You know, this feature could be a little side bar on the top right, or just as a header for every post. (I assume its semi automated, but I would be happy to see it all the time)

Agreed. The 3rd party app I'm using to read HN on mobile (Glider) has this feature and it's both useful and unobtrusive.

Screenshot: https://www.imgpaste.net/image/SDoBg6

I use Glider too and this is the first time I noticed this feature. Interesting!

Isn't that the point of the "past" button though? I've always assumed the purpose of Dang's "related" comments were to help bridge the discussion.

It seems as if the past button allows you to view a snapshot of the site on a given day, whereas Dang's bundles are previous instances of the topic/link being discussed on HN.

There is also a past button for submissions

Thanks for sharing! I'd never thought to click through and see

Me either! Maybe if dang included a "past" link in the comment, more of us would learn about it.

Oh wow, thanks!

Before I post something on HN I always do a search to see if it has been posted recently. If it's more than 2-3 years old, I post it again in order for new users (and others who forget it) to notice it.

There have been other similar suggestions i.e. when filling the information for a new submission to have an automatic duplicate search and produce a warning, but I've come to understand that adding features to the simple/lean HN page is not desired. Same goes for native dark mode (with having to load scripts/plugins/whatever).

I can understand Feature Creep (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep) fears, but it seems that here we're doing the exact opposite :-)

The "Refined Hacker News" extension for Chrome [0] and Firefox [1] adds something similar (among other things) to the bottom of every thread.

[0] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/refined-hacker-news...

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/refined-hacke...

I wonder if making old comments too-easily available backfire by reducing new takes and fresh discussion. Probably not in this particular case, it seems like a potential risk when designing a social news site.

P.S.: I choose to believe the neurons that instinctively throw up "but what if it's actually bad" represents a useful software design skill, rather than just a personality flaw. :p

Clicking the URL next to the post title provides this, at least for fairly unique pages. It’s less useful when the link is from a popular news site.