Not entirely related and this could just be coincidence, but.. I've seen a few cases lately where people have linked https://news.ycombinator.com/newest or just asked people to go there to vote their story up and the stories have fallen off the front page sharply despite doing well.

People used to claim getting people to hit /newest was the best way to encourage votes (since votes from direct linking to items were penalized or not counted in some way) but I suspect votes made from direct visits to https://news.ycombinator.com/newest are now also subject to the same fate.