Ask HN: Is something happening with HN's ranking algo?
I think I started to see a lot more submissions with relatively low number of upvotes and even smaller number of comments on the front page. 10-20 is the normal threshold to make the front page, the past few days haven't exactly reflected this, due to large influx of Apple related posts. You can always try https://news.ycombinator.com/classic too Stories hit the frontpage when they have 3 upvotes, and sometimes stories get a second run at it.