), but the stability seems lacking sometimes. The site is often inaccessible. I was going to suggest reimplementing everything in ASP.NET and VB.NET, but in RMS's presence, I don't dare.

As a very helpful comment once put it:

On HN, dhh is DHH but rms is not RMS.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=412440

(comment deleted)
OK then, reimplement everything in ASP.NET!

DHH, the Ruby guy? Sorry about posting that Lua vs Ruby benchmark link.

I can't tell if you're trolling or serious.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. It won't be rewritten in ASP.Net because of this: http://arclanguage.org/

I know about Arc. I'm half-joking about .NET, and I'm serious about the rest.
Wow. It feels like just yesterday I signed up for HN. YC:HN is priceless for me. Thank you YC and thanks to this community.
Seconding this. HN community, you rock. All of you. Even the people that start heated debates. (Hell, especially the people who start heated debates.)

Happy birthday!

Agreed. It's a lovely little oasis of healthy conversation, and friendly help/advice.

Long may it continue :)

Actually it feels to me like it's been around for much longer than 2 years... don't know what that means though
Absolutely. I'd like to add that the killer feature for me (well, aside from the good quality links and discussion) is "noprocrast" and that I'm particularly grateful for the relatively recent removal of the "ignore" link. It's all very much appreciated.
I would say that the killer feature is the users :-)
While I'm not much of a coder, I come to this place because there a lots of interesting articles and insightful comments. It's refreshing to see such an intelluctual crowd of people on the internet for once.
Why is the Alexa rank so low with 22k unique users everyday?
Honestly, there's still an argument to be made that compete.com is at least semi accurate. But Alexa is just a lost cause. It simply doesn't even resemble anything accurate anymore.

P.S. Happy Birthday HN

Alexa shouldn't be compared to anything because their algorithm is heavily skewed. Use Compete, it's fairly accurate.
Actually, I'm surprised it's so high (150,637 as of today).

It means quite a lot of HN visitors (which are not necessarily just registered HN users) have installed Alexa toolbar.

Which is what ultimately Alexa rank mean. It is a huge source of bias - different types of sites have very different likelihood that their visitors would have installed Alexa toolbar.

Probably because people that install spyware don't program or start their own companies, and hence don't read HN.
Happy birthday. What, no champagne?
Joining the throng of people congratulating HN and noting how big a part of my technical life it has become.
Happy birthday!

I'm happy to see that you didn't do any major changes to the look and feel of this website, most sites tend to change for the worse after receiving more and more hits. Good job!

hmmmmmmmmm

I think that the 14x growth happened because there is a nice atmosphere here that you won't find anywhere...

Happy birthday! HN is a great resource.
2 years and I'm still so far from 100 points of 'karma'... What a shame!

Happy birthday, Hax0rs!

Happy Birthday! What, only 2?
Here's a link to the oldest page I could find on the wayback machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070221033032/http://news.ycombi...

Oh Time flies! Never noticed that two years have elapsed. Happy Birthday.
Congratulations. It was just this new year that I lucked into HN - and it has made a huge difference to this tech-retread (me) as I seek to play catch-up in my hacking education. A great community you've catalyzed!
714 days here, karma 117 and I couldn't be happier: this place is special, let's keep it that way, happy birthday to us! wiiiii ! what kind of birthday gift do you give to a website?
> what kind of birthday gift do you give to a website?

Probably a really sweet submission. Like "new web framework lightspeed lisp screencast by Paul Graham on Justin.tv".

HN has completely dominated all other forums I used to read frequently, even the one I pay for membership at and have been hanging around for a decade. Thank you. (I think it's a good addiction).

So, what are your plans for the next year at HN and how can we help with them?

Congrat's! this is a great resource for all of us
Happy Birthday to the HN crew. Heres hoping for many many more!
What? No cake?

Congrats on a fun site so far, Paul. Hope it continues.

Happy birthday HN and thanks to the HNers; you are wonderful.
491 days here and I still haven't figured out what the user params (like "noprocrast" or "showdead") do, what a noob
I can't see the link to this anywhere, must be the age
very bottom of the main page. I have to admit, it wasn't obvious to me either when I first went looking for it.
thanks. The FAQ link should be where the question arises (in the user's profile page).
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread, and Hacker News Beside me singing in the Internet Wilderness

Oh, Internet Wilderness were Paradise enow!

(apologies to Omar Khayyam)

Intact? Don't kid yourself.
Thanks pg, cheers to us! This place has grown to be such a great one. Thank you all.
Happy birthday! The only site on the net worth checking multiple times a dayIMO.