Maybe Clockless Chip Design's Time Has Come - <AUTHOR> https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/5196-maybe-clockless-chip-designs-time-has-come.html <comment><USER2> This field has a well established name: asynchronous logic/circuit.

The author of the article failed to even mention once this term, instead repeating the term "clockless" as he was in some kind of branding spree.

Furthermore one of the article's tags was "apple", despite AFAIK the content not being affiliated with apple in any way.

<comment><USER3> Apple's in there as part of the dev history, though it just sounds like they hired up some of the engineers working on this to work on other projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another very interesting async design is GreenArrays GA144: "This very powerful and versatile chip consists of an 18x8 array of architecturally identical, independent, complete F18A computers, or nodes, each of which operates asynchronously. Each computer is capable of performing a basic ALU instruction in ~1.5 nanoseconds for an energy cost on the order of 7 picojoules". Programmed in Forth. [http://www.greenarraychips.com/index.html](http://www.greenarraychips.com/index.html)

<comment><USER5> That would be 667 MHz at 4.7 milliwatts for people who believe in different units.

<comment><USER6> That is _impressive_ power consumption.

I'll admit I'm not especially familiar with the field, but that sounds quite exceptional to me.

Is there anything out there offering this sort of price/performance ratio that's easily accessible, ideally programmable using open-source hobbyist tools?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not that the article is particularly detailed, but squinting at the clock diagram for Wave Semi, it appears to be a some kind of token passing, where the token is the clock.

I guess this question is for the semi- folks out there: given any n-bit boolean function, for smallish n, is there a way to implement the function so that the output is rock-stable (within reason) and only flips if given an input flip the corresponding function flips?

Because, if not, I don't see how this clock passing system won't require factoring in logic delay.

I'm sure a lot of details have been elided. Also, if it isn't apparent, I have no logic design knowledge.

All I know, from an outsider's perspective, having a global clock is ludicrous. When will designers finally kill it?! Us software people have had to kill the concept of intrinsic clocks with our consensus protocols for a while now...

<comment><USER7> "Given any n-bit boolean function, for smallish n, is there a way to implement the function so that the output is rock-stable (within reason) and only flips if given an input flip the corresponding function flips?"

Yep, there is a way. So you are designing your logic circuit as usual:

1\. For each input, decide the output

2\. Simplify the function using a Karnaugh Map [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnaugh_map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnaugh_map)

3\. From the Karnaugh Map, implement it with AND-OR gates.

When you are doing the Karnaugh Map you have to ensure every adjacent 1 or 0 (depending if you are doing standard or inverse logic) are grouped together. You will use more gates to implement the same logic. Or you can use less gates, and wait for the output to stabilize, you know, with a clock.

Update:

Wikipedia shows an example: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:K-map_6,8,9,10,11,12,13,1...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:K-map_6,8,9,10,11,12,13,14_anti- race.svg)

This has a race condition on the inverse implementation, and thus can generate glitches if used in an asynchronous circuit (but it is fine on a synchronous one): [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/0/02/...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/0/02/20071022024729!K-map_6%2C8%2C9%2C10%2C11%2C12%2C13%2C14_anti- race.svg)

We can fix it adding another Karnaugh group, thus making it glitch-free, and then can be used in asynchronous circuits: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/0/02/...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/0/02/20100810221056!K-map_6%2C8%2C9%2C10%2C11%2C12%2C13%2C14_anti- race.svg)

<comment><USER8> > 2\. Simplify the function using a Karnaugh Map > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnaugh_map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnaugh_map)

> 3\. From the Karnaugh Map, implement it with AND-OR gates.

oh dear, that brings back so many memories. however, for modern day optimizations with millions of primitives, kmaps are totally unfeasible. binary-decision-diagrams aka BDD, no not the other one ;), are the ones which makes things somewhat reasonable.

edit: if you are really curious about these things, then the text by zvi- kohavi (switching and finite automata theory) is an _excellent_ primer.

<comment><USER7> Sure, I will not use Karnaugh maps when I design a processor. They are awesome for teaching logic gates, but useless for building big logic. It's like pretending to build a skyscrapper with just bricks and mortar. Given enough effort you will succeed, but you are likely to die of old age long before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Asynchronous circuits: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_circuit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_circuit)

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a brilliant bit in the wikipedia entry:

The Caltech Asynchronous Microprocessor (1988) was the first asynchronous microprocessor (1988). Caltech designed and manufactured the world's first fully Quasi Delay Insensitive processor. During demonstrations, the researchers amazed viewers by loading a simple program which ran in a tight loop, pulsing one of the output lines after each instruction. This output line was connected to an oscilloscope. When a cup of hot coffee was placed on the chip, the pulse rate (the effective "clock rate") naturally slowed down to adapt to the worsening performance of the heated transistors. When liquid nitrogen was poured on the chip, the instruction rate shot up with no additional intervention. Additionally, at lower temperatures, the voltage supplied to the chip could be safely increased, which also improved the instruction rate—again, with no additional configuration.

Amazing. I want this right _now_!

<comment><USER10> Chips today have thermal clock rate scaling. Thermal control must be explicitly disabled to not get clock rate scaling.

If you haven't read anandtech they have articles covering this, since clock rate scaling increases the difficulty of benchmarking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think there is a technological path for gradually introducing synchronous design in clocked world: you can give them clocked inputs without problem, and you can gate their output at their worst propagation time without problem either.

I think with such an easy technological path, there is no intrinsic reason not to have them around us, even exposed as clocked systems. If someone told me today that there already are synchronous blocks in a famous silicon chip I would certainly not be surprised.

For example, I'm not a silicon guy so I'm guessing, but adders are generally exposed as one cycle instructions in software, but they still have to propagate the carry on the width of the word, so I guess adders are simply a tree of gate that synchronously propagate and we know the carry propagates faster than the clock tick.

<comment><USER12> That sounds like you are hinting at some form of prefix-adder, they are quite need in that they scale (N being the bit length), in a logarithmic way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I recently asked an Intel chip designer if asynchronous circuits could be a way to deal with stalling of Moore's Law and he was adamant that asynchronous circuits are a "fantasy." His argument was that even though synchronous use about 20% of the energy on a modern, chips, with asynchronous you still need to pass around synchronization tokens which would double the energy required and worse it would be on the critical path.

</comment><comment><USER14> Fulcrum Microsystems was a Clockless ASIC startup that was acquired by Intel in 2011 for their Ethernet switch silicon technology. [http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011...](http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2011/07/19/intel- to-acquire-fulcrum-microsystems)

</comment><comment><USER15> I remember this company from about 10 years ago. I don't remember the company name, but the logic was called Null Control Logic then.

<comment><USER16> Theseus Research. They're in my other comment in this thread with other links.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> See also, FLEET[1]. I'm surprised this hasn't gained more traction(or at least hype). I saw Sutherland give a talk about it in 2011/2012 or so.

[1][https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs152/fa06/lecnotes/async.pd...](https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs152/fa06/lecnotes/async.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER16> I recently dropped a lot of links to asynchronous cell libraries, chips, and so on in this comment:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10621937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10621937)

Just in case pro's want to comment on any of it or think it's cool.

</comment><comment><USER18> >They also had to invent a new type of gate – one that switches based on the sum of the number of its input that are at logic 1.

What? Isn't that just AND? I wasn't really too clever from looking at the diagram provided, so I might be missing something.

<comment><USER19> Looking at the waveform graph on the site, it looks like it turns the output to 1 when both inputs are 1, and turns the output to 0 when both inputs are 0 (In other words, it assigns the output to the inputs when the inputs are in agreement). Though, that's just a guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Didn't some company have a clockless ARM core available a few years back?

<comment><USER21> Yes, about ten years ago:

[http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1299083](http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1299083)

There were chips before that, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wonder how real time systems would work without a clock to synchronize everything.

<comment><USER11> actually you would want your system to react at the speed of its input (the world as seen form its point of view), not at the speed of its clock. And if you actually wanted a clock (say for an alarm clock in the morning), you could still input a clock to your system, that wouldn't entitle gating the whole system and having clock domains and that stuff.

<comment><USER21> That's not necessarily true, especially when interfacing with mechanical components.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Leakage is the big problem in deep submicron. You can't keep a state without periodically refreshing it (cf. DRAM). Also, asynchronous circuits are very prone to metastability. If these problems were easily solved, we'd have seen this old idea be widespread by now.</comment>


The Mystery of the Brand-New Bay Bridge's Corroded Steel - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/06/mystery-brand-new-bay-bridges-corroded-steel/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like they got a bad batch of steel or something. Corrosion doesn't cause steel to become brittle. It weakens it, yes, but it does so by reducing the cross-section. Corrosion doesn't materially alter the bulk properties of the metal, only the amount of metal in the bulk.

I get that there's corruption and shortcuts getting taken everywhere on big projects like this. But it's still surprising that better QA/QC isn't done. There's going to be a lot of finger pointing on whose fault this is.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I can imagine lax quality control if you're making... I don't know, a desk or even a house, but a bridge? Whoever dropped the ball put a HELL of a lot of people (and money) in jeopardy - even if the corrosion isn't going to critically affect the structure, it makes one wonder about the quality of the rest of the materials, and the contracts involved...

<comment><USER4> Well, the construction of the bridge decks and the materials for the bridge was made in China...

<comment><USER5> So are Apple Watches and iPads. Please stop it with this nonsensical nationalism/racism.

<comment><USER6> It's well known that china has lax safety and quality standards. See for one of many examples the adulterated pet food from china or the milk scandal where china poisoned 300,000 infants [1]. To this day, China's own citizens import milk for their children if they can [2]. Or chinese drywall [3]. It's merely prudent to safety test food and materials imported from China.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal)

[2] [http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-11-16/china- turns-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-11-16/china-turns-to-the- u-dot-s-dot-and-australia-to-import-safer-milk)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_drywall](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_drywall)

<comment><USER7> China also has had a bunch of spectacular construction failures. My favorite is the Shanghai bridge made out of styrofoam and garbage [1], but there are other, less spectacular examples: [2]. The schools in Sichuan are notable for poor construction, as many schools feel down but adjacent buildings did not. [3] Apparently one builder would tap the cement on inspection, and if it didn't ring right, he would make the contractor redo it. They didn't like him much, but his schools stayed up. Can't find the article, though. Apparently the rebuilding isn't any better [4].

I wouldn't even consider using Chinese construction material.

[1] [http://www.weirdasianews.com/2010/02/05/shanghai- wonderbridg...](http://www.weirdasianews.com/2010/02/05/shanghai-wonderbridge- trash-collapses/)

[2] [http://world.time.com/2012/08/27/bridge-collapse-in-china- ra...](http://world.time.com/2012/08/27/bridge-collapse-in-china-raises- questions-about-safety-of-countrys-road-construction-boom/)

[3] [http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/world/asia/25schools.html?...](http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/world/asia/25schools.html?pagewanted=all)

[4] [http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/05/14/183635289/F...](http://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/05/14/183635289/Five- Years-After-A-Quake-Chinese-Cite-Shoddy-Reconstruction)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Relevant discussion over a year ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7866795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7866795)

Senate report: Caltrans ignored shoddy work on Bay Bridge in China and U.S. [http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/bay- bridge/article...](http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/bay- bridge/article2589402.html)

Californians pay for Bay Bridge flaws, but wind farm recoups costs from same contractor [http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/bay- bridge/article...](http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/bay- bridge/article4748610.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Multiple civil engineering professors have been raising concerns over this issue since at least 2013.

[http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just- in/2014-...](http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california-magazine/just- in/2014-10-10/bridge-over-troubled-bolts-uc-berkeley-experts-raise-safety)

[http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california- magazine/summer-2013-n...](http://alumni.berkeley.edu/california- magazine/summer-2013-new-deal/troubled-bridge)

</comment><comment><USER10> Very informative video on the basics of Charpy Impact Test: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpGhqQvftAo&ab_channel=Mater...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpGhqQvftAo&ab_channel=MaterialsScience2000)

</comment><comment><USER11> I seem to recall one of the cost saving measures, coming with some controversy, being to use Chinese steel, at least in part. Perhaps I am incorrectly remembering this.

I would be interested in knowing the source of these components (which the rather long-winded article does not get around to providing).

<comment><USER12> The bolts were made in Ohio and finished elsewhere in the U.S. They never left the country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if an electrical circuit has happened between the salt water and the various sections of the bridge...

<comment><USER14> Perhaps during an electrical storm. Unless you think there's a long-term high- voltage short that nobody's noticed?

Welders use Phosphoric acid and an electrified scrub brush (electrified lead wrapped with tough cloth, dipped in Phosphoric acid) to scrub welding scorches off of brushed stainless steel. Phosphoric acid on its own will etch stainless steel (and teeth), and electrifying the set dramatically increases the reaction rate, leaving bare metal after a couple of gentle passes.

<comment><USER15> There's most certainly a cathodic protection system on the bridge for the rebars and supports exposed to seawater, however if pooling water wasn't intended in the lower areas then there was likely no CP active in the area - and the protection of the other members may have accelerated corrosion elsewhere due to stray current interference.

edit: It's actually the low voltage corrosion cells that you need to be cognizant of in such a case - most high voltage shorts fail before significant corrosion has taken place. Consumption rates for steel are in the kg/A-yr scale, and the concentration of the current dump is a major factor in general vs acute/pitting corrosion activity.

<comment><USER13> Yeah. If you get this stuff on a new boat or barge, you have to basically send around guys with voltmeters with really long leads, all over the ship... if I was in charge of the bridge I'd do that. It's relatively inexpensive, and either finds the problem or gets rid of one common variable.

<comment><USER15> This is what I do for a living actually - and concrete / mixed structure corrosion control is unfortunately a lot more expensive and difficult than single structure (ie steel hulled vessels). A typical concrete CP system will be low output but with dozens to hundreds of individually controlled zones and reference electrodes to monitor the system performance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> To me the fact that the bridge took 15 years to build --- perhaps the longest major bridge project --- is probably related.

</comment><comment><USER17> The u.s. seems to be increasingly modeling itself after banana republics and corrupt third-world countries, so it's no surprise that someone shorted the project with bad steel and pocketed the difference.

</comment><comment><USER18> They don't mention the steel supplier. It was Zhenhua Port Machinery Co., in Shanghai.[1] They usually make port cranes, not bridge parts.

[1] [http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/bay- bridge/article...](http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/bay- bridge/article2589402.html)

<comment><USER19> There's a lot of parts in the bridge. The rods aren't supplied from Zhenhua, they are from Dyson Corp. of Ohio.

[http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Bridge-supplier- fa...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Bridge-supplier-failed-to- reveal-rods-6037844.php)

<comment><USER18> Oh. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment>


Tiny Wins - <AUTHOR> http://joelcalifa.com/blog/tiny-wins/ <comment><USER2> It's amazing how the little things can make such a big impact: moving a call to action to the top of the screen, a report with more readable charts, a support email address that's easier to remember. Really it's Xs and Os.</comment>


Show HN: Stormio Pre-announcement - <AUTHOR> http://storm.io/ <comment><USER2> cool transition effects. However a) I think my definition of "scroll up" is the opposite of yours and b) my eyes glazed over reading empty babble and I have no idea what the product is. Something about the cloud?

</comment><comment><USER3> "Wecome to Zombocom! This is Zombocom! At Zombocom, anything is possible!"

</comment><comment><USER4> What does the product? service? do exactly?</comment>


Happy 25th Anniversary Slackware Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.slackware.com/announce/1.0.php <comment><USER2> My first Linux was in 1998 (when I was in 9th grade) and I _think_ my first distro was RedHat, but then my boyfriend at the time told me Slackware was better so I quickly switched. Like others in this thread, I learned so much from Slackware.

I eventually moved to Debian and its derivatives and now I only use Linux in a docker container or in a VM, but I'll always look back on that time in my life fondly b/c it's what shaped the basis for so much of my computing life. My career as an adult has had lots of pivots, but I can confidently say that I wouldn't have my current day job if it weren't for all the stuff being a Slackware user taught me 20 years ago.

Happy 25th, Slackware!

<comment><USER3> This sounds so much like me. Please tell me you ordered RedHat CDs from CheapBytes as well!

I took a bit of an odd path after Slackware, running OpenBSD as a desktop OS. I used Window Maker, and one tangential benefit was that none of my friends knew how to use my computer, so couldn't muck around with it much.

<comment><USER4> My first was 56k download of Slackware 4.3(?). Followed by I believe Red Hat 5.1 (from Best Buy). Later, I think I bought Red Hat 5.2 on Cheap Bytes. From there, I ran FreeBSD on my Thinkpad 600e using Window Maker. I miss it. Dearly.

Now, I'm on macOS with the 2017 15 inch Touch Bar MacBook Pro. I like it actually (I only wish I could replace the keyboard and/or open it in case I get gunk inside it). Only because I never used the function keys and it's a neat little hackable toy (the touch bar that is). My escape is caps lock, so the esc key doesn't bother me. I'm spoiled and entrenched in the Apple, iOS, WatchOS eco system. I constantly think about getting another Thinkpad, probably daily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Slackware was my first introduction to Linux. I initially investigated it as a way to get around my parents setting a password on Windows. Thanks, mom and dad, for the (very unintentional) motivation that set me on the career path I'm on now.

<comment><USER6> Same here! I recall my dad complaining that it was causing issues to windows when dual booting when I was a teenager. But damn getting a modem working in that era was tremendous bitch.

<comment><USER7> > But damn getting a modem working in that era was tremendous bitch

And of course help was available on the internet. On dialup. Which you couldn't get working without the modem.

<comment><USER8> I have fond memories of holding a printed out gentoo install manual and watching windows getting wiped from my box as a kid.

Then the terror of getting the modem to dial from a terminal, using lynx to get some browsing going so i could figure out how to get some GUI going on the thing.

Finally, getting Wine to run CS 1.6 so I could play at LAN parties with my buddies. They all thought I was a wizard because I was running this strange OS.

I genuinely believed that gentoo was going to give my machine super powers because all the software was "compiled and optimised for my machine." Maybe that was a little off the mark, but a great learning experience!

Now everyone has a smartphone, so it's hard to replicate that feeling of being cut off from the net with just a printed manual and your determination to carry you through. Good times!

<comment><USER7> I think in those days you had to use a terminal emulator of some sort (maybe minicom?) to dial the ISP, then background (without hanging up), then run up pppd. I had no idea what was going on with this process.

Obviously at this stage, a working X was a fantasy. You had your 6 ttys and that was it.

My first linux was redhat 5 from the CD on the back of a book - it didn't support my SIS 6326 card -- funny how I remember what graphics card I had 20 years ago, but have no idea what's in my desktop at the moment other than "some nvidia thing".

According to a post I can still find on usenet: "I got X running in 600*480 but the mouse pointer was corrupt, so they were close, but not close enough."

I assume I was dual-booting with windows 95 or 98 for my first year or so, at least until I got a better graphics card -- a Voodoo Banshee I think. I'd moved to debian by September 2000 though when I went to uni, and a year later when I saw in the Billenium with date running in an xterm.

> Now everyone has a smartphone, so it's hard to replicate that feeling of > being cut off from the net with just a printed manual and your determination > to carry you through

It's amazing how we used to survive without the sum knowledge of humanity available at our fingerprints.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Happy Anniversary! Like others here, Slackware was my first distro. I called it out in a blog post of mine a long time ago:

"All the "legit" people were using Linux so I spent a week downloading the different packages for a Slackware install and put them all on 3.5" floppies only to have the install fail. I should mention that up until this point I had basically zero Linux experience. Luckily for me there was Cheap Bytes which was a site that would burn everything to a CD and mail it to you for a small fee. A few weeks later that old 133Mhz Windows 95 computer was a lean and mean Linux box. I can still remember the panic when I saw that "darkstar login" prompt come up. What the hell had I done? As I said earlier, I was all in."

<comment><USER10> The floppy method failed me because I had bought 50 unbranded floppies at what I thought was a bargain price. But it turned out they weren't reliable at high density.

Switching to a different brand meant my only remaining problems were:

\- the time it took to install by switching out all those floppies

\- having to wait overnight for a kernel recompile whenever I added new hardware (not that often, but the memory is strong because those were the exact times I didn't want to have to wait)

\- not really knowing _why_ I wanted to use Linux, apart from thinking it would be cool to have a web server running in my room (this was back in 1994)

<comment><USER9> Kernel compile times! I remember kicking off a compile before I went to bed and then checking it the next morning before school to see what the result was. Good times for sure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh, the memories. Like many others in this thread, Slackware was my first. I still smile thinking about the bootstrapping process I managed to figure out (I was ~12 years old at the time). We didn't have much money, which meant we didn't have a whole bunch of floppy disks laying around. I managed to scrounge up enough of them to get the A series and a subset of the N series (just enough for PPP and FTP). Once I got a working setup, I dialed into our ISP and slowly downloaded extras until I had a usable system. First X, and then a graphical browser, and then the rest. Fond fond memories.

</comment><comment><USER12> Indeed happy anniversary, congrats, and thanks to Patrick Volkerding and crew.

I'm leaning towards FreeBSD lately, and when it's Linux at work it's necessarily RHEL due to company standardization etc, but Slackware is where the heart is, and will always be.

<comment><USER13> One piece of fun trivia, Patrick works for iXsystems so Slackware and FreeBSD are happy siblings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I still have 4CDs of Slackware 3.6. I was in high school when I first tried it, and I remembered all the complications of getting a PCI Winmodem working in Linux.

When I started university, I had a P3 667Mhz that booted Windows 98, Windows 2000, Slackware and BeOS 5. It used the BeOS bootloader because it was the most colorful.

</comment><comment><USER15> Pretty sure Slackware was the first or second Linux distribution that I tried while I was still in High School in the States. I was attracted to it because it was simple and straightforward, with the packages consisting of tarballs and the distributed packages being very close to vanilla with a minimum of distro patching or customization. It was easier to build stuff on. Didn't hurt that it was relatively svelte, either. I had a terrible connection (33.6 kbps).

My thanks for all their efforts. I learned a lot about Linux from playing around (poorly) with the distro. We've come a long way since then (the 90's). Happy Anniversary!

</comment><comment><USER16> My 1st linux distro back on 1998 (when I was 16) was Slackware 3.6 with a Linux 2.0.36 kernel. I remember I had a 33.6 kbps modem and downloaded it floppy by floppy. The distro was seperated in letter named packages and you could download only what you needed (iirc it was 'a' for the core system, 'd' for development gcc et al, 'x' for x windows etc).

Slackware had a very nice and straight forward installation procedure considering I was 16 at that time and all comcepts were self learned.

The 'package' manager was as simple as possible: packages were tgz files that were just unzipped to /.

The real problems I had was with my (ISA) sound card and my modem: I rember that I had to boot windows first for the sound card to set up and get the proper IRQ/DMA and them hot reboot to linux. For the modem because of how the telecom provided in Greece worked (no dialtone) I had to configure it to use ATX3DT instead of ATDT to call a number.

All these took me weeks of research but were resolved to great excitement!

Finally, after a couple of months using linux and accessing various IRC channels through the cool BitchX client I executed an innocent looking binary I was sent over. I was running everything as root of course...

You probably can understand what happend then :/

Although I knew (some) of the risks of executing binary acquired binaries in Windows I thought that with linux I was invincible. The good thing was that I noticed strange commands in the root's history (the attacker wasnt that good after all) and I immediately formatted the drive.

That incident kept me away from linux for a couple of years until I felt more confident for my security skills!

</comment><comment><USER17> When I downloaded it, painfully over a 57.6k modem using zmodem, I remember all the notes about slack and the church of Bob. At the time, 1993 or so, there was no Wikipedia, so it was a bit hard for a naive high school kid to figure out that there was actually no religious connotation. I never did get the hang of slack or slackware, but it got me on the path to where I am.

</comment><comment><USER18> My earliest memory of Linux is a bunch of dark blue 3.5 inch disks that I used to install Slackware from. I think that GCC required additional 4 disks and X 6 of them? Good times.

<comment><USER19> Boot, root, get the 3com drivers in. Good times.

<comment><USER20> disk set n1, iirc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Congratulations to Patrick and all the package maintainers and contributors! I've been a happy Slackware user for like 18 years or so, and eagerly awaiting Slackware 15!

</comment><comment><USER22> Slackware: Linux at its finest: no cruft, easy to install, just works. No automatic dependency resolution is a blessing in disguise.

</comment><comment><USER23> So many fond memories! Unlike many here, Slackware was not my first distro. I had tried Mandrake first, then RedHat, then grew more and more uncomfortable with their packaging system, and after a brief stint with Gentoo (admittedly, it was too early for my skills, back then) I met Slackware. It was love at first sight.

It was lean, nimble, skeletal almost. No frills, just perfect. My Athlon just flew with it - something I would never experience with Mandrake or RedHat! The (lovely) price to pay was that you would have to learn more about the internals. I would pay that price time and again!

And though I eventually moved to Debian (because, again, of the packaging system) I very fondly admit Slackware was my first true love.

Thanks for all you taught me, Slackware.

</comment><comment><USER24> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17598685](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17598685)

and

[https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/donati...](https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/donating- to-slackware-4175634729/#post5882751)

If anyone is still monitoring this thread, it transpires that Patrick Volkerding, the BDFL and main developer of Slackware, is having financial problems.

Moderators: I think this story would be of interest to HNers because of its similarities with the OpenBSD situation some years ago, and the issue of how to fund open source/free software projects generally

</comment><comment><USER25> Wow, time flies doesn't it? That was my first intro to Linux - installing on a 386 I think. Compiling stuff to get the sound card and CDROM working. Lots and LOTS of learning.

And finally, when it all worked - playing DOOM which actually performed better than on Windows.

<comment><USER26> How did people run Doom on Linux back then?

EDIT: Wow, Wine is _really_ old.

<comment><USER25> Yes, Wine has been around for a while, and it's pretty amazing software, but DOOM was a native linux release - cant remember how I installed it, but a linux version has been around since 1994

[http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Linux](http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Linux)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Great (and not so great) memories of downloading floppy images from A-Z? Writing them to disk, trying to get X to work, then installing openlook and later CDE to pretend I had a Sun at my desk. May have been '94 or so. :-D

</comment><comment><USER28> TIL that Slackware is about five months older than me. I was a distro geek in my teens, and Slackware, together with Gentoo, is on of the two distros that I never got working. Is there any concrete advantages to using it today?

<comment><USER29> > Is there any concrete advantages to using it today?

As a new slackware user, I see the following advantages

1\. no systemd

2\. really minimal bare system: running htop shows less than 10 processes running (including those of root)

3\. simple package management with no dependencies: a "package" is just a tgz file that you decompress into your filesystem

4\. _very_ up to date binary packages (e.g., there are just few days between the release of a new gcc version and its availability as a slackware package).

I have spent most on my life on debian and ubuntu, and I cannot imagine going back to them. Other distributions that I like are voidlinux (but unfortunately it has automatic package dependences, that limit my freedom too much) and dragonflybsd, which has also very modern packages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> In college, I was the SA of a small dialup ISP. Two PCs running Slackware, a Livingston port-master, a T1, and about two dozen Hayes modems. I probably still have the install CD in a box somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER31> Yup, first taste of Linux was Slackware too. We ran it on a 486 which was our University webserver for us and our friends. I still wonder what happened to that box.

</comment><comment><USER32> Been using Slackware for over 22 years, and don't have plans to stop using it any time soon...

I did throw out the last of my floppies many years ago, though!

</comment><comment><USER33> Happy Anniversary.

I've moved on to MacOS for work and Arch Linux for home but Slackware will always have a special place as my intro to Linux and understanding what actually goes on beneath the surface on a computer.

I can't count the number of late-night hours I spent in high school learning about Linux and playing DroidBattles on a second-hand, beat-up Toshiba Portégé running Slackware.

</comment><comment><USER34> Kudos.

Slackware was my first linux. I still vividly remember walking back and forth from the computer lab of sun machines, clutching my 3.5" floppies, hoping I had written out the data without any "block errors". At the time, I had no clue how I could check before hand without going through the install. it took more trips than i care to admit. :D

</comment><comment><USER35> I use gentoo these days, but I used slackware as one of my first distros and I learned tons. Congrats on such a great distro!

</comment><comment><USER36> Fall of 1996. guy on my freshman hall says "you should try linux". Installed slackware on everything I had for the next three years until finally switching to Debian.

Fondest slackware memory is installing the media to a Syquest Ezflyer -- but I needed to boot with a bleeding edge linux 2.2 kernel to recognize the parallel port hard drive!

</comment><comment><USER37> Back in 2007 Slackware was my first Linux distro because that's what my friend at the time used. Later on it became Debian and then Ubuntu.

I think openSUSE was once upon a time based off of Slackware, it's since diverged greatly. openSUSE is one of my favorite modern distros outside of the Debian based ones.

</comment><comment><USER38> As a SLS user, Slackware's arrival was very welcome. After every install of SLS a user might spend days applying patches to the system to get almost anything to work right. Slackware worked almost out of the box, which was HUGE back then.

<comment><USER39> Absolutely! I started with SLS back in 1993 and switched very rapidly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Joining others into wishing a the happiest birthday to slackware. Never used it though :)

</comment><comment><USER41> Slackware was my first distro back in the early to mid 90s. Switched t it from SLS! Both were downloaded from a local BBS...

Used it until Stampede Linux came out. (Them Pentium optimizations were important!)

</comment><comment><USER42> I once was a Windows only guy. Then i was given Slackware from a friend. I really had to learn it the hard way. But i learned a lot and it was worth the hussle.

Thanks Slackware and everyone involved.

</comment><comment><USER43> Slackware was the first linux distribution that I was able to install when I was younger probably... 18 years ago or so. Crazy to think about.

</comment><comment><USER44> My very first Linux distribution, Slackware 2.0.

Our ways have parted, but it is nice to still see it around.

Happy Birthday and kudos to all those that still keep it alive.

</comment><comment><USER45> My evolutions.

RedHat4 (not RHEL, ~1998), Slackware, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Debian

Honestly, cut my teeth on Slack - loved it, but now debian is my mainstay.

<comment><USER46> similar story ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Happy Birthday!

I used Slackware only for a short while before moving to FreeBSD, but I really loved its simplicity back then!

</comment><comment><USER48> my home servers are quite happy running slackware. they just keep doing their job without drama.

Thank you Patrick and co.

</comment><comment><USER49> Slackware was such a relief after downloading boot.tgz and root.tgz to build your own linux system.

</comment><comment><USER50> Never used it directly but Unraid is based on it, thanks Slackware!

</comment><comment><USER51> that is since 1.00 -- I think I started using it at slackware ~0.7

<comment><USER22> That is, _in utero_ , so to speak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Happy memories

</comment><comment><USER53> Congrendulates, Slackware.

</comment><comment><USER54> Still on Slackware, no plans to use anything else as my main OS. I haven't used it continuously but I keep coming back. Slackware _is_ Linux; everything else is mostly UI bling and attempted vendor lock.

<comment><USER55> > everything else is mostly UI bling and attempted vendor lock.

Well that's a ridiculous generalization to make. There are many solid distros that are none of that (e.g. Gentoo, Arch/Parabola, Debian, LFS, just to name a handful)

<comment><USER56> I would like to include Void as a serious, competent and elegant distribution. I've used it for a complete year, and have really come to appreciate its focus on simplicity, reminds how Arch was before they decided to use systemd.

<comment><USER54> Likewise. My initial statement was a smidge hyperbolic, as I really do like Void and run it on a Raspberry Pi. It has many of the same traits that make Slackware and pre-systemd Arch so appealing.

<comment><USER56> Before I migrated to Void, I used slackware-current extensively, it is indeed the cleanest GNU/Linux distribution I've found. Personally, I loved manually dependency resolution, but sadly didn't had the time to do it, so I ended up with Void, and it really shines on staying out of my way.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What is a viable alternative to basic income? - <AUTHOR> Assumption 1: Basic income is bad and will destroy the world economy.
Assumption 2: Automation of white collar jobs will happen at a scale of 99% of all white collar jobs (through AI or otherwise) and automation of low skilled jobs will be achieved for 99.9999% of all work through one or another way.
Assumption 3: 0.1% of the human population will be enough to do all work which machines can't do to theoretically support all human life on earth.
Is A2/3 exaggerated? Lets not dispute A1 even when its highly disputable. Just assume we can't have basic income in any form.
My question is what are viable alternatives to basic income in this scenario? <comment><USER2> Money is a [bad] stand-in for value. If "AI" is doing most of the work we have today both mental (programming, financial, etc) and physical (building homes, unclogging toilets, picking up litter) then people would just shift to work which does continue to exist (e.g. creative endeavours) and put value on that instead.

No matter how much you automate and how many jobs are displaced there will always be an infinite amount more work and different jobs will be assigned different values artificially.

To get specific, very few people are needed anymore to supply all the food/water/basics of life to a society. It is all already heavily automated. But are less people employed or are working hours shorter? No. We just found new ways to occupy our time and assigned those a value.

Take the Star Trek universe (where they got rid of money). There's a lot of unanswered questions about that concept, for example how do you divide up land? And who's to say running a wine vineyard is a more productive use of a plot than building a science facility (in particular with replicators in this context).

The more the deep you get into these questions the more artificial the way human society is structured seems. I legitimately think that people will always have jobs/work and there will always be some kind of compensation, but that work will move further and further away from the core resources that keep a society running (and the jobs themselves will have less and less actual value).

<comment><USER3> > Take the Star Trek universe (where they got rid of money).

They didn't in the "Star Trek universe" \-- money is frequently used in the _universe_ , and often things involving it are part of the plots of episodes. They may (or may not) have done so on Earth or within the Federation more generally (there are mixed indicators, but people at least frequently claim that is true from Next Gen on [actually, I think the first reference is in STIV, though in context that may be a joke more based on the character's immediate circumstances]; its pretty clearly not in TOS, and I think that there is a specific reference to a purchase being made on Earth in STII.)

<comment><USER4> Yes. See, for example, Ferengis, a Star Trek race that are obsessed with money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Instead of income, what about necessities for a modern life? Shelter, safety, medical care, nutrition and internet access? These could be provided at a minimum instead of the income (ostensibly) designed to be used for these things.

<comment><USER6> Of course, giving people money to buy these things is easier and probably cheaper than giving either the things themselves or special vouchers that the merchants for approved necessities can exchange for money. Someone has to administer all of these things and come up with rules for them and monitor compliance.

I mean, look at SNAP and the ridiculous recurring argument over what parts of a cow it is permissible to purchase with a voucher.

With vouchers, you are ultimately giving someone with a gun the power to enforce that the voucher is spent correctly, with cash you are not (although the why is proving hard to articulate, I'm pretty sure this is true)

<comment><USER5> No i'm literally talking about eliminating the free market from the equation for the bare necessities. No vouchers, you give people the minimum required nutrition, whoever wants it. Soylent or whatnot.

Not vouchers for housing, you build specific housing for this purpose. Basically communism for the bottom rung of society, though anyone is free to participate in the capitalistic parts of society anytime they wish. High wealth individuals coudl just as easily decide to reap the benefits of free housing and/or nutrition. Just a thought.

<comment><USER6> That's even harder to do than vouchers. Instead of centrally managing certificates you have an entire country's worth of logistic problems. I can't even begin to imagine the government structure needed to buy store and cart Soylent from Puerto Rico to Alaska.

Let alone government built housing keeping up with population distribution changes.

I like how your proposal doesn't imply a big public -> private wealth transfer, but I think what you are suggesting is much, much harder than making it rain on everybody

<comment><USER6> Hold up on my last line ^

Where do you get the soylent/electricity/housing/phone/internet from?

Are you proposing that the government fire up soylent plants, buy power plants, build, own and maintain housing and become a telecom provider?

Or is the government going to buy from private companies?

<comment><USER7> Yep, this is a very bad idea for the most part; these things already exist with private industry, so it's much easier for government to just allocate and distribute money, and let people buy things from existing providers instead of getting the government into the distribution of goods business. There's definitely room for more government regulation, especially with housing (that one's a mess, with all the foreign investors pumping up the realty prices; some simple laws should fix that), and also telecom (basically we need to copy whatever Europe's doing there).

<comment><USER6> Euro-style telecoms do seem to be kicking US style telecom ass, from a consumer perspective. I know I'm jealous.

I think it's hard to untangle foreign investment from local real estate prices without running into some of the US's fundamental "freedom" tenets, but I haven't looked very closely into what we might do. I feel like it is more of a NIMBY problem, most places

<comment><USER7> It shouldn't be that hard to enact some laws which make it really hard or unprofitable to be an absentee landlord. Perhaps rules requiring property owners to personally show up for annual property inspections? An easy one would be rules preventing corporations from purchasing residential property (after it's been constructed and on the market; it's normal for corporations to own it initially during construction and first-sale). There should be some other sneaky ways that localities could throw up roadblocks to foreign investors and other absentee landlords, and use them to seize the property.

<comment><USER6> I read about a Seattle law where non-code compliant rentals are forbidden from raising their rent. That might help

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I blog about this sometimes. I think well designed gig work and more affordable housing would solve this. I think if we don't tackle the affordable housing angle, no amount of basic income (aka supplementing the income of the poorest people) is going to be enough to solve the problem. Housing keeps getting bigger and more expensive and there is no upper limit to how far that can go. We need to put down a floor so housing is accessible for ordinary people with ordinary jobs.

Here are a few of the posts I have written on this topic:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/06/gig-work- don...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/06/gig-work-done-right- portable-income-for.html)

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/minimum- dece...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/minimum-decent- housing-not-minimum-wage.html)

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/05/gig-work- tha...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/05/gig-work-that-works- flexibility-and.html)

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/money-is- not...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/money-is-not- wealth.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> You'd have to make additional assumptions in that scenario to come up with a viable solution other than "Kill all the humans.".

Perhaps there is a category of jobs that hasn't been invented yet or that already exists but under the current economic conditions can't support more than a handful of people. White collar jobs have existed for millennia, too (scribes, accountants, civil servants). However, it was only with the Industrial Revolution demand for those jobs really took off.

Maybe, some day we'll all be some kind of artists or entertainers. On a more sinister note, perhaps we end up like the humans in the Black Mirror episode "15 Million Merits", where humans have to cycle on exercise bikes day in and day out to generate power and receive credits in return.

Those are all very hypothetical assumptions, though. In my opinion, not making any additional assumptions a basic income as of now is the by far most realistic - perhaps even the only - way of dealing with such a - quite likely -scenario.

<comment><USER10> I don't think an AI would need to kill them. Just ignore them because they are uneconomic and they will die on their own.

<comment><USER11> Depends how much damage they can do

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could it be that humanity at large is doomed to repeat its usual method of a "reset"? Planet Earth isn't getting any bigger, and if we're lucky worldwide population may plateau around 11 billion. Per Wikipedia, "Global workforce": "As of 2012, the global labor pool consisted of approximately 3 billion workers, around 200 million unemployed." Per The World Bank ([http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.ZS](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.TLF.CACT.ZS)), labor force participation has dropped from a little over 66% in 1990 to barely 64% in 2014. They give a per-country overview of these rates, and also per- income levels:

        High income	60%	60%
        Upper middle income	72%	67%
        Middle income	67%	63%
        Lower middle income	62%	59%
        Low & middle income	68%	64%
        Low income	77%	77%

High and Low income held steady, every other level shows decline.

Take a look at [http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/employment-and- growth/...](http://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/employment-and-growth/the- world-at-work), which has this byline (June 2012): Strains on the global labor force are becoming painfully evident. Market forces will fail to resolve demand and supply imbalances for tens of millions of skilled and unskilled workers.

As automation becomes ever more adaptive and versatile, it will be interesting to see in what ways human employment may somehow remain economically of interest. But right now the labor force participation trends downward, and the only way that could be good is if the non-participation people are having healthfully happy lifestyles - perhaps as retirees or married to well-to-do spouses.

But if the social order of things is changing such that the prospect of gainful employment becomes less tenable for most, here's to hoping that a better world may yet emerge with minimal strife. Otherwise, it's all too easy to imagine us collectively squabble and fret over moral hazards, free-loaders, and property rights (including the intellectual kind), and that the crisis must first reach a breaking point before any material changes can happen.

If UBI is a non-starter, I've got no ideas other than for maybe getting serious about space travel and colonization.

<comment><USER7> There's absolutely no economic rationale for space travel and colonization. If you have automation doing all the lower-end jobs, and no way of transitioning society past the current system where you have to work to support yourself, it's very simple: all these extra people will have to be eliminated. So we have 3 choices: 1) start up death camps and start transporting unemployed people to them for disposal, 2) undergo a violent economic collapse with food riots, uncontrolled crime, etc., or 3) institute a UBI. Only one of these is humane and rational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I actually think what will happen is a combination of a welfare state with some type of "jobs program" even if the job is just something useless or " study in university" etc.

But one thing is very worrisome - this all depends on the power of the people to rule , but companies seem very good at resisting that power (for ex. Tax loopholes, lobbying) , and if companies and psychopathic tendencies have their way - it would be pretty bad .

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's some food for though:

When the automated looms were invented, people thought all jobs would soon go away to the machines, with nothing to do. Surprisingly, new jobs were invented and people have been busy since then. I bet there was something similar happening in ancient Egypt as well, knowing how there are writings about how "the youth do not write properly these days, and the world is going to the dogs soon. Everything was better during my childhood." Look it up.

So I would suggest you clean your pants and don't worry about automation. Just go with the flow and keep an eye open for the radically new form of jobs that will open up.

Also, most of you folks work in services. You build webpages, web applications, SaaS, corporate software or consult on their integration, yada yada. You will never go out of work. This is a big world, and opportunity will remain plenty. It's just changing like it was changing in the early days of industrial machines. Put in the effort to find new frontiers.

<comment><USER15> >in ancient Egypt ... there are writings about how "the youth do not write properly these days, and the world is going to the dogs soon. Everything was better during my childhood." Look it up.

When people claim something dubious and back it up with "look it up" and no further sources, I reach for my gun. Most of those supposed ancient quotes about youth are modern nonsense, and as Google returns no results for your particular quote (and "going to the dogs" is a 16th century English idiom anyway) I'm going to go with "you made it up". Please don't make things up and exhort people to "look it up".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Income-less, post-scarcity society, where the limits of what goods/services you can access are so much higher than you could ever need that the only limitations put in place can be set democratically?

That, or just increase typical socialist democratic welfare state principles, tax the hell out of the .01% and invest in public goods.

</comment><comment><USER10> it could be more distributed. currently, if you own about $1,000,000 US in assets you can probably live of your return on your assets. what if you could retire on 10k or 1k in assets because of massive deflation and control of information(patents, copyrights) was loosened or replaced.

</comment><comment><USER17> The industrial revolution had a much greater impact on labour than anything we are seeing happening today.

Previous to this era - humans and animals did _everything_.

Can you imagine how many buggies the steam engines put out?

But the factories employed a lot of people who would have been doing other things.

Since then, we've constantly been going through this process.

Moreover - the biggest impact on labour today is _not_ automat ion - it's cheaper labour in the rest of the world.

As factories become a little more automated, it will start at the bottom - with the simplest tasks. Those jobs are already mostly outsourced. 'Automation' is going to hit China harder than it hits the US.

As for 'basic income' \- even applied in a normal context without the treat of disastrous unemployment ... 'means tested welfare' is one option. If we adjusted it a little so that people could possibly find work while still on welfare without losing benefits, this would take away some of the limitations.

<comment><USER18> The difference is that the industrial revolution amplified labor, while AI actually replaces it in many cases. AI + human is less productive than AI sans human. It's not just a difference in magnitude, but one of _sign_.

Cheaper labor elsewhere does not obsolete labor itself, it merely implies repricing or arbitrage.

It doesn't really matter how hard the labor market is hit, once it is already dead.

Means tested welfare fosters dependency, crime and generational poverty, and implies support of a vast administration and enforcement apparatus. It is used as a coercive stick to compel behaviors, and often those behaviors are harmful to the individual recipient - e.g. families that go fatherless, to protect AFDC.

<comment><USER17> "AI + human is less productive than AI sans human."

This is totally speculative on your part and it depends on the task.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Social darwinism (our current system to some degree) is viable for a certain continuing percentage of the population.

The social darwinists are in charge of a society that benefits them. Changing that reality is going to be prohibitively difficult.

</comment><comment><USER20> Resource contention with coercion, violence and/or warfare, which AFAIK is something we've had for thousands of years.</comment>


For Online Courses, Questions Over How Success is Measured (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.texastribune.org/2014/01/21/low-completion-percentages-moocs-prompt-debate/ <comment><USER2> I am always amazed when people make comments like this:

 _" The results of the University of Texas at Austin's first full-semester foray into massive open online courses, or MOOCs, are in."_

 _" Professor Michael Webber's "Energy 101," which had an enrollment that peaked at around 44,000 students, had 5,000 receive a certificate of completion — about 13 percent of the roughly 38,000 students who ultimately participated."_

So let's unpack this a bit. Professor Webber created a class called "Energy 101" and processed 5,000 students through it to completion. Your typical 100 level undergraduate class might have anywhere from 50 to 200 students in it.

UT Austin this year had 8690 freshman _total_.

So assuming the largest possible class of 200, this professor in one semester taught the equivalent of 25 semesters of 200 student classes, in _one_ semester.

Why should we care that 32,000 people signed up and then said "Woah, really don't have the time to commit to this right now?"

It is one thing to move to a campus dorm and start studying some topic. It is quite another to click a few links on a web page and say, "Yeah, that could be an interesting class."

<comment><USER3> Also, taking but not completing MOOC shouldn't count as a failure. I've enrolled in ~8 courses on Coursera and never completed any of them, but I still gained a lot of value from what I learned in those courses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think this emphasis on completion rates are a problem. I take a lot of MOOCs, but not all the content in said MOOCs are important. I just watch the parts of courses that are important or relevant to what I am doing, and call it a day.

For people learning from non-conventional sources, they are used to using bits and pieces from different online sources and building up their own courses and their own paths.

This fascination with completion rates is simply our propensity to value what we measure instead of measuring what we value.

<comment><USER5> Very much this. I think a large issue with MOOCs is that they're too focused on emulating the structure of a university class - focus on lectures, community built around specific classes, focusing on the metric of course completion rather than on attaining skills, etc. People who successfully teach themselves things (and right now, there are many people using the internet to teach themselves things) often have a very different approach.

It's interesting that so many people have trouble even considering that there might be other ways to approach education.

<comment><USER6> People who "successfully" teach themselves are overrated (good examples being Trump or Zuckerberg). They might be successful in a few dimensions (purely out of self discipline and above avg energy levels) but totally miseducated in many others because people don't know what they don't know. Without the right guides, feedback processes, environment and time(lots of time) most people usually end up taking all kinds of wrong turns.

Education not something intuitive, even if there are many paths. If it was we would just be leaving kids in libraries.

<comment><USER7> Your point that self-education often tends toward narrowness is well-taken, but I strongly disagree with the implication that any significant number of autodidacts are overrated in the way that your two examples are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We grappled with rates when I was engineering manager for the team at Coursera that created course statistics for our partners.

The completion "rate" does not matter because the denominator is a very noisy signal. It's a count of enrollments and what does "enrollment" signal in an online course, when it takes two clicks from a tweet.

There are other complexities but completion rate in the "are MOOCs worth offering" question is silly and tired.

What matters is people getting value they otherwise wouldn't.

<comment><USER9> How did you end up measuring the course? Completion by students who logged in at least once? Hours spent in course? Cost of course per completion?

It seems like we would want to compare what is learnedC that's how I value. But not sure how you would test that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> These are for MOOCs, not online degree courses, though.

There's no certifications with these. You can't get an accounting, law, or medical degree, bachelor/associate certificate, or anything you'd need professional accreditation for.

Maybe the completion rate is similar for people who buy books. I'd end up getting a book thinking it'd be an investment as it would be good as learning a subject. The next day I didn't really want to spend 12 straight hours learning Visual Basic.

Also these aren't like auditing a class and listening in on a real lecture either. Just from the list for UT Austin (a very good school): [https://www.edx.org/school/utaustinx](https://www.edx.org/school/utaustinx)

There are university lecturers people listen to all the time though, through the Great Courses / Teaching Company. Those sort of fit the leisure-learner path and don't require logging into some system for it.

<comment><USER11> > Maybe the completion rate is similar for people who buy books.

There's an even lower bar to entry: all the MOOCs I've participated in have been free.

<comment><USER12> They might be free, but all the MOOCs I've participated in have required a weekly time commitment to complete them, which is a sort of hidden cost completely separate from money. I've started the Stanford ML course on Coursera three times now, and each time some real-life thing has come up and taken me out of action for a couple of weeks.

<comment><USER13> That's just what free means, isn't it? The cost is separate from money.

I don't think it's hidden that you have to study in order to learn.

<comment><USER12> Studying isn't the problem, deadlines are the problem. If you could work at your own pace then I'd guess the completion rate would be substantially higher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The fact these classes dont allow one to preview the first few courses before registering has to influence these stats.

I've done a number of them over the last couple of years and the fact that I can't preview has caused me to abandon so many of them. If I don't like my professor, the way the course is organized, or whatever, I'll abandon the course and go find some other source for the same information which does a better job resonating with me.

And I know I'm not alone in doing this, off the top of my head, I know at least 3 workmates and at least a number of friends who do the same thing.

The completion rate would have to shoot up much higher were they to allow people to know what theyre getting into ahead of time. And strangely, these companies have a much better ability to do this than traditional schools.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can I bounce an idea off Hacker News readers?

How about doing live events at which you simply play -- on an overhead screen -- the very best videos or courseware from the web on selected technical topics. You get the best possible presentation and the chance to mingle with people who are keen on the same subject. You'd still need a person to act as a moderator or host, but there would be no official speakers. Would you go to such a thing?

This idea came about because I was at a seminar recently with multiple presenters on technical topics. At least 90% of what was said is available on the web. And the average presentation was awful. Yet, the auditorium was _packed_. Two hundred people showed up to hear publicly available information presented by mediocre speakers, none of whom were experts in the field (just people interested in the topic).

This is a regularly held seminar and people come. A lot people like attending a talk even if we could have stayed home and watched a better video on the same technical topic. I think part of it is that some people absorb material better in a classroom setting and the other aspect is the chance to socialize and talk with like-minded people.

<comment><USER16> I think the issue isn't that people aren't learning properly, it's more due to with the recognition of work and time required for no tangible reward. It's the same reason it's really hard for most people to sit down and learn coding on their own. It's not because lectures are hard to watch, or they aren't learning effectively, it's because you aren't getting anything tangible from it. Bootcamps are the same way, you get a "certificate" but it doesn't really have much value, and people know it.

Getting a degree from a good school (I go to UT Austin actually) is different. That's why people go to college.

<comment><USER17> A CS degree covers more than just programming. A bootcamp focuses on programming only.

Let's assume the CS degree has on average 1 out of 5 courses per semester that directly involves practicing programming, and not just filling up the requirements on liberal arts, and math, etc. 13 weeks * (3 hours lectures per week + 5 hours homework per week) * 2 semester per year * 4 years = 832 hours.

So a full-time developer bootcamp would need to be at least 5 months long to match.

Most are only 2.5 to 3 months long, but there are some 6 month long developer bootcamps. The short bootcamps might not have as much value, but still a good minimum start to development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's interesting how content discovery has remained ad-hoc despite the arrival of ed-tech platforms like Coursera or EdX. People still prefer to ask for best books, courses, podcasts, cheatsheets on Slack/Discord/Twitter etc.

I think this has to do with the conflict of interest. Any platform that creates its own educational content, necessarily becomes bad at content _curation_. For ex, 3Blue1Brown has amazing series on linear algebra and calculus but we don't find Coursera pointing to it.

<comment><USER19> 3Blue1Brown made videos for Khan Academy for a while but ultimately decided to take his career in a different direction. He talks about it on the first episode[1] of the Numberphile podcast, which if you are a fan of 3Blue1Brown I'd highly reccomend giving it a listen.

[1]: [https://www.numberphile.com/podcast/3blue1brown](https://www.numberphile.com/podcast/3blue1brown)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have a PhD, earned while on a prestigious national fellowship, and graduated with highest honors in undergrad. I graduated earlier this decade. I have enrolled in a single MOOC to keep my skills current in my field, and I couldn't finish it. Maybe it's because I work now, but I simply couldn't find the time to complete the lab assignments when only putting in 10 hours a week. My sample size is low, but I get the impression that some of these MOOCs basically demand that you have traditional student-level time and focus to complete them. Is that wrong? Perhaps not, but 4% then becomes unsurprising for a completion rate.

</comment><comment><USER21> The issue is with how MOOCs is used and what the creators expect from it.

I have signed for many MOOCs but not completed even 1 till date. But I got the knowledge I needed and got the task done. To me MOOCs is an organized google search or detailed stackoverflow/wikipedia.

Plus my extreme aversion towards "exams", is also a reason. Never found an incentive to get a paper that tells I know something. Plus, despite having certificates from school & university, I don't remember the stuffs I learnt. I forgot most stuff after writing the exams. Sadly, some even before writing the exam.

</comment><comment><USER22> Maybe because the definition of completion for some of the courses includes a lot of things that aren't valuable to the learner. I consider being able to skip lectures one of the benefits of online courses

<comment><USER23> Also because some of them don't let you really see what the content is unless you sign up. I have signed up for free online courses before just to check what they contain.

</comment></comment><comment> barry-cotter That's because overwhelmingly people don't care about learning, they care about certification. The completion rates for online degrees are vastly higher because people get that piece of paper that marks one as an intelligent, hard working conformist. They have to care enough to apply, and pay for a course. I don't know how much higher the completion rate is for EdX or Coursera students that pay for verified certificates over auditing courses but if it's less than four times as high I'd be surprised.

[https://www.usnews.com/education/online- education/articles/2...](https://www.usnews.com/education/online- education/articles/2015/01/30/experts-debate-graduation-rates-for-online- students)

> While many believe that there is a huge difference between online and on- > campus completion rates, [Russell Poulin]'s research suggests the difference > is slight. Based on a survey completed by more than 200 North American > school officials in 2013, Poulin found that course completion rates averaged > three to five percent better for on-campus courses than for online courses.

[https://www.edsurge.com/amp/news/2019-06-06-moving- from-5-to...](https://www.edsurge.com/amp/news/2019-06-06-moving- from-5-to-85-completion-rates-for-online-courses)

> Today, 2U reports completion rates of up to 88 percent for their online > degree programs. Harvard Business School's online programs claim similar > success, with completion rates of 85 percent.

> At Acumen, where I design online courses, we've also been offering selective > cohort-based programs for the past year that achieve completion rates of 85 > percent. That's a far cry from five years ago, when only 5 percent of the > students were finishing the MOOCs I was designing.

> How have instructional designers collectively moved the needle so > dramatically on completion rates? Unsurprisingly, some of the biggest > drivers of these improved metrics include making people pay for online > programs, increasing the selectivity of courses, and adding program managers > and teaching assistants to follow up with learners.

<comment><USER24> I'm not sure people don't care about learning, I'm certain I'm not the only one that's gone through a lot of stuff on OCW on my own. I think people are more likely to jump through specific hoops if they get something out of it, that has little to do with learning though.

<comment> barry-cotter I didn't say people don't care about learning, I said that overwhelmingly they don't. There is a tiny minority's who value learning for its own sake. They are most of the 4% who complete MOOCs with neither entrance criteria nor certification. They are the people who read complex works of literature, in whatever genre, outside an educational context. They're the people who don't just occasionally go to an art gallery but can speak knowledgeably about influences, styles and periods.

They're nerds of whatever persuasion. Normal people work on their three hours of tv a day, nerds learn about Nabokov or the Assyrians or decide that it would be better to work through a modern introduction to algebra than Euclid for fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> 2014, but I find it interesting the title focuses on the completion percentage. Instead, it seems it could have equally been that graduation at the online class was more than 10 times that of his average semester (also from the article). Negativity sells?

</comment><comment><USER26> Georgia tech's online masters in CS is the complete opposite (and orders of magnitude closer to a normal academic environment) than MOOCs, and the reason is all obvious design decisions / incentives.

Like any degree, Gatech's program has a permanent academic record, rules for grade quality in order to not be on academic probation, etc.

If you don't have the incentives in place, then many people will find excuses to not commit. MOOCs are lacking those incentives.

<comment><USER27> >If you don't have the incentives in place, then many people will find excuses to not commit. MOOCs are lacking those incentives.

I haven't researched this, but I would guess the $6,600+ cost has more to do with the high completion rate than any other factors. Most MOOC's seem to be pretty cheap, if not free.

Not to mention, completion of the Georgia Tech online program results in a degree. MOOC's typically just offer a certificate of completion, which carries little weight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why "complete" a MOOC though? Most MOOCs still have the same BS hoop jumping requirements as real courses alongside the meat of the course, but unlike real world courses theres no degree at the end. As a self learner I ruthlessly apply the 80/20 principle to maximize useful learning and move on. I've only completed a few that are mercifully all autograder based.

<comment><USER29> I loved the "achievement unlocked" feeling of completing online courses and getting a pdf saying "you did it!", so I tried to complete the classes for that (such a PDF has no real value, especially since I did classes on random topics I like, not job related).

I can see why Coursera/edx etc stopped giving out these certificates if you don't pay for them, but it has caused me to basically stop completing free online classes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I assume this is just free courses. I've been an online instructor for a university for 4 years as a side gig. I'd say the completion rate is about 85%.

<comment><USER31> > I assume this is just free courses

That is what I thought as well. People who pay a handsome sum for an online course are not going to let their money go to waste. Something about paying up simply ensures that you turn up and actually attend/finish a course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> This might be outdated on some platforms, but the last time I had time to indulge in some online courses, you had to enrol in the course _just to see the syllabus_.

My completion rate was not stellar.

</comment><comment><USER33> Until Visa officials around the World wake up and smell the coffee that Degrees shouldn't matter for immigration - I will care about and be anxious about my lack of a Degree. Until MOOCs don't confer a degree - it's going to be very hard to convince me to spend time getting a Certificate from it (as opposed to watching the most interesting and important bits and skipping the rest, in the "YouTube University" style).

<comment><USER31> Unfortunately, I don't think degree requirements are going to go away anytime soon for immigration purposes. Just imagine the backlash in the US/EU if the voting public finds out that people without degrees can now move to their countries. Many will link his to a mass-movement of unskilled and unwanted labor as opposed to talented and hardworking individuals.

<comment><USER33> That's very sad, but I suppose I can take a twisted comfort from it: the fact that this public attitude is unlikely to change in my productive lifetime means, it's worth girding down and getting a degree. At least it's unlikely that 10 years later I'll regret the time I wasted chasing a piece (or two) of paper(s) ~6 years prior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I watched the Andrew Ng videos in coursera - I honestly didn't care about any course work, I was just trying to watch the vids... did I do something wrong?

<comment><USER35> Not exactly, but the coursework is worthwhile. It's well designed so that you get to only focus on the topic at hand, not setup or scaffolding of any sort.

You really get a feel for how to turn an equation into vectorized code, which the video lessons can't give you.

I've completed the first Ng course, the later five-course specialization, and a few other courses (Odersky's Scala course among them). Still, 4% doesn't sound unreasonable: I too have enrolled in more courses than I completed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The cost of signup for a MooC is low and the time and effort needed to complete Mooc is rather high. That could explain the lower completion rather and something is still a lot better than nothing. Also why are we comparing against normal courses were people has dedicated time versus online where there is not dedicated time?

I think it would be good to design course content for the medium. Professional adults does not have unlimited spare time, especially not if you have other duties to upkeep that require time family and friends. Thus maybe it would be wise to divide the course content in smaller chunks and reward people for completing each chunk. This would be a design for Mooc that would be very similar to game level design which already works brilliant online! Aka divide and conquer algorithm. Reward people for completing levels.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide-and- conquer_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divide-and-conquer_algorithm)

</comment><comment><USER37> If you want to complete them I really recommend pairing up with a friend. Going at it alone makes it easy to quit. While 3 friends deciding to "drop out" is less likely to happen by an order of magnitude.

<comment><USER38> I've never successfully convinced a friend to take anything.

Turns out taking a Stanford class (or anything) on the introduction to logic isn't most people's idea of fun.

</comment></comment><comment> rajesh-s In my opinion, the lack of geography-specific pricing makes the evaluation (tests and assignments) and certification inaccessible to a significant population. Of course, one can audit the course anytime but it's hard to have the same level of sincerity and commitment when there's no incentive (certification that can probably be showcased on LinkedIN or CV) or deadline based timeline for the course.

I appreciate that these courses have been made available to anyone who wants to learn, but my point is concerning the meagre completion rate.

</comment><comment><USER39> As it stands, MOOCs don't have the same recognition or importance in society as traditional education does. So naturally completion rates are going to be low. Doesn't mean the courses aren't good quality or the information being shared doesn't mean people's needs. Just means that the psychological contracts that people enter when they sign up for these courses are a lot less burdensome and easier to break than within higher education, which might even be a part of their draw.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think coursera is amazing, i've finished a few courses signed up for a lot more. It's great, some i stopped because I wasn't really interested in, others I stopped because I got what I needed. I think it's truly amazing and I think completion is the wrong metric; maybe hours of instruction divided by average per course would be better.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is great news.

I remember a time when/where this kind of knowledge was hard to find and devoured whenever it was made available to you.

</comment><comment><USER42> I dropped one on automata after an exercise in the first exam required making use of an undisclosed algorithm that wasn't central to the topic and not covered in any of the required reading. When asking the lecturer about it, he directed me to chapters n through n+5 in some other book. I guess I didn't want it enough.

</comment><comment><USER43> I registered to a lot that were out of my league (say advanced physics). But also a few normal IT MOOCs, like relational DB, made me strenghten some new skills even though I didn't finish it. Mostly due to trivial time constraints making me miss deadlines.

</comment><comment><USER44> A lot of it has to do with credentialing. MOOC credentials aren't worth the time investment.

<comment><USER45> Plus nobody cares about credentialing at all. What they do care about is solving problems, and it seems reasonable that 96% of problems become solvable with the course material provided before reaching the very end of a course. Once the problem is solved, there is little reason to continue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> From having taught a MooC, I can share some light on this. Most people who sign up and drop it do so to access the course ware. Once they have downloaded this, they disappear or fade away.

</comment><comment><USER47> I'd be very curious to learn the difference between free/two clicks to enroll and a paid course.

I'd assume completion rate for something that you actually paid would be way higher.

</comment><comment><USER48> What length of course? I can't imagine that completion rates are the same for a 50 hour course vs a 200 hour course. Can't seem to find this data.

</comment><comment><USER49> That makes mse think that are probably a lot of easy wins in the funnel of getting people successfully through the course.

</comment><comment><USER50> The question is, does it matter ?

I've been following the MOOC phenomenon since its early days in 2010-2011, and taken a lot of moocs in the meantime.

Sometime the mooc reveals to be low quality, and I quit because I can get better information from books and/or by actually messing with the technology (xkcd.com/519). Other times, I quit the part after the interesting part, or don't care about going through all the single details to get a worthless recognition ("a website says i've watched all the lessons").

Other times I pay for a course, go through all the lessons, do all the labs, get all the certificate of completion.

It really varies a lot, and most people ask the wrong question: it's not "how do we measure success" but "how do we measure success with respect to the original goals?"

Very little people care about an automated system somewhere recognizing my 100% completion of the course materials. But I (and possibly, possible employers) care about actual competencies. It's the same thing all over again: in real life pieces of paper don't matter, what matters is the capability of solving problems and handling situations.

</comment><comment><USER51> Average completion rate for _MOOCs_ Is 4%

</comment><comment><USER52> Not surprising at all. I often follow the first few weeks of a MOOC but after a bit I am satisfied and don't feel the need to push through all 13-17 weeks of material. Isn't that a success? I certainly learned a lot along the way all the same! Much more about a topic than I would reading the wikipedia page or an introductory blog post, because MOOCs (being regular college classes) take a lot of pains to lay out the course material in a logical and structured format, which is itself alone already much more valuable than a single person's hodgepodge thoughts.

<comment><USER53> Came here to say this. It's the same with text-like books. There's 100 pages of what you bought the book for, and 400 pages of filler at the end in an attempt to add more value.</comment></comment>