
Ask HN: 25% of the most popular HN stories were posted in the last 9 days - valine
5 of the 20 all time most popular HN stories were posted in the last 9 days.  Has the HN readership grown dramatically in the past couple weeks or this just an anomaly?<p>Top 20 HN posts of all time:<p><pre><code>  https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hn.algolia.com&#x2F;?q=&amp;query=&amp;sort=byPopularity&amp;prefix&amp;page=0&amp;dateRange=all&amp;type=story
</code></pre>
The five posts in question:<p><pre><code>  https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13682022
  https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13718752
  https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13707547
  https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13747414
  https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13755673</code></pre>
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pcmonk
You missed the sha-1 collision:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13713480](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13713480)

Besides the two Uber stories, it's simply that a large number of incredible
events have happened recently. If you'd have told me about the sha-1
collision, Cloudbleed, S3 going down, or the seven exoplanets, I'd have
predicted 1K+ votes for any of them, simply because they're very newsworthy,
relevant, and super interesting to HN readers.

The two Uber stories hit a nerve in a hot topic, adding a lot of specifics to
formerly vague concerns/accusations. If you'd have shown me the stories before
they were posted, I would have predicted "front page, probably in the 200-400
range", rather than the 2K+ votes they each got. Either they were very lucky,
or (more likely) my model doesn't account for that particular type of story.

~~~
bbcbasic
I'd say the uber story is more interesting and relevant to most readers
because it feels like a travesty that could happen to any of us

To some extent, in most cases a smaller extent, it is a narrative we have all
witnessed in the workplace.

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FullMtlAlcoholc
The past week and a half has had some pretty incredible postings. Uber has dug
itself into an epic PR hole from the taxi strike to stepping down from Trump's
advisory panel to revealations that their office resembles Sterling Cooper
Draper Pryce. Then you have a SHA-1 collision AND Cloudbleed on the same day.

My personal favorite of these is the NASA discovery of 7 earth-like planets in
the goldilocks zone of a red dwarf. The little kid in me is imagining Tattoine
with a binary star system AND 3 or 4 garden planets that would appear as large
as our moon. A lot of them are within .005-.008AU of each other. For
reference, the moon is ~.00e AU away (closer, but smaller).

AND SpaceX announced that they would be flying 2 private citizens to the moon.
I'm surprised that isn't in the top ten. Maybe HN is fatigued

~~~
thecupisblue
Yeah, last two weeks were insane, so many seemingly important events in a
batch.

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winteriscoming
I guess some algorithm might have changed, because it's really odd to see that
a thread like this one about S3 has already gained 2.5k votes
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13755673](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13755673).
I don't remember seeing that amount of votes to threads like this during the
past year.

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danisth
Could it be some fallout of the story[0] posted on reddit 11 days ago in
regards to the shilling? I know that personally that has increased my time
spent on HN.

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/5une6u/reddit_is_be...](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/5une6u/reddit_is_being_manipulated_by_professional/)

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dang
It's both.

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BorisMelnik
This has less to do with the popularity of the post itself, and more to do
with the overall success of the HN community, and possibly the growth of the
userbase over time.

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JoeAltmaier
I fear: somebody wrote an upvote-bot.

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40acres
Great time to be a hacker news reader, so many interesting topics to discuss.

