3 ms·

Occasionally you see articles on HN with a date in the title, like “(1998)” — and over the years I’ve noticed that these tend to be some of the best posts. It

Occasionally you see articles on HN with a date in the title, like “(1998)” — and over the years I’ve noticed that these tend to be some of the best posts. It makes sense: on a site devoted to news, an article posted so long after it was published has to be especially good. So I hacked together this page, which links to every HN post with a date in its title earning more than 40 votes. It’s sorted in chronological order to encourage wandering.

degenerate 9y ago
For links that are now defunct/gone (such as #2 on the chronological list), can you pull the web archive at the closest date to the submission? (dead) http://yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm http://yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm ===> https://web.archive.org/web/20100108205037/http://yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20100108205037/http://yorktownhi... (archive from 6 days later) I don't think this can be done programmatically though... thanks for putting this together. I enjoy the old posts a lot, too.
- Momquist 9y ago
  The url can be found via the archive's API, and you can specify a timestamp. http://archive.org/wayback/available?url=http://yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm&timestamp=20010203 http://archive.org/wayback/available?url=http://yorktownhist... It returns a json with, notably, the closest archived page given the timestamp. https://archive.org/help/wayback_api.php https://archive.org/help/wayback_api.php
  - degenerate 9y ago
    That's way more fantastic than I thought their API would be! Thanks. Hope OP sees it.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- madethemcry 9y ago
  I also stumbled upon this too. The article was archived, I wonder why it's not redirecting. Now I'm finally enjoying this post too. http://yorktownhistory.org/wp-content/archives/homepages/1900_predictions.htm http://yorktownhistory.org/wp-content/archives/homepages/190...
- mannykannot 9y ago
  FWIW, #4 "Two 4000 ft plumb bobs hung down a mine shaft, with baffling results (1901)" can be found at http://www.lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/hollow/tamarack.htm http://www.lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/hollow/tamarack.htm
steviecleveland 9y ago
Very cool! Reminds me of the Ezra Pound quote, "Literature is news that stays news." Ezra was a... complicated man, but he had keen insights.
- lozzo 9y ago
  He was also a fascist to say the least of him. I would refrain from using any quote of him
  - zild3d 9y ago
    can "bad people" not have good ideas?
duxup 9y ago
It helps that for us readers we've got a lot of time after they were published to to evaluate those articles with. I probabbly wouldn't understand most of them nearly as well if they weren't proven out by recent history ;)
fhrow4484 9y ago
Really cool! Out of the 2k+ posts you list, some people are good at finding good quality classics! The top 10 here combined accounts for more than 10% of all the posts: USER POSTS COUNT Tomte 66 luu 42 tosh 33 ColinWright 27 adamnemecek 26 vezzy-fnord 26 brudgers 25 pmoriarty 24 networked 23 shawndumas 22
- Tomte 9y ago
  Unfortunately, I have so far failed to get a (1538) submission to stick. Well, let's try again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16444460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16444460
  - O_H_E 9y ago
    I think it does not stick, because I don't understand anything from the title
    - Double_a_92 9y ago
      Well at least you know that it's by Andreas.
      - O_H_E 9y ago
        LOOOOOOOL :D
  - hashbig 9y ago
    Looking at the source code, it only considers titles from 1900 to 2010 as classics.
- bberrry 9y ago
  Tomte is Swedish for "Santa", which seems fitting.
  - erikb 9y ago
superasn 9y ago
You are absolutely right, some articles are indeed timeless yet it's quite easy to miss them. This is a very good idea. A personal favorite of mine that gets posted here often is the Golden Rules for Making Money By P.T. Barnum (1880).
- slaman 9y ago
  Link for those who are interested: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8581/8581-h/8581-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8581/8581-h/8581-h.htm
derefr 9y ago
This is a clever and simple way to dredge up some great posts. I wonder if you could ensure fewer false negatives (i.e. find even more great stuff) by doing the opposite: attempting to filter out every post whose link is to a page that came into existence within a month of the post's submission date. This would likely require scraping the source links (unless you can get that from the https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public-data/hacker-news https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public-data/hacker-news dataset or somesuch), but it might be worth it anyway. It'd literally be "Hacker News, minus anything that looks like News."
- chx 9y ago
  I wonder how would you determine when a page came into existence.
  - mnx 9y ago
    google certainly has some approximation of that, for example
  - aoeusnth1 9y ago
    Someone mentioned the archive.org/wayback API. You could check the oldest archive.org/wayback snapshot is over a certain age.
jeffreylo 9y ago
hi james, i miss you
mito88 9y ago
merci, mr. j.

degenerate 9y ago

For links that are now defunct/gone (such as #2 on the chronological list), can you pull the web archive at the closest date to the submission? (dead) http://yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm http://yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm ===> https://web.archive.org/web/20100108205037/http://yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm https://web.archive.org/web/20100108205037/http://yorktownhi... (archive from 6 days later) I don't think this can be done programmatically though... thanks for putting this together. I enjoy the old posts a lot, too.

Momquist 9y ago
The url can be found via the archive's API, and you can specify a timestamp. http://archive.org/wayback/available?url=http://yorktownhistory.org/homepages/1900_predictions.htm&timestamp=20010203 http://archive.org/wayback/available?url=http://yorktownhist... It returns a json with, notably, the closest archived page given the timestamp. https://archive.org/help/wayback_api.php https://archive.org/help/wayback_api.php
- degenerate 9y ago
  That's way more fantastic than I thought their API would be! Thanks. Hope OP sees it.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
madethemcry 9y ago
I also stumbled upon this too. The article was archived, I wonder why it's not redirecting. Now I'm finally enjoying this post too. http://yorktownhistory.org/wp-content/archives/homepages/1900_predictions.htm http://yorktownhistory.org/wp-content/archives/homepages/190...
mannykannot 9y ago
FWIW, #4 "Two 4000 ft plumb bobs hung down a mine shaft, with baffling results (1901)" can be found at http://www.lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/hollow/tamarack.htm http://www.lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/hollow/tamarack.htm

steviecleveland 9y ago

Very cool! Reminds me of the Ezra Pound quote, "Literature is news that stays news." Ezra was a... complicated man, but he had keen insights.

lozzo 9y ago
He was also a fascist to say the least of him. I would refrain from using any quote of him
- zild3d 9y ago
  can "bad people" not have good ideas?

duxup 9y ago

It helps that for us readers we've got a lot of time after they were published to to evaluate those articles with. I probabbly wouldn't understand most of them nearly as well if they weren't proven out by recent history ;)

fhrow4484 9y ago

Really cool! Out of the 2k+ posts you list, some people are good at finding good quality classics! The top 10 here combined accounts for more than 10% of all the posts: USER POSTS COUNT Tomte 66 luu 42 tosh 33 ColinWright 27 adamnemecek 26 vezzy-fnord 26 brudgers 25 pmoriarty 24 networked 23 shawndumas 22

Tomte 9y ago
Unfortunately, I have so far failed to get a (1538) submission to stick. Well, let's try again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16444460 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16444460
- O_H_E 9y ago
  I think it does not stick, because I don't understand anything from the title
  - Double_a_92 9y ago
    Well at least you know that it's by Andreas.
    - O_H_E 9y ago
      LOOOOOOOL :D
- hashbig 9y ago
  Looking at the source code, it only considers titles from 1900 to 2010 as classics.
bberrry 9y ago
Tomte is Swedish for "Santa", which seems fitting.
- erikb 9y ago

superasn 9y ago

You are absolutely right, some articles are indeed timeless yet it's quite easy to miss them. This is a very good idea. A personal favorite of mine that gets posted here often is the Golden Rules for Making Money By P.T. Barnum (1880).

slaman 9y ago
Link for those who are interested: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8581/8581-h/8581-h.htm https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8581/8581-h/8581-h.htm

derefr 9y ago

This is a clever and simple way to dredge up some great posts. I wonder if you could ensure fewer false negatives (i.e. find even more great stuff) by doing the opposite: attempting to filter out every post whose link is to a page that came into existence within a month of the post's submission date. This would likely require scraping the source links (unless you can get that from the https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public-data/hacker-news https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public-data/hacker-news dataset or somesuch), but it might be worth it anyway. It'd literally be "Hacker News, minus anything that looks like News."

chx 9y ago
I wonder how would you determine when a page came into existence.
- mnx 9y ago
  google certainly has some approximation of that, for example
- aoeusnth1 9y ago
  Someone mentioned the archive.org/wayback API. You could check the oldest archive.org/wayback snapshot is over a certain age.

jeffreylo 9y ago

hi james, i miss you

mito88 9y ago

merci, mr. j.