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Off topic, but does anyone know what's up with the "?hn_email_told_me_to_repost=true" in the url?

HN will treat a resubmission within a short enough time frame as an upvote of the original submission. Changing the URL parameters causes HN to treat the second submission as a new, unique submission. AIUI this is usually discouraged, but sometimes allowed if a good article disappears from /newest or the front page too quickly to get a fair chance at being upvoted and discussed.

> AIUI this is usually discouraged

It's only discouraged if the story has already had significant attention [1]. Otherwise, assuming the story is high-quality, it's a good thing to do, because it reduces the randomness in what gets traction on HN.

1. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.

It's a reference to an invitation we sent. I've written more about this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140 if you're interested.

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