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Couldn't he just turn off registrations for new accounts? Not saying he needs to get HN to the top for a "startup" search query. I found HN by a Google search while looking for a good laptop to run Linux on.

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That happens. When too many people register accounts they're locked for the rest of the day and the register account option is no longer there, only login.

IIRC sometimes the "Create Account" section of the login page is missing, but can still be accessed through https://new.ycombinator.com/submit

That's not how it is right now so I'm not sure if I am remembering it correctly.

IIRC (I might search for it later) that was a spambot fix. Apparently it was fairly effective - I presume the bots were smart enough to find the 'login' link on the front page then register an account from there but not much else.

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