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 orderIt's interesting, but strikes me as very unrealistic. I don't think it'd go that way. In fact, it'd be far more horrifying. We wouldn't bother trying to convince an image of a brain into cooperation, because we simply lose any need to do that very quickly. One of the very first things we'd do with a simulated brain is to debug it. Execute it step by step, take lots of measures of all parameters, save/reload state, test every possible input…
It’s named after the multi-decade data compression test image https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna Buy the book! https://qntm.org/vhitaos
This, along with "It Looks Like You’re Trying To Take Over The World"[0] are two of my favorite short pieces of speculative fiction that embody the Frederik Pohl quote, "a good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam." This story, a sequel, and other great short stories are collected in his book of ten short stories "Valuable Humans in Transit".[1] I'm a big fan of supporting indie scifi offered with DRM-free ebooks!…
I went from bored to confused to fascinated to horrified in matter of minutes.
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
- 1221
- Total comments
- 473
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-01-05 | Lena | MikeLumos | 5 | 0 |
| 2021-01-08 | Lena | topynate | 2 | 0 |
| 2021-02-21 | Lena (Fiction) | colinprince | 1 | 0 |
| 2021-02-22 | LenaFirst breakout · Best thread | burkaman | 620 | 218 |
| 2022-07-19 | Lena | ajot | 4 | 1 |
| 2022-07-20 | Lena: Short story on mind uploading as wiki article | Arubis | 1 | 0 |
| 2022-09-02 | MMAcevedo | keewee7 | 86 | 16 |
| 2023-12-05 | Lena (MMAcevedo, the earliest executable image of a human brain)Hall induction | hugs | 144 | 48 |
| 2025-04-08 | Lena (2021) | ko_pivot | 2 | 1 |
| 2025-05-15 | Lena | BasilPH | 11 | 3 |
| 2025-07-22 | Lena: MMAcevedo | metadat | 2 | 1 |
| 2025-11-03 | Lena: A short story about simulated consciousnesses | nvader | 3 | 0 |
| 2026-02-13 | MMAcevedo aka Lena by qntmLatest 20+ point return | stickynotememo | 340 | 185 |