Show HN: I made Google Trends for Hacker News by indexing 18 years of comments

A Hacker News user just dropped a tool that basically lets people time-travel through 18 years of internet nerd chatter, and the crowd reaction was immediate: part admiration, part gleeful chaos. The project charts how often words, tools, and names have appeared across roughly 45 million Hacker News posts and comments, then lets you click through to the actual arguments, hype waves, and obsession spikes behind the graph. In plain English, it’s like a popularity tracker for what the tech crowd has been talking about for nearly two decades.

And the comments? Very into it. The mood swung hard toward instant praise, with people calling it “sick,” saying they “love it,” and complimenting the clean, easy look. One person was already poking around the “linux” trend like it was celebrity gossip data for programmers. The creator leaned into the fun of watching topics suddenly explode as “small burst[s] of activity,” which gave the whole thing a popcorn-worthy vibe: not just data, but drama preserved in chart form.

But because this is the internet, the real plot twist arrived fast: success may have broken it. A commenter posted a timeout error and bluntly declared “Hug of death,” the classic online badge of honor meaning too many curious people showed up at once. So yes, the tool won over the crowd—and then the crowd may have immediately body-slammed it with affection. Honestly? That only made the launch feel even more iconic.