Ask HN: Why do HN submissions come in waves?

3 pointsdakom1 comment

Very often, the front page of HN seems to have a disproportionate amount of submissions around a particular topic. They are often related but not exactly the same... e.g. they might be "testing methodologies" or "language design" or around a particular but wide reaching tech like "Rust" or "React".

Just curious

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A few effects play a role I think:

Attention comes with news: i.e. if something releases a new major version, different new features could be discussed, people go look at it again because it is in the news and find interesting things to submit, ...

Submissions trigger other submissions about a topic when people remember posts about the same topic, or go researching it, or read through other posts on a submitted blog.

Our brains are really good at noticing this kind of thing whenever it appears, so it seems really common.

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