Hacker News is simply a celebrated news aggregator and web forum created and tally by United States-based task superior patient Y Combinator. The tract officially launched connected the 20th of February 2007 arsenic ‘Startup News’. The thought of the tract was for imaginable founders to found themselves and go known to Y Combinator earlier they applied for backing and to bring backmost the ambiance of Reddit (a Y Combinator-funded startup) erstwhile it first launched and earlier it became popular.
The tract was besides partially a chance for Paul Graham to put to usage the Arc language, a dialect of Lisp which he co-created pinch Robert Morris. A news app, known arsenic news.arc was created to show the connection and was utilized arsenic the ground for Hacker News. News.arc does not usage a accepted database, alternatively writing contented arsenic files into directories. In 2024, Hacker News moved from utilizing Arc-on-Racket and alternatively embraced Steel Bank Common Lisp (SBCL) via a compiler dubbed Clarc.
In August 2007, the tract rebranded from Startup News to Hacker News, arsenic we cognize it today. This rebrand saw the description of topics from conscionable startups to besides including much wide ‘hacker’ topics. ‘Hacker’ arsenic utilized successful the site’s sanction refers not to group who maliciously utilization systems, but to group who tinker pinch and research technology, perchance utilizing it successful ways unintended by the creators – The Conscience of a Hacker (The Hacker Manifesto)-style.
Terms & Jargon
There is simply a decent magnitude of motto connected Hacker News. Many are modular forum colloquialisms, though location are besides galore phrases bespoke to the site.
Upvote A affirmative ballot for a station aliases comment.Downvote A antagonistic ballot for a comment. Posts cannot beryllium downvoted.Karma A constituent worth assigned to users based connected the number of upvotes they’ve received minus the number of downvotes they’ve received (and immoderate anti-abuse shenanigans). It is imaginable that stories besides person a slightly different karma system. A leaderboard of the users pinch the astir karma tin beryllium recovered astatine https://news.ycombinator.com/leadersParent The point supra the existent item. Depending connected context, it tin reference the supra post, comment, aliases user.Grandparent The genitor of a parent.OP Short for ‘Original Poster’. Usually refers to the personification who posted a thread, though is sometimes besides utilized to mention to the genitor poster of a commenter.Hug of Death When a linked tract falls offline owed to the abrupt influx of users from Hacker News. People will often travel up erstwhile a tract has been hugged to decease pinch an archive of the content.Flamewar When behaviour moves connected from critique and chat into attacks and anger.Flamebait Similiar successful usage to the word ‘ragebait’. To flamebait is to intentionally operation angry retorts and unconstructive arguments alternatively than thoughtful discussion.Shadowban/Hellban To prohibition a personification without informing them they person been banned, specified that their contented is conscionable not shown (or is shown less).news.yc Another measurement of referring to Hacker News, which references the site’s domain sanction of `news.ycombinator.com`. It is besides a reference to ‘news.arc’. It is little commonly utilized now but was a celebrated measurement to mention to the tract successful its earlier days.Voting
Posts tin beryllium upvoted by immoderate personification of the site. If a personification submits a nexus station pinch the aforesaid nexus arsenic different caller post, their station is not submitted separately and alternatively they’re counted arsenic an upvote of the earlier post. Comments tin beryllium upvoted by immoderate user, but only downvoted by users pinch complete 500 karma. The lowest people a remark tin person is -4,1 and comments cannot beryllium downvoted much than 24 hours aft their publication. Users besides cannot downvote a remark if it is simply a nonstop reply to them. When a remark has a people successful the negative, it becomes desaturated. To debar flamewars, the show of comments is delayed much the much nested they become.
Users pinch much than 30 karma tin emblem submissions, which has the effect of a much powerfully weighted downvote. Flagging is intended to beryllium utilized for cases wherever a submission breaks the tract guidelines. Flagging has effect moreover before an point is noted successful the interface arsenic being flagged.
Submissions marked arsenic ‘dead’ person been designated arsenic specified by either Hacker News’ heuristics aliases by a moderator. They cannot beryllium seen unless showdead is group to existent connected the viewing user’s account. In September 2015 it was made truthful that users pinch much than 30 karma tin vouch for dormant submissions, and capable vouches will unkill it.
Submissions tin beryllium simultaneously some flagged and dead. Posts do not show arsenic ‘[deleted]’ if flagged aliases killed. They only show arsenic deleted if the station writer removed it aliases if they asked a Hacker News moderator to region it.
Posting
Any registry personification tin station connected Hacker News, provided that moderation actions haven’t been taken against them. The tract has 2 main types of posts: nexus posts and matter posts. Posts pinch a nexus successful the nexus fields are considered nexus posts, and everything other is considered a matter post, moreover if links are included successful the station body.
The astir communal style of matter station is Ask HN, for asking Hacker News users questions. A format commonly utilized for some nexus and matter posts is Show HN, for users showing disconnected thing they person created. Polls tin besides beryllium created by users pinch complete 500 karma, though group very seldom usage the feature. It isn’t an charismatic contented type, but ‘Tell HN’ is often utilized for nationalist work announcement-style posts.
Post titles person a maximum magnitude of 80 characters, and the guidelines outline they shouldn’t beryllium editorialised unless it is misleading aliases linkbait. When submitting videos and PDFs, their title should beryllium appended pinch ‘[video]’ aliases ‘[pdf]’, respectively. Titles for posts linking to contented complete a twelvemonth aged should besides beryllium appended pinch their publication year, for illustration ‘Big News (2020)’. If a personification fails to do this erstwhile submitting, a tract moderator will usually alteration it for them.
Submissions tin beryllium edited by the station writer wrong 2 hours of posting, but aft that clip they are incapable to beryllium changed. Submissions tin beryllium deleted wrong those 2 hours, but only if location person been nary kid comments to debar chat from being deleted. Submissions tin beryllium replied to wrong a fortnight of their publication but upvoted astatine immoderate time.
Ranking
The Hacker News beforehand page – particularly a apical spot – is simply a reasonably awesome driver of postulation and discussion. Vale.Rocks has recovered itself featured location aggregate times. The halfway ranking usability (frontpage-rank) from the arc.news codebase was written as:
(= gravity* 1.8 timebase* 120 front-threshold* 1 nourl-factor* .4 lightweight-factor* .3 ) (def frontpage-rank (s (o scorefn realscore) (o gravity gravity*)) (* (/ (let guidelines (- (scorefn s) 1) (if (> guidelines 0) (expt guidelines .8) base)) (expt (/ (+ (item-age s) timebase*) 60) gravity)) (if (no (in s!type 'story 'poll)) .5 (blank s!url) nourl-factor* (lightweight s) (min lightweight-factor* (contro-factor s)) (contro-factor s))))If PP = points and TT = clip successful hours, this useful retired to:
Rank=(P−1)0.8(T+2)1.8\text{Rank} = \frac{(P - 1)^{0.8}}{(T + 2)^{1.8}}
There are besides further complexities successful that original codification to grip submissions pinch much nuance, but the main point is that posts are presented based connected the points they person pinch a diminishing returns curve to debar semipermanent domination of the beforehand page. Text-only posts that do not person a URL are explicitly penalised. Additionally, tutorials are downranked by moderators, and location person historically been certain position which person penalties associated pinch them.
The algorithm shown supra is simply a very elemental approach, and the ranking strategy has go much analyzable pinch clip to debar gaming of the system. There is voting manipulation specified that voting rings are thwarted. Sharing a nexus pinch different group aliases utilizing alt accounts mostly doesn’t work, nor does telling group to spell to the newest page and upvote from location arsenic a bypass. The nonstop specifications of Hacker News’ protection heuristics are not public, arsenic making them truthful would let them to beryllium bypassed trivially, but they do look to beryllium effective.
In summation to the modular beforehand page, location is besides a classical classed page. It uses the aforesaid ranking algorithm arsenic the beforehand page, though only factors successful votes from users who registered earlier the 13th of February, 2008. It was primitively announced arsenic being ‘ranked utilizing only votes from accounts complete a twelvemonth old’. There are besides a number of filtered lists for different station types.
Hacker News is editorially independent from Y Combinator and has a policy of moderating ‘less, not more, erstwhile YC aliases a YC startup is the topic.’. Y Combinator does, however, advertise batch applications successful the site’s footer. Y Combinator-funded companies person the expertise to station occupation advertisements connected Hacker News, which look astatine position 6 connected the beforehand page and person a fixed decay, and whitethorn besides station Launch HN posts.
There is simply a grade of randomness to what ends up connected the beforehand page. A station tin beryllium submitted astatine 1 clip and spot nary activity, past submitted again astatine different clip and spell to #1 connected the beforehand page. A station tin moreover beryllium submitted aggregate times and not spot immoderate success. Hacker News attempts to reside this successful a fewer ways to springiness links aggregate chances astatine success. Articles aren’t considered duplicates if they haven’t seen important attention and users are capable to taxable the aforesaid nexus aggregate times. There is besides the second-chance excavation and invitations to resubmit posts.
Second-Chance Pool & Invited Links
Oftentimes Hacker News submissions will beryllium overlooked, moreover if they are highly bully and of precocious quality. Moderators often announcement these links and will often springiness them different chance. Users tin besides email the moderators to petition that a submission beryllium fixed a second-chance if 1 really deserves it.
When a submission is fixed a 2nd chance, its station day is updated, and truthful are the station dates of immoderate comments. Originally, comment station dates weren’t changed, but that led to disorder from users arsenic to really a remark was commented earlier a station was posted, but the updated attack of bringing guardant remark timestamps besides confuses users. Users are sent an email inviting them to repost their submission if it is excessively aged to beryllium placed successful the second-chance pool.
Submissions successful the second-chance excavation aliases those which person been invited for resubmission are added straight to the beforehand page for a little period, giving them awesome visibility and often starring to them remaining location for agelong periods. Posts included successful the second-chance excavation are often referred to arsenic having been ‘re-upped’.
Moderation
Hacker News was primitively moderated by Paul Graham, 1 of Y Combinator’s co-founders and the creator of Hacker News. At the extremity of March 2014, Graham stepped down from day-to-day operations astatine Y Combinator.
In his spot arsenic moderator, he announced Daniel Gackle would beryllium taking complete arsenic superior moderator of the site. In taking connected the role, he retired his relationship ‘gruseom’ successful favour of ‘dang’.2 Scott Bell publicly joined Hacker News arsenic a moderator successful July 2016, though he had been moderating privately earlier that time. He ceased moving connected Hacker News successful 2019. Tom Howard was publically announced arsenic a moderator at the commencement of April, 2025. As dang changed accounts erstwhile switching to a moderator position, Tom Howard dropped his ‘tomhoward’ relationship for ‘tomhow’.
Based upon erstwhile cases, moderators typically enactment privately earlier being publically announced, and their departures are often made without publication.
In summation to moderating Hacker News, it is commonly alluded to that Hacker News’ full-time moderators besides create the tract and support the site’s anti-spam and anti-rank-gaming measures. Previously, Kevin Hale and Nick Sivo person been noted arsenic moving connected the site. It is besides suggested by moderators’ usage of plural position that location are much moderators than are publically known, though they are not full-time.
Moderation actions return a assortment of forms. Shadowbanning is 1 method and involves a personification aliases domain being flagged specified that immoderate submissions made are instantly marked arsenic ‘[dead]’. These submissions tin beryllium vouched for, however.
By inspecting the root codification of news.arc, a number of unexposed moderation functions which still beryllium connected the tract tin beryllium identified. Many person been removed, but galore still exist. Those which are unrecorded astatine clip of publication are:
- /newsadmin - Configuration of caching, comment-kill/ignore regexes, lightweights list, kill-all-by-user, and banned IPs.
- /badips - IP addresses pinch dormant submissions and one-click prohibition toggles
- /badlogins - Last 100 grounded login attempts (time, IP, and attempted username)
- /goodlogins - Last 100 successful logins (time, IP, username)
- /killed - All dead/killed items (stories and comments)
- /spurned - Throttled/blocked IPs. If not an admin, it returns a blank page alternatively of requesting login for illustration the different pages.
Name Colours
Under circumstantial conditions, users’ names connected Hacker News are displayed pinch circumstantial colours. If a user’s relationship is nether 2 weeks old, they are considered a ‘noob’, and their sanction will look greenish connected immoderate posts aliases comments they make. This greenish colour will persist connected those posts and comments moreover aft their relationship ages past 2 weeks. A akin characteristic was trialled for domains successful 2015, though the organization disliked it and it was promptly removed. Alumni of Y Combinator person orangish names, though the orangish colour is only shown to different Y Combinator alumni.
In February 2009, there was an experiment wherever users who had astatine slightest 25 comments connected their relationship and an mean people of astatine slightest 3.5 complete their 50 astir caller comments would person orangey-grey names. This was later removed.
Themes
Following the decease of important individuals, the Hacker News navigation barroom gains a bladed achromatic apical separator to commemorate them. The achromatic barroom was first utilized successful June 2009 upon the passing of Rajeev Motwani.
On Christmas day, Hacker News takes a festive colour scheme. The usually orangish navigation barroom becomes a heavy red, and the usually grey numbers indicating a post’s ranking alternate betwixt reddish and green.
Users pinch karma exceeding 250 tin alteration the colour of Hacker News’ apical barroom from the default of #ff6600 to different hex codification of their choosing. Alpha values are not supported, and attempting to input an invalid worth resets the colour backmost to the default. This characteristic was added successful early 2008 arsenic a acknowledgment to group who contribute. A database of apical barroom colours precocious chosen by users is made nationalist astatine https://news.ycombinator.com/topcolors.
Search
Hacker News has had hunt functionality provided by a fewer organisations. The first charismatic support functionality was launched successful mid-2011 and provided by Octopart arsenic a trial of their document-oriented datastore pinch search, ThriftDB, which is now defunct. Paul Graham had mentioned Octopart was moving connected a hunt implementation as acold backmost arsenic July 2007. This loop of hunt was disposable arsenic HNSearch astatine www.hnsearch.com and was shut down successful March 2014.
Before the ThriftDB functionality, the astir celebrated hunt solution was SearchYC, which launched successful 2007. It stopped operating soon aft the announcement of the charismatic search. Users were sad to spot it go, arsenic SearchYC was highly well-loved and feature-rich.
Agolia, which was successful Y Combinator’s Winter 2014 batch, launched a replacement to ThriftDB hunt successful early 2014. Soon aft they made further updates to grip filtering, amended the UI, and more. During this period, it was much of a full Hacker News client pinch a then-modern UI, alternatively than conscionable a hunt tool.
There were awesome overhauls at the commencement of 2015, astir notably vastly simplifying the interface. In precocious 2023, the Agolia hunt strategy received a important update improving capacity and deployment, arsenic good arsenic hunt filtering options. In 2025, the full Agolia hunt was fully rewritten by Jeff Slentz, and the original codebase was subsequently archived successful February 2026.
Another important hunt work for Hacker News was Trieve HN Discovery by Y Combinator wintertime batch 2024 company, Trieve. Their hunt strategy provided galore filters and features, including galore AI-enabled features. Trieve was acquired by Mintlify successful mid-2025, and their Hacker News hunt work was closed arsenic a result. It is apt the monthly costs of $6835.39 was besides a contributing facet to the closing. It was disposable astatine hn.trieve.ai.
As portion of investigation anterior to releasing their hunt service, Trieve wrote a history of Hacker News Search, which covers much services which I person omitted here.
API
Being Hacker News and a celebrated location for a assortment of software-developing professionals, the wish to programmatically interact pinch the tract is to beryllium expected. The main use of an API being the expertise to create civilization front-ends. So galore front-ends person been created – particularly ones which aggregate Hacker News pinch different akin sites, specified arsenic Lobsters, aliases which are autochthonal to circumstantial platforms.
Since the site’s inception group had been scraping Hacker News for their needs, which is simply a brittle approach. When Y Combinator looked to make interface improvements and move to a caller rendering engine, they realised that it would impact changes to the site’s HTML and break people’s scrapers. To reside this, they launched a due Firebase API successful early October 2014 pinch a three-week grace play to let developers to migrate. This API remains existent and functional arsenic of first publication.
Alongside HNSearch’s motorboat was the motorboat of the HNSearch API and a contest to create thing utilizing it, pinch the champion introduction arsenic voted by the organization receiving a widescreen Dell show arsenic a prize. There were 27 submissions, and the winner was HN Trends by Jerod Santo.
The HNSearch API was succeeded by the Agolia balanced for handling searches. Many different third-party Hacker News hunt solutions person besides exposed their ain APIs, though take has been little than the Firebase API and charismatic hunt API offering.
Demographics
Hacker News intentionally doesn’t way users excessively strictly, truthful the disposable information is limited. Unsurprisingly, Hacker News is simply a very United States-oriented website. The beneath ranges see if users are logged in, pinch the United States’ practice dropping if looking astatine each users. These figures look reasonable considering the analytics of this site, which has seen important Hacker News traffic.
| United States of America | 32% - 56% | Includes Silicon Valley; <45% (or arsenic debased arsenic 33%) for full users. |
| Silicon Valley | 5% - 14% | Part of United States total; <10% if measuring full users only. |
| Europe | 28% - 35% | Total for the region. |
| United Kingdom | 5% - 8% | Share of European total. |
| Germany | 4% - 7% | Share of European total. |
| France | 1% - 3% | Share of European total. |
| Netherlands | 2% | Share of European total. |
| Switzerland | 1% | Share of European total. |
| Canada / Australia / New Zealand | 7% - 8% | |
| India | 2% - 7% | |
| China | 0.5% - 3% | Includes Hong Kong. |
As of 2020, Dang stated that Hacker News’ progressive personification count had been ever uptrending, though pinch awesome swings, for the erstwhile decade.
Notable Posts
In 2007, Drew Houston made a station connected Hacker News announcing Dropbox, a Y Combinator summertime 2007 batch start-up which was launching. In a now infamous comment, personification BrandonM replied pinch issues he had identified pinch the startup. The ‘Dropbox Comment’ has go a word to mention to method users dismissing analyzable products and multi-billion-dollar ideas arsenic unnecessary aliases trivial, arsenic good arsenic a awesome of Hacker News’ cynicism. dang provided further chat of the remark successful a 2021 comment.
Under a thread astir Paul Graham’s then-recent effort ‘The Equity Equation’, personification sanj replied to a remark by personification cperciva with, ‘Did you triumph the Putnam?’, a reference to a prestigious mathematics competition, to which cperciva successful move replied, ‘Yes, I did.’. Paul Graham chimed successful to say, ‘That has to beryllium the comeback of each time.’.
My ain Hacker News declare to fame is that I successfully made a station connected Hacker News that sewage antagonistic points. This is notable, arsenic top-level posts cannot usually beryllium downvoted. As aforementioned, only comments tin beryllium downvoted and the action is restricted down a karma threshold. Apparently it was owed to the exploitation of a title condition erstwhile quickly upvoting and unvoting.
Miscellaneous
The tract technically went unrecorded as early arsenic October 9th, 2006, though this was successful a backstage authorities only for group related to Y Combinator aliases known to Paul Graham. Activity quickly petered disconnected aft the backstage motorboat and didn’t prime backmost up until the tract launched publicly. Despite the tract being unrecorded privately earlier the nationalist release, the ‘Go backmost a day’ nexus connected the archival beforehand page spectator doesn’t look connected the page for the 18th of February 2007, making erstwhile days inaccessible from the interface and requiring the editing of the time query parameter. If you effort to view the beforehand page earlier Hacker News launched, you get a cheeky ‘HN didn’t beryllium yet.’.
Starting successful 2015, highlights from Hacker News would beryllium posted connected the Y Combinator blog. Though the bid was ne'er officially announced to beryllium discontinued, the past station was published successful December 2018.
As Hacker News is not obsessed pinch extracting worth from its users, location are ‘noprocrast’, ‘maxvisit’, and ‘minaway’ values which tin beryllium group by users connected their accounts to restrict their usage of the tract and to thief them support patient relationships pinch it. noprocrast (short for ‘no procrastinate’) toggles the limits, maxvisit sets the maximum magnitude of clip you tin browse earlier being blocked from the site, and minaway sets the magnitude of clip the artifact lasts earlier it lapses. These blocks are trivial to bypass but thief successful mounting limits.
‘delay’ is different worth that tin beryllium group by users connected their profile, and it defines the magnitude of clip earlier a remark goes live, giving users clip to edit them earlier they’re seen. It tin beryllium group to a maximum of 10 minutes.
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