Judging by my referer logs when something on my site gets posted here, people do actually use this.

Pretty nice, better if it didn't redirect to www.hackerne.ws though...maybe I'm just too picky though!

I agree, the www subdomain looks awkward and unwieldy. They should make hackerne.ws the canonical name. Though they'll have to be sure to set their geographic target to the US in Google Webmaster Tools, unless Y Combinator has moved to Western Samoa? ;-)

did not know that. wonder what purpose it serves. "The .ws domain is an abbreviation for "Western Samoa", the nation's official name when two-letter country codes were standardized in the 1970s" -wik.

I believe a forum member purchased and redirected it as "a gift to the Hacker News community" and was immediately flamed for the inherent security issues.

Why isn't it actually redirecting though? Seems to be pointing, which is kinda strange. I don't even know how that is done.

It's a CNAME, and I guess the hacker news web server doesn't care what the HTTP host header says.

    www.hackerne.ws.	3565	IN	CNAME	news.ycombinator.com.
    news.ycombinator.com.	4235	IN	A	67.15.104.17

my login disappears

Different domain, different cookie.