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Comment by onemorepassword | Hacker News Reader

We can make lists until the cows come home, but passing them around amongst ourselves is not going to make one bit of difference.

How about actually asking for all of those things?

For instance, only once in 25+ years in this business have I heard an engineer ask for a decent chair. He got it. Period.

On that same theme, let's start giving the same honesty and information we demand from others. The "impossible" example in the article is meant to be humorous, but is actually painfully true. Rarely is something really impossible, just hard, complicated, insanely expensive, inconvenient or downright useless, but rarely "impossible".

But we bitch about wanting truth, honesty, information and not being patronized. Guess how seriously that will be taken as long as we don't reciprocate.

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We don't ask, because we've learned from both direct & indirect experience that we won't get it (and may be punished for asking). We're good at making something from nothing, we just do it and others expect us to; thus making most needs seem a matter of wants, and wants being looked down on as waste, we learn there is little point in asking for more.

You are a good manager, sensitive to how a little money spent on a good chair can make a great difference. Alas, you are not the only one subordinates are exposed to, and takes little for others to undo the good you did.

Impossible tasks:

Can we get a snapshot of the internet at 6 AM each morning?

Can you send a physical package from Los Angeles to New York City in 14 minutes?

Can you write software that will province 100% accuracy of handwritings for all human beings on the planet? (That's arguably more possible than the Los Angeles example above, but only in theory)

Can you write software that will write the sequel to the Lord of the Rings?

Can you write software that will complete Mozart's unfinished Requiem Mass in d minor?

Can you get a complete list of valid email addresses of actual people on the entire internet, in all countries?

Can you write software that will convert what it sees through a camera as speech, thus allowing a blind person to walk around a city and have the software describe, in details, what the device with the camera is pointing at?

Can you create software that can replicate the artificial intelligence of a common fly, and be placed in a device the size of a hand-powered drone, with the ability to actually fly and avoid being hit?

1 - build a large enough datacenter to constantly crawl the internet. build each morning.

2 - build something that does, maybe a remote controlled rocket

3 - we can start and work on that direction

4 - there are software that generates stories already

5 - same kind of software can be adapted to generate music, you could use machine learning to follow the same logic from the part we have to finish it

6 - you can start and do incremental updates each day

7 - Thats actually a nice idea to use computer vision to tts, someone could actually make this as an app to google glass

8 - not long ago circulated a story about the army developing something like this

2: Distance from Los Angeles to NYC: 2790 miles. Distance in kilometers: 4469.58. Kilometers per hours: 19,155, for arrival in 14 minutes. NASA's X-43A has a top speed of 10,000 km/hr (by comparison, the SR-71 has a top speed of 3,529 km/h). So NASA's fastest plane, the X-43A, could not make it in time to satisfy the requirements.

It is possible to say that sometimes in the future, perhaps distant future, all things are ultimately possible, but that's not what we're talking about, is it. We're not worried whether sometime in the future we will be able to zoom around the galaxy and perhaps Andromeda on wormhole ships, in fancy flights of the imagination that would even surpass the bounds of science fiction and enter the realm of fantasy. No, rather we get silly requirements from managers who wants these things delivered in the next twelve to eighteen months.

Also note that a data center that crawled the entire internet daily would probably have to re-implement Google, and even Google most probably doesn't crawl the entire net daily.

Software that generate stories already... Please. Name one bestseller in the past, well, ever, that was automatically generated.

Twilight.

At least I am pretty sure...

We can put an ICBM on someone's doorstep ~8000km away in just over half of an hour. Putting a package ~4500km away in 15 may be doable. You just better be ready to catch it at a couple miles per second.

Will the package detonate 100 feet in the air?

Oh, and Google glass is a freaking disaster. If someone has one at a party at my house, I will kindly ask them to take them off and put them in their car. If they refuse, I will kindly ask them to leave. If they refuse I will kindly remind them that the Los Angeles Police Department will help remind them that in my house, I get to say who gets to stay.

Engineers should spend more time telling their managers why something is impractical rather than impossible.

Impossible becomes a crutch very easily.

Many times management does not know enough to understand the explanations.

Given proper audience, many computer people are able to base their reasoning for rejection on actual physical laws and theories, but since management many times is unaware of these laws and theories of physics, management dismisses the claims of impossibility as "primadonna behavior".

Well said!

*Can you send a physical package from Los Angeles to New York City in 14 minutes?

Nope. But we might be able to do NYC to LA in minus 3 hours on a fast drone.

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