To me, it looks cleaner–i.e. that link was a footnote, more or less, and I'd rat...

india · on July 21, 2010

Fair enough but url shorteners break the web[1][2]. That is quite clearly not a good trade-off. I avoid url shorteners unless they be absolutely necessary.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_shortening#Criticism_and_pr...

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1416090

philwelch · on July 22, 2010

HN shortens URLs automatically when you paste them in.

Obnoxious example: http://www.hugeurl.com/?YzUxNzllMmZjNTk5ZDBjYzIwMjYwN2VlZjFk...