21–26 of 26 posts
(2026)
HN's convention is that the year is added for stories over one year old to indicate non-current (though still possibly interesting) submissions:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39958349> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37728779>
The article mentions one reason for small numbers predominating: > The first is listicles. “3 ways to do X”, “5 things I wish I’d known”, “10 tools I actually use”. The listicle is practically the native unit of the link post, and its count is almost always small and round. Nobody writes “17 things I wish I’d known” unless they genuinely have 17 things, which is rare, whereas “5 things” is a decision made in a title…
> If the title contains a gratuitous number or number + adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."
I really wish the analysis didn't cut off at exactly 10 numbers. Rerunning the query with higher LIMIT, I noticed the following: - The very next two numbers are 100 and 0. While 100 is consistent with the article's explanations, 0 still placing high despite fixing the query warrants further investigation. A quick glance at returned headlines shows the problem of phantom zeroes is not, in fact, fixed. - The query does…
I really wish the analysis didn't cut off at exactly 10 numbers. Rerunning the query with higher LIMIT, I noticed the following: - The very next two numbers are 100 and 0. While 100 is consistent with the article's explanations, 0 still placing high despite fixing the query warrants further investigation. A quick glance at returned headlines shows the problem of phantom zeroes is not, in fact, fixed. - The query does…
0 probably comes from things like "0 day (vulnerability)" and "0 deps".