In case you don't get much discussion, it may be because some of us have seen this before:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2484160

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2500556

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4083115

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5162117

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5549393

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5612606

Aargh! Why doesn't it warn you if the link has been posted already..? Is there a way to check? I totally missed it.

This is a well known "feature" of HN - it will detect exact URL duplicates provided they're recent enough, probably provided they're in cache. The same story is often submitted over and over again with no way of ensuring that discussions don't get split across multiple submissions. If you follow the "newest" page you see lots of them, although usually one "wins" and the others fall off the page without an up-vote.

A recent example of the same story submitted multiple times in quick succession is the $50,000 twitter handle being lost. An example of the same story submitted many times over the years is on the front page now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7149634

Until recently I've tried to cross-reference submissions, but largely now I've given up. This is a rare lapse.

And welcome to HN.

I guess one has to hang out in 'new' (I usually just visit the top links).

Thanks for the welcome! :-)

Hanging out in "newest" wouldn't help you in this case because it's an item that's been submitted over the years. Most people don't care and just submit things anyway. If you've interested there's always the search function. Sometimes a search to check if something has been submitted before will turn up an interesting item anyway, so there's value in that.

Gotcha.

:-)

Thanks!