First, because I made it on my own.(not important)
Second, if you examine the algorithm of http://www.hckrnews.com/, you will see that, the "TOP 10" only shows 10 news per day, "TOP 20" only shows 20 news per day. "Homepage" means those news currently on the homepage. "All" means to show all the historical news (mixed the good with the bad).
Is that what users what? No.
I, a user, want to read all those top 30 news which used to be on the front page over the last 12 hours while I was not able to access the Internet. You may notice that HN uses a new rank algorithm, the front page changes frequently. Some excellent news cannot stay long. I don't want to miss them. So, the cron can help me to preserve those items. Remove duplicates, list out the latest 100 news (or even 1000 news). You can add cookie to show the "last read" <hr> line.
I am also curious about what are the best ranks of those news. Then, I added that feature.
My code meets all my needs, the user's needs. Therefore, It is better.
