

Knuth's 'Earthshaking Announcement' due tomorrow - dermatthias
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news.html#lectures

======
jcl
Using new features of TeX π, Knuth has inserted interrobangs along critical
fault lines, and he intends to offset the entire West Coast, widening rivers
and reflowing the Pacific; the Bay Area will be left flushed and right ragged,
creating many widows and orphans. The only way to stem this bold, unjustified
plot is to transfer a well-padded figure of $175,921,860,444.16 immediately to
the Bank of San Serriffe.

~~~
francoisdevlin
Land: It's the only thing they're not making more of.

~~~
rroy1590
the lesson here is: Don't make jokes on the internet unless you've thoroughly
researched the 'facts' of your 'joke'.

~~~
Natsu
You have no idea how many jokes I've abandoned after realizing that they're
scientifically inaccurate.

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Amnon
Unfortunately, it appears to be just a lecture called "Earthshaking
Announcement". The previous one was called "All Questions Answered" and I'm
sure he left some questions unanswered.

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user24
I really think this is going to be one of the most overblown things ever. I
seriously doubt it's actually going to be interesting at all. Really. He's
being sarcastic with the title of a lecture. Calm down fanboys.

~~~
jacquesm
Nothing will ever trump 'it' aka the segway.

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tricky
or Transmeta or Danger inc. if you were around in 2000.

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shill
or Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone's vault live on television. Anyone here
remember that?

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malkia
Or Geraldo Rivera giving up the positions of the army unit he was embedded in.

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michael_dorfman
I had it on my list to post a reminder of this today as well-- looks like you
beat me to it.

I'm curious to see other's guesses here. My personal hunch is that he is going
to declare TeX complete, and move the version number to Pi (as he had planned
to do upon his death.)

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spicyj
Don't you mean tau/2?

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nudge
Maybe he's declaring the project finished early so as to avoid the upcoming
pi/tau bloodshed :-)

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ez77
I gather you say that pi/tau jokingly.

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shasta
You're tau/pi funny

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TheAmazingIdiot
Well... My old cd burner was a tau/pi. Does that count?

ObOntopic: it most lilkely is him declaring version pi.

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spicyj
Huh?

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TheAmazingIdiot
A tau/pi = atapi Just a bad joke.

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mmaunder
He's announcing that he's retiring. He had some health issues in 2006 so I
really hope it's not related to that. Of course his consciousness will be
uploaded to a positronic brain so he'll be around for a while yet.

~~~
qq66
If he was actually retiring, he's not the kind of guy to call that an
"Earthshaking announcement."

Incidentally, I went to his last Stanford lecture, the lecture hall with maybe
~400 seats was totally full, and there were exactly 3 women in the audience.

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fbu
Back when it was first announced, everybody made jokes about the new TeX
policy and every document made using TeX will have to be reviewed before
publishing :)

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ja27
He's quitting Stanford to work for Facebook|Google|Twitter.

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kloncks
How will this be earth-shattering?

Not trying to be a dick, just wondering if you have a point if you're not
kidding.

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jey
Dude, it's _Knuth_.

OTOH, maybe Twitter will continue their overengineering by porting everything
to MMIX.

~~~
pyre
TeX <-> JSON <-> JavaScript translator?

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RyanMcGreal
TeX 4.0 will have Ribbons.

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jackfoxy
Tomorrow @ 5:30 PM PDT, to be more precise.
<http://tug.org/tug2010/program.html> Given how many people on HN are
interested in this, I'm curious to see how fast, and in what manner, the
announcement gets posted here. Perhaps someone tweets it directly from the
conference and the tweet gets posted here. I'm hoping for a post here by 6:00
PM.

~~~
jey
We could just crash it, it's in Union Square (SF). :)

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mhd

        \blink{}

~~~
vrode
\marquee{ }

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fbu
Maybe the numbering of TeX will now go up to 6 and something...

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hernan7
Yes, he is changing the numbering from pi to tau.

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xtho
He converted to OpenOffice.

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kloncks
Does p = np or not?

That's what I hope we'll find out tomorrow. Too hopeful?

~~~
edanm
A tad too hopeful.

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kloncks
One can still dream!

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mikecane
Will TeX somehow tie into eBooks?

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Torn
Would put money on it being along these lines.

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lenbuster
Any theories on what Knuth will announce?

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praptak
Premature optimization is actually cool.

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WilliamLP
People stress out about random number generators too much.

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pistoriusp
I've seen a bunch of companies/ people using this strategy lately. Making it
appear like they're going to make a revolutionary statement that is going to
change the world.

An "idea implemented." Unfortunately is rarely turns out to be something
concrete - it's usually an idea with a significant buy in... But an idea
that's a step in the right direction... A call to action...

Examples:

1) Cisco announced a really fast router that was going to "change the Internet
forever." ([http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/03/09/what-cisco-lacks-
in-s...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/03/09/what-cisco-lacks-in-sex-
appeal-it-makes-up-for-with-speed/))

2) Bloombox (<http://bloomenergy.com>)

Of course, as others have pointed out maybe he's just playing the fool.

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michael_dorfman
Come on. You're really comparing a throwaway line in the "upcoming events"
section of Knuth's blog to a Cisco press release?

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pistoriusp
I actually just thought it was an interesting discussion point for strategies
like this; I also pointed out that he might be playing the fool.

Did not mean to garner offense.

~~~
michael_dorfman
No offense taken, but the point is, there's no "like these." You're comparing
two very different things. Knuth's comment was aimed at piqueing the interest
of the tiny fraction of people who might want to come see him at a TeX
celebration-- which has absolutely nothing to do with hyperbole in marketing
press releases.

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jhaglund
47 minutes past the scheduled 5:30 pm, pacific announcement time. Earth still
stable.

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brg
I'm pretty sure the announcement will be release dates of Volumes 4a, 4b, and
4c of "The Art of Computer Programming."

~~~
michael_dorfman
Not likely. The release date for 4A, sure-- that's scheduled for later this
year. 4B and 4C aren't even written, much less available in pre-fascicle form.

Besides, this is an announcement at a TeX conference; it's going to be TeX-
related.

~~~
brg
Thanks for the update, I was under the impression that each of the fascicles
were a dot volume, instead of chapters within 4A.

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buro9
Maybe he's created an earthquake algorithm?

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faragon
Well, if He's not the one demostrating P = NP or P != NP, some other will have
to take the token. That's life. Anyway, Knuth is a great hacker, having my
respect and admiration.

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JoelMcCracken
Do we know how long this has been up?

If it was something as significant as P{=,!=}NP, I really doubt he would have
been able to keep this hidden for any length of time.

~~~
pyre
For a month or so. It was announced on HN before. Hit up searchyc.com if you
are curious how long ago.

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zmmz
The Art of Computer Programming will not get finished.

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brfox
This thread has too many one-line jokes like reddit.

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jimfl
TeX will be able to render moment tensor solutions, with a package called
Beachball.

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huherto
I think he will retire. That is the last speaking engagement in the page.

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jpablo
Maybe he will unleash the missing volumes of TAoCP

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fierarul
What's the purpose of this besides having us speculate? Just have a post
tomorrow with whatever Knuth announced and it's enough to have a good
discussion.

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Tichy
This better be good

~~~
abeppu
In the same spirit as his objections to the old style delta (<http://www-cs-
faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/cm.html>) he'll be making comments regarding
whether we should be writing with $\phi$ or $\varphi$

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NonEUCitizen
title should say "Knuth's..." not "Kuth's..."

~~~
dermatthias
sorry for the typo. that's a hard to control habit of mine, because in german
it's ok to write 'Knuths'. fixed it.

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taloft
He will be introducing the $99 holographic PC.

