News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:How Hacker News ranking algorithm works by EGreg on Tuesday October 12, 2010 @01:46AM (#1782449)
do you guys take logs of both sides, so you don't have to keep updating the scores of all the previously posted items? I mean, if all that matters is how big the scores are relative to one another, then A > B <=> log A > log B (since A and B are positive). You'll just have to add a G*log(T+2) to the log(P) for new items, which can go on for a very long time. ... T is the time since some arbitrary point.

I think I may have just reinvented the way reddit does it :P

Re:How Hacker News ranking algorithm works by EGreg on Tuesday October 12, 2010 @02:03AM (#1782473)
in fact, as someone else said if you then make T = the number of submissions / votes since the beginning, people would be able to post at midnight and it would still have a "fair" chance of being ranked along with the other articles posted at busier times.