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The twitter account doesn't back this up with a source - the OP here doesn't back this up this up with a source - my quick Google search doen't back this up, this may be true, but in this day and age WTF people? why is this number one without any verification?


Yes, the source is not citable by Wikipedia's standard, but it appears that Mulcahy is considered an established personality in the recreational mathematics community, and his source was private communication from the close associates of John Conway, which by itself is backed up by Colin Wright, an established personality on Hacker News. [0][1] So it's certain to say the information is true.

By the way, I once said that Twitter is now the center of gravity of the web these days, and someone didn't believe me and argued against it with some user statistics, which missed the point. This is another example on how Twitter is the center of gravity, it is, in the sense of its network effect - that it has a group of active and influential people, which makes it the place where the latest news and rumors break out. Not different from the early blogosphere, the Usenet, or even Hacker News posts about Silicon Valley.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22843577

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22844444


It’s a little meta given we’re on HN, but I’d trust ColinWright FWIW.


It's been reported in the Guardian newspaper in their live Coronavirus feed. Their source is a tweet by someone by the name of Sam Wang.

This is very sad news. I can still remember typing into my ZX81 the game of life program from a book as a young teenager.


I agree, this should be verified, Mulcahy (https://twitter.com/CardColm) is wearing a jester hat, it may very well be playing a joke on us all.




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