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Comment by mastazi | Hacker News Reader

It's frustrating that the author is using the word "stateless" because it usually means something different in the context of computer-related topics. Maybe the title of the paper should have been something like "A proposal for an ephemeral-storage laptop" or something along those lines.

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Conversely, it's frustrating that you reference some definition instead of just stating it. Are you referring to stateless (web) applications? Wouldn't that also exactly fit your other "ephemeral storage" definition? You surely don't propose that those applications don't keep state while processing a single request. This proposed laptop only keeps state for a single boot.

>It's frustrating that the author is using the word "stateless" because it usually means something different in the context of computer-related topics.

Not really different. State is state.

Well then the premise is wrong. If state is state, then any useful computing device has state. The question is where (and if) that state is stored persistently.

The meaning of the title was not obvious to me either. Stateless in programming means pure functional, so the first thing I imagined from the title is some sort of new pure functional CPU.

This laptop also has a state, the post-boot state is just fixed and repeatable. And, of course, the underlying technology is not different, it makes use of a lot of state, so using the word “stateless” here is certainly not the clearest language possible.

To be fair, though, not even functional programming is truly "stateless." The program has a state as it's actually executing a function. It's still remembering the functions arguments, etc. It's just that the state is extremely ephemeral, and is lost by the time the function returns.

I think this is using the word "stateless" in the same way, only over a slightly longer timescale.

Functional is a programming language paradigm. That's too high a level to think at when you are talking CPU's and hardware.

There's no linguistic or semantic sugar on this level. Think assembly and lower. Remember, programming langyages, paradigms, and compilers are for you. Not the computer. It's all just 0's and 1's to it.

The author is a well-known computer security developer, I'm sure they're aware of the alternative meanings of state when deciding on the term.

What different do you mean? In computer-related topics state always refered to the ability to change or not change after an interaction has finished. I don't see how he used a different usage?

Not clear from your comment what definition of "stateless" you mean, but it is clear from the HN title.

The author actually has to clarify what they meant in the paper, as RAM carries state as well.

> state-carrying (persistence-carrying)

So what would be more accurate, I think, is "Persistence considered harmful".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(computer_science)#Progr...

Well CPUs and GPUs carry state too; I don't think anything practical is completely stateless so it's a fair description.

At least in the deeply embedded space, in context 'state' is commonly used to mean 'persistant state'.

It's stateless the way AWS Lambda is serverless. A bit like calling a taxi ride "carless".

Author doesn't speak native English; she's Polish.

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