use
sift
Hacker News threads, scored by code
A digest of Hacker News discussions. Code scores each thread, mostly from its comments, and lists up to twelve, one per domain, with no editor.
A story needs over 30 comments and over 100 points to enter, or over 50 points for Ask and Show HN, so a quiet thread never does. The list is rebuilt several times a day, and a failed run leaves the last one up.
It costs nothing to read or to run. No account, no cookies, no archive: each list replaces the one before. The same list is an RSS feed.
why it exists
Hacker News ranks stories by votes. Whether the comments are worth reading is a separate question, and finding out means opening threads one by one.
sift answers it with fixed rules, then stops at twelve.
what it taught
sift was built to rank by discussion, but its rule for repeats can outweigh that. A repeat is multiplied by 0.7, a new thread by 1.15.
On one run, the twelve picks scored within 12% of each other.