[Sohcahtoa82]

Not only is this is needless pedantry, it's also incorrect, making it a very typical HN comment.

It is not uncommon to refer to pointers as "mouse cursors" or shorten it to just "cursor". In fact, Wikipedia considers pointers to be a subset of cursors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursor_(user_interface)#Pointe...

"In computer user interfaces, a cursor is an indicator used to show the current position for user interaction on a computer monitor or other display device that will respond to input from a text input or pointing device."

[paulryanrogers]

Is it so needless? Perhaps I'm misremembering but the distinction was at least useful in the past as GUIs evolved out of TUIs.

If they had said pointers there would be no confusion.

[Sohcahtoa82]

Since its wrong, I'd think it's basically needless by definition.

[franklampard]

Exactly. In css this is exactly called

cursor:pointer/crosshair