[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.