Marshall Brain has died

https://www.wral.com/news/local/nc-state-marshall-brain-dies-november-2024/

by bsagdiyev • 2 years ago

335 166 2 years ago

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.

Dang - deserves a black bar?

lwhalen• 2 years ago

He was also the author of https://marshallbrain.com/manna, a sci-fi story that has stuck with me for years.

ryoshu• 2 years ago

Very relevant in the age of smart glasses for workers.

chgs3• 2 years ago

I was think about the software some companies use to “monitor productivity”

raphman• 2 years ago

Duplicate (different submitted link, however): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42222387

monocasa4• 2 years ago

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.

Manna: Two Views of Humanity’s Future

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.

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.

https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

simpaticoder2• 2 years ago

Very cool story, quite impactful on my thinking, although I will caution that the dystopia is better conceived than the utopia, mainly because the later requires inventing fantasy technology while the former does not. Indeed it's not clear at all what forces might destabalize the dystopia, since the power structures are immortal and self-replicating, and physics and biology (at least) prevents the utopia from existing. Maybe an asteroid or a caldera explosion? In fact I would love to read a sequel where the dystopia wins and AI-empowered oligarchs and human wage slaves create generation ships to nearby stars and eventually setup fast food restaurants in every corner of the galaxy.

monocasa4• 2 years ago

Which physics and biology prevent the utopia from existing?

nazgulnarsil• 2 years ago

Accelerando

marcosdumay• 2 years ago

The only clear distinction between the utopia and the dystopia is on wealth distribution.

All the rest of it is a narrative about consequences.

Anyway, the AI there isn't like our LLMs either. It's an AGI capable of long term societal prediction.

chgs3• 2 years ago

Which utopia? I saw two dystopias. One the likely future of western society, another being one where your very thoughts are programmed

nobodyandproud3• 2 years ago

I'm going to disagree here, slightly. If anything I think Manna is something closer to AGI; and its capabilities certainly imply that it's Turing Complete.

Which means the owners will constantly be playing whack-a-mole with edge cases and emergent properties that they couldn't anticipate from a prior fix.

This is what would destabilize the dystopia; though that doesn't imply more freedom. It could just mean replacing one set of oligarchs with another; skynet; or just anarchy if Manna started becoming very buggy.

On the otherhand, I don't think Vertebrane is Turing complete though I haven't given this a deep amount of thought; though I can't see how a bad actor couldn't coopt Vertebrane into a Manna.

ben_w11• 2 years ago

In fact I would love to read a sequel where the dystopia wins and AI-empowered oligarchs and human wage slaves create generation ships to nearby stars and eventually setup fast food restaurants in every corner of the galaxy.

The dystopian part was only enabled (within the story) by the fact that humans were utterly unnecessary to the rich.

None had any jobs, because the AI could do all for less… so why would the oligarchs waste money employing human wage slaves when the machines would always be cheaper than slaves?

bryanrasmussen• 2 years ago

the later requires inventing fantasy technology while the former does not.

are you sure that the technology of the former was not really fantasy technology - as in not possible yet at the time of writing? I think it probably isn't quite possible yet at this time, although some people I'm sure are hoping to make it.

vineyardmike6• 2 years ago

I found it to be an extremely interesting and useful tool to understand and imagine the impact of wealth distribution and automation in society. Personally, I believe in strong redistribution in society, because (at least in America) we largely live in a world of abundance, and automation should make everyone’s lives easier and more leisurely.

But I would like to point out that the “utopia” has a few serious panopticon elements which are very 1984. It seems as though high-welfare and high redistribution societies are predicated on high trust of your peers, and this takes that to the extreme…

Another core principle is that nothing is anonymous. Eric grew up during the rise of the Internet, and the rise of global terrorism, and one thing he realized is that anonymity allows incredible abuse. It does not matter if you are sending anonymous, untraceable emails that destroy someone’s career, or if you are anonymously releasing computer viruses, or if you are anonymously blowing up buildings. Anonymity breeds abuse. In [utopia], if you walk from your home to a park, your path is logged. You cannot anonymously pass by someone else’s home. If someone looks up your path that day to see who walked by, that fact is also logged. So you know who knows your path. And so on. This system, of course, makes it completely impossible to commit an anonymous crime. So there is no anonymous crime. Anyone who commits a crime is immediately detained and disciplined.”

A4ET8a8uTh0• 2 years ago

Manna was fairly eye-opening ( and you can see some parallels to today's LLMs to me. I will admit that I read it without knowing much about the author way back when and being fairly amazed at well he knew human nature and likely course that invention would take.

cblum• 2 years ago

I’ve read it all recently and I felt like the later described utopia was also a kind of dystopia, very Brave New World like (or at least the seed for a BNW-like dystopia). I kept waiting for a twist in the story, where the main character would realize that both worlds were terrible, but it never came.

bckr2• 2 years ago

Oh, this is very sad. I was really inspired by his essays and stories when I was 17.

I wonder what was happening with him.

Mistletoe• 2 years ago

Marshall Brain died inside his office Wednesday on N.C. State’s centennial campus.
While the university would not confirm any details related to his death, sources close to Brain said he died by suicide.

Marshall was a frequent poster in subreddits such as /r/collapse.

https://www.reddit.com/user/MarshallBrain/

I don’t think it’s hard to see what things concerned him. I think it’s important for all of us to realize that no matter how we think the world is going there is still brightness in the world and Marshall contributed to that brightness through his contributions to society.

bckr2• 2 years ago

I wondered. How dark.

FlynnCruse• 2 years ago

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.

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.

Rest in Peace Marshall Brain, a real-life legend.

panoply2203• 2 years ago

Same! I owe so much to him. Heartbreaking and forever grateful for the time we got to spend together.

BadHumans• 2 years ago

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.

schiffern3• 2 years ago

I noticed that. He made several subreddits, here's a (likely incomplete) list. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42224139

His commentary near the end of this interview is also telling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA5v2cfJp1o

An optimist in (increasingly) a cynic's world. Be at peace, Marshall Brain.

dredmorbius2• 2 years ago

Do you have an approximate time point for that comment?

Brain makes a comment beginning at about the 30 minute point, I'm listening to that now, though it doesn't seem to match your description.

The bit a couple of minutes later (32m) beginning "I have four children now in college..." seems closer.

I have to comment that the song about how bright the future was (by Timbuk3) was absolutely satiric and ironic, though that point is often missed. As is often the case, in music and otherwise (Beastie Boys "Fight for your Right", Bruce Springstein "Born in the USA", Neal Stephenson Snow Crash & the Metaverse, etc., etc.).

willio58• 2 years ago

Very sad, just a reminder that success doesn’t translate to happiness.

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.

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.

readthenotes1• 2 years ago

"success doesn’t translate to happiness."

I suspect that the pursuit of happiness, without the capture, leads to success. Or perhaps a strong avoidance of the fear of failure (iirc, that was a common motivation for Olympic athletes)

nisten• 2 years ago

Spent hours in highschool printing stuff out of howstuffworks.com because dialup at home was too slow until we got dsl :(

May he rest in peace.

gothink• 2 years ago

Wow, this is very tragic. I was actually just reflecting on the influence Howstuffworks.com had on my life and interests. Quick story:

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.

I hope Marshall knew how much people valued the things he created and the impact they had.

schiffern3• 2 years ago

Marshall Brain also wrote many programming books in the 90s era.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Brain#Publications

arresin• 2 years ago

This makes me nostalgic for the small internet.

ilayn• 2 years ago

Same experience for me. I was able to buy my first drumset from the money I got for making a PHP+MySQL+HTML website for someone (also done all in notepad). I did not know anything about computers but I needed to buy a drumset. And that page actually got me going about how HTML works.

I still remember their animations about car differential which were magical.

yarg• 2 years ago

As someone who has pulled himself back from suicidality, I absolutely abhor the expression "died by suicide".

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).

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.

rachofsunshine• 2 years ago

I've had similar experiences, and I have exactly the opposite beliefs.

Depression isn't a failing on the person's part, and it isn't stupidity. Nor is suicide resulting from depression. It's a disease, and you "die from suicide" the same way you "die from cancer" - from the effects of your disease disrupting vital functions of your existence until you can no longer survive.

For me, at least, understanding and healing from severe mental illness required understanding that the illness wasn't "me". It was this crappy thing I had to live with because some part of my brain Just Does That Sometimes. See [1] among other posts, but the only way I've ever found to beat my own tendencies towards mental illness - and they are extremely strong - is to treat them like a chronic disease. The same way that a person with liver disease has to avoid drinking, I have to avoid the things that trigger my own chronic depression.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41113032

opello• 2 years ago

I found the linked, and subsequently linked, posts very insightful, and entirely relatable, thank you.

yrral• 2 years ago

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).

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.

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.

Rest in Peace Marshall Brain, thank you for all your contributions to my (and likely others) life

arcanemachiner• 2 years ago

Loved that website. Its intro to C programming was how I got into programming.

slaucon• 2 years ago

I had the same experience, as I’m sure many others did. It’s easy to forget now how much rarer it was to find high quality and engaging educational content on the internet back then. Howstuffworks got me interested in so many different things, and exploring the articles was a lovely way to spend the time as a kid.

sd8f9iu• 2 years ago

Same story for me. I got into electronics as a kid, and he had articles on how components such as the capacitor worked[1]. It opened up a whole new world for me. Sad news to hear.

[1] Which is still incredibly up: https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/capacitor.htm

goodmunky• 2 years ago

He was 63 and wrote this a few years ago, “You’ve Had Your Turn –The Case for Euthanizing Everyone at Age 65” https://marshallbrain.com/youve-had-your-turn-the-case-for-e...

bufordtwain• 2 years ago

That is a very weird and troubling article.

rafram• 2 years ago

His premise seems to be that life past 65 averages out to suffering and a slow decline toward death, which I think many active and happy older people (who don’t wish to be killed!) would argue is very mistaken.

Misanthropic environmentalism isn’t environmentalism at all. Environmentalism designed by humans should be good for humans, not give them scheduled death dates.

ororroro• 2 years ago

This is likely satire along the lines of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal. The main giveaways are the directness of the language and the time of writing (on the tail of covid when people were unironically making such proposals).

shiroiushi2• 2 years ago

on the tail of covid when people were unironically making such proposals

They were? I remember a lot of awful stuff about those years, but this isn't one of them. I remember people making somewhat mean-spirited but understandable comments about (some) older people getting killed off by Covid due to their own actions (refusal to take the threat seriously and take precautions, leading them to catch it, and then have much worse outcomes due to the fact that the disease was much more deadly for unhealthy and older people).

Horffupolde• 2 years ago

What happens with domains, content, etc now? Is there a systematic way of preparing and securing online services for death?

xyst• 2 years ago

archive.org|.ph

panoply2203• 2 years ago

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:

https://web.archive.org/web/20010202064900/http://howstuffwo...

StephenSmith• 2 years ago

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.

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.

RIP Marshall. You were loved.

AlphaWeaver• 2 years ago

Marshall Brain's contributions to the entrepreneurship program more broadly were extremely significant. I never had him as a professor, but his influence on the program was clear, even to me.

He will be dearly missed.

joemazerino4• 2 years ago

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.

las_balas_tres• 2 years ago

What guard rails could anyone with an unrestrained high IQ possibly have?

LinuxAmbulance• 2 years ago

A social network with people who's voices could serve as a check against one's internal mental state of the world around them going out of sync with the real one.

There's the old joke about how several different blind men perceive an elephant differently, but that's not too far off from how we perceive the world around us.

Marshall clearly thought things were getting significantly worse towards the end of his life. What if that perception stemmed from a poorly selected input that was never challenged by any other person's perception of reality?

For example; "There is no point to living after 65" - when there's plenty of 65+ year old people who enjoy life and contribute to the world around them. My grandparents contributed significantly to my existence when they were older than 65. If they'd both passed away at 65, my existence would be far poorer for it.

It's important to have people in our lives that help us keep our perception of reality from spinning off into dark versions that don't accurately represent actual reality.

joemazerino4• 2 years ago

Faith.

mandmandam3• 2 years ago

Bit premature to use the e word. You don't know what he was going through, what his medical status was, or even have certainty how he died.

And all of us, even the von Neumanns and the Ramanujans, have restraints and guard rails.

joemazerino4• 2 years ago

Suicide is evil. Bar none.

ilaksh2• 2 years ago

Was he dark or just trying to be responsible and keep his head out of the sand in the face of massive challenges?

He wrote an essay about people being euthanized after age 63 in order to relieve the environmental strain of the high population. I don't know if he really believed that, but if he did and saw his health and quality of life deteriorating rapidly, then it is possible that he literally was trying to serve as a role model to people of how to be a good citizen and fight climate change.

I personally hope that we don't have to resort to such things as a society. But I believe that resource constraints and climate or other challenges are much more severe than people understand. I hope that we will be able to leverage technology to avoid disaster.

Intelligent people are able to understand and solve problems. That's why they don't ignore them and hope they will go away, like many less intelligent people. Brain might have been demonstrating a "last-resort" but effective solution to these types of global challenges.

pinkmuffinere• 2 years ago

If it weren’t for howstuffworks, I suspect I wouldn’t be an engineer. I’m sure I’m not the only one. Rip Marshall.

dyauspitr• 2 years ago

This is so sad, I loved this man. I wonder if the current dystopian road the US is going down had anything to do with it. Rest in peace, Marshall.

BobbyTables2• 2 years ago

Can’t help but feel he got screwed when the HowStuffWorks website was sold for 250x what he got just a few years earlier.

Aside from his futuristic works, his Win32 API book was extremely good and my first introduction to Windows programming.

It’s our loss to loose such a talented human being.

TZubiri• 2 years ago

Hey that's how I learned C

RIP

slfnflctd4• 2 years ago

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.

Since no one else has brought it up yet, I want to say that one of his websites, "Why Won't God Heal Amputees" (https://whywontgodhealamputees.com/) 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.

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.

nashashmi6• 2 years ago

Obviously someone who has come to atheism is not going to speak well of prayer. The guy ends each section with more questions than answers. And each of those questions comes from a highly confused state about what religion is, about what prayer is, about what God is. And maybe even what your purpose is.

In the words of the Bible, “ the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. ...” meaning his guide will only take him to further darkness and misguidance.

skulk2• 2 years ago

And each of those questions comes from a highly confused state about what religion is, about what prayer is, about what God is.

No need for goalpost moving. The holy book claims that God answers prayers. This is, in fact, a lie. Some people aren't yet fully convinced of this, and reading the website helps them along. (see uncle comments)

slfnflctd4• 2 years ago

a highly confused state about what religion is, about what prayer is, about what God is.

These are all incredibly subjective concepts with a multitude of meanings to different people. Plenty of people are confused about them, because they simply cannot be universally defined and are therefore by their very nature confusing.

For better or worse, large numbers of humans believe in a literal, conscious deity who can read their thoughts and then act upon the real world to make physical changes in it, provided they shape those thoughts 'just so'. There is no hard evidence these kinds of beliefs are true, and at least some evidence that they can be harmful.

I am not opposed to prayer. I even still do it myself sometimes. However, I think people should be more careful about making strong claims that anyone is actually listening to those prayers, let alone acting on them. Marshall Brain's website helped me to much better understand and articulate this in simple, concrete terms.

nyc_data_geek2• 2 years ago

No higher power ever wrote anything though. That's all human writing, human promises, human propaganda.

norir3• 2 years ago

I'm genuinely curious how you explain your own unconsciousness which comes out all the time when speaking or writing.

nashashmi6• 2 years ago

Has any book itself claimed to be written or orated by a higher power?

cipheredStones• 2 years ago

I wonder how long that site will be up, given his death. Hope someone mirrors it.

It's interesting to read the Nicholas Kristof op-ed from 2006 (https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/opinion/03kristof.html) which he links because it mentions the site (in its incarnation as "whydoesgodhateamputees.com") as "part of an increasingly assertive, often obnoxious atheist offensive", and essentially argues that the New Atheists should back off and stop being so mean.

While the New Atheists were definitely sharp-tongued (another page on the site asserts that there's no such thing as an 'atheist', for the same reason that someone who doesn't believe in leprechauns wouldn't be called an 'aleprechaunist', and atheists should instead call themselves 'rational people'), I think they had some excellent points about how the religious point of view is treated as the default in public discourse - and one of the ways that manifests is that arguments for religion (and more nebulous spirituality) are seen as expected and ordinary, while arguments against religion are seen as inherently aggressive and mean-spirited.

norir3• 2 years ago

This is an extreme dichotomy between fundamentalists and new atheists. I personally believe that both worldviews are wrong and inconsistent with lived reality.

WorkerBee284743• 2 years ago

It may not exactly be the most highbrow philosophical or theological treatise you've ever encountered

It's worse than that, it's bad theology on a topic that has been discussed for millennia.

slfnflctd4• 2 years ago

I've studied a fair amount theology, it was my original college major. I am aware of this.

The most salient point he made as far as I'm concerned is that there are very specific claims made throughout the Bible and other Christian literature about what exactly prayer does-- and there is an overwhelming amount of evidence that many if not most of those particular claims are false.

I am not opposed to people praying, and in fact wholeheartedly support it in many cases. What I am opposed to is making unreasonable assertions about what is happening when someone prays, and what kinds of results are to be expected.

amelius• 2 years ago

Interesting website. But there's one rationalization missing, imho: that God alters the timeline. That is, amputees are in fact healed in response to prayer, but nobody knows about it because God goes back in time and ensures the amputation never happened in the first place.

Disclaimer: I didn't read the entire website yet.

slfnflctd4• 2 years ago

Not the worst argument I've seen! I've been down numerous rabbit holes with regard to the "God is beyond time" concept. I even prayed for Abraham Lincoln at least once or twice, and started conceptually mapping out the number of prayers various historical figures may have tallied up over the centuries.

Now that I'm more of an agnostic utilitarian realist, it all seems a bit silly at this point, but there are certainly some fun thought experiments to explore.

Terr_2• 2 years ago

It does contain a bit of a false-dilemma though: It asserts that the only "real" form of god involves a specific flavor of Christian evangelical prayer-interventionist deity, and that the only other option is (B) no god(s) exist at all.

I'm very much in favor of showing how silly or self-contradictory (A) is, but it is fundamentally unsound to jump from that to asserting (B) is true.

qgin• 2 years ago

Wow, I never realized that Manna and Amputees were both created by him. Both of those had a big impact on my thinking and have stuck with me since I read them.

ziofill• 2 years ago

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.

ilaksh2• 2 years ago

It definitely was when Brain was involved.

zackangelo• 2 years ago

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.

RIP Marshall, I hope you knew what an inspiration you were.

dodongobongo• 2 years ago

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.

mulhoon• 2 years ago

TIL about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_goo from reading about Marshall.

pgl• 2 years ago

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).

What a loss.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BA5v2cfJp1o

[2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Manna-Two-Visions-Humanitys-Future-...

[3] https://marshallbrain.com/manna

Edit: Fixed "free to download from Amazon" - it's not

grupthink• 2 years ago

I loved his articles and stories. Hopefully his sites are archived before being taken down.

pabs3• 2 years ago

ArchiveTeam are working on it, his main site is saved by ArchiveBot:

https://wiki.archiveteam.org/ https://archive.fart.website/archivebot/viewer/?q=marshallbr...

He seems to have a lot of domains, if you know of any, please post them here.

thr0waway0012• 2 years ago

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.

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.

panoply2203• 2 years ago

Wow, thanks for sharing this story! As a long time friend of Marshall’s it’s fascinating to hear folks share their encounters with his work.

What are you up to now?

thr0waway0012• 2 years ago

Went to University to do a math major with a minor in economics.

My condolences about Marshall.

Very thankful for his work.

chakintosh• 2 years ago

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.

evilDagmar• 2 years ago

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.

mmmlinux• 2 years ago

obituaries deleted?

justinclift• 2 years ago

The link seems to be broken. It's just showing a 404 error.

michaelcampbell• 2 years ago

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.

Later in the year we were both in Manhattan and decided to meet under the WTC towers to head to lunch.

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.)

I've forgotten the value he came up with, but the mental math there amused me that he'd bother to try.

Super neat guy.

Marshall Brain has died

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