[capableweb]

> And ML is a much more popular topic than finance.

Holy SV-bubble moly, I don't think that's true, maybe not even in SV itself.

Two quick comparisons:

- https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Finance,... (Finance VS Machine Learning)

- https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Finance%... (Finance News VS Machine Learning News)

Even when comparing the region where "Machine Learning" is the most popular (South Korea), it ends up being 18% / 82% for "Finance". Or comparing the most popular city (Sunnyvale) it ends up being 14% / 86% for "Finance".

Not only is finance both a deeper and wider subject than machine learning, but also most people know that finance exists one way or another, while most people in the world probably haven't even heard about machine learning.

[olalonde]

Now try with "weather". Yet there is a HN for machine learning[0] and one for Bitcoin[1] but none about finance nor the weather. I'm not sure what my point is except that maybe some generic popularity measure isn't a good predictor for whether a "HN for X" is likely to succeed.

[0] https://datatau.net

[1] https://stacker.news

[capableweb]

> maybe some generic popularity measure isn't a good predictor for whether a "HN for X" is likely to succeed

I agree, it probably isn't. Much is up to the people who chose to submit (quality) content and then moderation. Won't matter if the topic is the most popular one on Earth.