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ColinWright
136,193karma·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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I keep saying - it's actually irrelevant. We need to stop burning oil and coal because there are other uses for them for which we have no reasonable alternatives. We need to start harvesting other en…
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<fx: sigh> For some things, C++ is better than C. For some things Lisp is better than either, and for yet other things, Python is better than them all. Why are people so insistent on declarin…
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Clickables: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=644956 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=973060 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1527010 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1545774 http:…
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If I see an article and I think it's mis-tagged, what can I do about it?
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You need to say it before people type in something that's against the rules, and then passwords, only to be thrown back again and have to do it all over.
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Why are usernames not allowed uppercase?
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This was completely unclear to me from your site, although having re-visited it's less unclear. It's certainly unclear what tags exist, how you deal with synonyms, how I edit my tags, whether I can c…
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>> ... to gain users to your project > Actually, no. Well, to my naive way of thinking, there's your first problem. You've done the usual thing of creating a site, and then wondering why n…
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My concern is that while I program in C, Python, ARM assembler, AWK, Bash and more, I'm not really drawn to articles specifically tagged with those things. I'm drawn to things that transcend any part…
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Or it was simply a typo.
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Same story from wired: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2543662
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You mean like this: http://hackerfollow.com/ Or this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1941631 …
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Where's the math?
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Find an existing open source project and fix some bugs. That will give you experience in larger projects, communication, reading documentation, understanding frameworks, using source control, debuggi…
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It's no longer possible to indicate assent by upvoting an existing comment - an undesirable side-effect of hiding karma on comments. As a result, I have to comment: Would anyone be interested i…
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Indeed - so why don't people do what I did here, and put in the comment including the link?
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Clickable: http://ireadhn.videowatchr.com Why do people not create the link?
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Then I guess I don't really understand your point. You said: One of my least favorite words is “impossible”:
it simply has no real value and just goes against
everything I believe in,
…
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Cool. It's impossible using an unmarked straight-edge and pair of compasses to trisect a general angle. It's impossible using an unmarked straight-edge and pair of compasses to compute the cube root o…