The Nineteenth Byte

5:00 PM

@orlp By now most mathematical challenge ideas have been covered.

@feersum Previous versions of Python supported only Latin-1, so you needed Unicode escapes for all other characters. When they changed that, they made ASCII the default, which goes with the Zen of Python: In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.

feersum

@Dennis I know about this but what does the source use them for?

Geobits

The interpreter does unless I'm reading it wrong, not his source.

Peter Taylor

@Dennis So does curl. I wasted at least half a day at work recently because it was stripping newlines from a POST.

feersum

I'm looking at the page and don't see any non-ASCII characters in it

Dennis

5:07 PM

@feersum Unbabtized has two non-ASCII commands that appear in the interpreter's source code.

feersum

I guess that square-shaped blob isn't the whole source

Peter Taylor

@orlp It's not actually a dupe of the lozenge tiling question. The matrices are different.

And since the answers don't actually use the matrices, it's not close enough to close-vote.

Dennis

@feersum It is, but it displays their HTML encodings instead.

Peter Taylor

But if you want ideas, check out meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/1475/194

Dennis

° and §. I downloaded the interpreter from the link. I hadn't noticed that before.

Optimizer

5:14 PM

we should update that meta post. its more than a year old.

Peter Taylor

The most recent update was about 7 weeks ago

TheNumberOne

For Alex A.'s post, there is one shebang character for each character in "Hello, World!"

Optimizer

i meant the main post.

well, I guess people can go through the answers too. But the post summarizing the things is easier.

Beta Decay

How long do you have to wait in between GET requests to stop the server denying any further requests?

On average, let's say

Geobits

About a week.

feersum

5:20 PM

If you just wait for one download to finish before starting the next one then you should be OK.

Alex A.

Awwww yissssss 6 hours to safety!

Beta Decay

I'm getting to around halfway through 1960 before officialcharts.com prevents me from making any further requests.

Geobits

Just toss a delay on it of a few seconds. Servers vary, but they're not normally very long.

Beta Decay

Ohh I has the delay for half a second :P

Cheers

Alex A.

@BetaDecay Can you make a single large request and cache the results? (Idk how web work)

trichoplax

5:22 PM

@AlexA. Undeleted and upvoted. I'm amazed it needs to be a loophhole but if people really are treating it as valid then there needs to be a place for us to indicate that it isn't.

Alex A.

@trichoplax Couldn't agree more.

Beta Decay

@AlexA. Nope, each chart for each week is on a different web page

trichoplax

Could be summarised as "Any approach that allows solving any challenge in zero bytes"

Since it is trivially extended to taking input too.

Alex A.

I'd suggest editing that in. :)

After all, it is CW

trichoplax

I may well do - good point. I'll have a think about the wording

It's gathering upvotes at pace even seconds after undeleting...

Alex A.

5:25 PM

I was trying to think of good wording the other day and ended up just removing a few pieces of the existing post without adding anything

trichoplax

Back up to zero already

Alex A.

One of the upvotes was me. :D

Beta Decay

Bloody hell, 2 seconds delay and the server still kicks me

Peter Taylor

21

A: Loopholes that are forbidden by default

Zero-length answers Considering an empty program a quine was original in the 1994 IOCCC. Over two decades later, if you can answer a question with an empty program and that question is scored by length (e.g., code-golf) and is tagged as quine or source-layout, just notify the OP.

trichoplax

@PeterTaylor That's one of several existing loopholes that should automatically cover it, but since there's been time wasted debating this recently I can see the specific case of MetaGolfScript being a useful duplicate answer to save arguments.

Alex A.

5:31 PM

Alternatively, MetaGolfScript could be mentioned specifically in Peter's linked post.

trichoplax

@AlexA. That's a thought - I was just in the middle of linking to Peter's linked post from the MetaGolfScript one but maybe it makes more sense the other way round

TheNumberOne

@aditsu Am I right?

Alex A.

@trichoplax Since Peter's already has a fair bit of support and MetaGolfScript falls under that category, I think it does make sense to add it to the existing post and remove the new one.

Duplication just clutters an already huge post.

@TheNumberOne The user M. I. Wright?

aditsu

@TheNumberOne huh, what?

trichoplax

@AlexA. My only reason remaining for wanting MetaGolfScript-style languages to have their own loophole answer is that one could get around the restriction by doing the same for a 1 byte program

TheNumberOne

5:34 PM

4? — TheNumberOne 2 mins ago

Alex A.

@trichoplax Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, good idea.

trichoplax

@AlexA. That's surely covered elsewhere too though?

Alex A.

Perhaps? Not sure.

aditsu

ooh

trichoplax

Maybe we should identify all the loophole answers that are relevant and tack on "which obviously rules out MetaGolfScript style languages". We can't do that every time someone refuses to accept that something is obviously already covered by a loophole though...

Maybe we should delete the MetaGolfScript answer :P

TheNumberOne

5:36 PM

@aditsu :(

Beta Decay

MetaGolfScript would be more interesting IMO if a non-empty program didn't act like an ordinary GolfScript program, but also behaved differently based upon N

Alex A.

@trichoplax You mean ugoren's (or whatever his name is) in the quiz?

trichoplax

124

A: Loopholes that are forbidden by default

Using a made-up language specifically designed for the challenge This includes any language with commands that "do whatever I choose them to do". Claiming that your answer is written in "MyOwnLanguage", where the command x means "read a sequence of numbers, split them into groups of three, and ...

aditsu

@TheNumberOne well.. it's your fault for not checking first :p

TheNumberOne

I know.

trichoplax

5:37 PM

@AlexA. Lol no I meant the loophole answer. Obviously answers on main that contravene it should be deleted - I shouldn't have to say that :)

Alex A.

:)

(you really should have run for mod, you know)

So it looks like MetaGolfScript falls under "made up languages designed for the challenge" and occasionally zero-length answers.

trichoplax

Thanks :)

Also this:

56

A: Loopholes that are forbidden by default

Using the program name to store data Example - this bash script prints Hello World! echo $0 Must be saved in a file called Hello\ World\!

As it basically uses the language name to store data

Beta Decay

That's more tenuous

Alex A.

That's particularly amusing given that the guy who posted the MetaGolfScript answer to the quiz is the same one who suggested that loophole.

trichoplax

Lol I've been through and just got to the bottom of the loopholes page - amongst the downvoted ones is "Using golfing languages". What??

Alex A.

5:43 PM

???

trichoplax

Having one's cake and selling it and using the proceeds to buy more cake

Alex A.

meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/1696/20469

My favorite ^

trichoplax

@AlexA. Yeah I hadn't noticed that

Martin Büttner

@PeterTaylor whoa, sweet, thanks for letting me know :)

trichoplax

Lol @ "or even C"

Alex A.

5:45 PM

@trichoplax Extra lol @ Martin's comment

I submitted that to the blog Gems from Stack Exchange.

trichoplax

I think I remember that being linked from here...

Beta Decay

Ohhh that's where I saw it :D

aditsu

dammit, is there a meme generator that works?

trichoplax

7 billion of them and counting... :)

Alex A.

@aditsu Isn't that just what Reddit is?

aditsu

5:50 PM

ah, imgur has one

Beta Decay

tmblr.co/Z1JL5t1oVqCMQ

aditsu

haha

ok, here we go

Alex A.

haha

@trichoplax Include? ^

trichoplax

Yeah, let's add a new loophole: "answer's that are covered by half a dozen loopholes already"

I'm beginning to see that Peter was right all along - I shouldn't have undeleted that loophole - it was a can of worms... :)

Alex A.

How so?

@trichoplax Ah yes. Standard loophole: Violating other standard loopholes.

trichoplax

5:56 PM

I mean if we add a loophole to cover each time people claim existing loopholes don't count, we'll be adding loopholes for every daft thing that comes up

Beta Decay

New loophole: "The answer's a meme already"

2

Optimizer

@AlexA. we need another one to prevent violation of this one

trichoplax

@AlexA. Yes exactly - that should cover it :)

"Standard loophole: violating this loophole"

Alex A.

Standard loophole: Using a computer to do the work for you.

trichoplax

Um

Optimizer

5:59 PM

@AlexA. PPCG is not covered by it. Here we use other humans to tell computers to do the work for you

Geobits

Feb 19 at 18:09, by Geobits

@TheBestOne I think PPCG should count as "an interpreter" for English. You type in what you want to do, and it spits out runnable code in a variety of languages :P

Optimizer

yes we know that we all go redundant and say what you have said around an year ago.

Geobits

I've said that before, too.

Optimizer

see

Geobits

and that

Optimizer

6:02 PM

"and that" too.

TheNumberOne

@Geobits Have you ever pinged yourself?

Geobits

I've pinged the crap out of myself.

Optimizer

have you pinged your dog?

Geobits

Nope, but nobody else here has yet either.

Have I mentioned his name?

I usually just use a snap of the fingers to grab his attention anyway.

TheNumberOne

"My dog"

Optimizer

6:08 PM

I remember you saying that he also goes by Geobits

must be hard

Geobits

Not really. There are several Jameses in my family and a few Davids at work, and that seems to work out okay.

(neither of those are my name if you're assuming that)

Optimizer

so you are good sharing your name with your dog?

Geobits

Not really. I'd like to him to stop, but it's very hard to explain that to him, and he only does it while I'm gone.

Optimizer

maybe we should try convincing him

@Geobits be a good dog and stop using your owner's name!! I will treat you a bone if you do so!

Geobits

You can try, but I don't know how well he reads. He's still a puppy ya know.

Optimizer

6:12 PM

(because we are really not sure whether its you or your dog right now..)

Geobits

He might be paying attention at home. Not sure.

aditsu

well, I made my contribution towards SE's bankruptcy, I hope I make it into the early batch that actually receives the swag :)

trichoplax

You can balance out the cost to them by wearing it in public

Geobits

I was looking to highlight a certain Android answer earlier from a few years back but couldn't find it. I thought it was Commonsware's, but I might be wrong. It did a great job explaining multitouch handling.

I'll have to look some more later.

aditsu

I doubt it will help them much, but I always wear my swag :)

trichoplax

6:16 PM

:)

Geobits

My shirt and mug are both well used :)

Still have a pile of stickers untouched, though.

Martin Büttner

the new shirts are really nice actually :)

Geobits

It's just the small logo, right? Not the full name?

trichoplax

@Geobits Did you post a comment on it at the time?

Martin Büttner

yeah, just the SO logo, and the shirts are... I don't know what the English word is... not exactly a flat colour...

the dictionary says "mottled"

trichoplax

6:18 PM

Banding? Blotching? Or that very small scale variation that makes shirts look somehow more comfortable?

Geobits

@trichoplax I don't think so, just upvoted both question and answer. I may be able to find it later; I didn't spend too long earlier.

Martin Büttner

@trichoplax the latter

trichoplax

I kind of like those. Almost like the old fashioned way of greying out an image by dropping half the pixels, instead of dimming them all

aditsu

is it like a brushed metal pattern?

Martin Büttner

Geobits

6:24 PM

Oh that is nice. Now I need to look for that question harder.

aditsu

hmm, kind of like that, it seems

Martin Büttner

it's really nice and comfortable material as well

aditsu

not bad :)

Martin Büttner

now if the native speakers could tell me what word they'd use for that kind of pattern... :P

aditsu

I wouldn't know how to describe it in my native language

Optimizer

6:25 PM

which pattern?

Geobits

I think every store here has a different name for it ><

Optimizer

from a shopkeeper's perspective, its called "<the pattern that you want to buy today>"

Geobits

A quick search turned up "heather grey", but I've never heard that used in actual conversation.

trichoplax

That texture comes in lots of colours

But they all have that same visual feel

Geobits

Yea, I should have just said heather. It's apparently done by just grabbing a bunch of similarly-colored threads and weaving them together.

Optimizer

6:31 PM

"heather color with the same visual feel"

Rainbolt

deltaapparel.com/colors

Geobits

Oh, the Wikipedia page uses a word I have heard used in shops: flecked

Rainbolt

I think heather is correct, based on that

And this explains why they are typically so soft: spectratees.com/what-is-a-colored-heather-t-shirt

(I also love these kinds of tees)

trichoplax

@Geobits It sounds like heather is the method then, which can look flecked, but flecked can also be the result of speckling, right?

Geobits

I guess so, but I don't know how you'd speckle a shirt. Heather is apparently used as method and descriptor, I just don't normally pay attention it seems.

trichoplax

6:35 PM

You can speckle a shirt with fabric paint and a toothbrush

Rainbolt

I just imagined a factory mass producing tees with an industrial toothbrush.

Geobits

Oh, right. I wouldn't normally consider a shirt with paint speckles, so didn't think of that :)

I'd probably call that speckled instead of flecked, though I guess both could maybe work.

Beta Decay

@MartinBüttner Where was your avatar taken? You look really cold there :D

trichoplax

You can use bleach and a toothbrush, but that's not so safe if you're decorating shirts with children - airborne bleach is bad

Rainbolt

That reminds me - I need to ask ELU about "the other day". My roommate and I are arguing about whether "the other day" implies some sense of recency.

Geobits

6:37 PM

@BetaDecay Is it gone? :O

Rainbolt

"He washed his car the other day."

I think it implies that he washed it sometime in the last few weeks

Geobits

19

Q: When is an event so old that the phrase "the other day" no longer applies?

I went to the dentist half a year ago, but when I mentioned that to my girlfriend, I said that I went there "the other day." She said that events which happened such a long time ago definitely did not happen "the other day", but this violated my understanding of the phrase; I would use it to refe...

Rainbolt

So glad you found the answer

trichoplax

To me it means "long enough ago that I can't instantly recall the exact day, but no longer ago"

Geobits

Hmm. I can't recall the exact day I lost my first tooth, but it was not "the other day" :P

Martin Büttner

6:39 PM

@BetaDecay in Berlin, late January 2012... it was freezing and I didn't have gloves

trichoplax

OK. I retract my definition. I will go and read the post...

Geobits

@MartinBüttner So..... the other day?

Beta Decay

@MartinBüttner Berlin? I always assumed those were trees in the background

Geobits

Most non-US cities I've seen actually have a few trees ;)

Martin Büttner

there are trees in and around Berlin (it wasn't exactly in the centre of the city though)

Beta Decay

6:41 PM

@Geobits Define US city ;)

Rainbolt

Some remind me to chkdsk in about 3 hours and 18 minutes

Otherwise I will forget

Beta Decay

Because what the UK calls a town is a city in the US in my experience

Geobits

Oh. I'd have to say at least 100k population.

So not a big city, but...

Beta Decay

Big enough

Geobits

Meh, barely.

I'd prefer a couple million, but it'll do.

Beta Decay

6:45 PM

Wait, is what gone?

trichoplax

I'd hate to live in a city without trees

Beta Decay

I can't really imagine living in a city

TheNumberOne

Is 26,000 very big for a city?

aditsu

if I have internet, power, water and food, I can imagine living pretty much anywhere

Optimizer

In fact, the remotest of the places with the above said facilities are the best ones to live!

TheNumberOne

6:52 PM

@aditsu Satellite phone. Solar Panel‌. Water filter. McDonald's.

Beta Decay

@TheNumberOne Pah, too much effort

Rainbolt

You also need a hoe, some wheat, some cows, and a furnace.

trichoplax

As long as you have the internet you can get everything else delivered

Geobits

Sheep are good too. Gotta get some wool for a bed.

Optimizer

@Rainbolt why do we need a hoe????

Rainbolt

6:54 PM

@Geobits Or just don't die.

Geobits

Well sure, but it's nice to sleep every once in a while.

aditsu

2 Chainz - Birthday Song (Explicit) ft. Kanye West

►

Optimizer

@aditsu ?

aditsu

that's why you need a hoe :)

Optimizer

there are about 100 more song with "hoe" in their lyrics

Geobits

6:56 PM

I'm half-convinced aditsu has a bot running that posts obliquely related youtube videos at random intervals. The NLP aspect is impressive from what I've seen so far.

Beta Decay

Of course it has to be a fibre optic cable to your house

New Main Posts

0

Q: Approximate Square Formation

Background I have a bunch of square-shaped boxes of equal size, and since I'm a neat person, I want to arrange them all into a square formation. However, their number is not necessarily a perfect square, so I may have to approximate the square shape. I want you to find me the most aesthetically ...

code-golf ascii-art optimization

Optimizer

^ I think we've had similar question(s) before

Beta Decay

Likely! @PeterTaylor whistles

aditsu

Fab Abs Oblique Challenge Workout!

►

Beta Decay

6:58 PM

What the...

Zgarb

@Optimizer I did a quick search before posting, but didn't find anything resembling it.

Optimizer

@aditsu you are making Google go all "WTF" while trying to evaluate user's behavior based on youtube history!

Geobits

Hmm. I think you need to train your algorithm a bit. Wrong sense of oblique.

Peter Taylor

Is sorting in CJam stable?

Optimizer

as in always give same correct result?

Beta Decay

6:59 PM

In The Bleak Midwinter/O Sanctissima

►

Geobits

@Optimizer I'm scared to think what Google guesses about me. Looking up stuff from Skeptics, Politics, and Parenting has probably made them decide I'm a sociopath.

aditsu

@PeterTaylor yes it is

Beta Decay

O, bleak?

Optimizer

cat video
cat video
cat video
2 chainz - birthday
cat video
fab abs

Beta Decay

llama video

jrenk

7:00 PM

I'm back guys

Beta Decay

kaboom

jrenk

no :( I don't want to explode

poor creeper :'(

Optimizer

no no, he just decays another beta particle

aditsu

@Optimizer I like to keep them on their toes :p

Beta Decay

If I could be bothered, I'd set up a bot which posts exploding messages every time you enter this room ;)

jrenk

7:02 PM

haha :D

Vioz-

We just need to take shifts

jrenk

or I just change my pic to ... hmm ... a minecraft cow?

Beta Decay

changes bot to mooing

jrenk

.... :'(

aditsu

@Optimizer no, as in preserving the order of "equal" elements

jrenk

7:03 PM

I'm fine with that actually

Geobits

Minecraft Cows & Minecraft Cows & Minecraft Cows (Minecraft Animation)

►

Optimizer

@aditsu how did you guess that by the word "stable"?

jrenk

@Geobits haha :D this video is quite disturbing

aditsu

@Optimizer it's a standard term, google.com.hk/search?q=stable+sort

Optimizer

oh

jrenk

7:04 PM

I'm learning node.js right now! I'm sooo exited :)

Martin Büttner

@Sp3000 Any luck with Labyrinth? I think I'm almost ready for writing the docs. Open questions: should I keep the depth stack command, and does it count 0s at the bottom (that you pushed manually)? What to use as a NOP? I'm thinking ", maybe... looks a bit like footprints. Should any other commands be added/reassigned?

Beta Decay

Hehe looks a bit like footprints :)

Rainbolt

You guys better not stand too close to jrenk while he is on top of me (in a non sexual way)

Martin Büttner

I haven't used any of "&'[]`| (or # if I switch NOP) yet. I'd like to avoid letters, although I had to use v for rotation.

jrenk

@Rainbolt haha :D I hope I nevery explode near you

aditsu

7:12 PM

so, assuming they really decide to send me swag, will they contact me and ask for my address? or how does it work?

Geobits

They'll email you a google form to fill out.

Mine had size/address/etc, all the needed info.

aditsu

ok, I'll watch out for that then, it would make a nice birthday present :p

Geobits

If you have strict filters, you might want to open it up a bit. Both of mine came from Tim Post, and since it looks like he's doing this one, too, it will probably come from tpost@stackexchange.com

aditsu

btw, I just received my GCJ t-shirt a couple of days ago :)

Geobits

Nice. What's it look like? I see a few designs when I search.

aditsu

7:20 PM

the front is the same as previous years, the back has the space needle

orlp

@Maltysen @Jakube what is the shortest way to write ceil(a/b) in Pyth?

(let's say a = J and b = K)

_/_JK

is that it?

Beta Decay

@aditsu GCJ?

aditsu

@Geobits found a picture: lh5.googleusercontent.com/-fcIvhM7cKuA/VZ252WB4PUI/AAAAAAAAQ_k/…

@BetaDecay Google Code Jam

Geobits

Oh that's nice. It's no SO shirt, but it's nice ;)

aditsu

the front side also works in foo, I guess :p

except it's lowercase

Dennis

7:26 PM

Haha.

TheNumberOne

@Dennis I didn't intend for it to work in Foo :(

aditsu

making it not work in foo is one of the challenges of the quiz :p

3

Dennis

@TheNumberOne Nobody did (except for Doorknob). Most answers now contain some sort of Foo protection.

Beta Decay

Why on earth does practically everything work in Foo though?

Dennis

Foo directly prints all strings in double quotes and does not exit when it encounters a syntax or runtime error.

TheNumberOne

7:31 PM

Because foo ignores most characters and prints everything between double quotes.

Beta Decay

So single quotes protect you?

Dennis

Yup.

So does any time of escape inside the double quotes or embedding a string anywhere it is ignored by your intended language.

Geobits

Or printing by ascii values like some langs use, or doing it backward and printing in reverse, etc.

Dennis

Printing by ASCII values adds a lot of bytes though.

Geobits

Yea, sure. I just meant that in some languages it's not even an issue because they don't have a bare "Hello, World!" anywhere.

Not competitive for bytes, but maybe for crackability.

Dennis

7:36 PM

Yeah, I've done pretty well with that. :)

Beta Decay

How many of these could help wardoq crack?

Vioz-

@jrenk It's based on this:

cows & cows & cows

►

Dennis

@BetaDecay Almost none of them. If the code contains He, you're already screwed.

Vioz-

Which is much creepier, I think :P

jrenk

@Vioz- that is even more disturbing ... I don't know what to say

Geobits

7:39 PM

There's a Bovine Centipede a minute or so in. You could say something about that :)

Vioz-

Cyriak is an interesting dude

He's done some work for Adult Swim / CN too

Geobits

Oh, somehow I didn't realize it was his. First of his I saw was youtube.com/watch?v=-0Xa4bHcJu8

Beta Decay

@Geobits Cool haha

I first saw Baa

I'm not sure what I'm watching here ...

Geobits

7:42 PM

Just swallow the pill and go with it.

Vioz-

He has some webcams of the LHC hosted on his site too!

cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html

Beta Decay

I should have swallowed the blue pill

jrenk

@Vioz- haha :D

orlp

@isaacg euclidean distance should be on an arity 2 function, no?

why is it on .a

it takes a two-element list =/

isaacg

It's on .a because .a wasn't doing anything on that input anyways. I agree, it should get put on something else.

orlp

7:53 PM

@isaacg it's not the symbol that bothers me, it's the arity

just to double check :)

isaacg

I agree.

I'll make it .N for norm

Because E and D are taken.

.e, .E, .d, .D

orlp

@isaacg also, what did you think about my proposed new pad operator?

.] pad to multiple of N

isaacg

Oh, right. What sorts of applications were you tihnking of?

orlp

similar to .[

@isaacg usually challenges have some odd/even handling

for example the recent minecraft one

Rainbolt

Haha. @Geobits i.imgur.com/623MX1U.png

orlp

7:55 PM

3

Q: Can I make that shape with blocks, slabs, and stairs?

Consider a rectangular two-dimensional grid where each cell can either be empty (.) or full (0). e.g. ..00.... 0000.... .00000.. 000...00 ..000000 000.00.. The grid is considered infinite, all cells outside the depicted region are empty. The goal is to cover the filled spaces and leave the e...

code-golf geometry

Rainbolt

Who voted to close?

It does not seem like a very broad challenge

Geobits

Hmm. Do we have any challenges yet that require actual printing? Like on paper?

isaacg

@orlp I don't know, it still seems pretty narrow.

Geobits

It's a pain in the ass to try to search.

aditsu

not that hard - codegolf.stackexchange.com/search?q=printer+is%3Aquestion

Transcript for