Disqus - Latest Comments for NathanCollins

Re: SeaSpecs - Tested

Nathan — Thu, 09 Mar 2023 05:29:55 -0000

Thanks, this sounds like a sincere review and is helpful. I'm in Indonesia with insane UV and thinking I should try surf glasses ...

Re: Haskell: The Bad Parts, part 1

Nathan — Sun, 01 Nov 2020 00:01:23 -0000

I don't think you fully explained why sum and product are bad. You said that foldr is lazy and +/* are strict in their second arg, but didy explain the problem with this combination. Is the problem that this leads to O(n) stack usage, due to strict evaluation of the recursive call to foldr in the second arg to +/*?

Re: http://blog.duolingo.com/post/20471393575

Nathan — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 02:18:41 -0000

This should be an option. I would turn it on now, but would have wanted it off initially when I did not know how to type accents.

Re: Unity greeter updated with support to disable the "ready sound" (Ubuntu 12.04)

Nathan — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 04:27:45 -0000

Disable the ready sound by renaming the audio file: `sudo mv /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/desktop-login{,-disabled}.ogg`. From http://askubuntu.com/questi...

Re: Unity greeter updated with support to disable the "ready sound" (Ubuntu 12.04)

Nathan — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 04:26:31 -0000

How do you change the setting as the lightdm user? Using `gksudo -u lightdm dconf-editor` does not work for me.

Re: Unity greeter updated with support to disable the "ready sound" (Ubuntu 12.04)

Nathan — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 04:00:15 -0000

The login-screen mute button is not persistent for me ... which makes me wonder why it's there :P

Re: TSA Finally Cracking Down on Snow Globes!

Nathan — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 23:15:01 -0000

v = (4/3) pi r^3

me thinks Dan is a terrorist trying to sneak in an extra 7/9ths of explosive snow globe liquid.

Re: http://smalter.org/post/4809138824

Nathan — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 23:35:42 -0000

no C-clamp???

Re: Seed Fund Reject Still a Ne’er-do-well

Nathan — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 19:14:06 -0000

Good story, although I think the strawberries were more like $12, and you left out the part where we got $25k from AlphaLab, and then Silas, Rigo, and I moved to Pittsburgh to do Sonya Labs.

Re: http://smalter.org/post/143379605

Nathan — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:18:39 -0000

Walter Chen hates Chinese people.

Re: http://smalter.org/post/67567546

Nathan — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:19:00 -0000

There's a difference between what you're willing to eat and what you prefer to eat. I don't know the context of her use of "flexatarian", so I don't know what the "question" was, but the term could be a meaningful omission from the spectrum you listed:

vegan: no animal products
vegetarian: no dead animal products (ignoring rennet ...)
omnivore: "normal" american diet with meat in most meals?
carnivore: my friend zack's ex girl friend who claimed she didn't like fruit or vegatables, and maybe people that refuse to order a dinner that doesn't have meat in it (my brother for a long time).

From googling "flexatarian" (had never heard it) I think it would fit in between vegetarian and omnivore, and balance the term carnivore. Sounds potentially useful, at least to define when someone eats meat, if not also to describe the proportion. I've heard similar terms used meaningfully by (mostly) vegan people to say "if you invite me to your dinner party i won't cause trouble".

But maybe I'm just arguing because I find myself in a confusing (for me) situation. I was a "genuine" vegetarian for about 5 years. Then one day I decided to order some fish sushi. Was I suddenly an omnivore? Certainly not in the sense that I would take the term if anyone else used it. Oh well, I guess I just relapsed, won't worry about it, back on the wagon. Then in the last 6 months I started occasionally eating leftovers containing meat at work. So then I definitely wasn't a vegetarian. But I wasn't buying any meat, so it still seemed like there was a meaningful distinction there: nearly all of the food I ate was vegetarian (brings to mind "freegan"). Then you invited me over for thanksgiving and asked if I'd eat meat. I said "sure". Oh no, what am I now?

To make sense of this process I have to think about why I was vegetarian. I was vegetarian because my parents convinced me it was better for me, the animals, and the planet. My parents have been vegetarian my whole life, and vegan for quite a few years. So in some sense my vegetarianism was the closest thing I ever had to religion (restricts experiences I enjoy, based on blind belief much more than evidence, inherited from parents). So in my head I'm "straying from the path" and probably going "straight to hell". And of course that makes me uncomfortable.

I could similarly think about in terms of addiction. A lot of people "don't smoke", but will bum a cigarette when they're drunk. Why don't they identify as smokers? Because they think it's negative. And with negative addictions, when you identify yourself as a non-user that gives some sort of support: when you are tempted to indulge you remind yourself that if you do you might not be what you want to be anymore. If you had been talking to a former alcoholic about drinking and they said they "only drank socially" now, would you complain that their distinction was meaningless, because they're simply a drinker? For the them the distinction is meaningful, and the identification probably provides support when they're tempted to binge alone. The distinction provides the boundaries within which the negative behavior is permitted.

If I think about it this way, then the difference is that you don't think negatively of meat eating, so the boundaries are pointless for you. Maybe the girl was just trying to impress vegetarians, who knows? I'm just saying that the distinction *could* be meaningful.

Re: Some Almost-27-Year-Old Girl Really Needs To Learn How to Capitalize and Punctuate

Nathan — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 18:33:17 -0000

no, i diss 6th graders, that obviously makes me a winner

Re: http://smalter.org/post/62872519

Nathan — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:00:07 -0000

fear me!

Re: Some Almost-27-Year-Old Girl Really Needs To Learn How to Capitalize and Punctuate

Nathan — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 20:52:11 -0000

haha, i had a similar experience in october. on october 23rd someone named nick fennel sent a gmail invite to my gmail account:

<quote>
notice that you sent your message to a *gmail* account.

On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 7:47 PM, Nick Fennell <nfennell13@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been using Gmail and thought you might like to try it out. Here's
> an invitation to create an account.
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Nick Fennell has invited you to open a free Gmail account.
</quote>

but it got much better the next day when he IM'd me:

<quote>
6:39 PM Nick: Hey Nathan r u thier
me: yeah
Nick: hey what about Ian
6:40 PM me: ian?
i'm not sure who you are
6:41 PM or who ian is
Nick: its Nicholas from your band and Gym class
Nicholas Fennell
me: i think you've got the wrong nathan
6:42 PM Nick: r u nathan collins
me: yes
Nick: OMG u dont remeber me
6:43 PM me: nope
6:44 PM Nick: u bastard.
me: yep
6:45 PM Nick: ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
me: yeah, depressing isn't it?
6:46 PM Nick: x-( :-| dude do you go to marshall and r u in 6th grade
me: no
6:47 PM i went to university of wisconsin and would be in 21st grade right now
exceept i'm on leave right now
Nick: ok. u r wierd
6:48 PM me: yep
Nick: dude seriusly
6:51 PM dude nathan im not stupid
6:52 PM me: our interaction indicates otherwise
6:53 PM Nick: dude
</quote>

Re: Ian Gowen

Nathan — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 03:16:09 -0000

I had one of those once: I got up and looked at my dresser. It wasn't quite right but I wasn't sure why. Then, suddenly, my alarm clock flew into my face like a snake and bit me in the face. A little unnerving.

Re: Google Code Jam Online Round 1A: Numbers

Nathan — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:46:09 -0000

Spot on :)

Re: Google Code Jam Online Round 1A: Numbers

Nathan — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:42:20 -0000

Thanks, where can I find it?

Re: Taming the Data Partie Deux: Open Law?

Nathan — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:58:19 -0000

Seal of approval magnet, SWEET! Airfare well spent.

Re: Google Code Jam Online Round 1A: Numbers

Nathan — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:52:59 -0000

Haha, thanks for the cool problem. What sort of solution did you have in mind when you set the problem?