Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons - <AUTHOR> http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/solitary-confinement-shane-bauer <comment><USER3> People often ask the hypothetical of what sorts of behavior we consider normal today that people in the far future will regard as barbaric or bizarre. Our prison system is probably near the top of that list, for a variety of reasons. Not least of which is the sheer size of the prison population these days due to the war on drugs.

Even more significant is the widespread societal belief that prison experience should be brutal punishment and torture, with no concern for justice, fairness, or humaneness. Prison rape is a punch-line, it's not even on the radar as a political issue.

The public acknowledges, accepts, and approves of prison experiences as not merely pragmatic methods of keeping some folks separate from public society, and especially not as rehabilitory, but as retributive, vengeful, and arbitrary. These are the basest and most despicable sentiments when it comes to issues of criminal justice, but they rule the day in the 21st century as much as they ever did in the middle ages or even in the stone age.

This is easily one of the most significant issues of our time, as significant and important as the Cold War in the 20th century or the struggle over the abolition of slavery in the 19th.

<comment><USER4> I'm kind of glad that this is your perception. This should be everyone's perception of prison. You should have an extreme necessity to keep your ass out of prison. You should be scared absolutely _shitless_ of prison, so much that you play exactly by the rules to keep yourself from ever going there. Our prison system does a pretty good job at driving this perception home.

Prison is not a rehabilitation center. If it were just a means of keeping folks separate from society, I know plenty of unmotivated individuals that would love to sit around with a bunch of other lazy-asses and be fed 3 meals a day. For free. Don't you?

Prison _has_ to be scary. It _has_ to strike one as the number one place that you do not want to go. It's the other ultimate consequence, along side of death. I can't imagine this world if it wasn't.

<comment><USER5> Upvoted to counter the ridiculous downvote legion. I fully disagree with your point, but it's a fair point worthy of HN, and I applaud you for uttering what is clearly a minority opinion here.

<comment><USER6> Advocating what amounts to rape and torture just because we don't break it into its components (it's tacitly accepted, after all) is utterly abhorrent and deserves every step closer to invisible that it's getting.

<comment><USER5> Soo, people who you disagree with should be stopped from spreading their opinions? Come on, it's not that extreme, he's supporting the status quo. It's not like he's saying that all <minority X> should be killed. For comparison's sake, I once wrote here that "the Israeli government are a bunch of nazis" (and I'm still ashamed of that), and I got fewer downvotes (which doesn't make any sense at all, it was a horrible and worthless thing to write). In fact, people who disagreed with me took on the discussion and I learned a lot. That's what HN should be about.

I really don't understand why supporting the current US prison system is an opinion so dangerous that it must be hidden from sight.

Also, if you would've carefully read his post, you'd have seen that he doesn't advocate rape and torture, but the _perception_ of it. It's a subtle difference, but a significant one.

<comment><USER6> >Soo, people who you disagree with should be stopped from spreading their opinions?

Nobody's stopping anybody from spreading their opinion, last I checked. I said the downvotes were deserved.

Not only for being factually incorrect, ("Prison has to be scary", which is the whole premise of the post, is handily disproved by looking at some of the Nordic nations' systems), but for perpetuating the kind of culture that allows solitary confinement (i.e. psychological torture) and prison rape to be accepted by otherwise sane and caring people.

The culture of "whatever happens to guys in prison is their own fault" NEEDS to stop.

<comment><USER5> > _Nobody's stopping anybody from spreading their opinion, last I checked. I > said the downvotes were deserved._

directly contradicts

> _[it] deserves every step closer to invisible that it's getting_

from your previous comment.

Also, you know that downvoting something enough hides it from HN. On HN, a downvote doesn't mean "I disagree", because we have comments for that. A downvote means "this comment isn't HN-worthy".

As for the actual discussion topic, I mostly agree with you and I don't understand why you're discussing it with me. I'm defending another's right to disagree with you and me.

> _The culture of "whatever happens to guys in prison is their own fault" > NEEDS to stop._

I agree, but I'm appalled that you think you can enforce a culture change by hiding the opinions of people that don't want that culture change. You can't shove culture down people's throats.

<comment><USER7> _On HN, a downvote doesn't mean "I disagree"_

Actually, it does. pg has said that it is fine to use this way.

I think it's stupid, and you'll see in my profile a screed against the braindead moderation style of HN and why I think it's bad. I don't particularly care anymore though - there is no interest from the admins in changing it, so it's pointless to try.

<comment><USER8> It's possible to disagree with an argument without losing respect for the person making it. You might, for instance, have a rare or specialized experience that would lead you to think differently from another person. Even if you know that person to be wrong, you wouldn't respond with a downvote. Not if their position was intelligent and stated in good faith. Reasonable people disagreeing, and all that.

And then there are the idiots. Here, the downvote is less about disagreement per se, and more about a response to thought that is generally stupid and awful. What it says is that your opinion is so unworthy of consideration that it's simply being removed from circulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A very sad read and the comments are even worse. This sort of thing so clearly crosses the line in to inhumanity. I appreciate that some/many of these inmates have committed awful crimes but it seems that this particular system offers no opportunity for rehabilitation and is focussed solely on punishment.

I forget where I read it but I believe that there is a correlation between the severity of the punishment and it's peak effect. If it is normal imprisonment then the effect of the punishment plateaus at 18 months (ish) and if it is solitary then the (albeit greater) effect of the punishment plateaus at 30 days, after that it is achieving no extra punishment and you may as well go back in to a rehabilitation mode. I'm not saying that prison sentences should be no longer than 18 months but after this point the focus should be on (eventual) reintegration into society with new skills and education to keep them from reoffending.

<comment><USER10> It's not about rehabilitation or punishment. It's far more cynical than that. It's simply a matter of separating people from the population. Prisoners are separated from the free population; especially dangerous prisoners are separated even from the prison population.

<comment><USER11> The main purpose of prison is to act as a disincentive. A lot of people don't commit crimes in the first place because they are scared of going to prison.

<comment><USER12> The evidence appears to indicate that it's far less effective as a disincentive than people hope.

For prison to work as a disincentive, people need to be capable of making sensible decisions about what to do NOW in order to create a better distant future. They often aren't. Criminals are often people who do very badly at this. They don't want to be in prison twenty years from now, but it's not going to affect how they live their life now.

If prisons as thought of as primarily a disincentive, it's a very expensive way of getting not much back. I expect it's a cultural thing.

<comment><USER11> How can you know how many people _don't_ commit crimes because they fear prison? Yes the people who currently are in prison are the ones who didn't think they would get caught, but there are people who are not in prison because they did consider that.

Yes there are cheaper and more effective disincentives, but you're right it is a cultural thing. Our culture considers those barbaric (but not prison somehow.)

<comment><USER12> "How can you know how many people don't commit crimes because they fear prison?"

It's very difficult. We can look at the fact that the US imprisons more of its population than any other nation, and if prison is a working deterrent, this would mean that the United States is a phenomenally lawless and criminal society barely held in check by the fear of the USA's notoriously harsh judicial system. Is the USA a phenomenally lawless and criminal society?

There are studies that try to evaluate the deterrence effect of prison. Some conclude yes, some no, but the weight of evidence appears to indicates that on the whole, it's a pretty ineffective deterrent. You can google as well as I can so I won't list a bunch of google hits.

"Our culture considers those barbaric (but not prison somehow.)"

Now _that_ is interesting. I meant a detention system that actually works; that actually is applied with the intention of turning criminals into good citizens and making a better society. I assume that you don't consider that "barbaric", so I'm guessing you thought I meant something like state- sanctioned torture or other such physical abuse, or cutting off people's hands, or public executions in the town square, and all that sort of thing. So our cultural gap is so big that the first thing you thought of to deal with detention as an ineffective deterrent wasn't an effective detention system, but harsher punishments, whereas I thought of stopping trying to use it as a deterrent and do something useful with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Solitary confinement is now so obviously a form of torture that it's surprising this is still controversial. Future generations will surely look on it the way we look on past barbarities.

<comment><USER14> The problem is that psychological forms of harm are not treated with as much respect as physical forms. There are no pictures of it, you cannot see it. It is the same reason why people struggle to see a psychiatrist but not a doctor.

Lack of sleep is also deployed in some countries ie. the guards won't let you sleep.

<comment><USER15> The real problem is that the US is part of no international treaty on human rights. Turkey and France have a way more fair process now thanks to the European Court of Human Rights. They have also put hard limits on terrorist law etc. It's slow but it's a real adult supervising the local politicians with true values.

<comment><USER16> The US vigorously refuses to be part of any of that. Now you know why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I just don't understand how such a ridiculous system comes into being, these are people's lives, criminal yes, but people. Or do they just not think like that?

I mean, let's say you get sent to the SHU, I won't go into why because that's probably impossible without introducing circular logic. Now all your "associates", ie everybody who knows you in prison, can also be sent to the SHU. The only way out quickly is for you to "debrief", accuse some other people so they can be sent to the SHU in your place. But, how many people can you genuinely criminalise who aren't known associates? Judging by the fact they read prisoner's diaries, I'd infer surveillance is quite high, so surely the number of unknown criminal associates is pretty low? If that holds, then who do you "debrief" about? Like the article said, it's a catch-22, or at least should be. Instead the guards have a - according to a judge - <USER2> right to make up stories, attribute them to you, forge your signature and incarcerate others on that basis.

It's so abstract it's bizarre. It just seems so dystopian, if you consider the world inside the prison where you're 'innocent' until you commit crime on the inside, that world would be ridiculed if they weren't criminals. Thrown in on false evidence, and the only way out is to give more false evidence. I don't understand how that ends up happening.

<comment><USER3> The truth of the banality of evil comes into play not just at the extremes (death camps and so forth) but also at the margins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Get past the comedy, listen to the facts.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPZed8af9RI>

The facts stated have never been refuted.

Be ashamed. Either Americans are the most criminal in the world, or the US justice system has a real problem.

I mean, worse than Iran? Worse than China? South Africa? Are Americans really that bad?

Perhaps now we know a certain hacker preferred death. I know I would. As a British citizen, I would genuinely rather kill my self than end up in the US justice system. Do not doubt that. And I know my government will not protect me from American "justice" either.

Im sorry, but this makes me very, very angry. If a country cant get justice right and fair, then Im sorry, I believe it has no right being a country, let alone being a country that thinks it has the right to interfere on the world state, and have the sheer arrogance to pontificate on others.

<comment><USER18> There are many problems with the US Justice System, but those standards are impossible for any country to meet.

<comment><USER19> Norway and Sweden don't seem too bad.

<comment><USER20> Assange apparently disagrees.

<comment><USER21> Quite the opposite. He has been asking Sweden to guarantee that he will not be extradited to the US, and in return he will face trial in Sweden. They are _still_ trying to negotiate this.

He has criticisms about what has happened in Sweden, no doubt. But it's the prospect of going near a US prison that is the non-starter, and the basis of his asylum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Many of the structures that make up our society (jails, taxes, laws, rulers) were not "our" creation, but the creation of kings.

When those kings were deposed, rather than abolishing the structures those kings had created, they were instead largely preserved and put under "democratic" control.

It could be that this was a mistake: that there's something structurally intrinsic to the instruments of monarchies that can not be eradicated, regardless of who nominally controls them. ACAB.

<comment><USER22> In some ways the prison system in the U.S. seems to be worse precisely because it is supported by a democratic society. If prisoners are tortured under a king, their barbaric treatment can easily be associated with the cruelty of the king. This connection creates a risk of revolt, and a sensible king will be mindful of it.

In a democratic society with a Kafkaesque prison system, torture of prisoners is not as easily associated with any one person's cruelty. Because most people are optimistic and don't like to believe that several hundred million of their neighbors would silently condone the torture of a whole class of people, it's easy for lazy minds to consider prisoner torture acceptable, necessary, justified, and so on to whatever stronger beliefs these individuals may hold.

I'm not saying that prisoners would fare any better in a non-democratic society, but how people think of prisoner mistreatment would definitely be different.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally. I think one of the most pernicious things about ineffective but reaffirming processes like voting is that it's easy to conclude that if we don't change things, we must not have wanted them to change.

Hypothetically, we believe in justice and freedom (and other good things and not bad things), or we would not have formed a democracy. Since we freedom- loving, democratic people would naturally act to end all oppression, it follows that if a policy, law or practice does not change then it must not truly oppress people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> After reading this article, keep in mind that Andrew Auernheimer is also in a SHU, for having someone update his twitter account on his behalf.

And the reason he is in prison in the first place is for changing an integer on the end of a URL.

Do these punishments make sense to anyone?

<comment><USER23> The punishments make sense to the people meting them out.

The prison authorities transparently use isolation in an SHU as punishment for making them look bad or for inconveniencing them. The two inmates mentioned in the article who acted as 'jailhouse lawyers' seem like good examples of this. Anyone in prison who offers any resistance to the power of the authorities is very likely to be treated this way, even if they are merely requesting legally-guaranteed rights or marginally better treatment, because doing so acts as an example to others.

Auernheimer was imprisoned, it seems to me, primarily for unrepentantly embarrassing those in positions of power, and later transferred to the SHU for the same reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The nature of America's prison system is driven by the fact that middle class white people vote for politicians and policies that put poor black people through a cruel, inhumane and all-too-usual system of torture and deprivation. Is unusual sadism a national characteristic? I do not want to think so, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

<comment><USER25> I didn't know that the laws so clearly stated that black people are singled out to be tortured.

Can you provide at least one reference to this atrocity?

[I'm guessing you can't]

<comment><USER26> Racism doesn't necessarily entail singling a group out explicitly, especially today where we have a trained smell for racism.

If your intent is to single out black people, there are _many_ ways you can target them without spelling out "black people". Specific job categories, specific neighborhoods, specific types of crime (which are _hugely_ lopsided racially), etc etc.

The same can be applied to any race. You can _effectively_ create a law that only targets Asian immigrants without once mentioning the words "Asian immigrant".

In the US race and crime are inexorably linked, and highly politicized. Through a combination of factors and people (acting both maliciously and otherwise), blacks _are_ without a doubt targeted.

Here in NYC we have a rather odious policy of stop, question, and frisk, where the police are empowered to stop anyone they deem suspicious or threatening and search them. It turns out that Blacks and Latinos are search disproportionately often, well beyond their proportional contribution to crime rate. There's nothing in the regulation that spells out that dark-skinned people should be searched more, but everyone in charge knows this is the consequence, and everyone in charge intends this to be the consequence.

Racism is complicated. The fact that you don't have a hooded guy on your lawn burning a cross, screaming "lynch him!", doesn't mean it's not in front of you.

<comment><USER7> Anecdata on disproportionate searching: I'm a middle-class white guy who's 40. I haven't been pulled over for a "random stop, sir" since I was about 25, and before that I would have been pulled over about a dozen times. The times when I was pulled over, I was a young guy with long hair in a beaten-up car. My mother has _never_ been pulled over. And judging from the general dialogue with friends, this is not an unusual experience. These "random stops" are (almost!) certainly using a different definition of 'random' than the ones we used in statistics class.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Too depressing to read in its entirety. One straightforward way of evaluating whether there might be anything wrong with practices in American prisons is to compare with other countries -- do other nations with stable democracies use solitary confinement in a similar way?

<comment><USER28> > do other nations with stable democracies use solitary confinement in a > similar way

Other countries with stable democracies have universal health care, don't incarcerate almost 1% of the population, have never landed people on the moon, don't spend 5% of their GDP on the military, aren't the home of Apple, Microsoft, and IBM, and so on. America has always been (and will probably always be) an edge case.

<comment><USER27> Actually, all nations think they are special. It's not an excuse for backwardness.

<comment><USER29> OT: I remember being in the USA after those 9/11 terrorist attacks an they aired those "proud to be an American" commercials all the time... like they assume it's a good thing to be proud that you are a national of a certain nation. And maybe it is a good thing - I don't know. It just seemed strange to me. And all those American flags in front of regular family homes... do you still have those? You don't see that in Europe.

Please do not take this the wrong way. I kind of admire your patriotism... although I think it might prevent you from seeing (and fixing) bad things.

<comment><USER30> If it weren't for some sense of pride, things would never be fixed. Think about your technology work -- you do a good job because you take some pride in it.

American patriotism is the most public, but every country's citizens take some measure of pride in their country. We're the most public about everything (the home of myspace/facebook/twitter/instagram/the internet generally) so it makes sense to me that we're really public about patriotism.

<comment><USER7> American patriotism related to the wake of the 9/11 attacks seem to have broken more things than it fixed, both internally (eg TSA) and externally (eg the pride-wounded initiation of the Iraq war). It doesn't seem to have actually fixed much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The "Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations" of the State of California tweeted [0] a related article [1] titled __Why the Producer of "The Hangover Part III" Spends So Much Time in Prison __.

[0] <https://twitter.com/CACorrections/status/340220581972692992>

[1] [http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/05/hangover-part- iii-e...](http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/05/hangover-part-iii- executive-producer-scott-budnick-california-prison-interview)

</comment><comment><USER32> A lot of the comments here are completely ignorant about the state and nature of prisons, both on a small scale level for the lives of people who are incarcerated as well as at a large scale in how Amercian society supports prisons as a racist institution. I urge everyone looking for starting knowledge to start with Angela Davi's Are Prisons Obsolete?: [http://www.amazon.com/Are-Prisons-Obsolete-Angela- Davis/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/Are-Prisons-Obsolete-Angela- Davis/dp/1583225811)

</comment><comment><USER33> I think I'd rather spend 3 years in solitary (given adequate books, ability to write, etc.) than in general prison population. I accept that I'm probably an outlier, though.

<comment><USER34> You think that, until you've spent a few months, perhaps only a week, in solitary confinement.

<comment><USER33> I spent 6 continuous months on Sealand with one other guy (who I avoided as much as I possibly could, saw him about 3 minutes a day if I didn't correctly time my hallway trip to avoid running into him).

Lots of space, and the Internet, though.

<comment><USER35> > with one other guy

so not solitary

> Lots of space, and the Internet, though

and not (physically or mentally) confinement either

\---

The only way in which you are an outlier is that you have an inflated sense of your own awesomeness.

<comment><USER7> rdl may just be unusual in this sense. As for 3min/day, even solitary prisoners have that minimal contact - bare interaction with guards when let out for exercise, or when the meals come.

<comment><USER33> Yeah, it's not _sensory deprivation_ , which seems reliably able to drive people crazy in hours to a day. It's just a really crappy form of prison (combined with some additional psychological trauma of being solitary). If you're there voluntarily, even if without the ability to easily leave, it's nowhere near as bad.

I imagine political prisoners do comparatively well in solitary, too, or the extremely religious, etc. I know from the other side, religiosity and belief in one's cause are the main ways to successfully resist torture or other psychological hardship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> There's a wealth of information on solitary confinement in the US, including a few excellent articles like this one. This makes me think that the problem is on the way to being solved. A lot still needs to be done, but solitary confinement is now declining.

This site has a huge amount of information, this is probably also the place to look if you want to help: <http://solitarywatch.com/>

If you want to know more, a good place to start is this national geographic documentary <http://documentarystorm.com/solitary-confinement/>

and these two excellent articles [https://www.byliner.com/susan- greene/stories/the-gray-box-an...](https://www.byliner.com/susan- greene/stories/the-gray-box-an-investigative-look-at-solitary-confinement) [http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande)

</comment><comment><USER37> That explains why the death sentence is on the books ... these are the lucky ones.

That is cruel but sadly not unusual punishment.

<comment><USER38> "Born in the U.S.A." is ringing in my mind at this point.

<comment><USER39> I believe the Springsteen song you're thinking of is "Johnny 99":

"Your honor, I do believe I'd be better off dead / So if you can take a man's life for the thoughts that's in his head / Sit back in that chair and think it over, Judge, one more time / And have 'em shave off my hair and put me on that execution line."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Wow 42 years in solitary confinement for a 'political' prisoner

[http://sfbayview.com/2012/hugo-pinell-is-42-years-in- isolati...](http://sfbayview.com/2012/hugo-pinell-is-42-years-in-isolation- about-to-end/)

</comment><comment><USER41> Hmm, you know, this is a comparison of two different prison systems with two different prisoners. I fail to see a control here. As much as the observation of one person that has been through a system would be valuable insight looking into another, I don't find it anything more than subjective.

I bring up the point about two different prisoners in that 1. I don't believe all prisoners should be treated alike and 2. Different strokes for different folks. As for baseline humanity, again that is subjective. Pirates viewed marooning with some jug of water and a knife and shot as humane. I don't think that fits today's standards of humane treatment.

The article suggests that because of one man in the system the exception if you will, is getting screwed, we must do more to prevent this from happening. I'd argue that if this was a computer system, one exception isn't something to write home about. Many exceptions depending on how you define it however...

Systemic exceptions are expensive to fix and will cost us all a good amount in practice, so the real question we may ask ourselves is, how much money are we willing to put in taxes to overhaul the system? More specifically how much are each one of us willing to pay? A lump some of a dollar? Sure. A million dollars? Not so sure.

      Anyway, it's a mother jones article, it and many like it prey on the notion of self-hate and guilt-ridden introspection that many of the U.S. audience loves to talk about, including me!

</comment><comment><USER42> Well, we in the US have made just about everything a crime, so it's no wonder that we have a ton of people in jail. Gone are the days when people didn't need to consult a team of lawyers to stay compliant with the law...they just instinctively knew that things like stealing and murder were illegal.

With so many startups and entrepreneurs here on HN, I bet tons of you have violated laws for taxes, banking, employment, or zoning at one time or another and you probably had no idea.

</comment><comment><USER43> _Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America's Prisons..._

"But it wasn't until I started posting on Hacker News that I truly realized man's inhumanity to man..."

</comment><comment><USER44> Here's a link to the prisoners' contact information, if anyone wants to send letters.

[http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/prisoners- contac...](http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/prisoners-contact- information)

</comment><comment><USER45> Most states have private prisons. We read about that all the time, mainly on how profitable they are.

But unlike private health care, there's no one even poking it with a stick in the start up world.

<comment><USER46> I think that's the core of the problem. Once you make an industry out of something it's bound to grow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> If you enjoyed this article, there is a fantastic book explaining all of the problems with the American prison system and the 'Felon' Label that goes along with it. It's called "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander. Highly recommended reading.

</comment><comment><USER48> Interesting how many people here are hand waving to explain this with immigrants, blacks etc. when from the outside everyone else sees it as the brutal "eye for an eye" policy that runs US thinking, society and foreign relations.

</comment><comment><USER38> I guess a lot of people have seen Oz or documentaries about prison life in USA. I think the legitimate question would be - is solitary punishment not preferable to the life in general population?

</comment><comment><USER49> and they shall beat their swords into plowshares...and their prisons into monasteries.

</comment><comment><USER25> Prison is society's recourse for anti-social behavior. Does it have to be a violent and horrible place? No. The residents tend to make it that. In addition, I am against pampering in anyway, with my tax dollars, people whom I've had to remove from proper society...for anti-social behavior.

Prison is supposed to be a deterrent. My biggest gripe is that I have to pay for it at all. I support banishment or death.

<comment><USER50> Does this view not presuppose that the exhibitors of the anti-social behavior cannot be fixed or remade into useful members of society? If you believe that, fine, but if you think that some could be reformed, why is that not worth the money? "Reform", in my mind, has nothing to do with pampering. It _could_ be even more torturous than now...For example A Clockwork Orange. Not that I'm advocating that.

Does this view also not presuppose that all prisoners have exhibited anti- social behavior? I think we can both say that this is not the case. Although, prisons tend to somewhat separate the two populations.

<comment><USER25> I suppose that good people can make a[singular and non-violent] mistake or error in judgement which can run them a foul of the law. These people don't require reform. They are typically leaniently sentenced, pay for their mistake and move on.

I also suppose that others are more habitually and fundamentally anti-social. These people are not worth the effort of trying to 'save'. The brains have literally been wired for this behavior[over the course of many years]. They must be removed from society.

There are also those somewhere in between natural-born killer and 'busted for pot'. These people are responsible for their own personal choices. If they keep making bad choices of their own volition I have no compassion for them. [I say this from first hand experience dealing with a close relative who is a lifelong fuck-up.]

<comment> mc-lovin You are making a lot of assumptions, which seem taylored to bolster a particular worldview, rather than be based in fact. In particular, you assume

1\. People differ vastly in their innate ability to follow societal rules.

2\. The justice system is able to distinguish between people who make simple mistakes, and people who are unable to follow society rules.

3\. The above is a big factor in sentencing.

While there is evidence that some aspects of behavior are innate, there is also a huge literature linking the environment a person is raised in, and their tendency towards crime. Furthermore, sentencing is generally extremely inconsistent by any standards, so it is very unlikely that sentencing would fit your criteria for being lenient to the right people. Finally, it's hard to think of sentencing criteria that fit the criteria you propose, and are also objective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> So what the hell is Obama doing anyway? He's done nothing but wring his hands and give lip service to human liberties.

You have to give Obama credit though, he is supernaturally charismatic and completely amoral, not to mention the best centrist in US political history.

I think that when he is gone and his powers of charisma and diversion have long dissipated, history will not be kind to him. He never had the courage and compassion to do the right thing.</comment>


Facebook should have stayed in Boston, & other quotable Startup School moments - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2011/10/31/facebook-should-have-stayed-in-boston-and-other-quotable-moments-from-y-combinators-startup-school/

<comment><USER2> He didn't say "Facebook should have stayed in Boston." Quite the opposite, actually.</comment>


Apple's tribute to Steve Jobs, one year on. - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/?hn <comment><USER2> _Yesterday_ : "Apple is a worthless patent troll. All of their 'inventions' are things that were invented somewhere else. The only thing they did was patent other people's work, then charge twice as much for it to a bunch of worthless fan-boys."

 _Today_ : "R.I.P. Steve Jobs. He did so much to change the face of technology forever."

`

Sometimes you have to sit back and appreciate the fickleness of a crowd...

<comment><USER3> If other HNers are like me, this might explain it: I'm not a big fan of Apple. And lately I think they've become the "Big Brother" they were fighting in the 1984 commercial. However, I'm a _huge_ Steve Jobs fan. He's right up there with Henry Ford and Fred Harvey on my list.

Just watch this little clip and you can see why I like one and not the other: <http://www.wimp.com/stevemoment/>

<comment><USER4> I think that Henry Ford is a really good comparison. I _admire_ Henry Ford. He was a true innovator. He was everything an entrepreneur should strive to be.

Yet he was also incredibly flawed. His shortcomings are well documented. I still admire, and attempt to emulate, Henry Ford the entrepreneur even if I don't love the man as a whole.

In the same way I admire Apple (and their embodiment in Steve Jovs) for what they've done, and in many ways emulate their approach and passion for making delightful products. Yet I'm wary, and extremely critical, of much of what they're doing.

I can definitely be both. I want to promote the Apple that makes amazing products, while quashing the Apple that wants to exert utter control over everything.

<comment><USER5> > I want to promote the Apple that makes amazing products, while quashing the > Apple that wants to exert utter control over everything.

Which is kind of like wanting to promote water without promoting getting wet.

<comment><USER6> not necessarily. e.g Nokia's Meego platform was open, yet it was extremely well designed

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> People say "Steve wouldn't have done this to maps." but they're wrong. Apple still has it because they're still willing to piss off their users in the short term, but for the benefit of the long term. They're the only major company that sees and understands the innovator's dilemma.

<comment><USER8> No, they're the only major company that has a huge and scarily-loyal fan-base who are willing to rationalize major screw-ups as some kind of visionary strategic decision.

And they didn't innovate - they replaced a nicely-functioning product with a broken imitation.

<comment><USER9> As pointed out by others, the screw-up was not admitting that Apple Maps launched as an inferior product. The long-term benefits of a homegrown mapping product were very obvious, such as turn-by-turn and vector tiles.

<comment><USER10> I see this implied repeatedly by everyone, so could someone explain how customers on the ground using Apple Maps are somehow providing Apple with any data that could improve the maps?

<comment><USER11> For example if you find lots of People driving in a consistent manner on what is not already a road on your map then it needs to become one. You can do this ordered by number the number of people per unmapped road segment to have the most effect.

Another example, if you find that everyone drives off the road in a certain area then comes back on a little farther down and that no one drives the intervening segment, then the road probably needs to be adjusted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A moving tribute and wonderful video in and of itself. I'm far too young (21) to fully appreciate everything he embodied. His early death really makes you appreciate the luck of being alive. From the normal to the billionaire magicians, remember this:

"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time." - Mark Twain

</comment><comment><USER13> Music by Yo-Yo Ma I think: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZn_VBgkPNY>

<comment><USER14> Yes; it's Bach's Cello Suite #1. You've probably also heard it in Master and Commander, where it was performed by Yo-yo Ma. It's one of my favorite pieces of string music.

<comment><USER15> The piece is the prelude of Bach's first cello suite. The thirty-five other movements in the Bach cello suites are equally beautiful, but it is mainly this movement that is played.

While my cello playing was originally inspired by Ma's interpretation of the cello suites, I now find his rendition of them a bit insipid. I suggest checking out Pablo Casals' interpretation - he popularized the Bach suites, and the recordings are beautiful. Rostropovich also played them fairly well.

If I had to pick a Bach cello suite movement for such a video, it would be the Sarabande from the 6th suite:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3dgACCAzwM>

Edit: I changed my mind, I would go with the Sarabande from the 1st suite: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvOo0cS8w10>

<comment><USER16> I was lucky enough to hear Rostropovich play the 5th cello suite live once. I would rank his performance a lot better than "fairly well", but tastes vary. Another favorite performance of mine for those suites is Anner Bylsma[1]. He uses a more historically accurate instrument than most modern versions. I don't necessarily think that makes other versions _bad_ , but it does make his (or one like it) worth trying.

[1]: [http://www.amazon.com/Bach-Suites-Cello- BWV-1007-1012/dp/B00...](http://www.amazon.com/Bach-Suites-Cello- BWV-1007-1012/dp/B0000027TV/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Scrolling through all the comments, I find that it is impossible to not encounter cynicism - e.g. Apple is trying to divert from the Maps folly etc. - in this forum.

This is Apple paying respect and taking a moment to reminisce about Steve ... it's just a nice, human thing to do.

<comment><USER18> Even I am a staunch anti Apple proponent but I have to sit back and applaud what Steve has achieved and what an incredibly visionary and accomplished man he was, I wish I could live like he had.

The video was a frank reminder that we had lost a great man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Removing their products from the landing page to pay tribute to Steve.

Would Dell or Samsung do this? Genuine question.

<comment><USER20> First and foremost - they know that it wont stop one person from buying -- eventually, even if, arguendo, it would temporarily stop someone, if they watch Steve's message they will get the company DNA so sooner or later they will convert them.

Second, money is not always everything. You know H&N the biggest New York tech shop -- multiple stores high, automated baskets flying everywhere, a product's catalog of 1,500 pages, things you can buy there that you didnt know exist. They always full easily making half a mil in profit a day. You know they close their doors every single Friday for religious purposes, regardless of what their customers think.

<comment><USER21> I think you mean B&H?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You know, I opened Safari this morning and, while I was startled by the music suddenly blasting through my speakers with no warning, I watched the video through to the end. It was nice, I enjoyed it.

But EVERY TIME I OPEN A NEW SAFARI WINDOW IT STARTS PLAYING AGAIN. Sound and everything. Couldn't they have set a cookie for "already watched"?

The annoyance this occasioned was the final push I needed to go into the preferences and reset my Safari home page from the default Apple page -- actually, I just chose to have new windows open empty -- but Apple has now lost the chance to advertise to me every time I open a new browser window.

<comment><USER23> Or you know, you could change your home page...

<comment><USER24> I think his point is that apple makes the safari homepage apple.com . They know that every mac they sell will start there. Despite knowing that, they don't seem to have thought that users might be annoyed by the video playing every time. I don't think that really matters, but it's interesting to talk about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well, I don't think it's the most fitting tribute to Jobs. It sounds more like an Apple commercial. Granted, Apple is the sum of his life's work. But a tribute to someone should be more than that person explaining the greatness of Apple, it should be someone explaining the greatness of Jobs, IMHO.

<comment><USER26> It's perfect. What could be a more fitting tribute to Steve Jobs than to put an elegant facade on someone else's work?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Direct link to video: [http://movies.apple.com/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs- memoria...](http://movies.apple.com/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs-memorial- us-20121005_r848-9dwc.mov?width=848&height=480)

I used Movie Player to open it (Movie -> open location)

<comment><USER28> Direct download link: [http://www.apple.com/105/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs- memori...](http://www.apple.com/105/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs-memorial- us-20121005_848x480.mp4) \- 41 MB

(hint: I always download Apple videos (for future reference, and because my internet connection is really slow) and the trick is to replace "_r848-9dwc.mov" at the end to "_848x480.mov")

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Page miserably fails to load on Chrome running on Ubuntu

<http://imgur.com/eWREY>

<comment><USER30> Try the mp4's posted above - [http://www.apple.com/105/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs- memori...](http://www.apple.com/105/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs-memorial- us-20121005_848x480.mp4).

<comment><USER31> Thank you. The video would not play for me in the browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Beautiful video. Well made, well executed, and showed how Jobs was a visionary for Apple and the brand. Love the minimalist presentation of the video, how the entire homepage is 'whited out' with just a simple video. Amazing experience, and made me remember some of my favorite Job quotes. Well done Apple.

</comment><comment><USER33> There's irony in the page using a plug in for the video and SVG to render the text of Tim Cook's letter, right?

<comment><USER34> In chrome, I'm seeing a <video> tag, not a plugin.

<comment><USER33> I'm getting a quicktime plugin in chrome

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Has it already been a year? Jesus...

</comment><comment><USER36> For those having trouble with the video, [http://www.apple.com/105/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs- memori...](http://www.apple.com/105/media/us/stevejobs/stevejobs-memorial- us-20121005_848x480.mp4)

</comment><comment><USER37> just curious, why is the link "apple.com/?hn" ?

<comment><USER38> Because the link has been posted before, to get around the duplicate detection you append meaningless GET params.

<comment><USER37> More because <http://www.apple.com/> did not opened the Tim's note, while <http://www.apple.com/?hn> did. It seems any random GET param is indeed meaningful in this case :)

<comment><USER39> Works for me without the GET param. Maybe it's just because you're returning to the page?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'd hate to be the guy to do this but...

I agree, to some extent, with Malcolm Gladwell's take on the Steve Jobs legacy.

<http://tinyurl.com/br6rl7b>

Still, RIP Steve and thanks for inspiring us.

Sent from my iPhone.

<comment><USER41> Who's going to remember Malcolm Gladwell in 50 years?

<comment><USER42> Unless I'm too senile, I will.

Gladwell's writings are (if nothing else) extremely popular and extremely enjoyable to read. We remember content from 50 years ago that wasn't half as good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Why is there a ?hn link referral tag at the end of the URL?

</comment><comment><USER44> There are few founders that are remembered as fondly as Steve after they retire or pass away: Grove, Gates, Hewlett, Packard come to mind.

Something to think different about.

</comment><comment><USER45> I think I just found an easter egg in Siri in tribute to Steve: <http://i.imgur.com/Ptz47.png>

<comment><USER46> I got it too a while ago. I asked "Is Steve Jobs your father?" and Siri prompted me with the same page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> How do you fullscreen videos on apple.com?

<comment><USER48> On OS X or iOS there should be a full-screen button in the upper right corner of the video player controls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Its not about the idea, about the product or about the technology. It was Steve's unique way to change the way a product is made, to make it intuitive, elegant and simple which set him apart.

Its not the idea, but implementation of the idea, in the most creative and beautiful manner, that matters.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you click the "x" in the upper-left, there is a message from Tim Cook about Steve's passing.

</comment><comment><USER50> To me that was a bit of a special day: on the one-year anniversary of Steve Jobs' death I get the official notification that I am on the transplant list for a new kidney. (I also spent that morning on the operating table having a PD-catheter installed).

</comment><comment><USER51> We miss you, Steve.

</comment><comment><USER30> How different will this be from the Kim Jun Il tribute?

<comment><USER52> Very different. North Korea actually has nuclear weapons for use in their random "thermonuclear wars".

<comment><USER53> But didn't Steve Jobs threaten to "Go Nuclear" with patents?

<comment><USER54> "Nuclear patent winter is coming" -- House Stallman words

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Technology and a focus on the future go hand in hand. I wonder whether Jobs (at his best) would be dwelling on the past like this (over any event)? What happens when an army of sheep loses its lion?

Also, while the hockey puck quote in the video could be interpreted as a hedge/ preemptive rebuttal of the above observation, I don't think it was meant that way. The tremendous irony there must have escaped quite a few people, since they ended up running with it.

</comment><comment><USER56> I think this is the first time Apple posted a non QuickTime video on their site. As a Linux user, it felt different :)

<comment><USER57> Still QuickTime for me (Chrome on Mac/Lion) and it doesn't work by default (something with permissions).

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Tasteful, elequent and respectfuly well designed tribute. I'm sure even the late great Steve Jobs would of approved.

</comment><comment><USER59> I like the way they show the video, "Exit out" In the upper left corner, anyone know what they use to do this?

</comment><comment><USER60> Why must I watch the tribute every time i open safari? I miss him less each time...

</comment><comment><USER61> If you like this video you would like our creation Steve Jobs Timeline as well - www.nuskhalabs.com and <http://tmblr.co/Zpw4yxUgp9Mi>

</comment><comment><USER62> If you reset safari you get the video. Interesting

<comment><USER63> Isn't that just because the default homepage in safari is apple.com?

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Jobs, meh. Hardly up there with Ford or Rolls & Royce, for example. Far more inspiring, far greater creations, and much more interesting companies.

Still, his products were ever so pretty.

</comment><comment><USER65> this makes me sad

(and that i'm the first one to use the word "sad" in this thread makes me even more sad)

</comment><comment><USER66> Is this the beginning of making a legend and a myth out of Steve Jobs? Yes let's remember him but also let's move on.

</comment><comment><USER67> * Not using the HTML5 Video Tag

<comment><USER68> It's using it on Chrome for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> No mention of the iPad or OS X.

<comment><USER70> If you had to boil Steve Jobs's biggest contributions down to a minimum, it's:

      * the first genuinely usable, affordable GUI (i.e. the Mac)

      * the iPod

      * the iPhone

I'd say the Apple ][ is debatably on that list (the first personal computer than "just worked" or something). NeXTStep is a wonderful OS with a lot of Good Stuff in it but it's a piece of a product. The iPod Touch and iPhone are fairly obvious evolutions of the iPhone.

The other missing item isn't an Apple product: Pixar.

<comment><USER71> No question about Apple ][ - That was the first computer schools across the country (US) started buying en masse.

To my mind, that is the product that really touched off the personal computer revolution. As you mention, the Mac paradigm shift was about the GUI, Mouse, and taking what they started with the I and ][ to the next, more refined and "product-ized" level.

<comment><USER70> I tend to agree with you. (I actually started writing a defense of my initial position and realized that I was wrong!) I think some would like to dismiss the Apple ][ as, say, merely being the luckiest of a bunch of similarly conceived products that came out around the same time (e.g. the Commodore Pet was announced earlier but delivered later, and the TRS-80 came out slightly afterwards), but then not only was the Apple ][ more successful, it was also dramatically superior technically (e.g. its expansion bus allowed for self- configuring cards that could even slave the computer, which led to products like the DTACK 68k board that turned a humble Apple ][ into a workstation- class computer back in 1980.

<http://www.easy68k.com/paulrsm/dg/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I bet they wish he could come back, Maps/Siri/lack of innovation on new products.

<comment> SG- Everything coming out now went through him, do you think it really takes a year to develop products? The maps team had been working on the new maps for years. I guess Apple should have invented warp drive in the last year too.

<comment><USER72> He wouldn't have released it, he will be spinning in his grave right now. They need to ditch Cook and get someone with a pair of balls.

<comment><USER73> I think they would have released it. It seems they had little choice. It was either release it or renegotiate their contract with Google since it is almost up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Gross.

</comment><comment><USER75> Anything to detract from the disaster that is Apple Maps. If I could I would undo two things, first revert to iOS5, then bring Jobs back. Ah, the good old days.

<comment><USER76> You would bring back Steve Jobs _second_?

<comment><USER75> Seriously, downvotes? I was gonna bring him back!

Yeah second, because my immediate problem is getting to my intended destination tonight and since the upgrade which screwed with my WiFi tethering and maps that's a problem.

It would take even him more than a couple of hours to fix this. A downgrade I could do myself, if Apple allowed it that is...

<comment><USER42> _my immediate problem is getting to my intended destination tonight_

Just in case you hadn't noticed, complaining about your inability to get to where you're going with your new maps app looks really whiny and entitled.

Go back just a few short years in human history and we didn't have _any_ smartphones with maps and GPS, and you know what? people actually managed to find their destinations. Get some perspective.

<comment><USER75> It worked three weeks ago, now it doesn't. So I miss Jobs.

FYI, I was a participant at the root of that development (drove with GPS on the roof of a mini cooper in 1992, the company I worked for then, licensed data to Google Maps for many years). The perspective I have is that there was no reason to screw with something that worked at the expense of the user.

Still miss jobs.

My wife's Android navigation will do tonight. Her S3 Looks pretty nifty suddenly.

<comment><USER42> I miss Jobs as well. On that we can absolutely agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> Am I the only one who finds it kind of sick that Apple is squeezing out as much PR as possible of the death of their former CEO?

Let the man rest in peace.

<comment><USER78> The Apple website is one of the bigger ones - and yet they essentially removed all of their products from the landing page, if anything I would guess that there will be a small dip in revenue today for the online store. I disagree that this is about PR, the people running the company lost their colleague and probably genuinely miss Steve. A somewhat classy tribute.

It also reminds everybody of their mission, contrast with HP for example who have lost their way.</comment></comment>


Apple Confirms Plans for Oregon Data Center - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple_confirms_plans_for_oregon_data_center/ <comment><USER2> Lazy web: Any idea what laws were passed in the area that helped lure Apple and Facebook to create data centers there?

I am guessing Apple is going to use this facility for their iCloud services. I am sure they will be buying up large plots of land all over the place in the coming years as iCloud becomes more important to their business.</comment>


A free alternative to Photoshop, that is used by 3Ms of people - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/c8ru2y/i_made_a_free_alternative_to_photoshop_that_is/ <comment><USER2> Yes, I'm one of them. I rounded up other beginners' most straightforward photo editing tools. [https://clippingpathindia.com/blogs/tips/what-s-the- easiest-...](https://clippingpathindia.com/blogs/tips/what-s-the-easiest- photo-editing-software-30-tools-to-choose-from) I think Photoshop is the best tool that specifically shows editors on how to edit in Photopea. It is the best alternative to Photoshop, I guess. I'm enjoying it. Great work! Thank you so much for this alternative tool! I got so much out of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you do yourself a disservice with your title. When I read it I thought _" Oh no. Not another article about The [bloody awful] Gimp!"_ and nearly ignored it.

I'm glad I had a look though. That is really pretty impressive to be running in a browser. I've just had a brief play, opening a couple of my PSD files. Some glitches [especially with embedded fonts] but, otherwise, one of the most useful web apps I've seen in a long time. Congratulations!

[ And it pisses all over The Gimp! :-) ]</comment>


Opinionated view of Swift from a Ruby/Objective-C/JavaScript Developer - <AUTHOR> http://blog.encoredevlabs.com/post/88236228430/opinionated-view-of-swift-from-a

<comment><USER2> I'm glad that Swift is more like Python and less like Ruby or Javascript. Too much meta/DSL capability means I won't be able to easily understand other people's libraries.</comment>


Looking for Beta-Readers for a New Computer Science Fiction Novel, Crash Dump - <AUTHOR> https://www.pdf-archive.com/2019/11/26/crashdumpdocx/ <comment><AUTHOR> I did just a minor in CS but have a life long love of programming and Science Fiction.

For three years I worked on this novel and the best way I can describe it is Computer Science Fiction.

The target audience is tiny (a good chunk of the book is a command line based "conversation" between our hero and an AI).

I'm asking for any feedback and am willing to pay $10 through paypal or Bitcoin if anyone reads the whole thing and tells me what they think.</comment>


How FPGAs work, and why you'll buy one (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://yosefk.com/blog/how-fpgas-work-and-why-youll-buy-one.html <comment><USER3> The major issue with FPGAs today is that there is no free toolchain for compiling the bitstreams that run on them.

The only project I know of to make any real progress on fixing this is fpgatools. [0] It supports a single model of the Xilinx Spartan-6 series, the XC6SLX9. I know almost nothing about FPGAs, but seeing as how almost no one is working on this problem, I figured I'd try to add support for the XC6SLX45, the model that is the Novena motherboard. So far I've added the C code to represent all of the pins. [1] Unfortunately, I haven't heard anything from the maintainer about how to proceed further.

fpgatools is only a single piece of the puzzle, though. It provides libraries to build the low-level bitstreams, but we'd still need Verilog/VHDL implementations that use it, as well as replacements for the proprietary "soft cores" that most people are using. The amount of work required is intimidating. Not having an HDL readily available did motivate me to have some fun rewriting the example C programs in Scheme, though. [2]

Does anyone know about other such efforts to free FPGAs? I'd be very grateful to hear about them.

[0] [https://github.com/Wolfgang- Spraul/fpgatools](https://github.com/Wolfgang-Spraul/fpgatools) [1] [https://github.com/Wolfgang- Spraul/fpgatools/pull/8](https://github.com/Wolfgang-Spraul/fpgatools/pull/8) [2] [https://gitorious.org/davexunit/guile- fpga](https://gitorious.org/davexunit/guile-fpga)

<comment><USER4> I disagree strongly. The major issue with FPGAs today is that they cost money (because they are chips). They cost even more than your CPU. So you can't treat them life software. To put it in simpler words: everyone has access to a CPU, less than 1% have access to an FPGA. Fix that* and the tooling will follow.

* one way to make FPGAs "free" is to incorporate some FPGA blocks in an Intel CPU. Then it will feel free.

<comment><USER3> Intel CPUs are anything but free. They contain nonfree microcode and other nastiness, so they would be unsuitable for free hardware projects.

<comment><USER5> I think the grandparent is referring to 'free as in beer.' It doesn't cost anything to tinker with programming because almost everyone already has a computer they use for other things. Not so with FPGAs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think a lot of people posting here don't realize that programming an FPGA means programming how the gates are set up on the FPGA, not software programming.

VHDL/Verilog etc are descriptive languages, not software languages ala C/Python/Java/etc. You should have enough hardware design knowledge (at RT level) to be able to sketch your HW design in a piece of paper, and then, you are apt for writting VHDL/Verilog and putting it into the FPGA.

<comment><USER7> While this is sort of true, this attitude contributes to the problem another commenter mentioned about how working with FPGAs is like taking a trip to the 70s. There's no reason you can't use a full-fledged programming language like Python to specify your hardware with the strict HDL subset at the RT Level, then use the full language's power to test it off-FPGA, and use all the software tooling around your full language to make the whole experience as pleasant as possible. In fact, that's the approach of MyHDL: [http://www.myhdl.org/](http://www.myhdl.org/)

<comment><USER8> Yup, made an experiment with it -> [http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?doc_id=1323837](http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?doc_id=1323837)

I really like MyHDL!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Our experience with GPU cloud computing at Graphistry should be pretty representative. We spend a lot of effort getting subsecond interactivity in funny C dialects (OpenCL/CUDA). To get those down further, we can put together a few GPUs and reuse most of the code. Eventually, however, data communication costs get too high, so FPGAs would be the next step. That is certainly doable: OpenCL -> FPGA compilers are a thing!

So the question is who has already been going down that pathway, and I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader :) My guess: that'll stay in private hands for awhile, and after a few years, as FPGAs get put into public clouds and everyone goes down the same pathway, a lot of people will be using FPGAs, even if indirectly.

<comment><USER8> With OpenCL + FPGA what you do is basically instantiate a GPU architecture inside an FPGA and then execute the OpenCL algorithm into that.

I think that's cool but you aren't getting a better throughput than what you would get with a GPU.

The better solution would be to do your custom optimised control/data path for the FPGA architecture you are currently using (VHDL/Verilog).

<comment><USER10> That's not how it works, actually. The compiler generates the dataflow directly in hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The trouble I had with FPGAs is how radically different languages like Verilog and VHDL are when compared to languages like Java, Python, or C++.

Writing code that is concurrent by default is a massive paradigm shift when all I had been exposed to at that point were procedural languages.

<comment><USER12> That's because hardware description languages are not programming languages. This point was constantly emphasized in my digital systems courses. You do not describe a sequence of instructions using an HDL, you describe the layout of a circuit with registers, wires, and logic blocks. You have to consider the physics of the device to avoid violating timing constraints or driving a signal from two different sources, etc.

<comment><USER13> Hardware description languages are not imperative programming languages (even if they might superficially resemble them). That doesn't mean they aren't programming languages at all -- they just belong to a different category of language.

(I suspect that there's a connection between hardware design and functional programming, but I don't have enough hardware design experience to know how closely the two are related.)

<comment><USER14> Conal Elliott, Haskeller of FRP fame, was recently working for a company where he was developing a compiler of functional programming into categorical semantics which is actually quite neatly similar to the layout of a circuit. The company went under, unfortunately, so I'm not sure of the status of his research, but some remarks are available on his blog [0] [1] [2].

Further, there is a notion of a Generalized Arrow [3] which is a useful, advanced functional programming technique which is quite nice for implementing FRP. These are somewhat obviously "wiring diagrams" but are shown to be in correspondence with a more normal "lambda calculus"-like syntax.

[0] [http://conal.net/blog/posts/haskell-to-hardware-via- cccs](http://conal.net/blog/posts/haskell-to-hardware-via-cccs)

[1] [http://conal.net/blog/posts/overloading- lambda](http://conal.net/blog/posts/overloading-lambda)

[2] [http://conal.net/blog/posts/optimizing- cccs](http://conal.net/blog/posts/optimizing-cccs)

[3] [http://www.megacz.com/berkeley/garrows/](http://www.megacz.com/berkeley/garrows/)

<comment><USER15> You have CλaSH [0] based in Haskell developed at University of Twente that has the same goal.

[0] [http://www.clash-lang.org/](http://www.clash-lang.org/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Right now, FPGAs deliver slightly better perf/W than GPUs, but significantly inferior FP32 performance. That said, they do shine for simple embarrassingly parallel tasks assuming the task does not require FP32 operations. A good example here is bitcoin mining.

That changes this year with the release of Altera's Arria 10, which comes with 1.3 TFLOPS of hardcoded FP32 math units. The other gamechanger is the ability to write kernels in OpenCL rather than VHDL.

However, the build time for OpenCL on FPGAs is still many hours compared to tens of seconds for GPUs so my guess is that GPUs will remain the development platform for FPGA code for the foreseeable future, occasionally deploying to FPGA on a daily basis or so.

Drifting a little off-topic, the SDKS and libraries for all the accelerators should be free. That's what makes me such a CUDA fanboy. I'm looking at you Intel. Charging for your Xeon Phi/CPU OpenCL compiler? Bzzzzt wrong...

</comment><comment><USER17> _A sequel is in the making, titled "Why you won't buy an FPGA"_

Did the followup article ever get written? I didn't find anything with a search for the proposed title on either his site or Google.

<comment><USER18> The reason is because GPUs gained more general-purpose capabilities. GPUs are the new FPGA, for all practical purposes.

<comment><USER19> Author here.

I didn't write the follow-up yet because it requires a lot of research and I'm busy :-)

If you ask me, GPUs are anything but "the new FPGA". GPUs are the least efficient hardware accelerator out there, but also the most accessible to the largest number of programmers. FPGAs are _much_ more efficient than GPUs on DSP workloads and GPUs are useless for I/O while FPGAs are a godsend. On the other hand, FPGAs have a ton of problems GPUs don't have. The two do not look similar to someone caring about accelerators any more than snow and ice look similar to someone living at a place where they get to see both... though the two might seem similar to people from hot places where neither is common (or perhaps if they saw one but never the other.)

<comment><USER18> But are they the most efficient in cost-per-computation? For all the major data crunchers I'm familiar with, doing either finance or scientific calculations, that's the only metric they cared about.

Only place I can see the cost-per-computation metric not mattering is in space satellites. Am I way off?

<comment><USER19> Do you get more throughput per dollar with FPGA relative to GPUs? Most certainly, except for floating point stuff, especially double precision. (Finance would care much less than scientific computing and I think FPGAs are way more prominent there.)

<comment><USER18> You sure? The ones I'm personally familiar with are investment banks that have hundreds of thousands of computers doing machine learning modeling. They ran the costs, and found GPUs to be far more cost effective.

<comment><USER19> Machine learning software will tend to use floating point, hence the result IMO. In HFT for instance I'd expect things to be the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am currently just another college student, but I have some experience in this field, as I had interned at Xilinx (which is the largest FPGA maker right now, iirc, although Altera may have taken the crown).

I don't think your typical college CS student, and by extension, the average programmer, would be interested in using FPGAs right now. This isn't an issue of performance, or costs, or lack of use cases- FPGAs are quite fast now and certainly can be extended to new niches that currently are CPU-bound. The issue isn't related to any of the advantages stated in this article, it's that the FPGA toolchain is still mired in the 1970s, a world dominated by the EE ecosystem that modern CS sprouted from.

Building things for a FPGA simply- for a lack of a better word- sucks. There is a lack of beginner tutorials, a free (non-proprietary) implementation tools. Severely lacking free example code and libraries. Few ways to share code, like Github. Much weaker community help.

Richard Stallman may be overzealous, but his impact on programming is striking if you compare it to what could have been, in the world of electrical engineers. Working on FPGAs now is crippling, when you are used to coding in the 21st century. Imaging a world where programming is without the GCC compiler, with little libraries to build on, without Github, without Stackoverflow. And THAT is the reason why FPGA adaption is low.

There are currently over 400,000 questions on Stackoverflow tagged "python", and over 40,000 questions tagged "mongodb". [1][2] In contrast, there is less than 2000 questions for the Verilog language, and less than 500 for Xilinx, even less for Altera.[3][4]

I have helped organize several hackathons at my University, where the largest one consisted of over 2000 people from across the USA. Random hacks that innovate are encouraged. There are plenty of other obscure platforms that are used, and yet very few people use FPGAs. This is indicative of the difficulty for typical programmers to dive into FPGAs, and it will be a hard problem to solve.

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/python](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/python)

[2] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/mongodb](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/mongodb)

[3] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/verilog](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/verilog)

[4] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/xilinx](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/xilinx)

<comment><USER21> One of the biggest problems is how insular and impenetrable that community is. The FPGA community, and to a certain extent the entire semiconductor industry, seems to have a prescribed path for engineers.

First, you get an electrical or computer engineering degree with a couple internships at semiconductor companies. Then, you get a junior role at one of those companies where you are mentored by senior engineers, who pass on the black arts of chip design, tool usage, Verilog/VHDL quirks, and such. You slowly move up the ranks, either at your first company or another semiconductor company, until you are the senior engineer mentoring new grads. Then you retire.

Any deviation from this path and you're screwed. You don't come into this clique from the outside, and they won't let you back in if you move too far away. It has resulted in a negative feedback loop: this attitude is bolstered by how odd, archaic, and inaccessible the tooling is, but also serves to keep different approaches out and keep the tooling odd, archaic, and inaccessible.

Disclaimer: I'm a disgruntled EE and systems software developer who gets a steady stream of pings for web and NLP dev jobs but can't get the time of day from a hardware company.

<comment><USER22> I was one of those semiconductor guys for about 15 years but now I am in the retirement phase. I worked for Motorola, Freescale, Canon and Qualcomm. Did the FPGA stuff at Canon.

Believe it or not they let people in all the time. And they let you back in. I got my Qualcomm gig after ~2 years of being out of tech entirely.

I reckon it's because of that crappy tooling thing you mentioned. Years later and nothing has really changed hence I was ready to jump back in pretty easily. Things haven't really changed in 10 years IMO. Tools vendors just pump out the same crap.

I wouldn't worry about working for a HW company. The job is nothing special.

The main point is the engineering aspect: You start with the problem then weigh up the pros and cons of each solution. Most problems require a specialist in the domain. E.g. DSP, Image processing, telecommunications. Stuff that requires fast computations at low level. That can be a way for outsiders to get in. They learn the HW stuff as they go.

Stuff like web and NLP (Natural Language Processing I assume?) is a little bit too high level for most HW engineering work unfortunately.

<comment><USER21> > I wouldn't worry about working for a HW company. The job is nothing special.

It's more the nature of the work. I want to work on hardware, but not for a defense contractor again. I'm reasonably good at the CS-ey stuff I'm doing now, but I don't really like it. I like making physical devices do things.

> Stuff like web and NLP (Natural Language Processing I assume?) is a little > bit too high level for most HW engineering work unfortunately.

Until four weeks ago I had never done any serious web dev, and NLP was just the first escape path that presented itself when I desperately wanted out of a defense contractor black hole. I am, fundamentally, a signal processing engineer. Even when I was doing real-time radar code nobody wanted to talk to me.

<comment><USER22> Radar is a bit niche. Embedded signal processing SW might be a good avenue. Verification is another one.

Like any job, HW companies either want experienced people or grads to do the crap work. You need a related skill-set to go for experienced positions.

FPGA hobbyists are not considered to be experienced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What I'm having trouble understanding (as just a regular, not-hardcore programmer) is this: What end-user advantage will cause people to buy devices that include FPGAs? What use are they to a consumer? What interesting programs or devices can be created with an FPGA that can't be done otherwise?

Basically, if "everyone can easily create whatever custom objects they need!" is the utopian vision for 3D printers, and "everyone can self-host their services and protect their privacy and freedom!" is the utopian vision for a home server[0], what is the utopian vision here?

[0] Such as one running [https://sandstorm.io/](https://sandstorm.io/)

<comment><USER3> > What end-user advantage will cause people to buy devices that include FPGAs?

Well, the "consumer" (a term I do not like) would never even know there was an FPGA in their device.

<comment><USER23> Sure, but what would cause manufacturers to start putting those FPGAs in those devices?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think one issue here is that to achieve the great gains in performance FPGAs can provide you do need to treat it like a proper HW design. C to RTL exists but to get the best out of it you're basically using C as a syntactic sugar for verilog/VHDL.

So the overhead for programmability is higher than a DSP/GPU if you want to gain over and above them.

I do wonder if there's a sweet spot in here somewhere that's basically a sea of DSP or GPU (maybe better to call them stream processing units) with programmable wiring and some specialised ALUs/FP units mixed in that can also use the wiring allowing you to create special one-cycle fixed function ops?

<comment><USER25> As a C programmer, I don't think C is suitable for such a fundamentally parallel architecture as an FPGA. I would prefer a higher level language, maybe declarative, where it is up to the compiler to lay out the parallel operations. Unfortunately the engineering culture gap from HDL to a high level language is much wider than to C.

<comment><USER26> Actually it's easier and more natural to translate a (domain-specific) high level language into RTL than trying to fit an alien but so-called "general- purpose" C.

I'm using a language which translates into Verilog, but features native support for expressing things like FSMs, pipelines, buses, FIFOs - <USER2> something as simple as this makes HDL coding much simpler and much less error- prone than a conventional low-level RTL.

<comment><USER27> This is because C, as I understand it, is a language that best described the fundamental workings of processors, and let you work with a thin-abstraction layer over the cpu/memory architecture.

FPGA don't have this traditional cpu/memory architecture, and as a result, C fits them poorly.

<comment><USER26> Exactly. C assumes too much about the hardware semantics, it's got a peculiar memory model, sequential execution and all that. There are tricks, of course, allowing to get out of the C box a little bit - e.g., using multiple address spaces to simulate distinct memory and memory-like blocks, but it's still unnatural and do not make hardware description any simpler than doing it manually in RTL level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Is there a possibility to use just-in-time compilers to port software to FPGAs? I can see how that could be used to accelerate applications written on bytecode languages (i.e. mostly everything in your mobile phone) to near- assembly speeds.

<comment><USER29> What jbangert said is the crux of the JITing problem: "compilation" for FPGAs is not really at all like compiling software, and can be hugely computationally expensive. On top of that, pretty much the entire synthesis, mapping, and place and route flow is usually proprietary.

That said, there have been some efforts in this direction. Search the literature for "warp processing".

<comment><USER28> Back in the day I learned about using VHDL to design circuits, is that the kind of compilation also used for FPGAs?

That language paradigm is close to modern dataflow oriented programming languages. It should be theoretically possible to compile an application program written in that style and have the logical circuits in the FPGA be a direct mapping of the business logic in the application.

<comment><USER29> > Back in the day I learned about using VHDL to design circuits, is that the > kind of compilation also used for FPGAs?

FPGAs can implement any digital circuit which fits, with some caveats. So yes, VHDL is commonly used to describe designs for FPGAs. I'm not sure what you mean by '[that] kind of compilation', though, as you never specify what kind of compilation you mean.

Implementing a circuit on an FPGA involves many of the same, or similar, steps and processes as implementing it on an ASIC (and obviously, does not involve all the physical design stuff). If that's what you're asking.

> That language paradigm is close to modern dataflow oriented programming > languages. It should be theoretically possible to compile an application > program written in that style and have the logical circuits in the FPGA be a > direct mapping of the business logic in the application.

Sure, of course it's theoretically possible; there's nothing you can do in digital logic you cannot do on a UTM (space/memory constraints aside), and vice-versa. This field is known as "High-Level Synthesis", and it's been around for decades. It's only now becoming sort-of widely used for real-world stuff.

But it's nothing like "directly translating" to logic for the FPGA ;). It's probably easier for most programmers to design in such a language vs. an HDL, but AFAIK that's not even close to the biggest challenge with doing HLS. I think timing and resource allocation are much bigger problems (but I'm not very informed about HLS!).

Look through the HLS literature if you're interested in what's involved--I'm not an expert by any means. Also, if you're interested in alternative programming languages for hardware design, check out BlueSpec and Chisel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think FPGAs are an untapped technology. I would love a book by Manning or Pragmatic called "FPGAs in Action" or "101 FPGA Projects". I have no idea what to do with it besides try to make a bitcoin miner.

<comment><USER31> I have several FPGA-based devices, in hybrid digital-analog synthesizers. FPGAs allow rapid reconfiguration of signal routing between analog components, which latter deliver much nicer sound quality than DSPs for many requirements, especially filtering. There are also Field Programmable Analog Arrays but I don't have any of those, yet.

<comment><USER32> I would love to play with those for synths/audio/effects! Any recommendations on where to look? I look every few years and products come and go. Just now I looked and found this, which looks intriguing! I love to see more about these!

[http://anadigm.com/apex-devkit.asp](http://anadigm.com/apex-devkit.asp)

<comment><USER33> Check out the Milky Mist [http://m-labs.hk/m1.html](http://m-labs.hk/m1.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Suppose I wanted to get started with FPGAs for purpose of computation (no interest in control or actuation of sensors/devices). What would be the best starting board for less than $300?

I'm not a student, but I can probably find one if your suggestion is a student dev board.

<comment><USER35> I've recently purchased the parallela board:

[http://www.parallella.org/](http://www.parallella.org/)

It's got USB/ethernet/arm cpu , and has been incorporated into numerous other projects. It's ~$100.00 USD.

<comment><USER36> I second the parallella, not only does it have an FPGA, an arm core and a massively parallel cpu. So much to play with and still running Linux so the workflow is super smooth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Xilinx is working on tools to make FPGA development easier for traditional software developers.

[http://www.xilinx.com/products/design- tools/sdx.html](http://www.xilinx.com/products/design-tools/sdx.html)

</comment><comment><USER38> I've written a number of IP cores with FPGAs over 10 years ago and the sad fact is that the same problems and criticisms that led me to forget about using them anywhere than at some big company are still very relevant today. Problems include:

* Hostile toolchains for independent developers / engineers. Lack of reasonably useful toolchains including simulators, synthesis tools, the works. iVerilog has been lame before in my experience, for example. * Expensive hardware that's artificially inflated in price due to lack of commodity concerns (perhaps lack of competition in general) * Toolchains unfriendly / bad UX for traditional software developers. I read a Linux Journal article with a Python-like HDL featured - myHDL and its traction is what I suspected it would be - irrelevant to anyone but hobbyists, and hobbyists have basically zero input into the industry unlike software's dynamics. After working with different compiler vendors and doing some research in the space (GPGPUs completely destroyed the market like I figured back then because software developer use cases of hardware tend to be very narrow uses of FPGA / ASIC capabilities - parallel processing or custom FPUs for boutique DSPs being typical), I've seen rather little progress compared to the leaps in software productivity. Even the recent Scala-based Chisel language seems a bit trite as well and more research-ware that won't be adopted by manufacturers probably because... * Most FPGA and ASIC targeted use cases for HDLs are primarily for _hardware_ engineers first most, not people that are software engineers first. When people get specs on hardware, nobody really cares about the HDL code written as much as whether the SOC has a lot of test benches and they look at the block diagrams instead of the HDL typically and things tend to be developed typically as black boxes due to how IP cores work (per industry conventions). * Compilers for hardware languages have had tons of issues for a long, long time because expressing bit math and signals (especially the analog extensions to VHDL and Verilog) have been really cumbersome with imperative style languages. Historically, we've gotten far more concise, legible results with language clarity by using conventions from Matlab and R than with C and Ada, but Verilog and VHDL are just too damn dominant and most experienced electrical engineers that are hardware gurus really do not like to learn a lot of new languages and semantics unlike how software developers tend to behave typically.

However, I've always felt that hardware engineers and software engineers should talk a lot more, and the ever-increasing gap has been a disappointment for me. I'm totally on-board with a lot of testing for software, but at the same time I understand that software is typically designed with the expectation to change things frequently while hardware is typically written to be reliable-first and to go through insanely rigorous testing because you cannot patch hardware. Most IP cores that are distributed a lot have at least 2.5 times as much test benches / harnesses as the code to actually do the work. Hardware has much more rigorous specification designs than software typically though, so this is possible at least. Haskell's QuickCheck would be totally helpful for how a lot of hardware is tested because nowadays you can't test all the combinations of signals on, say, a 128-bit bus in a reasonable amount of time. So test benches are full of tons of statistical functions and are sometimes even generated with machine learning techniques to exercise the most likely to fail use cases and states. This all goes out the window if you switch languages typically. That kind of attention to testing is almost unheard of in software in my experience.

A trivial-seeming example of how HDLs are hostile to software developers is the difference when you write a switch statement in C versus in an HDL (tremendous apologies, I haven't written Verilog in 10 years):

      switch (input) {
        case b'10:
          output <= input & inputB;
          break;
        case b'01:
          output <= input ^ inputB;
      }

vs.

      switch (input) {
        case b'10:
          output <= input & inputB;
          break;
        case b'01:
          output <= input ^ inputB;
          break;
        default:
          output <= b'00;
      }

Omitting a default case causes a latch to be produced by the compiler, so the two are VERY different and will punish software developers that like to use shortcuts (my Perl background bit me real hard trying to do shortcuts in the Verilog compilers I used before - I was even more surprised to see my C-style macros failing after only 2 levels of indirection to try to make my cores more configurable, forcing me to rewrite my cores often). Unlike in software where something like whether a switch statement becomes a jump table or a series of if statements isn't typically make or break, in hardware the difference between a single clock cycle being used up or not is massively important.

After basically yelling at my compiler and tools oftentimes for doing things that defied their documentation enough times, waiting hours for place and routes to finish (they ARE NP hard, after all), and uncovering so many edge cases in FPGAs that required use of clock trees and manual refinement of the resulting FPGA image file, I realized that this just wasn't going to get much better of an experience because these levels of concerns are what hardware engineers are responsible for tuning themselves and you just can't abstract and delegate it away.

I asked my boss back then why Intel shouldn't enter the market and he responded "because if it's commoditized, the entire industry will lose all their margins because the market for FPGAs is primarily large company hardware engineers." It took over 10 years later for Intel to finally buy Altera it seems... and in the meantime we had an incredible number of things happen across the spectrum while FPGAs are still practically the same user experience and fundamental architectures (nothing like SMT happened in FPGA land really, no really revolutionary compilers to make writing hardware super easy).

There's a gazillion more reasons why we'll see more people using the Raspberry Pi and Arduino for learning to tinker with hardware, and Xilinx, Altera, etc. have always been the way they are now, so my decision to just never go back to the fun world of FPGAs seems to have been justified, sadly.

</comment><comment><USER39> (2013)</comment>


Hadoop Vs Pachyderm: A Technical Comparison - <AUTHOR> http://www.pachyderm.io/hvp.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

Founder here. We'll hanging out in this thread all day to answer any questions.</comment>