Yes; users who have recently posted.

Ah, nice - so "my color doesn't appear on the list" is a problem that fixes itself automatically when you complain on HN about it!

A suitably recursive property for an internet forum, which I doubt pg had in mind when he wrote that code.

(For the curious, this is because HN only loads profiles into memory whenever users post. Then they stay in memory until a server reboot, which seems to happen every day or two.)

Everything I hear about HN makes me feel like it's a hobby side project hosted on an old laptop in someones basement, and not literally the PR arm of a giant venture capital company.

It was. That’s why it won.

Welcome to 1995.

s/post/do things/ but otherwise yes.