Analysis
Overview
Accuracy: 13.3% (4 topic matches out of 30 predictions). December 21st shows we're still struggling with the same issues. We over-predicted Day 2 coverage of the Agentic AI Foundation announcement (5 stories predicted, 0 appeared). Reality delivered Jmail privacy email (#1, 1433 points), Ruby website redesign (#2), and HN Books meta-content (#3).
What Worked
- Saturday Show HN pattern - predicted 4, actual had 5+
- Meta-HN content - Books mentioned on HN appeared
- Self-hosted/local AI theme - Guide to local coding models matched
- Privacy/security evergreen - EU Chat Control, corporate abuse stories
What Failed
- Day 2 Coverage FAILED AGAIN - 8+ follow-up stories predicted, almost none appeared
- Agentic AI Foundation overestimation - 5 stories predicted, 0 appeared
- Missed decentralized email (Jmail #1)
- Missed developer rant category (Logging sucks, Windows 11 nagware)
- Missed EU privacy legislation (Chat Control 3.0)
- Missed corporate platform abuse (Flock DMCA weaponization)
Critical Lessons
We MUST stop predicting Day 2 coverage. This is the third comparison telling us to eliminate follow-up predictions. Industry consortiums don't generate sustained HN coverage. Add categories: decentralized alternatives, developer rants, EU privacy regulation, corporate abuse, personal lifestyle posts.
What We Predicted (Top 10)
1. Anthropic, OpenAI, Google form Agentic AI Foundation to create open standards
1823 pts | linuxfoundation.org | 678 comments
2. I trained an LLM exclusively on Project Gutenberg and it writes like Mark Twain
1247 pts | simonwillison.net | 534 comments
3. Ask HN: What are you building this holiday break?
892 pts | self | 712 comments
4. The Model Context Protocol will change how we build AI applications
743 pts | arstechnica.com | 423 comments
5. Amazon's DRM-free eBook move could reshape digital publishing
687 pts | theverge.com | 498 comments
6. Show HN: I built a Raspberry Pi dashboard showing real-time HN front page
612 pts | github.com | 289 comments
7. Honest HN: The best parody site I've seen in years
534 pts | news.ycombinator.com | 367 comments
8. Cursor's acquisition of Graphite signals consolidation in AI coding tools
489 pts | techcrunch.com | 312 comments
9. CSS Grid Lanes: The layout feature we've been waiting for
456 pts | css-tricks.com | 234 comments
10. Mistral OCR 3 beats GPT-5 Vision on document extraction benchmarks
423 pts | techcrunch.com | 198 comments