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ColinWright

136,194karma·18,658submissions·December 14, 2009
about
If you want to contact me, find me on the web. I am especially interested in math, juggling, programming, and education, and since there are other people with my name you'll probably need to include at least one of those terms in any search.

I was once a prolific contributor and commenter, but no more. I go through bouts of submitting stuff, but then go and disappear for lengths of time. If there is something you'd like me to see or comment on, you can email me. Don't ask me to upvote things. If it is interesting (to me) then I will.

Submissions do not imply endorsement.

My spam filtering is pretty severe, but I've put the word "Dysprosium" on the allow-list - quote that and your email will get through.

I used to have an email here but it got harvested by spammers - I'm looking at you, mbientlab.com - so it has been removed. This is a temporary one:

HN_a7dab8S4@solipsys.co.uk

Email sent there and quoting the element name will pass my spam filters. After that we can use "proper" email addresses.

recent activity (18,658 total)
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ObXKCD: http://xkcd.com/191/ For reference, I became reasonably fluent at reading and writing lojban. I think it's fantastic, but in the end there were few people to communicate with, no decent rea…
15y ago·view thread
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You got 5 comments and six upvotes when you posted it two weeks ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2588415 One of the comments was "I'm too old for this - might suit a 6 year old though." But …
15y ago·view thread
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Until recently you had no activity for several months. Karma average only counts recent(ish) activity, and is only calculated sporadically. Probably it just hasn't caught up with your return to actio…
15y ago·view thread
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Dup from 19 hours ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2628328 Many comments there already.
15y ago·view thread
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Dup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2628498
15y ago·view thread
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Thank you - useful. Perhaps they really didn't need to use that specific trick on that specific occasion. It might be interesting for someone to comb through and find out if they used it lots of tim…
15y ago·view thread
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That doesn't make sense to me at all. Sure, pick a larger part, pay more money, and don't squeeze your code. It's a decision to be made, but don't label the decision for a smaller part as "wrong" un…
15y ago·view thread
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Nice to see that having search still doesn't prevent people from submitting the same stories over and over again: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2560148 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=256…
15y ago·view thread
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It appears that the story is first mentioned in a letter by Ed Post of Tektronix to the editor of Datamation. A transcript can be found here: http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~elf/hack/realmen.html Every o…
15y ago·view thread
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> They had enough spare bytes to not have to pull > that trick. It'd have been better to clean up some > algorithms somewhere or reuse some code. I assume from your clear and u…
15y ago·view thread
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If I recall correctly the opcode for the jump absolute was C3, and the conditional versions we C2, CA, etc. The destination was two bytes, 16 bits, little endian. The JR - jump relative uncondition…
15y ago·view thread
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You're missing the point. Such "tricks" were essential to fit the required code into the necessary space. The same thing still happens (although rarely) when fitting required functionality into limit…
15y ago·view thread
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I know I've seen this before, several times. I even know I used SearchYC to find it in the past. So I turned to the new search box to find it, and I'm having no luck at all. Can anyone suggest searc…
15y ago·view thread
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People won't use it. Decent search has been available via SearchYC for years, and no one seemed to use it to prevent duplicate and/or similar submissions. Further, if you submit via the bookmarklet …
15y ago·view thread
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SearchYC allowed results to be sorted by date of submission, allowed searches by username and points, and other aspects that Google simply doesn't understand and can't provide.
15y ago·view thread
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Again? Really? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61434 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=163630 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=234790 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=257328 http:…
15y ago·view thread
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Perhaps that all means that you can pay in BitCoin, provided you assign a fair and reasonable exchange rate with the USD at the time?
15y ago·view thread