Nice work. I wonder if there may be a better application for the Vectara capabilities than search? Algolia has already done the search thing, can the Vectara search be 10x better? What I do find missing from HN is the ability for me to see things that may be of interest to me, but that I may have missed. I like how I get everything in the main feed which is pure popularity, but I don't have the time to go through all…
Unclear that the HN feed is pure popularity. There's got to be something else to it [1], otherwise it would look like all the medium-like crap you'll find elsewhere. [1] my hunch is that some human expert curation is involved.
It is not pure popularity, I suspect it is a combination of clicks/upvotes/comments over time. I know time is a key component in the algorithm. If you don't rise fast, you don't rise. Who is commenting/upvoting is also likely an easy metric to add in. If I have more points, my votes are probably worth more than someone without.
Human curation also exists, but I think that is aimed at removing spam and uplifting YC company posts.