There Will Come Soft Rains (1950) [pdf]

Post by throwawayffffas » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 2:00 PM UTC

bigfishrunning wrote: post #113

WillAdams wrote: post #98

One thing which I find striking here is that a modern home and attendant conveniences roughly embodies 10--15 horsepower of effort, or the work of 40 or so full time house staff. Thus far, the only notable robots are little disks which vacuum up floors (and they're getting outlawed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104371 ) and some innovations just haven't become widespread (an uncle of mine piped his home for…

the real problem with household robots is that they are either flimsy toys or dangerous machines, and there's not much in-between. If we were to build a humanoid robot that would just put laundry away (as described in a HN article a few weeks ago), it would need to be strong enough to lift a laundry basket, have advanced control systems to go up and down stairs, and also be safe/reliable/trusted enough not to hurt pe…

Post by frmersdog » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 2:04 PM UTC

briansm wrote: post #49

schoen wrote: post #22

I think an appreciable number of people upvoting this and reading it or re-reading it may not have noticed why it was submitted today (the date on which the story takes place is tomorrow!).

Reminds me of when November 2019 came and went (the date that Blade Runner is set in)

  First Laughing Man Incident - Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2024)

  Third Impact - Neon Genesis Evangelion (2015)

  Fourth Corporate War - Cyberpunk (2022)

  Geisel Library Walk - Rainbows End (2025)

  2020 Tokyo Olympics - Akira (2020)

Post by nahuel0x » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 2:05 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #97

nahuel0x wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as we know life is only present on Earth, we presuppose that in the vastness of Cosmos there are other instances of it or that it can re-emerge from almost zero, but the reality is that we simply don't know. So maybe there is a possibility that wiping out all the life on Earth also wipes it from the entire Cosmos, forever.

Or perhaps the comment you were responding to was asserting "knowing" or "caring" is not something Nature can do.

Post by physPop » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 2:06 PM UTC

ern_ave wrote: post #111

WillAdams wrote: post #98

One thing which I find striking here is that a modern home and attendant conveniences roughly embodies 10--15 horsepower of effort, or the work of 40 or so full time house staff. Thus far, the only notable robots are little disks which vacuum up floors (and they're getting outlawed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49104371 ) and some innovations just haven't become widespread (an uncle of mine piped his home for…

> What will be the first device to bottle up AI and other modern technologies in a package and become widely in-demand One problem I see is that corporations insist on collecting and reselling our data. As a result, a lot of people are reticent to get much automation. They seem to accept it with TVs, but other devices - it's just too much of an intrusion. I say "a lot of people" but I don't know how many people it is…

Post by srean » Tue, Aug 04, 2026, 2:12 PM UTC

totetsu wrote: post #126

twotwotwo wrote: post #28

Okay, a stretch for HN, but: singer-songwriter Silvana Estrada named an album released last year Vendrán Suaves Lluvias (meaning There Will Come Soft Rains). She talked about how she and her brother read The Martian Chronicles as kids and she remembered the Sara Teasdale poem quoted at the end. She said she composed the songs at a difficult time in her life and, I guess, something about that image in the story (and t…

And if your in the mood for a hard rain there is this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvZmrygK3F0&t=3790s