Hacker News Reader

Comment by eatonphil | Hacker News Reader

My impression is that there are two things at play:

1) Once you've noticed something, you tend to notice it more often.

2) Novel (or uncommon) articles on HN that get to the front page tend to attract other articles on the same topic. I can imagine this along the lines of:

Human 1: Hey apparently there's an audience on HN for topic X that I enjoy! I wonder if HN is also interested in this related article on topic X.

Or Human 2: Hey here's this interesting related article I discovered while looking at front-page article Y on topic X.

The summary of all of this is to say that my guess is that like attracts like and uncommon topics die down fairly quickly in time. I imagine that it is less of a concerted effort by stakeholders to push and direct topic X than just the effects of a curious and diverse group.

View on HN

On the other hand, this is the second positive article on this plane to hit the top of hacker news in 3 days [1]. A trillion dollar plane that is notorious for costing way too much probably has a pretty decent marketing budget behind it, and it's not very difficult to assume that these articles are part of that somehow.

For an article that came out before this recent press rollout began, try this one: "The F-35 Is a $1.4T National Disaster"

article: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-f-35-14-trill...

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16869679

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19506763

>"The F-35 Is a $1.4T National Disaster"

A trillion dollar plane that's cutting edge probably has a pretty decent opposition market budget behind it from adversarial nations, and it's not very difficult to assume that these articles are part of that somehow.

no, it really is that ridiculous.

I find, anecdotally, that topics or subject trends come in waves of 2 or 3. Something will make front page of HN, and then a few days later someone else will capitalize on a proven "market of interest" and submit another article that also makes it's way up.

Could also be a paid PR campaign if you're the cynical type. 50/50

“Capitalizing on a proven market“, or maybe just simple, old-fashioned web "surfing". Following the links deeper and deeper into a topic originally found on hn. Hundreds venture off into the rabbit holes, a tiny fraction feel they found something worth sharing back to hn.

Most likely a bit of both, you are not alone in noticing the pattern.

Or another one not so long ago about still ongoing troubles with F-35C carrier version [1]. I stumbled upon that while following up to reading of the recent F-35 post on HN. Fascinating craft, nevertheless.

While at it also found some stories about F-35 helmet targeting systems, if it's anything like BAE Striker II for Eurofighter [3]

1. https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/navys-version-f-35-ha...

2. https://militarymachine.com/f-35-helmet

3. http://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/future-tech/inside-baes-stri...

I think that is all pretty likely.

One addition you have a lot of readers hitting one story, google or someone notices and ... someone(s) is going to be exposed to that topic more even if only because Google decides to push it on some of those folks.

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