Growth
+452%
Papers are the only large category still growing: 9163 new objects in 2012–16 versus 50572 in 2022–26. Books moved the other way, 6180 → 4597 (-26%).
Stats
What 20 years of Hacker News looks like once links are collapsed into objects. All numbers below are computed from the 25,610 ranked picks (1,116,238 objects found in 49,324,111 items).
25,610
ranked picks
1,116,238
objects found
2,615
distinct hosts
2007–2026
archive span
What stands out
Hacker News' memory shifted twice. The 2012–16 era was about repositories, Wikipedia and books; 2022–26 is about papers and datasets, with 50,572 new paper objects and 1,720 new datasets in the last four years. The loudest categories are also the most submitted: 81% of paper picks and 76% of essay picks arrive as stories. Books and films are the exception (35% and 14%): they surface inside comment threads, which is why comment mining finds an order of magnitude more of them than link mining. And the long tail is stable — 29% of all picks come from just three domains, and Surviving in-flight breakup of an SR-71 Blackbird at Mach 3.18 has been linked in 19 different years.
Where picks live
35%
Only 35% of book picks were ever submitted as a story (films: 14%), against 81% for papers and 76% for essays. Books and films exist almost entirely inside comment threads.
Concentration
29%
github.com, youtube.com, en.wikipedia.org supply 29% of every ranked pick — GitHub 2,641, YouTube 2,390, Wikipedia 2,388.
Peak
2020
95,474 objects were discovered in 2020, the busiest year in the archive. The quietest recent year is 2025 with 80,833.
Longevity
19 yrs
Surviving in-flight breakup of an SR-71 Blackbird at Mach 3.18 was first submitted in 2007 and still linked in 2026. The most reposted object is golang/go, submitted 288 times.
Fastest riser
×14.8
Datasets went from 116 new objects in 2012–16 to 1720 in 2022–26 (+1383%) — the steepest curve in the archive, driven by the AI boom.
What HN discovers each year
Objects grouped by the year they first appeared in a submission. A single story can put something on the map; the tail is everything that keeps coming back.
| 2007 | 1,039 | Wiki · 621 |
| 2008 | 3,745 | Wiki · 2253 |
| 2009 | 9,253 | Wiki · 5455 |
| 2010 | 16,716 | Wiki · 8865 |
| 2011 | 20,705 | Wiki · 8728 |
| 2012 | 27,279 | Wiki · 10264 |
| 2013 | 44,039 | Wiki · 15221 |
| 2014 | 49,787 | Wiki · 13612 |
| 2015 | 60,278 | Repos · 16136 |
| 2016 | 72,099 | Repos · 18264 |
| 2017 | 74,580 | Videos · 18605 |
| 2018 | 75,022 | Videos · 18206 |
| 2019 | 80,830 | Videos · 19073 |
| 2020 | 95,474 | Videos · 25308 |
| 2021 | 88,346 | Videos · 25944 |
| 2022 | 84,606 | Videos · 25168 |
| 2023 | 86,968 | Videos · 24239 |
| 2024 | 79,142 | Videos · 21864 |
| 2025 | 80,833 | Repos · 24847 |
| 2026 | 65,497 | Repos · 29302 |
Category × era
Distinct objects first submitted in each era. Papers and datasets grow; books and courses shrank when people stopped linking them.
| Category | 2007–11 | 2012–16 | 2017–21 | 2022–26 | Picks | Submitted | Median pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Repos | 7,396 | 65,502 | 88,303 | 112,415 | 2,462 | 99% | 415 |
| Wiki | 25,922 | 68,351 | 81,740 | 69,764 | 2,456 | 88% | 90 |
| Videos | 11,801 | 62,403 | 107,136 | 103,441 | 2,543 | 92% | 105 |
| Essays | – | 35,908 | 84,148 | 47,698 | 2,631 | 76% | 253 |
| Startup | 80 | 169 | 179 | 93 | 520 | 100% | 94 |
| Careers | 43 | 100 | 98 | 70 | 306 | 100% | 128 |
| Build logs | 150 | 423 | 489 | 681 | 1,629 | 100% | 127 |
| Incidents | 14 | 35 | 40 | 27 | 115 | 100% | 128 |
| Papers | 1,407 | 9,163 | 37,011 | 50,572 | 2,662 | 81% | 154 |
| Books | 3,201 | 6,180 | 7,010 | 4,597 | 2,130 | 35% | 1 |
| Courses | 329 | 1,919 | 1,861 | 815 | 1,991 | 63% | 3 |
| Specs | 539 | 959 | 1,029 | 1,226 | 1,824 | 55% | 2 |
| Datasets | 12 | 116 | 324 | 1,720 | 946 | 81% | 2 |
| Music | 59 | 1,028 | 1,707 | 1,089 | 1,204 | 88% | 1 |
| Films | 371 | 960 | 1,178 | 1,184 | 919 | 14% | 2 |
| Patents | 131 | 232 | 837 | 779 | 520 | 61% | 2 |
| Podcasts | 3 | 34 | 1,162 | 875 | 752 | 84% | 1 |
Biggest gain from 2012–16 to 2022–26: Repos: 65,502 → 112,415. Biggest drop: Books: 6,180 → 4,597. Median points only counts objects that were themselves submitted, so comment-only picks cannot drag it to zero.
Hosts that keep showing up
Distinct objects per domain among the picks — the sources HN actually reads.
github.com
2641
youtube.com
2390
en.wikipedia.org
2388
amazon.com
1783
medium.com
1648
w3.org
1265
soundcloud.com
1019
arxiv.org
917
imdb.com
813
huggingface.co
661
nature.com
619
ocw.mit.edu
411
coursera.org
349
podcasts.apple.com
300
rfc-editor.org
298
patents.google.com
295
edx.org
280
sciencedirect.com
270
udemy.com
268
anchor.fm
212
Most reposted
The same link, submitted again and again — HN's long-term memory.
| golang/go repo · 2014–2026 | 6,899 pts | 288 subs | 992 ppl |
| Graph Algorithms for Data Science blog · 2019–2026 | 349 pts | 235 subs | 5 ppl |
| orgs/community repo · 2022–2026 | 2,059 pts | 156 subs | 197 ppl |
| nodejs/node repo · 2015–2026 | 4,694 pts | 146 subs | 218 ppl |
| rails/rails repo · 2008–2026 | 3,644 pts | 144 subs | 311 ppl |
| Surviving in-flight breakup of an SR-71 Blackbird at Mach 3.18 book · 2007–2026 | 2,493 pts | 143 subs | 1,374 ppl |
| rust-lang/rust repo · 2014–2026 | 3,216 pts | 135 subs | 643 ppl |
| Facebook has been granted patent on shadow banning patent · 2008–2022 | 2,112 pts | 130 subs | 182 ppl |
| raganwald/homoiconic repo · 2008–2014 | 3,458 pts | 117 subs | 22 ppl |
| anthropics/claude-code repo · 2025–2026 | 2,139 pts | 116 subs | 271 ppl |
| torvalds/linux repo · 2011–2026 | 2,736 pts | 96 subs | 626 ppl |
| tensorflow/tensorflow repo · 2015–2025 | 1,960 pts | 90 subs | 163 ppl |
| microsoft/vscode repo · 2015–2026 | 1,403 pts | 90 subs | 278 ppl |
| github/dmca repo · 2011–2026 | 9,722 pts | 87 subs | 211 ppl |
| getlago/lago repo · 2022–2026 | 608 pts | 87 subs | 11 ppl |
Still alive after a decade
Objects first submitted at least 12 years before their last appearance.
| Surviving in-flight breakup of an SR-71 Blackbird at Mach 3.18 book · 2007–2026 | 19 yrs | 2,493 pts |
| Cool URIs Don't Change (1998) standard · 2007–2026 | 19 yrs | 741 pts |
| Bouba/kiki effect wiki · 2007–2026 | 19 yrs | 547 pts |
| Eternal September wiki · 2007–2026 | 19 yrs | 249 pts |
| Kardashev scale wiki · 2007–2026 | 19 yrs | 230 pts |
| Magic Roundabout (Swindon) wiki · 2007–2026 | 19 yrs | 208 pts |
| Monty Hall problem wiki · 2007–2026 | 19 yrs | 179 pts |
| Silphium wiki · 2007–2026 | 19 yrs | 172 pts |
| Negative temperature wiki · 2007–2026 | 19 yrs | 154 pts |
| Dunbar%27s number wiki · 2007–2026 | 19 yrs | 147 pts |
| AI winter wiki · 2007–2026 | 19 yrs | 120 pts |
| Jury nullification wiki · 2007–2026 | 19 yrs | 111 pts |
| Malbolge wiki · 2007–2026 | 19 yrs | 102 pts |
| Panspermia wiki · 2007–2026 | 19 yrs | 79 pts |
| Mercantilism wiki · 2007–2026 | 19 yrs | 71 pts |
Early sleepers
First submitted on or before 2012 and still among the highest-scoring objects today.
| github/dmca repo · 2011–2026 | 9,722 pts | 87 subs | 211 ppl |
| I made a robot to cut my hair with scissors build · 2010–2025 | 4,573 pts | 26 subs | 0 ppl |
| rails/rails repo · 2008–2026 | 3,644 pts | 144 subs | 311 ppl |
| raganwald/homoiconic repo · 2008–2014 | 3,458 pts | 117 subs | 22 ppl |
| git/git repo · 2010–2026 | 2,747 pts | 45 subs | 279 ppl |
| torvalds/linux repo · 2011–2026 | 2,736 pts | 96 subs | 626 ppl |
| Surviving in-flight breakup of an SR-71 Blackbird at Mach 3.18 book · 2007–2026 | 2,493 pts | 143 subs | 1,374 ppl |
| elixir-lang/elixir repo · 2012–2026 | 2,441 pts | 41 subs | 55 ppl |
| Facebook has been granted patent on shadow banning patent · 2008–2022 | 2,112 pts | 130 subs | 182 ppl |
| django/django repo · 2011–2026 | 1,969 pts | 19 subs | 120 ppl |
| JuliaLang/julia repo · 2012–2026 | 1,755 pts | 41 subs | 147 ppl |
| facebook/facebook-ios-sdk repo · 2010–2024 | 1,644 pts | 5 subs | 21 ppl |
Quiet favourites
At least 60 different people linked these in comments, but they never collected a huge single thread — the consensus items rather than the viral ones.
| Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger effect wiki | 287 ppl | 110 pts |
| Paradox of tolerance wiki | 410 ppl | 184 pts |
| The Market for Lemons wiki | 176 ppl | 102 pts |
| Ship of Theseus wiki | 165 ppl | 111 pts |
| zed-industries/zed repo | 201 ppl | 143 pts |
| Sugar: The Bitter Truth (UCSF lecture) video | 195 ppl | 156 pts |
| Eternal September wiki | 298 ppl | 249 pts |
| Embrace, extend, and extinguish wiki | 240 ppl | 212 pts |
| Fast inverse square root wiki | 121 ppl | 118 pts |
| Kessler syndrome wiki | 154 ppl | 155 pts |
| Veblen good wiki | 109 ppl | 114 pts |
| Flow (psychology) wiki | 103 ppl | 108 pts |