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Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by gamegoblin on Thursday November 28, 2013 @11:57AM (#6815303)
I was inspired by this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813162

I find that lookback of 2 generally creates more entertaining titles. Lookback of 3 usually seems to just splice together two titles (which can be hilarious, and is usually more grammatically correct), and lookback of 1 tends to generate more nonsense.

Some fun ones I found just now:

    The Neuroscientist Who Discovered He Was a Teenage Hacker

    How my comment on TechCrunch got me a new, useful superpower?

    PHP Sucks But I Didn't

    Windows 8 is 20% faster than C

    The Navy’s newest warship is powered by WebGL

    Cards Against Humanity has made comments even worse, I'm leaving

    How Porsche hacked the financial system and made a html5 game, polished it many many times
Interestingly, if I change the code to pick the most likely word, followed by the most likely word, etc. the "most probable" post is "The New York Times and The Internet"

If I limit it to just 2013 posts, it is "The NSA surveillance".

My site is running on the smallest Digital Ocean droplet (512MB), if it goes down, I will feel silly. If it does, code can be found here: https://gist.github.com/grantslatton/7694811

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by dirtyaura on Thursday November 28, 2013 @04:13PM (#6816503)
Oh boy, I haven't lauhde this hard for a while. You have created a masterpiece of algorithmic humor. A few gems from my trials:

HIV-Infected Infant Cured With Early Use of 'App Store'

First employee of startup? You are not colder than absolute zero

No, really, pi is wrong: The NSA slide you haven’t seen

$100k Revenues in One Click.

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by dnqthao on Friday November 29, 2013 @01:37AM (#6818183)
This one is so real!

Q: “How much does an app cost?” A: “About as much as I make?

Too scared to write a simple operating system

Cook something or get out of bed for less than $10,000 per day.”

In Math You Have to Find Them

Fastest-growing YC S11 startup looking for hackers. Join us in our quest to kick healthcare's ass.

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by dcohenp on Thursday November 28, 2013 @09:42PM (#6817606)
Honestly, when I read the NSA one I started laughing, but then it kind of sent a shiver down my spine. Brrr.
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by Draco6slayer on Friday November 29, 2013 @04:39PM (#6821123)
The NSA had been spying on mathematicians, and discovered their greatest secret. Pi and e are actually switched. No, really, pi is wrong.
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by jessedhillon on Friday November 29, 2013 @04:38AM (#6818617)
I got one which aptly describes a sentiment I feel often in general around here:

The piece of shit startup I hate to love

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by Kliment on Friday November 29, 2013 @05:09AM (#6818710)
That one is actually authentic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6656728
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by pawn on Friday November 29, 2013 @01:24PM (#6820414)
I thought this one was great:

What it's like to be forked

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by spyder on Thursday November 28, 2013 @04:42PM (#6816613)
- MongoDB Gotchas and How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle

- Show HN: My husband is Broken

- Twitter acquires, you laugh, you're still loving

- My dad unexpectedly uses my Linux laptop to get your attention. Join us!

- Ask HN: my 5-year-old son to Acquire Lucasfilm Ltd.

- Linux is now hosted in North Korea

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by cfontes on Thursday November 28, 2013 @09:12PM (#6817522)
"MongoDB Gotchas and How We Nearly Lost the Discovery Shuttle"

This one is a gem. I can almost see the fishy article about it

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by kr4 on Thursday November 28, 2013 @02:12PM (#6815967)
Couldn't resist from posting these:

-How Facebook is killing Linux on the desktop

-MongoDB Raises $150 Million - And Still Isn't Difficult Enough To Watch HBO Shows

-Facebook claims it can read your e-mail without a data plan

-I am depressed and I need someone to talk to restaurants.

-Ask PG: Will you share your data in plain English

-France convicts Google Maps for iOS

-Mars water surprise in Curiosity rover – I am depressed and I am building Tindie fulltime

-SPDY Review by Opera Software has filed a lawsuit

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by kr4 on Thursday November 28, 2013 @02:30PM (#6816037)
A few more (thanks for an hour long non-stop laugh!)

-Microsoft made their own online textbook, save district $175,000

-Data.gov & 7 Other Sites to Shut Down Uber

-Ramit Sethi and Patrick McKenzie on Getting Your First iOS App Store Nightmare

-Valve: Piracy Is More Important Now Than Ever Before

-iCloud’s Real Purpose is to Kill W3Schools

-Pirate Bay Will Stop In Silicon Valley And Unemployed America

-The Revolutionary Birth Control In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value

-Samsung flew bloggers to Berlin, then threatened to leave a tech job at Facebook

-Google’s Marissa Mayer Has a Secret Backdoor in New Encryption Standard? (2007)

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by skykooler on Thursday November 28, 2013 @03:32PM (#6816291)
Some that made me laugh a lot: -In emergency cases a passenger was selected and thrown out of the Internet

-In CSS, “px” is not broken: It’s a Pyramid Scheme

-SpaceX's First Official Cargo Resupply Mission to Mars

-Resistor hack turns a Nvidia GTX690 into a Bank

-Google+ is now free on Amazon

-Saturn's North Pole Is A Difficult Community to Participate In

-JSON will be on 'every HP PC' shipping next year, says CEO

-Mozilla and Epic Announce Unreal Engine for Vim

-Every Black Hole Contains a New (and Better) Google

-Why "Coupon Code" Should Not be a core type in PostgreSQL 9.2

-Skype 5 for Mac 1.1

-The author of Nginx on why V8 is not an iPad

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by reinhardt on Thursday November 28, 2013 @03:56PM (#6816411)
Here's my top10 as of now:

  - Ask HN: What's the best place to aim on a Porn Website
  - The Professor, the Bikini Model and the Kindle
  - John Resig's ‘Secrets of the HBGary hack
  - Oracle discontinues Ruby/Rails support for SOPA.
  - A new way of writing unmaintainable code.
  - Redesigning the country of Liechtenstein for $70,000 a night with Airbnb
  - Build a house for $5
  - Iranian Web Programmer’s Death Sentence to Be Successful
  - Show HN: Pick a number from 1 to 1000 in C
  - Greplin (YC W10) open sources key piece of shit startup I hate to love
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by mFixman on Thursday November 28, 2013 @09:11PM (#6817519)
- Redesigning the country of Liechtenstein for $70,000 a night with Airbnb

That isn't too far off: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2447580

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by reinhardt on Friday November 29, 2013 @04:18AM (#6818565)
Ha, and I tried to include only titles that sounded as obvious jokes. It's getting harder and harder to tell real from Onion-style stories.
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by siddboots on Thursday November 28, 2013 @06:42PM (#6817111)
-RSS Is Dying, and You Should Too
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by puzzlingcaptcha on Thursday November 28, 2013 @06:48PM (#6817143)
This one is golden.
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by amjd on Friday November 29, 2013 @01:44AM (#6818189)
Love this one. Haven't laughed so much in a while. xD
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by cfontes on Thursday November 28, 2013 @09:20PM (#6817545)
Yeah, it's the best so far.
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by gms on Friday November 29, 2013 @02:04AM (#6818235)
Tears are streaming down my face from laughing so hard.
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by tobico on Thursday November 28, 2013 @09:51PM (#6817640)
- My boss decided to add a new syntactic feature to PHP
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by atmosx on Thursday November 28, 2013 @02:48PM (#6816103)
Hahaha these are AWESOME especially the facebook one and the MongoDB hahahahaha
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by sologrrl on Thursday November 28, 2013 @04:15PM (#6816509)
Those are absolutely hilarious. Created a new subreddit to submit and vote on the best of these titles at http://www.reddit.com/r/HNCJ

Show HN post for the subreddit is here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6816322

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by chrisdevereux on Thursday November 28, 2013 @04:39PM (#6816600)
Even better: write a bot that continuously submits and upvotes generated comments, creating a strange and constantly evolving parallel HN-universe.
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by wolfgke on Thursday November 28, 2013 @05:48PM (#6816899)
My top 10 so far (in no particular order):

  Tesla wins in North Korea [since Kim Jong-un bought one]
  CISPA Passes in the browser
  Zynga Shuts Down Major Websites and Https Protocol [very plausible]
  The Rules of a startup [couldn't believe first this wasn't a HN title]
  Simple Minecraft Clone in 580 lines of Ruby [ditto]
  What's the best startups in the noise of 802.11 [even more true than HN]
  Parsley.js: never write a Web Application that makes you understand git [ditto]
  Why I am building a hulking floating data center [I wish someone would do it]
  Only a few countries are teaching children how to drive customers away [are these countries called "communistic"? ;-) ]
  Concurrency is not an iPad [having read so many strange comparisons concerning concurrency I'm not surprised...]
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by imrehg on Friday November 29, 2013 @12:26AM (#6818007)
Pretty aggressive/pessimistic!

  RSS Is Dying, and You Should Too
Edit: Some more funnies...

  Nimbus.io: Open-source alternative to the US
  Groupon is the new FTP
And last but not least:

   Official Hacker News is bad for you
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by Draco6slayer on Friday November 29, 2013 @04:55PM (#6821174)
Science fiction novel about an open-source country.
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by FiloSottile on Thursday November 28, 2013 @06:28PM (#6817051)
I've made a Twitter bot out of it, it will post on average every 5 hours.

https://twitter.com/HNTitles

Code at https://github.com/FiloSottile/HNTitles

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by cfontes on Thursday November 28, 2013 @09:19PM (#6817541)
Nice of you to release the code.

Cheers !

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by emhart on Thursday November 28, 2013 @12:55PM (#6815656)
"PHP Sucks But I Didn't" is pretty hilarious, also knowing what the "most probable" is by year could be a great annual tradition. Did you check 2012 and 2011?
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by Houshalter on Thursday November 28, 2013 @07:05PM (#6817204)
Or the most probable per month would be interesting too.
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by egor83 on Thursday November 28, 2013 @01:56PM (#6815916)
> 5. WordPress has left the solar system

Amazing. Thank you!

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by sowhatquestion on Thursday November 28, 2013 @02:39PM (#6816066)
"Ma'am, Your Burger Has Been Acquired by LinkedIn"

^ almost died laughing at that one just now

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by timtadh on Thursday November 28, 2013 @02:47PM (#6816098)
also: "Learn You a Haskell is now larger than LinkedIn"
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by ggambetta on Thursday November 28, 2013 @12:11PM (#6815374)
Markov chains are always hilarious. Try feeding it the whole text of a news article, or even a book; this way you can use higher lengths and get even more impressive results.
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by drewhk on Thursday November 28, 2013 @01:07PM (#6815693)
I am not sure. I have seen funny MC generated text before, but I think headlines are short and their structure plays well with the Markov Model.
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by DanI-S on Thursday November 28, 2013 @02:39PM (#6816065)
> Deleted my portfolio, made $30k in my first six months of programming: from man-rodent to partyman
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by ElectroPrime on Friday November 29, 2013 @03:46AM (#6818471)

  Why I Quit My Job to Start the Rest of My Life as an Apple Store Employee
  Facebook bans Adsense in all human history
  Show HN: We made an addictive way to fold a sheet of paper
  Rules of Storytelling According to the UK Gov
  Death to the ISS - Launch Webcast (starts at 12:00am PDT)
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by frik on Thursday November 28, 2013 @02:04PM (#6815943)
Obama wins back the right to keep emails private

John Resig's 'Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja Update'

From YC Rejection to 10,000 Users in 1 Day

PyPy is faster than pushing a pixel to the screen

screenshot: http://s28.postimg.org/k9pdb67n1/funny.png

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by wilg on Thursday November 28, 2013 @08:56PM (#6817472)
I threw together a little app that lets you vote for the funniest ones of these: http://headline-generator.herokuapp.com/

(I also really want to update it to also do Upworthy-style headlines. And maybe combine the two?)

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by wilg on Friday November 29, 2013 @12:24AM (#6818004)
Update: Now it does Upworthy also. And mashups. Amazing mashups.
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by dgesang on Thursday November 28, 2013 @12:25PM (#6815469)
> The Navy’s newest warship is powered by WebGL

omg ymmd

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by theycallmemorty on Thursday November 28, 2013 @03:08PM (#6816184)
"MIT discovers a new syntactic feature to PHP"
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by DouweM on Thursday November 28, 2013 @05:00PM (#6816675)
"NSA Boss Asks Congress For Blanket Immunity For Companies That Help NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden"
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by mattdeboard on Thursday November 28, 2013 @04:57PM (#6816665)
> Most data isn’t “big,” and businesses are wasting money pretending it is a prison and damaging our kids

Won't someone think of the children?

> JPL director: Curiosity may have been causing USB disconnects

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by zaguios on Thursday November 28, 2013 @01:31PM (#6815800)
Here's one I found that was quite amusing: "Aisle50 (YC S11) streamlines the search for aliens"
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by icambron on Thursday November 28, 2013 @01:38PM (#6815826)
The best one I got was "Aisle50 (YC S11) is a valid ipv4 address"
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by edkennedy on Thursday November 28, 2013 @03:31PM (#6816287)
My best one is "Voyager 1 spots new region at the edge of the iTunes EULA"
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by andrelaszlo on Friday November 29, 2013 @08:10AM (#6819249)
Absolutely brilliant. I'm dying.

    Supreme Court to avoid public shaming
    WordPress has left the solar system
    Cyanogen raises $7 million to build a perfect SNES emulator
    Washington Post to grow vegetables on weekdays
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by vincvinc on Thursday November 28, 2013 @09:52PM (#6817645)
Startup hopes to hack the beliefs that are holding you back

Thank you for epitomizing HN.

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by mFixman on Thursday November 28, 2013 @09:08PM (#6817512)
> Show HN: I am very real
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by rbosinger on Thursday November 28, 2013 @03:13PM (#6816212)
I want to work for Porsche! It sounds like they're getting shit done.
Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by corobo on Friday November 29, 2013 @10:15AM (#6819649)
FBI Document: [DELETED] had plan to kill an unresponsive SSH session

Pffft, this is obviously just another internet conspiracy

Re:Show HN: Probabilistically Generating HN Post Titles by theycallmemorty on Thursday November 28, 2013 @03:08PM (#6816182)
Those are incredible.