[redhale]

> You need to come on stage with a dream that you’re going to dazzle the audience with your show. ... If you doubt yourself so much that you think some gimmicky notifications are more interesting than the article, you’ve lost me as an audience.

I'm sorry, I just have to laugh at the self-seriousness of this and the other negative takes in this thread.

It's a quirky little "fun" feature that shows the location of other people viewing the site, implemented on a personal blog. If you have a blog that gets a few dozen views a day, it could be neat. If you get the HN hug of death, it's extremely annoying.

The author made a mistake, but it's a minor one, and I think it hardly betrays the self doubt you seem to be reading into it. It's not like it's an auto-playing video ad.

It's a good article. I suggest powering through to use the reading mode of your browser.