[weinzierl]

Despite that the video starts with

"The title of this video won't be exactly right. [..] If it's actually a 100% spot on it's a miracle"

the title was exactly right when I saw it the first time. I even screenshotted it.

I also wondered if it would work on HN. Is there a limit on the number of times you can edit a title on HN? Obviously there isn't on Youtube, which I find quite surprising.

[0xcde4c3db]

It's apparently very common to see it be exactly right. My guess is that YouTube is doing enough batch/cache/snapshot magic to view counts, and applying the scheme equally to the web UI and API, such that it's not actually necessary for the script to poll super-frequently.

[flingo]

Or, someone at youtube saw the video and thought it was cool.

Like how this video will always have 301 views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIkhgagvrjI

[redisman]

The view count is definitely cached for some second at a time. Part of me wonders if that statement is just part of the viral-magic of this video.

No way! He said it would be a miracle!

[PudgePacket]

Pretty sure only hn admins can edit a title.

[weinzierl]

Users can too, at least I can, but probably there is a karma threshold.