Linear types make performance more predictable - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tweag.io/posts/2017-03-13-linear-types.html <comment><USER2> As much as I want to use Haskell for real, instead of just reading about and toying with it, I think the examples in this article are a perfect illustration of why I find learning Haskell borderline obnoxious at times.

      data S a
      data R a

      newCaps :: (R a ⊸ S a ⊸ IO ()) ⊸ IO ()
      send :: S a ⊸ a ⊸ IO ()
      receive :: R a ⊸ (a ⊸ IO ()) ⊸ IO ()

      In this API, S is a send capability: it gives the ability to send a message. R is a receive capability...

At least here the author reasonably explains the snippet (this article is actually just fine generally), but so much of the Haskell examples online are just like this. Single letters for every type/variable. Why aren't S and R just called SendCapability and ReceiveCapability? It's almost like the Haskell community takes pride in being as obscure as possible, which I think is very possibly true.

<comment><USER3> Haskell I've seen often looks a lot like mathematical equations to me, where the tradition is that the notation is terse, with single letter variables (possibly with primes or other modifiers) is the norm.

<comment><USER4> Very clever way to make sure the programming language never gains any significant traction. ;)

<comment><USER5> Haskell: avoid success at all costs.

<comment><USER6> People keep saying this as if it were meant to be parsed "(avoid success) (at all costs)", but in fact it's supposed to be "avoid (success at all costs)", in other words "principles > popularity".

<comment><USER7> I've always understood it to be, simultaneously, _jokingly_ the former and seriously the latter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of Baez's Rosetta stone paper [1]. It's about some common threads in physics, math, logic, and programming. A completely different set of connections that what you'd see in Gödel, Escher, Bach.

I kinda sorta remember linear logic having the option for an infinite source, and an infinite sink for things you might want to deal with. A business has an infinite number of customers, but each specific transaction needs to be handled in a very specific way. You give me a dollar, and i give you a hamburger or french fries, your choice.

A light, accessible overview of linear logic is here [2]. That has a few nice, simple examples. It's easier than the wikipedia article.

[1] [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/rosetta.pdf](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/rosetta.pdf)

[2] [http://www.csl.sri.com/~lincoln/papers/sigact92.ps.gz](http://www.csl.sri.com/~lincoln/papers/sigact92.ps.gz)

<comment><USER9> Basically, non-linear variables are those with infinite duplication and sinks (they're "comonoids").

<comment><USER10> Another option is affine types that give you "at most once" semantics, in contrast to linear types' "exactly once". If your language has non-termination then affine is easier to enforce. (Cf Rust.)

<comment><USER11> Sure, but rust benefits from must_use annotations, which effectively turn those annotated affine types into linear types. Turns out they are both useful in a very overlapping venn-diagram kind of way.

<comment><USER10> How does this deal with non-termination? Eg.

       declare x (must_use);
       P;
       use(x)

(I apologies for the non-Rust-conforming pseudo-code.) The type-checker won't be able to tell if P terminates or not, whence x's use can't be enforced. That's a direct consequence of Rice's theorem (which in turn follows directly form the non-computability of the halting predicate).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a big deal. Right now, Haskell (like most GC-ed languages) has one big heap that gets GC-ed regularly. The _only_ time memory is reclaimed is when the GC runs.

By retrofitting Haskell with linear types, there would be another linear heap. In that heap, there is no GC - resources get freed as soon as the linearly typed value is used. On can imagine programs properly annotated with linear types that don't even need ANY GC.

This is an even bigger deal in Haskell than in most other languages because Haskell, being immutable, performs a ton of allocations. Want to update a field? Nope, but you can allocate the whole object again with just that field changed. If most of that work could be moved to a linear heap which doesn't need GC... well you get the point.

<comment><USER13> I have not seen any evidence that GC is the primary bottleneck in Haskell, or that a form of compiler-driven manual memory management would be faster.

<comment><USER11> GC has non-zero overhead compared with linearly typed de-allocations, but that's not the main point. The title mentions predictability, and one of the big blockers to using almost any GC-ed language is the lack of predictability about runtime latency, which is very different than throughput, which I generally associate with the term bottleneck.

Additionally, predictable performance is about what the programmer can predict (whether you are talking about throughput or latency), and the argument is that linear types make it much easier to reason about the performance of a system, hence making it more predictable.

<comment><USER14> IANA expert, but as far as I can tell...

1) When it comes to sources of unpredictability, laziness is a way bigger problem than garbage collection

2) Assuming that by "GC" we mean "some variation on mark-and-sweep" (rather than meaning "any type of automatic memory management", which I hope is not the usage of anyone in this conversation), GC cost (in terms of CPU-time consumed) doesn't care how many allocations you've done, nor how much garbage it needs to collect. All it cares about is the size of the working set at the time that it runs. As such, all those lingering copies of the old tree nodes (etc, etc) are irrelevant. So I don't see why Haskell's additional allocations should cause GC to be any more of an overhead.

<comment><USER7> > So I don't see why Haskell's additional allocations should cause GC to be > any more of an overhead.

In this kind of garbage collector, time of an individual garbage collection should not depend on the amount of garbage that has been generated. However, producing more garbage should mean more frequent collections, and so more time spent in GC overall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Linear logic is also useful for describing the rules of games. You can set up the games starting state as resources and the games rules are axioms and winning the game is equivalent to proving a certain outcome.

This was also super interesting: [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cmartens/lpnmr13-short.pdf](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cmartens/lpnmr13-short.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER16> Related paper: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp- content/uploads/2017/03/haskell-linear-submitted.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER17> It's interesting that they use the word "capability" here. These kinds of single-shot values show up in the capability-theory literature occasionally. I suspect that linear types might be equivalent in structural power to the typical notion of "perfect encapsulation" in object-capability security, but I don't yet have a proof.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is wonderful, can't wait to use it for my own code. :)

Though at the moment the semantics isn't entirely clear to me. For instance, in the protocol example, shouldn't the pair be using multiplicative linear conjunction? It doesn't matter so much for a function receiving two Ints, but what's the semantics for a function receiving multiple ressources?

I guess you can use an impredicative encoding, e.g.

      A ⊗ B = forall C. (A ⊸ B ⊸ C) ⊸ C

but isn't it more usable if it's built into the compiler?

</comment><comment><USER19> Oh but I want a linear kind though! I'd love to reimplement Rust with GHC for some kick-ass safe interopt.

<comment><USER20> Did you actually mean Rust done in Haskell or Haskell done in Rust for Rust stdlib?

<comment><USER21> Implement Haskell in Rust and then implement Rust on top of that

<comment><USER20> I think that might be a waste since we have better tech than Rust for compilers. Better of doing it in COGENT and Haskell simultaneously. Use tools such as QuickCheck on Haskell part. Production code will be COGENT that's certified to machine code. Once that's finished, use the compiler to compile itself with RTS left in COGENT.

[https://ts.data61.csiro.au/projects/TS/cogent.pml](https://ts.data61.csiro.au/projects/TS/cogent.pml)

<comment><USER22> Hi, I'm the creator of Cogent.

I don't think Cogent would be much good for writing a compiler, actually (it doesn't natively support recursive data structures like ASTs). It's designed for OS components like file systems.

<comment><USER20> Wow, what a small world. :) I evangelize high-assurance tech and R&D on forums like this. I wasn't aware of this limitation of COGENT. I maybe wrongly assumed one could write a simple, non-optimizing compiler if people had written two filesystems in it. The latter seemed more complex. I'll hold off on that recommendation then.

I did want to learn some more about the strengths and limitations of your tool to generate ideas for other researchers. Send an email to the address in my profile. I'll reply in a few days with some questions that people here might have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I wonder how we are supposed to type ⊸ in ye olde ASCII?

<comment><USER12> IIRC There is some discussion of using "-o", but then there are a whole slew of lexing/parsing issues that emerge since "o" is not part of the (vast!) class of characters Haskell considers as valid for use in operators. Regardless of that, I do kind of hope "-o" gets adopted...

<comment><USER24> I think "\--[star]" could do well: the "[star]" emphasizes the "pop" in the lolly. Touch it once, and it's gone.

EDIT: Having trouble typesetting the asterisk!

<comment><USER25> * gets swallowed up for italicizing text on HN. Best way to get literal text is a line with two (or more) leading space characters:

      --*

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I still not get what is the deal here. So I see the types, but not why making them linear is good.

<comment><USER27> Linear types guarantee at compile time that you can use each value only and exactly once--so no use after free errors, no memory leaks.

<comment><USER26> Ok, and know that is not possible with normal types and follow the flow?

<comment><USER9> No, as it turns out in presence of recursion it's undecidable to know that in general. Inference in a linear logic system can answer when it's possible some of the time. Programmer-written annotations can assert it's the case. Type- checkers can ensure that assertions actually hold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> How on earth do those functional programmer folks always come up with the worst names for simple existing concepts, with totally different names? Worse than perl.

-> instead of comma?

-o / linear instead of refcaps?

"linear types" are certainly not linear. They are a simple reference capability, already in usage for decades. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object- capability_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object-capability_model)

e.g. [https://tutorial.ponylang.org/capabilities/reference- capabil...](https://tutorial.ponylang.org/capabilities/reference- capabilities.html)

Consuming a value changes its type to enable reasoning for concurrency.

As to the claim: Sure. Not only makes a refcaps type system concurrency predictable, it also makes it decidable at compile-time, and much faster. rust could learn a lot from this to avoid locking.

<comment><USER29> > -> instead of comma?

Because a comma would be a very unusual notation to separate the parameter and return value of a function.

For example a function with type "a -> b -> c" is not a function taking three parameters, it's a function taking something of type a returning another function of type (b -> c). Writing that as "a, b, c" would be an extremely weird way to write that.

<comment><USER28> Yes, I was wrong. I should have said () vs ->. You would write your "a -> b -> c" as

      (a) -> b
      (b) -> c

and then combined: ((a) -> b) -> c. A function taking a function. But Haskell just flattens nested these lists.

E.g. take this:

      inc :: Num a => a -> a

is normally written as

      func inc (Num a) -> Num;

A function taking a Num and returning a Num. The a is normally written as T, a generic type variable, thus forbidding type-promotions from e.g. overflowing Integer to Num. This inc will wrap around.

This is normally written without dependent types as generic for all subtypes.

      func inc (Num a) -> Num;
      func inc (Integer a) -> Integer;

Now Haskell calls that "pattern matching", but of course it is not pattern matching, it is polymorphism, static dispatch based on signatures. Pattern matching has a well-established meaning already, if strings or structural matching. Dispatch does much more than just matching. A match only finds exact candidates, dispatch also finds the closest candidate, which doesn't need to match.

<comment><USER29> Haskell doesn't call that pattern matching, or at least I've never heard that usage.

What Haskell calls pattern matching is if you have a single type (e.g. Maybe a) with two different constructors (in this case Just and Nothing) where "Just something" will match with a value constructed with that first constructor and Nothing with the second constructor.

Note that his isn't the only thing you have wrong, there are no values of type Num, because Num is not a type. In the expression "inc :: Num a => a -> a" the only type is a, which has a restriction namely that the type has to implement the Num typeclass. The parameters don't have a name in the type signature.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is Free Will a Buffer Overflow? - <AUTHOR> http://rogueleaderr.com/post/46948814545/is-free-will-a-buffer-overflow

<comment><USER2> Glad to see the questions raised but I fail to see how free will can at all be compared to buffer overflow or how in doing so we draw any closer to an explanation or understanding of its existence. I think if your goal is merely to show that free will can't be discounted by the laws of the known universe you're better off comparing it to "strange matter," things that share physical properties with most matter but are missing fundamental blocks of what we call matter like mass (gravitons) or interaction with matter (neutrinos). That allows us to say that if this "strange matter" can violate those rules, there is the possibility that something exists in the universe that operates on the fringe of known matter, still interacting but violating most of what we consider "rules" regarding matter's existence, perhaps even allowing us to operate freely. In computing terms, free will is probably more like a systemic computer, maybe it's more easily understood as a human's ability to reprogram itself. A highly evolved, biological machine capable of reprogramming itself. Although that just begs the question since the reprogrammer must still be programmed at some higher level to follow commands. The process of making a biological machine like that is a blast, but they're wildly unpredictable, as you would expect anything truly capable of freely reprogramming itself would be. ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I'm with you on the notion of free will as "reprogramming", but I contend that "strange matter" is the wrong direction to look. My point in the article is that in order for free will to exist at all, it would have to exist as a dynamic of the information system that is "represented" by arrangements of matter but is _not_ actually the matter doing the arranging.

As soon as you link free will to discrete matter (i.e. this is the free will atom) physical laws clearly attach and you've boxed yourself out. Strange matter may obey different laws, but it still obeys laws.

But in an information system like a computer program, things are a lot more nebulous. You can't even in principle point to the bit that makes one instruction a buffer overflow and another not. It's just that in one configuration the system behaves as intended and in another it doesn't, but the standing-in-relation-to-expectations of the system is something that exists in the information layer and not in matter per se. And when you introduce self-reference information systems go bonkers.

Free will has to be the same way, if it exists at all.

<comment><USER2> I think we need to determine what free will is first because to me random or just unpredictable does not equal free will (that's how I think of the buffer overflow you describe). Nor does complete freedom to act or do whatever you want equal free will. For example, having free will doesn't mean I can now fly or defy other natural laws. Free will, to me, incorporates interpretation and response, and the ability to change the rules regarding interpretation and response. It doesn't mean not having rules and laws regulating interpretation and response, it just means having the ability to redefine those laws. So yes, at some point I'll need something above causal reaction in order to have free will but that doesn't automatically imply that I'm boxed out because that free will is attributed to matter (strange as that matter may be). The whole point of the comparison to strange matter isn't that free will is a particle, but rather a way to show that physical laws don't clearly attach to everything in the universe. And I don't mean to imply that free will must be one thing or another. I think that's what I'm taking issue with in your argument. Especially your last sentence in the above comment. My comparison to strange matter is merely to show that free will cannot be discounted by physical laws. Your assertion says that free will, if existent, must be in a particular form. While my position can't be disproved, yours can't be proven. So I guess neither of us are pushing this argument much of anywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we're only disagreeing on a pretty narrow point. I basically define "free" in this case as "impossible in principle to definitely predict". That's why I'm resistant to the strange matter explanation, because although neutrinos etc do behave unusually I haven't seen evidence that they behave _without any laws_. I could be wrong about that; I don't know much about strange matter.

But re: my last sentence, the idea is that:

1) Free will cannot follow laws 2) All physical objects follow laws 3) Therefore free will cannot be physical, if it exists

And re: disproval, I kind of think my position may actually be testable. I'm not clever enough to think of an experiment, but my contention is that "will" can have causal influence on the world. And where there's influence, there can be measurement.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Truly Free People Search - SWiK - <AUTHOR> http://swik.net/Truly-Free-People-Search Truly free people search. Search by name and results include: Age, relatives, city and state, street address, zip, phone numbers and photos. <comment><USER2> Why oh why did I ever think anonymous editing wouldn't be ruined by spam? Thanks for helping to ruin SWiK you bastards :(

<comment><USER3> Just about everything you build on the net has to be approached from the abuse angle. First figure out how jerks can break it, then make sure they never ever get a toehold.

It's a sad affair but that is how it is.

On a given site I'll spend probably 2/3 of the total construction time on making sure that the assholes won't be able to spoil it for the nice people.</comment></comment>


Hello, Gophers Rob Pike's opening keynote of GopherCon 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://confreaks.com/videos/3419-gophercon2014-opening-day-keynote

<comment><USER2> The history and evolution of Hello World, a program that I have taken for granted, was just as fascinating as the evolution of go.

Those little pieces of boilerplate that become invisible to the experienced coder--the main function, the placement of parentheses--have years of careful consideration behind them, as Rob Pike demonstrated.

An excellent and illuminating keynote.</comment>


Look-and-Say Numbers featuring John Conway [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea7lJkEhytA

<comment><AUTHOR> "The most stupidest problem you could conceivably imagine can lead to the most complicated answer you could conceivably imagine."

"Somehow it was supposed to guess [the sequence] ... in the end he had to tell me."

Reminds me of those IQ tests were you are supposed to guess the sequence. This sole anecdote is not enough to invalidate the method, but gives me a hint judging someone intelligence by having him complete number sequences (or geometric ones for that matter) may not be that effective.

<comment><USER2> The fun thing about finite sequences is that you can find mathematical rules for arbitrary continuations (in the simplest way with more or less explicit ifs as (n mod i)) with no way of deciding what the right one is, except maybe that less complicated ones are probably not the solution.</comment></comment>


Does Life Speed Up As You Get Older? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120709-does-life-speed-up-as-you-age

<comment><USER2>
      BBC Future (international version)

      We're sorry but this site is not accessible from the UK ...</comment>


Ask HN: What to do with an iOS app idea? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a recent biz grad who's got a few ideas for an app. I don't know how to code (ObjC or any other language), so I'm not sure whether I should: a) suck it up and learn (if so, what are the best ways to learn it well/quickly?)
b) where could i meet potential partners (students?) without having the financials to pay them? is HN the place to be?
thanks. <comment><USER2> You don't have to pay programmers, but you need executive vision, street sense and goddamn heart to work with "us".

So you have an idea; study it, research it, see if it's worth it, and come back to "me" with fire in your eyes. Tell me this shit is gonna kill, offer me decent %, call people and think out our marketing plan, press releases, interview people. Line shit out for me so by the time I fire up an IDE I know who I am coding for.

Look at my work and tell me you want better. Challenge me. Take my work and sell it. Show me receipts. Put people on hold and tell me about figures. Be my go-getter.

You gotta want it, as much as I do, and it's up to you to tell me what "it" is.

I don't want your business idea, I don't care if it's "good", I wont to hear about it, I will not listen. But should you storm the gate, as loud as you are convinced, and tell me to quit my job to work for nothing with you .. Sir, you might have just gotten yourself a deal.

In business school they taught you business. You can just about shove it. Programmers want a religion; come to me when you want converts, not employees. Believe in motherfucking SOMETHING. I want to bleed with winners, not speculators.

<comment><USER3> Like! (1000 times)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been in web development since 1999, and let me share something with you: everyone has an idea. Everyone. When people ask me what I do, I cringe. I don't want to tell them, because I know what's coming. Every one of my family (I'm talking immediate and extended) members has, at some point, asked me to build/host/collaborate on some type of web-based product. Remember the laws of supply and demand you learned in econ 101? Well, there's a ready supply of ideas available at no cost. I can't stop people from telling me their ideas, so before you even begin, realize that the value of an idea is $0.00.

So what has value? Value comes in what I can't find easily. The number one thing missing from the equation any time someone pitches me an idea is some modicum of effort. You may not be able to code, but there are plenty of other things you can do. How much effort have you put in to outlining your idea? Outline your product. Outline its features. Outline its appearance. Spell out the business side in detail. Calculate a burn rate. What other capital investments will you have to make? Who else is in the space? The more detail you have, the more dedication you appear to have.

Beyond that, recognize that your idea might not be appealing to a programmer. Programmers aren't excited by the same things that business developers are. We don't want to implement yet another social business app, even if it does target a niche that "no one else is even paying any attention to!" If your idea isn't technically interesting, your pool of potential developer targets just got cut in half, and the pool of _talented_ developer targets just got cut by a factor of ten.

Develop your idea and share it. Don't fall in to the trap of believing that your idea is unique and requires protection. I don't sign NDAs. Period. I don't sign them because you have nothing I want, and I have everything you want. Remember, I don't want to hear your idea. Show me your idea and all the effort you put in to it. If it's enough, I'll work with you. I'm not going to steal your idea because I've tried to do it all myself before and it doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER5> An idea is worth nothing. Execution is everything. Either pay someone and bring them on board, or learn it yourself. No one works for free, and that's an important thing to remember. They will either want cash or a percentage -- remember to get that in writing too.

</comment><comment><USER6> b) you can meet students in universities.

Also, realize that _everyone_ has ideas for an app. Everyone. You need to build the ability to execute. That can be by coding yourself, by outsourcing, by finding people that work for free (good luck), etc. Without the ability to execute, ideas are worth zero.

Learning to code probably won't make you a good coder, BUT it will make it much easier for you to find and talk to good coders. That's worth investing a few months in at the beginning of your career, it will pay off handsomely. Do it. Just get a book that you like in your local bookstore.

</comment><comment><USER7> You could learn it. But you should also realize the value in specialization. Your app idea isn't worth much. What should be worth something is your ability to sell that idea. Your ability to market it into something people want.

I think there's a balance between guarding a good idea and being paranoid someone is going to steal it. Talk to people about your app idea. Be passionate about it. If it's really a good idea and it's something you are serious about, people will mention it to friends who may be willing to work with you.

</comment><comment><USER8> realistically, you need to learn how to code or earn enough money to pay someone.

No one who is able to is going to want to write an app based on your idea for partial equity. People who can program have their own ideas that they are more passionate about.

</comment><comment><USER9> Suck it up and learn. It's not hard. There are plenty of books to get you started so just pick one and start.

</comment><comment><USER10> By the time you learn how to code well, someone else will have brought your idea to market with better execution. Stick to what you're good at (business in your case) and hire a programmer to do what he is good at.

I'm not a programmer, but it didn't keep me from releasing Audio Footnote (audiofootnote.com).</comment>


Ask HN: POTUS Donald Trump; What this means to Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I actually think there is a _possibility_ that it could be _easier_ to get into US as highly skilled migrant under Trump presidency because of his anti- immigrant polities.

If he raises a minimum income bar for H1B to 150K and keep the same cap, then it would be much less qualified applicants for H1B visas and therefore there would not be cap overflow with annoying lottery process.

Of course, I can't predict what Trump is going to do. He can also reduce cap significantly (which would be very stupid move).

Let's admit current H1B requirements are stupid. For example, requirement to have bachelor degree instead of high salary. There are lots and lots very mediocre developers and almost all of them have degree. On the other hand, there are pretty strong developers who do not have degree (i.e. smart drop- outs).

P.S. I like this article: [http://paulgraham.com/95.html](http://paulgraham.com/95.html)

<comment><USER3> You confuse skill with high salary. If you're a part of HN community and work for a startup with some seed funding, good luck with (a) finding people (b) paying them $150k.

Not sure how you the want government to evaluate chemical, mechanical, aerospace etc. engineers. Right now it's formal education, since I think it's hard to do it objectively otherwise. For software engineers you expected USCIS will look at our ... GitHub accounts to evaluate it?

H1B as it is OK. Unfortunately big firms figured you can DDoS the application system and flood it with applications, get some people, underpay them and use them to replace more expensive and more qualified US people. This is a problem and it needs to be solved.

Read this article as an example: [http://www.infoworld.com/article/3004501/h1b/proof- that-h-1b...](http://www.infoworld.com/article/3004501/h1b/proof- that-h-1b-visa-abuse-is-rampant-in-tech.html)

<comment><USER4> I would advocate for using standardized test scores. If you're a smart dropout, even high school dropout, you could take the tests within just a few weeks.

Perhaps there does need to be some kind of flexibility for people who are not native English speakers. For example, a very high math score should be able to compensate for low verbal scores.

Using degrees seems like the worst possible option, since the standards are so low these days, and the trend is for the standards to go even lower.

<comment><USER5> > standardized test scores

I think H1Bs should only be used for highly skilled specialist roles with a minimum pay grade like 150k (adjusted for local cost of living). In that scenario, a standardized test would either be no more useful than measuring by degree possession, or would not be able to aid the search to employ highly skilled niche specializations.

I am personally upset because my employer successfully hired an unskilled and unqualified H1B "masters degree" (who also is not fluent in English) to perform the duties equivalent to a 3rd year computer science student. Either this person should have never been hired, or if they should have been hired, they should have been hired by a better employer. Either we imported a bad candidate, or we imported a good candidate and squandered his talent for work we should have hired literally any fresh BS in CS candidate for. Of course, my employer is happy because he's paying less than fair market value for entry level work. This has undisputedly displaced a local citizen from work.

What upsets me the most about this is that there is a company willing to pay to import a 150k+ highly skilled, rare, and valuable candidate and my employer may have been responsible for blocking that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That Peter Thiel is really good at picking winners and disruption.

<comment><USER7> Having watched and listened to Thiel for several years now, I came up with a pet hypothesis I call 'The Wolfian World' that I feel describes what's going on more accurately than the newspapers.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884413](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884413)

<comment><USER8> I am an immense fan of BOTNS, it is perhaps the most cherished novel in my collection, several years after reading it I still haven't read another novel that has impacted me in a similar fashion (recommendations are welcome), however, while I don't object to your analysis of some of the book's themes, I think your connecting it to current political events is a pretty huge stretch and really only accurate in a somewhat superficial sense. Still, I can't say enough good things about that book so have an upvote.

<comment><USER7> My email is in my profile if you or anybody else wanted to talk about BOTNS and why there's a deep connection between Peter Thiel's ideas and those of Gene Wolfe.

I don't think it is a coincidence that Wolfe was an engineer during the same period that Thiel has been scrutinizing. There are many intriguing connections. The energy crisis in oil, the rejection of nuclear energy (the New Sun). I fancy I see allegory. Maybe I'm mad but I am fascinated by both sets of ideas and cannot help seeing a wonderful marriage. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Data requests of Silicon Valley companies by the government may increase.

The list of people deemed "suspect" and spied on by the government using private data may grow and the people spied on may become, on average, browner and more Muslim.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd guess it will be a harder sell to get software developers in Europe, Australia, NZ, etc. to move to the US.

<comment><USER11> Or easier. Hillary is a face of western corruption to much of the world. So long as Trump delegates the tech stuff properly and doesn't do anything too unusual the moral choice of the US should be easier.

<comment><USER12> Not true here in France or most of Europe, for that matter.

The only people happy about Trump is ultra-right wing/neo nazi panopticon of odd figures - Wilders, Le Pen, Farage, Orban ... Really the "crème de la crème" of Europe. And, of course, Putin.

The rest is worried now - people are seriously questioning what happens, for example with NATO, after Trump's remarks on not unconditionally supporting the allies. Is Trump going to divide Europe between himself and Putin, e.g. in exchange for Syria? Is Putin going to have a free hand to invade Baltics now? What about Ukraine, Moldavia? Are we going to go back to the Iron Curtain era where Soviet "borders" were the ones with West Germany? These are serious issues which you don't feel on the other side of the Atlantic, but for us living there it is a big deal.

What about business? Trump made some remarks about erecting trade barriers to protect American markets. So, of course, this concerns us too.

On the other hand, the misogynist, racist, xenophobic BS he was producing during the last few months is mostly seen as disgusting, but finally mostly your internal problem. I am sure someone like Merkel is not going to be personally happy to have to sit next to him at some official function, but people do respect the result of the election and are professionals. GWB was not seen as the sharpest tool in the shed in Europe neither but everyone survived it.

Clinton was seen as a continuation of the US policies, so naturally people would have preferred her - nobody likes to rock the boat too much when it comes to foreign policy or business. Trump is seen as unpredictable, unreadable and incompetent in this regard, unfortunately.

<comment><USER13> Tread carefully; while I suspect most of Europe doesn't care too much about Trump, the media and rest of the left wing in the UK labelled anyone pro- Brexit as ultra-right wing / neo Nazi types - they're still being called uneducated and racist by presenters on TV as I'm typing this.

Then the vote for Brexit won a majority. They're not all scum at the extreme end of a political spectrum.

If France goes down the same naive, name-calling route Le Pen will surely be next to capitalise on it.

<comment><USER14> The media are not the left.

While individual publications might be exceptions to the rule generally the media are to the right of centre in Europe.

<comment><USER15> I don't where you get that from, but in France, most of the media are left- center left, with a few to the right.

<comment><USER12> That's what you get when you generalize over all media and, especially, not knowing any of them.

European media are on both sides of the aisle, you will find both left and right leaning ones, including crazy tabloids.

However, what you likely won't find is something like Fox News, with conspiracy theory pushing nutcases being regulars there.

BTW, this theory about a "media conspiracy" is not new, nor something that Trump or Putin invented. Lügenpresse ("lying press") is a term widely popularized by (not invented) and mostly associated with National Socialists in Germany - in Hitler's Mein Kampf, for example.

Most people parroting this unfortunately don't care - anyone having a different view has to be a part of some complot or aiding the "enemy" (whoever that happens to be).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No one can reliably predict what it means.

<comment><USER17> Oh my god, a sane comment in this thread. God bless you.

<comment><USER18> Really? I think it's fairly obvious that no one knows what it means, and that OP is asking for peoples opinions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't think there will be significant negative drag to Silicon Valley as anti-immigrant policies won't apply to skilled migrants.

Ultimately Trump is a chauvinist and economic with the truth sure, but that just makes him a New York businessman. He is no ideologue and as long as he doesn't kick off a trade war things should level out quite quickly as I note here:

[https://governmentsandmarkets.com/trump-the-morning-after- th...](https://governmentsandmarkets.com/trump-the-morning-after-the-night- before-a6c711ae64e9#.ajb1p4y85)

We can also actually expect more support for startups as these are acknowledged job creators. Where the danger comes is in enforcement of anti- monopoly statutes for larger companies, although healthcare monopolies are likely first on the plate.

</comment><comment><USER20> If Obamacare is repealed, I'll have to stop working independently and go back to a "real" job to be able to afford health insurance.

</comment><comment><USER21> With the GOP controlling both Congress and the Presidency, and a luddite POTUS, encryption, digital privacy, and net neutrality are all in danger.

<comment><USER22> How are these things in danger NOW? Did you sleep through the whole Snowden incident, and everything Assange published in the past decade? Trump can't take away what you don't already have.

<comment><USER21> We've certainly lost some of these things, but we're about to lose all the rest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It probably means very little. A president does not really have the power to make significant change. It happens with collusion from congress and apathy from the public.

The Silicon Valley outcry about Trump was mostly a social signal intended to make people seem enlightened -- how enlightened does one really have to be to be disappointed a presidential candidate makes rude/racist remarks?

<comment><USER24> With the same party wearing all three hats, the chance of change is increased.

<comment><USER25> I seriously doubt the republicans and Trump will be on the same page much. Plus the democrats are slightly stronger in the senate, so the filibuster should slow many changes down a bit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Complete uninformed speculation: The stock market doesn't seem to like him. If that continues, the big markets may be less appealing as investments, interest rates may stay low, and so VC may be a (relatively) more appealing place to throw money. That would fuel money towards more startups, but it's a wildly uneducated guess.

<comment><USER27> I think the market will self correct shortly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The only policy position he really made clear that would affect SV was that he said he would find a way to severely punish Apple for making their devices in China.

Whether he follows through and has congressional support is to be seen.

<comment><USER29> No other US company makes anything in China?

<comment><USER30> For instance, various Trump brands manufacture heavily in China.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Probably won't be able to hire all those cheap H1Bs (and that's coming from a former H1B!)

<comment><USER32> Trump loves cheap H1Bs.. Who do you think works on his resorts for minimum wage?

<comment><USER33> Those are H-2Bs.

<comment><USER32> Good point, I should've said he loves cheap H1Bs, who do you think works for the Trump Modeling agency for minimum wage..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think he will be fine for the H1B and and other skilled immigrant programs.

Lower corporate taxes would be good, but I don't think it will be realistic. However, some kind of deal for tax repatriation for large multinationals might be possible. This could bring a lot of money back into the country by the likes of Apple and others.

Tariffs might have some impact as well depending on the type of company/labor and source countries affected (China/Mexico).

</comment><comment><USER35> I think for the most part, Pence would be the most experienced in the Trump/Pence duo. I would look into Pence's government style.

<comment><USER36> Pence is the VP which constitutionally has next to no power (Lookup VP John Nance) President-elect Trump will be running the executive via his cabinet appointments. It'll be Governor Christie, who's running the transition and finding those cabinet appointments, that you should be pinning your hopes on.

<comment><USER37> Yeee-es, but then would you say Cheney had no power?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Srsly, if you want a highly skilled worker who is paid >$100k in the States, you got to have them start working here early when they are not that sophisticated and maybe is paid $70k or so. if I start my career in my home country I wouldn't give sh*t about working in the States after a few years when I'm already successful.

</comment><comment><USER39> Peter Thiel has his ear, predict based on what you would think Thiel would suggest. My guesses, not that I have a great model of Thiel's mind, are less regulation but more data collection, probably not much change w.r.t H1B.

</comment><comment><USER40> I predict that not that much will change WRT valley issues.

His bombastic statements were populist, I don't see anything on the policy agenda that seems it will hit the Valley in any meaningful way.

Even if there are some trade-barbs with China ... the Valley doesn't export much there ...

<comment><USER41> American tech manufacturing is outsourced to Asia, right? Will a trade war with China, for example, impact gadget production and raise costs and lower demand for the gadgets that the valley produces and profits from? If there are trade-barbs with China then I would expect that to hit the valley hard.

<comment><USER42> Low factory jobs may come back to US, hopefull with better pay than in China and selling gadgets at a higher price point, while China starts focussing on producing for their own population. I look at this quite optimistically, as it makes end-user price closer to the real cost of production, and it makes production local which brings the concerns for extremely-poor workers closer to the consumer.

In other words, no-one cared for Chinese slaving away, but reimporting those jobs and having Americans factory workers in the same indecent position may trigger more empathy, or at least more health/education budget is available to cater for them. Maybe we'll even charge 10x for IoT gadgets (or kid games, or Ikea lamps), so that workers get a decent situation. It will hit the Valley hard, but only startups who distribute moderately useful gadgets that rely on the poverty of the Chinese workforce.

Maybe it will go as far as paying the Macbook price for a PC, but that's ok if workers get proper working conditions.

<comment><USER43> > while China starts focussing on producing for their own population

It's already doing that, which is why US companies are tripping over themselves as they scramble to get in on the Chinese market

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Why would I move to US/Silicon Valley ? Is it because Donald Trump won ? But what will change about taxes and freedom ?

</comment><comment><USER45> Shouldn't we be talking about this shit before the election? It's not like California had anything to do with Trump, but still.</comment>


Hard Drive Reliability Review for 2015 - <AUTHOR> https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-reliability-q4-2015/ <comment><USER2> This is interesting...

"A relevant observation from our Operations team on the Seagate drives is that they generally signal their impending failure via their SMART stats. Since we monitor several SMART stats, we are often warned of trouble before a pending failure and can take appropriate action. Drive failures from the other manufacturers appear to be less predictable via SMART stats."

~10 years ago, I remember google research put out a highly cited paper wherein they found that SMART stats were not a particularly strong indicator of impending drive failure (50% of drives had no SMART indications of problem before failure). [http://research.google.com/pubs/pub32774.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub32774.html)

Has this now changed (at least for Seagate)?

Reliability/longevity is nice but a signal of impending failure is far more valuable from an operations point of view.

<comment><USER3> From our experience, we've found 5 SMART stats that are useful in predicting failure: [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-smart- stats/](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-smart-stats/)

Many SMART stats aren't particularly useful in predicting failure as they simply correlate to the age of the drive in some fashion.

Also, here is our data on every single SMART stat for all of the drives we have: [https://www.backblaze.com/blog-smart- stats-2014-8.html](https://www.backblaze.com/blog-smart-stats-2014-8.html)

Gleb (CEO, Backblaze)

<comment><USER4> Gleb,

First thanks for all your company's sharing of such data, as well as the pod open platform. Kudos.

Second, can you do a Writeup specifically and only about SSDs?

Thanks

<comment><USER5> As far as I know, they don't really use SSD's because of the higher cost/GB. So they probably don't have much to say about them :/

<comment><USER6> Is there any good use case of having ssds in a data center, if you did not care about cost?

<comment><USER7> They're used in DCs plenty when speed is required

<comment><USER8> Yep, I work for a very large government department here in AU and we have a tiny bit of SSD in our DC for the stuff that really needs it.

It's probably not 5% of our total storage, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> HGST ( _or Hitachi Global Storage Technologies_ ) are again topping the charts for drive reliability! They must be doing something right.

Also, the fact that backblaze are publishing most of their data online is very cool.

<comment><USER10> HGST, formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, part of WD as of 2012. The cool thing about them was that their consumer Deskstars were at least as reliable as enterprise disks by other manufacturers. I still have 12-year-old PCs here with HGST 80 and 160 GB drives that were subject to daily use and a lot of inappropriate handling. The Deskstars don't mind.

Very unfortunately, HGST has apparently scaled back Deskstar sales and development significantly since the acquisition. I guess it has to do with WD selling off some of HGST's 3.5" assets to Toshiba in order to appease competition authorities. See also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10057519](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10057519)

<comment><USER11> Yet:

"In May 2012, WD divested to Toshiba assets that enabled Toshiba to manufacture and sell 3.5-inch hard drives for the desktop and consumer electronics markets to address the requirements of regulatory agencies."

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

<comment><USER10> Added link to an older comment of mine that addresses the HGST/Toshiba thing. To me, it looks like newer Toshiba 3.5" models are based on Fujitsu tech (if the enclosure design is any indication). Also, Toshiba might abandon their HDD business completely. [1]

[1] [http://seekingalpha.com/article/3827746-seagate-western- digi...](http://seekingalpha.com/article/3827746-seagate-western-digital-soon- true-duopoly-hdds)

<comment><USER12> Fujitsu :( I worked at Fujitsu wholesale distributor around 1999, EVERY SINGLE drive sold between 1999-2001 died within 3 years (PB15/PB16). Those were great drives, cheap, silent, fast, and smelled great fresh from the factory due to pine sap rosin.

Allegedly Cirrus Logic controller had a manufacturing defect and died due to heat. Myself I always suspected that very peculiar and strong smelling rosin flux. PCB was drenched in it, this type of flux is usually highly activated and requires cleaning, otherwise acid will eat solder joints and copper away, especially in humid and hot environments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't really understand their methodology for computing failure rate. The page says they calculate the rate on a per annum basis as:

([#drives][# failures]) / [operating time across all drives]

Wat? The numerator and denominator seem unrelated. What is being measured here?

To me, it would make more sense to look at time to failure. Together with data on the age of the drive and the proportion of failures each year one could create an empirical distribution to characterise the likelihood of failure in each year of service. That would give a concrete basis from which to compare failure rates across different models.

<comment><USER14> Are you referring to the "(100*drive-failures)/(drive-hours/24/365)"? There's no multiplication of total # of drives and # of failures in there.

It's all just a scaling: you have a number of broken drives in a corner of the datacenter in the wire bucket that says "broke during 2015", you count them, divide by total hours of that type of disk running (since they may have been brought in commission at different points), and then scale it so you get it in percent-per-year, not likelihood-per-hour.

It smells of someone explaining code, rather than illustrating an important engineering formula, but there's nothing wrong with the rescaling calculation per se.

<comment><USER13> > Are you referring to the "(100 _drive-failures) /(drive-hours/24/365)"? > There's no multiplication of total # of drives and # of failures in there.

Perhaps the problem is the specific example given. 100 is the size of the drive fleet and also the multiplier required to convert to percentages. Let's assume you are right and the 100 in the equation is not #drives.

Even so, I find the approach questionable. If the point is calculate the proportion of failures then that (overly simplistic) calculation is:

[#failures] / [ #drives] = 5 / 100 = 5% failure rate.

But this isn't what's calculated. Instead the author calculates the proportion of drive-years per annum affected by failure. For the 100 drives in the example the cumulative number of operational hours given in 2015 is 750K hours (out of a possible 876K hours, had the drives been operating 100% of the time).

That's a problem because 750 / 876 = 85.6% of total time.

5 / 85.6 = 5.84% "failure rate" which seems to me an overstatement.

The problem gets worse as the number of operational hours decrease. Imagine for a moment the 100 drives only operated 50% of the time in 2015. We have:

100_ (5 / ((875K*0.5) / 875K)) = 10% "failure rate". This despite only 5% of the drives having failed.

Wat?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A useful additional metric is the age of the drive at failure.

This would determine if the failure rate was constant for the life of the drive (meaning random failure) or is it age related (infant mortality or old age).

25 drives that fail after 1 week plus 25 that fail after 50 weeks is different to 50 drives that fail one per week.

<comment><USER16> Luckily they open source their operational and smart status for all of their drives[0]. This means that you can do this additional analysis (and more). Which is awesome.

[0] - [https://www.backblaze.com/hard-drive-test- data.html](https://www.backblaze.com/hard-drive-test-data.html)

<comment><USER15> Brilliant, thanks for letting me know. I'm studying Logistics Engineering and reliability analysis is part of my degree. This will make a great case study :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "...give or take a Petabyte or two"

As one does.

<comment><USER18> Yev from Backblaze -> when you have 200 of 'em you lose count :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Color me skeptical. I bought into this, at first. After reading some other stuff, not so much.

Like this, for example: [http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6028/dispelling- backblaze-...](http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/6028/dispelling-backblaze-s- hdd-reliability-myth-the-real-story-covered/index.html)

<comment><USER20> I read the same thing a year ago and I came away actually upset at the tweaktown article. Off the top of my head, I remember some of the complaints being that the drives were subject to abnormal amounts of heat and that the drives were consumer-level drives.

I remember a study Google did on harddrive reliability and it seemed to show that heat had little to no effect on it. I also don't regard consumer-level as being a bad thing. As a consumer, I kind of want to know which drives are built for abuse better. All drives fail; which drives fail more and at what cost?

<comment><USER21> The tweaktown article did talk about temperature. I think you were right to feel they were being silly with that. Temperature MAY correlate with failure but Backblaze found it did not do so within the ranges they actually see in their environment. Something about which it appears they would have more than enough data to be able to compute.

<comment><USER22> Google's study some time ago found that temperature either didn't correlate with failures or, in the ranges they ran their machines, had an inverse correlation with failure. It would appear to be one problem disk manufacturers have largely surmounted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Are Backblaze the company that bought all the hard drives in the Bay Area during the 2011 crisis?

<comment><USER24> Possibly - there's a blog post where they trawled consumer stores to buy drives and drives in enclosures, and then removed the enclosures.

[https://www.backblaze.com/blog/farming-hard- drives-2-years-a...](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/farming-hard- drives-2-years-and-1m-later/)

And the discussion on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6801334](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6801334)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4631027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4631027)

<comment><USER25> Not just the Bay Area either. They coined the phrase "hard drive shucking", 'cause they were buying consumer external usb drives, then digging the drive out and thorwing away the enclosures.

That story is linked down near the end of the article:

[https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze_drive_farming/](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze_drive_farming/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Good data, but I wish they would have rendered these tables using HTML. Not fun typing these out myself to search.

<comment><USER27> You can download the raw data from [https://www.backblaze.com/hard-drive-test- data.html](https://www.backblaze.com/hard-drive-test-data.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've head a lot of bad luck with Western Digital hard drives lately. Nice to see some data back that up. I didn't know HGST existed, though.

<comment><USER29> HGST and its cousin HDS don't get nearly the recognition they deserve in the North American Enterprise storage market. Their products have, in my experience, always offered phenomenal value and rock-solid reliability at very reasonable prices. HDS arrays in particular are pretty great at outperforming 'big name' storage vendors at far lower prices.

<comment><USER30> I think they changed brands too many times to keep their enterprise reputation intact. Few people even remember that HGST used to be Hitachi which used to be IBM.

On the other hand, those who do remember IBM hard drives probably remember them as the Deathstar, so HGST might not want to be associated with their old home so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What would be really helpful is if they could simply put some amazon links on this report to the drives with the best reliability according to their tests.

<comment><USER32> Then people would accuse them of shilling/being biased.

<comment><USER31> People will always be sour and accuse you of things.

But actually I don't see how this makes them biased in any way. All drives essentially sell for the same amount (and Amazon pays a percentage of that) so if you trust the info as being accurate (and why wouldn't it be?) then how could it biased then given there is such little lattitude in pricing?

And who is going to accuse them anyway? People who read HN? If so, so what?

The data presented is a nice shortcut answering the question of "which drive should I buy" without having to read all of the charts and most importantly think.

Lastly, you don't have to buy from amazon just because they give you a link but it does make it easier to see a price and compare to whatever vendor you might typically use (or provide several links to different vendors).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wish there were similar statistics publicly available for SSDs. From these failure rates, hard drives don't look as reliable as one would imagine.

<comment><USER3> I actually am blown away by the reliability of hard drives. We've found that after 4 years, nearly 80% of hard drives are still working, and the median life is about 6 years: [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-long-do-disk- drives-last/](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-long-do-disk-drives-last/)

Considering a 4 TB hard drive has to track 32,000,000,000 individual bits, allowing reading and writing repeatedly of each one, on platters that are spinning 120x per second, spaced a hair's width from their heads...I think it's actually incredible.

As for SSDs, we keep wishing that we could switch to them, but they're still 10x more expensive on a $/TB basis. That may change in the next few years, and if it does, we'll look forward to sharing data on SSD usage at scale as well.

Gleb (CEO, Backblaze)

<comment><USER33> I guess my point about hard drives is most people never back them up and kind of always expect them to hold up over 5-10 years. They have years of photos, videos and documents stored on them. Then there are friends savvy enough to setup a raid system and invariably the raid hardware fails before the drive does and they can't get a replacement.

Thanks again for sharing the drive reliability statistics.

<comment><USER18> Well those folks should have Backblaze ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is it possible for this data to ever be useful? Given the time necessary to acquire the data, and the rate at which improvements are made to drives, cannot we make the assumption that drives purchased today probably won't operate in exactly the same manner as drives purchased a year ago?

I don't mean to insult, just to ponder the relevance of such long-term studies on tech that changes so quickly.

<comment><USER35> When the data is consistent for several years you should already figure out that Seagate is not going to improve so fast, when they do improve in BackBlaze data you can start buying them again.

Large companies may buy Seagate due to the price advantage and the fact that their storage systems can better handle the drive failure rate.

<comment><USER36> The Seagate drives do seem to be improving in reliability though. The higher capacity Seagate drives which I presume are newer models have better failure rate numbers than the lower capacity drives. The 4 and 6TB drives seem to have reasonable failure rates compared to the other manufactures - only HGST is better than Seagate for the 4TB and Seagate 6TB drive has a lower failure rate than the HGST 8TB. FOr >4TB drives the Seagate 6TB has the lowest failure rate.

6TB 1.89% 4TB 2.19/2.99% (depending on model) 3TB 5.1/28.34% (depending on model) 2TB 10.1% 1.5TB 10.16%/23.86% (depending on model)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It'd be interesting and quite helpful to see the failure rate vs. drive age, per manufacturer.

For example, for less reliable manufacturers there might be a "if you get past first N weeks, you are fine" pattern, or a failure cliff exaclty 1 week past the warranty period, or something equally entertaining.

</comment><comment><USER38> Just in time for me.

I've got 5 Western Digital drives which have failed out of original purchase of 6. Now I'm wondering if it's really worth it trying to go through the RMA process (I need to figure out exactly how old they are and how long the warranty is) or if I should just give up on Western Digital and go with a different manufacturer... though I am not looking forward to spending that amount of money all at once.

<comment><USER39> The best performing brand seems to be HGST which is a subsidry of Western Digital

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Great stuff. Does anybody have any stats for drives' Bit Error Rates (BER) / maximum unrecoverable read errors (URE) / non-recoverable read error rates ? By my understanding, manufacturer quoted BERs for commodity drives, often 10^14, tend to be 10^15 or higher in practice.

</comment><comment><USER41> This information is super useful. I have an ST3000DM001 and only trust it because its smart stats are still all in the green (and of course I have local and cloud backups of anything important).

I've had it for four years now and there are no warnings of any kind yet, so I guess I got one from a good batch.

<comment><USER42> On the basis of buying a single personal hard drive this data is interesting but wouldn't have much impact on your purchasing. As usual the advice is to have multiple backups of everything

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Always look forward to this report, thanks for sharing the data.

Amazing the 4TB hitachi with twice the platters of the 2TB fail less.

(and I will never buy seagate again for home pc or servers, even before this report I could have told you they are unreliable)

<comment><USER44> That's the wrong message to take away. The right message is: every manufacturer goes through periods of good and bad disks. Don't depend on any drive to be perfect.

The Seagate 3TB were awful, but their 4TB seem to be just fine.

<comment><USER45> I've had two Seagate drives "fail" recently after <2 months - the drive is fine but the (OEM) USB3 enclosure is dead. No idea who manufactures those for Seagate but I'm not impressed.

<comment><USER46> Similar experience with WD. I bought a western digital USB drive. It failed, I RMA'd it for a new one. It failed. A year later I bought a bigger one, and it failed after another year.

I cracked open the enclosures and the drives are just fine. I still use them for backups with no errors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Total 213,355 Terabytes or 213 Petabytes, that's quite a bit.

<comment><USER48> Honestly not that much : to feel comfortable at home I would need 20 TB of storage (of course it's only Linux ISO ;-). A bit more than 10 thousand people like me and they would have to reorder more drives.

<comment><USER47> At the datahoarder subreddit according to his flair one of the mods claims to have 1.4PB.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Would be more interesting to find out reliability figures for high-throughput data-center models of hard drives instead of backup drive models, with low access rates.

</comment><comment><USER50> Are there similar results or survey for SSDs?

</comment><comment><USER51> Sort of off-topic and apologies for the commercial nature, but can you really get a 2 TB thumb drive for $17? Do they work?

[https://www.wish.com/search/2%20tb%20thumb#cid=5683434cce922...](https://www.wish.com/search/2%20tb%20thumb#cid=5683434cce922026a8eae933)

<comment><USER52> It's a common scam to sell flash drives with modified firmware that causes it to report a larger size than the underlying flash chips provide. Usually once you write past that point, the writes will loop around or drop the data entirely. It's likely that the $17 flag drive you linked to is a scam.

Beyond that, flash drives tend to have low write durability and horrible performance on large writes (because of poorly implemented garbage collection).

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I have 2 x ST40000DM and 1x ST40000VX in my desktop, plus one 4TB Seagate 'surveillance' drive as a USB luggable, though OSX to which it is currently connected doesn't want to give me the specifics (neither right-click Info, nor DiskUtil).</comment>


Jelly, Biz Stone's New Startup - <AUTHOR> http://jellyhq.com/

<comment><USER2> So, do good... and brag about it?

<comment><USER3> Sure, why not?

Why should people who do good not brag about it?

If feeding egos incents people to make the world a better place, why not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is it?

<comment><USER5> Even the domain has been booked recently. DOMAIN: JELLYHQ.COM created-date: 2013-03-22 00:38:18 updated-date: 2013-03-22 00:38:21

Apparently, an "idea stage" venture. The only point of attraction is Mr. Stone!

<comment><USER6> It's a pretty big point of attraction. Blogger and Twitter are a pretty good track record.

<comment><USER5> Exactly!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "People are basically good."

I hope the product has a lot more going for it than this assumption, because if not, this seems like a very flimsy platform.

<comment><USER8> To be fair, he can't be that honest.

It also has Biz' wallet. If it wasn't for him, this wouldn't even be mentioned. Developers joining are probably guaranteed a year or two salary, no matter how bad it is. Beyond that, we have to know more about it

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> april 1st post date.

<comment><AUTHOR> He talked about this project back in January with Charlie Rose. [http://www.fastcompany.com/3004361/a-conversation-charlie- ro...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3004361/a-conversation-charlie-rose-biz- stone-ev-williams)

<comment><USER9> Must be real then. The April 1st post date and all the obligatory buzz words like "Mobile first" threw me off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I look forward to hearing more about this.

</comment><comment><USER11> a web page. pretty a.w.e.s.o.m.e

<comment><AUTHOR> Twitter acquired Vine when it was just a web page.

<comment><USER11> i dare them to acquire jellyfish ;)

<comment><USER12> I doubt they're aiming to be acquired, but maybe you're joking. This will likely be funded by Obvious</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Open-source tool for managing faculty, students, courses, and more - <AUTHOR> https://www.bountysource.com/fundraisers/455-edutrac

<comment><USER2> Good luck to the guy, BlackBoard(the market leader in that segment) has a few patents and is willing to use them to kill competition.</comment>


Ask HN: What do language designers think of VLang? - <AUTHOR> I see vlang (https://vlang.io) in github trending repos(https://github.com/trending). I have looked at this some time back and it looked too good, basically go with a hint of Rust. I have few questions to hard core compiler engineers and other PL experts.<p>What vlang is trying to do is possible with out a GC of any kind(including ref counting)? If yes, why none of the modern PLs took this route? <comment><USER2> The author's claims are fairly loosely worded so it's hard to make much of a determination until the relevant code ships in some form.

For example, the documentation claims both no memory leaks and C/C++ translation. It's not possible to do both in general because C and C++ programs can have memory leaks. Presumably what the language will end up with is the ability to translate some subset of C and some subset of C++ automatically. That may or may not be generally useful depending on the details of the subset.

Even the claim of no memory leaks itself is a bit suspect. GC'd languages don't make that strong a claim. With a sufficiently restrictive language, it's probably possible to achieve but I'm not sure how useful that language would be. My guess is that it'll probably morph into a claim about memory safety which is more reasonable.

Finally, please don't take this as a criticism of the language. It's still too early to have a sense of that. It's perfectly possible for the language to fall some way short of its pitch and be really great. But that's obviously caveated by a variation of the old adage that all of the code I haven't written yet is bug free.

</comment><comment><USER3> This memory model would be possible and practical without references. mut off by default, nice. pure by default, nice. Allocate everything on the stack (hopefully with overflow checks unlike rust), but change internally to heap allocation with automatic scope tracking and deallocation (easy with gcc or clang). copy by default.

But with threads and refs you need more than that, namely ownership tracking and compile-time errors on wrong argument attributes (mut, ref). Imho V does nothing of that. To ensure concurrency safety, like in Pony. And haven't checked if stack overflows are caught on recursive calls, or if tail call conversion is done, to make it practical even with the stack limitations.

What I really liked of V was the OO system.</comment>


Ask HN: How would you crack the upcoming unemployment wave? - <AUTHOR> AI will lead us to the largest unemployment wave in history. Maybe in 10 or 20 years from now. How would you avoid chaos? <comment><USER2> How is AI any different from other technology improvement such as electricity, automation, personal computers, steam engines, or the cotton gin?

All of them destroyed some jobs, and created new ones.

Are you sure that the impact of this one thing will be larger than other events, such as climate change, space travel, video games or war?

The only thing that is likely from AI of is perhaps increased productivity, which, on its own, will not create chaos. And, we have had several false starts in the past on that with AI, so even that is unclear.

My suggestion is to continue living your life in the best way you think possible.

<comment><USER3> Unequal distribution of gains.

That is the primary difference. If a founder creates a technology from Singapore and sells it worldwide it can replace millions of workers without those workers or their countries seeing any gain, relative or otherwise.

A secondary difference is that it may fully obsolete some humans, just as cars fully obsoleted horse drawn carriages. In the past, farmers could move to factories, but once robots are able to understand simple commands and enact them with human-like limbs at a all-in cost lower than minimum wage, then a good part of human society becomes unable to earn a living. Sure, some things only humans can do (those that require a belief that the job must be done by a human: therapist, tour guide, politician, etc) but it doesn't seem especially likely that this will absorb the billions of low-skill workers.

<comment><USER2> These reasons would apply to the cotton gin as well.

<comment><USER4> cotton gin didn't replace dr's, lawyers, teachers, truck drivers, surgeons, taxi drivers, delivery drivers, writers (many news agencies already use AI to write articles) customer service / tech support, and even coders (there's a project to teach AI to code). The end goal of ai/automation is a society where nobody has to work at all but can live like kings because the robots take care of everyone..

<comment><USER5> The real question then becomes one of what will the masses do? Hedonism is a short trip, next sets in boredom. What we need is scientists and explorers in space. Ultimately, a risky adventure. That takes even more science in areas that are much more undeveloped than AI: psychology, sociology, science-based politics and definitely biotech (which is on the cusp of important breakthroughs ) and space travel. (Elon Musk plan in essence)

The meantime would require a massive shift in thinking of elites from greed to charity and cooperation.

<comment><USER6> > what will the masses do?

Doing all the things that fall outside the realm of economy: \- Caring for their children and elderly relatives. \- Pursuing artistic and scientific endeavors. \- Volunteering in their local community.

All of this would certainly keep _me_ busy. I honestly don't know if this reasoning applies to 100% of people; that's a hard prediction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> World war.

History suggests that the massive devastation and annihilation of labor resulting from a multi-continental war is extremely economically stimulating to the survivors. So many opportunities for jobs rebuilding and restoring the things and people that were destroyed!

(I am, of course, being sarcastic, but it's useful in these contemplations sometimes to consider the stakes by putting a null hypothesis of sorts on the table).

<comment><USER8> I don't see any sarcasm here. Two previous macroeconomic transitions (industrial revolution, post-industrial white collar economy) were indeed resolved by world wars.

I considered this scenario extremely likely to be repeated.

<comment><USER5> See, the main difference is the scale of the destruction. WW2 exactly ended because it escalated to really horrendous levels. (If the Japanese or Germans got the nuke first, we'd be in a very different world now.)

<comment><USER8> That's fine.

WWI culminated in development of chemical weapons. They were used in wartime, assessed, and stockpiled. But everybody was scared of ever using them again. Chemical weapons were not used in WWII.

The same thing happened with nuclear weapons in WWII. They were used, evaluated, and then stockpiled. But everybody was scared of ever using them again, and they weren't. Nuclear weapons most probably will not be used in WWIII.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do nothing.

Plenty of able-bodied people today don't work. They live off investments, the government, and/or the largesse of friends and family. Many lead lifestyles you or I might find very limiting, but they're Americans and they vote. They'd become available to work if something matching their work ethic, life situation, and BATNA was to come along. For many, nothing ever will.

Our world is not really in very much chaos over this, compared to the chaos of the past 100 years from other sources.

Futurists once predicted that the 40-hour workweek would become a thing of the past as automation made leisure time more available. I submit that we're actually seeing that, though maybe we don't recognize it: many of us working more than 40 because we have jobs that require it, and with those of us working single digits being pretty quiet about it, the aggregate average is slipping further below 40 every year.

A society where 10% of the people work really hard and 90% of the people barely work at all sounds more like the popular concept of a utopia than a dystopia, at least to me.

<comment><USER10> This makes me a bit sadder about the fact that I averaged 55 hours a week last year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My solution is to end our reliance on "jobs" for survival.

This can be done by building machines that produce everything necessary for human survival, and making those machines as low cost as possible.

In general I refer to these machines as "survival machines", and I see them as somewhat similar to a computer operating system but for human beings.

I've written a few essays about this concept, and am actively developing robotic hardware to build the first prototypes now.

[http://tlalexander.com/machine/](http://tlalexander.com/machine/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Revive unique ornate embellished design. Centuries ago, every product in the home of the wealthy was its own miniature work of art; almost necessarily, because it was all hand-made. Certainly kept artisans busy.

Today, flat design is considered desirable – by definition, devoid of embellishment. Embellishment is considered tacky. This trend is no doubt encouraged by mass industry, which benefits from more uniform design: it is easier to produce, and easier to mass-market.

A market for unique embellishment could provide employment for many. By definition, unique embellishment cannot be scaled, else it would not be unique. So-called "hipster" culture has already started going this route, with hand-made "artisanal" goods and services (food) becoming trendy and employing many producing what would otherwise be a fraction of a large factory's output.

Of course, the problem is maintaining the key trait – uniqueness – as desirable. Ornate embellishment can be mass-produced. The trick is convincing people to spend more to buy something that was inefficiently produced, as opposed to something that _looks_ like it was inefficiently produced.

<comment><USER13> This is a cool idea, but isn't it a chicken or egg scenario? I need lots of disposable income to buy unique, handmade things. If not enough people have money to buy these things, then the market won't be able to support many artisans. I'm not sure if I'm missing something here.

<comment><USER12> You are right. It is a practice that has to start from the wealthiest. Of course, this is why artist communities thrive near centers of wealth. I'm not sure how to kickstart such a larger trend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a society, fund jobs where humans are still best. Caretaking of elderly, daycare, more teachers for more hands-on learning. Unless robots are full on conscious beings, people will always need that human connection for their own proper development and well-being.

Case in point, Norway has a ton of oil money and they could almost live off it as a country. But instead they save as much as they can and invest the rest in a strong social state that takes good care of the young, elderly, poor, disabled.

<comment><USER4> There's only so many people that can fill those types of jobs..I'm a developer though --so an introvert - I'm never going to want to take care of elderly for sure.. I could def. see myself teaching because - I do like to do that, but I'd probably teach coding, and when there are no coding jobs - when all teaching is about taking care of elderly or becoming a teacher... or a massage therapist - I'll be out of a job there as well.

There's 9 billion people on the earth and if we try and divy up all jobs that require a human touch -- we'd still have about 8.4 billion people left unemployed. Full on conscience robots aren't impossible either - further out for sure (2050-2060 by most estimates) - but w/ AI's help in researching/coding next gen AI that timetable could move up exponentially.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not sure why people continue to ask this question when the threat of massive global food web and ecosystem disruption caused by human-driven environmental damage is arguably far more imminent than job displacement. I say arguably because there are arguments that state the contrary, but they aren't realistic. Drastic job displacement due to automation will take at least 10 more years, while we're already seeing unprecedented droughts, groundwater depletion, pollinator extinction, and massive biodiversity eradication in the oceans. Scientists are literally saying that we are past the point of no return [0]. So why would people think that a massive unemployment wave will strike before an ecological catastrophe does? I'll tell you why: because rich people don't even know what they're doing. If they did, they'd know it would be in their best interests (granted, long-term best interests) to use their massive capital advantage to improve the longevity of the human race, i.e. their customers. And, as time has shown, the only way to wrangle in stupid rich people is by a revolution, and probably a violent one unfortunately. So ironically, as I say that there are more pressing issues at hand, my solution is to have a revolution. Disclaimer: I don't want this to happen any more than the next person, but it will regardless.

[0] [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/donald-trump- clima...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/donald-trump-climate- change-policy-global-warming-expert-thomas-crowther-a7450236.html)

<comment><USER6> > I'm not sure why people continue to ask this question when the threat of > massive global food web and ecosystem disruption caused by human-driven > environmental damage is arguably far more imminent than job displacement.

Because it tickles your brain more to think about this. (No sarcasm or anything, just neutrally offering a hypothesis.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> >How would you avoid chaos? Encase myself in a robotic super suit and fend off the hordes one bullet at a time.

In all seriousness, I think the most likely course of action is that a significant part of society will retreat into virtual reality and drug addiction. As we are already seeing in Europe, east Asia, and parts of the US, in the absence of economic opportunity the population drops once people have some experience of modern life and see that it's not all it's cracked up to be.

<comment><AUTHOR> "a significant part of society will retreat into virtual reality and drug addiction."

Sound like chaos to me ;)

<comment><USER16> I don't think we can pretend that most people will be employable, and employ them in make-work jobs. That won't fly even for those who benefit from these jobs - people are too knowledgeable and incredulous now. They will know it is just a game.

The population will fall, and indeed it already is falling. VR and drugs sound like a way to sedate people, not drum up chaos.

<comment><USER13> It sounds an awful lot like the Brave New World.

<comment><USER5> Indeed it is one possible model of a surprisingly stable society. One other intermediate is to cart them off to space. And then next once population is low enough so that only the best remain in the genetic pool, we might see something special. Plato's republic? That was never possible because you could not have every one be a philosopher scientist as the support base was never there to begin with.

Utopia of a kind, probably with people who are no longer quite exactly homo sapiens but a new species even. (super advanced AI could be it)

There are many ways to have a temporary dystopia but how many to have a permanent one?

Huxley foresaw specialising humans to the kind of work they are supposed to do, but he never foresaw the tools we now have.

Now then, we need not agree with Mond's goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> wu-ikkyu _Redesign the monetary system from the ground up with modern goals in mind_ , as opposed to the legacy goals stated in the 1913 Federal Reserve Act.

As it stands, 2 of the 3 explicitly stated goals of the Federal Reserve system are:

1\. achieve maximum employment

2\. maintain stable prices

Exponential growth of computing and automation makes #1 a sadomasochistic, obsolete, and counterproductive goal as putting everyone to work would mean us having "too many cooks in the kitchen".

Stable prices is also counterproductive and counterintuitive, as automation is making goods and services better, faster, and cheaper. Prices should tend toward zero in an increasingly automated labor market.

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

</comment><comment><USER17> Live a lifestyle by then which is very inexpensive and build up savings.

Meaning: Own your own property. Reduce or eliminate long term contracts (vehicle loans, two year commitments, etc). Reduce overall spending (so your savings last longer).

There's a reason why, in 2008, retirees as a group were least impacted. They had more stable lifestyles that didn't depend on an active job. Plus even if the AI revolution never happens, this strategy has benefits for the next recession, illness, or other unemployment.

</comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Culture itself has to change. A winner-takes-all global capitalist system is already on track to pile loads of wealth upon the wealthy and hollow out the middle class into a modern serfdom.

We as a people need to better value kindness, volunteering, or even the basic dignity of life itself.

If we are lucky, we will achieve these things in time for the machines to learn them from us. If we end up creating super-intelligent machines in the mould of Ayn Rand, I suspect our future will be harsh and unkind.

</comment><comment><USER18> > AI will lead us to the largest unemployment wave in history.

Citation needed.

But let's assume you're right. I think the last thing we need to do is hand more power to governments.

For instance, if AI bring massive productivity increases across many sectors, than price pressure will be downward. Anti-market solutions like price floors (to support business) or minimum wages (to support workers), will not allow us to fully enjoy the improved standard of living brought about by falling prices.

Some localities or states will outlaw self-driving cars (as they hurt driver jobs), but that will simply prevent delivery prices from falling in that locality, hurting the many for the benefit of the few.

Imagine if the cost of living dropped to 10% or 1% of what it is today, while at the same time quality and quantity of goods increased. We wouldn't need government to assure some income based on today's cost of living. Instead, a meager amount of savings, a small amount of charity, or a small amount of work could sustain everyone's existence. Propping up current wage levels with UBI would be fighting the natural economic forces driving cost of living down.

<comment><USER10> So, AI brings massive productivity, which drops cost of living... and then what happens to the industries whose costs were reduced as part of that?

What if the impact of AI reducing costs looks like the impact of on textile industries in countries that receive mountains of donated clothes?

"The result of this harmful practice is increased dependency on foreign aid in countries like Kenya and Uganda. Local industry can't compete, so factories close down, taking priceless jobs with them. It's a huge problem."

[0] [http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel- intervie...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-interview- with-african-economics-expert-for-god-s-sake-please-stop-the- aid-a-363663.html) [1] [http://blog.wovin.org/faq](http://blog.wovin.org/faq) [2] [https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/23/lets-kill-the-aid- industry...](https://techcrunch.com/2013/11/23/lets-kill-the-aid-industry/)

<comment><USER5> The main problem with robotics is the very high barrier of entry to making silicone electronics. This obviously concentrates power in the hands of the very few.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Enact a tax on automation. Don't do it immediately, do it when the tech hits the knee of the adoption curve. Use the income to implement a guaranteed basic income. Otherwise it's going to end in dystopia.

<comment><USER2> Does that mean I have to use a government approved text editor every time I automate something with code?

<comment><USER20> Eight Monitors and Constantly Surveilling

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Historically, technological advances do not lead to widespread unemployment, though they do generate widespread speculation about future unemployment.

If this time is different, then I think the answer will be in something like universal basic income. Preparing for that and avoiding chaos means introducing social structures and ideas that can lead us out of capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER22> To me this is like asking how do we crack the littering problem from tourists on Olympus Mons?

I still think we are really far from this. Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant aren't anywhere near good enough to replace a human assistant. Siri has been out for _5_ years and look at how slowly the improvement in digital assistants has been since then. At the rate seen over the last 5 years we're at least a decade or more away from digital assistants putting human assistants out of work.

Now we talk about AI actually putting jobs that require more training than an assistant (which I am not denigrating, it is a hard job, but easier to train someone on than some other professions) and I think we're 50-100+ years away from AI actually causing some kind of employment crisis.

</comment><comment><USER23> Implement a Georgist tax regime[1], take the money production facility away from the banks (direct issuance by the goverment for infrastructure, profit share the results), implement Distributist[2] policies to spread capital ownership as broadly as possible, and implement a gently eugenic basic income regime. (Not happy about that last one, but it has to happen to make things sustainable.)

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

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism)

<comment><USER24> I have no idea what a "gently eugenic" regime would be. Or, if it's what I'm imagining, why it would be necessary for sustainability. Mind elaborating?

<comment><USER23> An example would be to make basic income only apply to citizens over 18, so having additional children would not increase payments to a family, and then making children a large tax break, encouraging people who can afford them to have children.

I'm ambivalent about it, particularly since I'm catholic, but I'm afraid the alternative is idiocracy and, eventually, far more human suffering.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> AI? 10 or 20 years? You're out by at least an order of magnitude.

The upcoming unemployment wave will be caused by the automation of middle class jobs exacerbated by the failing economy caused, ironically, by the decreasing population.

</comment><comment><USER26> I believe the next step is expanding our footprint out of earth and colonizing other planets. That will provide people who aren't the beneficiaries of the current economy a new start. There will be fringe planets that are 'uninteresting' but still viable for human life.

I don't believe that a basic income would be the right way forward. It might be a good stop gap measure while we try and figure out super-fast travel and terraforming - but it will marginalize a huge portion of the society.

Historically no society has been kind to 'freeloaders' and I don't expect that to change anytime. (Please note the quotes - it is not my opinion, it is just what the opposition thinks). We don't need UBI, we need universal opportunity for jobs for everyone so that they can feel a measure of dignity and go about their life instead of looking at a life of netflix and chill.

The other choice I can think of happening is androidization of people. Once you are able to upload your consciousness into a network, there won't be any shortage of space. I think this is even further out though sadly :(.

</comment><comment><USER27> Yeah I know. I'm about to say something that is sacrilege.

In nature, the population and the available resources tend to equalize. I am a bleeding heart libertarian (let people do what they want to do as long as it doesn't affect others but I don't mind paying taxes to provide a safety net), so I'm not saying people should die on the street, but maybe we should stop having as many children and things will stabilize.

I even think it would be cheaper long term if we subsidized birth control for the people who wanted it.

<comment><USER28> I used to be a hard core libertarian, but not anymore. It will simply not work in an era of full scale automation and AI.

<comment><USER27> That's why I qualified it as a "bleeding heart liberterian". I don't believe the government should mettle to much in what private corporations do with a few exceptions, but I do believe its first responsibility is to its citizens and to provide a safety net. I don't mind my taxes going to help others who got left behind

As far as exceptions to when the government should mettle: it shouldn't allow companies to actively harm people (pollution), it should force companies to give consumers all relevant information on whatever they are trying to sell, and they shouldn't allow mergers that decrease competition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The health and social systems desperately need people to work there. I don't think truck drivers want to start a career in nursing, but well, many people driving taxis today didn't think they switch to driving taxis when they lost their jobs.

Another way would be pumping money in (re-)education of all these people.

I'm don't think every one of them can be changed into a lawyer or physicist, but I saw a bunch of "street-smart" entrepreneurs whos businesses at least made enough money for them.

</comment><comment><USER30> You're asking how to solve a problem that hasn't emerged caused by a technology that hasn't matured, with a solution you haven't created.

Sounds like a problem for government! ;)

</comment><comment><USER31> Conveniently, nuclear fusion is also 10-20 years away. With the energy problem going away at the same time, we won't need to worry about working anymore.

<comment><USER32> Nuclear fusion is ALWAYS 10-20 years away.

<comment><USER33> I think that's the point of randomdata's comment.

<comment><USER5> Actually it has been progressing nicely linearly so the original predictions were way too optimistic, but it is at break even now. In the meantime, there are major improvements to be made in fission.

Making it progress faster would take more genius scientists plus somewhat more funding. Not a lot more though. But where do you find and view do you cultivate such physicists and material scientists?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The biggest problem is the backward compatibility with the current system.

Negative income tax with a government backed efficient job market where to overhead of hiring someone for 2h is minimal. As a result, someone working 20h a week would have the same quality of life as someone working 40h today for a minimum wage. Worker can spend the extra 20h on education, leisure or more work.

I don't think anything other would fly pocitally.

</comment><comment><USER35> If it does happen, there would surely be a new wave of employment in areas unimagined before.

<comment><USER4> That worked great for horses, right? After cars they were employed in lots of places never imagined... --we use glue for tons of stuff now adays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think our society might be changing a little bit more. This talk explains it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI)

</comment><comment><USER30> You're asking how to solve a problem that hasn't emerged caused by a technology that isn't developed, using a solution you haven't created.

I know. Government will solve this! ;)

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm working on the problem at catallax.info. My book should be out soon. I'm going to be looking for lots of input and collaboration.

</comment><comment><USER38> Learn ai as hard as I can.

<comment><USER7> That's a good personal solution but it does not scale. But by all means, do that; we need more people who understand the capabilities and limitations of the technology in the space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Invest in chip companies. AI requires a lot of computes.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why is this post dropping to the bottom?

</comment><comment><USER40> Work to seize the means of production

</comment><comment><USER41> Robot tax.</comment>