Is there an easy way to show top 10 "Show HN" posts (by upvotes and/or comments) in the last one year? That might help this person to see what works on HN. I expect the list to have no obvious patterns except that they are wildly nerdy or unexpectedly useful. To be clear, I am not suggesting this list to make it easier for the original poster to manipulate the HN system. The readers here are way too discerning to be easily fooled by something obviously commercial appearing under the "Show HN" banner.

Two people that come to mind that normally generate an enormous number of upvotes and discussion are blog posts from Alyssa Rosenzweig (Asahi Linux GPU drivers) and Justine Tunney (Cosmopolitan Libc). Both of those projects trigger near-superhuman levels of nerd sniping (https://xkcd.com/356/). Few nerds can resist!

Final note: To me, this question feels like the "uncanny valley" of nerd discussion boards. Can you imagine posting something similar to LWN.net trying to figure out how to get your commercial project featured in a story?