Top all-time · #3845
Alexander Obenauer
Personal blog · alexanderobenauer.com/labnotes · on HN as alexobenauerprogrammingdesign
Alexander Obenauer's personal blog at alexanderobenauer.com covers programming and design. Since 2021, 20 different Hacker News readers have linked it 30 times, most often “Ollos – An itemized personal computing timeline”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-02-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Alexander Obenauer's blog for its Lab Notes and OLLOS pages on novel operating systems, universal data, and 'atomic apps' that separate data from presentation. One commenter calls them great.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Exploring new and renewed ideas for how personal computing and the interfaces we think with can better serve people’s lives – expanding opportunity, agency, curiosity, and creativity.
Most-linked posts?
- Ollos – An itemized personal computing timeline4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-01-21
- The Potential Merits of an Itemized OS (2021)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2022-05-12
- Alexander Obenauer's Lab Notes2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-06-20
- The Graph OS2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-01-09
What Hacker News says?
On my personal site, I've published my explorations (so far) on the future of personal computing, by way of designing an "operating system of the future." https://alexanderobenauer.com The site is built in Svelte using Elder.js as an SSG.
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Share your personal site”Submitted Building apps in minutes, not months as a story · 460 points
HN discussionIs it Ollos by Alexander Obenauer? https://alexanderobenauer.com/ollos/
Comment linking /ollos/
on “Show HN: Timelinize – Privately organize your own data from everywhere, locally”Submitted Semantic Zoom as a story · 14 points
HN discussionQuite the fan of Elder.js; I build my personal site using it ( https://alexanderobenauer.com ), where the entire site is built once, each time I push a change, then hosted on static hosting (Netlify). The flexibility on how routes map to various files and templates is wonderful. Some routes are simply markdown files (copied directly from my notes app) that are then rendered into the right template file.
Comment linking /
on “Elder.js – An Opinionated, SEO Focused, Svelte Framework”Submitted My core work is independent research in software as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThis very much reminds me of Alexander Obenauer's Lab Notes[1] and OLLOS[2]. They're both great, recommend reading them. [1] https://alexanderobenauer.com/labnotes/000/ [2] https://alexanderobenauer.com/ollos/
Comment linking /ollos/
on “Catalog of Novel Operating Systems”Submitted The interfaces with which we think as a story · 3 points
HN discussionComputers are not a kitchen. They are clay, they are Lego, they are jungles of imagination. It's true that our current trajectory devolves their universality to a set of discrete isolated applications == multiplexing a set of appliances on one device. That's an economic win sure, but it's tragic if we fail to unlock more of their flexibility for "end users"! IMHO that's the biggest unsolved problems of computer scie…
Comment linking /
on “Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever? [video]”Submitted The Potential Merits of an Itemized OS (2021) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI'm reading through The Lab Notes from Alexander Obenauer[1], and I'm noticing lots of coincidences. Universal data portability [2] in particular shares the same code insight of reusing all user data in any context where it's needed, and Universal reference containers [3] are the primary use case for my idea of Wit. With the example interactions in that website you can get very close to what I imagined my system to…
Comment linking /labnotes/003/
on “The Subtext 10 Programming Language”Submitted The Messy Desktop as a story · 3 points
HN discussionMy point was that modifications to the higher up system (e.g., file mounts) could be isolated per process (and then trickled down to sub-processes). If the process corrupted the OS' function in any way, only that process would feel it, everything above it would be fine. I do agree that AI could be used as a rare reason to actually innovate in the OS space. > do files even matter anymore if you interact primarily via…
Comment linking /labnotes/009/
on “Desktop Is Dead”Submitted The Graph OS as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI didn't understand much from the homepage, but looking at linked Lab Notes[0] I see 2 major takeaways: 1. "Atomic apps", which I understand to be apps that separate presentation from the data. 100x this. We used to have it, with files and programs that could open them, but with move to cloud apps, this feature of computing is disappearing. How do I make a directory that contains stuff from my google drive, onedrive…
Comment linking /labnotes/014/
on “WonderOS”Submitted The Venerable Hyperlink as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAfter skimming https://alexanderobenauer.com/articles/os/1/ - I think the items are more like objects than files. Files have a uniform I/O interface, while items seem like they can have unique properties instead of having a uniform interface.
Comment linking /articles/os/1/
on “WonderOS”Submitted Ollos – An itemized personal computing timeline as a story · 2 points
HN discussionhttps://alexanderobenauer.com/labnotes/000/ Notes from the founder.
Comment linking /labnotes/000/
on “WonderOS Research Project”Submitted Alexander Obenauer's Lab Notes as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Ollos – An Itemized Personal Computing Timeline as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Potential Merits of an Itemized OS as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Extemporaneous UIs as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Notes on Time as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Lab Notes: Semantic Zoom as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Gestural view construction as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
