Comment by oceliker

I'm sure you thought about this deeply already, but FWIW I think 5 years is a little bit too long. You're basically looking for "timeless" articles, but there are not that many of those on the web; much less so if you exclude the last 5 years. Also, this necessarily eliminates anything related to new scientific and technical advances, which I think are the coolest discussions in HN in general.