Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderI don't think just developing a Z80 operating system is enough. The whole ecosystem needs to be preserved. In agriculture, we have the doomsday seed vault [0] just for this purpose. If we anticipate collapse of the current economic system or society, I think we should build a doomsday computer vault, that keeps everything we need to rebuild the computing industry in a underground bunker. It keeps everything we need in a controlled environment, such as 8080, Z80, m68k, motherboards…
The problem with claims of imminent societal collapse is they treat "collapse" like an event, with the world neatly divided into before and after. Historically, societal collapse is much more fuzzy. No neat single cause. No single moment when things flipped. You can only truly know the collapse has happened well in retrospect. In terms of computing, this means that any strategy looking at a before/after collapse framing is missing the entire interesting middle part - how do we transition…
Genuine question: if we're in a collapse scenario that is so devastating to the global supply chain that we're scavenging microcontrollers, how do we generate electricity to power them? Solar panels and batteries don't last forever and would presumably require the same or similar supply chain as the microcontrollers. This is a cool project regardless, but in such a catastrophic scenario it seems easier to just give up on computing and go back to more primitive technology. If I can't…
On the vi editor, it should fit on a 80x24 terminal. A 64x16 window would be perfect. Also, I coudn't get this Forth to do float or double operations. On the term size, edit cos-grid.c as en exaple for cwm: #define WCOLS 64 #define WLINES 16
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 3
- Total points
- 1238
- Total comments
- 626
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-10-07 | Collapse OSFirst breakout · Best thread | spraak | 753 | 303 |
| 2021-01-25 | Collapse OS – bootstrap post-collapse technology | rewir | 213 | 116 |
| 2022-05-11 | Collapse OS | signa11 | 46 | 8 |
| 2025-03-26 | Collapse OSLatest 20+ point return | kaycebasques | 226 | 199 |
