I'm going to use this time to drop the Marshall Brain work that had the biggest impact on me, and is some of the most prescient speculative fiction I've read.<p>Manna: Two Views of Humanity’s Future<p>He contracts two societies. One is a dystopia where AI very, very similar to today's ML models is integrated into society as a replacement for the middle class, removing social mobility as well as acting as a panopticon lower management, and centralized social credit system.<p>The other society uses the similar technology not as a social class moat, but as a tool to form a synthesis with all members of their culture and and unlock new levels of individual freedom.<p><a href="https://marshallbrain.com/manna1" rel="nofollow">https://marshallbrain.com/manna1</a>
A gut punch for me. He was influential in many ways, as multiple comments here have already attested-- in particular the 'Manna' story that has been mentioned several times, which definitely knocked my socks off.<p>Since no one else has brought it up yet, I want to say that one of his websites, "Why Won't God Heal Amputees" (<a href="https://whywontgodhealamputees.com/" rel="nofollow">https://whywontgodhealamputees.com/</a>) was very important in my world. It may not exactly be the most highbrow philosophical or theological treatise you've ever encountered, but it crystallized several points I still consider hugely significant.<p>For anyone raised by Christian fundamentalists of the type who continue to claim to believe in miracles being possible as a direct result of prayer, it is one of the most important things you may ever read. It lays bare the blatant falsehoods at the root of all such claims, forcing you to grapple with the fact that whatever higher power(s) may exist, they do not keep their supposed written promises in any way that we human beings would consider honest amongst each other.
Wow, when I was a kid back in the early 2000s, howstuffworks was my favorite website. I bet I read every article on how various things work (there were many hundreds).<p>I found that the knowledge from that website helped me understand how everything in the world worked and satisfied my curious mind. I attribute my knack for understanding new things and fixing things to this website.<p>Back then, the site was clean and had very good clean and expertly written explanations of how various mechanical, everyday and scientific equipment worked. Nowadays that website is not the same, seems riddled with SEO spam and fluff articles like a content mill.<p>Rest in Peace Marshall Brain, thank you for all your contributions to my (and likely others) life
Marshall was one of my closest Mentors through college. Truly heartbreaking to hear of his passing. I wish his family; wife and kids, the best through this tragic period.<p>He inspired me daily with his dedication to his students, incredible work-ethic and love for entrepreneurial engineering. My life is forever changed for having met and been mentored by Marshall, I cannot express enough gratitude for the time I got to spend with him.<p>Rest in Peace Marshall Brain, a real-life legend.
He was 63 and wrote this a few years ago, “You’ve Had Your Turn –The Case for Euthanizing Everyone at Age 65”
<a href="https://marshallbrain.com/youve-had-your-turn-the-case-for-euthanizing-everyone-at-age-65" rel="nofollow">https://marshallbrain.com/youve-had-your-turn-the-case-for-e...</a>
Wow, this is very tragic. I was actually just reflecting on the influence Howstuffworks.com had on my life and interests. Quick story:<p>My first introduction to programming was building a Geocities website in HTML (using notepad, of course) at a science camp in 1999. They also showed us the "How HTML Works" web page as a resource, which became my first technical resource. I remembering struggling with something on my website and eventually emailing my question to Howstuffworks, not expecting much back. Not only did a very patient and informative woman respond to me, she continued to answer my questions and offer helpful guidance to this very eager kid for the rest of the summer. Without that positive experience, who knows if I would have stuck with it. It's been on mind a lot since I just realized that was 25 years ago.<p>I hope Marshall knew how much people valued the things he created and the impact they had.
He was also the author of <a href="https://marshallbrain.com/manna" rel="nofollow">https://marshallbrain.com/manna</a>, a sci-fi story that has stuck with me for years.
I just wanted to highlight that he was also an entrepreneurship professor at NC State and shaped many students' views of what they could do with their lives.<p>I was one of those students. I now own my own company as a result of his teachings. He was very influential and a wonderful human being. This news is tragic.<p>RIP Marshall. You were loved.
Given the amount of dystopian content he was posting on his website and subreddit lately, he seemed to be despairing quite a bit regarding the direction of society.
Can’t help but feel he got screwed when the HowStuffWorks website was sold for 250x what he got just a few years earlier.<p>Aside from his futuristic works, his Win32 API book was extremely good and my first introduction to Windows programming.<p>It’s our loss to loose such a talented human being.
I shared this on the other HN thread, but I spent some time revisiting the HowStuffWorks c 2001, and highly recommend as a catharsis and reminder of the web as it once was:<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20010202064900/http://howstuffworks.com/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20010202064900/http://howstuffwo...</a>
Oh man. Sad to hear that. I remember in the early '2000s before Wikipedia printing out those tutorials to read before I'd take these long bus rides out of town to work at the meat (slaughter) plant. I was trying to educate myself so I would not have to work at the meat plant for long. That job kinda sucked but at least it got my mind straight. I was debating whether or not to save up for college. Working there for a year let me save up and to convince me that I'd rather go to school to try to not work a blue collar job.<p>I read a few of those How Stuff Works articles printed on paper at the public library on those long hour bus rides. They'd keep my spirits up.
Well, damn. Some time before HowStuffWorks, he was an instructor for our newly minted development team teaching us all how to do C++/Motif programming in a reasonable way in 1993. For #reasons I was the only person on the team available to help him out with getting our development environment set up and we worked together for the better part of a day on Sun SparcStations running Solaris.<p>Later in the year we were both in Manhattan and decided to meet under the WTC towers to head to lunch.<p>He got there a little early, stepped off the base of one of the World Trade Center towers, and knowing the length of one side of one tower and the number of floors, estimated how many Zebulon NC's would fit in the 2 towers (Zebulon was where he either lived at the time or where he was born.)<p>I've forgotten the value he came up with, but the mental math there amused me that he'd bother to try.<p>Super neat guy.
Marshall taught one of my classes at NCSU when I was there ten years ago. He was a little eccentric but super nice. I remember that he said if we made a website, the “natural exploratory pressures” of the internet would find it, so all we had to do was have good content. I wonder how much of that still holds, but it’s a good memory. Hope his family finds peace.
Sad to hear a brilliant man decided to take his own life. He seemed increasingly dark on his later takes, and it's a testament to the evils of unrestrained high-IQ and no guard rails.
So grateful that HSW existed when I was younger. As a teenager, I couldn't afford to get the timing belt and water pump replaced on my car so I had to figure out how to do it myself. I bought the service manual from AutoZone but I needed something to closer to an introduction to even be begin to understand it. He seemed to love explaining how car engines work and that series of articles was exactly what I needed at that time to get started.<p>RIP Marshall, I hope you knew what an inspiration you were.
Sad to hear. This is an amazing resource that many curious people have grown up with. It alleges here that he committed suicide. It makes me extra sad that someone who gifted others with so much found themselves in that place.<p>Dang - deserves a black bar?
Very sorry to hear that Marshall died :( I just went on howstuffworks.com and I see two articles on astrology on the home page. For real? I thought it was a science-based website.
He was such an amazing guy. We got to interview him on our tiny podcast[1] after we reached out and he so happily joined us for half an hour. His book, Manna (which is $0.99 to download from Amazon[2] or free on his website[3]) is still one of the most fascinating and interesting visions of the future that I've come across (although I don't totally agree it's the only reasonable option).<p>What a loss.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA5v2cfJp1o" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA5v2cfJp1o</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Manna-Two-Visions-Humanitys-Future-ebook/dp/B007HQH67U" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.co.uk/Manna-Two-Visions-Humanitys-Future-...</a><p>[3] <a href="https://marshallbrain.com/manna" rel="nofollow">https://marshallbrain.com/manna</a><p>Edit: Fixed "free to download from Amazon" - it's not
Very sad, just a reminder that success doesn’t translate to happiness.<p>The podcasts that came out of HSW.com have heavily influenced my life. Especially Stuff You Should Know (still a top 20 podcast but no longer owned by How stuff works.<p>I remember 16 years ago going through the whole rigmarole of downloading the podcast on my white MacBook, syncing to my iPod, repeating each week so I could keep up with the episodes of SYSK coming out. Fast-forward to today I still listen to each episode religiously and have learned so much from Josh and Chuck.
TIL about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo</a> from reading about Marshall.
Websites that refresh instead of returning you to the previous page (HN in this case) should be nuked off the internet. Microsfot does that A LOT on their support forums.
In other news, yet another website fails at understanding that a hard redirect prior to a 404--instead of just issuing a 404 in the first place--is an idiotic practice that breaks browser history.
As someone who has pulled himself back from suicidality, I absolutely abhor the expression "died by suicide".<p>If I had gone through with it, I would have killed myself - and any euphemisms being thrown around would serve no-one at all (especially not those still living in that hole).<p>I would much rather have it framed as me having done something unforgivably stupid and completely preventable - but as a society we'd much rather reject that reality and instead refuse to acknowledge that more often than not the signs were all there; that not only was the death an irreversible act of idiocy, but it was also something that we could've and should've stopped yet did nothing to prevent.