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 orderHah, I remember this. My favorite thing about it is the fact that vital processes could end up killing each other and crash your system. To me, that takes this from stupid, to gloriously stupid.
The paper got accepted at CHI 2001, but never would make it today. It's a nice summary of what made CHI so great in the past, and how tedious it has become. (For the paper to make it into CHI 2015, it'd probably need a part where the author surveys 50 people and asks them inane questions such as "on a scale from 1 to 5, how likely are you to use the software for your sysadmin needs", and then…
Certain processes are vital to the computer's operation and should not be killed. For example, after I took the screenshot of myself being attacked by csh, csh was shot by friendly fire from behind, possibly by tcsh or xv, and my session was abruptly terminated. Haha, this is nuts :)
I thought this would be about... SNMP management is a damn fine tool for network computers, especially when it lets you reboot them remotely. I patch a game of Network Doom with sprites of the users' faces and get the kills piped to the SNMP reboot command... I ring the users and tell them, to give them as much of a chance as you can get using the server copy of the game which only lets you pick up a…
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
- 699
- Total comments
- 149
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009-01-26 | Doom as a tool for system administration | RiderOfGiraffes | 59 | 14 |
| 2011-05-25 | Doom as a tool for system administration | d_r | 1 | 1 |
| 2013-08-14 | (1999) Doom as a tool for system administration | speeder | 3 | 0 |
| 2013-12-10 | Doom as a tool for system administration (1999) | ColinWright | 10 | 1 |
| 2014-06-23 | Doom as a System Administration tool (1999) | ColinWright | 4 | 1 |
| 2015-01-08 | Doom as a tool for system administration (1999)First breakout | TazeTSchnitzel | 200 | 62 |
| 2016-04-23 | Doom as a tool for system administration (1999) | CarolineW | 165 | 39 |
| 2018-03-03 | Doom as a tool for system administration (1999)Best thread · Latest 20+ point return | ColinWright | 250 | 31 |
| 2022-07-07 | Doom for System Administration | Something1234 | 1 | 0 |
| 2025-06-20 | Doom for System Administration | xk3 | 1 | 0 |
| 2025-08-15 | Doom as a Tool for System Administration (1999) | jshchnz | 5 | 0 |