About HackerTube
HackerTube answers one question: which tech videos did the Hacker News community actually recommend? We index every YouTube link shared in HN stories and comments, keep the ones the community talks about, and rank them by discussion signals — never by view counts.
How it works
Index HN
YouTube links are harvested daily from public HN stories and comments via the HN Algolia API. The same video shared twice is merged into one record.
Check availability
Each video is checked against YouTube oEmbed. Dead or private links are marked unavailable and rechecked monthly — never silently deleted.
Score community signals
Videos are labeled tech / non-tech and scored by how many independent HN discussions and members recommended them.
The community score
+ 2 × distinct_story_count // independent HN discussions
+ 1 × mention_count // total shares (stories + comments)
+ min(5, log10(1 + story_points)) // front-page bonus, capped at 5
Why this shape? Independent authors are the strongest endorsement, so they weigh most. Story points come only from front-page stories (HN comments carry none) and are capped — one viral post must not outrank many separate members recommending the same video.
What the numbers mean
- mention_count
- how many HN posts or comments shared this video
- distinct_story_count
- how many different HN threads it appeared in — “discussions”
- distinct_author_count
- how many different HN members shared it — “sharers”
- distinct_day_count
- how many different days it was mentioned
- story_points
- sum of points of linked HN front-page stories (comments have none)
None of these are view counts, ratings, or “popularity”. They measure community recommendation only. As of today the index covers 3,625 HN items, 2,801 mentions and 2,408 videos (1,235 tech & active).
Independence & naming
Data & playback
Discovery data comes from the public Hacker News Algolia Search API; video metadata from YouTube oEmbed. Videos always play through the official YouTube embed player — nothing is downloaded, re-hosted, or proxied by us. HN comment excerpts are limited to 200 characters and always link back to the original thread.