Supreme Court sides with student in case over textbooks - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/court_sides_with_student_in_case_over_textbooks/singleton/ <comment><USER6> I really liked this bit from the decision:

> _Third, Wiley and the dissent claim that a nongeographical interpretation > will make it difficult, perhaps impossible, for publishers (and other > copyright holders) to divide foreign and domestic markets. We concede that > is so. A publisher may find it more difficult to charge different prices for > the same book in different geographic markets. But we do not see how these > facts help Wiley, for we can find no basic principle of copyright law that > suggests that publishers are especially entitled to such rights._

FINALLY! Someone's finally seen what Robert Heinlein wrote in _Life-Line_ and essentially just paraphrased it:

> There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion > that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a > number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of > guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing > circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not > supported by statute or common law. Neither individuals nor corporations > have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be > stopped, or turned back.

<comment><USER7> That's why the content industry pushed for the DMCA and used that in the case of the DeCSS case: DMCA as a mean to protect market protection like DVD region encoding.

The problem with physical books is that they can't do it. The know it, the court knows it.

<comment><USER8> This could definitely accelerate the move to non-resaleable ebooks to the detriment of students.

<comment><USER9> It's my hope that people will continue to find, as I do, that reading books on a screen is a huge handicap to absorbing the material effectively.

Programming exercises and whatnot are fine and dandy on a glowing screen, but despite working on computers since 8 years old, my brain demands non-glowing, ink-on-pulp copies for deep thought. Surely I'm not the only one?

<comment><USER10> No, you're not. I spent the past week helping someone with statistics. As she clicked back-and-forth between her e-book and online homework, I flipped back- and-forth through her hardcopy book, refreshing my memory and guiding her through her homework.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The publishers will just make sure to produce a different textbook between different regions now. Just re-order the chapters a little and re-order some questions/assignments. So even if someone ships in the foreign book it will be as useless as a previous edition.

In general the whole textbook industry makes me sick. But fact is that lecturers are entirely responsible for it. The publishers can only do what the lecturers let them do, and either through apathy or greed the lecturers have shirked their responsibility to their students.

<comment><USER12> The worst offenders are the professors who write their own textbooks (even though there are dozens of better ones already available) and then use them in their courses, making money off each student. Maybe there should be conflict of interest rules in universities.

The heroes in this game are the instructors who are creating open-source textbooks.

<comment><USER13> I had a professor who was a co-author on the textbook that we used in his class. It was the "standard" work in the field, so it would have been ridiculous to use a different one. Nonetheless, he acknowledged the potential conflict, gave us an accounting of his earnings per copy (well under a dollar per), and bought food for the class out of his own pocket. Good solution, I thought.

<comment><USER14> I'm upvoting your comment _for_ your professor. Please serve as proxy and go deliver the upvote to him. He sounds like "good people".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The case involves textbooks, but it's not really _about_ textbooks. Instead it's about what "made lawfully under this title" means in the context of first-sale of physical items.

Under one interpretation, if you buy a book outside the US, your ability to resell it in the US without permission depends on whether or not the book was made in the United States.

Under the other interpretation, "lawfully made under this title" means more that the making of the item itself was within the legal construct of copyright. That is, not pirated or counterfeit.

This second interpretation is what the majority opinion espouses, and the dissenting opinion aligns with the first.

This may be unsatisfactory for people concerned with software or e-book licenses, but Omega v. Costco might have come out differently if this had been decided beforehand. In that case, Omega sued Costco for reselling watches because they registered a copyright* for a logo on the back of the watch. Omega claimed that Costco had no first-sale protection from copyright since the watches were not made in the US. The 9th circuit agreed, SCOTUS split 4-4 (Kagan self-recused) and the 9th circuit stood.

The majority opinion implies that it's perfectly fine to fly to a foreign country, purchase legitimately sold watches, toasters, electric kettles, and books and bring them home for sale. (Subject to applicable duties, etc.)

Yes, manufacturers will probably not just throw their hands up and give up on price discrimination. I have no idea what they will do. But the profits from Country X still might trump any loss of profit/image due to importation and resale in the US.

Scrambling chapters in textbooks might work, but then they lose some efficiency and flexibility, for example: the option of liquidating inventory to a low-margin market when a new edition comes out in the US at a higher profit margin.

* Generally brand logos are trademarked, but they can sometimes also be copyrighted. It's a little muddy, and arguments exist whether or not, say, Mickey Mouse could become/remain a trademark after the copyright protection expires.

EDIT: To clarify what I meant by "I have no idea what they will do": I am not entirely without ideas of approaches companies could take; the suggestions in other reply threads here are definitely candidates. I just don't think I can predict the specific action[s]. Maybe 'all of the above' for some, maybe the status quo for others.

<comment><USER16> > _"I have no idea what they will do."_

Stall. Send out some FUD. Maybe lobby for higher duties (as compared to tariff rates).

But most of the goods that have sufficiently large price discrepancies are going to a digital manifestation anyway.

So region-coding, DRM and the DMCA will (continue to) be the order of the day.

<comment><USER17> > _Maybe lobby for higher duties (as compared to tariff rates)._

Not sure I see the distinction. According to the WTO, "customs duties on merchandise imports are called tariffs."

<comment><USER16> I think the point would be to codify a distinction and change (increase) rates on customs duties accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> SCOTUSblog analysis: [http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/03/opinion-analysis- justices-...](http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/03/opinion-analysis-justices- reject-publishers-claims-in-gray-market-copyright-case/)

<comment><USER19> Grouping useful stuff together:

The opinion itself: <http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-697_d1o2.pdf>

The dissent is perhaps most interesting.

<comment><USER20> I just love circular reasoning like Ginsberg's. "We should decide this case in Wiley's favor because it's the official policy of the United States to support similar provisions in international agreements." Then, when it's time to negotiate the next ACTA framework or WIPO treaty, we'll fall back to, "Hey, US law works this way, and look how successful it's been for us. Wouldn't the rest of you benighted nations like to enjoy the fruits of our maximalist copyright regime as well?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Honestly I don't know how i feel about this. As a recent grad i know full well how high prices are for text books, i would do everything possible to prevent having to buy them.

I personally thing the requirement to always have a new textbook(that years version) is more ridiculous then the prices they charge. I don't know where that requirement stems from, but in my opinion it is the real problem.

But with that said I don't see this ruling lowering prices, if anything it will increase the prices in the other regions where the prices were previously lower.

There is no kind of magic bullet with these kinds of things, companies are not going to just lower profit margins, they will always try to make it up somewhere.

<comment><USER22> Publishers are merely exploiting the highly school-like nature of university education in the US. When I was in university, over in Europe, a long time ago, on the first day of lectures the professors would wheel in a cart of textbooks, saying these are suitable texts, go and pick the one that suits you best.

But in the US, _students demand_ that their education is like high school, with a set text and all, and if the exercises in "Physics for Biologists", 9th edition are on a different page from "Physics for Biologists", 8th edition they complain. This is the root cause of the continuous revisions to undergraduate texts.

<comment><USER23> > students demand

What? I've never heard this particular demand (and I just graduated from a US college). Sure, students might complain about having the wrong edition - <USER2> only when lecturers assign work by page number, so that it becomes impossible to do it with the wrong edition. Do you have any evidence that this is the students' fault?

<comment><USER24> Effectively, it was an era before your generation.

This is largely speculation, but it's the conclusion I've drawn from my experience in community college (my university experience was more specialized and used effectively no textbooks):

Students very often saw themselves as customers to a university, and the consumerist mindset of always being right was unfortunately brought along with this. If they got something wrong, they didn't accept blame for that: they'd push it off onto the TA or onto the professor. One easy vector for that was to blame it on the particular variation of book they had used, so professors started moving towards simply mandating a single golden text and teaching directly out of it.

I got the sense that a huge part of it was because the faculty had gotten together and agreed on this solution as the simplest one; it was particularly palpable in cases where the professor was dismissive of and disgusted by the mandated textbook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This will push textbooks more heavily toward digital distribution, where the content will be "licensed" to an individual user, without resale rights.

While I applaud digital distribution, the lack of consumer rights comparable to the first sale and fair use doctrines is a large and growing problem.

<comment><USER26> The only saving grace of digital distribution of textbooks is that it (often) allows easier pirating. The availability of inexpensive used textbooks is less crucial if free PDFs are available.

<comment><USER27> The publishers are already pushing bundled grading systems with their textbook. You get the textbook and also a login key so you can submit homework and quizzes online. I don't know how widespread it is yet, but I suspect many service courses at state schools will adopt it soon.

<comment><USER28> It's getting more and more popular for intro level courses. It's an easy way to shift more of the cost of running the course off of the university (or the state) and onto the students because you need fewer TAs/grading assistants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm not sure why so few people link to the real content.

Oral Argument recordings:

[http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_de...](http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_detail.aspx?argument=11-697)

Opinions:

<http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-697_d1o2.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER30> It is hard to overestimate the importance of this decision.

Had it gone the other way it would have been an utter disaster and contrary to every common sense

Still it concerns me that 3 judges sided with the publisher. In such a landmark decision even 6 to 3 seems to close a margin for comfort.

<comment><USER31> The supreme court does not "side with" any particular party (ideally); they "side with" a specific interpretation of the law.

If you read both the court's opinion and the dissenting opinion, you'll see that the dissenting opinion is strictly based on interpretation. The supreme court not only attempts to interpret how to apply the law, but determine what congress' intent was when enacting the law.

<comment><USER32> Actually, at least 2 justices specifically do _not_ determine congress's intent, because they do not believe it matters.

If you look, you'll see they often specifically refuse to join in footnotes/etc that cite congressional intent or history.

<comment><USER33> It's possible they're still trying to determine congress's intent in a sense, they just give a more objective meaning to 'intent': i.e. what a reasonable person reading the statute would think that congress meant by the words they used. (As opposed to what they actually, subjectively meant, per extrinsic evidence like statements made in congress).

That's the way intent is read in contract law: it's judged objectively (from the position of a reasonable person in the position of the parties at the time of contracting), subjective intentions don't matter. _[Edit: while true of English contract law, this is apparently not accurate for US contract law: see DannyBee's reply]_

(I'm only guessing - I'm an English law student, so not familiar with US supreme court justices, so could be completely wrong on what they're doing. _[Edit: yup, I was.]_ )

<comment><USER32> Speaking as a lawyer familiar with both english and US law:

English contract law is a bit different than US. In the US, it's not objective in general (contracts are held against the drafter, and subjective intent matters).

Your description of objective intent is well, not intent in this case :) Objective intent of congress would be what a reasonable person _making_ the statute would have meant, not what a reasonable person _reading_ the statute would think it meant.

The second is in fact, what is done, but is not related to intent at all, it's related to interpretation.

As for congress's intent, Scalia is of the firm view that either objective intent, or subjective intent does not matter. The words mean what they say, and say what they mean, and if they don't, that's a problem for the legislature. In cases of ambiguity, he believes in plain meaning, not objective intent. So he'll use a dictionary, not try to figure out what congress objectively meant.

He's fairly unwavering in the above, though if you look through hundreds of opinions, you can generally find one or two that are not consistent with this.

[http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/salvatori/publications/RARSc...](http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/salvatori/publications/RARScalia.asp) and [http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=...](http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3109&context=dlj) are fairly good descriptions of his approach

<comment><USER33> Interesting. I'm surprised that US contract law would differ from English in such a fundamental way. Thanks for the explanations, on that and on Scalia's approach.

<comment><USER32> Contracts(well, consumer sales, anyway) in the US is done by Uniform Commercial Code. Basically, model legislation that was adopted by all states.

It is, in part, an explicit repudiation of English common law.

(Note that I generalized. There are areas where subjective intent does not matter, and areas where it does, but it's nowhere near as objective as English law)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm glad, obviously. You should be able to do whatever you want with something after you purchase it.

But it just makes me sad this had to get to the _Supreme Court._

<comment><USER35> Honest question: What if the good was only sold to you with a particular assumption? For example, if a phone company sells me a smartphone with the agreement that I do not unlock the phone, should I still be able to do whatever I want with the phone (unlock it) after it is in my possession?

<comment><USER36> > What if the good was only sold to you with a particular assumption?

Then you specify that assumption and the penalties for breaking it in a contract, which both parties sign. That's why I find the phone unlocking thing so baffling--you're already under contract, why do the carriers care if you unlock your phone so long as you don't violate the terms of the contract?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It is great that students will be able to get cheap text books. But, are we not concerned that the court seems to be throwing out a law passed by Congress in an area where the Constitution grants them explicit power to act merely because they think the law is a bad idea?

Title 17 of the U. S. Code Section 602(a)(1) "Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringe- ment of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106, actionable under sec tion 501."

<comment><USER33> Having briefly skimmed the Opinion[1] (IANYAL), the heart of it was an exercise of close statutory interpretation to try and figure out exactly how s. 602 interacts with s. 109, with the majority concluding that as s. 602 refers explicitly to the s. 106 exclusive distribution right, it's subject to the same limitations as s. 106 is, including s. 109's First Sale limitation. (So s. 602 then just has the effect that the act importing an unauthorised copy into the US is an infringement of copyright). _[Edit: My mistake - <USER3> finding was actually unanimous. The 3 dissents were only dissenting on the interpretation of "lawfully made under this title" in s. 109]_

That's clearly not the only possible reading - 3 of the justices came to a different conclusion. But the idea that a court giving giving a reasonable interpretation of a mildly ambiguous statute is "throwing out a law... merely because they think the law is a bad idea", just because another interpretation is _possible_ , is nonsense.

[1] <http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-697_d1o2.pdf>

<comment><USER37> Thanks for that explanation. I hadn't had time to read the whole opinion. Perhaps my statement came off too harsh. I am nothing close to a lawyer, but I found the "parade of horribles" to be a little troubling. Shouldn't the Congress be the one evaluating the consequences on the law? I guess the counterargument is that those things are so horrible that we can assume that isn't what Congress meant.

When reading Supreme Court opinions, I am often blown away by the well reasoned, logical arguments, that support findings I disagree with. You can disagree, but you can't say they don't have some facts and logic to stand on.

If you've never read an actual Supreme Court opinion, I would highly encourage you to do do. The linked article here is just awful. It doesn't even provide the case name. The opinions are surprising easy to read, and flow pretty well. The language isn't difficult, and they can be surprising humorous. If you can make it through a C++ book, then you'll have no problem understanding the basics.

<comment><USER38> What always strikes me when reading Court opinions is, first, that there are well reasoned, logical arguments that support _both sides_ ; and second, that in almost every case where I've seen a marked difference in the quality of the arguments (this case is _not_ one of them, btw--both sides' arguments seem to me to be well reasoned and logical, it basically comes down to a judgment call about interpretation and what Congress intended), the argument I've found to be stronger has been the _dissenting_ one. In other words, it seems to me that, when push comes to shove, the Justices aren't as good at arguing for what the Court actually did, as they are at arguing for why the Court should have done something else.

<comment><USER37> I've noticed that as well. I think it is because whoever is writing the majority opinion has to temper the opinion to make it agreeable to a majority of the justices. Authors of minority opinions have no such restriction and can swing with full force.

<comment><USER38> That's a good point; in fact, it's even stronger in a way, because the majority opinion is the "official" one that becomes effectively law, so it not only has to be agreeable to a majority of the justices, it has to be agreeable enough to become part of the law of the land indefinitely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's interesting that the Omega watch case had a 4-4 tie in the SC while this decision was 6-3. Does this mean that Costco can start importing cheap watches again?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_S.A._v._Costco_Wholesale...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_S.A._v._Costco_Wholesale_Corp.#Supreme_Court_case)

<comment><USER40> Costco won in district court on remand. The theory was that even if it was infringing copyright, using copyright to block physical goods was an abuse of copyright.

So Costco still won in the end.

Omega was appealing the decision last I heard.

Cr_ppy Omega watches are overpriced anyway.

<comment><USER28> Seems like this precedent should make Omega's appeal that much harder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Am I the only one that disagrees with the decision? Correct me if I'm wrong:

So imagine you're a publisher and you sell a math book in the USA for $60 and in a 3rd world country for $20 so that more people can afford it and you can establish a presence there.

Is it fair for people from that 3rd world country to sell the book back to the USA and for you to miss out on your profit?

I know most of us here love having the freedom to do whatever we want but we need to look at the RESULT of the decision, not the EMOTIONAL return of the decision. Sure it makes us feel good to know we can sell what we want to where-ever and whom-ever we want. But what if the result of that action is a bad thing?

I think it's quick sales like this that will push more publishers to:

1) Move towards digital only distribution with heavy DRM.

2) Increase prices in the USA to make up for the loss in profit.

3) Increase prices in other countries to discourage the overseas exporting.

4) Retract themselves entirely from smaller markets.

Am I missing something, or not seeing the benefit? Seriously critique my thoughts, I want to see both sides to this.

<comment><USER42> "Am I the only one that disagrees with the decision? ... we need to look at the RESULT of the decision"

That is not the job of the Supreme Court. They are supposed to decide based on what the law says, regardless of the result. If you disagree with the _law_ , then write to Congress.

But it's fair to ask whether this will produce better or worse results. It's a good observation that this will cause publishers to shift out of poorer markets and increase the use of DRM[1].

The previous situation was not perfect though, either. To interpret that statute geographically would be a major restriction on trade; and if not, would create a lot of ambiguity. Nobody wants to purchase something from another country if they are worried that the manufacturer will come in later and take it away because it had some copyrighted design (which could be anything) on it somewhere.

I believe the results will be better overall (by a lot) under the new interpretation of the law. Clarity and simplicity about where you stand as the owner of property is incredibly important.

One way to think about it is that nothing has changed. The publisher can still create a contract with the buyer that says they won't resell it in another region. It's just that the "default" purchase contract does not give the publisher that right. And we should make defaults match expectations as closely as possible, otherwise people are entering into contracts they don't understand. The notion of purchasing a product has many expectations that go with it that have been developed over millennia. To allow the publishers to inject extra terms that contradict those expectations just to fit their particular business model is ridiculous.

[1] Though DRM wouldn't be nearly as bad if there were no DMCA and if the sellers were forced to call it "licensing" rather than "buying". Again, the default purchasing contract should match the expectations of both parties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> If you listen to the oral arguments [http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_de...](http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_audio_detail.aspx?argument=11-697) , I get the feeling the resale of cars weighed a bit on decision:

"A geographical interpretation would prevent the resale of, say, a car, without the permission of the holder of each copyright on each piece of copyrighted automobile software. Yet there is no reason to believe that foreign auto manufacturers regularly obtain this kind of permis sion from their software component suppliers, and Wiley did not indicate to the contrary when asked. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 29–30. Without that permission a foreign car owner could not sell his or her used car."

</comment><comment><USER44> I'm not a huge international policy wonk, but I don't get how these suits (this one and Omega vs. Costco) reconcile with the rules of the WTO (of which the US and Thailand are charter members).

Doesn't the National Treatment Policy state that imported goods shouldn't be treated differently than locally-produced ones? And doesn't restricting the first-sale doctrine on imported good break that very rule?

I'd love for someone to explain how this relates to international law that we're supposed to be following. I'm always curious abou this stuff, and I can't find anything good in my Google searches.

(I realize that the WTO is rather toothless, but still.)

</comment><comment><USER45> This is good news. Publishers charge US students much more than students in other (even high-income) countries. At least they shouldn't be able to legally prevent people from buying international edition books. The publishers often change the questions in those books, but there are ways to deal with this.

The old-textbook publishing market will probably decline in the near future as people move to digital and interactive options. This will be a big improvement, but the publishers will once again have control. There will be many free options available though.

</comment><comment><USER46> Why can't they apply similar interpretation to legalize re-importation of drugs? The arguments there are similar ( "drugs are expensive in US to subsidize foreign markets").

This is also another blow to the academic publishing racket. In response, they might stop publishing cheap international editions. I hope the availability of high quality open source textbooks and material from MOOCs will cause the developing world to adopt them instead. However, there is a chance that pirated copies - either digital or facsimile copies of US editions - <USER4> flood the asian markets. This already happens today but at a small scale.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is fantastic news. Had the court ruled differently, the first sale doctrine would have been in doubt, which could have destroyed ebay, craigslist, garage sales and nearly anything that involves reselling a good.

</comment><comment><USER48> Excellent for the native textbook industries of these countries.

<comment><USER49> But not necessarily for the students in those countries. Presumably low-cost and market-recognized quality are factors that have kept American textbooks in distribution in foreign markets (and domestic producers out of those markets). In their absence, one might think that prices will rise, quality will fall, or both; at least in the short run.

If these countries are relatively free of government collusion with established (or establishing) producers, then ultimately competitive pressures could rectify that as market demand gets satisfied; but in the short run prices up, quality down.

<comment><USER50> Alternatively, it's possible the American publishers wer effectively "dumping" their textbooks to prevent international publishers from ever being able to establish themselves.

<comment><USER49> Always a possibility. Though that wouldn't change the short term effect on students, since the "dumping" did have the effect of lower prices for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Roberts and Sotomayor on one side, Scalia and Ginsburg on the other. Not really a right/left split.

If you had to draw some line, you might notice that the dissenters, Ginsburg (80), Scalia (77), and Kennedy (76), are the oldest on the bench.

I wouldn't read too much into that, just thought it was interesting. We probably already make too much of the "right/left" line in the court, since cases like this--where people don't cleanly line up according to political ideology--are fairly common.

</comment><comment><USER52> I feel glad and sad in the same time. Glad because first sale doctrine survived, and sad because it could very well not. The whole matter that first sale doctrine disappears as soon as you cross borders sounds ridiculous - <USER5> practice of manufacturing goods cheaply at one place and sell them in another is an extremely common practice, and there's absolutely zero reason for books to be except from it.

</comment><comment><USER53> In the bookstore of my local community college, I saw the required intro calculus text selling for around $140. That is wrong in so many ways.

And it's instructive to contrast textbook prices with the very reasonable student discounts on software. Software labels are trying to create customers for life, while book publishers are price gouging while they can.

</comment><comment><USER54> Small victories are victories none the less.

The fact that this had to come up as a question to begin with demonstrates a critical flaw in our system. A Flaw with IP law, and with the ability of high dollar interests to influence our government.</comment>


Buying an Amiga 30 years later - <AUTHOR> https://www.vintagewave.net/blog/2018/11/30/buying-a-commodore-amiga-30-years-later <comment><USER3> For anyone too young to understand the fascination, the Amiga was far ahead of its time but suffered a premature death due to the gross mismanagement of the Comodore corporation.

In the early 90s, non-linear digital editing for film and TV (as well as graphics, and titles) was limited to specialized machines that cost, literally, millions of dollars in 90s money. With an add-on product called the Video Toaster, these functions could be done on an Amiga — for a price affordable to many public access broadcasters.

Lightwave3D which began as part of the video toaster brought 3d graphics to a ton of people — again, at a time when an SGI and something like wavefront would run around $40k. Lightwave was used to great effect for shows like Star Trek TNG, Babylon 5, etc. Even ILM used it for some shots theatrical releases, if I recall correctly.

Then there was the huge demo scene and gaming cohort which pushed the Amiga to do things that seemed like they shouldn't have been possible.

An awesome time for personal computing.

<comment><USER4> Just a minor clarification - the Video Toaster was a switcher, a broadcast quality paint box, and could facilitate regular linear editing but did not have non-linear capabilities. It wasn't until much later, nearly at the point at which the Amiga had ceased to exist and become at best a peripheral of the video toaster rather than the other way around, did the video toaster gain NLE capabilities in the form of another product the Video Toaster Flyer. Source: video toaster serial number 000009 lived in my personal A2000.

<comment><USER5> It's a minor piece of trivia but one of the key engineers involved with the Video Toaster was Brad Carvey, the brother of Dana Carvey of SNL fame. Apparently Brad Carvey was also the inspiration for the Garth character in the Wayne's World movie.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I reluctantly moved to Windows/PC very late (probably 1997 or 1998) long after Commodore was done for. The scene was clearly losing many people but there were still a few magazines in circulation and I was amazed every time I went in Germany to see much more life on the Amiga scene.

Nothing was ever the same after - the community of creators that had formed and thrived on the Amiga was unique, and while people moved on they did not find a proper alternative to reunite on.

It's always good to see such articles about the Amiga, but it's a bittersweet feeling.

<comment><USER7> When I first got a windows 3 machine at work (early 90's) it took about year to stop trying to drag down from the top of the screen to show the high res display.

And I also used to be unofficial UK third line amiga support for PRESTEL and telecom gold - if they had some weirdness the normal help desk couldn't replicate

<comment><USER8> I didn't get to try an Amiga growing up. What do you mean when saying "drag down from the top of the screen to show the high res display"?

<comment><USER9> Amiga could support multiple "desktops" with different resolutions at the same time. You could (partially or fully) expose a different desktop by dragging the titlebar at the top of the screen.

Here is a demo: [https://youtu.be/H86miOXXS48?t=534](https://youtu.be/H86miOXXS48?t=534)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, it's actually a hack that is well explained in the book "The Future was Here". It's not real desktops since it only works on the vertical axis. But even though, it was massively impressive compared to what other computers could do at the time.

<comment><USER10> It was a hack because it depended on the refresh cycle of old CRT displays. The electron gun scanned across each horizontal line from top to bottom. The video chip could use interrupts to switch resolution in the middle of the vertical refresh cycle. The same trick wouldn't work with a modern LCD display.

<comment> white-flame The native output resolution is the max vertical resolution of all currently displayed modes.

For instance, if you have an interlaced mode showing under a non-interlaced mode, then the entire screen displays at ~480i (to use modern terms) with the non-interlaced portion doubling its scanlines. But if the interlaced screen gets covered up, then it snaps to ~240p non-scandoubled.

The biggest modern problem with this is that displays turn themselves off to resync on mode changes, which always annoyed me greatly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Always good to see people re-discovering the Amiga. It truly is a wonderful machine.

My (current) collection: [http://www.jaruzel.com/amiga/collection](http://www.jaruzel.com/amiga/collection)

Not shown is the shelves and shelves of spare parts, expansion cards, cases, keyboards and broken A500s/A1200s I also have.

Collecting them becomes addictive quite quickly!

<comment><USER12> Nice collection! Genuine question. What do you do with all these Amigas? Do you use them for anything productive, are any of them your "daily driver"? Or do you just fire them up from time to time for nostalgic reasons, or something else?

<comment><USER11> I just muck about with them when I feel like doing something different to my main 'PC' based computing. Right now, I'm trying to resurrect an old SCSI hard disk controller for the Amiga 500 using newer SCSI disks (which should be backwards compatible) but it's just not playing ball. :/

<comment><USER13> I'm also into retrocomputing, although my collection is more focused around the 8-bit machines of the UK and Europe (Oric-1/Atmos, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, etc.)

I was just wondering if you'd heard of the RaSCSI device, and/or one of its clones?

[https://github.com/fran-cap/RASCSI-68kmlaver](https://github.com/fran- cap/RASCSI-68kmlaver)

Also, SCSI2SD?

[http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php/SCSI2SD](http://www.codesrc.com/mediawiki/index.php/SCSI2SD)

As I have a number of other items in my collection, studio-gear, with SCSI this is my next foray into keeping the machines alive: replacing SCSI with something modern/servicable...

<comment><USER11> I was hoping to keep the full retro experience complete with whirring disks and head clicking, but if I can't get these old controllers to talk to newer drives, then yeah, I may have to go down the SCSI-SDCard route. :(

I'm also trying NOT to expand into Commodore 64/128 as well, as I'm rapidly running out of room... but I never owned a C128 back in the day, and I REALLY want one!

<comment><USER13> Yeah, I understand the authentic vibe, but there's something to be said about having every bit of software, ever written for the machine, on a single solid- state SD card. ;)

Re: C128 - I know the feeling .. a pal of mine in the retro-computing group at a local hackrrspace recently set up his C128 for some great assembly hacking (he's building a new game engine for it in assembly) and it has totally inspired me to take another look at it as a machine.

Retro-Computing really has such rewards!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Originally I was an A500 user in my teens. I started recently to buy various models in bad shape (1000, 2000, 500, 500+, 1200...) to fix and restore them, I still don't really understand completely why but I enjoy that a lot. My next project will be to build a "new" amiga 1200: new cases have been produced, new keyboards are coming soon and I just bought an unpopulated newly produced motherboard. So overall, this is very little nostalgia but more an excuse to learn new skills like troubleshooting hardware and SMD soldering.

<comment><USER15> I'd like to do something similar but with a Mister FPGA as the computer, although I'm not sure it'd fit in the repro A1200 cases

<comment><USER14> That is cool. Terrible fire is doing that IIRC: they have an end to end emulation running now based on their previous foga based accelerator. You are planning to use that as a base to redo everything from scratch?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've recently gone on this journey myself, having had an A500 as a teen, and now own an A1200 with 500MB HDD and 8MB memory. I've also recently purchased a 68030 accelerator with 68882 FPU, 128MB of RAM, real-time clock, and the 4GB CF card storage upgrade that I still need to fit.

Just wish I still had all my floppies from the old days. Managed to find a few and was surprised to find they're still working flawlessly.

<comment><USER17> I may have a box of amiga floppies in the garage, maybe an a500 as well. Wonder if populace is still in that mix.

are you looking for software for amiga or just your old floppies with saved data?

Had no idea people were still using them, after so many c64s were unusable with bad power supplies, I assumes no more would ever be made.

Now I'm glad I kept some of the amiga stuff and sad to think I gave away a box of c64 floppies.

Have a few xeroxed manuals for word processors and such from the commodore days I found while organizing garage stuff. To think that full blown word processors worked with such little memory so long ago.. and now we have huge code bases to save text these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Being the only PC dude among a group of friends with Amigas, always made me kind of jealous of them.

Although I got to code on them during our bring your computer, get together kind of afternoons.

Sadly my parents were actually right sponsoring my migration from a Timex 2068 to an 386SX instead of an Amiga 500.

<comment><USER19> My god, a Timex 2068, have't heard that in a long time. Had one and it was great.

<comment><USER18> Portugal had a Timex factory during the 80's, so we got to buy them bundled with the 48K emulation cartridge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As someone who cut my teeth on an A500, I have quite the soft spot for all things Amiga. I came across a wonderful documentary of the Amiga saga on Youtube:

Amiga Story by Nostalgia Nerd

Part 1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws3DJF7MbMU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws3DJF7MbMU)

Part 2: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcXcy2b1dRM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcXcy2b1dRM)

</comment><comment><USER21> I didn't grow up on the Amiga; I cut my teeth on the TRS-80 Color Computer line (2 & 3). My first brush with an Amiga (outside of a demo at a Babbages in the mall) was thru a guy I knew in high school who had one for video editing. He showed me (and others in our group - I had helped form a "Color Computer Users Group" and we met at this guy's house) a graphics demo - <USER2> completely blew me away. This was probably sometime in 1989 or so.

After high school, and a year in a tech voc school (where I also got to use Amigas, because at the time industrial electronics used the 68k for controllers, so we had to learn how to code and interface to them - so we used an Amiga as the platform for that), I started my first software engineering gig, and at some point I convinced my employer (a small mom-n-pop shop) to lend me the money to buy an Amiga. I ended up getting an Amiga 2000 with a monitor and hard drive.

I stayed on at that place long enough for them to give me two more loans (which got completely paid back); first for an Amiga 1200, then last for an Acer 486 PC (fell in love with Myst at Best Buy).

I still have both Amigas, the monitor (1040s), software, tons of Fred Fish floppies...lol. I don't know if any of it still works; I haven't fired any of it up in decades. I got out of the Amiga around 1992 or so, and moved on to Windows. I honestly wished I had discovered Linux at the time, but it wasn't on my radar (I had some experience with Unix, specifically AIX and RS6000 hardware - at that first employer). I didn't discover Linux until 1995. Which I found to be a close experience to what I recall on the Amiga (it's more a feeling thing for me - definitely nothing like the graphics, sound, software, etc - but the discovery and freedom, that wasn't as there with Windows).

Today, about the only thing I do with Amiga is occasionally purchase the latest version of Amiga Forever - at some point I want to build a dedicated emulation box running it.

</comment><comment><USER22> AMOS on the Amiga was largely what got me into games programming. Loved my Amiga so much.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have my original A600 (1993) and C64 (1986) — great hardware that captured the imagination of a young kid. I still have fond memories, fooling around and coding games (my parents were too cheap to buy me more than a few retail games)

</comment><comment><USER24> Rabbit-hole: Vampire FPGA accelerator

<comment><USER25> Amiga innovation still excites us 2018. I can't wait!

<comment><USER24> Not sure what you are referring to, but Vampire boards are (or were) for sale already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I still have my original A1200 and it still works. I have adapted an ATX PC PSU to power it - it needs an extra bit of power available to keep the 68040 expansion card+RAM, the VGA adapter card, and the internal IDE drive going.

Haven't powered it up for about 4ish years. The floppy drive seems dead last time I tried it - and it was an upgrade High Density PC-style drive with its own special card to drive it, and I can't remember the name of the card/drive it was that long ago I did all this. :)

</comment><comment><USER27> I remember being at a computer show in the late 80s/early 90s as a teen. The kind of place that you went to see new tech showed off by major brands (IBM, Intel, and MS were there), but also to get good deals from vendors on components instead of ordering through magazines.

Anyway, I'm waiting in line to price out a motherboard, when this big guy walks up and buys 5 or so of the most expensive ones. People were pretty surprised and someone asked what he was building. He said they were going to be burning them later that day, something about "Amiga makes it, Intel makes it stupid." Made me think there was something seriously wrong with the people who used Amigas.

That was probably my first experience with the toxic fanboy mentality. I realized much later how much that had turned me off from any kind of user community. It makes me a little sad/jealous when I read about people having such fond memories of those times and communities, because I never tried to join in.

<comment><USER28> Must have been a false flag operation by an Atari ST user, Amiga users would never do that! Damn Atari ST users, always trying to make Amiga users look bad.

I was probably too young to notice any of the "community stuff". Through scrolltexts or readme files I had an idea that there were people communicating and swapping, but for us kids, all that was needed to "join the community" was to have an Amiga, and/or games and demos. We might play mostly on the Amiga, but we weren't looking down on other systems, if it was fun, we were down. E.g. my friend's dad had a Spectrum CPC, so we tried all games we could manage to run on that, too (it didn't matter if they had "worse graphics" if they were fun and different from the games we already knew), and I played a lot of Empire Deluxe on the PC of another friend.

I did have an "Intel Outside" Workbench background image for a while though :D

<comment><USER27> Haha

The fact that my dad worked for IBM and was able to procure my first computer from an office closure pretty much guaranteed my platform of "choice" anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I have recently bought an A1200 as well, but one thing that surprised me was the unbearable-ness of the refresh rate (50/60Hz ?) of the original monitor. I eventually had to buy a signal converter to connect the machine to some better display unit.

I cannot imagine how I could have spent day-long gaming sessions in front of that display.

<comment><USER30> Isn't the 1200 supposed to drive a VGA monitor?

<comment><USER26> I have a small card which fits over one of the chips of my A1200 and provides a VGA signal. Can't remember the name of the card offhand - haven't powered the A1200 up for about 3-4 years since the last time.

<comment><USER11> Probably an 'Indivison AGA' (Or 'OCS' if you have a 2000/500). Fits over the Lisa chip, and grabs the video output and scan doubles it to work with a standard VGA type monitor either via VGA or DVI. Can support resolutions up to 1280x1024.

<comment><USER26> That rings a bell, indeed. Especially the phrase "scan doubler".

Thanks!

It's been so long since I really concentrated on the A1200/Amiga stuff in general, I've forgotten most of it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I would love to find a modern USB joystick in the form factor of that Competition Pro. Alas, these days, the only joysticks anyone seems to make are giant hulking flightsticks.

</comment><comment><USER32> I used to have an Amiga 500 with a RAM upgrade and HD (3 megs RAM, 30 meg HD. This was amazing for 1989!) I then later upgraded to a 3000 sometime in 1991. I foolishly sold the 3000 in college, and my parents gave away the 500.

I also taught myself C programming on the Amiga. I got Lattice C, before it became SAS, for Christmas one year! This was back when software came on dozens of floppy disks and had huge spiral bound manuals.

I love retro stuff. I wish I kept all of it.

<comment><USER33> I had no idea you could expand the RAM up to 3 Megs!

I remember I had to save for months to be able to buy the meager 512KB "brick":

[https://goo.gl/images/jUzQVD](https://goo.gl/images/jUzQVD)

It allowed me to play The Secret of Monkey Island, so it was totally worth it :)

<comment><USER32> Neat. I had that internal 512K expansion, and also a "Supra" brand SCSI controller and RAM expansion that attached to the left side. It gave me another 2 megs.

It looked something like this: [https://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id...](https://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=1245)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Was the Amiga a British phenomenon or was it Stateside too?

<comment><USER18> It was the machine to go for 16 bit demoscene and graphics programming in Portugal.

Atari ST were hardly seen, PC were mostly for school and work related tasks, with the Apple devices beyond reach to everyone not at the university shared labs campus.

<comment><USER30> PC's, until the 8086mph demo, were considered unfit for the demoscene, as CGA graphics were utter crap when compared to humbler 8-bit machines. They were also clunky and expensive.

<comment><USER35> Audio as well. I think it was '89 that SoundBlaster came out with sampled audio for PC's. It wasn't anything close to what the Amigas could do though. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY9p1oiE1_Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY9p1oiE1_Y)

<comment><USER18> Adlib came out first.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_Lib,_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_Lib,_Inc).

Then Yamaha, Roland, SoundBlaster, ... and nowadays most people don't care what their audio chip looks like, unless they are doing professional audio.

<comment><USER35> Yes we had FM/wavetable synthesis, etc., I was more meaning sampling/trackers used in MODs which really made Amigas stand out.

<comment><USER18> Ah ok.

Endless hours spent with Protracker. :)

I remeber a guy at school getting a MS-DOS driver that would drive the speaker in such a way that we could hear midi/mod files instead of the typical lousy beeps.

Still, it required lots of teenage imagination to think it sound anything worthwhile listening to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Heh I donated my old A1200, all the games, and Philips monitor to the The National Museum of Computing in Bletchley Park, UK. Sort of wish I still had it, Monkey Island was in such good condition it was nearly BNIB condition.

At the same time my dad donated his pristine Apple ][ in it's original box no less!

<comment><USER35> > Sort of wish I still had it, Monkey Island was in such good condition it was > nearly BNIB condition.

You can still play those games with an emulator, like FS-UAE. All of the games (and apps) are around if you search. I've been having lots of fun lately lol.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> While the Amiga was a very good 2d graphics machine, it really sucked hard in 3d. While the world was preparing for 3d, Commodore brought us ...CD32.

If the Amiga had a good 3d polygon rasterizer chip in the beginning of the 90s, it may have been alive today.

</comment><comment><USER38> The sight of the Competition Pro triggered some instant nostalgia. There were lots of cheap knockoffs around when I had an Amiga, but the original was _much_ more reliable.

</comment><comment><USER19> I remember playing R-Type and it was a blast at that time. The Amiga was really a beast compared to my spectrum and timex machines.

<comment><USER39> I remember having nightmares from that 'intestines' level. Probably should not have played it that young :-)</comment></comment>


New Horizons Becomes Closest Spacecraft to Approach Pluto - <AUTHOR> http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/news_center/news/20111202.php

<comment><USER2> I'm glad I'm not the only one who still calls it a planet :)

> … until its closest approach – about 7,767 miles (12,500 kilometers) from > the planet – on July 14, 2015

> But by the time New Horizons sails through the Pluto system in mid-2015, the > planet and its moons will be so close that the spacecraft's cameras will > spot features as small as a football field.

<comment><USER3> The new 'dwarf planet' designation was a stroke of genius. It's not a planet but it ends in 'planet' so everyone is happy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A thought struck me that I find amazing. New Horizon's is traveling over 2.6x the distance from the Earth to the Moon in a day. Average distance is 384403km. NH is moving faster than 1 million km per day.

It took the Apollo crafts about 3 days and 4 hours to reach the Moon (specifically 3 days, 3 hours, 49 minutes).

Even at New Horizon's speed, it takes _10 years_ to reach Pluto.

Damn, space is big.

<comment><USER5> In elementary school, I charted out the average distance of each planet (yeah, in those days I called Pluto a planet) from the sun on common scale on an adding machine tape. Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars were all very close to the beginning end of the tape. The outer planets were far, far away, and the tape wrapped around several walls of my elementary school classroom. Yep, space is big.

And all the distances within the solar system are beggared by the distances between distinct stars in our galaxy, not to mention the distances among different galaxies. Arthur C. Clarke wrote an essay about these facts, titled "We'll Never Conquer Space."

[http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke#We.27ll_Never_...](http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke#We.27ll_Never_Conquer_Space_.281960.29)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious as to how much of the planet (I know, I know it's been demoted) the craft will be able to "see". That is given the distance from the sun will it be draped in darkness, barely visible?

I had a comic as a kid that had these really freaky cold aliens that lived on Pluto in very dim light conditions. That's my only reference point.

<comment><USER7> Astronomers drove digital imaging sensitivity, so I reckon they've got it worked out. Skimming <http://arxiv.org/pdf/0709.4281v1> , it looks like Ralph, the main visible-light camera, can distinguish between true blackness and a mere 3k photons per pixel, and at the margin can detect objects of magnitude 14. Coincidentally, that's about the magnitude of Pluto from earth, and you can't see it even with a small backyard telescope. So this instrument is less like a consumer camera and more like, say, night-vision goggles.

This paragraph originally did the math for Pluto's brightness wrong (thanks to atakan_gurkan below for pointing that out), so instead let me refer you to a short but interesting Metafilter thread on exactly this question: <http://ask.metafilter.com/23197/Darkness-at-the-edge-of-town> .

One more factor – Pluto's albedo is quite high. It reflects 0.5 to 0.66 of the light falling on it, as opposed to e.g. 0.14 for the moon (which is fairly dark in the scheme of things, but not at all hard to photograph; you can easily overexpose it in a grainless photo with a recent consumer DSLR).

So: dim, yes, but still clearly visible.

<comment><USER8> Brightness drops off inversely proportional to the square of the distance, not square root.

Still, I think there will be plenty to see. I am quite excited about this actually.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some great startups that started out "in stealth"? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Depending on what you mean by it, every one.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you mean a company like OnLive that was in stealth mode for many years?

</comment><comment><USER4> Facebook might count, depending on what you mean by stealth.

</comment><comment><USER5> Blekko - [http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/04/stealth-search-engine- blekk...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/04/stealth-search-engine-blekko- raises-another-2-5-million/)</comment>


That time when Skype almost used XMPP - <AUTHOR>

  From: "Janus" <email@example.com>
  To: firstname.lastname@example.com
  Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 11:15:17 +0100
  Subject: PSI

  Hi,

  My name is Janus Friis. I'm one of the founders of KaZaA and now a
  company called Skyper (www.skyper.net). We're looking into IM solutions
  for an upcoming product so I thought of PSI. Can we talk?

  Janus
 <comment><USER2> It's seems like the recipe for success these days is to take an established, interoperable standard, and do something completely different. SIP, IRC and XMPP is not good enough for Skype, WhatsApp, etc. The Apple iDisk supported WebDAV, and was a failure, while DropBox has become a household name.

<comment><USER3> Considering that iDisk didn't had any integration with any OS other than Apple's OSX, I really wonder why didn't had the Dropbox success...

<comment><USER2> But it did by virtue of the protocols it supported. You could connect over AFP from a Mac and WebDAV from everything else. It didn't require a client, which Dropbox does. It also pre-dated Mac OS X.</comment></comment></comment>


New Dropbox homepage  - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropbox.com/

<comment><USER2> Looks the same to me...

<comment><USER3> Looks like they didn't previously have the 'sign up' form: [http://web.archive.org/web/20121209045623/https://www.dropbo...](http://web.archive.org/web/20121209045623/https://www.dropbox.com/)</comment></comment>


Evidence that ancient Japan was more cosmopolitan than previously thought (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/10/05/national/history/research-uncovers-evidence-ancient-japan-cosmopolitan-previously-thought/#.WKvgqRjMzv0 <comment><USER2> The article describes evidence that an educated member of the Persian elite was employed at an academy that trained officials of the Japanese imperial government. It's not at all clear how the researcher in the article makes the leap from this limited evidence for elite-to-elite contact to the conclusion that "...this suggests Nara was a cosmopolitan city where foreigners were treated equally." Consider the conclusions that would be drawn from the modern-day scenario of a modern-day Persian employed at a government training facility in, say, Pyongyang...

<comment><USER3> > It's not at all clear how the researcher in the article makes the leap

Maybe because this article is a summary for popular consumption and presents conclusions instead of every step that leads to them?

<comment><USER4> This is likely to sound a bit reactionary, but hopefully it will help some people. In my estimation, the Japan Times exists to perpetuate a certain stereotype of Japan to the west. I suspect that it's not so much that the editorial staff holds these views personally, rather that it is lucrative to pander to pre-existing feelings toward Japan. Remember that this is primarily an English language newspaper. Japanese people generally do not read it.

If you use the Japan Times as your primary source of information about Japan, I suspect that you will come away with the impression that Japan is a xenophobic, corrupt, authoritarian, misogynist country that is on the verge of financial collapse. While there is some truth behind these things, the Japan Times has a way of presenting the information such that if you already hold this view, confirmation bias will very satisfyingly kick in.

Why do I mention this WRT to this article (apart from the fact that it is published in the Japan Times)? Because, as far as I know, nobody ever doubted that Japan in the Nara time frame had foreigners living in Japan. Just look at the Wikipedia page for the Nara period. Anyone who has ever been to Nara will have seen the evidence for themselves. Nara was not just open to foreign cultures, it was aggressively adopting them (especially Chinese culture). The fact that there was a Persian living in Japan at the time is interesting, but hardly mind blowing.

So why on earth would you publish this article? To provide a contrast for readers -- Wow, Japan wasn't always xenophobic! I wonder when it started? Perhaps I'm jaded, but that's what I see here. The original question is a good one, because it tries to probe the intent of the original research, rather than to accept the presentation of the editing staff at face value.

<comment><USER3> Your comment assumes that the Japan Times coverage is exceptional but I didn't find the Yomiuri Shimbun's very different and the ideas you object to and want to attribute to the Japan Times slant seem to be consistent with direct quotes from the researcher.

> nobody ever doubted that Japan in the Nara time frame had foreigners living > in Japan

Actual claim is: "this is the first time a person as far away as Persia was known to have worked in Japan" Seem like an important difference.

> Just look at the Wikipedia page for the Nara period... Anyone who has ever > been to Nara

I'm guessing Akihiro Watanabe of the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties has both been to Nara and is as familiar with the place as the average reader of the English wiki article. He apparently holds these views you ridicule as nothing so much as Japan Times editorializing.

> The fact that there was a Persian living in Japan at the time is > interesting, but hardly mind blowing.

The idea that the article claims it's "mind blowing" seems like a straw man.

> So why on earth would you publish this article?

Probably because the Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties had a press release and it seemed like an interesting item. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

<comment><USER4> First, the Yomiuri Shimbun's coverage _is_ the Japan Times's coverage. Look at the by line -- "Japan Times/ANN".

And, I'm sure it's an important discovery. I'm not so sure it is being reported well. That's my point.

<comment><USER3> I'm talking about actual Japanese coverage[1] which includes stuff like "古代の日本が予想よりも国際色豊かだった可能性" ('It appears Ancient Japan was more international than expected') not strikingly that different from the Japan Times headline.

[1] [https://www.google.com/search?q=%E6%B8%A1%E8%BE%BA+%E6%99%83...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%E6%B8%A1%E8%BE%BA+%E6%99%83%E5%AE%8F&safe=active&biw=1278&bih=958&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A10%2F4%2F2016%2Ccd_max%3A10%2F20%2F2016&tbm=#safe=active&tbs=cdr:1%2Ccd_min:10%2F4%2F2016%2Ccd_max:10%2F20%2F2016&q=%22%E6%B8%A1%E8%BE%BA+%E6%99%83%E5%AE%8F%22)

<comment><USER4> My google results do no match yours. Mainichi has a story and does not include that quote (or any other). Nikkei as well. There is a Youtube video of the story which describes it, but includes no quotes. It mentions that there is an exhibition where you can go and see the artefacts.

I could not find the story in the Japanese version of the Yomiuri newspaper from google, but I found another site that linked to it. When I followed the link, it was dead.

The focus of the articles I've read seems to be that this is the oldest written evidence of Persians coming to Japan, which I agree is very interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Prior to Europe's Age of Discovery, much of the world was actually quite well- connected. Just look at Ibn Battuta's travels ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Battuta)) -- when in Yuan Dynasty China, he stayed in a city's Muslim quarter with Egyptian immigrants!

<comment><USER6> World traveler in the 1300's. Incredible.

<comment><USER7> The Ancients were not that primitive. There is the _Periplus Maris Erythraei_ , a manual for traders that describes the ports of the Indian Ocean, from Zanzibar to Sri Lanka. These are the ports that were _regularly_ visited by merchantmen on trading voyages. More adventurous characters might want to cut out the middleman and sail further to China, whose existence is mentioned in the same text.

700 years prior Pharao Necho II outfitted an expedition to sail around the African continent, for no other reason than research.

[http://www.livius.org/sources/content/herodotus/herodotus- on...](http://www.livius.org/sources/content/herodotus/herodotus-on-the-first- circumnavigation-of-africa/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know if I would call the Heian period "ancient".

<comment><USER9> The article isn't about the Heian period (794–1185) but Nara period (710–794). (Or at least it is implied.) The Nara period was the first historical period in the history of Japan. (Historical defined as: written history surviving from that period exists) In that sense, it makes sense to me to call it "ancient".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is why i like HN. often it isnt the OPs but how reading posted articles means accessing news sources i wouldnt normally see. From the OP about ancient japan i found this amusing story about modern japanese language and cultural perspective.

[http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/02/17/national/japans-...](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/02/17/national/japans- interpreters-struggle-to-make-sense-of-trump-speeches/#.WKy4l_yIY0M)

<comment><USER11> A Japanese people saying "He rarely speaks logically, and he only emphasizes one side of things as if it were the absolute truth." feels very ironical to me. Having lived there I discovered that logic is not a core value and more often than not one have to do something the way it is supposed to be done, period. Given that's the second paragraph first sentence, I would take the whole article with a grain of salt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Evidence that prejudiced white western beliefs about orient turned out to be wrong ? Who is surprised fellas.

This might sound like a racist rant but it is not. I routinely come across American Indologists routinely publishing papers about India which are way off than what an Indian might be able to see as trivial truth. I will not be surprised of Western world has made similar mistakes about the Orient.

I think western academia needs a more unbiased fact-check about their understanding of the rest of the world especially in the times of xenophobia.</comment>


Why Switzerland? (2007) - <AUTHOR> https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/pourquoi_la_suisse/ <comment><USER2> I don't know all the pros and cons of living in Switzerland - but its flag is a big plus...

<comment><USER3> It's also a red flag, so I'm not so sure...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _half the population lives in the greater Zürich area._

Probably 4 million people would disagree with this assemssment.

Switzerland has a population of ca. 8.5M, of which (roughly) 6 Million are in the German speaking region. The greater Zurich area consists of ca. 1.3 Million inhabitants.

A Basler, or a person from Berne may feel a bit offended, despite the fact that a lot of people from other parts of the country commute to Zurich to work.

Edit to add: THose are today's numbers. But the relations are not very different from 2007.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can we stop with the Switzerland IT hype?

Switching jobs take months before even getting interviews, bunch of useless people in all layers of hierarchy only good to believe the jumbo marketing crap from consultancy 100 times worse than Accenture.

And don't get me started on xenophobia or the place of woman in society.

<comment><USER6> _And don 't get me started on xenophobia or the place of woman in society._

Exactly. Moving to Switzerland is only a reasonable option if you (and your family) are white.

<comment><USER7> Switzerland is definitely not perfect in this respect but I see a lot of evidence that it's a good option even if you are not a white mail, which I am (for context). First, my wife is an Iranian Born French citizen and she is now VP of Technology at a 500 person energy company. She wouldn't leave Switzerland for anything. Also, I work with many Indian colleagues who are very happy to be here.

I'm not saying their lives are perfect and they don't suffer from racism and prejudice but on the whole Switzerland is a very much a net positive for them.

<comment><USER8> > _[…] even if you are not a white mail, which I am (for context)_

You are… what?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The difference to the rest of Europe became even bigger over the last 12 years.

I am a self employed tech recruiter here in Zurich and I can say that more and more people want to come here.

Taxes are low, salaries high and things costs less than one thinks. I run [https://coderfit.com](https://coderfit.com) and connect programmers with jobs in Zurich for a living. (I programmed for money before, so I know the market from many sites.) If, you want to move here find my email in my HN handle.

</comment><comment><USER10> He's living my dream. I feel trapped here in the US.

<comment><USER11> Make a move! or get on with the program. Whining about it online won't get you there. I swapped side of the world at 21 and never looked back.

<comment><USER12> It's really hard _to_ move, especially without a degree. Your residency is tied to your job and you often need something lined up before you go. Even if you have a degree and can obtain residency showing up and expecting employment isn't realistic.

For context I have no degree and I almost made it with a German company. Someone accused me of being racist and I was fired within the hour. Killed any idea that Europeans are actually more accepting or tolerant.</comment></comment></comment>


Numenta releases brain-derived learning algorithm package NuPIC - <AUTHOR> http://numenta.org/news/2013/06/03/introducing-nupic.html <comment><USER3> Five years ago, I used the previous closed-source version of NuPIC for my MSc thesis to build an evolutionary simulation of a predator/prey relationship to evolve camouflage patterns. The NuPIC network was the "predator", trying to categorise "prey" patterns against background images. I only scratched the surface of what it could do, but it worked incredibly well.

It looks like this new version is a completely different implementation [1] but, in my experience, the idea is sound and the approach is very promising.

I'd love to revisit the project at some point. The fact that this is now open source makes that much more appealing.

[1] [http://numenta.org/faq.html#whats_the_difference_between_thi...](http://numenta.org/faq.html#whats_the_difference_between_this_and_your_old_offering)

</comment><comment><USER4> Has Numenta done any of the empirical evaluations that are standard in the mainstream applied machine learning communities? For example, if they're doing image classification, one of the standard shared tasks from the field of vision research. When you ask what research supports Numenta's approach, they always point to the Hawkins book. It's a nice story, but there's quite a history of nice stories in AI that haven't always been ready from prime time.

<comment><USER5> Good point. There are so many benchmarks that can be performed. POMDP (Partial Observable Markov Decision Processes) literature has a lot of benchmarks (bandits, etc.). Reinforcement literature has many. There are many standard problems in nonlinear control theory solved, not only the inverted pendulum. It is common knowledge that an algorithm that performs well on task A, will be outperformed on task B. What are the tasks B in Hawkins book? In what do these specific type of recurrent networks excel, and in what do they sink as a brick?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They have some pretty fancy acronyms ("Cortical Learning Algorithm (CLA), but also the Online Prediction Framework (OPF)"), but is this just an n-th generation autoencoder? "Encoders turn raw values into sparse distributed representations (SDRs)."

I feel like they're making up their own terminology in a bubble instead of integrating with the rest of mainline research?

<comment><USER7> It's valid to say that CLA is somewhat separate from mainline research, and some of the terms are a product of that. The specific ones you refer to arn't misnomers however.

CLA - Closest 'mainline' term would be a recurrent neural network, but the neurons and network organization are _very_ different.

OPF - This is more of a runtime environment or a set of tools to work with.

Encoders - These are actually a step below what you think of as an autoencoder. They translate many data types into useable inputs for the network. Then the spatial pooler takes over and tries to find efficient representations.

While it's possible to describe Numenta's work with existing frameworks, and unifying nomenclature is always useful, I hope you'll take the time to learn the system so that we can apply the correct shared terminology!

Full Disclosure: I used to work for Numenta.

<comment><USER6> Are there any concise (non-book-length) tutorials or online courses about the Hawkins Way?

<comment><USER8> The most recent HTM paper is here:

<https://www.groksolutions.com/technology.html#cla-whitepaper>

There were some earlier ones that used to be on the Numenta website (before the name-change), but I don't see those posted now.

With the exception of being able to handle on-line learning, I have a slight preference for their previous, more abstract approach. Their current approach seems to model the details of the neural connections at a lower level than what seems necessary to me. This is not, by the way, any kind of valid scientific opinion, just the views of a widely-read amateur.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I hope somebody makes an ImageNet classifier or does some other standard machine learning benchmark so we can directly compare the performance of NuPIC to the state-of-the-art in machine learning.

</comment><comment><USER10> Quick link to Jeff Hawkins book _On Intelligence_ which describes the theory:

<http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-ebook/dp/B003J4VE5Y/>

<comment><USER11> I bought this as an audiobook on iTunes for a car trip or something, back in ~2006. It made a huge impact because its theories are so simple and easy to understand that, if you are even a novice programmer, you can probably imagine how you'd go about implementing such a brain. Especially if you find the original white papers and read them too, as they practically include the source code if I recall (I've got them printed and bound on a shelf somewhere).

While I was in grad school, I spent several weekends tinkering with my own implementation of a very simple HTM to process shapes in Go (the game). It never did much in the way of playing Go, and I stopped messing with it after something else more practical got in the way, but I'd love to dust off that code and now seems like a great time to get back into it.

The narration on the audiobook is very high quality, and, for me at least, the ideas were quite accessible through audio. I highly recommend it if you're the type of person who might purchase such a book in paper and never get around to reading it (but you have time to kill in the car).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm just going to throw this out there in the hope that someone enlightens me.

Ever since I first read the book "On Intelligence" I thought Jeff Hawkings was on the right track with Strong AI. The insights I got from reading the book I thought were invaluable. I don't know how close they are to Strong AI or if they are closer then anybody else but I would expect that if they were making any real head way into the field that Google would already have made an offer to buy them.

At least that is what I would do if I wanted to be the first to control the technology. The fact that nobody seems interested in acquiring them sends the signal that they probably are no better than anybody else building AI tools.

<comment><USER13> I've read "On Intelligence" too and I think Jeff Hawkings is onto something. However your argument:

>>"The fact that nobody seems interested in acquiring them sends the signal that they probably are no better than anybody else building AI tools"

Seriously? The bar to being successful is an acquisition offer from Google? I'd understand if money was the driving factor. But Jeff Hawkings has already made a bunch of that from his previous ventures and to me at least, it seems that he's genuinely passionate about building something extraordinary. So, I'm still rooting for Numeta.

In the SV bubble the measure of success may be getting "acquired", but I hope Numeta is more about actually creating some groundbreaking advancements in AI & not just getting acquired.

<comment><USER12> >>Seriously? The bar to being successful is an acquisition offer from Google? I'd understand if money was the driving factor. But Jeff Hawkings has already made a bunch of that from his previous ventures and to me at least, it seems that he's genuinely passionate about building something extraordinary. So, I'm still rooting for Numeta.<<

The thing is, Since On Intelligence came out I haven't really seen any real products from them. Sure, they created some tools that they expect other developers to build projects on top of them but that is it. Honestly, with all his talks claiming how his algorithms are much better than the current state of the art I would expect really good image recognition, speech recognition or something like IBM's Watson to come out of their labs. But everything I've seen from them seems average. Not that much better than the state of the art.

If they had anything groundbreaking and I were google, I'd want to acquire that technology to further the goal of Strong AI. Google is interested in producing AI and will acquire anybody that can help it with that goal. Google is not interested in Numenta's technology, and I'm sure they've checked their technology, which makes me think that Numenta doesn't really have much to offer.

Whether Jeff is interested in selling or not is irrelevant.

<comment><USER14> Google hired recently Ray Kurzweil as director of engineering. Ray's recent book - "How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed" - <USER2> influenced heavily by the ideas from the first generation of Numenta's technology (via Dileep George). So, you could say that Google is following Numenta to some degree. Jeff Hawkins is always careful about setting expecetations and tries avoid as much hype as possible. The progress was indeed slower than what some people imagined it to be, but it is a very hard problem . Now, Numenta has Grok and its technology will be tested in the field. It also released NuPIC as open source, which will let anyone interested to dive in, run benchmarks, etc.

<comment><USER13> In all honestly though, the Google founders were Ray Kurzweil fans before he wrote the "How to create a mind" (which is book that's a whole another discussion altogether). I would be really surprised if there weren't already some interest and some back and forth between Numeta and others in the AI field. It's really about goals, and if goals align then "acquisitions" might make sense. But it is far from a marker of success. There are plenty of acu- hires to prove that.

<comment><USER15> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y43qwS8fl4> \- Jeff Hawkins recent talk at Google with Kurzweil in the audience asking questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It'd be nice if they had some small useful examples.

Context: I'm not familiar with ML though I've been reading some papers recently (I'd like to learn ML; I wanted to have some ML baddies in a game and let them play each other, etc).

I imagine the ML component being a black box with inputs and outputs, but it's probably more complicated than that. The FAQ says "The algorithm lends itself well to high-speed temporal data" which makes me think of high frequency trading or touch-screen input smoothing or something like that, but I don't see examples for those kind of things in their github tree (but maybe I'm just so unfamiliar with ML that I don't know the names of the concepts?).

<comment><USER17> I think Dileep George's thesis offers some clues as to the relation between Hawkin's Hierarchical-temporal ideas and other ML constructions: [http://www.dileepgeorge.com/tiki/tiki- download_file.php?file...](http://www.dileepgeorge.com/tiki/tiki- download_file.php?fileId=28)

I recall George was the technical lead at Numenta and has since left.

Hawkins' model centers on having an overall model of the brain based on prediction. I remember watching a Hawkins video where he makes the reasonable point that neuroscience has failed to create overarching visions and it seems plausible that such a vision (or several competing vision) could be useful. But I also think that prediction in-and-of itself probably isn't sufficient.

FWIW, When I earlier scanned their website, Numenta was trying to sell its software for big bucks and not giving any detailed documentation for their algorithm. Now they seem to be giving everything away for free. That might be an indication that this is the end of the road. But it's hard to know, of course.

<comment><USER18> >>I recall George was the technical lead at Numenta and has since left.

George Dileep left Numenta and co-founded Vicarious Systems[1].

[1] <http://vicarious.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As a former cognitive neuroscientist, claiming that a region as large as the neocortex has a single underlying principle that explains it all sets off my oversimplification alarm bells...

I'm sure the code is great for machine learning purposes, but I doubt his theory has much bearing on how brains work. The brain is one of the most heterogenous and complex structures in the solar system.

<comment><USER17> Care to go into greater detail?

The thing is, the hypothesis that there is a more-or-less basic neocortical algorithm wouldn't be disproved by modest amounts of variation in the neocortex.

And position that the neocortex is rather uniform is fairly standard neurophysiology as far as I can tell.

[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/01/02/1221398110.abst...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/01/02/1221398110.abstract)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> what is the difference between Numenta and Grok Solutions?

Per the wiki, the latter is the successor of former, but now it seems the may have resurrected the old brand.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grok_(company)>

<comment><USER7> Correct. The Numenta name is now associated with the open source project and NuPIC, whereas Grok is the commercial company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I couldn't find a paper describing the science behind this (did they publish any?). Is there anything new here? Or is it just an iterative engineering improvement on existing science?

<comment><USER22> He wrote the book On Intelligence. Probably one of the most illuminating books that exists.

<comment><USER6> Care to elaborate or point out some well written reviews?

<comment><USER23> I've read it and fwiw it contains some great information, but only at the lowest levels of cognition. Its fascinating, but his conclusions are not compelling because they're drawn from selective facts that have already been tainted by opinions.

It reads like he's gone the long way around to learn the same things ML already knows while resisting anything that ML doesn't already know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm a third year computer science student from Maseno unversity, I'm really interested in learning about AI and unfortunately we'll only be learning more about machine learning and so on next academic year. We've done a basic unit called Intelligent Systems. So my question is, what next from there? Can someone please recommend what I should read to advance my rather basic knowledge?

<comment><USER25> Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning by Christopher M. Bishop

Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective (Adaptive Computation and Machine Learning series) by Kevin Murphy

<comment><USER24> Thanks!! I'll check then out. Do they start basic enough though?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> For anyone who is interested in this, Jeff Hawkins gave a fantastic key note speech at last year's StrangeLoop conference entitled "Computing Like The Brain" which goes into some detail about the theory behind this.

<http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Brain-Computing>

</comment><comment><USER27> In case you got interested in machine learning and neural networks, I've found this course by Geoffrey Hinton refreshing and helpful: <https://www.coursera.org/course/neuralnets>

</comment><comment><USER28> Looks interesting. Anyone have any idea how this research/product fits into the larger landscape of ML theory?

They don't seem to reference much outside work as far as my cursory check revealed.

<comment><USER29> According to the author's book, there was almost no preceding work in this area; the one groundbreaking paper was largely ignored.

1\. "On Intelligence", Jeff Hawkins, 2004

2\. "An Organizing Principle for Cerebral Function", Vernon Mountcastle, 1978

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Glad to see this bubbling to the top. I've been following its development for almost a decade. It will be nice to finally have some code to reverse engineer.

</comment><comment><USER31> serious question - is there a reason why computer models of thought and 'weak AI' focus on biologically-inspired models instead of generalizing to higher- level cognitive phenomena? It seems like this is quite a bit like trying to model the hydrodynamics of a river flowing by going down to the quantum mechanical properties of water and dirt.

<comment><USER29> This has been tried without success. You may have heard about the AI winter, or the failure of the symbolic approach, in the 1980s.

Check out "On Intelligence". It talks about their reasons for following biological constraints, in opposition to your point of view, common among computer scientists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Has any of this been peer reviewed?

<comment><USER30> The book has been out for almost a decade. I've read other published papers over the last decade. They've shown remarkable result from what I've read. I'm not a peer exactly but it seems that they are on to SOMETHING. That being said, they've changed direction a bit since doing nupic. Grok takes a different approach to solving the same problem(ie generalizing the structures of the neocortex and using it to make predictions about incoming data).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> only works with Python 2.6 and not 2.7??

<comment><USER34> Oh, then it can't be real AI.</comment></comment>


Airbnb referral program lost them my business - <AUTHOR>

I signed up and booked a trip on airbnb recently.  The process was pleasant and I sent invites to my family and told them about it.
My parents, who are on the road, decided to try it out.  They sent pics of their place and said they had a great experience.  Great!  Now I get 25 bucks and they learned about a new service, right? Nope.
I waited a week or so and contacted customer service.  Must've been some kind of oversight.  The rep was prompt and requested the email of the referral I made.  I thought it was odd since my account clearly shows they signed up, it just didn't register that I should get a credit... but I obliged and sent the email.  The rep then told me he would have to contact them to ensure that I did in fact invite them... ummm ok?  Why?
Here's my response:

  "That's silly.  But go for it.

  They are in my referral group... It shows in the UI.
  And they have made reservations.

  Not a great experience."
 Then I get this bit of snark along with some questionable information:

  "Matt,

  I do apologize that this has been such a painstaking
  experience, however it looks like the issue is due to their
  initial reservation not being at the qualifying limit. Once
  they begin a trip that is worth more than $200, (before
  Airbnb fees) you will both receive your referral credits.

  Oliver C"
 According to their docs, 75$ is the qualified price... not 200$ https://www.airbnb.com/referrals/terms_and_conditions?offer_name=default
Honestly, I don't even care about the credit... It's great to save a few bucks but at this point I am more inclined to just move on...
I wanted to share because I figured there may be some lessons for others when dealing with customers.  In addition their marketing for referrals is really shady when it comes to being upfront with the restrictions (10o dollars bonus... if they rent their place AND rent someone else's AND it's over an amount).
Anyone else has a negative experience with these guys? <comment><USER2> > Then I get this bit of snark along with some questionable information

What snark? They apologised and answered the question ($200 Vs. $75 point not withstanding).

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm only saying this because I don't want to read about conspiracy theories when this story gets flagkilled.

Nothing personal, and I am not a fan of AirBNB, but I don't care.

</comment><comment><USER4> Also says $75 here [https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/84](https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/84)

</comment><comment><USER5> Ignoring (without downplaying) the referral limit mistake, I don't actually detect any "snark" in the response from the CSR.

<comment><AUTHOR> The longer conversation might have shown... the overstatement of "Painstaking process" was either poor wording or sarcasm.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is the 5th email back and forth... and I wasn't really complaining initially... so the comment "I do apologize that this has been such a painstaking experience" was really taken with a high dose of sarcastic intent. In noway was it painstaking... it was just bad user experience.

I fully admit that I may have been overly sensitive... in email it is tough to read people. But generally, the discussion to this point did not warrant that comment.

</comment><comment><USER6> Did you reply with the link?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did. And about 3 hours later I get an email (automated) saying I got the credit. Not email from the service rep...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bad job Airbnb.

</comment><comment><USER8> AirBnB is rife with technical glitches, oversights, poor product design, and inconsistent numbers. (Ie fees not matching when you look at the mobile app vs the text they sent you vs the website.) It's pretty embarrassing for an established company of their size, funding and cash flow, and I think speaks to the nontechnical nature of their team. Would switch in a heartbeat but hey, they're the market, for now.</comment>


AngelScript: Statically Typed and Embeddable Scripting Language - <AUTHOR> http://www.angelcode.com/angelscript/ <comment><USER2> No even sample "Hello World"?!

<comment><AUTHOR> Here it is: [http://angelscript.pbworks.com/w/page/100523356/Hello%20Worl...](http://angelscript.pbworks.com/w/page/100523356/Hello%20World%20example)

      void main()
      {
       cout << "Hello World!\n";
      }</comment></comment>


Show HN: ChristmasVillage – Live stream controlable village and train - <AUTHOR> http://christmasvillage.io <comment><USER2> There is a 12 second delay in the video stream.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup that's due to Youtube uploading/transcoding. I put a note below the controls but that may not have been the most visible. It's definitely something I'd like to improve on in the future but would require my own direct streaming. Maybe something is possible via webRTC though.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would love any feedback you may have.

Happy holidays!</comment>