mumintrollet's comments

Impressive! I used to play this all the time as a kid but I kinda forgot it existed for a while, so this was fun :) I scored 31 against the computer's 33 :/

This is cool! It felt really satisfying finally getting shots after trying a couple times. Makes me want to play billiards again, it's been a while now :)

This idea is so cute, I hope it goes well for you! Good luck with development <3

I remember when I got back into programming, this site was one of the things that really made me excited to code + develop a deeper understanding of algorithms :)

Do you mind sending me one? I understand if not since I've been lurking more than I've been commenting, but I really value online forums like HN which don't seem to suffer (as much) from the issues that plague, for example, Reddit, and I'd appreciate it :D

> But English words do seem to distinguish meaningfully between what you term 'voiceless' and 'aspirated voiceless' isn't it? For example, there is a difference between 'time' and 'thyme'. Ignoring the difference between 'y' and 'i' for a moment, wouldn't both words be the "same" to English speakers if what you are saying is true?

Aspiration is not contrastive in English - it's impossible to find two words that differ only by aspiration. Aspirated consonants (in general American English) mainly feature in the onset of a stressed syllable (pin ['pʰɪn], potato [pə̥ˈtʰeɪɾoʊ]) as long as they're not preceded by /s/ (spin ['spɪn]). The important part is that you can determine whether or not a consonant is aspirated only by its position in the word, which is why it's an allophone - a variation of a phoneme which isn't distinctive, but still sounds different. English is my L2 so "thyme" still messes me up, I always try to pronounce it with /θ/ like the first consonant in "thigh".

How people differentiate sounds is actually very interesting. The leading theory is that infants can differentiate all human phonemes (see Jusczyk's Head turn Experiment) but starts categorizing sounds into categories based on what languages are spoken to them by 9-12 months. An interesting language is the (sadly extinct) Ubykh, which had 84 (!) phonemic consonants but only 2 or 3 distinct vowels. For example, speakers percieved /qʲ q qʷ qˤ qˤʷ/ as five different sounds, even though an English-only speaker would probably categorize all of them as just "kinda guttural".

On "sju" (/ɧʉː/) - /ɧ/ is a very odd sound in general. It doesn't really feature in any other languages, and what exactly it should be categorized as is still debated by phoneticians. It also varies a lot by region - Finland Swedes generally don't differentiate the consonants in "sju" and "köpa". So bottom line, we don't know how to pronounce it either :D

Isn't there a difference between ianai was describing and constructive discussions with people holding opposing perspectives? I feel like I am surrounded by people with different opinions from my own, which I'm thankful for, but none of them engage in the types of malicious behaviors that "the worst of the Internet in person" brings to mind.

This is such a cool project! The font looks really nice as well :)

There is a solver at https://github.com/jwngr/sdow, fittingly called Six Degrees of Wikipedia :)

That sounds very fun :D It very roughly reminds me of what I used to play as a kid in Sweden, which was called "Land and country", though it had a lot less knives.

Each player started with a sector ("country") of a slightly larger circle (~3m diameter), taking turns in order to throw a small stick/shovel into some other country, thus declaring "war" on them. The person who gets "attacked" has to step on the thrown item with everyone else trying to run away as far as possible. Once the item has been stepped on, the attacked person tries to throw the item at a player of their choice. If they hit, they get to "annex" as large a region of that country as they can without lifting either foot from some starting position in their home country.

It always was my favorite game despite apparently not being Buddha-friendly :)