Toshiba Introduces MacBook Air 'Blade-Type' SSDs to Mass Market - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2010/11/08/toshiba-introduces-macbook-air-blade-type-ssds-to-mass-market/

<comment><USER2> That is awesome. It is an utter waste of space to put SSD's into a 3.5 or 2.5" hard drive case.

This also opens up the door for some very compact PCs. Rather than having flash memory soldered onto the motherboard, I would like to see slots on regular PC motherboards for this.

Lots of questions: Is this some standardized connector, or has Toshiba created a defacto standard? Is this just an alternate SATA plug, or is the SATA daughter controller integrated onto the motherboard itself?

Edit: It's just standard mSATA. Controller on each drive. From the horse's mouth: [http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2010_11/pr0801.htm?from...](http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2010_11/pr0801.htm?from=RSS_PRESS&uid=20101108-1204e)

mSATA is a standard: <http://gizmodo.com/5364485/msata-its-like-sata-but- smaller>

<comment><USER3> Putting an SSD in to a 3.5 or 2.5" hard drive enclosure is indeed a waste of space, but talking 'mSATA' to what is essentially memory seems to be a waste of speed.

All that work to stuff data down a serial pipe emulating a harddisk that isn't even there.

<comment><USER4> Flash has certain disadvantages that favor using a controller instead of direct addressing like DRAM. To make SSDs fast, you have to do wear leveling, command queueing, and parallelization of requests across all flash chips. Oh and when a cell fails, you have to remap spare cells. Doing this stuff in software would be a giant pain.

You can get raw flash chips, but it's hard to get decent performance and reliability out of them. That sort of setup is usually for embedded systems where writing is rare and read performance isn't important. Firmwares for switches and routers, for example.

<comment><USER5> While I understand your comments and that this can get hairy, also consider a softmodem-like implementation as a counter-example.

A softmodem (variously also called a Winmodem) is a partial or full software implementation of a modem, and helped reduce the parts counts and the costs of modems.

Ugly or not, it's a near certainty that we'll see a software (or firmware) implementation of this; some sort of "softssd" or "winssd" scheme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been expecting this from the moment I first saw an exploded view of an SSD. I understood the case allowed for the SSD to be used as a replacement drive, but figured it was only a matter of time before they'd be installed in slots on the motherboard. Next prediction: RAM/SSD soldered right onto the motherboard. [Yes, I realize I'm stating the obvious.]

<comment><USER7> Hate to steal Apple's thunder, but the first _eeePC_ (of all things!) was, I think, the first to do this, and many non-HDD netbooks now use this design. The MBA ones just seem to be longer, allowing more flash chips. Previous examples not only have cribbed the mini PCIe's connector but also the entire form factor (5cm or 7cm long), despite not using the PCIe protocol. Interestingly, the MBA still seems to use the PCIe connector, just the form factor has changed.

So far the various netbook designs are electrically incompatible. I don't know where the MBA one fits into all this.

EDIT: looks like they standardised the interface as "mSATA" back in June.

<comment><USER8> Hate to steal EeePC's thunder, but this has been done in embedded PCs on mini- itx form factor computers since flash storage was available, pre-sata connectors. It looked like a 1-inch nub that fits in the IDE connector. It was perfect for embedded PCs since power requirements were always very low for flash memory and an easy way to save a watt.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, but weren't/aren't those typically encased in a plastic housing, not unlike CompactFlash cards?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone know how the Toshiba controllers on these and the MBAs perform, relative to the Intel and recent Sandforce controllers?

<comment><USER10> Anand does some performance tests:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook- air-1...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook- air-11-13inch-reviewed/4)

summary: pretty good!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm wondering when we'll see servers with hot swap versions of these.

</comment><comment><USER12> Need more? See: <http://www.fusionio.com/products/ioxtreme/>

Even more than that? OK, how about: <http://www.violin- memory.com/technology/capacity-flash/></comment>


Show HN: I've built self-opening trash bin, I relax myself feeding garbage to it - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ivanilves/arduino-sketches/tree/master/basurito <comment><USER2> One request - after you toss in the garbage and the lid closes, make it "chew" for a couple seconds by rapidly opening/closing the lid over a small distance!

<comment><USER3> Oh boy that's not a good idea. I have a trash bin that opens automatically just like the author's post. I really realy love it. But the lid doubles as a fan when it opens and closes so it fans out the ordors. You'd want that amount of fanning minimized.

<comment><USER4> You've undoubtedly thought more about bin design than I ever have, or probably ever will, do you have any suggestion for combating that fanning effect?

My kitchen bin is of the slide-out cupboard type, and also suffers from that, despite being more of a shearing than a wafting action!

<comment><USER5> Treating this as an X/Y problem ... do you separate your waste? I separate anything that smells (non-compostable food waste, non-recyclable junk) into a separate pail, that is emptied every day or two, so it's never there long enough to get smelly. The dry recyclable stuff can stay in there as long as it wants, and the compostible stuff (waste vege material) never really smells too bad, but again gets tossed more frequently.

<comment><USER4> Compost, and then recycling (paper/tins/glass mixed where I am) and rubbish in two bins in the same drawer thing.

That's part of the problem really - after compost and recycling I'm left with very little waste, so anything that there is can sit there a while. I tend to empty it because it's been there a while rather than because it's full.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Who's a good trash can? Who's the best trash can? Here, have a treat..."

<comment><USER7> Yeah, need to make the response faster to so it can snatch stuff out of the air that is thrown at it like a dog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would prefer those sensor by the side so that when the bin senses someone is near it automatically opens up eliminating the need to wave first.

<comment><USER9> That would cause unintentional trigger don't you think? I.e. someone is just passing by.

<comment><USER10> It clearly needs more tech!

 _We at Trashero value our users time, attention and privacy and are proud to introduce IntelliBin AI, the worlds first truly intelligent trash bin. Using computer vision and AI, it possesses true situational awareness and determines the intention of users from the context. It will therefore only open the lid when someone approaches it to actually throw something away (sometimes even before users know it themselves!) but will ignore approaches when someone or their cat just passes by. At a price of $299 (includes the subscription fee for cloud connection for 2 years, $9 per month thereafter; you can put it in salvage mode to get 10% off your next Trashero product), it is a truly competitive product in the market of next-generation trash bins. At a modest assumption of one intelligent trash bin per four-person household, we see a potential of $1.2 T per product cycle (expected lifetime of 2 years) worldwide.

We're hiring: Trashero is changing the world and you want to be part of it? Submit your application through our Trashero Hiring App. Due to the math-heavy nature of our work, we are expecting candidates to be able to solve any of the Millennium Prize Problems in a reasonable time on the whiteboard, so you might want to brush up on these in advance. For the more hands-on part of your work, we expect 10-15 years of experience with K8s, Rust and TensorFlow._

When is the deadline for the next YC batch again? ><

(This is a joke and the names are made up if that's not clear from reading)

<comment><USER11> The other day I saw a video of man demoing a sink faucet that reacts to "OK Google, I want 500ml of water at 80 degrees Celcius".

Although a trash can that detects if you threw trash at it would be neat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This would be an excellent place to add googly eyes!

<comment><USER13> We attached googly eyes to our robot vacuum cleaner because my daughter was afraid of it.

<comment><USER14> I added a mustache too, it was instantly more likeable.

<comment><USER15> What style of mustache?

<comment><USER14> A full handlebar (sticker), she looked very dapper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> After reading the title I imagined a bin I could throw things at and it suddenly opens and closes.

Would these proximity sensors alone be enough to detect a projectile coming at it?

<comment><USER13> The sensors could detect that, but a motor that opens the lid so fast could be dangerous.

<comment><USER17> Some garbage cans have lids that open inward, so I guess you could do it that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hah, my parents have a commercial version of this. I hope his works better than theirs, because their's is always opening and closing at the wrong times!

<comment><AUTHOR> Mine really works fine. Ultrasonic sensors are pretty decent in presence detection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just love it. Well done.

Have you considered a weight sensor or maybe sound sensor to determine when to close again? I assume it's on a timer at the moment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you liked it. ;) Closing is on timer for now, yes.

Maybe I will add an infra-red or sound sensor to make closing more intelligent. Good tip!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Took me a while wondering how and why the bicycle pump is part of the project...

</comment><comment><USER21> And with a balistic trajectory detection it could gulp trash on the fly!

</comment><comment><USER22> I use these: [https://photos.app.goo.gl/TfKqBp2GVJjYkmYG6](https://photos.app.goo.gl/TfKqBp2GVJjYkmYG6)

</comment><comment><USER23> [https://youtu.be/rxgWHzMvXOY?t=17](https://youtu.be/rxgWHzMvXOY?t=17)

</comment><comment><USER24> A better, possibly fast open/close design would be:

1\. to have a motor roll open and close the bin lid.

2\. the opening end could have a weak magnetic strip to "click" on that side.

3\. to have the sensors to the side of the bin instead of on top.

4\. my bin is under the kitchen sink, and I'd presume you'd want to hide your bin too, and so you could use a simple light sensor there.

All this would make it a simple yet super effective solution to avoid the bin fanning out odours.

</comment><comment><USER25> Hope you don't have any pets who might not like the sounds from that ultrasonic sensor...

</comment><comment><USER26> Before clicking the link my impression was "big deal, I have a Twitter account too."

</comment><comment><USER27> "basurito" LMAO

</comment><comment><USER28> Garbage in garbage out.

</comment><comment><USER29> [https://www.google.com/search?q=trash+bin+foot+pedal&source=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=trash+bin+foot+pedal&source=lnms&tbm=isch)

<comment><USER30> Yeah, this is an iTouchless 13 gallon trash can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The idea is good, but the code is very mediocre. The state machine has many redundant checks, very difficult to figure out how it works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your expertise, you are very welcome to propose any real improvements, if you can ;)

<comment><USER15> ivanilves, thank you for writing this up and sharing the code & the video of the end result, it is a fun project!

As a thought experiment I've had a play to see what the state machine logic might look like if we try to replace the bool state variables with a set of explicit finite states, and to push the state transition logic into a pure function. Results are here: [https://gist.github.com/fcostin/851c1b4d1e3cb75ba972408151f1...](https://gist.github.com/fcostin/851c1b4d1e3cb75ba972408151f185ba)

It is more verbose, but one advantage of structuring it like this (that i've only partially succeeded at) is that state transitions only happen at most once per each call to advance_state. Might make it easier to read through and follow the logic. It also makes the state transition logic easy to unit test, since it is pure-functional instead of being mixed together with sensing and doing actions (unsure how much of a concern or possibility unit testing is with ino files, I've never done any arduino dev myself).

Not sure if this is anything like what SomeoneFromCA was thinking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your code, looks like this can help improving my state machine indeed. I'll try to apply that approach when I get my next slice of free time ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> But does it play despacito?

Pacito pacito basu basurito

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like a key feature! ;)</comment></comment>


Blue Chip – Shuji Nakamura beat the titans to blue LEDs and laser (2000) - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/blue-chip-2000-07-05/

<comment><USER2> postscript: Nakamura only received $200 from his employer, sued, settled for millions: [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/business/worldbusiness/12l...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/business/worldbusiness/12light.html?_r=1&)</comment>


Google offers free websites (.in domains) to Indian SMBs (powered by HostGator) - <AUTHOR> http://googleindia.blogspot.com/2011/11/google-offers-free-websites-to-indian.html

<comment><USER2> Sites are quite basic (<http://www.vijashiviinternational.in/> <http://www.khoslaprinters.in/>). Well, they look pretty bad, but better than nothing for very small businesses.

There's an almost identical site for the same initiative in the UK: <http://www.gbbo.co.uk>

Wonder if they're going to roll this out in the US eventually, and they're using IN/UK as test markets?</comment>


React / D3 Visualizer - <AUTHOR> http://tgolson.com/react-d3-visuals/

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely just a bit of a spike to learn React and mess around with D3. I think it turned out pretty well though - lots of different things to play around with.

[https://github.com/TGOlson/react-d3-visuals](https://github.com/TGOlson/react-d3-visuals)</comment>


Osaka University professor: "The prince from Snow White is a sex offender" - <AUTHOR> https://en.rocketnews24.com/2017/12/14/osaka-university-professor-the-prince-from-snow-white-is-a-sex-offender/ <comment><USER2> Why not discuss Parzival instead? The interactions between Jeschute, Parzival and Orilus provide plenty of material for discussion, and _it isn 't straightforward_.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there HN App that will notice me on new reply to my comment? - <AUTHOR> Literally HN Reader is like todomvc app, there so many HN Reader apps.<p>But I didn't found any that will take advantage of push notifications to notify me about new replies to my comment. Do you guys know any? Also I would like to know which one are u using and why? Thanks. <comment><USER2> I just whipped up a super hacky Python 2 script which will notify you if someone replies to your comment, without requiring your email, and can be self hosted (fill in your HN username in the variable): [https://gist.github.com/Decagon/1ef31011d05bf71aa5570f2bddda...](https://gist.github.com/Decagon/1ef31011d05bf71aa5570f2bddda41c4)

Just run it with: while true; do python HNgetCommentReplies.py | mail -s "new hn reply" email@example.com; sleep 1m; done;

(e.g. check every minute for new comment replies and mail output.) It will output "Reply to comment: hn-url" if there is a reply, otherwise it will output nothing. Unfortunately it doesn't save any state, so it doesn't know if it already emailed you a reply. This can be easily fixed but I don't have too much time right now. Also, it makes one query at a time, which is a bit slow (as it takes around 20 seconds to check for replies.) This can be parallelized to make it much faster.

Benefits of this script is that if it were centralized, n users could be subscribed to get notifications (e.g. a million users) it would only use one query to the hacker news server every 30 seconds or so. It just looks to see if all recent comments have a parent whose name matches yours.

I'll dogfood it for a while and see if any replies to this comment works.

<comment><USER3> " sanity check sample response\

<comment><USER2> Sample check response confirmed--but I think I have to fix something

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use/like [http://www.hnreplies.com/](http://www.hnreplies.com/)

<comment><USER5> Hmm, no privacy policy?

<comment><USER6> You could ask the guy making it [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dangrossman](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dangrossman)

Personally I use it and it is awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great question.

I posted a related Ask HN the other day asking about who's using the api and for what tools:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15861468](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15861468)

Unfortunately I'm never made it to the "ask" page so it never got traction</comment>


All the talk about Google Voice - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.infoworld.com/mobile_pulse/archives/2009/03/whats_were_sayi.html

<comment><USER2> The SMS feature on Google Voice has got to be the one I use the most often so far. Especially because I don't use my phone, so there isn't a reason to get unlimited text messages for $30/month. With everyone else getting this unlimited plans, makes it really easy to communicate with them for free.</comment>


Asking the wrong questions - <AUTHOR> http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/01/11/wrongquestions <comment><USER2> I really liked this article because it was a concise demonstration of the 'known' solution problem. A while ago[1] there was a discussion of what folks from the 19th century thought the world would be like in the 20th century. The common theme is that the futurists could never anticipate a change to a technology they didn't have any experience with. The rise of communications as a means of linking people together was completely missed, even by the Dick Tracy types who had wristwatch phones. Why? Because not only did it communicate like everyone had experienced (telegraph, telephone) it _persisted_ with bulletin boards, MUDS, Facebook, and Twitter.

That is why I always try to ask a question my Dad suggested I ask when looking a future predictions, "What is so common place that they can't see it changing?" That is so difficult to do. Things like "What would the future be like if there literally was no disease and any physical injury could be patched up quickly?" Or "Energy is suddenly free?" or "Lie detection becomes infallible?" etc. Very tough to do.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13101643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13101643)

<comment><USER3> _" The rise of communications as a means of linking people together was completely missed"_

Not by everyone.

Take a look at _" The Machine Stops"_ by E.M.Forster (of _" A Room with a View"_ and _" A Passage to India"_ fame).[1][2]

In 1909 he predicted something like the internet, chatrooms, internet addiction, and various other things that have since happened.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops)

[2] - [http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html](http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/prajlich/forster.html)

<comment><USER2> I don't disagree, my point wasn't that nobody gets it right, it was that in order to get it right you have to think about the things which you take for granted being different. And that is not a natural act :-). Some of the best science fiction that anticipated the Internet has been stuff that assumed telepathy and looked at issues associated with that. We hit some of those problems with voice activation and bluetooth headsets :-).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Two problems in the article analysis

One is the classic hard vs soft sci fi. A classic example in book form is Stranger in a Strange Land reads like a story about 60s boomer hippies from India who meditate and get high and die in an allegory of Jesus, because it is. There's a very thin wrap of search and replace science fiction over that hippie story most famously a giant plot hole where the author wrote in video telephone video conferencing without following up on the hole in the plot generated by being able to see the other party. In comparison, hard sci fi takes into account and weaves a story about the human effects of technology...

The other problem is in the "The authors polled a range of experts". Asking my plumber about theology or my lawyer about physics is obviously dumb, and in pop culture we accept that asking a 50s dude about the 70s is pretty much a waste of time. However in all fields of human activity if you want an intelligent commentary on contemporary computer programming you have to either hatch or grow a contemporary computer programmer. The opinions of a dude in another field from decades ago are only accidentally going to be correct. Regardless who was an expert in automation in the 60s, I'm pretty sure they weren't being asked because they almost certainly didn't have cool authoritarian credentials because the topic wasn't cool enough at that time, so by definition they were talking to the wrong people. The history of many present day trends and concepts shows they were not very cool before they became cool, therefore asking contemporary experts on the topic of cool will mostly not work.

<comment><USER5> > _In comparison, hard sci-fi takes into account and weaves a story about the > human effects of technology..._

I find two problems with the above analysis.

Oftentimes soft sci-fi (PK Dick for example or even someone like Frederic Brown) identifies the "human effects of technology" far better than someone from the "hard" camp, such as Clark or Asimov.

Second, the article specifically covers bad predictions made by hard sci-fi and concerning use and impact of technology itself.

> _The other problem is in the "The authors polled a range of experts". Asking > my plumber about theology or my lawyer about physics is obviously dumb_

Not that obvious to me. That's a great way to overcome systematic bias and domain blindness and get some outsider insight. You talk about being silly to talk to a "plumber about theology", but I've heard that a carpenter is supposed to have made some great contributions to the field, as did some fishermen.

<comment><USER4> Oh there's some overlap as in all things very little is binary.

None the less PKD doesn't really tell "human vs technology" stories. Take for example "A scanner darkly" which is an interesting psychological thriller and story about chemical addiction. To quote the wikipedia: "A Scanner Darkly is a fictionalized account of real events, based on Dick's experiences in the 1970s drug culture. Dick said in an interview, "Everything in A Scanner Darkly I actually saw.""

"Man in the High Castle" is alt history action. Its not really a story about technology.

"Blade Runner" is film noir action flick with a dose of moralizing about racism and dystopia.

I'd say the thing that defines PKD is technology as escapism. Yeah OK "a scanner darkly" is about speed freaks but he wanted to tell a psychological thriller about addiction without people casually tossing it away as "the speed freaks movie" so he invented a whole substance D mythology to prevent people from taking the easy way out in their analysis. Ditto Blade Runner where the technology was a cloak to hide aspects of modernity he didn't want to talk about, not a central part of the story.

Sort of like how some fantasy pencil whips away aspects of the modern world the author doesn't like in order to pare down to just what the author wants us to focus on.

Technology as a zoom lens, not in the zoom lens. PKD is a cool author but in many ways he doesn't even write sci fi.

How about another definition, soft sci fi can be turned into any other scenery with mere cut and paste, and tada "a scanner darkly" is about elves smoking too much pipe-weed in Tolkien world. But hard sci fi requires a major and substantial rewrite to change the scenery, not just cut and paste. KSR's Mars trilogy isn't going to Venus or ancient South America any time soon.

The problem with the carpenter you mention is out of millions of pro and maybe a billion amateur/ancient carpenters only that one had much insight. Its a bad odds game.

<comment><USER5> Those are his more psychedelic works sure. But take something from Dick like "The Second Variation". Or "The Electric Ant". Or "We can remember it for you wholeseale".

Or here's his version of the future of IoT, home automation and subscription payments, which as someone in an increasingly number of "forced on my throat" subscription schemes (Adobe, etc) I find surprisingly prescient:

The hero in Ubik tries to get out of his own house:

"The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please." He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you." "I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt." ...he found the contract. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. "You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug."

> _The problem with the carpenter you mention is out of millions of pro and > maybe a billion amateur /ancient carpenters only that one had much insight. > Its a bad odds game._

I find the opposite. All the important contributions to theology and fields such as philosophy have been made by outsiders. Once degrees and tenures started rolling in, the substance starts rolling out. At best those tenured bores can do meta-analyses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the premise of 'disrupt', isn't it? That the existing business models or technological solutions are so thoroughly shaken by the appearance of something new that doesn't pass for a mere iteration of the same. Electricity was not directly comparable to steam, despite having some of the same uses at first, cars were quite different from horses, and the packet-switched internet behaves differently from circuit-switched telephone lines.

Part of this phenomenon of even experts unable to predict the new is that often our current technology is capped by our societal understanding of physics. Before the Wrights and other early pioneers, we knew that powered heavier-than-air flying was possible for light things like birds, but weren't sure whether the same applied to large, heavy frames, or how we'd be able to deliver enough power to the machine while keeping the weight down. But after a couple of early success, a vibrant field of haphazard experimentation and serious scientific research opened up, and we learned a lot about aerodynamic lift.

Before the transistor, it was difficult to seriously posit that electricity- powered, non-mechanical computers would be ubiquitous not just to the point of every government and large enterprise having them, but also every single person possessing multiple miniaturized versions on their person. The invention of integrated circuits was a transformational achievement: it enabled us to go from having very scarce computing capacity to having a slight excess, and so new programs emerged to harness that ability to do calculation. VR and AR in turn aren't that transformative yet: they're simply video games where a portion of the input comes from the 'real world'.

Today, we're at a UI/UX/AI/ML crisis, where we have immense computing resources at our disposal and still lack an effective ability to communicate our intent with the machine. We dip down to the ancient metaphor of manipulating a pre-set UI with a pointer like a mouse or our fingers or our eyes, or we have to speak audibly to those within earshot so a microphone can capture our command, ascertain some meaning, then map it to one of many predefined actions. These seem like the dark ages. It's not hard to guess that something revolutionary is going to happen in this arena, and will require actual scientific discoveries to make it possible.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting aside: One of the RAND's predictions (No. 24) is for " _International agreements which guarantee certain economic minima to the world 's population as a result of high production from automation_", which sounds pretty much like Basic Income, along with some of the same arguments we've heard recently about why it will be increasingly needed. (Not saying I agree nor disagree)

<comment><USER8> The RAND study is from 1964. There have been several experiments with basic income systems in the US and Canada in the 1960s and 1970s, and I may assume that the general idea is even older.

<comment><USER9> It is. The idea was floated by the US founding fathers as a form of compensation for having all the land parceled up and owned. Further back you have the Levelers who were essentially proto-communists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> One way to detect suspect predictions is to look at which ones suggest improvements to things we have today without changing them significantly.

For example, people envision self-driving cars that are exactly like the cars we have today, only automatic. They predict that they will still be big, expensive, complicated, multi-person vehicles. I'm sure that category will continue exist, but why will that remain the norm? The size and complexity of cars are major drawbacks (e.g. storage, traffic, cost). With bicycles, we can see that small individual vehicles have significant advantages due to their size, cost, and simplicity. With self-driving cars, I think there will be room to borrow some of those advantages. Today, we have to build cars with safety as a major concern, but when self-driving vehicles are common, we will not have to. If we are free to relax during a car journey, the ability to travel at high speed may not be such a major concern, either. The typical self- driving car could easily be something inexpensive, small, and simple like the PodRide instead: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lKq1fGtXFM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lKq1fGtXFM)

<comment><USER11> >If we are free to relax during a car journey, the ability to travel at high speed may not be such a major concern, either.

Most of the people I've spoken to firmly believe self driving cars will be faster, not slower. They'll be safer and more consistent at speed so it's reasonable to trust them to do so safely.

When the train takes 4 hours and I can drive it in 2h30 - I take the car. Just the fact that I get to "relax" is not sufficient.

<comment><USER10> Most car trips are much shorter than that, although that could change when driving is no longer necessary.

For an occasional long-distance trip, it would make sense to buy a ride on a purpose-built high-speed self-driving vehicle. Kind of like a personal train cabin.

For day-to-day commuting and errands, people could be able to spend much less for a smaller, slower, simpler vehicle that is potentially cheap enough for an average person to own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I see things like the RAND 'long-range forecasting' study, I always look to see if they specify ubiquity -- it's very different to assert that we'll have ultrasonic implants for the blind in a laboratory setting vs. being commonplace and woven into the fabric of society.

As William Gibson is fond of saying, "the future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." Predicting what will become integral to our daily life is much more interesting/difficult than determining how long it would take to develop a specific technology's proof-of-concept.

</comment><comment><USER13> Thanks for this piece, it made me recall the joy of spending my afternoons in the library and the vivid dreams I got from science fiction books - I remember reading Verne's "20,000 Leagues under the Sea" as a kid in the 70's and picturing the Nautilus as a nuclear submarine in Victorian clothes.

Back then the cold war was rampant and Brazil was under military dictatorship. Now I'm living in the future, and it is half familiar and half surprising.

</comment><comment><USER14> Applied AI will be the next "nobody knew how fundamentally things would change."

I don't believe in the singularity (at least as currently envisioned) but I do believe we need to figure out what a society must look like when most human beings are, almost literally, not useful for commercial employment.

Like, the whole tenets of a market economy and capitalist ownership will smash into the tenets of human worth and the function of society, with violence and consequences much greater than we've seen until now.

We can see it coming. It's obviously clear. And nobody in charge is taking about it, much less doing anything about it. A totally avoidable tragedy, walked into on purpose.

<comment><USER15> If technology makes the cost of supporting a person's life is nearly zero, then the wages they'll demand can also approach zero. So a human can undercut a robot worker on cost.

Currently, that doesn't happen because humans are so expensive to maintain - they'd sooner starve to death than work for less money than they need to keep themselves alive. But it's more than before. We do have a huge tertiary sector of the economy which is basically humans being employed to do low-value or unnecessary work because they're so plentiful and cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> For anyone interested: There's an enjoyable radio adaptation of 'A Logic Named Joe' from X Minus One in 1955 [https://archive.org/details/XMinusOne55122831ALogicNamedJoe](https://archive.org/details/XMinusOne55122831ALogicNamedJoe)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a bit banal. Nobody can predict second and third order effects reliably because they don't know how to weight one predicted effect vs another to know how they'll intersect and interact.

Extrapolation for any one technology usually works well for a short distance into the future (a decade or so), but the chances of a technology being blindsided by something else entirely rapidly rise over time.

<comment><USER18> It's not second or third order effects, it's the way that technologies facilitate social changes that trips people up.

The astounding thing about the Internet isn't just that it's possible to do all kinds of science fiction things with it, but that it has no single inventor.

In fact a public internet for shopping, dating, and photo sharing was never even considered as a goal when the core technologies were being RFC'd.

The real value of technology only appears when it intersects with user land. The broader the take-up, the bigger the potential for bottom-up social and political effects.

Telegraphy, radio, heavier than air flight, internal combustion ground cars, TV, and even printing were all defined by the political and social changes they created far more than by the physics that made them work.

So traditionally when someone prognosticates about a new shiny thing they assume their culture won't change and the technology will somehow fit into it.

Far more often, the most interesting thing about new technology is the way it affects belief systems, economic and social activity, and political power relationships.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I will relate to my observation in Harry Potter books. Harry Potter universe has time machine which we know scientifically are impossible while in the same HP universe, Hermoine has to physically go to the forbidden library to read books. JK Rowling couldn't think of wikipedia or internet which both exist in real world but not time travel.

<comment><USER15> Strong encryption is another thing that sci-fi authors seem to miss. For example 1998's Moonwar has people sneaking communications on laser beams instead of radio waves because spies won't be able to eavesdrop on the straight-line laser without physically going to its location. That, despite the internet already using encryption for financial transactions in real life.

<comment><USER6> Yeah but how do you do key distribution and management? The physical security and "forward secrecy" (in the loose sense) afforded by an ephemeral transmission that can only be received in a fixed location is non-negligible [1].

[1] [http://www.gdsatcom.com/email/3-22-11.htm](http://www.gdsatcom.com/email/3-22-11.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre writes about why the future is inherently unpredictable in his book _After Virtue_. It's in the context of social sciences but it applies just as well here. There's a decent summary here[0]

[0]: [http://www.thenewatlantis.com/doclib/20120203_aftervirtuecha...](http://www.thenewatlantis.com/doclib/20120203_aftervirtuechaptersummary.pdf)

> MacIntyre argues that "there are four sources of systematic unpredictability > in human affairs" which preclude social science from being like natural > science (93). The first is radical conceptual innovation, which can be > explained in retrospect, but inherently can only be predicted when the > innovation has already occurred. MacIntyre notes that this also means that > the future of scientific innovation cannot be predicted, invoking the > Church-Turing thesis as further proof. The second source is the fact that > "the unpredictability of certain of his own future actions by each agent > individually" implies the unpredictability of that agent by any other agent, > and hence an aggregate unpredictability to the social world (95). The third > source "arises from the game-theoretic character of social life" (97). > Social life in fact embodies multiple games, players, and transactions and > thus cannot be studied as a single instance, reducing the predictive power > of game theory. The fourth source is "pure contingency", the way in which > "trivial contingencies can powerfully influence the outcome of great > events", such as the length of Cleopatra's nose, or Napoleon's cold at > Waterloo (99-0).

</comment><comment><USER21> I have to say I find this piece pretty disappointing. Slightly smug throughout, which is easy in retrospect, with approximately zero to add to the conversation. The thesis seems to be: The future is hard to predict, and even if you can, it's hard to get the timeline right. No shit. Is this what VCs do with their spare time? Remember granddad and contemplate uncertainty?

</comment><comment><USER22> > _Centralized (possibly randomized) wire tapping._

I think some of those predictions were pretty spot on.

<comment><USER23> I think the point the author was making was that people predicted this would take much longer to become feasible than other things like "radar implants for the blind", which obviously was not the case.

<comment><USER24> How cool that they actually don't need implants! The existing hardware can be hacked to provide sonar capabilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> We carry the PSTN over the Internet over private IP networks that interconnect with each other over the PSTN.

I know, it's nitpicking.

<comment><USER26> That last one part i don't believe in.

<comment><USER27> You don't believe in ADSL?

<comment><USER26> Check the sibling comment for expressing my concern clearer than I could.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> One of my favorite examples of SF writers underestimating the pace of certain changes is a scene early in Isaac Asimov's Second Foundation -- which is set 1000s of years in our future -- showing the life of a teenage girl before she starts adventuring.

Sitting in the bedroom of her suburban house, she uses the new technology of a voice-activated typewriter to write a paper for history class. Looking over this homework assignment, her father reprimands her for one of her writing choices, and she sullenly revises the paper accordingly.

(The choice, as you will likely recall if you read the Foundation Trilogy, was to brag about her grandmother, the heroine of the previous book.)

</comment><comment><USER29> It's a little gloomy to see how early most of the predictions are, they were overly-optimistic by 10-20 years in most cases.

Has anyone ever tried aggregating popular predictions over time? It would be interesting to see a history of predictions for self-driving cars up to now.

</comment><comment><USER30> My main take-away from this article was that people often use the underlying paradigms of today (perhaps unknowingly) to predict surface level details of tomorrow. "Asking the wrong questions", as the article byline states.

Instead, we should try to predict how the fundamental paradigms will change, and then deduce visible, commonplace details from that.

I did just started reading "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" by Kuhn, which is all about paradigms (of a specific sort). It's good stuff.

<comment><USER31> Kuhn argues that it would be difficult to discern if one were inside of a revolution as it was occurring, correct?

So how does one ask the "right question"?

<comment><USER30> I'm not sure. But I think knowing that the default mode is usually to ask the wrong questions can help us. It provides a new lense for analyzing any ideas that come up: "What assumptions am I sub-conscioisly making here? What current paradigms does the idea depend upon?" etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I enjoyed the photo, the family history, and the premise of "asking the right/wrong question". I think that all technologists - or perhaps everyone - can and should take a step back from their daily grind and ask some questions.

I think the wisdom of the crowd can be leveraged in asking questions about the future. There are sites like longbets.org where you can weight in.

It is one of the great gifts to the human species to be able to contemplate a future beyond tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER33> I am going to choose to believe that the wrap-up paragraph, asking "who will have the right kind of driving data for autonomy?" is a subtle wink, because the current conventional wisdom about autonomous cars -- that they are coming soon, and that machine learning on massive datasets is the key to their success -- is very likely going to end up being one of those things we talk about jokingly in 50 years. Ha! Remember when they thought we'd have a colony on the moon in 1990, that machines would have genius IQs by 2000, and that cars could drive themselves by 2025? Oh, the people of the past were so cute.

</comment><comment><USER34> I thought this would be about how we have prioritized the advancement of technology for the few over the welfare of the rest.

Maybe it should be titled "Still asking the wrong questions"

</comment><comment><USER35> I am not surprised that a telco centric forcasts would be locked into a switched circuit mind-set.

eve in 96/97 interviewing at a british telecom board the 3 (all mainframe guys) just did not get the internet at all - ironically the board was at 207 old street

</comment><comment><USER36> It would be great to read more about the grandfather and the glider.

</comment><comment><USER37> Any reason to expect women will be more likely to be rocket pilots in the future than truck drivers today?

<comment><USER28> In Starship Troopers, Heinlein suggested they'd be pilots due to better reflexes.

I have no idea whether that had scientific grounding.</comment></comment>


'Where was the Lord?': Slave testimonies - <AUTHOR> https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/in-depth/news/2019/06/03/alabama-state-holiday-jefferson-davis-birthday-where-lord-9-slave-testimonies/3740398002/ <comment><USER2> That was an incredibly powerful set of personal testimony. I just don't get exposed to that visceral reminder of what slavery was very much. And still so much of the south is in denial about it. Setting up gerrymandered districts in Virgina, making it harder for people to vote in ways that clearly make it harder for blacks to vote. So much of that is still here. I'm from a southern state, it's not exactly unknown to me that this has been the way it was for a lot of people. Now that I live in my west coast tech utopia I don't see people who seem to live in that world (sarcastically I kind of say this, look at all the homeless but there is less visible racism, so it must be more hidden). This should be required reading in schools. My own history classes told me a lot about how horrible slavery was, but wow, nothing like this.

I'm amazed they published that in the newspaper. Look through the editorials in it, search for jefferson davis and read what people say about changing school names. That was a freaking brave editorial decision. - [https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/education/20...](https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/education/2019/06/03/jefferson- davis-birthday-alabama-holiday-why-three-montgomery-high-schools-named- confederates/2638908002/)

<comment><USER3> > I'm amazed they published that in the newspaper. (...) That was a freaking > brave editorial decision.

As someone not from the US: what would the controversy here be? (i.e. what reason would someone opposed to publishing this name?)

The Netherlands has done pretty awful things in Indonesia after WW2, and while that is unfortunately hardly mentioned in high school, I can't imagine it being controversial for a Dutch newspaper to publish testimonials of it.

<comment><USER4> Imagine that a large number of people in the Netherlands thought that what the Netherlands did in Indonesia were right and justified, and that the Netherlands should still have colonies and Indonesians should be ruled from the Netherlands to this day. Imagine these people still fly flags celebrating Netherlands rule of Indonesia and name their schools after the officers responsible for committing those atrocities in Indonesia, which they deny actually happened.

<comment><USER3> How often do people actually approve of slavery, or deny that it happened? I mean, I know there are some - I've seen articles as well. But surely those are only the excesses of a fringe movement, not something the newspapers should actively take into account when deciding what to publish?

<comment><USER4> They deny the excesses of slavery, or excuse them, and argue that whites are inherently superior and should rule over other races as subjects. There are an awful lot of people in the south that at a minimum are sympathetic to those views.

<comment><USER3> "An awful lot" as in: enough to pressure newspapers into not publishing accounts of it? That's... Wow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To us, 2 centuries after slavery went extinct in the civilized world, the idea seems incredibly cruel, although it was practiced in various forms throughout human history in most civilizations with little regard to its victims.

We must ask ourselves, are there any other malevolent deeds inflicted humans to other humans or living creatures that we overlook? The most obvious answer to this is the treatment of animals in the meat and dairy industries. Those creatures can't and will never be able to voice their suffering. It seems to me that in 2 centuries from now, people will talk about this issue with the same contempt we talk about slavery today.

<comment><USER6> 2 centuries? You might want to check your math on that. And also language. Illegal is not the same as extinct. So if you're looking for things that have been overlooked, you might start right here.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure I understand your comment. Slavery is illegal, that means that we as a society reject and punish those who practice it.

The question of whether it will ever disappear is a question of enforcement/policy and not of moral values.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This should be required reading in American schools.

</comment><comment><USER8> >never seed her no more in this life

I am moved by the stories. The accounts are so raw and visceral. Is there a website where there are audio recordings of the narrations?

<comment><USER9> Maybe not _these_ narrations, but there is this: [https://www.loc.gov/collections/voices-remembering- slavery/a...](https://www.loc.gov/collections/voices-remembering- slavery/about-this-collection)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Let me get this straight, the majority of the discussion on this painful look into a horrible institution is about the financial system, and whether it technically constitutes Capitalism?

These were real people, with names and faces just like you and I, not some abstract argument about personal liberty or economic systems.

It seems really disrespectful to me to reduce people to that. Like people here are making them a kind of chattel again, fodder for arguments, instead of seeing their humanity.

Anyway, for those that care, for white people who can see that the legacy of this horror is still with us, built into our institutions: here is a real quick read on dismantling racism in an organization.

[http://uuwhiteness.us/wp- content/uploads/2017/06/READ_Anti-R...](http://uuwhiteness.us/wp- content/uploads/2017/06/READ_Anti- Racist_Organizational_Development_WesternStates.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> Unfortunately, the website just redirects me to [https://eu.montgomeryadvertiser.com/](https://eu.montgomeryadvertiser.com/) which has got to be the least impressive internationalisation website I've ever seen?

Anyone post a text-dump?

<comment><USER12> Does [https://web.archive.org/web/20190617060036/https://www.montg...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190617060036/https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/in- depth/news/2019/06/03/alabama-state-holiday-jefferson-davis-birthday-where- lord-9-slave-testimonies/3740398002/) work?

<comment><USER13> Yes (I'm not the requester but had the same issue), thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Any time I hear another impassioned plea about some southerner's pride in displaying the Confederate flag as a mark of their "cultural heritage", I roll my eyes. Sure, I'll recognize your freedom of speech as to the display, but you'll never convince me that the display is anything but bald racism. The closest thing I've ever heard to a rationale from a defender is basically "because reasons". Even "states' rights" requires a clear motivation when you're talking about one small part of a federation, and still boils down to racism if you take it to its logical conclusion. As a rebuttal, you need only look at quotes from prominent Confederates to know the truth; that you're going out of your way to defend the acts of some very evil men. Reading these stories made my stomach churn. I'm done with [your] moral equivalencies.

<comment><USER15> The questionability of national pride aside, if Confederate flag brandishing Southerners truly only cared about national pride they'd do what Germans do: not fly the damn flag.

It's okay to have a problematic history. You don't have to be proud of everything your ancestors or their peers did. The Confederacy was a lose coalition of states that were defending their right to own slaves. If you were born in the South that doesn't mean you have to make up excuses for this or be sorry about it -- those things happened before you were born. But if you celebrate it, you celebrate slavery.

There are a lot of nuances you could argue about (e.g. how much slave owners should have been subsidised to cushion the economic impact of abolishment or whether the US should have allowed states to secede peacefully) but abolishment was the right thing to do and the states that took up arms to stop it were on the wrong side of history.

You don't see Germans find it socially acceptable to celebrate the accomplishments of 1930s Germany much. It shouldn't be socially acceptable to celebrate the Confederacy either. _Especially_ if they have ancestors who fought for Germany in WW2.

Oh and the most absurd part of that excuse is that the flag in question was only in use for a very short time and specifically in the context of the war. This is like saying the flag of the Nazi Germany Kriegsmarine isn't about anything the Nazis did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Slavery is undoubtably beneficial to Capitalism (ex: sea trade via the triangular trade routes), and the almighty dollar frequently overrides morality for the worse.

<comment><USER17> I will respond to this only because I've heard it before. That view is impossible to justify because

a. Slavery is an evil, repulsive act, and if it's linked to capitalism, then that will (for good reason) lead to opposition to capitalism.

b. While it was economically good for some, it was bad for others, and you can't write down a sensible economic model in which ownership of others leads to an efficient outcome.

That's all I'm going to say about this crazy claim in an attempt to prevent its misuse.

<comment><USER18> I'm not saying the person you are responding to is right, but your counter seems flawed. Owning slaves was legal and allowed some people to gather wealth, even at the expense of other people. As a result, there were people who got rich doing exactly that.

Why isn't that part of capitalism? Yes, it taints it, but really what it says to me is that unfettered capitalism will lead to "evil", repulsive acts, and that is exactly why, as problematic as it is, government must set legal boundaries around unacceptable behavior when such behaviors are discovered.

To make a modern analogy, it is legal for coal companies to "top" mountains, and to strip mine, and to release gigatons of CO2, and with it biologically significant amounts of mercury, massive amounts of particulates, large waste byproducts of coal ash and more. It is legal and profitable, so there are many companies doing it, despite the clear external costs to environment and the health of the population. Is this not part of capitalism?

<comment><USER19> What is capitalism? Is capitalism any system that uses money? Doesn't that make most "socialist" countries capitalist?

To me, capitalism is about guaranteeing people's property rights. Some forms of indentured servitude might be considered a type of capitalism, but certainly not 19th-century American slavery, in which slaves had almost no rights (and the situation got _worse_ as time progressed). In the very early days, slaves could even work for pay and eventually buy their freedom, but as the years went on, they were banned from this and later from owning property altogether.

Furthermore, history clearly shows that slave codes were continually tightened not because it was believed to be economically viable but because the population of the South was afraid of black people. Already in the eighteenth century it was made illegal for a slaveowner to free his slaves by fiat. It required approval from the government. How is _that_ capitalist?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manumission#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manumission#United_States)

> _A 1723 law stated that slaves may not "be set free upon any pretence > whatsoever, except for some meritorious services to be adjudged and allowed > by the governor and council."_

This isn't some perverse overinterpretation of slaveowners' property rights. It's about fear, plain and simple. White people in the antebellum South did not want black people to be part of society. Capitalism can't explain that. There was a brief respite after some slaves fought for the patriots in the war and manumission was reinstated, but then:

> _However, as population of free Negroes increased, the state passed laws > forbidding them from moving into the state (1778)[34] and requiring newly- > freed slaves to leave within one year unless they had special permission > (1806).[35]_

This was _not_ just about money. Money doesn't explain "freed slaves must leave".

<comment><USER18> Of course it wasn't _just_ about money, as fear of reprisal was obviously a concern.

But the entire reason slavery existed wasn't fear of black people -- it was to use them to generate wealth, and not just for the slave owners; slavery propped up the economy of southern states. If the slaves had vanished overnight via a magic trick, it would have affect the economy of country as a whole, and cratered it in the south.

You are dismissing the primary reason for the perpetuation of US slavery by repeatedly pointing to one factor that was a byproduct of slavery.

<comment><USER19> You ignored my main point. _What is capitalism?_

If all of the slave owners freed their slaves voluntarily, either they are insane (i.e. society is doomed, everyone is crazy) or slavery is completely unnecessary to the economy. Anti-manumission laws cannot be explained by any _rational_ economic motive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> States rights [to own slaves]

</comment><comment><USER21> Q. Where was the Lord?

A. Where is the Confederacy now?

<comment><USER22> Alive and well, but using other names.

The KKK was formed after the Civil War (and the Confederacy). Jim Crow Laws were long after the Confederacy supposedly died. The Civil Rights movement (specifically in Selma Alabama) was long after the Confederacy.

<comment><USER23> Parchman and Angola.

Jim Crow laws were used as the model for the Nuremberg Laws and Mein Kampf calls out the achievements of white supremacy in the USA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> that's just an awful part of world history, what allowed that to flourish? total evil in men's hearts, this was only 200 years ago, not that long ago, this isnt something that happened 1000 years ago.

and even though the confederacy was based on slaves being unequal to whites, the civil war was not necessarily about slavery only, it was more of a split in government between a pro-agrarian society, which required large swaths of slaves, and states vs federal government. sure there were people strongly against slavery in the north like abraham lincoln and abolishinists, but i imagine a large majority in the north didnt really see that as the largest issue, it was more the south wanting to leave the united states and.form their own government.

<comment><USER25> Lincoln was elected in large part because he was opposed to allowing slavery in new states (a popular position in the North) and secession followed directly from his election, because the Confederate States saw limiting slavery in the territories as an existential threat to their own practice of slavery.

It's also kind of funny to hand wave about how the war was about a "pro- agrarian society" instead of necessarily about slavery and then immediately toss in a mention that the pro-agrarian society " _required_ " slavery.

<comment><USER26> "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause." — Abraham Lincoln's Letter to Horace Greeley; August 22, 1862.

<comment><USER27> As I said in a comment cousin to this one, the reasons that Lincoln entered the war aren't equivalent to "the reason the war happened". What you call the "cause" of the war depends on what level you're looking at.

The _direct_ cause of the war was the Fort Sumter altercation.

The reason the Fort Sumter event occurred was that both sides were angling hard for a war they thought they could easily win.

The reason the Union wanted to fight the war was (mostly) that its leaders had strong political inclinations and economic incentives to reject the right of the Southern states to secede, and to use military force if necessary to maintain the union.

The reason the South seceded was primarily that they believed (mostly wrongly) that the North wanted to end slave ownership, which they viewed as both economically destructive and a violation of their rights.

While it's _technically_ true that the story is more complicated than just "the war was fought over slavery", that doesn't change the fact that the existence of slavery was the most significant point of strife in the run-up to the war. But for slavery, the war would not have happened. There are few, possibly no other institutions in the America of the 1850s you can say that about. So it's absolutely correct to say that slavery was the reason the Confederates fought the war, even if it's not the reason Lincoln did. I think that gets you most of what people want to say when they say the war was over slavery.

<comment><USER28> > The reason the South seceded was primarily that they believed (mostly > wrongly) that the North wanted to end slave ownership, which they viewed as > both economically destructive and a violation of their rights.

The south was trying to expand slavery to territories and north.

<comment><USER27> Even assuming that is true, it makes no sense as a reason to secede. Assuming the Civil War never happened, they would still have lost all political influence by seceding.

<comment><USER28> The whole conflict was about territories. It is not like north would care what happens to slaves in the south.

There was balance - half states slave states, half not. Territories being not slave states would disturb balance. They feared being outvoted. They feared that territories being not slave states would be addmission that slavery is wrong and put pressure on them to stop slavery.

Seceding makes you completely independent. You dont loose power, you gain it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: CategoryLinksBot – tag and search hyperlinks in Slack - <AUTHOR> https://categorylinksbot.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> So I have now spent over a year developing this slackbot. Mostly used the time to learn how to build an application on kubernetes (using GKE). Looking to add Pocket integration in the future but still undecided on that. Thanks for any feedback!</comment>


Omphaloskepsis – The Startup Disease - <AUTHOR> So, like most of you, I thought I had a great idea that solved an important problem.
Companies are leaking confidential data. Exfiltration is a worldwide security concern.
Most data lives on data center servers. If it was possible to block or at least recognize that confidential data was being copied off a server then a major security hole coulld be closed.
But any software running on a server can be compromised to hide the exfiltration. Plus there would be a lot of CPU overhead trying to monitor data traffic at high wire speeds.
Data centers already do compression/decompression at wire speeds using field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) attached to wires at both ends of a connection. They also do encryption/decryption "on the wire". This increases bandwidth without impacting the CPU.
So why not create an FPGA that monitors server traffic for confidential data exfiltration? It operates at wire speeds, does not impact the CPU, and cannot be modified without a physical connection, making hacking nearly impossible. Plus it is hardware so there is something physical to sell.
That's a great idea. I created a prototype. I had a "team", including a CEO. I started training a grad student.
What I didn't have was a clue about customers and markets. Who would buy it? How could I find them? What story could I tell them that was compelling?
I had a story. I convinced myself. I had passion about it. But I suffered from Omphaloskepsis (Omphaloskepsis or navel-gazing is contemplation of one's navel as an aid to meditation.)
My startup died from Omphaloskepsis.
Jill Soley and Todd Wilms have a cure for Omphaloskepsis. They have a new book out "Beyond Product". It is short, painless, and informative. (http://jillsoley.com).
Spend an afternnon and read it. Give it to your CEO. It might just save your startup. <comment><USER2> Insightful book with lot of practical advice for every stage of startup. Wish I had it for every startup I worked at!</comment>


The Shazam for billboard and outdoor advertisement - <AUTHOR> http://www.tadawapp.com <comment><AUTHOR> Tadaw is a mobile application that allows users to earn exclusive deals, discounts, and products during their commute. We turn billboards and outdoor advertisements or OOH (out of home) advertisements into store fronts. It's like Shazam but for billboard and outdoor advertisements. Using voice commands or touch points, users are able to learn more about the product(s) or service(s) being advertised and make purchases directly from the app. Our customers gain better insight into how their outdoor marketing campaigns are performing and generate more sales.

</comment><comment><USER2> Lovin' it! Excited for it to get rollin and give it a try!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a fantastic concept and I'm excited to give it a whirl.

</comment><comment><USER4> What a dope concept ! Would love to see the interface and how it works.</comment>


Auto Type Deduction in C++ Range-Based For Loops - <AUTHOR> https://blog.petrzemek.net/2016/08/17/auto-type-deduction-in-range-based-for-loops/ <comment><USER2> I don't like that at all.

Sure if you consider:

for (auto& p : wordCount) {

        // ... word: p.first, count: p.second

}

then

for (auto& [word, count] : wordCount) { // C++1z

        // ...

}

seems like an improvement because you immediately know the semantics of the two parts of the pair. But you have no idea what "word" or "count" _is_. In this example with words like "word" or "count" the semantics somehow encode type information but most of the time you deal with user defined types where that information is a) not clear and b) not as trivial.

To me this whole "auto" thing seems misunderstood. People use it to make their lifes "easier" (think lazy) but not simpler. The type system is there to _help_ you and type information is of uttermost importance and should be available as closest to the usage as possible without destroying readability so you don't have to look it up somewhere else.

using wcPair = std::pair<const std::string, int>;

for (wcPair& p : wcMap) {

      std::cout << p.first << " : " << p.second << std::endl;

}

seems reasonable enough. The loop itself can be read without clutter, you can infer what's supposed to happen without knowing much stuff and even if you want a deeper understanding of what's going on then the information you need is right above.

Doesn't that seem much better? oO

...and if you want a language _without_ a type system don't use a language with a type system.

<comment><USER3> The purpose of the type system in C++ is partly to encode semantics about the usage of a particular construct. For example, we might declare three or four types which all support the increment() function(or operator). The traditional way to do this is to create an interface and have the four concrete types inherit from the interface.

What auto says is "I don't care what type this value is. I just want it to support the semantics that I'm about to describe in this block." If you change the return type of the value in the auto expression, as long as the new return type supports the same semantics as the original return type, you don't need to touch that function after the refactor.

The compiler still complains when it can't find a way to make the return value support the semantics you're asking for. This is an improvement, but only in cases where you genuinely don't care what type it is, but only that it supports iteration. You still have to use auto with care, like every other keyword, but it does significantly improve maintainability in code bases where traditionally you would mechanically key in the same type information multiple times throughout the declaration of a class and its usage. Typedef and using statements solve similar problems, but they don't solve exactly the same problem.

For a good example of why this is a wonderful thing, try to determine what return type you should declare for an STL iterator, or try using Boost while avoiding the auto keyword.

<comment><USER4> I'm currently working on a code base that's just upgrading to MSVC 10.0, and seeing std::vector::value_type(?)::const_iterator everywhere is killing me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use const auto on occasion, when the element type is inexpensive to copy. If I'm iterating over a vector if int's, why would I prefer const auto& over const auto? Assuming the compiler does not try to optimize the const auto&, const auto should be faster than accessing a value through a reference.

<comment><USER6> Using const auto& over const auto makes your code more robust. For example, what if you later decide to change the type of items in the vector from ints to something that is more expensive to copy? You would need to track all uses of the vector and add an ampersand there. And as for the access speed, YMMV but compilers are generally good at optimizations and will drop the reference when it would be faster to just copy the items.

<comment><USER7> But be careful about the lifetime of the object referenced! Just because its 'const' doesn't mean it cant go out of scope.

<comment><USER8> Local const reference prolongs the object lifetime[1]. There shouldn't be any problems whenever you use it in a for loop.

[1]: [https://herbsutter.com/2008/01/01/gotw-88-a-candidate-for- th...](https://herbsutter.com/2008/01/01/gotw-88-a-candidate-for-the-most- important-const/)

<comment><USER9> There definitely can be problems: the reference may escape the for loop, and the reference may be invalidated by a modification of the container (even for something "stable" like ordered_map, the referent may be removed).

<comment><USER10> If a pointer/reference escapes the loop you'll have problems whether the thing to the right of the colon is a reference or a copy. If it's a copy, the escaped reference will _definitely_ be invalid once that iteration complete. If it's a reference, it will remain valid in more situations.

<comment><USER9> Yes, I believe that's what I was saying, but your comment sounds like it is disagreeing. Could you clarify?

<comment><USER10> Oh, okay, then. I thought you were saying that that was a problem specific to iterating by reference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Huh, I always thought that there is an optimization to always choose the most consty and referency option possible. So if you write `auto` but don't modify the item in the loop, it may choose to use a reference / pointer under the hood, as if you wrote `auto &` or `const auto &`. But it can't strip away the `&`.

The reason is that I imagined C++ can substitute anything for auto, so it can make `auto` into a pointer to Foo, but it can't turn `auto &` into `Foo`. (In a first pass, of course due to the as-if rule the compiler can do whatever it wants when you are not looking.)

In the example the author reccommends against, `for (const auto x : range)`, I would think it means:

\- const: don't _let_ me modify x (enforce const-correctness at compile time)

\- Make a copy or reference, whatever is faster.

Particularly, I think/thought: `const` does _not_ tell the compiler to make a copy. The lack of `&` allows the compiler to make a copy.

I'm sure this interpretation is not 100% what's in the standard, but a intuition I developed from observation, so probably some of it is wrong.

<comment><USER12> _auto_ doesn't mean "make a copy or reference, whatever is faster". _auto_ first and foremost means "make a copy". Then sometimes compilers can do a trick called copy-elision and you might be working on a reference. But generally assume it's going to be a copy.

auto& means only make a reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wouldn't one want to use 'f(std::forward(x))' with 'auto&&' ?

<comment><USER14> I think the example with function application is a bad one here - moving the element potentially leaves it in an undefined state. It would be a better example if the code did something with _x_ instead of calling a function on it.

So I don't think you'd want to forward it. Note that you also need the element's type to forward it, which isn't possible in general with the example's signature.

<comment><USER15> This has been slightly confusing to me, but the syntax auto&& might not mean an rvalue reference. According to the post, it means a universal reference. I wish they would have made a different syntax. For example, with templates, my understanding is:

void somefunction(int && i) // i is an rvalue reference

template<typename T> void somefunction2(T && i) // i is a universal reference

It might be a similar thing with auto&&. So I would tentatively agree that std::forward should be used.

<comment><USER14> Yes in this case it's a universal reference, I'm aware. Universal references work with auto&&. What std::forward does is the following:

\- if you put in an rvalue reference, it's like std::move

\- if you put in anything else, it does nothing.

So my point about the article's formulation ("when you want to modify elements in the range in generic code") and its example remains.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the disadvantages programming? - <AUTHOR>

What are the disadvantages for a programmer if he is programming for past 10 years? <comment><USER2> This... isn't a coherent question. The disadvantage of programming for the past 10 years is you haven't been programming for the past 20? I have no idea what you're asking.</comment>


Ask HN: TOGAF - <AUTHOR>

Any opinion regarding TOGAF Certification?  Currently at a "plateau" of my career (14 years in Java+Web) and am considering moving forward.  Thoughts? <comment><USER2> I don't have any specific thoughts on TOGAF Certification per-se, but my overall thought is this: Any certification is only as valuable as some set of potential employers find it to be. If you can identify a set of employers, that represent organizations that you would want to work for, that value TOGAF, then it might be worth it.

Another thought is: Despite what you might get from the HN echo-chamber, I believe that there are _very_ few situations where a certification is going to _hurt_ you. The question is more, "does it help enough to pay for itself?"

Do you have any certifications now? What kind of roles are you looking to move into? I'm guessing you are thinking "architect" type roles?

Some other things to consider as ways to expand your career, depending on your current situation and where you want to go... project management, agile methodology type certifications? How about what used to be called SCEA (Sun Certified Enterprise Architect)? Or, if moving into management is on the table, how about starting to take business classes (not _necessarily_ an MBA, but something to give you a "hook" into the business side of things) or something along the lines of Six Sigma or Lean training / certification?

Do you want to be a CTO eventually? CIO? CEO? Something else?

Also consider the "elephant in the room" here on HN: entrepreneurship. Maybe you could forget TOGAF and all this stuff, and jump straight to CEO by starting your own company. Have any project ideas sitting on the back burner? Could you identify some problems you've seen in your 14+ year career and come up with some novel solutions?</comment>