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 orderThis article epitomizes a phenomena that I don't like. It starts with a simple subject, and a mildly interesting result. Then obfuscates it with an unenlightening and confusing model. Then shows how to do lots of exploratory programming with that model and create apparently surprising results. Then uses it to sell the modeling tool so that you too can come to surprising results about things in a way that does not enlighten. Here is the simple subject. If jobs are…
It's funny. I saw the headline, and my immediate association was "employees" rather than computation tasks. And I was thinking "not even!" It's been my experience that scaling up employee count, has diminishing returns, with even some net negatives with some adds. I'm not sure I buy the quadratic gains, but the general gst is that if done correctly, two processes/tasks/workers/etc is better than one. So why is this? Why does it work in computing, but not with people? Is…
(2020) Popular in 2022 (106 points, 41 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31239017 2020 (111 points, 51 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25001875
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
- 2
- Total points
- 230
- Total comments
- 93
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-11-02 | Two workers are quadratically better than one | headalgorithm | 4 | 0 |
| 2020-11-03 | Two workers are quadratically better than one | quyleanh | 3 | 0 |
| 2020-11-03 | Two Workers Are Quadratically Better Than One | headalgorithm | 4 | 0 |
| 2020-11-05 | Two Workers Are Quadratically Better Than OneFirst breakout · Best thread | headalgorithm | 111 | 51 |
| 2022-05-02 | Two workers are quadratically better than one (2020)Latest 20+ point return | Tomte | 106 | 41 |
| 2025-10-19 | Two workers are quadratically better than one: modelling a queue with PRISM | fanf2 | 2 | 1 |