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:
“Mathematician Laurence Sigler had made it his mission to translate [Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci], rushing to complete the task right before he died of lymphocytic leukemia in 1997. But his editor moved on, and the manuscript languished on floppy disks for years. For a while Sigler’s widow Judith Sigler Fell, fearing the project would be killed, took the extraordinary step of impersonating her husband in communiqués.
By the time Fell found a new publisher, Springer Verlag (now part of the same publisher as Nature), floppy disks had been superseded and she had to hire a hacker to extract the files. Fell then discovered that Springer only accepted submissions in TEX format, the technical standard for physics and mathematics texts. She learned it and spent six months retyping the text. Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci was finally published in 2002 — the 800th anniversary of the book’s first appearance.”
Representatives from Springer Nature declined to comment, beyond saying that “detailed information about specific retractions is usually confidential and can only be shared with the relevant authors.”
So the only person with whom Springer can discuss why the papers have been withdrawn is ... Plank.
No idea. Sometime when it's not being hammered you can ask them ... it's not my instance.
And I don't know what my instance is running on ... I have a tech co-mod who deals with it. We have two rather grunty servers running the the cloud, that's all I know.
If you're genuinely interested, email me and I'll find out for you. Details in my profile.
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Added in edit ...
From their "about" page:
Hello World! Welcome to mastodon@bauhaus, our small niche in the fediverse.
This server originated @maschinenraum, a small hackspace in Weimar. It is currently administrated and moderated by a small team via @admin.
We run our own server in a local data centre just down the road, so there's no cloud here – however, that also means if it breaks, it breaks. And it will happen every now and then, and there are backups, and it's mostly fine, but don't expect 100% uptime – 99% will have to do.
We're part of the Chaos family surrounding the Chaos Computer Club, so you can meet us at events like the C3 and get to know your admins!
And just like that—surprise!—one AI company bails out another AI company's grift. Google agreeing to rent compute from xAI (cough, "SpaceX") magically makes them eligible for inclusion in the S&P500.
Americans, they are looting your life savings, the ones you earned through labour that they are gleefully replacing. Your descendants will never have the chance you had.
I drew a graph of connections between Paul Graham essays, and coloured them via a PageRank-style weighting algorithm. I emailed it to PG, and he suggested I post it here.
Is it too much to ask that when giving a book review, a link to the actual book title, and possibly a listing on a website, should be prominently given?
Lawyer A began chatting with the firm's AI on 20th March 2026 following receipt of my query of that date.
What is remarkable when reading those chats is, first, that one would think that the text attributed to the AI was produced by an intelligent human being.
The second remarkable thing is that, on a large number of occasions, it is plainly wrong or, at the very least, extremely misleading.
I agree entirely that seeing and experiencing are different, but seeing it is more than being blissfully unaware, and can be enough to provide motivation.
And I've worked with many youngsters who have significant amounts of empathy. They feel the pain almost as if it's their own.
>> definitely matters as to how old they are, and how much they've done.
> No, it doesn't. Either the tool is good/useful or it isn't.
So if a developer with decades of experience in writing software would receive exactly the same feedback from you as a 16-year-old writing their first project?
If not, if you would tailor your feedback, then it does matter how old they are.
I know 16-year-olds, and 15-year-olds, and 14-year-olds, who absolutely know what goes on in a job hunt because they are observant, socially aware, and have watched relatives sending literally hundreds of resumes and get nothing back.
And those kids ... inexperienced, no mortgage, no creditors, no "real world" responsibilities ... absolutely see it.
When someone builds something using the tools at hand and the experience they have, it definitely matters as to how old they are, and how much they've done. That shapes how you give feedback, both in style and content.
I know a lot of bright, intelligent, keen, motivated kids, and in every way I encourage them to go and build things that they think are relevant and important, even if I don't agree. The experience will shape them and make them better.
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:
[email protected]
Email sent there and quoting the element name will pass my spam filters. After that we can use "proper" email addresses.