This article is great insofar as it describes how to write an article that appeals to HN. But having been writing and submitting to HN for like 8 years with maybe a dozen front page entries, I think the hack is simpler: pick a topic people want to discuss/find interesting, name the article well (not clickbaity but not boring), and submit earlyish in the day PST. The content of the article is not super important for hitting the front page (as evidenced by a lot of the stuff that does hit front page). BUT if you want to stay on the front page/rank higher, I suspect article quality does matter a lot.