I think comment notifications is sufficiently core that it should be an official feature.<p>Letting the community solve thing externally to HN is well and good, but results in exactly this situation, where a lot of users relied on one user&#x27;s system when it was abruptly taken offline.<p>It provided a convenience that, in my case, significantly improved my HN experience (and others&#x27;, too, since it kept certain conversations alive that otherwise would have faded earlier), an improvement which was then equally subtracted when the service disappeared.<p>I&#x27;d love HN to be community-extensible, though. Current browser extensions are great (I use this [1], which adds thread collapsing and highlights unread comments), but need to be maintained across browsers and typically don&#x27;t work on mobile.<p>A better solution would be to allow users to add scripts to their account, which could then be copied into a static location (so the author can&#x27;t change the code to something disruptive) and inserted into the page body. Then a nice little ecosystem could grow where users shared useful extensions.<p>As an example of a personal need currenty unfulfilled: I recognize a few HN names, but most I just forget. Each thread is full of anonymous people who I&#x27;ve surely read, and maybe replied to, before. It&#x27;d be wonderful to get something (Gravatar icons, expand to full name, unique colorization, &quot;previously replied to person&quot; or &quot;previously upvoted&quot; indicator) for each name to make them easier to remember and recognize, even within a single thread. It&#x27;s also be great to show company names next to user names.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hckrnews.com&#x2F;about.html#extensions" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hckrnews.com&#x2F;about.html#extensions</a>