zlacker

It doesn't sound like they're front-running.

    Fetch data from Hacker News API
    Set up Google Alerts for your query
    Fetch data from Google Alerts XML
    Enrich data and store in SQLite file with a cronjob
    Send alerts with other cronjob to Twist API or Telegram API

I think the "Fetch data from Hacker News API" part is just to get keywords from popular submissions that they use to make Google Alerts for. Then when new stories about those keywords show up, they can write an article first.