
Ask HN: So what was Knuth's "earthshaking announcement"? - Kliment
Knuth's mysterious announcement at the TeX user group gathered some interest on here, but even several hours later no specifics about it seem to be anywhere online. Can someone who was there or found out about it share what it was about?
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mark_h
I did a quick twitter trawl an hour or so after, and it seems like it was
actually a joke: a new successor to TeX, using XML, arbitrary precision, and
auto-layout.

Also, my favourite was this one:
<http://twitter.com/elmindreda/statuses/17444964495> "Anyone looking to
profile Twitter users can easily identify all programmers today simply by
searching for "Knuth"."

~~~
michael_dorfman
Knuth's sense of humor shouldn't be underestimated-- there are a lot of great
jokes hidden in the index of TAOCP, among other places.

And, of course, his first publication was in Mad Magazine.

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jey
I tweeted about it from the event but the corresponding news.yc submission got
killed.

<http://twitter.com/jeyjey>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1476674>

~~~
sabat
I truly worry about the overzealous killing of yc news stories. I can't be the
only one who's noticed a recent uptick in the number of stories killed for no
apparent reason.

~~~
axod

      1. It's a tweet submitted as 'news'.
      2. It seems that the 'earth shattering' announcement was boring.
    

I think there's a couple of good reasons why it got killed.

~~~
dhimes
Unfortunately, when they killed it I assumed that it was because it was a hoax
submission. It was news that this community was waiting days (months?) to hear
about, so, although perhaps not a full news story, it was certainly of
interest here. And probably of more interest than "X reasons I love/hate Y"
for a lot of us.

------
s2r2
Am I the only one who's a little disappointed?

~~~
philwelch
In retrospect, if Knuth had an actual "earthshaking announcement" to make, he
probably would have pre-announced it a bit more prominently, or not at all.

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mindviews
Knuth played a joke and "announced" iTeX.

<http://search.twitter.com/search?q=knuth>

~~~
Tichy
The problem is, now if he really proves P=NP, nobody will believe him.

~~~
fierarul
If Knuth announces that he proved P=NP a lot of people will believe him.

~~~
Tichy
That was kind of the joke...

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kaveh1000
You can see a video of the talk, uploaded with Knuth's permission, here:

<http://river-valley.tv/an-earthshaking-announcement/>

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nuxi7
TeX 3.15

~~~
naradaellis
Tex 6.28

~~~
schn
Tex Tau

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vegai
A "joke".

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BirdWatcher
I wasn't aware adults actually used twitter. I thought it was for 12 year old
girls

~~~
billswift
There are twits of all ages.

