On Tactics to Hit the Hacker News Front Page

I read a post by Herbert Lui titled 5 tactics for hitting the Hacker News front page. I had six New Leaf Journal articles make Hacker News page one between April 2021 and January 2024, and can say with certainty that I never employed any of Mr. Lui’s recommendations or things not to do. I also never submitted any of my own articles to Hacker News (the only thing of mine I submitted was my GitHub repository on Bing Search blacklisting). But I must quibble with Mr. Lui’s assertion that only good articles make Hacker News page one. Au contraire my friend. My second most successful Hacker News post was a short snippet on a YouTube video about a YouTube spammer who had posted a couple million spam videos. Of all the things. But more on point, I cut Hacker News out of my feed collection somewhere in the late 2025 neighborhood because some combination of AI, the Middle East, and the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election broke it more than it was already broken. I do not think any of my posts have been shared to Hacker News since last fall (which was actually a post from here rather than NLJ). I will content myself by saying it is all because Hacker News is no longer a place for quality links.

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