[ximeng]

YC also seems discomforted, it's only about half way down the front page with 196 votes in an hour. (Top item has 117 points in 3 hours).

Perhaps this is due to flags from people who don't like the story, or maybe mods have manually down-ranked it.

[mixmax]

The algorithm takes many things into account, one of which is the url. Self-posts for instance need a lot more upvotes to get high up on the frontpage. So You can't quite know.

[ximeng]

It jumped from first to tenth in a few minutes... But yes you can't quite know.

[ximeng]

After 4 hours, this is top of second page with 269 points.

Top of first page has 201 points after 6 hours.

[asto]

looks like they've assigned a larger weight to this post so it falls faster but there's no way to be sure of course. I don't see why so many regular HNers would flag this post.