In the first few months, there were quite a few days where nothing was posted (see the difference between https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61 and 62). If /front works for a day, but shows no stories, that means HN existed but there were no stories that day.
The navigation links work until they point outside the ultimate beginning or end of the data, and then stop appearing. That was a bit tricky to get right as I recall.
