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8:43 AM
@PeterTaylor Natural languages covered.
@MartinBüttner I meant the converter and the numbers-in-words ones, not the plotting problem. I've already commented with that on Beta Decay's post.
 
@SohamChowdhury then we have the problem of people inventing their own natural languages, and I happen to know one with a very tidy number system. Thinking about it... we could do with a working converter...
 
Just to be clear, you know what I mean by "converter", right?
And as for inventions:
 
asin, 10 -> Ten, WhateverTenIsInGermanHowCanINotKnowThis, n-?
 
well I'm clearly missing the point then
 
8:49 AM
I had two ideas: one is to write a program to convert between two representations of chemical molecules called InChI and SMILES (the "converter").
The other one is, yes, 10 -> *zehn* (das ist wie man auf Deutsch "10" sagt).
What happened to Markdown?!
test
 
doesn't work with multi-line or something
 
Oh.
Are you going to keep the "language with a tidy number system" secret?
 
would you like my to divulge it?
 
If your don't mind.
 
thinking about it, I think there is some ambiguity in it at the moment, because we don't have precedence rules for *n^ and base changes...
 
8:52 AM
?
 
the number system swaps digits for phones, so 0 is b- (bar), 1 is c- (shar), 2 is d- (dar) etc. and you just string them together as you would normally
there are phones for points, exponents, and one that lets you change the base of the number of convenience, and one that makes it negative, but the rules regarding these are flimsy and need to be sorted out
actually, that's a SVO syntax... it might need an overhaul...
wow... our online parser does not know y-, that's embarrassing
 
9:08 AM
[Melonio,] thou stick'st a dagger in me [with thy penchant for vile suspense].
 
oh, sorry, it's called Timlan, there is some manner of documentation at timlan.tim32.org
wow, we still haven't re-written the parser, what have I been doing all summer
 
9:34 AM
@VisualMelon I think we could just apply the same guideline for this as we do for programming languages: if it existed before the challenge, it's fine.
 
10:02 AM
grrrr... I was thinking about making a kolmogorov challenge, where you need to reproduce the conversation between Guybrush and the Head of the Navigator from Monkey Island I (Please? No. Please? No. Please? No. Please? No. Please? Okay.), but so far every single youtube walkthrough I found uses the threatening conversation to get the necklace... and I don't want to replay 3 hours of the game right now
ah nice, found a text walkthrough that has it
aaaaand, it cuts off and switches to the other one...
 
10:27 AM
0
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Martin BüttnerMonkey Island: The Head of the Navigator code-golf kolmogorov-complexity Attention: This challenge contains some mild spoilers for The Secret of Monkey Island. Towards the end of the game, you're being led through the catacombs by a magically preserved head of a navigator: You need its eyeb...

 
@NewSandboxedPosts @everyone, is that picture inappropriate for SE?
 
11:33 AM
42
Q: How can I kill puppies without consequences?

DoorknobThe starting pets can sometimes get quite annoying, since they keep getting in your way. Those little dogs keep blocking my path! Therefore, I quite reasonably want to slaughter them brutally. But of course I want to do this safely. I've noticed that whenever I kill my pet, I "hear the rumble of...

@MartinBüttner I would probably use something less... striking.
 
@Doorknob it's so cute though :D
 
awwww look at da cute wittle zawmbee head!
 
12:01 PM
@SohamChowdhury I see two major issues. The first is that the boundary between language and dialect isn't always clear (and even in cases where it is clear to linguists, politicians sometimes want to get involved in the definition). The second is that it becomes more a contest of finding a set of (probably closely related) languages which are similar enough to be mutually compressible than a programming contest.
 
12:19 PM
^ Wouldn't the second thing be fun?
And for the first one, how about making a list of allowed languages? Or restricting the contest to Romance/European languages (probably not a good idea)?
A list of allowed languages would probably mean that we allow separate dialects as long as there is more than a single phoneme's worth of difference in at least 50% of the "number names" below 1000.
Just throwing that out there.
Who owns the "new meta posts" and "new sandboxed posts" bot(s)?
 
1:04 PM
@SohamChowdhury Maybe, but I don't think it would be on topic for PPCG. A whitelist of languages could save it, but I think you'd want to be more specific than "Romance" because otherwise the language/dialect issue is still a problem. (E.g. is Gallego a dialect of Portuguese?)
(And FWIW phonemes are a bit of a red herring unless the question asks for output in IPA or as sound)
 
1:24 PM
We need another good KOTH challenge. It's been too long.
 
1:44 PM
Why would anyone ever trust this site's advice about color theory?
 
Hello!
Can someone with an Ivy Bridge or newer processor test this program for me:
 
Hello!!
 
Oh yes, needs Linux, too.
 
can't help you there, sorry
 
@PeterTaylor How about "the language must one of the official languages of at least one country"?
 
2:07 PM
@Doorknob how about putting it in a spoiler?
although I think it's even creepier if you accidentally hover over it
 
@MartinBüttner Gallego is an official language of Spain.
 
apparently, it's technically "co-official" whatever that means
 
It means that there's more than one official language.
 
lol okay
never mind. how much of a problem is that? I don't know my way around spanish/portuguese to tell how badly that would simplify the challenge.
@PeterTaylor btw, what's your opinion on the navigator head image?
 
2:23 PM
@MartinBüttner I'm not an expert on US law, so I'm not sure whether it falls under fair use. But I love the way the cut-off starred message in this chat makes a random Avatar reference.
 
lol
so you mean just from a copyright perspective it's questionable?
 
Yes.
 
hmmm
but that's a problem with the entire challenge then, right?
I'll try to find out some more about the legal issues.
what I was referring to though is that I was afraid some sensitive souls might complain about a column-width picture of a zombie head.
 
For some reason, when it comes to copyright people tend to be a lot more sensitive about a single image than a snippet of text, even if they're similar proportions of the full work from which they're extracted.
I'm pretty sure that StackExchange has a minimum age limit which is at least as high as the recommended minimum age for the game.
 
My main objection to the image is that it's just too big. Banner that thing or get rid of it IMO
 
2:30 PM
@Geobits Oh rly?
 
SE limit is 13
 
rly
 
You and your newfangled cards. 5E or gtfo ;)
 
You guys wanna see what my boyfriend and I look like?
 
2:33 PM
Sure, why not?
Is he a block of cobblestone?
3
 
@Geobits He's a block of diamond of course. (My hands are in no way tied)
 
That's the smart thing to say for sure :P
 
@Geobits Sorry, I've only been looking at it on 1440p ^^ ... I guess I'll just make it a link.
 
You see that big dude in the back? We have like five of him in the store. They are the reason all of the chairs are broken. We call them neckbeards.
 
@Martin I just mean that it's pretty big and doesn't actually add substance to the post. Since that's the case, I think a cropped banner would be fine, but it's just big as is.
 
2:36 PM
@MartinBüttner The PS3 re-release is rated 10+
 
@PeterTaylor thanks for looking it up
@Geobits If I crop it, I'm losing the "I think he likes you" though :D ... maybe it doesn't add substance, but I thought it added some character to the challenge for people who haven't played MI ^^... but okay, I'll just link to it externally
 
I love watching the transcript rearrange itself when a user enters the channel for the first time each day.
Take that, anonymous stars! I know who you belong to!
3
 
0
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Nate KerkhofsSudden Death Rummy Rummy is a card game where the objective is to get rid of all cards in your hand by forming "melds". A meld is either a consecutive series of cards in the same suit, or 3/4 cards of different suits of the same value, which is, in ascending order A(ce), 2-10, V(alet), Q(ueen) o...

 
Oh crap
I got a project that I get to do all by myself and I'm trying to make it perfect and I just realized I camel cased all of my tables and columns in SQL
And now I can either spend ten minutes fixing it all or just say that's how it will be done.
 
2:57 PM
ThatsHowItllBeDone
^ If that looks wrong, say "Jim sad" in a Hulk voice.
 
@Geobits removed the image. any opinions on the challenge itself?
 
3:27 PM
0
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

professorfishGPS: Golfed Positioning System [WIP] code-golf geometry 3d under construction, please don't vote yet Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write code for a GPS receiver. Input The current time, as nanoseconds from the Unix epoch. Four satellite signals, in the following format:

 
3:38 PM
@Martin Seems fine (the challenge) to me :D
 
great :)
 
3:56 PM
 
haha, thanks! :D
 
Hmm. I think maybe 650 is the cutoff size, not 600. You may want to center it ><
 
hmmmm how do I centre it?
 
I think posts support html, but I haven't really tested that.
 
center tag doesn't work, and neither do style attributes
couldn't you quickly make a >650px version?
 
4:01 PM
Sure thing boss :P
 
meh, I didn't mean to sound that demanding :D
 
700x150
 
thanks a lot , much appreciated! :)
 
No prob :)
 
max-width is 630 apparently
that's slightly odd, because the column width is a bit more than that
 
4:12 PM
Nice. I guess they're figuring the div width is 640 with a 5px buffer on each side?
(except that they don't center it in said area)
 
hm no clue
now I just need to figure out the legal issues, but that should hopefully be fine
I'm sure homage falls in the same category as parody ^^
 
Probably. I'd think the guys over at Arqade would have been sued to death by now if it was much of an issue.
 
same for scifi actually... all those quotes and screenshots.... then again that falls under "commentary"
 
Well, my "real world" advice is: Use it. If they ask you to take it down, do so. Odds are they won't notice or care. (I am not a lawyer. Obviously)
 
I'd be very honoured if they cared :D
 
4:46 PM
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to make my challenge 'less broad'?
0
Q: The World in the Future

Beta DecayIn the future, the world will change, there's no doubt about it. For that reason, you have to produce a realistic map of the world n years in the future. The number n should be the number of years in the future and can be input via STDIN or argv. It can be one of four types of maps: satellite (...

 
I personally think it's fine now. It's not much broader than codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/24326/8478, I think.
 
@BetaDecay I say f' it. Post it advise voter to let their aesthetics guide 'em.
 
So I just have to wait until more people vote to reopen?
 
4 isn't enough?
 
Well you need a 5th one.
 
4:53 PM
ah
just fyi @BetaDecay, I moved to reopen it like yesterday.
 
@AndoDaan Ahh, thanks!
 
whoa, activity by gnibbler!
 
@BetaDecay Provide a physical model which ensures consistency among predictions.
 
@Rainbolt btw, I made some good progress on tetris yesterday
the gameplay is basically all done. all that's missing is timing and process interaction
 
Without that, "it must be possible for the Earth to look like your map in n years" is a source of infinite debates.
 
5:12 PM
@PeterTaylor Where would I find a suitable model though? Would I have to make one myself?
 
@MartinBüttner Nice! The game loop will probably be the most important part. I'm interested to see how that will work
 
yeah, me too :D
 
I haven't written a Java library to represent the current board state because I don't know yet how expensive it will be to ask for a refresh
Right now all I can do is send moves
So my roommate speculated on some cards over the weekend, and we've now made over a thousand dollars in profit.
Shipping and handling is free on the buy because we bought over $100 worth of cards, and it costs us about a dollar to ship it back once we sell in bulk.
 
@Rainbolt that makes me think... maybe I should support two request modes... one which gives you the state and one which only tells you how many gravity ticks there have been since the your request, so you can calculate everything yourself, if that's faster than I/O
 
There's also option number three: ping the submissions and let them know that a tick has occurred.
So you just tick, and they just receive ticks.
If there happens to be some new information available, then it comes along with the tick
 
5:20 PM
yes, I just wanted to avoid submissions having to poll for those ticks all the time, because they have to read them, otherwise they just pile up on STDIN
 
It just seemed clean because you only have to send out the diff between last tick and this tick
 
5:32 PM
@BetaDecay I don't know.
 
@PeterTaylor I'll look into it, but for now I've edited out that line just in case.
 
5:49 PM
@Rainbolt The less data I send, the more I put a burden on the participants to reproduce all of the gameplay on their end.
(A good submission will probably have to do that anyway, but I'd like to keep the entry barrier for simpler submissions low)
 
I'm thinking about some chemistry-themed challenges.
 
that seems to be a thing at the moment :D
 
I saw a thing in the sandbox about predicted molecular structure.
 
yes, and Soham had a similar idea (I think he just ended up commenting on that one though) as well as an idea where you convert from one nomenclature to another
 
That would be infeasible for any compound with more than a few elements, but VSEPR theory is probably feasible.
 
5:59 PM
my last chemistry lesson was about 8 years ago, so I'm not much help there
0
Q: Monkey Island: The Head of the Navigator

Martin BüttnerWarning: This challenge contains some mild spoilers for The Secret of Monkey Island. Towards the end of the game, you're being led through the catacombs by a magically preserved head of a navigator: You need its eyeball necklace, but the Head is reluctant to give it to you. One way to get it ...

I wanted to wait with posting until tomorrow, but PPCG was so quiet today that I thought it could use another question.
 
VSEPR theory is a method if predicting the shapes of simple molecules.
 
6:21 PM
wow that column of spaces in the console excerpt in my challenge is quite a coincidence :D
 
6:32 PM
@PhiNotPi You can take the idea and modify it if you want. I'll change my post to CW since I haven't made too much progress.
1
A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Beta DecayFind the Molecule code-challenge Introduction Finding a molecule from a formula is like completing a jigsaw puzzle without the picture: it takes a long time for a human to do it but a computer can do it quicker. What you have to do is, given a chemical formula, output the molecular structure ...

 
 
2 hours later…
8:20 PM
@Rainbolt did you get it fixed? If not you could post a code golf question for shortest code to convert camel case to [whatever case you need]...
 
0
Q: Profile Picture for Sandbox User

professorfishThe sandbox is now owned by a dummy account, Sandbox. At the moment it has a default profile picture. Can we create/find a profile picture for it that illustrates that: the user is a dummy account the user's sole purpose is to run the sandbox I think we may want something like the Community ...

 
@githubphagocyte I left them camel cased. I've since exacerbated the problem by writing six procedures that are also camel cased. On the bright side, all of my parameters are lower cased, so they stick out like a sore thumb while I am coding. I thought that was a neat side effect, even if I didn't follow convention.
 
@Doorknob see last meta post
 
8:42 PM
@MartinBüttner I answered it, but it's pretty boring though for an offbeat site like PPCG. Someone needs give it a touch of comedy or wit.
 
@Rainbolt always nice when a mistake has positive side effects...
 
@MartinBüttner Yeah, I know; mods get notifications for new meta posts
 
@Doorknob So if I create a billion meta posts and then immediately delete them, you'll get notified a billion times and nobody else will even know?
 
@Rainbolt you and your bleeding fingers will know...
 
@githubphagocyte This is a site for programmers. You think I would do it manually?!
 
8:56 PM
@Rainbolt Hopefully then nobody will notice the "this user is suspended" banner on your profile either. ;)
 
@Rainbolt lol
 
@githubphagocyte Wait. Are you threatening me?
Github is threatening to make my fingers bleed!
Ban him Doorknob!
 
@Rainbolt um, no. I'm just warning you about the dangers of keyboard overuse... :)
You could try typing on just your finger nails, as they're more hardwearing, but then you'd probably make the backs of your fingers bleed
 
When I was a lifeguard, my toes used to bleed from walking barefoot on the wet concrete so much.
 
9:22 PM
@Doorknob I love the art!
 
I know; it's so fancy and masterful!
 
It has some perspective so it isn't boring, but it isn't terribly complex either. I think it's fitting for an avatar.
 
Also, turns out links don't show up in profiles until you get 10 rep. Probably not too big of a problem, but I could suggest a few edits and approve them if it's really important to have a sandbox link.
 
@Doorknob Seeing as most people will only ever see that profile because they got there from the Sandbox, I don't think it's important to have a link that goes straight back to it.
 

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