
Predicting Hacker News article success with neural networks and TensorFlow - foob
https://intoli.com/blog/hacker-news-title-tool/
======
gliptic
"Rust Rust Rust Rust Rust" seems to be the optimal number of Rusts with 97.6%
success probability.

EDIT: This beats it with 99.4%:

    
    
      "  Rust Rust Rust Rust Rust                 "

~~~
ageitgey
You can do even better - "YC PG Rust Rust Rust" gets 99.7%!

~~~
motivic
"YC YC YC YC YC" gets you 99.9%!!

edit: "YC YC YC YC YC YC" -> 100%

~~~
gliptic
"YC YC YC Rust Rust" is also 100% :). Gotta have some Rust.

~~~
Hoshea
"YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY YC YC YC YC YCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC RUST" is also
100% with 0% flag probability :)

~~~
pawadu
YC YC YC YC YC YC golang is better thanRust

100% :)

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steeleduncan
Interesting article.

Ignoring the outlier, stories have at best a 1 in 3 chance of succeeding on
HN. This means 2/3 of the interesting stories passing through HN are lost, and
I could potentially triple my high quality reading material. It is amazing how
much good content there is out there that I will never find.

~~~
anigbrowl
Don't fall victim to FOMO (fear of missing out). If something is important
enough you'll hear about it anyway, if not then it's whimsy.

Think of it like when you go to a restaurant, sometimes you choose a meal but
you notice other people eating things that look more interesting which you are
now too full to try. It's possible you'll never been able to eat at that
restaurant again (eg if you're on vacation or it's the last night of the
restaurant's operation (I've had quite a lot of favorite restaurants shut
down, taking many fond gastronomic and social memories with them).

But really, this is a misunderstanding of opportunity cost. Those other meals
may have been delicious, but so was yours; you would still only have been able
to comfortably eat one meal, rather than the whole menu; and if you had had
what your neighbor was eating, then you might have regretted not having your
own meal.

Game theorists and economists explore regret minimization frameworks for
decision-making, and that's valuable, but you have to consider both the extra
work involved in applying the framework vs the real opportunity cost. A
surfeit of choice (whether via advertising or in reality) can lead to
overestimation of opportunity cost by tricking you into imagining you could
enjoy all alternatives whereas in reality your selection was going to be
limited anyway.

you may find it interesting to think about the psychology of collecting, and
how it differs from usage. Collections can themselves have considerable value
(scientific, cultural etc.) but some collections are the result of acquisition
gone wrong and tipping into hoarding without any enjoyment of the collected
object.

~~~
quicknir
> you are now too full to try

That's your mistake right there.

------
s_chaudhary
I see what you did there with your own title:
[https://imgur.com/a/SthQV](https://imgur.com/a/SthQV)

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vmarsy
Pretty interesting : The highest score I've been able to find right now, apart
from the extreme examples, is 49.6% success, 5.3% flag ... with the title
"Predicting Hacker News article success with neural networks and TensorFlow".

Did the author chose that title on purpose? :)

It's fun to try a title, and then add "Ask HN:" or "Show HN:" in front of it
and see the probability change dramatically, or remove the (YC ...) from the
extreme examples and see the prediction change.

~~~
dsr_
Try 'YC has died'.

------
epx
Predicting the success of comments is way easier. Just lean left-wing for
positive points and right-wing for negative points. I have been testing this
myself for a while.

~~~
throwaway2016a
Libertarian economic policy is typically right wing and it will very often get
upvoted.

Libertarian social policy is left wing and will typically get upvoted.

I'd say if you want a better than random chance to have positive upvotes lean
Libertarian not left. Except when the Libertarian view is left in which case
you are doing both.

Also, please don't bring politics into a non-political story.

------
baccheion
I did something similar ("50 terms most predictive of a submission making it
to the front page") some time ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10893677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10893677)
.

One realization was that it was easier to predict if a title/keyword would NOT
make it to the front page than if it would. That is, it's clearer what to
avoid (startup, app, business, product, mobile, marketing, etc) than what to
do.

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abdias
Why do people assume posts on the front-page are driven fully automatic + some
secret juicy for points and what have you?

Why wouldn't YC just use a human (or two) to bump/nudge posts they would like
to climb or expose according to their agenda/internal policy?

It you monitor the hot page, there is a clear political bias, topical bias, as
well as temporal peaks of movements/ranking indicating that would be the case
- too complex for any ML currently to predict. Just my 2 cents.. keep it
simple.

~~~
blackguardx
HN is a hive mind that has some complex transfer function. This project is
experimentally (using past data) determining that transfer function.

------
SmellTheGlove
I upvoted this story because the title scored well in the model.

Show/Ask HN seem to do pretty well. I suppose I'd have expected that, given
the community feel of the site. I'd say HN is a pretty good place to test a
prototype or ask for guidance, and overall people do seem to constructively
and thoughtfully try to help each other out.

------
throwaway2016a
I absolutely love that the author includes both a live demo and an explanation
of how they did it! Bravo.

Although, something seems odd when whitespace effects the score. It may have
been a good idea to normalize the whitespace.

------
superasn
This was a very interesting read though most of the article simply went over
my head (because I'm just a lowly web dev). What would be the shortest path to
learning the things described in this article?

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bbayer
"Predicting Hacker News article success with neural networks and TensorFlow"
has success probability of 49.6%. I am wondering if OP tried several options
to come up with this title.

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PNWChris
This is a neat tool! I had too much fun identifying minimal titles,
particularly my coming post "(YC S0000009)" with 99.3% probability of success
and a 0% flag probability.

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ColinWright
I love the way putting in a title gives a score, and then putting a space on
the end sometimes changes it. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the
worse.

So: Consider the trailing space ...

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anigbrowl
Don't forget to send some of your karma back to the author in between spending
it on champagne and yacht rental.

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MichaelBurge
"Universal Basic Income, Neural Networks, Rust" does pretty good at
50.6%/3.2%.

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brudgers
"A* explained" should probably have a low probability of being flagged.

------
ryanmarsh
"HN considered harmful"

34.1%

