Hacker News has asked for the same 100 tools for 18 years — and 81 already exist

A developer scraped 63,300 Hacker News comments and posts from 2008 to 2026, used an AI classifier to isolate 12,441 genuine software requests, and ranked the 100 most persistent asks. The findings are striking: 81 of the 100 tools have already launched on Show HN, 46 of 100 want local or private ownership rather than AI, and four of the top ten are people offering to pay to stop being the product — for Windows, a browser, email, and search.