7 ms·
Harder Drive: hard drives we didn't want, or need (2022) [video]
- mathgradthrow 2y agoI wonder how many people here are discovering tom7 for the first time beacuse of this video.
- samstave 2y ago[flagged]
- _-_-__-_-_- 2y agoMe!
- drewcoo 2y ago[flagged]
- uvesten 2y ago#metoo It’s like when you think of something that will never exist, because it is just too absurd. However, this guy not only has an even more absurd idea, he also brings it into existence and shows why it’s a great idea to build a sustainable future! #nohate
- timClicks 2y agoWait until you encounter his executable research paper about executable research papers. The NAND gates video is probably the closest humanity will ever get to perfection though.
- kristopolous 2y ago[flagged]
- HALtheWise 2y agoThere's a research paper form available. http://tom7.org/papers/murphy2022harder.pdf http://tom7.org/papers/murphy2022harder.pdf
- kryptn 2y agoThat's not a good summary of this video. I wonder how much other content you've skipped because some AI told you it was something it wasn't.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kristopolous 2y agoI skipped it because it's 40 minutes long and I had lots of things to do. I used the AI tool because I didn't expect anyone else to take their time to explain it and the 19 page pdf seems to be meandering without a coherent thesis. So the answer to your question is 0 because that's not what happened.
- flexagoon 2y agoMhm, that's called "entertainment". If you don't have 40 minutes (or 20 on 2x) to spend on something that isn't work, that's pretty sad.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pino82 2y agoSame here. It's not that I wouldn't have the time. It's about principles. Some exceptions aside, text is just the better medium for actual content (not so much for the big show, though). Put some images or clips into the text if it makes sense, but don't make everything a video. I'm sure a lot of people here cannot even imagine how we can continue living without having seen that clip. And 10000s of other ones - the barrier for superlatives is quite low nowadays. Also, there are entire generations of people out there today whose default way to retrieve content is by some video clips. Their perspective is different, because texts are hard for them. Sure they can somehow read, but many of them never learned well to actually understand text. That's the point. I can imagine that there maybe indeed is some value in the clip. But I'm also very sure that it's quite okay to skip that video; and all the other ones. Things will be fine for us. Still. ;)
- ulrikrasmussen 2y agoThe value in this clip is in entertaining you. The delivery is a major part of it. I agree that too much information is delivered (poorly) via video these days, but this is not an example of that. It would also be silly (I think) to prefer a condensed summary instead of actually watching your favorite show on Netflix.
- ejolto 2y agoYou're in luck because the video is also available in the form of a research paper http://tom7.org/papers/murphy2022harder.pdf http://tom7.org/papers/murphy2022harder.pdf
- Uehreka 2y agoOof. Some things aren’t purely informational. You can’t summarize experiencing Harder Drive, you can only get a description of what happens in it. Actually watching Harder Drive actually is the point. You spend 30 minutes (lol I wish it was 40) watching something fun/funny and feel good while you’re doing it.
- kristopolous 2y agoSo it's entertainment? Alright.
- Uehreka 2y agoIf you’re trying to imply it’s No Big Deal… well you’re right, but not in the way you expect…
- kristopolous 2y agoAlright, it's entertainment that I'm not allowed to be uninterested in.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- exhilaration 2y agoI've never heard of this guy but that was fantastic. Subscribed!
- hnbear 2y agoThe PDF a couple of weeks ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41159075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41159075 Not sure if that counts as a dupe. Also, it needs [2002] tagging.
- rogerrogerr 2y ago*2022
- a022311 2y agoYeah I submitted that. Why is it #1? Should I flag it?
- kencausey 2y agohttp://tom7.org/papers/murphy2022harder.pdf http://tom7.org/papers/murphy2022harder.pdf
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Waterluvian 2y agoThe idea of buffering data by transmitting it somewhere far, bouncing it off a moon or whatnot, and using that distance of radio waves as your memory is my favourite thing ever.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoThere's a great sci-fi short story (well, two, I guess) that I can recommend based on this - although, knowing what you said is a slight spoiler for them.
- Waterluvian 2y agoPlease do!!
- wizzwizz4 2y agoOne of them is https://qntm.org/transi https://qntm.org/transi. I don't know about the other.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoThat's one of the ones I was thinking of! Another one is "The Hundred Light Year Diary", by Greg Egan.
- OscarCunningham 2y agoIn Conway's Game of Life, the first self-constructing machine used this principle. It has two construction arms, and the recipe for them to create new copies of themselves is encoded in gliders and bounced back-and-forth between them. This turned out to be much simpler than building any kind of storage device. https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Gemini https://conwaylife.com/wiki/Gemini
- NortySpock 2y agoSort of like a really, really long delay-line memory tube, it's just mostly-vacuum instead of mostly-mercury... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-line_memory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-line_memory
- K0IN 2y agothis lives in my head rent free for the rest of my life
- tomfreemax 2y agoHaha..., storing data volatile, with not good retrieval success, slow speed in thousands of heads... I wonder if you could make a harder drive out of this approach... And how much you could store there. And does it benefit society? Like automatic phone calls..., texts... :-D
- fnord77 2y agois there a TL;DW on this? I don't have the patience for these long drawn out videos with bad audio.
- ComputerGuru 2y agoYes, previously submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41159075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41159075
- brokensegue 2y agoIt's very hard to summarize
- kzrdude 2y agoTry it, or work towards it as a goal
- ChrisClark 2y agoUnfortunately no. With a short attention span, you will just have to miss out on what makes his videos awesome. For this type of thing, making it accessible for you would ruin the magic.
- compiler-devel 2y agoThe commenter could have ADHD or some other disadvantage outside of their control. Imagine applying what you said to someone in a wheelchair—“making it accessible to you would ruin the magic.” Gross.
- oefnak 2y agoHuh? Making many things wheelchair accessible would ruin them. Stad for wheelchair people, but not a bad thing to acknowledge... Right?
- compiler-devel 2y agoWhy are you asking me again when I’ve already stated my position?
- zeroq 2y agoI remember lcamtuf mentioning very similar concept ca. 2003. In his version you would partition secret data and send it out to non existing email addresses, just to get them bounced back within a couple of days. If you want to get your secrets back together you would simply start gathering appropriate parts (you need to keep track of all the chunks somewhere), otherwise you'd simply send them to another non existing email address.
- rwmj 2y agoI really need to add Tom's plugin to nbdkit upstream ...
- wkirby 2y agoDo yourself a favor and watch the entire back catalog. Not sure there’s anyone more creative than tom7 working right now.
- StableAlkyne 2y agoSIGBOVIK is always fantastic, and Tom7 is consistently the star of the show
- starry_dynamo 2y agoSeconded. My first experience with Tom7 was the "Super Mario Bros. is Easy with Lexicographic Orderings and Time Travel..." I've been hooked ever since.
- TrevorJ 2y ago100% agree. This guy is next level.
- kmaxwell 2y ago[flagged]
- YZF 2y agoSome of these ideas are as old as time but the comic seriousness is great. Reminds me of older analog delay circuits where the signal was sent as a sound wave in glass IIRC ... with multiple taps for different delays. EDIT: Here's a cool example that maybe warrants its own submission: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/glass-ultrasonic-delay-lines-pictures/ https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/glass-ultrasonic-dela...
- lupire 2y ago41 comments, 2 years ago: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22harder%20drive%22&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- labrador 2y agoIt'd be nice if there were a topic summary. What is this about? I'm not going to devote part of my day reading/watching something about chainsaws to understand what the topic is
- kibwen 2y agoTom7's relatively small oeuvre of videos are frequently re-posted here and just as frequently re-upvoted, and they deserve to be. Discovering what the video is about as it discursively unfolds is part of the joy. There comes a moment in every video (multiple moments, even) where you'll suddenly be like, "wait, I can't believe what you appear to be suggesting", only to find out that not only is he suggesting it, he actually implemented it. There are few video creators who are as attuned to the hacker mindset as Tom7; I decline to summarize and instead strongly recommend you watch it and find out for yourself. It's a video about the logistics of juggling a trillion chainsaws, in a manner of speaking.
- labrador 2y agoYour comment makes it sound even less appealing since I avoid getting nerd sniped by my hacker mindset and go on to topics that actually interest me
- jameshart 2y agoI don’t think Tom7 videos will ‘nerd snipe’ you. Nobody has watched a Tom7 video and thought ‘wait, I need to implement something like that’. They will give you some things to think about, some new metaphors to use (you clearly like geeky creators who give you metaphors to employ since you are aware of XKCD’s ‘nerd sniping’), and they will entertain you.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ElectricalUnion 2y agoThrowing chainsaws in space is probably a more reasonable "juggle" that for example using blockchains as mass storage. It's also probably cheaper for the environment to boot.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- agusv 2y ago[dead]
- valid_aq 2y agoThe concept of storing data within the transfer process like that heavily reminded me of a short story that invoked a very similar idea, Valuable Humans in Transit by qntm: https://qntm.org/transi https://qntm.org/transi
- vidusgsogvvcgrb 2y ago[flagged]
- arendtio 2y agoFinally, I understand what the Dark Net is :D
- kmarc 2y agoThis is the first time I encounter a tom7 content. I expected a fun, nerdy video. I walk away with goosebumps, cathartic feelings. I didn't see it coming how the end switches to a pretty serious topic. The whole composition is award winning in my mind, but then he also put a ton of engineering effort in it, at a level of quality that I could at most wish that I could achieve in a lifetime. Wow.
- kroltan 2y agoMy favourite feature of this video is that he uses the "Network Block Device Kit" to make a kit of 3 drives, each using one of those words as the main point: "Network" storage, "Block" storage, and "Device" storage.
- parkerside 2y agoThe basic premise of the ping-based drive, taking advantage of ephemeral media i.e. transmission time of a packet, was the idea behind clacks (https://github.com/AlexanderParker/clacks https://github.com/AlexanderParker/clacks). I got excited to see someone else had a similar idea and explored it. My approach was more as a p2p system of mutual random packet bouncing rather than using ICMP ping. Edit to add: I simulated a network of peers and rendered some videos of a single message propagating through the network: https://github.com/AlexanderParker/clacks-tests/blob/main/profiling/README.md https://github.com/AlexanderParker/clacks-tests/blob/main/pr... Recovering your file in this way would take some time... "Eventually" you'll get it back...
- llimos 2y agoGNU Terry Pratchett
- 12_throw_away 2y agoNeed to praise the inception here - the whole time I was watching it, I was feeling clever, thinking "all of these silly and wasteful methods for storing data are still pretty efficient compared to 'blockchain'". Then it turns out that that that was secretly the whole point :)