Hacker News

points by Trasmatta 16 hours ago | 0 comments

The title of the post is actually:

> How Google determines the names for bodies of water in Google Earth

But the HN link is

> Google determines the names for bodies of water in Google Earth

Is this one of those cases where HN automatically changes the submission name? Because removing the `how` really changes the meaning here.

[–] yreg 16 hours ago

Yes, leading How in title is always removed and often leads to worse titles.

I don't like these magical (unexpected) solutions.

[–] cubefox 16 hours ago

Yes. There is some old regex (probably written 20 years ago) which automatically tries to improve the titles. One of the more silly rules is to remove "how" from the beginning.

[–] hsuduebc2 15 hours ago

I would guess that author just shortened the title which was too long for hn?

[–] phyzome 14 hours ago

No, HN has a braindead feature that autostrips certain words from titles.