Today, 30 years ago, Commodore introduced the Amiga - <AUTHOR> http://amiga30.com/ <comment><USER4> For a 41 year old man like me and many of my generation the influence of Commodore was life altering.

It was the Apple of it's time, better in many ways than Apple itself with so much potential. Seeing Defender of the Crown for the first time, or using Deluxe Paint, or ProTracker. You just felt like living in the not evenly distributed future where you were in the forefront and everyone without an Amiga was years in the past.

The innocence and magic feeling of all this at the time, unexplored possibilities an amazing time I hope every generation gets to experience in their own way.

<comment><USER5> Same age, same experience. I also remember when years later I first started really using Windows and an IBM PC at university - they were already 486DX2 at a whopping 66MHz, but the UI still felt more sluggish than my 7MHz at home.

Computations, on the other hand, were incomparably faster.

<comment><USER6> A bit younger (I was in my last year of primary school when I graduated from the C64 to the Amiga 2000). I fondly remember reading through the back of the Amiga 2000 reference manual (the ring-bound one) on Christmas day. It had schematics and everything! (back at that age, schematics just LOOKED cool - <USER2> couldn't really read them as such).

I remember those $5 shareware disks you used to be able to get at the markets.

By the end though, several years later.... Oh man.... Games weren't as smooth as on the Amiga, but OH THOSE SIERRA VGA GAMES ON THE PC!!!! Especially compared to their horrible Amiga ports (which were also Sierra abandoning the platform.... the port of King's Quest VI that was done by Revolution Software shows how much better they could have been).

Awesome memories!

<comment><USER7> They had shareware disks bundled with magazines. I knew someone who worked at the magazine shop and we would slide some out to copy them. It's amazing how now I can get any software so easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Amiga was like Tesla (the car) is now.

Not that it was (is) blazing fast and technologically advanced in comparison to other models but the fact that it seems to have come from a whole another plane of technology.

Surely it helps to have multiple special-purpose chips onboard as it helps to have dense battery pack worth of 500km baked into the chassis. But that's not the thing.

What a 32-bit pre-emptively multitasking operating system with modern library stacks and system services for building user interfaces and applications was to old machines where you poked memory addresses directly to draw something on the screen is quite akin to what an internet-connected fully electrically powered and from-the-ground-up architected smart&mobile device-on-wheels is to clunkers primarily designed to host an oily, fire-burning engine and an appropriate steel drivetrain, with a passenger cabin retrofitted wherever there's space left from the mechanical components.

You could write high-level code and put that space ship spinning on the screen, and still have it rotate more smoothly than in any of the machines from preceding era—where no operating system or user interface was messing in the way. That was like having the cake and eating it too. And yet you could switch to "insane mode" by suspending the operating system and commanding the special chips directly, and do things people couldn't even imagine on 8-bit machines (and for the most part, on 16-bit machines too).

Amiga had elements so modern that it almost lasted till the end of the 90's, except for cpu power and marketshare. Considering it was born in the early 80's when 8-bit cpus could beep and produce blocks of color on the screen and died (for all practical purposes) in the internet era, that's one long stretch of time where it made the difference.

<comment><USER9> It's interesting that the OS has actually aged pretty well. I went back the other year and wrote a small application in AmigaE, a great little OO language specifically tailored for the M68k, and had a _blast_. I architectured it to use multiple processes and IPC, with the UI running at high priority at a steady 60 fps while image loading a decoding is done in the background. No assembly code or direct hardware access, just plain E and the full OS multitasking int he background, and it still runs without dropping a frame on a 7 MHz A500 with a floppy drive.

The code is on Github if anyone's curious:

      https://github.com/MagerValp/ArcadeGameSelector

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> In 4th grade a friend got an Amiga. He boasted that it had 4096 colors, and we ridiculed him mercilessly. There aren't that many colors! Can you name them?

We had our Apple IIs and TI-99/4As with their 16 colors or less and couldn't imagine anything greater.

Then we went to his house and saw Defender of the Crown, and we were humbled.

<comment><USER11> I remember having similar trouble imagining why a PC would need a sound card.

After all, the PC speaker could already play every note: C, D, E and so on... What could a sound card possibly add?

Then I got a copy of Sierra's demo cassette that had sounds from games like King's Quest IV and Space Quest 3. It blew my mind. I listened to it a hundred times. (The whole cassette is on YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC91456D0EB82E02A](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC91456D0EB82E02A) )

Of course the Amiga had 4-channel sample playback several years before my Sierra cassette revelation, but I didn't know anyone with an Amiga at that time.

<comment><USER10> I had a similar experience calling into Sierra's 800 number and listening to their hold music, which was music from their games played on a Roland MT-32. I had an 8 bit Sound Blaster at the time, which sounded pretty good, but this just absolutely blew my mind.

Today it's kind of impossible to explain to a young person that at one time, there were sound cards, and they were analogous to video cards today in that the music in a game would sound much better depending on how much you spent. In a world with MP3s, MIDI just doesn't compute.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, it's interesting how we pretty much hit the ceiling on digital audio quality more than a decade ago. If I'd built my computers instead of buying premade, I could still be using the audio card I bought in 2000 and not have any problems with it. That's so alien to the general hardware experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One can read "The Future Was Here", to learn more about the platform and its contributors. [https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/future-was- here](https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/future-was-here) \- there's also an accompanying website: [http://amiga.filfre.net](http://amiga.filfre.net)

Note that the Platform Studies series ([http://www.platformstudies.com](http://www.platformstudies.com)) has exciting upcoming stuff.

<comment><USER14> These are absolutely fantastic books. They hit the nostalgia buttons, but then go into some nitty gritty details about what these things were.

Racing the Beam absolutely changed how I think about pixels on a computer screen in a way that's hard to explain, but is quite profound.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was 13-14, and a member of Telenet's "Net Exchange" BBS, which existed to support members of its "PC Pursuit" [1] service. I dialed in via a backdoor on one of Telenet's 800 numbers, using (at first) a 300 baud modem on a HP 110 laptop.

I got to be friends with a number of the folks on the system, and at the time, my main system was an Atari 520STfm (it was all we could afford). A bunch of the guys on the board took pity on me, took up a collection, and (secretly) called my mom. A month or so later, a Very Large Box arrived in the mail.

The guys had gotten together with one of their own who owned a computer store, and bought me a used, but well-equipped, Amiga 1000 system, along with an adapter that let me use my Atari monitor with it. The letter that came along with the system said "No smart kid should be without a decent computer. All we ask is that you do the same for someone else when you're able." It made my mom cry.

I used that system every day. Took it to school to show off a couple of times (we were using PS/2 Model 25s there, in comparison). It was used to do titling for the public-access news show my media class produced, among other things. It was my main system up until I had to "upgrade" (blech) to a 386sx-33 so I could run 1-2-3, Wordperfect 5.1, and DBase III+ for college classes. Over the years I acquired numerous A2000s, an A3000 or two, and even an A4K, but nothing beat the fun of firing up that A1000 back in the day.

I turn 41 this year, and have had a great 20+-year career as a UNIX/Linux systems administrator. I'll never forget those guys who pitched in and helped out some kid living in a tiny rural Oklahoma town - they really helped get me to where I am today. To continue the tradition, I build and give away at least 2-3 computers a year to people who are less fortunate. It's the least I can do.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telenet#PC_Pursuit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telenet#PC_Pursuit)

</comment><comment><USER16> There's a YouTube channel with excrutiatingly in-depth Amiga repairs: [https://www.youtube.com/user/RetroGameModz/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/RetroGameModz/videos)

He goes down to the circuit level, including _within_ microchips, identifies problems with all kinds of tools including spectrum analysers, and shows off some (to me) amazing soldering skills.

Here's a four hour (I kid you not) video of the repair of an Amiga CD32: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZK3Rmerg1I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZK3Rmerg1I)

<comment><USER17> RetroGameModz videos are extremely by the book, IPC to the letter. Afair he is from Netherlands, or some other old rich European country, so he can afford 'wasting time' during repairs as a hobby. In real life this level of attention to detail (pedantry) is present _only_ in military, aviation and space (even medical is not that crazy). For example normal people dont reconstruct pads, they jumper over with kynar/enamel wire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The "Viva Amiga" film project doesn't seem to be finished yet, but according to their July 3, 2013 blog post, they interviewed Tim Jenison, the creator of the Video Toaster [2], and the current NewTek CEO, Jim Plant. That alone will be interesting.

Even if you aren't old enough to remember how the whole world somehow overlooked the amazing capabilities of the Amigas, it's an interesting and humbling historical lesson in how the best tech does not always win.

[1] [http://vivaamigafilm.blogspot.com/2013/07/newtek-and- video-t...](http://vivaamigafilm.blogspot.com/2013/07/newtek-and-video- toaster.html)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Toaster)

<comment><USER7> There also this movie coming some time soon: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1195082866/from- bedroom...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1195082866/from-bedrooms-to- billions-the-amiga-years)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was about 12 years old. I had been engrossed with both the family Apple IIe computer and the fleet of Apple computers installed at my school, learning how to write BASIC programs. Wandering through the local shopping mall with my dad, we saw in the window of a software shop an Amiga 1200 running Lemmings.

I was awestruck. I started getting copies of Amiga-related magazines, and saw these amazing three-dimensional pictures of things like _balls_ and _rubber ducks_. It was like gazing into the future.

Thankfully, my dad was likewise impressed, and within a few months we received delivery of a shiny new Amiga 3000. In anticipation of continuing my pursuit of programming, we got a compiler for an Amiga variant of BASIC, but I ended up focusing on two-dimensional graphics with Brillance, three-dimensional graphics with Imagine, and video editing with a variety of tools.

A friend at school picked up an Amiga 2000 and joined the multimedia production fun. It might be a good thing that we didn't have YouTube back then, as we likely would have published all sorts of embarrassingly poorly- done animations and videos. We persuaded our school to buy its own Amiga computer for us to edit the student newsletter on, but we both left the school the following year, and it was reported that the Amiga got shoved into a storage space, never to be used again.

I tried hard to persuade anyone who would listen to get an Amiga. The IBM- clones and Macs of the day just seemed so flat-out inferior, I couldn't imagine why anyone wouldn't want an Amiga if they just realized what it could do.

I suppose I would have been happy to still be using the Amiga to this day, except that, after the demise of Commodore, it became increasingly (but not surprisingly) clear that support for the Amiga platform was dwindling. Some users have heroically clung to the Amiga even to this day, but even by 1996 or so it was looking prudent to move elsewhere.

Like remembering a corned beef sandwich from a deli you visited twenty years ago, I might be remembering the Amiga greater than it actually was. But even after thirteen years of using modern Apple computers (and iPads and iPhones and what-not), I still feel there was something magical about the Amiga that has not been captured in anything else.

Or maybe the Amiga captured something magical in me.

</comment><comment><USER20> My first contact with a A500 was in a friends house. I was amazed by the graphics and the sound. At that time, I had a ZX Spectrum 48k, and had to save money for about 2 years to buy it. never had the money to buy a Amiga. Last month, got myself a A500 and I'm discovering a whole computer world that I've missed.

</comment><comment><USER21> One interesting memory that I still have trouble explaining to people - multiple video modes on the same screen. I remember having a 640x400(ish) 256 color screen, then pulling it down halfway and having a 320x200(ish) workbench screen behind it. "Huh?" is what I usually get. Then "why would you want that?"

<comment><USER22> A nifty feature that's only possible on analogue monitors, I think. Like light guns.

<comment><USER23> It was also only worthwhile as long as multiple resolutions had different tradeoffs in terms of supported palette etc.

On the Amiga you even had paint programs using this to display the image you were editing at one resolution/palette, and the UI / tools etc. in a strip displayed at a different resolution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Need to add to the Amiga love anecdotes.

\- My first Amiga was an A500, eventually ended up with a chip RAM upgrade, an A520 20MB hard disk and some extra Fast RAM.

\- I owned several Amigas in the early 90s, but I actually cried when I sold my A1200 to buy a 486 DX2 66! Why you may ask? Doom. It changed everything.

<comment><USER25> Doom was the death knell for my Amiga days as well. That and by that time, IIRC, it was obvious that Commodore was going under fast. I don't want to go pull out an Amiga and play, but it's rare to experience something that actually feels like a whole new ball game. (The Oculus Rift is close.)

<comment><USER26> After my first machine, an Atari 800, I had an Amiga 500 and loved it. But I didn't keep up with industry news at the time, so my first indication that All Was Not Well was when I walked into my local Amiga store (Omnitek, in Tewksbury, MA) and the Amiga stuff had been moved aside to make room for IBM PC-contemptibles... some of them with Commodore badges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If you want an excellent book about Commodore:

[http://www.amazon.com/On-Edge-Spectacular-Rise- Commodore/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/On-Edge-Spectacular-Rise- Commodore/dp/0973864907)

<comment><USER23> Note that there's a second edition that's split into two volumes. The first covers the "8-bit era". The second, covering the "Amiga years" has just had a successful kickstarter [1] and should be ready by end of year hopefully. It greatly expands on the original.

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1462758959/commodore- th...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1462758959/commodore-the-amiga- years-book)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I got an Amiga 500 the following year (or 2 years later? I can't remember). I was a kid, so 99% of my time was spent on games; most of my friends had a C64 or a ZXSpectrum, so basically they queued to come to my house...

My father went on to use Logistix extensively in his work, and even to compute results for some school election -- printing tons of pie charts with a dot- matrix.

He also used some graphic effects software (3dtext? Videotext? Can't remember). Because we did not have any video equipment or laser printer, he ended up taking pictures of the screen with his Reflex and then have them printed on actual slides. His colleagues were in awe. Now I can't believe he went to all that trouble!

By the time I actually paid some attention to the manuals and tried my hand at Workbench stuff, Amiga was on its way out. I ended up using an IBM emulator to run WordPerfect, and then just moved to a Windows 3.1 laptop; by then, "real" games had moved to consoles anyway.

</comment><comment><USER29> The real question : Where do I download a dvd image with an emulator and 1000 games to replay my youth ?

<comment><USER30> Here: [http://www.amigaforever.com/](http://www.amigaforever.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I loved my Amiga A1000. I forgave the early, buggy floppy-based firmware (Kickstart) and OS (Workbench). I think this experience tempered me for a life working with good-intentioned but buggy operating systems. :-)

</comment><comment><USER32> Fun fact: Comedian Dana Carvey's brother Brad Carvey built the first wire- wrapped Video Toaster -- arguably the Amiga's "Killer App", which spawned Lightwave3D and powered the visual effects of countless 90's science fiction shows (as well as some film work). In Wayne's World II you can spot Garth wearing a Video Toaster t-shirt to their music festival.

<comment><USER33> Also, Wil Wheaton did QA for the Video Toaster (source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wil_Wheaton#Post- Star_Trek](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wil_Wheaton#Post-Star_Trek)).

<comment><USER32> Wow, that's really something -- stars on hit TV show for better part of a decade and moves to Kansas to QA an Amiga product. Illustrative of how passionate people were about the Amiga.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Often the software and OS APIs on that system are glossed over in favor of the hardware or the graphical shell. The Exec[1] was a marvel at the time -- and in some ways, still is. I don't know how much ARexx[2] preceeded AppleScript, but it was also, something that other OSes seldom got right.

It took other user-oriented operating systems about a decade to catch up, and in fact, the hardware everyone raves about in the Amiga fell behind far sooner than the system software.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exec_(Amiga)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exec_\(Amiga\)) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARexx](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARexx)

</comment><comment><USER35> I still have my Amiga 500, working. Some years ago I built this 'website', imagining how an Amiga comeback would be: [http://darioportfolio.com/amiga/](http://darioportfolio.com/amiga/)

</comment><comment><USER36> There's a very nice interview on Tweakers.net taken on the Amsterdam Amiga day, with many influential developers:

[http://tweakers.net/video/10600/30-jaar-commodore-amiga- de-i...](http://tweakers.net/video/10600/30-jaar-commodore-amiga-de-invloed- van-de-eerste-multimediacomputer.html)

RJ Mical and Dave Haynie are interviewed, who did hardware development for the Amigas, as well as Mike Dailly (creator of Lemmings) and Allister Brimble (composed for some well-known games of the platforms).

Lot's of Dutch inbetween explaining the historical significance, without subtitles, but probably worth a listen to just for what these guys have to say about the platform.

</comment><comment><USER37> I remember when we upgraded the family computer from a (second-hand) Apple ][e to an (also second-hand) Amiga 500.

I had gotten my start programming in BASIC on the Apple ][, and was blown away by the stuff I could do using AMOS on the Amiga.

The Amiga 500 was eventually replaced by a new Amiga 1200. Sometime after the end of Commodore (I must have been 14 or so) my parents bought our first PC, a 486 (the latest and greatest at the time) running DOS / Windows 3.1... it just wasn't the same.

</comment><comment><USER38> I missed out on the Amiga, going straight from 8bit Atari to x86. I used a A500 but never owned anything made by Commodore. I still find it fascinating and the Deathbed Vigil video was a great but melancholy watch. I never programmed for the Amiga but like everyone else I was always impressed by what the Amiga demoscene could do.

An unfortunate clash for the opening weekend with quakecon dates.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm reading "The Future Was Here" and it gives an excellent dive into the guts and history of the machine. I've really come to a new appreciation for how this crazy machine worked. Highly recommend this book for anybody with more than a passing interest in this legendary machine.

</comment><comment><USER39> Amazed at an Amiga 1000 of a friend. Amiga 500 then A4000/40/RetinaZ3.

</comment><comment><USER40> Been reading about modern Amiga hardware recently like the upcoming X5000 with Amiga OS 4.1. Almost tempted to try it. I forced myself to use Windows, OS X and various Linux for years, but they never felt right.

</comment><comment><USER41> I am so going to this! My 13yo son is going to be so excited to attend.

<comment><USER42> > I am so going to this! My 13yo son is going to be so excited to attend.

I suppose you mean your 13yo inner child?

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> If you can afford it you should always sell a product for no more than a 100% of your cost. [1]

[1] 31:50 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBvbsPNBIyk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBvbsPNBIyk)

</comment><comment><USER44> Good old times!

Cool overview of the history of programming languages: [http://goo.gl/Fa7mNi](http://goo.gl/Fa7mNi)

</comment><comment><USER45> Got my amiga 500 down from the loft about a year ago. It had lay dormant for at least a decade. Plastic had yellowed. I plugged it in and turned on the power switch, expecting to hear a fizz/pop and declare it dead. It booted up fine. And ran kick-off 2.

Seems the only thing to degrade in those 10 years is my reaction time.

<comment><USER46> Assuming you're hoping to play more Kick Off 2 (plus a bit of Sensi perhaps ;-) ), it's highly recommended to replace the capacitors, as leaking capacitors have a nasty habit of ruining old computers. Also, regarding "Plastic had yellowed.", you may be interested in this... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retr0bright](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retr0bright)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I was in love with my C64 and everything Commodore including the Amiga, as any Apple die hard is today; but isn't it time we moved on? it was a computer, and it is no more... chao, and thanks for all the fish...

<comment><USER23> We won't move on until we have systems that consistently beat it. My phone is incomparably more powerful than my old Amiga - with a quad core CPU running on a clock frequency hundreds of times faster and with overall performance at least three orders of magnitude greater, yet even simple apps are often more sluggish, for example.

Sometimes it feels like we've moved backwards in many respects (yes, there are amazing improvements too)

<comment><USER47> and I seem to remember "the 6 million dollar man" as the most awesome series ever, and yet once every couple of years when I get the urge to look up an episode for old times sake I need to confront reality, that it actually totally sucked.

take a look at this top 10 games video for the Amiga - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82kwS9fU7N4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82kwS9fU7N4) , it may have rated as awesome in 1985-1990 but comparing it with anything today is totally ridiculous; and gaming is just an example, since this comparison extends to any other software genre, such as office, communication, engineering, scientific tools, programming tools, etc...

<comment><USER23> I have used AmigaOS and "descendants" like AROS many times in recent years, so I'm not just looking at this with rose-tinted nostalgia. In fact, I've contributed code to AROS.

And yes, there are still awesome things about it.

I've pointed out here before, for example, that I can booth AmigaOS or AROS on modern hardware (either under an emulator in the case of AmigaOS, or the Linux hosted version in the case of AROS) and have it boot straight into a text editor, and that whole process starts faster than Emacs on my laptop.

And there are still massive amounts of functionality that isn't readily available in mainstream OS's today.

Exactly because attitudes like yours means that lots of developers ignore a lot of the lessons these systems have for us - it's not just the Amiga.

<comment><USER47> > And there are still massive amounts of functionality that isn't readily > available in mainstream OS's today.

Can you specify?

> lots of developers ignore a lot of the lessons these systems have for us

what lessons are you talking about?

<comment><USER23> > Can you specify?

A few examples:

Datatypes lets most newer Amiga programs load any type of file of a format that people have written datatype libraries for. E.g. all image viewers and editors that supports datatypes (pretty much all the were still under development when datatypes where introduced) can load pretty much any image format you can think of without any explicit application support as people are still writing them. Datatypes support also exists for e.g. music, word processing documents and others. For some applications it makes sense to have their own custom filters for some formats, but datatypes provides a minimum level of support for even obscure formats, as well as continued support for new formats for applications that are no longer in development.

Similarly any app that supports XPK can transparently decompress and compress any compression format you drop a library for into the right directory (and in fact there's a XPK datatype, that if installed lets any application that supports another datatype - such as for images, or documents - <USER3> compressed versions of the same).

Assigns is one of my favorites: Amiga applications typically load libraries from "libs:". "Libs:" is a virtual directory that is the union of a set of paths that typically includes "progdir:libs/" (but doesn't have to). "progdir:" again is a virtual directory that refers to the directory the application is installed in. It's somewhat like $PATH, except you can create your own assigns, and lookups are handled at OS level. You can somewhat simulate it on Linux with combinations of various obscure filesystem drivers, but there's nothing like the ease of use of assigns. Assigns are also given special treatment in filesystem dialogs/requesters, which meant that e.g. having a "docs:" and "pics:" assign or similar was common ways of creating shortcuts to the stuff you used the most, without needing any explicit support anywhere.

And these names also extends to volumes/labels of physical media. Think backup application that knows the label of the DVD you burned file X to. Want to restore it? Backup application could ask you to insert DVD labelled "August 2014", or on AmigaOS it would just try to open the file "August2014:X" and AmigaOS will ask you to please insert volume "August2014" with no application support needed. This is admittedly a feature that was far more important when dealing with physical media was more common.

OS support for running controls/widgets (gadgets in AmigaOS) in separate threads ensures a high degree of responsiveness even when the machine is under high load.

Ease of writing filesystem drivers means you find stuff like FrexxEd - a text editor that exposes the open buffers as files, so that you can operate on the open buffers with any tools that can process a file.

Pervasive AREXX support meant pretty much _every_ application can be fully scripted, either "natively" in AREXX, or from pretty much every language by talking to the applications AREXX port.

> what lessons are you talking about?

Decomposing applications and treating the system as a whole, for starters. For AmigaOS this was an absolute necessity: You wouldn't have the space to effectively multitask on a machine with 512KB RAM if everyone needed to pull in huge amounts of different dependencies. So there was a lot more effort into standard components, or replacements for standard components, that allowed applications to do more with very little.

Not being wasteful, certainly. Above I mentioned FrexxEd. The custom filesystem in FrexxEd might seem like unnecessary bloat. But on a small system it meant that you did not have to write to a temporary file in T: which would commonly be assigned to RAM:T/ which would mean you'd suddenly have a second copy of the file in memory, instead of just processing what was already there. Similarly, the way cut and paste is implemented in AmigaOS is intended to be able to deal with efficient buffering to T: _in case_ it has been re-assigned to a slow device (even a harddrive would have been slow enough to make the UI sluggish if you were to cut and paste a large chunk of data).

But the things that made these applications work well on such small machines also makes them blazingly fast on modern machines where UI's are somehow still sluggish even when they don't add much functionality (it's another matter if a super-complex UI is slow)

<comment><USER47> the apple II, the C64, the mac, the Amiga, and later the PC, the Internet, Windows, Linux and then the IPhone and Android, dozens of other amazing projects, products, technologies and movements (e.g. open source), all revolutionized and transformed our lives or at least had some impact on the history of computing,

but how does an API for handling image formats amount to that today?

isn't it fair to say that the Amiga had its day in the 80s and 90s, and that time is now past?

Or to put it in Mr. Praline famous words: 'E's not pinin'! 'E's passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! 'E's expired and gone to meet 'is maker! 'E's a stiff! Bereft of life, 'e rests in peace! If you hadn't nailed 'im to the perch 'e'd be pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! 'E's off the twig! 'E's kicked the bucket, 'e's shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

<comment><USER48> Datatypes were a very cool feature, not just a simple API. For an application to be able to support new format be it an image, video, spreadsheet, document or anything the application has to be updated to use a library or to add native support for that format.

Imagine if you could add a Datatype for an image format such as EXR and you would instantly be able to open it in Paint, embed it in Word and Powerpoint without having to update the apps. A DOCX Datatype would allow Wordpad to open Word documents. A new video format on the internet? No need to wait for browser support, just add the Datatype and it would work.

Another advantage of a system like this would be for security. If an serious exploit was found in a popular image decoding library then you could delete the offending Datatype and none of your apps could be exploited until the fault is fixed. May be inconvenient but at least it would be safe. Shared libraries could be used to handle this to an extent but most apps would probably crash if you deleted a required library and who knows if the app is using the shared library or a statically linked version?

There was a few nice features that were in the Amiga operating system but this was one that i wish had been implemented in other operating systems.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


HP Holds Navy Network 'Hostage' for $3.3 Billion - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/hp-holds-navy-network-hostage/#ixzz0zH1qgHUT

<comment><USER2> A duplicate of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1649860></comment>


The New uberX: Better, Faster, and Cheaper than a Taxi - <AUTHOR> http://blog.uber.com/2013/06/11/uberx-cheaper-than-a-taxi/ <comment><USER2> It's hard to say how big and/or profitable the car-sharing industry might end up being when it's mature and stable and all the inevitable regulatory issues are ironed out, but for now as a consumer I welcome cutthroat price wars. In San Francisco I use SideCar almost exclusively, and it seems to be about the same price as a taxi, so it's great to have another similarly-priced option.

</comment><comment><USER3> What about the recent lawsuits and uber violating transport regulations? My impression (without really following the thing, just reading headlines and a few HN comments) was that Uber can compete with such low prices by not following some legislation there is in the person transport business.

</comment><comment><USER4> For those that don't know, uberX uses hybrid cars instead of luxury sedans [1].

[1] [http://blog.uber.com/2012/07/03/sf-vehicle- choice/](http://blog.uber.com/2012/07/03/sf-vehicle-choice/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like Sidecar and Lyft are eating their market share</comment>


ComputeDRAM: In-Memory Compute Using Off-the-Shelf DRAMs (2019) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://parallel.princeton.edu/papers/micro19-gao.pdf <comment><USER2> From the paper:

 _Our novel operations function at the circuit level by forcing the commodity DRAM chip to open multiple rows simultaneously by activating them in rapid succession._

That reminds me of this:

[https://www.linusakesson.net/scene/safevsp/](https://www.linusakesson.net/scene/safevsp/)

It's worth reading the long explanation there, and the HN discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11845770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11845770) , but the critical part is this:

 _In short, one memory cell gets refreshed with the bit value of a different memory cell._

What I find more amazing is that this effect has probably been noticed for as long as DRAM existed and treated as a bug (like above), and it took several decades for someone to think "that could be _useful_!"

<comment><USER3> I seem to recall an unusual proof of work scheme (cuckoo iirc) which depended on some similar exploit of off-label DRAM timing behavior, but just as a means of assuring a standard measuring unit rather than to perform compute ops.

<comment><USER4> As the author of the Cuckoo Cycle PoW [https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo](https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo) I don't recall any such dependence. I don't see how the operations described in the paper would benefit a Cuckoo Cycle solver, which in essense looks like [https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo/blob/master/doc/simplesolve](https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo/blob/master/doc/simplesolve)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Micron had implemented an Automata processor on DRAM.

[https://insidebigdata.com/2019/07/26/machine-learning- with-m...](https://insidebigdata.com/2019/07/26/machine-learning-with-microns- automata-processor/)

[https://semiwiki.com/forum/index.php?threads/survey-paper- on...](https://semiwiki.com/forum/index.php?threads/survey-paper-on-microns- automata-processor.11424/)

<comment><USER6> This wasn't really on DRAM in the same way as the paper is, interesting though that project was. Sadly, it's more or less defunct. The academic research at UVa has largely come to an end and Micron spun out the project to a startup that seems to be moribund ([http://www.naturalsemi.com/](http://www.naturalsemi.com/)).

I tracked these guys because we were doing automata in s/w (the [https://github.com/intel/hyperscan](https://github.com/intel/hyperscan) project at Intel). There were some aspects of their methodology I didn't like (notably, they tended to run benchmarks that spewed matches, slowing Hyperscan down, while turning off matches on the h/w card!) but I found them v. interesting and they had some really thought-provoking stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> In-Memory compute would be useful for garbage collection. Compare also with this article: [https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~krste/papers/maas- isca18-h...](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~krste/papers/maas- isca18-hwgc.pdf) (note: one of the article authors is Krste Asanovic, who is on the RISC-V chairman of the board).

</comment><comment><USER8> A single but excellent comment from last year: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21992296](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21992296)

<comment><USER9> That comment says

 _"The Elxsi 6400, built in the early 1980s could do logical operations to memory using the off the shelf drams of the day. Designer was Harold (Mac) McFarland, of PDP-11 fame."_

I googled for more info, but didn't find info about that. There's a Wikipedia page ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elxsi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elxsi)) that confirms the McFarland part, and I found the system architecture ([https://amaus.net/static/S100/elxsi/systems/Elxsi%20System%2...](https://amaus.net/static/S100/elxsi/systems/Elxsi%20System%206400%20architecture.pdf)), which is interesting (instructions for multi-precision _ascii_ addition and subtraction, for example, I would guess for supporting COBOL), but nothing about those DRAM tricks. Does anybody have more info?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems to me like the biggest limitation is that while multiple rows can be operated on at once, there is apparently no operation that can mix the values of different columns. So bits at index 0 within a number can only be dependent on other bits at index 0.

Anyone see anything that contradicts this?

</comment><comment><USER11> what I'd like is a programmable vector math unit with adjustable vector length so I can do massive compute operations without having to pay memory access latency cost. for instance, it would be awesome if CPU can just instruct to do alpha blend 2 frames command to the memory and avoid the whole fetch decode execute loop altogether.

On top of this it would be really awesome if this attached 'ram compute block' was re-programmable like fpgas or a simpler higher level construct. then we could essentially do all the 'parallel & dumb' computations in ram itself so CPU would mostly be for control and branch code.

<comment><USER12> With 5nm coming soon, I think this is inevitable. It's now possible to put 127M transistors in a single square millimetre, but despite billions of transistors in a CPU, total performance is not hundreds of thousands of times greater than primitive CPUs from decades ago.

It would cost next to nothing in terms of chip area to have a simple "controller" CPU in each DRAM chip that can issue vector instructions without needing to have its hand held.

The problem is the instruction set: where do you stop? Do you just have simple logic operations, or a full set of floating point operations? Do you have flow control? Stacks? Etc...

Code would either have to be written in the "full featured" language as well as a cut-down language similar to CUDA, _or_ the embedded little chips would have to be full CPUs.

The other issue is cache coherence. It's possible to have designs where either the little DRAM CPUs participate or they don't. Both have big advantages and big disadvantages, and neither is easy.

I suspect that this is going to start turning up in GPUs before CPUs, or possibly for HPC applications before general purpose computers.

<comment><USER13> Since designing and perfecting new, highly parallel programming methods is hard, I can imagine stretching current approaches.

Spread ALUs and simple control units across RAM cells, there's little needed because the RAM is its own registers. Some distant big control unit will send out instructions to the processing units, and orchestrate I/O. A bit like GPU but with a different set of constraints. Likely it could be made compatible with OpenCL or CUDA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting that they get around lack of NOT operations (and thus lack of universal logic capability) by storing each value twice: once normally, and once bitwise-negated.

<comment><USER14> Not so much "getting around the lack of NOT" as "implementing NOT".

<comment><USER15> I'm confused: Are you using the Bill & Ted Sarcastic Postfix NOT or not?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Do these operations make the memory Turing-complete?

I don't have the expertise to know...

If they don't -- then what would be needed to be done to the memory controller (in this case a custom FPGA memory controller) to make it Turing-complete?

Also... even if it isn't Turing-complete, then probably whatever functionality is missing could be implemented by the FPGA -- although at the probable cost of a memory round trip for those instructions, right?

In other words, you could probably use this for mixed-mode, hybrid, Turing- completeness via additional FPGA instructions, even if the operations on RAM aren't Turing-complete in and of themselves -- or am I missing something?

All of this sounds very promising!

Great concept, great paper -- hope you get well funded for your next round of research!

<comment><USER17> It has the functionality of the first Connection Machine, except with no network to exchange values between columns (as another comment pointed out). You can do 64K logic operations, each on one bit, at a time. You still need an external controller (which can be in the FPGA, as you suggested) to fetch instructions, do loops and things like that.

The CM-1 could do conditional execution: you tell the 64k processors to add but only those with a give flag set to 1 will actually do it while the others will execute a NOP. It is possible to simulate this on this design but it would be rather awkward, just like their 1 bit addition is awkward compared to the one clock equivalent in the CM-1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So is there any example code? I would love to experiment with this on an extra computer I have lying around.

<comment><USER19> You need to modify the memory controller so I'm guessing a FPGA is required, though maybe a microcontroller can be used as well. Also note that they only got the AND/OR operations to work on a couple of the eight DRAM modules tested so chances are you have to be lucky or source those parts as well.</comment></comment>


MathML in Chromium - <AUTHOR> https://mathml.igalia.com/news/2019/02/12/launch-of-the-project/ <comment><USER2> I really wish browsers would just render formulas directly from TeX. Let me write <tex>\sqrt{1+x}</tex> or whatever. TeX is the de facto standard for writing mathematical formulas. That browsers don't render it natively just screams of NIH syndrome on the part of browser and web standards developers.

MathML still hasn't caught on after two decades, for three reasons: 1) not working in all browsers; 2) even when it worked, the rendering was often buggy or plain ugly; 3) no one wants to write MathML directly.

MathJax instantly solved all problems, which made it an overnight success. MathML might be able to overcome 1) and 2), but 3) should not be underestimated. MathJax will be around as long as it is the most convenient solution for showing equations in a browser (no user-side compilation required), and rendering times and network traffic will suffer accordingly.

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry but Latex is an inconsistent touring-complete mess. Latex commands are far from intuitive, otherwise Detexify wouldn't be so popular. It's a million macros held together with duct type with no consistency in naming and syntax, and always dependent on which age-old package you're referencing. It's good at outputting pixel-perfect printable, non-accessible PDFs, and that's it.

I'm excited by this because I hope that with a proper widely-supported system for math in HTML we can eventually write more papers to be digital-first. An HTML document is so much more accessible, searchable, semantically analysable and flexible than Latex and its PDF output. I dream of a world where the standard for papers is not Latex .pdf but .mhtml or .maff.

<comment><USER4> It is true that the LaTeX ecosystem as a whole is a mess of packages and macros. But most of its mathematical typesetting comes from the underlying TeX (and a set of macros maintained by the AMS), and it's fairly small and consistent. The Detexify you mention is only for looking up specific symbols provided by various fonts (packages), and has nothing to do with mathematical typesetting or LaTeX macros in general: TeX/LaTeX engines support Opentype fonts now and if you want to use one of them, you can just type ∞ instead of \infty or ℝ instead of \mathbb{R} (actually you can do this regardless with unicode-math), bypassing the need for looking up symbols-a4 or Detexify.

Encoding the aesthetics of good mathematical typesetting is not trivial, and Knuth and others have spent decades on it based on studying and absorbing all the tricks that hot-metal typesetters had come up with over centuries. It would be foolish to throw away all that hard-won knowledge and implement half- baked solutions from scratch: those working in the field understand this (though the original MathML proponents perhaps did not), which is why the linked post mentions "math rendering based on TeXbook's appendix G".

More generally, in this conversation (and in any discussion about MathML), several things get conflated:

1\. What syntax the user types to get their mathematics. I think it's beyond dispute here that no one wants to type MathML by hand (and even the MathML advocates do not propose it AFAIK). Also, so many people are familiar with TeX/LaTeX syntax that it must be supported by any complete solution, though alternatives like AsciiMath or some interactive input are still worth exploring.

2\. How the mathematics is actually encoded in the HTML file, or delivered to the browser. Frankly I don't think this one matters much because it's invisible to the user; any of raw TeX syntax, or MathML syntax, or fully- positioned HTML+CSS, or SVG, will probably do.

3\. Who does the rendering and typesetting / layout. The promise/dream of MathML is that a standard will be specified and all browsers will implement it; though this is yet to become reality. Meanwhile, typesetting can already be done server-side (someone runs TeX/MathJax/KaTeX/etc before sending it to the browser) or client-side (MathJax/KaTeX running in the user's browser) instead of being done in the browser's native code.

4\. The quality of the typesetting/the algorithms used. I already mentioned this in the second paragraph above so I won't reiterate it, but this has been mostly underestimated/ignored by those advocating MathML. The decisions made by TeX reflected the best journals of the early 20th century and have in turn become the shared aesthetics of the mathematical community; "so-so" typesetting will not do.

5\. What the result/output of all this rendering/typesetting/layout will be, in the web page's DOM. This affects things like usability (being able to copy- paste), scaling/zooming, styling individual parts of formulas, etc. Again, already (La)TeX+dvisvgm supports SVG for this, and MathJax supports HTML+CSS, MathML or whatever. Anything other than raster (PNG etc) images is probably fine here.

The main new/useful thing I can see with MathML is with (3); the browser doing the typesetting. But that's hard, and it has a lot of other challenges to overcome too. And as MathJax/KaTeX/dvisvgm demonstrate, the facilities provided by the browser for layout (HTML+CSS for example) are already sufficient for print-quality typesetting.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an interesting, thought-provoking comment!

> (though the original MathML proponents perhaps did not)

FWIW I'm pretty sure that they did. Arguments to authority are pretty terrible, but if you look at the authors of the MathML 1.0 (earliest) or 3.0 (latest) specs[0][1], and google them, you can see that many of them have backgrounds in science or math and have been active in the LaTeX ecosystem.

> but this [quality of the typesetting] has been mostly underestimated/ignored > by those advocating MathML.

I don't see any evidence for this, not among its designers, implementers or even general proponents.

Firefox's output (implemented almost(?) entirely by individual volunteers), for instance, is acknowledged to be still considerably worse than LaTeX output in a pdf, though it is competitive with its web alternatives (superior in some respects, worse in others) — do be sure to install MathML fonts[2] though.

> 5\. What the result [...] will be, in the web page's DOM.

Have you seen the tag soup generated (by necessity) with MathJax or KaTeX?

[0] [https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-MathML//TR/REC- MathML/](https://www.w3.org/TR/REC-MathML//TR/REC-MathML/)

[1] [https://www.w3.org/TR/MathML3/](https://www.w3.org/TR/MathML3/)

[2] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/MathML_Proj...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/MathML_Project/Fonts)

<comment><USER4> I guess when I say "MathML proponents" I ought to be more careful in my thinking to make a distinction (even if they are often the same people) between those working on MathML as a project, and those advocating for its actual use today under current conditions. I have no problems with the former; I wish them good luck and look forward to trying the result when it's ready. For the latter, I can only say that anyone advocating using MathML today despite its problems (poor layout and browser support) clearly cares about something else more than they do about actually communicating mathematics to humans.

No doubt among the authors of the MathML specs there are people who care about typesetting. Though I'll note that being active in the LaTeX ecosystem is not a guarantee of this: the prime example is the author of LaTeX (Leslie Lamport) himself, who makes a pitch for the LaTeX model around (mostly) not caring about the appearance: [https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/document- production.p...](https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/document- production.pdf) — in contrast with Knuth who devotes the largest (despite smaller font size) chapter of _The TeXbook_ to _Fine Points of Mathematics Typing_. (A blog post by one of the authors of the MathML spec you linked to: [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/murrays/2011/04/30/two- math...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/murrays/2011/04/30/two-math- typography-niceties/)) In fact some of the worst mathematical typesetting I've seen is by people who wrote in LaTeX and blindly trusted it to produce the best typesetting, and sometimes even ignored the warnings about overfull/underfull lines.

Looking at the MathML sample page in Firefox ([https://mdn.mozillademos.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/MathML_Proje...](https://mdn.mozillademos.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/MathML_Project/MathML_Torture_Test$samples/MathML_Torture_Test?revision=1449367)), there are many that are worse and none that is better that TeX's output (which for some reason is given on the page in low-resolution images rather than high-dpi images or SVG) — and in any case if you feel that some are subjectively better, it's still the case that the aesthetic most everyone wants is "like TeX". And personally I've seen very little by Firefox/MathML people on their layout decisions (if they decided to do things differently from TeX, why?), while with MathJax I've seen that if their output is found not to match TeX's it is treated as a bug report and a fix attempted. What are the some respects in which you say Firefox's output is visually superior to MathJax's? Is there a page demonstrating them?

> Have you seen the tag soup generated (by necessity) with MathJax or KaTeX?

Yes, and it's not pretty. But (1) among the list of things to care about this is the lowest of the low, as it does not affect what is visible to the user, and (2) the tag soup of MathML, though shorter, has still all the XML ugliness so it's not as if it will ever be readable. (In fact looking at the comparison of different input formats [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MathML&oldid=8864...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MathML&oldid=886463711#Example_and_comparison_to_other_formats) for sufficiently complex equations even the TeX/AsciiMath inputs become unreadable; the well-typeset visual representation may be the only somewhat readable one.)

<comment><AUTHOR> > For the latter, I can only say that anyone advocating using MathML today > despite its problems (poor layout and browser support) clearly cares about > something else more than they do about actually communicating mathematics to > humans.

Much of the reason people are in favour of providing MathML output is that if nobody did, then the likelihood of Chrome getting MathML support would have been near zero (and the risk of Firefox removing its existing (if imperfect) implementation, high). (A chicken and egg problem.) Since MathML is likely (you may disagree — but you must agree that it's plausible that if a JavaScript solution can do it, a native one can probably do it better) to lead to better equation typesetting on the web, once it's properly implemented, people advocating MathML today can very much care about better communicating maths to humans, in the long run. Also, MathML is not incompatible with MathJax — in fact, since MathJax's internal representation of equations is similar to MathML's, converting from MathML (to SVG/HTML+CSS/whatever) is faster than converting from TeX — so it's not as if providing MathML in the document dooms your readers you to its "ugly" output. (And yes, MathML can be both an input and an output for MathJax...)

> [...] (which for some reason is given on the page in low-resolution images > rather than high-dpi images or SVG) [...]

That's because the page was made several years ago, when such images were the norm (look at a Wikipedia page on the Archive from even 2016), and hasn't seen significant updates since, because MathML was feared dead (due to Chrome, at the time, explicitly rejecting support) and volunteer effort dried up. Somebody™ should update this...

> Looking at the MathML sample page in Firefox [...], there are many that are > worse and none that is better that TeX's output

For the little that it's worth, IMO five are worse, two are slightly better and the rest just as good as the TeX.

> And personally I've seen very little by Firefox/MathML people on their > layout decisions (if they decided to do things differently from TeX, why?), > while with MathJax I've seen that if their output is found not to match > TeX's it is treated as a bug report and a fix attempted.

Far more people work on MathJax than on MathML — MathJax has a two-member team, plus support from AMS, plus volunteers, while MathML has only had occasional volunteers (see above; not that it was much better previously), so it's not a fair comparison. Also the page comparing TeX with MathML was made by the people in favour of MathML precisely because they care about trying to achieve parity with TeX.

> What are the some respects in which you say Firefox's output is visually > superior to MathJax's?

For instance the speed with which the output is rendered. Several second latency for better final appearance might be a bargain you want to take, but it's still a visual trade-off. (You can use server-side MathJax, but then you lose some end-user customisability.)

> the tag soup of MathML, though shorter, has still all the XML ugliness so > it's not as if it will ever be readable.

How else would you expose the structure of an equation, to the DOM, than with XML ugliness? It's just important that the XML ugliness makes sense (and MathML's does).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's very good news that this has finally started. Wikipedia, probably the biggest website that displays formulas, still renders them to SVG images.

Igalia had already been improving WebKit's [1] MathML renderer and they had a fundraiser for the Chromium MathML work for a long time. Now they seem to collected enough to start with it. It's one of the great advantages of open source that a small company like Igalia can just go and improve multiple rendering engines used by billions of people.

[1]: [https://webkit.org/blog/6803/improvements-in-mathml- renderin...](https://webkit.org/blog/6803/improvements-in-mathml-rendering/)

<comment><USER6> "Wikipedia, probably the biggest website that displays formulas, still renders them to SVG images."

Not exactly.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Displaying_a_formula#Na...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Displaying_a_formula#Native_MathML)

<comment><USER5> Even users on Firefox only get to see the SVG images per default.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can also use a computer algebra system (CAS) to perform computations and get the output in mathml, for example the free CAS maxima.

wxMaxima is something like jupyter notebook but developed with wxWindows by a solo developer. ?? is help for command

I just copy pasted:

(%i2) ?? mathml; \-- Function: mathml_display (<form>) Produces MathML output. (%i1) load("alt-display.mac")$ (%i2) set_alt_display(2,mathml_display); <math xmlns="[http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML">](http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML">) <mi>mlabel</mi> <mfenced separators=""><msub><mi>%o</mi> <mn>2</mn></msub> <mo>,</mo><mi>done</mi> </mfenced> </math> (%o2) true

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's an example of why MathML is attractive as a rendering layer (try Firefox vs Chrome, and look at native MathML latency vs MathJax emulation):

[https://runarberg.github.io/ascii2mathml/](https://runarberg.github.io/ascii2mathml/)

(it helps to have the LaTeX Computer Modern fonts installed locally, which for some reason aren't imported on this page)

<comment><USER9> hmm, here is a project I haven't given nearly as much love as it deserves.

ascii2mathml was the first compiler I ever wrote (and have written since). I wrote it because I wanted authors from a non math background to be able to write short expressions in forums or comment threads without having to know latex. I tried to make it as intuitive as possible. Even going as far as making `1+2 / 3+4` a different expression from `1 + 2/3 + 4`. But I know some people started integrate the library in their notebook apps, mainly used by math students taking notes in lectures in a markdown format (writing the expressions in ascii2mathml). Ascii2mathml might be a better fit then then the original asciimath for that purpose as the original is no expressive enough to capture advanced math expressions.

I bailed on it a couple of years ago because it looked like MathML was a dying. Chrome wasn't going to implement it. Also I haven't been using it for anything either. Perhaps it is now time I revisit it and give it some love.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not in any way affiliated, but Igalia is a cool company. They pay their employees to work on OSS projects as a part of their job. Andy Wingo work(ed?)there and they financed quite a bit of guile development as a way to make him develop his compiler and runtime skills.

</comment><comment><USER11> My personal opinion is that MathML should die. MathJax is here today and works.

<comment><USER12> So, because we have a JS library, we should drop an effort to natively support first class math rendering in the browser?

That's why we can't have nice things.

<comment><USER13> It's not first class. It's cross-browser-inconsistent garbage layout largely unsuitable for anything but the simplest mathematical expressions, and a horrible markup syntax for authors.

If MathJax or KaTeX is too slow for some purpose, someone should try to compile a more streamlined TeX renderer to wasm.

<comment><USER14> > garbage layout largely unsuitable

I dunno. Looking at the math rendering torture test at [https://mdn.mozillademos.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/MathML_Proje...](https://mdn.mozillademos.org/en- US/docs/Mozilla/MathML_Project/MathML_Torture_Test$samples/MathML_Torture_Test?revision=1449367)

I prefer the MathML version in 15 of the examples and the LaTex in 11. (No preference in the others.)

<comment><USER13> I think the MathML sizing, positioning, and spacing of glyphs is strictly worse in every example at your link, sometimes quite dramatically. In a few cases (like the deeply nested fraction) the LaTeX is also not great.

This would be a fairer comparison if they saved the LaTeX as SVG outlines, or as a higher resolution bitmap. As it is the LaTeX version looks fuzzy on my high DPI display.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> this is great news.

Does anybody know if this will translate to chromium based web toolkits (eg QT), and MS Edge (soon to be based on chromium), and therefore, React-XP [1] ?

[1][https://github.com/Microsoft/reactxp](https://github.com/Microsoft/reactxp)

</comment><comment><USER16> I hope MathML gets more support. It is a bit unwieldy, but it seems like a simple solution to displaying maths on a simple HTML page, here is my example.

[http://gron.ca/algebra/023.html](http://gron.ca/algebra/023.html)</comment>


Why does medicine cost so much?  Here's how drug prices are set - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/5564547/drug-prices-medicine/?linkId=65902613 <comment><USER2> This is how it works now.

How much are you willing to pay of my money to save your life...what could go wrong.</comment>


Consultants Should All Get Real Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/consultants-should-all-get-real-jobs/

<comment><USER2> they should at least do "real work" every 3 years to learn and feel what it is like</comment>


Japan's all-male boards face rejection by foreign investors - <AUTHOR> https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Business-trends/Japan-s-all-male-boards-face-rejection-by-foreign-investors <comment><USER2> American investment companies are free to do what they want, and similarly Japanese companies are free to take American money if they want.

I'm personally of the opinion that plays like this will ultimately drive people into the arms of the Chinese, Saudis, etc. and further reduce America's influence in the world, but that's only my guess on the matter.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Better diversity "brings economic as well as cultural benefits," Legal & General Investment said when announcing the new policy. The company described the goal as "moving the needle on diversity in Japan._

Citation needed. Better diversity lowers the salaries so that Goldman Sachs (mentioned further down in the article) can get even richer. Speaking of which, isn't a certain ethnic group over-represented in finance?

<comment><USER4> Better diversity is the effect of a well run company not the cause.

<comment><USER5> maybe it doesn't matter. Replacing male A with female B makes no difference in running the company, so diversity can be achieved without really affecting how well the company is. The main reason to enforce diversity at this level is because that top level diversity will drive diversity from top, it is a good start point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This decision is probably for the best. Boards being somewhat independent from management is desirable and this might be helpful breaking up the Old Boys Club style effects. Can't complain about foreign influence either, if the company has been sold to foreigners. And it is just implausible that all the best candidates are men.

But the social situation is relevant here and an overarching risk needs to be mentioned. The best candidate will be male ~50% of the time (possibly more often after accounting for differing work patterns between the sexes) and if the difference between "best" and "good" is detectable then that should be the priority. Pushing social changes is fine, but corporations are the engines that drive all the prosperity of the modern era. Good governance and systematically excellent competence at the highest levels are both critical properties. Of course the difference at this level probably isn't detectable so good on them for keeping people on their toes.

Asset management firms aren't supposed to be Social Engineering priority 1, Running Assets priority 2. I don't think that is happening here, but it bears repeating that if they do over-prioritise social goals that would be a corruption of what their role in the market actually is. We need them to be pushing the limits of economic efficiency, because a 0.5% difference at that level is significant to a large number of people's lives.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's an interesting idea, as investors they can set whatever requirements attached to their money and I believe board diversity it good.

Thing is, I said I _believe_ and from the article it doesn't seem like they have much hard data. It can be done simply on principle for sure, but if it's true why not include a nice chart showing that those 10% companies in the US that don't have a woman director are underperforming?

<comment><USER8> > why not include a nice chart showing that those 10% companies in the US that > don't have a woman director are underperforming?

Because most probably they're not, once correlations are excluded. It's annoying that we keep trying to justify what is ethically desirable with made up facts.

<comment><USER9> This is hostile for no reason. Why "annoying" and "made up facts" rather than simply presenting evidence that they do not perform better, or citing lack of evidence that they do? Hell, even just saying what you _think_ is probably the case without evidence would be a fine way to express yourself. But you felt the need to make it an ideological insult.

<comment><USER8> Well, it would be annoying in general (beyond this specific case, let's assume an instance we agree on) because it confuses an ethical stance with a factual statement. In this case, _right_ with the _profitable_. Say that tomorrow we find out that more diverse companies perform slightly worse- what do you do? Do you change your opinion on diversity? I guess you don't, because diversity is ethically desirable, whatever its consequences. So wouldn't be more honest to say that we don't really care about the effect on the company's performance?

And for the specific case, I think it's very hard to prove that more diverse boards make companies more successful- there are a ton of spurious correlations and confounding factors, plus an understandable desire to obtain one result and not the other. Do you have any good research to point me to?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Better diversity "brings economic as well as cultural benefits,"

Is that actually true? When I looked into it a bit further the results seemed mixed, on the economic part at least.

<comment><USER11> Facts and evidence are the Tools Of The Patriarchy. You supposed to shut up and blindly belive. Do not question the western state ideology of progressivism.

(P.S.: as an unbeliver you won't be able to "see" the "Benefits™")

<comment><USER10> Indeed it has become a new religion. Gad Saad has some reasonably funny youtube videos about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's funny; we in the west can pass laws that companies boards must have a certain arbitrary number of gonads[1], but forcing them to operate in the national interest (I dunno, let's say, not exporting everyone's job to some foreign hell hole), suddenly it becomes "muh free market decision, we must obey the free market, muh shareholders."

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/us/california- boardroom-g...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/us/california-boardroom- gender-quota.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> Says Nikkei, a company with all-male all-very-old board members.

</comment><comment><USER14> No worries, I'm happy to keep investing in the most profitable companies regardless of the current misandrist prejudice that seems to be everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER15> ... its their culture let them do whatever they want

<comment><USER16> An investor in a Japanese firm, that has a vote in that firm's board elections is unambiguously a participant in that culture. They have responsibility for the way they cast their vote, and have a shared interest in and responsibility for the actions and behaviour of that company and it's management.

If the owners of a company aren't responsible for how a company is run, who is?

<comment><USER17> Isn't there any room for respect for traditional Japanese culture? They do have a different understanding of things over there and perhaps it's up to them how to change their ways. They have changed completely as a society at least twice before on their own. They may decide to do so again.

<comment><USER18> >Isn't there any room for respect for traditional Japanese culture?

Is culture a blanket excuse for bad behavior? Just because a country has a history of doing something doesn't make it worth respecting. Bad things are bad no matter how long they've been practiced.

<comment><USER19> bad according to your cultural background?

<comment><USER20> The hivemind strongly believes moral relativism isn't a thing and western culture is the only valid one.

<comment><USER18> This is nice and snarky, but I don't think it's morally relativistic to say that actions that subjugate and control people based on race or sex are acceptable just because it's their "culture"

Human rights should be universal and not something that should be limited just because you were born a certain way in a certain place.

<comment><USER20> >Human rights should be universal and not something that should be limited just because you were born a certain way in a certain place.

Why is it that you think so?

Why is it that your definition of human right, which seem to include being able to occupy that board of directors, should apply to anyone else?

<comment><USER18> I wasn't speaking specifically of being on the board of directors - my point was that plenty of things happen because of "culture" that are simply unacceptable - like FGM. You cannot allow something to keep happening just because that's how it's been done, and yes, I would argue that not being mutilated is a basic human right. Thankfully Japan doesn't practice FGM, but being on the scale of "Bad shit" at "Discriminating against women" instead of "Horrifically mutilating them" doesn't earn them congratulations and a pat on the back.

It was American culture to not let women vote, to keep them as stay at home parents, to load them up with children constantly to build our families. That doesn't mean that that treatment was right.

But, as for the board of directors, women have been working full time in professional roles in Japan for decades now. Japan, to this day, still has famously sexist workplace culture. More than half of all adult women in Japan are employed, yet even those with college degrees have a hard time finding full time employment, compared to men with the same degrees from the same schools. Women are not treated equally in the workplace in Japan. 2nd highest gender pay gap in the OECD, behind only Korea.

"Be sexist towards women" isn't something you get a pass on just because it's your culture. This isn't moral relativism. Human beings are human beings, and shouldn't be discriminated against because of their gender, skin color, etc. Unless you want to argue that women are biologically less suited for being members of a companies board?

This requirement tells Japanese companies they need to do one of three things, if they want foreign investment: They need to either find qualified women within their company and promote them and bring them onto the board as they should have been doing all along, find qualified candidates from outside, or begin actually hiring and developing women in their company if they have not been doing so.

<comment><USER20> You haven't answered why. You simply stated it's unacceptable and america chose to go a different path.

They have no obligation to share your view on any of these things.

Stating "sexism is bad" is indeed not moral relativism, it's idealism. Saying that because america did things a certain way, Japan should follow is moral imperialism.

Even if your argument were based on some objective metric (and not an ideal) they still wouldn't have any reason to care. That's what I mean by moral relativism. Forcing your views of social dynamics on them is direspectful to their views and autonomy as a society.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Study: Cannabis boosts risk of stroke and heart attack independently of tobacco - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/03/09/cannabis-boosts-risk-stroke-heart-attack-independent-tobacco/ <comment><USER2> One thought that occurred as I read this: stress is a known cause of stroke/ heart attack. Perhaps stress-prone individuals seek out cannabis to handle it. Thus, the cannabis use and heart disease are correlated, but not caused by each other.

Perhaps the paper addresses this, the article did not.

It seems this article was written using only the press release about this.[0] The paper would actually provide support for these claims, making it fit for actually reporting on. But the paper will not be released until March 18. So it seems no critical thought was put into the article. My expectation is that journalists report on news once it has been verified, or at least clearly communicating this lack of fact-checking.

I think it's a classic case of clickbait headline and low-effort journalism. If they didn't report on this now, some other news outlet (with a lower standard for news) would, and then by the time it was verified, it would be "old news". No ad revenue for you.

Nobody is actually enabled to have a discussion about this potential issue because this reporting is so shoddy. The headline parrots the claim made by the researcher with no supporting evidence. By the time the facts come out, the headline has already made its way through the media. So now, we never have a productive conversation about it, and consumers walk away misinformed at best.

0: [http://2017.accmedia.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/03/Kalla_Ma...](http://2017.accmedia.org/wp- content/uploads/2014/03/Kalla_Marijuana_Consumer-Web-Briefing_Press- Release.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Mine might be a bit of a fluff comment, so I apologize in advance for that, but it really doesn't help them to have a photo of a spliff in the article and not a regular joint. There's clearly tobacco mixed with the cannabis in that rolling paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I want to think that this is the usual anti-cannabis scaremongering, but it actually seems more like a combination of clickbait and the usual soft "science" studies. I file this under, "Eggs are good for you/Eggs will murder your soul". Maybe it's a matter of moderate consumption? In the case of cannabis in particular, maybe it's a matter of not combusting the damned stuff? It's hard to imagine that smoke in any form is _good_ for you after all. Fortunately smoking a plant only became the popular route for cannabis _once it was made illegal_. Before that, tincture was the way to go.

Most people don't want to walk around with a joint hanging out of their mouth, but they'd be fine with a breath-strip with fractionally distilled CBD or whole plant extract. People who would reasonably scoff at inhaling burning plant fumes, might be comfortable with a medical vaporizer and a CO2 extracted product with lab tests to vouch for it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if this takes all methods of ingestion into account. My cardiologist told me to eat all I want - just don't smoke it, and the jury is still out on vaping.

<comment><USER6> I was wondering the same thing. Inhaling smoke is just not a smart idea if you like oxygen, but that does not implicate cannabis per se as being a causative factor for cardiovascular trouble.

<comment><USER4> Whereas for example, tobacco smoke has been shown to be especially harmful. I think the popularity of smoking tobacco has shaped the views of many as to the nature of smoking anything else. As you say, it's hard to imagine smoking anything is a good idea, but that doesn't mean that it's all COPD, heart attacks, and strokes either.

Just anecdotally, people who smoke a lot of cannabis rather than vaping or eating it seem to me, to get a lot more upper respiratory inactions, bronchitis and the like. Will that shave years off your life? Maybe, maybe not, but it's still clearly something to pay attention to, when the alternatives to smoke exist.

<comment><USER6> Yeah. Inhaling hot particulate matter is going to put some level of unneeded stress on your lungs. I think that's pretty well-established.

what comprises that particulate matter may be incidental to its health effects -- grain size probably matters more than grain composition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think inhaling smoke is the key here. Do nicotine patches increase risk of heart disease and stroke?

I imagine wood smoke is full of carcinogens too. Same with plastic.

We were just not built to inhale smoke chronically.

<comment><USER8> Nicotine is a known stimulant and vasoconstrictor so one could imagine that it's not great for long term cardiovascular health. That said, it seems consensus is that it's better than smoking [1] (quite old I know).

EDIT: Also, yes wood smoke has bad things in it [2], but dose and dilution make the poison. In the developing world, poor venting of wood stoves is a real health problem [3].

[1] [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735109797...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S073510979700079X) [2] [https://www.epa.gov/burnwise/wood-smoke-and-your- health](https://www.epa.gov/burnwise/wood-smoke-and-your-health) [3] [http://www.unfoundation.org/who-we-are/impact/our- impact/dec...](http://www.unfoundation.org/who-we-are/impact/our- impact/decreasing-child-mortality/time-to-tackle-one-of-the-worlds-deadliest- killers-cookstove-smoke.html)

<comment><USER9> Quickening and impeding the heart just makes it work harder to get the same job done. Why wouldn't we think this has similar effects to mild exercise on long term CV performance?

<comment><USER8> That's a good point, and I don't know. Though I would propose that there's a difference between chronic stressor and short term stressors. In the case of exercise you're fluctuating up and down, in the case of a nicotine patch, you might be more constantly stressed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've really been wondering about the long term effects of marijuana smoke, in particular the bewildering strains that have been bred in response to market forces and growing constraints over the past 50 years. I have a feeling that it is going to be the Millennial generation's "why didn't anyone tell us!" chronic health problem.

Pointless anecdata: a conversation with a coroner in Washington State reveals his observation that since legalization occurred the lung quality of younger folks dying for unrelated/accidental reasons has been atrocious.

<comment><USER11> I'm betting we find a notable difference in effects based on what people are doing after ingesting in different ways. I suspect certain types of mental & physical exercises done at some point after ingestion could help to a large degree.

<comment><USER10> I'm solely talking about the long term effects of filling your lungs with fine particulates.

<comment><USER11> Gotcha. Maybe we can find a way to think the particulates out of our body?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Link to the actual study?

<comment><USER13> "...when marijuana use was illegal in most states."

"It identified 316,000 patients - 1.5 per cent - where marijuana use was diagnosed in the notes."

I'm not a researcher but I would suspect there are massive holes in this research. How many of these people would not voluntarily reveal MJ usage given it's illegality or stigma. The amount of MJ usage/duration during the patient's lifetime etc is also a huge factor.

<comment><USER14> I would not reveal cannabis use to my GP, nor would I advise any person in the US to do so. A note can (probably will) be made in your medical records. That note may follow you around, and cause doctors to treat you as a "drug-seeking" patient.

<comment><USER15> Not necessarily disagreeing, but AFAIK, "Delta-Sierras" are after hard drugs. MMJ is not(yet?) a problem for medics. It is still illegal federally, so you could expect that to be used against you in a variety of dubiously connected ways.

<comment><USER14> I live in a red state where cannabis is as hard a drug as as you can get as far as the law is concerned.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple begins selling Amazon's eero mesh routers - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/13/apple-eero-selling-homekit/ <comment><USER2> My favorite thing about the eero is the Alexa integration... you can literally tell Alexa to pause the internet for self, and then her data is cut off until you go into the eero app and re-enable it. The only thing better would be to be able to shortcut it with 'Alexa.. earmuffs'.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had major issues with Eero and the Apple Store to the point that I had to get rid of them in favor of TP-link's Deco system. I really wanted to like it, but no amount of troubleshooting with support or changing DNS could make it work.

<comment><USER4> How do you like the TP link system?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess that makes it official that there won't be a new AirPort any time soon.</comment>