I remember the first submission of this interesting article. Often on HN, I wonder, "Who really submitted that?" I'm still not sure why the duplicate submission detector is as buggy as it is.

I've always assumed it was deliberately left porous to compensate for the luck of the draw. There's a lot of randomness in which articles get an initial boost on /newest. If the duplicate detector were airtight, a lot of good stories would die unseen. This way, they can have another shot at a discussion.

Obviously one should not abuse this to post things that have already had a good discussion or (worse) to promote uninteresting content.

I saw jamesbritt's submission a few days ago—it may even have been how I learned about the article. I thought it was a shame that it fell through the cracks, hence the repost.