The Porsche Taycan's Two-Speed Gearbox - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/electric-car-two-speed-transmission-gearbox/ <comment> compiler-guy The level of hubris here is pretty high. "No reason"? "No performance benefit"?

Porsche is spending billions of dollars to bring a very high performance track-focused sports-sedan to the market. Hundreds of extremely good engineers are getting paid millions of dollars to figure this problem out.

I'm sure the transmission is a giant set of engineering tradeoffs (what project isn't), and maybe it won't work out and will end up being the wrong solution.

But it can't be so obvious that random Joe-and-Jane HackerNews know the answer off the top of their heads and Porsche doesn't after all the resources it has spent to figure out the problem.

<comment><USER2> So, I'll just hop in here and lay out the spoiler.

There is a major performance difference in the Taycan, it's endurance, and it's highly likely this transmission is a key element to achieving it.

For those that don't know, Tesla's cars can not keep their maximum performance up for a very long time. The battery gets hot and lowers power output until it cools back down. The Taycan, while not having as impressive max specs or range (and some serious questionability about the charging claims) _CAN_ keep its maximum performance indefinitely. At least through a full discharge of the battery pack, but, also after a recharge it can keep going and they demonstrated this recently with a 24 hour marathon test drive stopping only to charge it.

So, without really getting into all the weird perception based arguments, there is clearly a difference in performance and the transmission may be critical to it.

<comment><USER3> This is more of a function of battery chemistry on the S/X - the Model 3 does not have the same power restriction under load.

<comment><USER4> Which makes Elon's promise of sending the Model S round the ring a bit confusing.

Presumably it would be a suicide run to match the Taycan, which to my understanding would involve modifications and not be eligible for the same category.

Either it was an idle boast, or we're about to see the launch of the 21700 Model S.

<comment><USER2> Once around the ring is not an issue. It's a day at the track that's a problem, not one lap. And not an issue at all if you're fine with waiting periodically while the battery temp comes back to optimal.

<comment><USER5> Do you have data for a Tesla completing a single Nurburgring lap at full speed? AFAIK they failed each time so far [https://insideevs.com/news/323053/tesla-model-s-fails-to- lap...](https://insideevs.com/news/323053/tesla-model-s-fails-to-lap- nurburgring-under-full-power-video/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a little surprising that even with a two-speed Gearbox the Taycan has neither better range nor low range 0-60 acceleration than the Tesla P100D (which has the same size battery). Obviously spec comparisons aren't the whole story and the handling and high-range acceleration may be better on the Taycan. Looking forward to seeing more comparisons and already glad to see more EV models in this category.

Edited incorrect comment about top speed.

<comment><USER7> > It's a little surprising that even with a two-speed Gearbox the Taycan has > neither better range nor low range 0-60 acceleration than the Tesla P100D > (which has the same size battery).

0-60 times probably don't matter on the track. Its probably more important to optimize the 60 to 120mph time, which is where the torque of a (single gear) electric motor begins to taper off. I bet that Taycan has superior 60-to-120mph times than any gearbox-free design, which would lead to superior track performance. Especially on a track as big as Nurburgring.

Even on highway driving, 0-60 times kind of don't matter as much as 30-60 times. (Aka: merging into a highway). The only reason to push 0-60 times is for drag-racing really.

<comment><USER8> > The only reason to push 0-60 times is for drag-racing really.

Wat? Most people care about accelerating from a standstill to the average legal speed limits.

0-60 captures that perfectly. It's incredibly relevant to the general public's driving patterns.

<comment><USER9> People rarely do a full power 0-60 with a car that can do it under 5 seconds. More likely they go from 30-60 or similar.

<comment><USER8> When a car does it silently without being overtly antisocial they do it far more often.

<comment><USER7> Leaving all the other cars next to you in the dust is quite antisocial behavior actually.

For the most part, I want to accelerate with everyone else when that green light goes off (except for Trucks: I wanna leave Trucks in the dust and get away from them ASAP). The 30mph to 60mph acceleration of off-ramp into freeway cruising speed however, is pretty important. A lot of things are going on when I merge onto a freeway, so I'd like to make sure I can accelerate in an adequate amount of time: to the point where I've (occasionally) downshift to 2nd, even in standard traffic, to get to 60mph asap.

<comment><USER10> Serious question: how is this antisocial behavior? I understand wanting to stick with the flow of traffic when you're part of the pack, but if you're in front of the pack, what's the advantage (to anyone) of hanging back?

<comment><USER7> 1\. By accelerating dramatically off the line, you're telling the other cars that they are driving too slowly.

2\. Alternatively: you may be sending a signal that you want to drag-race with someone. And nobody likes it when drag-racers start playing on public roads. Keep that stuff off the streets and on the track only.

Now sure, if the cars next to me are driving slowly, I'll leave them in the dust. But its not something I'll do on every green-light, and its something I'd do only if they're going exceptionally slowly (ex: driving 40mph in a 60mph zone)

Those are the two signals I perceive whenever someone accelerates strongly off of a green light: either #1, or #2, depending on context. There's certainly a time to signal #1, but its a relatively rare event.

<comment><USER11> If you take someone accelerating quickly from a light as a signal that you're driving too slowly, you probably drive too slowly. I don't think its a signal at all - and who really cares if it is?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Aside from not providing much of any performance benefit, this will introduce difficulty coordinating regenerative braking through the shift point.

One of my former employers had a group trying really hard to make a 2-speed for EVs make sense. It just doesn't. If there is an efficiency gain, it's probably better to throw the extra money and weight into the motor. An exception _might_ be if you want to cruise at 120+ mph for long distances, but that's not realistic.

<comment><USER13> Which part of cruising at 120+ mph for long distances is not realistic?

<comment><USER14> 1\. outside Germany, cops 2\. power scales as v^3 destroying range.

<comment><USER15> We shouldn't lose sight of #3.

3\. This is a toy we're talking about here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As I understand it, this gearbox type is key on Porche's intent to make it able to maintain performance over use rather than overheat, notably it improves acceleration and efficiency at high speed. I would expect the Taycan to use less energy to maintain 150mph.

<comment><USER17> don't you have a ton of cooling air at 150mph?

<comment><USER16> It's about efficiency at various speeds, plus having to intake more air to cool more things increases drag, the best way to improve cooling performance is to improve power use in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In dual-motor (front, rear) Tesla vehicles, each motor is on a different gear ratio for optimal power bands.

<comment><USER19> I wonder if this is part of why their dual-motor models get better range. I could see it being better for regenerative braking, too.

<comment><USER20> Not sure on the S or X but my model 3 AWD has less range than RWD. AWD is quicker by 10%.

<comment><USER21> AWD adds more weight and drive train losses.

<comment><USER22> This is only true on the Model 3. Indeed, on the S, the dual-motor variants were _more_ efficient due to different gearing. It is still unclear the community why the 3 dual motor variants are as much as 10% less efficient. It is not totally accounted for by weight, and the extra induction motor should be capable of torque sleep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> FWIW the original Tesla roadster was also a 2 speed, but they dropped the gearing as soon as they could meet their original top-speed without it.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, and it was apparently prone to breaking (I learned this from Googling just now). I was pretty sure I drove a 2-speed Roadster back in the day, but wanted to confirm that actually made it to production -- it did. (The Roadsters I drove were Tesla-owned but I'm pretty sure they were full production models).

The more things change, the more they stay the same. I remember Tesla being laughed at for this whole overpriced roadster thing, then because their transmissions were breaking, then because the 'fix' was to produce a "crippled" 1-speed car because they couldn't figure out how to make a transmission that didn't break.

And now, 10 years later, I own a 1-speed one, and, miraculously, the whole thing works on a real sedan, not just a kit car.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Once upon a time there were cars with a "normal" 4 speed (+reverse) gearbox and an added "overdrive" box (that if I recall correctly could only be used in 3rd and 4th gear), surely there were a few Triumph's and some Volvo station wagons, they had a button/switch on the gear stick that activated it electrically.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdrive_(mechanics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdrive_\(mechanics\))

This device (with all the possible evolutions in these 30 or 40 years) sounds a lot like this "overdrive" box.

<comment><USER26> Loads of cars had an overdrive and it made a significant difference to fuel economy at high speed.

I think the difference here is that the Taycan has a kind of automatic gearbox that can operate while under hard acceleration whereas, as far as I remember, you only pushed the overdrive button when you had reached cruising speed.

<comment><USER25> Yes, that is part of the evolutions I mentioned, what I meant essentially was saying that a two speed gearbox (electrically/hydraulically operated) reminds me more an overdrive box (which is actually a two speed gearbox electrically/hydraulically operated) than an actual 4/5/6 speed manual or automatic gearbox.

The actual use of the old overdrive was to lower revs of the engine (please read as save fuel) at a given speed, or (I know, not the actual intended use) to increase top speed, which is exactly what the new Taycan gearbox seemingly is used for (automatically, not manually, of course).

I remember a diesel Volvo station wagon (must have been a volvo 240 or 244) where in order to overtake someone at 120-130 kmh, the procedure was:

1) turn A/C off

2) accelerate as much as possible in 4th gear

3) push the override button

that gave just a little more speed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Interesting fact about ZF: it was founded in 1915 to make gearboxes for zeppelins.

<comment><USER28> TIL:

 _" ZF Friedrichshafen is more than 90% owned by the Zeppelin Foundation, which is largely controlled by the town of Friedrichshafen."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seems logical. I think most manufacturers have just decided that they'd rather use an over-sized motor than deal with a transmission, but if you're willing to tolerate a more complicated drive-train you get more usable power with less weight.

Using a transmission might get weird if you have multiple motors, though. For instance, it would be odd to have the front wheels in one gear and the rear wheels in a different gear, or the right rear wheel in a different gear than the left rear wheel.

<comment><USER30> From what I've read, the AWD versions of the Model 3 (possibly others) actually do this (different ratios in the front and back). As the article says, Tesla had a hard time building a transmission that wouldn't tear itself apart under the torque of the electric motors.

So, they put the front and back motors at different ratios. The back motor is used at lower speeds, and the front motor kicks in at higher speeds.

<comment><USER24> I'm not sure about the higher speeds vs lower speeds thing. Anyway, Tesla knows the gear ratios in both units, they can apply power as necessary to get the exact torque split the computer wants.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > comes mated to a motor with a maximum power rating of 140 kW

Is that a typo? The Chevy Bolt and Hyundai Kona both have 150 kW motors, and Teslas start above 200 kW.

<comment><USER22> They don't have any actual inside information about the Taycan, so they switch to talking about the ZF transmission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Many years ago I remember reading about EV conversions, and besides direct drive or keeping the existing multispeed (manual) transmission, one of the other relatively popular options was a Chevrolet Powerglide with the torque converter removed. This is a two-speed automatic from the 1950s that's known for being simple and very strong, and remains quite popular for drag racing. I suspect its popularity for EV conversions also arises from being able to handle the huge amount of torque an electric motor can exert, and the better performance of 2 speeds, so it's interesting to see Porsche also choosing a 2-speed auto for its EV.

</comment><comment><USER33> According to the article, two-speed transmissions can increase range about 5%. That is important because batteries are so expensive.

However, battery prices are falling rapidly. They dropped 35% in 2018 alone. That being the case, I am guessing most ev manufacturers will stick with single-speed powertrains, and focus their technological efforts elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER34> Porsche has to have reasons for using a gearbox but I don't think this article espouses them. The points they hit on are where Tesla's as good or better, so there must be other good reasons.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm surprised ZF/Porsche didn't turn this into an eCVT, as an eCVT (a la Prius) has probably the same complexity, but with the added benefit of having more ratios. I suspect it would also reduce shock loads on the transmission as a result of shifting.

I wish the article would have gone into this, because I suspect Porsche said no more for marketing reasons rather than technical ones, as CVTs are universally hated in car performance circles.

<comment><USER36> A CVT can't handle as much torque as a gear-based transmission.

<comment><USER35> CVT != eCVT

An eCVT is a planetary gearbox which uses a pair of electric motors to control the rotational speed of the ring and planetary gears to achieve an overall gear ratio anywhere between a minimum and maximum ratio.

It's largely the same thing as what this two-speed gearbox is, but it leverages electric motors to provide a smooth transition between two ratios, instead of using (presumably) a set of clutches and auxiliary gears to select one of two fixed ratios.

This is why this question jumped out at me immediately. On the surface, they are going with a really, really archaic, complex design over a more simple, all-electric design which is ideally suited for their application.

I can't help but think ZF started with an eCVT, then retrofited it back to being a two-speed. They must have had a good reason for this. And I wonder if it's a patent/license issue, or if there's some technical reason this wouldn't work. And I'm disappointed the article doesn't go into details on this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Currently there is no reason to put transmissions into EV's. More money should be put into the improvement of electric motors and battery tech. People care about range and reliability. While acceleration is awesome, Tesla can already achieve sub 2.5s 0-60 which is more than most anyone can handle. Adding a transmission to an EV just adds one more thing to fail and replace fluid every few years.

<comment> compiler-guy Are saying that Porsche--which is spending billions of dollars on the Taycan and its transmission--is doing this for no good reason?

"People care about range and reliability."\--Certainly some, perhaps most people, do. And Tesla serves that market very well.

But that isn't Porsche's market. Porsche's target market cares a lot about handling, and performance in track-like conditions.

<comment><USER38> > Are saying that Porsche--which is spending billions of dollars on the Taycan > and its transmission--is doing this for no good reason?

Yes, they are. They are saying that "better on a track" is a bad reason, and "it makes more money" is a bad reason.

That is not a claim that Porsche is incorrectly engineering to reach their goal, or doing anything unprofitable.

It's an opinion.

<comment><USER39> In what way is "better on track" a bad reason? Lots of cars have features which are only really useful on a track, are all of these cars needlessly complex?

<comment><USER38> A lot of people would say yes, and I would not call them objectively wrong to have that opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm amazed they spent all that R&D loot and then called it 'Taycan' \- I can't decide if it sounds more like 'toucan' or 'trashcan'.

FWIW the Wikipedia article[0] on the car has this to say about the name:

> The name Taycan, roughly translates from Turkish as "lively young horse" in > reference to the steed of the Stuttgart coat of arms on the Porsche crest.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_Taycan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_Taycan)

</comment><comment><USER41> Direct drive BLDCs have enough torque to drive anything under 1t.

A split torque design doubles that to 2t.

Tiny Chinese EVs have no problems with autobahn speeds for any amount of time.

</comment><comment><USER17> just to be sure: should I be in awe in front of a 2 speeds automotive gearbox from a 100 years old manufacturer?

it's been a few minutes and I still don't feel the tingling.

</comment><comment><USER42> What a load of bullshit. The article is making a merit out of a clutch to cover for their failing. I had to stop reading after ridiculous statements like "that 5 percent range improvement can save significant money as battery capacity" - riiiight it can save ... 5%. I'd rather pay more for the battery and save of the maintenance down the road. Serious Wired, how much did they pay you for this?

</comment><comment><USER43> > _Multispeed transmissions must be robust to deal with the massive amounts of > torque that electric motors can generate in a very short period of time, > says Shashank Sripad, a mechanical engineer also from Carnegie Mellon._

Put a manual clutch on it; problem solved. Manual boxes can be built strong.

Then make it at least a 3 speed so there is a decent H pattern there from the stick user's perspective, and so that the ratio isn't so large (it's like around 2X change¹, supposedly! That means the motor's RPM has to drop by by half on upshift and double on downshift.)

3 speeds could use a 1.44 step.

       1 3
       | |
       +--
       |  \
       2  R = V/I

\---

1\. Source: this article claims the gears are 16:1 and 8.05:1. [https://jalopnik.com/an-extremely-detailed-look-at-the- porsc...](https://jalopnik.com/an-extremely-detailed-look-at-the-porsche- taycans-engin-1837802533)

<comment><USER39> If you put a manual gearbox in it, I bet a single bad shift would tear it apart with all that torque at low RPM. Also would probably kill the clutch unless you are a really good driver, and it is hard to shift when you can't hear the engine RPM.

And I don't think manual gearboxes are any stronger than a well built automatic but I have nothing to back that up except intuition.

<comment><USER43> > _it is hard to shift when you can 't hear the engine RPM._

A third-rate hardware tinkerer could come up with a circuit that makes a motorboating sound from a speaker at the engine RPM. That could be heard just during shifting activity, like when the clutch is out.

> _Also would probably kill the clutch._

It would require a special clutch design. The clutch is not needed when starting, of course, because since the motor can generate torque right from zero RPM, the transmission can be engaged. A clutch mechanism needed when changing gears due to the mismatch in speeds that needs to be bridged. The existing two-speeder must have something serving as a clutch, just not a manually operated one.

Speaking at torque at zero RPM; can't that be modulated down somehow? Surely there must be some way of managing the motor to bring in torque gently. This must be happening already, right? I mean, electric cars don't burn rubber each time they get moving.

> _I don 't think manual gearboxes are any stronger than a well built > automatic_

That's easy; just define the requirements for "well built" so that it is so, and don't care about weight, size, and other things. The automatic transmission from a bus is probably stronger than the manual in an econobox car.</comment></comment></comment>


Team Apart (YC S08) hosts group meetings online for free - <AUTHOR> http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/team-apart-hosts-group-meetings-online-for-free/

<comment><USER2> This is where Skype should have been going all these years instead of spending time on pipe dreams with EBay integration.

I wonder how long they (Team Apart) can stay ahead ahead of the long tail of all these collaboration apps coming online. They may have great tools, but there will always be more/better/other tools you want to use.

I think the Google Wave platform approach might be more of what they should do. Provide the platform with extension points and let everyone else build the apps for you. Developers, developers, developers, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Would the founders mind sharing if they used a PR shop or if this was an organic get?

<comment><USER4> I'm not one of the founders, but Paul Boutin covered them for Venture Beat too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been using TeamApart for a few weeks now with great results. Once remote desktop sharing comes online this thing will be unstoppable.

</comment><comment><USER6> i love this product. it's really useful for remote dev stuff</comment>


Forced Windows 10 Upgrade Shuts Down PC Used by Anti-Poaching Rangers in Africa - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/forced-windows-10-upgrade-shuts-down-pc-used-by-anti-poaching-rangers-in-africa-504861.shtml <comment><USER2> The amount of churn in the computer industry is staggering and the upgrade treadmill is a huge waste of resources to many, but I suppose it's the only way for them to continue making a profit. Personally, I think Windows as an OS reached its pinnacle sometime around the XP timeframe; since then it has mostly been frustrating UI changes and feature removals, "security" features designed to lock down your PC _against_ you and instead follow the commands of some corporate entity, and massive amounts of data collection. Incidentally, that timeframe coincides with the rise of file sharing, and while the Internet certainly wasn't very safe or secure back then, it was an era of relative freedom.

I was quite disgusted when I saw that Windows 10's start menu contains _adverts_ ; maybe Microsoft realised that the average user would likely install adware themselves anyway, so they wanted to get into that industry too... all the evidence certainly supports that, including the now-well-known _closing the upgrade window indicates consent_ shady behaviour common amongst malware/adware. It's clear that MS is really, _really_ desperate to get as much users onto Win10 as they can.

To adopt a phrase MS originally used against Linux, "Windows 10 is a free upgrade only if your freedom and privacy are worth nothing."

<comment><USER3> _I was quite disgusted when I saw that Windows 10 's start menu contains adverts_

Maybe they got the idea from Ubuntu's funneling local search queries to online search engines?

<comment><USER4> Trying to equate Canonical and MS is desperate. Microsoft is undeniably worse. And Will Microsoft remove the ads? Of course not. When windows 10 first came out the only way to remove candy crush was with power shell.

[http://superuser.com/questions/958562/how-do-i-remove- candy-...](http://superuser.com/questions/958562/how-do-i-remove-candy-crush- saga-from-windows-10)

You will jump through these hoops every upgrade unless you go through and disable certain updates, which you will need to keep up with for the rest of your life.

You now have to pay a monthly fee to avoid 30 second videos in Solitaire.

<comment><USER5> Well, Ubuntu doesn't do those paid searches any more by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a sense of irony seeing this post today when just last night, as my girlfriend and I were planning a weekend trip, I asked her what OS she was using (not being familiar with anything beyond Win7), to which she responded Win8. I then asked if she planned to upgrade to Win10, noting a post I had read about MS charging for the upgrade after a certain date, to which she responded no...then a minute or two later, poof, Win10 auto-update starts...literally in the middle of a reservation transaction. She swears she never explicitly consented to the upgrade.

It's one thing to read about and discuss the issues with Microsoft's overt push to migrate the world to Win10. It's admittedly a completely different experience to see it happen right before your eyes. Some time ago, I half- committed to never owning another computer with a Microsoft OS beyond Win7, reasoning that you just never know if a useful tool may pop up that's only available for Windows. After last night's surprise, that commitment became unwavering.

<comment><USER7> As someone who held onto Win2k until it hurt, I still thought it might be a good deal back then when they offered the free upgrade from 7 to 10. I thought: I'll just wait until the last moment so I can see what kind of bugs come up. While upgrading one of my laptops to 10 to play around with it and be prepared (which was a horrible experience on it's own).

Now with the moment coming closer and seeing what they do there, I'm pretty sure I'll play the win2k game one more time with my win7 and see what comes up next. Even if I'd have to pay for it.

<comment><USER8> 1\. Backup your Windows 7 install

2\. Upgrade to Windows 10 (this associates your machine with a permanent license)

3\. Restore your backup

If/when time comes to actually upgrade, you should be able to do so (or install from scratch) using the license you acquired in step 2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As per the post[0], the upgrade did not crash the computer BUT it did download 6Gb of data over satellite-internet which can be quite expensive.

OP is having an AMA[1].

0.[https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4mcdon/i_live_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4mcdon/i_live_in_the_central_african_bush_we_pay_for/)

1.[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4mirin/i_am_the_accid...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/4mirin/i_am_the_accidental_it_guy_antipoaching_pilot_in/)

<comment><USER10> I think it's weird that so many people want to demonize Microsoft for snapping to a model that Apple has been using for a decade. I'm currently in one of those weeks where every time I wake up my iPad I have to click through two separate dialogs to tell it that, no, I don't want to install the updated version of iOS it downloaded without asking. Yet everyone is fine with this. I mean, except the Linux guys, I guess.

<comment><USER11> The difference is, iOS asks. You can say no.

There are plenty of people being force-upgraded to 10 who never consented.

<comment><USER12> >The difference is, iOS asks. You can say no.

Yeah, and then it asks again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again.. and again....

<comment><USER13> That's when you upgrade. There's no reason to stay on an older iOS.

<comment><USER14> Tell my iPad 2 that.

<comment><USER13> My iPad 2 should talk to yours. It's happy with iOS 9, if a bit slow compared to my Air 2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The windows boxes in our office have been upgrading themselves, much to everyone's dismay:

The one in the meeting room decided to upgrade and then break in the middle of a client presentation I was leading. I got my Mac and continued on, but it was embarrassing.

My colleague's machine upgraded itself overnight, and in the process deleted a bunch of files and corrupted creative suite.

I know having as many people as possible on the latest version is a good thing from a platform perspective, but in reality it's such an irresponsible thing to do. It just lets people know that Microsoft are quite happy to reach in and break their stuff at any point.

If anything it's persuaded the last few Windows holdouts in the office to switch to the Mac or Linux in short order.

<comment><USER16> Edit: Note that i am not disagreeing that MS is engaging in a dark pattern by opting-in users implicitly, and then only informing them about said opt-in having happened. The snide and snark in this post only came about because i realized rather suddenly what was actually happening, and how the misreporting and sensationalizing had skewed this whole thing in a way that the reporting helped literally nobody but people's click counters.

Know that the upgrade is not unavoidable, and if you have friends who don't want it, tell them how they can avoid it.

> The windows boxes in our office have been upgrading themselves, much to > everyone's dismay

Go around and ask which of your colleagues closed this window without actually reading it: [http://i.imgur.com/aWFX0vc.png](http://i.imgur.com/aWFX0vc.png)

<comment><USER17> Also ask them about how many bloody times prompts about upgrading have come up, again and again and again. People are not perfect robots that crunch data, fatigue sets in at some point, which is exactly what microsoft preyed on in this case. Crunching data is what we use computers for, or at least try to.

<comment><USER16> Ok, then report "MS is using dark patterns", not "Windows is upgrading on its own and there was nothing we could do to stop it". Those are both very serious failure modes, and both need to be adressed, but by obscuring which one is actually occurring you're doing nobody a favor.

<comment><USER17> Blaming the victim is doing nobody a favour either.

The distinction between "windows is upgrading on its own and there was nothing I could to to stop it [once it started]" and "microsoft used a bunch of shifty tricks to fool me into pressing a button that supposedly gave my consent, and then there was nothing I could do to stop it" becomes pretty moot, pretty fast.

Yes, the latter is technically correct, and should be the main focus. But for the victims who are wondering what the fuck just happened, a snide, "did you read the dialogue before closing it?" isn't helpful. It comes off as smug because because you consider yourself superior.

If there was more nuance to your original comment, you probably should have made it in the first place. Your one-liner only came across as snark.

<comment><USER16> > The distinction between .... becomes pretty moot

I vehemently disagree, since by identifying the actual issue you can, instead of frightening other people into fearing an automatic upgrade at any time, inform them about what is actually happening and better prepare them to prevent the same happening to them.

That said, yes, my previous comment was snide snark. At that point it was all i had upon realizing how badly the whole discourse was fucked up towards not being useful to anyone.

<comment><USER17> > > The distinction between … becomes pretty moot

> I vehemently disagree, since by identifying the actual issue you can

I understand where you're coming from. And I already agreed that what actually happened – the shifty practice to supposedly gain consent – should be the discussion. My entire sentence about the distinction is with regard to giving consent, which is what your original one-liner alluded to. Microsoft tricked people so they would have the excuse after the fact that you gave consent, when they really do no such thing.

So in most ways we probably agree on the actual issue – but your original one- liner came across as blaming the victim for being human – my reaction to it was to blame microsoft for intentional manipulation of human nature to achieve their objective, without the person's consent, against the person's desire, in a way that tries to make it look like their own fault.

If nothing else though, the snark comment prompted us both to elucidate our viewpoints and (I hope) find common ground.

<comment><USER16> > common ground

If the common ground is that we're somehow in a situation where both Windows users, and MS are being harmed, and the only people benefiting are news websites who get clicks for sensationalist headlines that do nothing to help the users, then i think we've reached it. :)

:( vvvv

<comment><USER17> Oh well, I guess not, then. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Using dark UI patterns (like dialogs without cancel button) is disrespectful to users. They bought Windows to get stable and reliable operationg system. The system that updates at night and gets drivers or software broken is nowhere near stable. Even linux (which is awful as desktop system) doesn't autoupdate.

It might be acceptable if Microsoft gave their product away for free: many free products (e.g. Sublime or Skype) include annoying autoupdate popups for non-paying users. But Windows is quite expensive software.

Microsoft's motives are just getting more paid services, getting more telemetry (for free! they do not pay for it) and maybe adding some kind of subscription in future. Recent Windows versions like 7 or 8 seem to be 'good enough' for most customers so they do not want to upgrade for free let alone buy newer versions.

And subscription is as bad as DRM.

<comment><USER19> > Even linux (which is awful as desktop system)

I disagree. Linux is great as a desktop system precisely because you're in control, not some third-party. And in terms of desktop functionality there is no meaningful difference anymore.

<comment><USER20> But the drivers problem isn't really behind them. I just purchased a lenovo laptop after reading similar comments noting the progress of linux desktop, and can't get the laptop to connect to an external monitor, despite the device being on ubuntu's certified list.

<comment><USER21> If you post your model laptop on the Ubuntu forums or on reddit.com/r/linuxquestions with your issue, you'll likely get either a solution or enough information to know how about soon support will be added for your device. It's often a solved problem just with no upstream patch yet.

<comment><USER20> Thanks. I'll give it a try.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I tune cars as as as a hobby. My current setup is based around windows xp due to driver supports (technically an embedded application). My plan was to upgrade to a windows 8 machine and emulate an xp install. But I'm not going to anymore. I tune while driving and it could be catastrophic to have the machine install updates. I'll continue with the air gapped xp machine. Too bad because I was looking forward to not using a machine that was a hundred years old.

<comment><USER23> Your decision is the correct one, but I'm pretty sure that no consumer version of Windows has ever shipped without a requirement that you shouldn't use it for real-time/safety-critical purposes.

<comment><USER22> Well, safety goes out the window when you are tuning a modified 911. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can we get this changed to the original source? Not only does the Softpedia article not add anything substantial to the original source, it's also factually inaccurate. Windows 10 wasn't installed on any of their computers, the issue was just that it racked up a huge telecom bill for caching the installer. It also didn't impede any operations or disable any computer.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4mcdon/i_live_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4mcdon/i_live_in_the_central_african_bush_we_pay_for/)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, but chewing up that bandwidth, surely it took forever and it must have slowed down some critical network functions!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The headline really should be reworded, even the article states the shutdown was a theoretical.

> _if_ a forced upgrade happened and crashed our pc's while in the middle of > coordinating rangers...

</comment><comment><USER26> I have a few computers where I have reserved the Windows 10 upgrade. I have yet to have this upgrade happen automatically.

</comment><comment><USER27> Our business's recent experience with forced upgrades

Our accounting team used Quickbooks Pro 2014 which worked on Windows 7. Then all our machines went to Windows 10, and Quickbooks no longer worked. Our accounting team basically did no work for a week while they did a combo of trying to figure out which software to migrate to (went with Quickbooks Online), recover any missing data, and make sure the data migrated successfully to the new accounting package.

The nice part of this forced migration is that Quickbooks online does not require Windows, so three less Windows boxes to support at our shop as we have moved the acct dept to Linux boxes.

The rule of unintended consequences in full effect.

</comment><comment><USER28> Have they considered upgrading to a Linux distro?

[http://distrowatch.com/](http://distrowatch.com/)

</comment><comment><USER28> This has to be the only tech site where a suggestion to use Linux results in a down vote.

<comment><USER29> MS kind of infiltrated HN in 2015, visible to HN users during the Build 2015 conference in early 2015. Coincidentally Microsoft and Y Combinator formed a partnership, [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/stevengu/2015/02/09/y-combi...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/stevengu/2015/02/09/y-combinator- and-microsoft-inspiring-ideas-through-partnership/) and somewhere I read that they formed a joint venture (but I haven't found the source again).

In 2015 a lot of new (green) sock puppet and corporate accounts appeared that down vote comments and flag stories that share not their "nice vision". The worse situation around MS all started when Gates (who is apparently still a driving force) replaced Ballmer with Nadella, a marionette. I am viewing HN using a third party front end, and every time a unfavorable MS story appears it doesn't last long on HN until it gets flagged - no other company story is handled that negatively or flagged in any way that often. So there is a clear pattern behind it. To make my point clear, also this story quickly vanished from the HN frontpage. And I would have no chance to even know about it. HN used to be a better site :(

<comment><USER30> Microsoft has no special status on Hacker News. It's true that HN sees a flurry of MS stories on their big conference day, but it's also true of Google, Apple, and Amazon's annual conference days, and maybe others. That's how they all like to do their big tech announcements. Each time it happens, people complain that HN has fallen into the clutches of MS|Google|Apple|Amazon, but nothing has changed at our end. Actually we _raise_ the bar a bit on those days so that only 3 or 4 such stories stay on the front page instead of 7 or 8. They'd probably get more attention overall if they staggered their releases through the year.

There have been a lot of unfavorable stories about MS on HN, including recently. We don't do anything special to penalize them, nor do we let users abuse flagging in the way you suggest. In fact the Windows 10 update nagware saga has appeared numerous times on HN's front page, including multiple stories about clicking 'x' on the dialog box, how it screwed some African satellite operators, etc. The current one fell suddenly off the front page because of software (it set off the flamewar detector).

If MS "infiltrated" HN, it's news to me and I'd like to know about it. It's our job to protect the integrity of this place for the community and we take it seriously. When we see gaming and manipulation we crack down on it hard. But actually the BigCos aren't the ones who do such things. They're (rightly) too risk-averse.

If you think you see evidence of manipulation you should email us at email@example.com. When we get emails like that we always look into it.

<comment><USER29> Look: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11845741](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11845741)

This MS story from today also vanished from the frontpage quickly.

I contacted HN (you), I highlighted several vanished posts. You mentioned you see no pattern or unusual activities.

Also this one vanished: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11846199](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11846199)

<comment><USER30> Those stories fell off the front page because of software that penalizes overheated threads, which tend to be shallow and sensational. That software has been running for years.

Even if an automatic penalty hadn't kicked in, moderators would have penalized that first link (even if we personally agree with what it says). First, it's a duplicate that adds no new information over previous incarnations of the story (which have already appeared more than once on the front page, already an indulgence and certainly not a pro-MS one). Second, it's a garden-variety riler-upper, and those aren't a good fit for HN, as should be well known by now.

None of these mechanisms has anything to do with Microsoft. I'm pretty sure that the bias you're arguing for doesn't exist at our end. How sure are you that you're not simply noticing things because they fit your interpretation?

<comment><USER29> Ok, fair enough. It's certainly a fine line. Though, a company is playing a not so nice but well known game, a game it is known for decades. And one can see how reasonable objective comments get downvoted and highly opinionated pro-biased comments get upvoted to influence the audience. And about stories, you rarely see objective stories about that company, because the fear to loose ads or the big gorilla and its lawyers. I will continue using a third party frontend, as HN frontpage hides some of the "heated discussions" or "high voted stories" that got flagged a lot too. But I am here because of the insightful comments and stories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> In their quest to remain relevant and join the 1 Billion install club for their latest OS they're using every trick in the book to fool users into upgrading their OS just so that they can meet their timelines. What they didn't account for was the backlash and rage their malware inspired tactics would ignite. Forcing people to upgrade to Windows 10 against their wishes is despicable and disgusting.

</comment><comment><USER32> For f*cks sake.

What about "Unpatched Windows PC shuts down N instances of x,y or z due to worm/virus/malware," which is a headline far more common than this completely ridiculous headline.

This is the technological equivalent of that one person pontificating and whining on about someone who once knew someone who died in a car crash BECAUSE they WERE wearing their seat belt.

Back before updates were forced, users have proven themselves too clueless to manage their own PCs. I don't care what people do as long as they are not connected to the internet. It's a shared resource.

<comment><USER33> For security updates, yes. But this is not a security update. Upgrades that completely change the UI, alter the set of programs that are capable of running on the platform (potentially disabling critical software), and add new processes that do things behind the scenes that you might not want (like monitoring/tracking etc.), and may not even be compatible with your hardware are another thing entirely.

Updates or upgrades should only be forced when backwards compatibility is preserved.</comment></comment>


Does text shadow increase text legibility - <AUTHOR> http://strd6.com/2010/11/does-text-shadow-increase-text-legibility/

<comment><USER2> "Does white text on white background become more readable if you add some black to the outside of the text?"

Shocking results!

<comment><USER3> That post was way more interesting than you gave it credit for.

<comment><USER4> Not really. Real world examples would have been more useful. I don't see anyone arguing that white on white text is hard/easy to read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everybody's right. Science wasn't necessary, it's obviously useful in a limited set of circumstances. (One could argue that such text without contrast shouldn't exist, but that's easier said than done in a dynamic environment such as a game.) Zed's still right in the way he meant it, which was not about those limited sets of circumstances.

In other news, the well-known true statement "the sky is blue" isn't actually true. Right now it's black, studded with these little white spots. But we still know what that means. Context.

</comment><comment><USER6> The utility of text shadow really lies in the 3D aspect of it. If you have white text, adding a black text-shadow at -1px distance makes the text look inset. With black text, a white text-shadow at 1px distance works too.

It enhances contrast... and looks sexy. Win-win.

</comment><comment><USER7> Those are sort of outrageous examples.

I find text shadow helps when I've got the contrast between the type and the background a little close. Text shadow can be used to subtly improve the contrast just around the letters. Done right users don't consciously know there is a text shadow but legibility is improved while maintaining a mellow set of colors.

To be explicit, in HTML-5 land I would be talking about something like a 1 to 4 pixel wide shadow with say an hsla(0,0%,0%,0.25) color to darken a background around some lighter text.

</comment><comment><USER8> _"I think there's quite a bit of promise in the technique of using "real" statistical evidence to back up claims."_

That, or, you got punked into blasting a hundred bucks by Zed Shaw via Twitter...

<comment><USER9> $10.50

But practicing science with simple, practically trivial, experiments can make it easier to do real science on more difficult examples in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> <http://socket.io/> is a good example of it making it harder to read.

<comment><USER10> I don't know, the contract between the background and the text is low already, so making it worse would be kind of hard.

I like using a drop shadow on headings or other important bits of text that have been placed on something that causes the contrast to be low. But I try to make it so it is not obvious it is there, just subtle.

<comment><USER11> I just tried turning off the shadow there and the text is _much_ more readable. It's actually plain white text but the 1px black drop shadow makes it more difficult to read against the blue background.</comment></comment></comment>


How to Save the Troubled Graphene Transistor - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/518426/how-to-save-the-troubled-graphene-transistor/ <comment><USER2> > Last year, one team clocked a graphene transistor at a cool 427 GHz.</comment>


A Statistical Analysis of the LearnedLeague Trivia Competition - <AUTHOR> http://toddwschneider.com/posts/statistical-analysis-of-learnedleague-trivia-competition

<comment><USER2> Nice writeup. I may have missed this, but how did you get the data? Did you scrape the site?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did, though I asked permission from the Commissioner first</comment></comment>


46% of 2015 Tech IPOs Are Underwater, 62% Under Their First Day Closes - <AUTHOR> https://mattermark.com/46-2015-tech-ipos-underwater-62-first-day-closes/ <comment><USER2> I'm too lazy to go find a source, but this is about on par with IPOs in general by my recollection. In fact, for all IPOs, I thought the number was even higher than that. But my number comes from ten or so years ago, and it comes from an unreliable memory.

EDIT: well, here's one article pinning it at 68%. But it still seems tech- heavy, and it's the Huffington Post, so take it FWIW. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/10/2011-ipos-are- under...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/10/2011-ipos-are- underwater_n_976291.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> You would expect an efficient market to set prices such that they have the same EV as other options, so this is not surprising or disappointing. And you'd expected the median to be a money-loser if there's a skewed distribution.</comment>


Does your brain have a mind of its own? - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-marcus4-2008may04,0,5015266.story <comment><USER2> I seem to have a whole schoolyard of inner children running around in there. Does that count?

More seriously:

"But merely adequate solutions (what engineers call "kluges") -- like the awkward, injury-prone human spine, good enough but far from perfect -- can stick around indefinitely if better solutions are too far away on the evolutionary landscape."

Compare this to the dictum, "Do the simplest thing possible that works."

Are "merely adequate solutions " always kluges? I think not.

</comment><comment><USER3> after being familiar with Jungian psychometrics, a lot of these things seem off. for example, there are personality types that are easily distracted (eg ENFJ), and there are types that are impossible to distract (eg INTJ)

that's beside the point of the article, but often reading these things is like watching someone trying to do arithmetic with roman numerals instead of the much more arithmetic-friendly arabic notation

</comment><comment><USER4> Gah! Infinite recursion.</comment>


How To Take Advantage Of The System - <AUTHOR> http://maneeshsethi.com/blog/how-to-take-advantage-of-the-system-free-webinar/

<comment><AUTHOR> Some cool things you'll learn in this presentation:

* How to travel the world for free (with $7500 in free tickets)

* How to become a "Famous" DJ in berlin

* How to make 1000EUR / night and get 400+ people to your club by buying facebook ads

and much more awesome :)</comment>


Colorado Man Challenges Evidence Collected Secretly Through Surveillance Law - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/01/29/268437919/colo-man-challenges-evidence-collected-secretly-through-surveillance-law

<comment><USER2> Now it would be great if there was a certain court in Texas that votes in favour of citizens for every Patriot/FISA Act court case, just like there is one for patent trolls.

<comment><USER3> Defendants win the majority of patent cases in Texas.

<comment><USER4> I think that is incorrect. Patent holders win almost 60% of patent cases in East Texas, as opposed to the national average of just over 30%. Delaware is almost as bad.

Patent trolls or NPEs win at a much higher there as well - 45% versus 20%.

( [http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2013/09/19...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the- switch/wp/2013/09/19/why-do-patent-trolls-love-east-texas-and-delaware-they- win-more-there/) )</comment></comment></comment>


Inside Amazon's dynamo - the Distributed Storage System *behind* S3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/10/inside_amazons.php <comment><USER2> I think both Werner Vogels and the paper itself were pretty clear that this was _NOT_ the basis for S3. This line from section 1 is pretty telling even had they not spoken up on this:

"To meet the reliability and scaling needs, Amazon has developed a number of storage technologies, of which the Amazon Simple Storage Service (also available outside of Amazon and known as Amazon S3), is probably the best known. This paper presents the design and implementation of Dynamo, another highly available and scalable distributed data store built for Amazon's platform."

More supporting evidence from section 2.1:

"Dynamo targets applications that need to store objects that are (usually less than 1 MB)."

S3 allows individual objects up to 5GB in size. This in and of itself does not rule out Dynamo being the underlying store for S3 but does certainly lend weight to what Werner and the paper's authors have claimed regarding S3's origin.</comment>


The Story of Tailwind - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/adamwathan/status/1289645193038192641 <comment><USER2> I'm a fan of Tailwind, but this same content was posted less than a day ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24031290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24031290)</comment>


Will You Ever Be Able to Upload Your Brain? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/will-you-ever-be-able-to-upload-your-brain.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> The author seems to have written the article on the assumption that it will be humans figuring out a brain upload mechanism.

While his time frame estimates might be sound given that context, I'd argue they're wildly inaccurate given a more likely scenario: such things will be brought into existence first via a super-intelligent agent, if at all.

If that proves to be the case, the time frame for brain uploading becomes roughly bound to the advent of AGI. When that happens, the same entity capable of creating our brain upload mechanism would likely be capable of endowing humans with effectively immortal bodies just the same.

In other words, technology like this is almost certainly going to be part of a post-singularity world (assuming there is a singularity in the first place), and who knows what that will look like.

<comment><USER3> There is a huge range from slightly smarter than human AI vs the kind of 'magic' AI it would take to make the singularity happen. An AI that's 10% smarter than any human would probably not be that noticeable outside of testing, as it's not obvious who the smartest person in a room is. And it would take a decade of study to catch up to the cutting edge on just one field. 10x that and your doubling the rate of progress that a single person was making, but that's not really going to change much.

Suppose we develop an AI that's 100x better than that, or 10 times as fast as any person as in they can do in 1 hour what it would take a highly trained and educated person 10 hours to do. Well, after a year or two they could probably be roughly as capable as a really good 20 person team due to lower communication overhead, but adding one more 20 person team is not going to change the world much. A million of them, might double the rate that the world progresses, but that's both a long time coming and probably not going to change things much.

To really get the singularity type progress, you need an AI that can make it's self smarter though better software and hardware, which seem like a far harder problem than just building a working AI. After all what if the first thousand just want to sit around and read Fan-fiction all day.

<comment><USER2> Most fast-takeoff AGI scenarios usually involve a singular intelligence created from an algorithm that easily scales based on how much computing power is allocated to it.

Combined with the notion of computing overhang[0], it's possible that our very first AGI could far exceed human intelligence, such that it would have capacity for rapid self-improvement right from the start.

I'm not saying this will necessarily be the case; slower takeoff scenarios are certainly a possibility, albeit an unlikely one (IMHO).

Another point to consider is that computing hardware is vastly superior to the human brain both in its capacity for raw calculation, and its sheer speed in terms of raw latency.

Keeping that in mind, assume we have created an AGI simulation that's approximately equal in complexity relative to the human brain. Not intelligence, just complexity of the simulation itself.

Now consider that AGI is not bound by biological constraints, and would not necessarily be structured in similar fashion to the human brain. This lends itself to potentially far more efficient architectures, and with that, the realization of AGI at a computational cost far below that of simulating a complete human brain.

Moreover, given a completely alien architecture, it's not hard to imagine the cognitive side of such a simulation interfacing rather directly with traditional modes of computation.

To illustrate, imagine comparing a human being to an identical human being that has a microprocessor integrated into their brain. Both humans may have nearly identical capacity for abstract intelligence, but the one with the microprocessor is going to be effectively far more intelligent, simply because their capacity for dealing with raw data and calculations is vastly superior. It's not hard to imagine a similar dynamic coming into play with AGI.

[0] [http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Computing_overhang](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Computing_overhang)

<comment><USER4> > Most fast-takeoff AGI scenarios usually involve a singular intelligence > created from an algorithm that easily scales based on how much computing > power is allocated to it.

Still, it's pretty easy to imagine this not resulting in the sort of "runaway" intelligence most often associated with the notion of singularity. What if general intelligence is inherently extremely computationally complex? Imagine that the level of intelligence is represented by a number n, and say that human intelligence is n=100. If the computational complexity of intelligence is, say, O(1000^n), we won't expect to see hardware that's twice as intelligent as humans any time soon even if we know the algorithm.

<comment><USER2> If that were the case, I would agree we would be quite far away from simulated human-level cognition.

My main point was that either we have the computational capacity, or we do not. If we do, the chances of overshooting the human-level mark by a large margin are quite high, hence the risk.

Another angle on this is that perhaps human cognition has an unnecessarily high degree of computational complexity, a degree that's far above the threshold required for an AGI to be dangerous.

The Paperclip Maximizer[0] is an excellent example of this. Perhaps due to low computational complexity of its architecture, the thing wouldn't even be sentient in any sense of the word, and yet it'd still be perfectly capable of destroying the world.

Why? Because its initial intelligence would be determined by the amount of computing power allocated to it. Allocate enough computing power, and assuming you've passed the magic threshold, it would start allocating itself computing power in short order.

Perhaps what we should fear most is not sentient AGI capable of thought similar to humans, but AGI that's a structured amalgamation of existing AI technology—if only because the latter is far more likely to be feasible first.

[0] [http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think discussions around this are ill-served by the "upload" metaphor, as it somewhat implies that the new brain, the original brain, and the uploading process are all largely separate things. It seems much more likely to me that the new brain will take the form of an augmentation that survives the death of the original brain. The personality would be "uploaded" not by deliberately sampling parameters to feed a model, but by the new brain organically (heh) becoming a component and embodiment of the existing personality. I'm sure this isn't a new idea, but I don't know what it's called.

<comment><USER6> This is similar to the Moravec Transfer [1], a proposed method of (slowly) transitioning to a non-biological brain. Indeed the whole concept of "the self" is important to maintain, even if it is to some degree an illusion.

1\. [http://everything2.com/title/Moravec+Transfer](http://everything2.com/title/Moravec+Transfer)

<comment><USER7> There is no guarantee that the subject will not lose a bit of consciousness on every neuron that is being replaced (even if, to outsiders, it appears not to be the case).

<comment><USER5> I would expect a hybrid meat-computer personality to notice that at some point in the transition. If not -- if consciousness is so profoundly ethereal that a person's own consciousness can be gradually replaced with a simulated one without the person themselves even noticing -- then what's the difference between the "real" consciousness and the simulation?

<comment><USER8> >then what's the difference between the "real" consciousness and the simulation?

Well, isn't that the whole idea? Objectively, there is no difference. If there was, uploading wouldn't ever be possible.

The only potential difference is the subjective impression of "this consciousness that I am now is the same consciousness that I was yesterday" versus "this new consciousness is an exact clone of mine, but is not really 'me'".

This incremental upload technique simply tricks your subjective self into thinking there is absolutely no change in continuity.

<comment><USER9> _> This incremental upload technique simply tricks your subjective self into thinking there is absolutely no change in continuity._

In other words, your subjective consciousness is somehow changed but you can't subjectively tell? What does that even mean?

<comment><USER8> These are tiny, atomic, piecemeal changes that happen slowly over time.

If one of your neurons randomly dies right this instant, you would probably not subjectively notice, even though that neuron composes your subjective consciousness. Your neural network is highly redundant and fault-tolerant.

<comment><USER9> Yes, neurons in our brains are dying every day, but it doesn't affect our subjective consciousness. Are you simply saying that uploading, if it were done carefully, would not make any more difference to our subjective consciousness than neurons dying every day?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I look at efforts to synthesize the human brain within a computer I see an effort to make a synthetic bird rather than a machine that flies.

If this analogy has any use as a model beyond a cursory observation then a focus on machines that solve hard problems will bear more fruit and earlier (maybe ever) than attempts to fully replicate the human brain.

Today is it possible to build an (outwardly) anatomically correct and functioning sparrow (in all respects) out of synthetic materials? I don't know but surely it is hard. To make one certainly would have been impossible for the Wright brothers.

Today we have things like the F22, A380, and little drones. Each is quite complex but the complexity accreted over time, each layer a pragmatic solution to a problem at hand.

If we take the same approach what kind of "thinking machine" might we end up with in 100 years time?

<comment><USER11> Thinking (or thoughts) are different from consciousness. A simple experiment can tell you this. Sit silently and observe your mind. You'd see thoughts keep on popping up, if you don't indulge with them, each would fade away quickly. If you do indulge, you get on a ride of similar chain of thoughts. This riding is termed as "thinking".

IMO the neuron pathways that exist in our physical brain are determined based on "rides of thoughts" we have taken in our life so far. But there's no visual or physical proof to locate the consciousness that does this observation and takes the ride.

So uploading brains means uploading only "the experiences" you have got in your life but as long as the rider isn't there, these are just mere memories with no further rides possible.

<comment><USER12> Are you advocating for an immaterial soul?

<comment><USER13> Is there any other kind of soul? It sounds like kr4 is arguing for consciousness as a higher order emergent phenomenon separate from (but built atop) thoughts.

<comment><USER12> I mean, it sounds like they're saying that the physical (and thus uploadable) brain is not itself conscious, but only a highway for thoughts to ride on and a storehouse for memories. That clearly implies that there's a non-physical thing that is actually conscious, whose existence kr4 takes on "gut feeling" despite lack of evidence.

If consciousness is an emergent phenomenon of the physical properties of the brain, then surely it will also emerge from a sufficiently accurate simulation of those physical properties.

<comment><USER13> > If consciousness is an emergent phenomenon of the physical properties of the > brain, then surely it will also emerge from a sufficiently accurate > simulation of those physical properties.

It's possible, but it may not be the "same" consciousness, and indeed, may not even consider itself to be. Perhaps better terminology to explore this line of theory would be to replace "thoughts" with "memories" and "consciousness" with "self".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > We all find our own solutions to the problem death poses.

No! No body does this. People make up excuses. People spin death to be a positive, often under some guise of Deep Wisdom. People come up with all sorts of ways to _cope_ with death, but calling any of them a solution is just false. Death is a vile, atrocious thing, the biggest enemy humanity has.

We don't say that slaves all found solutions to slavery. Or that everyone finds solutions to domestic abuse. Or solutions to dementia or Alzheimer's. Death is a far greater evil.[1] So how disgusting is it to say everyone finds a solution.

I admit the author probably didn't intend to imply this, but it's exactly that kind of thinking that we should be aware of and fight. Just because it seems inevitable, we should not make it socially acceptable to give up and view death as anything but the wickedness it is.

1: Yes there are atrocities worse than death, but many of those involve death, or are worse because of the limited timespans caused by death. Apart from having your mind destroyed, I'm guessing most things would be healed by rather long periods of time, than sufferers would prefer a period of suffering+long OK life, vs suffering+death.

<comment><USER15> A world without death is a world where flowers _never_ change into fruit, a world where fruit _never_ change into a new plant. Remember there's a theory of the universe ending in heat death, where entropy is maximum, where there is no more change possible. To prevent death is to prevent change, and you bring about a world, in the long term, becomes changeless, like a giant museum, flowers and fruit and plants stay in the same state and never age, caterpillars never turn into butterflies, where squid never mate and reproduce, everyone immersed in their VR, day after day, for eternity. Philosophically, what difference is that to the heat death of the universe then?

The experience after death is exactly the same as the experience before birth. Was it a vile, atrocious thing you weren't born until you were? Death is about returning to that state. The disintegration of your mind is the mirror image of the creation of it. A world where you have left without right, top without bottom, beginning without end is like the universe before the big bang, or the universe after the heat death, where we, you, me, and everything else, is returned to being one.

Lengthening life span? That's a different matter. But I can tell you, you will never stop death from happening. It's perfectly acceptable to accept death will happen, and more isn't always better. ;)

<comment><USER16> If death is so noble and necessary, why should anyone have a problem with murder? Why should we bother trying to cure diseases? Do you think the world was twice as dynamic and full of vitality 100 years ago, when the global average life expectancy was half what it is today?

I don't think making people immortal would "prevent change" because there are plenty of kinds of change that don't involve ending a person's life without their consent. Is that not obvious?

<comment><USER15> Death happens, if not now then when entropy is at maximum, and birth happens too. Murder happens, and people angry at murders also happen. Diseases happen, and cures for diseases happen also. People go to work late happens, people go to work on time happens too. People fall in love and is rejected happens, and people fall in love and is reciprocated happens also. If you were to tell me what life is, that's life. That's vitality. You can have both left and right, good and bad, or nothing. There is duality, and then there is oneness, and you can't have one without the other. Life is duality, non-life is oneness. Maximum oneness is maximum entropy.

<comment><USER17> > If you were to tell me what life is, that's life.

That boils down to "life is stuff happening", which is true, useless, and does nothing to answer the question posed. It is trivially obvious that it's impossible to stop _all_ death, or even all human death, so I think it's also obvious that what's being talked about is not the elimination of death, but the elimination of the current main cause of death, which is aging.

<comment><USER15> I was replying to MichaelGG's statement:

 _Just because it seems inevitable, we should not make it socially acceptable to give up and view death as anything but the wickedness it is._

As I said before,

        Lengthening life span? That's a different matter.

EDIT: Reply to below, that's a good explanation, thanks. I don't think I could come up with it so clear and succinct, if I could I would have!

<comment><USER17> Yes, I was trying to address specifically that I think you are arguing a points with is somewhat orthogonal to the current discussion, because both are using similar terms to mean different things. Your terminology is more correct (you are addressing death as a specific concept, and it's inevitability), while they are addressing age extension, possibly to it's logical conclusion a the end of the universe, but using "death" to denote that, when it's obvious there are other causes of death that cannot be stopped.

In other words, I think there is no real difference of opinion, just a difference in terms making it seem so. This appears to have been exacerbated slightly through your flowery description of your point, which I take to be: "Death of is impossible to stop in the end, and giving the false impression that it is may be harmful. That said, if we can retard it in humans to a large degree, that's useful. Additionally, death serves a useful purpose in many systems, so we shouldn't lose sight of this."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So, my concern about uploading my brain, is whose cloud service do you trust to run your consciousness? Google? Microsoft? Amazon? Facebook? Apple?

The level of trust that I'd require is pretty high. You could imagine it once again being relevant to check the pedigree of a company. Ideally there'd be a cloud provider already running now that is known for its trustworthiness. 'established 2013' might actually mean something one day.

My main hope is for indistinguishability encryption to reach the level where I wouldn't really have to trust the provider, but as long as you pay a significant performance penalty you're going to end up massively disadvantaged.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E)

</comment><comment><USER19> 'When the construct laughed, it came through as something else, not laughter, but a stab of cold down Case's spine. `Do me a favor, boy.' `What's that, Dix?' `This scam of yours, when it's over, you erase this goddam thing.'

<comment><USER17> It's approaching two decades since I read Neuromancer. I think it's time to revisit, since I barely remember it. Amazingly enough though, I still have very distinct memories of the CGA graphics and some situations from the game. The coffin hotel, the diner, pawning organs. And I played that a decade before I read the book. How has nobody remade this game yet, with the indie resurgence of adventure games?

<comment><USER20> If you want a hard science-fiction novel about digital humans you could read Greg Egan's Permutation City, it's a masterpiece.

<comment><USER14> Greg Egan is fantastic; I particularly liked his short stories.

One should note that he says people shouldn't expect to just sit down and read a book, but should use a pencil and paper to help figure things out. Though that doesn't apply so much to Permutation City, it does to other stuff like Orthogonal and Incandescence. (From what I've heard Schild's Ladder, too).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> While I have no hard evidence for this, I expect we will eventually find that human intelligence and consciousness depends heavily on quantum effects. Thus it will always be impossible to scan and upload a human brain in a way that captures the essence of a person's mind.

Even though I don't think it will ever happen I enjoyed reading the hard science fiction novel "Hegemony" by Mark Kalina. It presents an interesting vision of what life would be like in the far future with mind uploading.

[http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/atomicnovel.php](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/atomicnovel.php)

<comment><USER22> > expect we will eventually find that human intelligence and consciousness > depends heavily on quantum effects. Thus it will always be impossible to > scan and upload a human brain in a way that captures the essence of a > person's mind

And you have a strong reason to believe that emulating or implementing those quantum effects in a structure other than the human brain is impossible?

As a secondary argument - if an reacts to all stimuli and behaves in all ways exactly as the corresponding human would, claiming that it "lacks the essence of a person's mind" prompts a pretty obvious (and well-considered) question.. how do I know you're not just an essence-less entity that acts exactly like a Real Human would act?

Or are you claiming that correct emulation of a human's behavior is impossible, because 'quantum'?

<comment><USER21> At some point in the far future we may be able to implement an AGI as a quantum computer. However I don't think we will ever be able to scan and upload an existing human mind into that computer; there isn't even any theoretical way to measure and store the whole quantum state.

<comment><USER22> I suspect you aren't all that familiar with quantum mechanics - you seem to think that an object as complex as a brain could have a single quantum state (true) that cannot be decomposed into many orthogonal localized systems (extremely unlikely).

There isn't a theoretical way (yet) to measure and store the whole _electrical_ state either - why bring quantum mechanics into it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [http://www.brainpreservation.org/ken-hayworths-personal- resp...](http://www.brainpreservation.org/ken-hayworths-personal-response-to- mit-technology-review-article/)

</comment><comment><USER24> So, to justify their "just accept death, guys" conclusion, the author makes broad sweeping statements like "details quite likely far beyond what any method today could preserve in a dead brain" without providing any specific arguments about the limitations of vitrification whatsoever. Not even a bald assertion that "cryonics fails to preserve structure X". Yup. Okay.

</comment><comment><USER25> Assuming that the ability to upload our entire brain to a computer will not be available during out current lifetime, what about the idea of mass data collection of our experiences, storage of this data, then periodically run improving algorithms that combine all our experiences into a consciousness?

This would maybe involve wearing a camera 24/7 to record everything we see and hear, and also some feedback on our own inner thoughts and our own recording of our emotional responses to things. When we finally die, a computer crunches all this data using neural networks to create a consciousness based on our life experiences and emotional responses.

This would initially be maybe not fantastic, but as technology progresses the crunching of the source data improves and every decade a new iteration of our consciousness can be produced, hopefully coming closer and closer to the real us.

</comment><comment><USER26> Permutation City by Greg Egan explores what it would mean if you could easily upload your consciousness but wealth meant access to better, faster, hardware to store it.

<comment><USER27> His short story, _Learning to be me_ , is a really great piece exploring a related technology. Recommended!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> An additional complication is the role of the billions of glial cells that are present in the brain. Their function of supporting neurons is quite well characterised, but they can also more specifically modulate neuronal function, so their place in a comprehensive connectome model shouldn't be ignored.

Then there is the network of vasculature, the flow of cerebrospinal fluid, interactions with hormones, and just generally all the interfacing with other bodily systems. All this would have to measured and modelled somehow too, in addition to all the billions of neurons.

I agree with the author, there's no way all this is going to solved any time soon.

</comment><comment><USER29> What would I do with an uploadable version of my brain? I'd send it off to an accelerated university where it can learn at a rate far faster than I ever could. Plus, if we could upload a brain, then there's a good chance that we understand how to manipulate the state of an existing brain. So after my brain has graduated, we'll simply upload that virtual brain's state back into my skull! All this would take about 2-3 min tops? But somehow I imagine this will still cause university enrollment prices to climb. It's student loans all the way down.

<comment><USER30> It's actually interesting to consider the divergent paths followed by a merge scenario presented here. If we assume that uploaded-you is put through a simulated "going to university" experience, then it's a few years older than you are. Even if it was _only_ simulating classes and studying, somehow turning off any "human" needs for social interaction and enteratinment, it's had years of time to think new thoughts, assimilate new ideas, and become a fundamentally different person.

If it's completely overwriting your brain's current state, then you're replacing yourself with someone similar to you but who'll be _obviously_ different to anyone who knows you.

If it's more a merge scenario, then you're (effectively) killing yourself and the copy, and maybe the copy won't want to rejoin you if it means losing its own distinct state.

Continuity of consciousness is weird to think about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A couple of quibbles with the article:

>While progress is swift, no one has any realistic estimate of how long it will take to arrive at brain-size connectomes. (My wild guess: centuries.)

It's not so hard to estimate. Just extrapolate progress on scanning, computing etc. About 2050 plus or minus a couple of decades. We had a 20um scan in 2013 and you'd probably want to get that down to 20nm for a connectome so if you assume resolution doubling every couple of years that would be about 2035.

(2013 scan: [http://io9.com/see-the-first-ultra-high- resolution-3d-scan-o...](http://io9.com/see-the-first-ultra-high- resolution-3d-scan-of-the-ent-514395280)

Images showing neural connections: [http://book.bionumbers.org/how-big-is-a- synapse/](http://book.bionumbers.org/how-big-is-a-synapse/))

Of course as the article points out a connectome misses a lot of chemical detail.

>It will almost certainly be a very long time before we can hope to preserve a brain in sufficient detail and for sufficient time that some civilization much farther in the future, perhaps thousands or even millions of years from now, might have the technological capacity to "upload" and recreate that individual's mind.

Or quite possibly we can do it just now for $30k or so by sticking the body in liquid nitrogen. ([http://www.cryonics.org/membership/](http://www.cryonics.org/membership/) ). Maybe that won't work but maybe it will.

<comment><USER32> A couple of quibbles with this: microscopy technology doesn't advance that quickly, certainly not doubling every few years.

A new, entirely different technology is far more likely than creeping improvements, as in semiconductors. However, these are far harder to predict.

<comment><USER31> I was thinking about the details. We have good enough microscopes already resolution wise but to cut up a brain fine enough and picture it with existing electron microscopes would take ages, probably centuries with current tech so it needs a speed improvement more than anything. Also a 20nm scan could produce an awful lot of data ~ a billion TB which could be an issue even allowing for Moores law. Still there's quite a lot of research money going it to this stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> With modern ML techniques it looks feasible to recreate at least online behavior of an individual - facebook likes, comments etc. The datasets are here, in facebook/google datcenters, and DL models are already used to model conversation. It would be interesting to know just how many megabytes of logs of your online activities is really necessary to extrapolate your behavior into the future.

Facebook AI research is probably playing with such models right now.

<comment><USER33> Eh? Humans are not fixed entities, they adapt and learn. You can't extrapolate into the future based on my previous anything. Six-year-old me can't tell you who thirty-six year-old me is.

<comment><USER20> Given enough data and a good model (recurrent neural network can model arbitrary algorithms, for example) you can learn algorithmic regularities in data, including learning itself. There is a paper just about that: [http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F3-540-44668-0_13#...](http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F3-540-44668-0_13#page-1)

If this can be scaled to human-like learning remains to be seen, but training a conversation RNN model that remembers some details of past conversations and acts on them should be possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> TL:DR; The brain is very complex so it will take long, I don't know how long and I don't dare to make an estimate, but, as I'm getting older I am more and more at peace with dying.

</comment><comment><USER29> I sense this will be one of those articles that will be a perfect example of someone who had a very firm position against progress is clearly proven wrong. I wonder if we could automatically flag articles like these based on the number of tautologically negative arguments that appear...

</comment><comment><USER35> Upload my brain, so people in the future can use it as a DIY kit for Artificial Intelligence?

This article sounds a lot like SOMA the video game. brain scans, uploading your brain, etc [http://somagame.com/](http://somagame.com/)

</comment><comment><USER36> i find it hard to imagine how to replicate the smaller connections of my brain, and the inter-connections that they all have. With that being said, i hope that it could be done, because i would be super down, and would want to be uploaded into the net.

<comment><USER20> Small volume of mouse cortex is already successfully scanned at 3x3x20nm voxel resolution, with smallest synaptic details being visible [http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674(15)00824-7](http://www.cell.com/abstract/S0092-8674\(15\)00824-7) The tool is called ATLUM. The process could be scaled up.

<comment><USER37> Yeah, it's fundamentally not "this is impossible" but "this is very hard and expensive", and very hard and expensive tasks have a remarkable way of becoming cheaper and easier over the long term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Great Mambo Chicken and The Transhuman Condition

[http://www.amazon.com/Great-Mambo-Chicken-Transhuman- Conditi...](http://www.amazon.com/Great-Mambo-Chicken-Transhuman- Condition/dp/0201567512)

Very interesting book.

</comment><comment><USER39> How would you program mind if you were writing a simulation?

</comment><comment><USER40> seems hardly worth the trouble. don't flatter yourself your brain needs to stay around - highly unlikely and very un-ecological to power up a machine to maintain a presence of virtualitzed shit for brains. -Just saying. Next Question?

<comment><USER31> > seems hardly worth the trouble

Assuming it works well why not keep in touch with the loved ones. Funerals are so gloomy. Why not an upload party? You could make the virtual environment like the versions of heaven in the various religious books and have that stuff for real rather than make believe.

<comment><USER41> Not just heaven. If the right religious nutjobs get ahold of an upload...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_Detail)

<comment><USER2> You need not look to fiction in order to be completely terrified:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Transhumanist_Associati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_Transhumanist_Association)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


ETHletter – set up the price for incoming emails [beta] - <AUTHOR> ETHletter is a mail service - like Gmail, Yahoo mail or any other. But there's one big difference - during the email creation, you can set up the price for 1 incoming email (in Ethers, fiat money will be available soon). So, anyone who sends you an email needs to pay to you.
All the transfers are implemented within the Ethereum blockchain. No tokens - only Ethers are used. The Ethers are transferring directly to your address, right after the payment is confirmed by the miners. If the sender doesn't have enough funds/don't know about ETHletter - don't worry, we will respond him with the instructions and description. The sender doesn't need to sign up at the ETHletter service - he just needs to top up his balance with one click.
You can easily use ETHletter within the web-interface. Or you can set up your favorite mail client - Thunderbird, Outlook, etc. Also, you can set up the email forwarding, so you don't even need to use your ethletter email directly.
The service is free, no limits on emails or any other pitfalls https://app.ethletter.com <comment><USER2> Interesting idea, will wait for your release on main net. Will other currencies be added (I mean EOS or other smart-contract platforms maybe) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> For now we don't play to integrate other blockchain networks. But I think we can add the ability to set up payments in another crypto (by using exchange rates).

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I will be happy to answer for any critics/comments

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice project. I'll use it for my job messaging.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Also, you can subscribe to our newsletter (at the bottom of [https://ethletter.com](https://ethletter.com)) so you won't miss the updates

<comment><USER3> When do you plan to use mainnet?

<comment><AUTHOR> Most likely, we will move to the Mainnet on 10 October. Right now we are testing the app on the Ropsten testnet.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do you store emails as plaintext? - <AUTHOR>

Do you store emails as plaintext? <comment><USER2> It might help if you tell us why you want to know.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just wondering if it is standard practise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No, they're hashed. It's very easy to do.</comment>


Measuring the ionisation fraction in a jet from a protostar - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11595-x <comment><USER2> Do we understand yet, in detail, the process that creates and maintains these jets?

Is it the same process for stars, for neutron stars, for black holes, and for galaxies?

Do these jets have any role in the evolution of the large-scale organization of the universe, the formation of galaxies, or the formation of stars; or are they just decorative?

If the former, what parameters of existing models that have been made to approximate universal evolution are skewed by their neglect of the contribution of jets at all scales?</comment>


Palm Saturday - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2009/06/palm_saturday <comment><USER2> I agree one the keyboard issue. Even the Palm Pre does not have a full keyboard (I assume those keys are tiny, too), so not having experienced that kind of keyboard before, I wonder how much easier to use than the iPhone keyboard it would really be. I am willing to believe that it is a little bit easier, but neither solution would be convenient for writing a novel or something.

The price for the keyboard is high, though: extreme ugliness! The sliding parts thing alone is awful. Even without that, I would expect a keyboard to be prone to getting dirty, and being more brittle than just a flat, solid, iPhone-like brick.

<comment><USER3> There is another point—international markets. I assume sooner or later Palm will want to expand to overseas. iPhone has it easy—it is all just software. How about Pre—will users be forced to memorize where the keys are, or will Palm incur cost of manufacturing different keyboards?

<comment><USER4> Palm will incur the cost of making a single part with different layouts for each region, but the cost of this is negligible as to make it a complete non- issue. Companies like Blackberry, and indeed Palm themselves, already do this and laptop manufacturers have been dealing with major keyboard differences for years, so I don't see why Palm will suddenly have any significant problems associated with it.</comment></comment></comment>