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Comment by zachbeane | Hacker News Reader

See also http://idlewords.com/2003/12/100_years_of_turbulence.htm, by HN-banned author and entrepreneur Maciej Cegłowski.

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That article is painfully flawed, though its point remains valid. What makes Alberto Santos-Dumont, a dedicated experimenter with a positive genius for simple solutions to baffling problems, a "one-man freakshow"? The author never explains, and it's not obvious to the reader. The author's dismissive analysis of the innovations of the Wright Flyer minimizes its advantages and inflates its idiosyncrasies beyond any sense of scale — and for what purpose? His frivolous distortion of fact does nothing to enhance his point.

Usually if I'm downvoted I understand why, but in this case I'm baffled. Can anyone help me understand why this wasn't considered a useful contribution to the discussion?

As I understand it, downmodding can currently mean as little as that somebody disagreed with your comment.

It could even be someone accidentally tapping the down arrow while scrolling on a phone.

What-the-wha? The creator of pinboard.in, an awesome bookmarking site, is banned from HN? How? Why? Link?

HN-banned? Why? How? By whom? When?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4108008

The whole affair is really sad. Especially due to high quality of Maciej's blog.

Interesting. So that's the story of the origin of lobste.rs.

Personal animosity, I imagine:

http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

Maciej isn't banned and he's welcome back anytime.

Maciej was banned, though, and left immediately when that happened, like many reasonable people would.

Mistakes happen. I don't think there's much drama to mine here.

Oh I know, and I wasn't implying otherwise. (It struck me as a big misunderstanding, though I don't know all the details.) My point is, he's not banned and he's welcome. The comment upthread was at best ambiguous on this, so I felt obliged to say something.

I think I misread your comment, and also that we are probably totally agreed about Maciej. :)

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