The Nineteenth Byte

zyabin101

1:12 PM

@NewMetaPosts Oh, no, someone deleted that question. @Doorknob!

Calvin's Hobbies

The author did

Lembik

@Doorknob I personally love the art contests

my view is that they have their place and sell the site really well. We wouldn't want them to become the majority however

orlp

1:38 PM

@isaacg we need a builtin for random.sample

@isaacg <.S<col><len> works but is awkward

Lembik

@MitchSchwartz Hi

hi @orlp

orlp

@isaacg and perhaps just like we have the 'trigonometry' suite of functions, we can add the random suite of functions that has all the distribution RNG

@Lembik hi, I heard you like art?

made this yesterday

Lembik

@orlp yes!

is it for some challenge?

orlp

it's sort of based on this: codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/64332/…

although I used a trick to get rid of the black borders

Lembik

it's very nice

orlp

1:43 PM

I'll see if I can crop it

(the original maze)

into 1920 x 1080

Lembik

although I also like code-golf art questions :)

mınxomaτ

I wasn't even aware that batch could do RegEx with findstr. And apparently it has an interesting history, too.

orlp

@Lembik my solution is based on a very complex rainbow function though

Lembik

@orlp cool

orlp

@Lembik have you ever seen like the HSL rainbow?

it works:

but it's not uniform at all

this rainbow is far prettier and more uniform:

TimmyD

1:48 PM

@mınxomaτ Fascinating article

mınxomaτ

Also, I never noticed that: Why does the mouse cursor jump a few pixels when you right-click on the Start button?

orlp

@AlexA. of course calvin tops that list

TimmyD

Thank-you, random upvoter on a three-month-old challenge :D

orlp

you guys want to know incredible irony?

182

A: Why is this code vulnerable to buffer overflow attacks?

On most compilers the maximum value of an unsigned short is 65535. Any value above that gets wrapped around, so 65536 becomes 0, and 65600 becomes 65. This means that long strings of the right length (e.g. 65600) will pass the check, and overflow the buffer. Use size_t to store the result of...

this answer of mine

got 130+ upvotes

and no one had spotted the fact that the string would never be null-terminated, and always would cause a buffer overflow

Mitch Schwartz

2:30 PM

@Lembik ello ello

Doorknob

@Lembik depends on what you mean by "art contest." Some people only use the term for challenges that are definitely off-topic ("draw a juicy avocado [popularity-contest]"), which, of course, we don't want. Popcons that involve graphical output and that have "looks pretty" as a voting criterion can have a place on the site—if they hold up to our other quality standards (e.g. "looks pretty" cannot be the only voting criterion, etc.).

orlp

this channel is fascinating: youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA

Adnan

2:49 PM

Has anyone seen this?

Looks very amazing in my opinion

mınxomaτ

Not a codegolf solution, but I have been playing with a "visual" solver the past few days. You can access the jsfiddle here: jsfiddle.net/V92Gn/3899 It attempts to find solutions via random mutations. It won't stop if it finds the "correct" answer, but it can get to many of the correct solutions much quicker than those answers below. — styletron 19 mins ago

Adnan

Thank you :p

mınxomaτ

@Adnan Links get oneboxed autoamagically.

Adnan

I didn't know that also applied for comments

FlagAsSpam

I found my future brother (on the rightmost section):

mınxomaτ

2:55 PM

xkcd also oneboxes autom.

Adnan

lol, the chat is full of surprises

FlagAsSpam

Guys, I found a summary of winterbash in xkcd.

At least, for me. c:

Adnan

Hahaha

Lembik

@MitchSchwartz hello!

Mitch Schwartz

@Lembik i think we've been over hello already :)

Lembik

3:00 PM

@MitchSchwartz :) Good to see you here (virtually)

@MitchSchwartz so... n/2 by n circulant matrices..a slight mystery it seems :)

I realise my new challenge is closer to the one you gave a lovely answer for than I had hoped. Nonetheless, the results can still go to OEIS :)

orlp

oh boy

everyone, go to your golf directory and post the results of ls here

Zach Gates

@FlagAsSpam genius

orlp

grc

@FlagAsSpam aw, I should've changed my avatar for winter bash

Mitch Schwartz

@Lembik writing a brute forcer for speed in a fast language with a bit of pruning and symmetry doesn't interest me atm

Lembik

3:13 PM

@MitchSchwartz right.. much more exciting would to try to find a pattern which says when an n/2 by n solution exists

@MitchSchwartz it's the sort of thing one might hope one could write to code to detect

@MitchSchwartz do you know how to iterate over lyndon words?

maybe that could be a code-golf challenge

Mitch Schwartz

didn't peter taylor have a post that did that? i seem to remember seeing that. i haven't worked with them

Lembik

@MitchSchwartz I think he had something in java

Mitch Schwartz

a post to one of your challenges, i thnk

Zach Gates

Still no additional answers to Euclidean Vectors after the bounty. That's so surprising

Lembik

:(

Zach Gates

3:18 PM

^

trichoplax

@El'endiaStarman Nice :) I can't change the birth and death probabilities though

undergroundmonorail

I wanted to comment on an answer on another SE site so I made an account there. I then re-read the answer and realized my comment didn't really apply.

100 network rep for free lmao

trichoplax

@undergroundmonorail There are tens of thousands just waiting to be claimed if you keep signing up to more...

3:34 PM

What is .ps1?

PowerShell

PowerShell

ohh

Thanks

Rainbolt

Whoah. Since when are there little pencils next to edited messages?

undergroundmonorail

3:35 PM

since like

as long as i can remember

Rainbolt

I guess I just never noticed them

undergroundmonorail

It's kind of subtle, especially since the message updates before the icon shows up

so you can easily look away before it happens

Optimizer

@Rainbolt o.O ಠ_ಠ

Rainbolt

@Optimizer Why do you have four eyes?

Optimizer

2 were not enough in this case of ignorance

Rainbolt

3:40 PM

I am ashamed :(

ETHproductions

@AlexA. Oh, haha. GitHub's online editor doesn't want me to side one way or the other :P

undergroundmonorail

@El'endiaStarman Apparently the newest dev builds of Dolphin can communicate via named pipes, so you can have a program that reads the game's memory and responds with controller inputs... it's theoretically possible, just obviously really really difficult ;P

Luis Mendo

@MartinBüttner Thanks for the edit! I think it got caught with the one I was doing at more or less the same time

ETHproductions

Ooh, I'd gain ~720 rep with the question upvote rep increase

...aaaaaaand of course Calvin's would gain 3x more than anyone else :P

trichoplax

rightly so!

Dennis

3:46 PM

I think this is both too broad and too unrelated to programming. With GIMP, I made this image (exactly 1024 bytes) without any programming at all. Furthermore, there's no objective validity criterion. — Dennis ♦ 2 mins ago

Thoughts?

ETHproductions

I had written (most of) a challenge about the rep increase, but never posted it in the Sandbox

Perhaps I'll do that today

trichoplax

@Dennis I'd hope that later answers with more programming in would have tailored approaches that are more competitive than that approach, but i don't have any paperwork to back that up...

I don't see it as any worse in that respect than any other kolmorogov challenge, except this one is a pop con so subjective

New Main Posts

0

Q: Format the reputation

You probably do know that the different reputation levels on Stack Exchange are formatted differently when seen from the questions page / a post. For example: if a user has 1 to 999 (one to three digits) rep, it's left as-is. if a user has 1000 to 9999 rep (four digits), it receives the comma a...

code-golf

Dennis

@trichoplax If it had some metric to judge the resemblance of a submitted image, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Personally, I think it should be closed in its current state.

TimmyD

@Dennis I think it's an OK challenge. It's easily narrower than Calvin's fractal-walls challenge that everyone thought was great.

cat

3:54 PM

So close to being a programming language, but not there yet :(

TimmyD

It just seems there's a certain subset of users around here that see popularity-contest and are immediately itching to press the Close button.

trichoplax

I think it's important to hover over the close button every time you see a popularity contest, because it's one of the easiest challenge types to get wrong. I don't think every one should be closed though. I see this one as similar to tweet image compression but with a fixed input to allow more specific tailored tricks.

Dennis

@TimmyD everyone thought was great does not mean on topic. The vast majority seemed to like code trolling as well.

@TimmyD Consider me one of them. ;) If it wasn't for the occasional gem (maybe 1 out of 50), I'd propose declaring them off topic altogether.

trichoplax

@Dennis Just thinking aloud: With a standard kolmorogov complexity challenge, if someone doesn't use programming but just answers with print('required text'), I'd expect it to be treated as showing no effort, rather than being used as evidence of a poor question. If all the answers are like that, I'd blame the question, but if there are other, more competitive answers that require programming skill then I'd say the poor quality answers were the only problem. Do you think that applies here?

I think we need to address "subjective winning criterion" and "does not require programming" as two separate concerns.

TimmyD

@Dennis 42 upvotes, 0 downvotes, 7 favorites ... sure seems on-topic

Dennis

4:05 PM

I don't think you should ever blame an answerer for using the most competitive approach. If a simple print statement is all that takes to win the challenge, the problem lies within the challenge, no the answer. And the OP allowed it explicitly:

@NathanMerril that's absolutely fine - it's more or less the point of the challenge. Off the shelf compression algorithms are permitted, though I think ones customized to the source material will do better in the end. — Nathaniel 2 hours ago

trichoplax

@Dennis Yes I definitely agree that if the simplest approach turns out to be the most competitive then the question should be closed.

Mitch Schwartz

it could vary by language

Dennis

@TimmyD Popularity has nothing to do with on topic. Most creative way to display 42 has 387 upvotes, yet we recently locked it for being a bad fit for the site.

trichoplax

I guess this hinges on whether the intuitive feeling that a customised approach will beat off the shelf generic compression is justified

TimmyD

@Dennis Interesting. I guess I disagree with the locking of that challenge, too.

Dennis

4:12 PM

@TimmyD Do you also disagree with banning code trolling? Because that was just as popular.

281

Q: I need a program where the user inputs an array of doubles and the program outputs the array sorted

Note: This question was severely edited since I first posted it here. The rules were moved to here, read them before posting any answer to understand the purpose of this. This was the first question created in the code-trolling category. Imagine a lazy user on Stack Overflow asks this question: ...

code-challenge popularity-contest code-trolling

With 139,214 views, I think this was the most popular challenge on PPCG ever.

trichoplax

Although I gave encode-images-into-tweets as an example of a similar popularity contest, it's actually not a popularity contest, but "the winner will be judged by me"

TimmyD

@Dennis I wasn't here for that portion of history, so I don't feel I have the context one way or the other. However, it seems day-by-day that we should drop the "PP" off our name and just make every challenge code-golf.

trichoplax

I'm not comfortable with that "judged by me" winning criterion, but I still think the answers are amazing and definitely show programming skill and ingenuity

Dennis

@TimmyD I have an outstanding proposal to drop the PP, but I don't think the site should be entirely about code golf. There are great challenges that aren't code golf: king of the hill, cops and robbers, fastest code, general code challenges and, yes, a few popularity contests.

@trichoplax Yes, that challenge actually requires programming skills. It would have been insta-closed if posted today though.

Mitch Schwartz

+1 on dropping PP, i was never on board with that

trichoplax

4:25 PM

Even though we're not just about CG, the PP doesn't seem to cover any of the things we are about either. I'd be happy to see it go.

Dennis

Yes, that.

Jan 6 at 5:25, by Dennis

IMHO there's no bigger slap in the face than posting a programming puzzle on a site called Programming Puzzles, just to get it closed for being off topic.

Rainbolt

This one encompasses all of the things are about, and none of the things that we aren't (IMO):

5

A: Should we change our name?

Programming Challenges For the folks who feel that Puzzles are really just a subset of Challenges, and prefer the simplicity of just the one term that encompasses both.

I'm only a little biased

trichoplax

@Dennis I'm interested in why the tweet compression challenge would be closed today. Do you mean because of the author being the judge, or even if it was a pop con?

@Rainbolt I would upvote, but I'm afraid I already did...

Dennis

@trichoplax I mean because of the winning criterion the author chose, which is not at all objective.

Rainbolt

Oh wow... I posted that meta question. I just realized that

TimmyD

4:27 PM

I'm a fan of Code Sport(s) and cast my vote appropriately.

Mitch Schwartz

@Rainbolt that's how i would describe the type of problems the site is about, but i don't think that's a good name, it's not as catchy and mismatches with the url

Rainbolt

I was going through the answers and I was like "Wow, I wrote a ton of these"

Doorknob

tl;dr for the context of the current discussion?

TimmyD

12

Q: Paint the Mona Lisa in 1 KiB of code

Here is a picture of da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Click here for a larger version. Your task is to reproduce the Mona Lisa in 1024 bytes or less. You will write a program that takes no input and loads no files, and outputs an image file. The rendering section of your program will be no larger than 10...

popularity-contest graphical-output

Rainbolt

Talking about renaming the site @Doorknob

Dennis

4:28 PM

@Doorknob Short term, should ^^ be closed?

ETHproductions

Did anyone else just notice the sidebar got 80px bigger?

Dennis

157

Q: We're standardizing the sidebar width at 300px on all sites

Stack Exchange sites are ad-supported. We run relevant, unintrusive ads that don't get in your way--but they help us keep the lights on. Even sites that don't have paid external ads usually have a few internal ones, used to promote other sites on the network and whatever else each community feels...

discussion featured advertising feedback sidebar

TimmyD

157

Q: We're standardizing the sidebar width at 300px on all sites

Stack Exchange sites are ad-supported. We run relevant, unintrusive ads that don't get in your way--but they help us keep the lights on. Even sites that don't have paid external ads usually have a few internal ones, used to promote other sites on the network and whatever else each community feels...

discussion featured advertising feedback sidebar

Doorknob

@Dennis pre-ninja'd

TimmyD

Ninja'd

ETHproductions

4:29 PM

Yeah, I've seen that

Doorknob

@TimmyD ninja'd-ninja'd

trichoplax

@ETHproductions Do you mean here in chat? It should only affect main and meta

ETHproductions

@trichoplax no, on main and meta

zyabin101

@Doorknob Ninja'd-Ninja'd-Ninja'd

Dennis

hits refresh Oh god, that's ugly!

ETHproductions

4:29 PM

I didn't realize 1) they hadn't done it yet, and 2) they were doing it so soon

The server went down for a few seconds two, which is why I noticed in the first place...

trichoplax

@ETHproductions Ooh! Now I can see more of the HNQ list in the same vertical space :)

Doorknob

@Dennis probably just one of those "ahhh change is bad" things. Was a bit off-putting to me at first, but I'll probably get used to it soon :P

Dennis

And if I don't, there's always user scripts.

Rainbolt

Still looks just as bad as it did before on a 1920 by 1080 monitor: i.imgur.com/VHBRDOV.png

Dennis

I do think the change should come with more slots for featured stuff though.

zyabin101

4:31 PM

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH. I like this new sidebar width.

trichoplax

@Rainbolt <ctrl>+?

zyabin101

@trichoplax Does nothing.

Digital Trauma

Damn rep-cap

Rainbolt

@trichoplax Are you suggesting I ctrl + or asking if I ctrl +'d when I took the picture?

Digital Trauma

I suppose its a nice problem to have though

trichoplax

4:33 PM

@Rainbolt I'm wondering whether zooming in would help

TimmyD

@Rainbolt Maybe ctrl-questionmark is the keystroke combination

zyabin101

@TimmyD Does nothing.

Rainbolt

@trichoplax I would lose vertical space, and gain some readability I guess. More than 110% and I think I actually lose readability

trichoplax

Ah. OK

TimmyD

I run at 125% ... 1080p on a 14" screen is tiny

Rainbolt

4:35 PM

I do wish that the sidebar would double up for monitors that can handle it

I currently have to scroll down to see the HNQ, when nearly a third of my screen is white space.

Optimizer

the term is "responsive"

quartata

12

Q: Paint the Mona Lisa in 1 KiB of code

Here is a picture of da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Click here for a larger version. Your task is to reproduce the Mona Lisa in 1024 bytes or less. You will write a program that takes no input and loads no files, and outputs an image file. The rendering section of your program will be no larger than 10...

popularity-contest graphical-output

ETHproductions

@Rainbolt What would be a better arrangement for your screen?

quartata

>told him it was too broad

>didn't listen

trichoplax

If resolutions get much higher, it'll make more sense to view the site in portrait instead of landscape

Optimizer

4:36 PM

>missed a space too

quartata

@Dennis Yes absolutely

@Optimizer >mfw doesn't know what greentext is

trichoplax

@quartata Is there a way of improving it?

Rainbolt

@ETHproductions Doubling up the sidebar (see two messages higher than the one you responded to)

Optimizer

mfw?

quartata

@trichoplax Yes:

Rainbolt

4:37 PM

Maybe a left and a right sidebar, both 300 wide

mainbar 728 wide

quartata

10

A: Would "render the Mona Lisa in 1000 bytes" be on topic here?

Yes But I think popularity-contest might not be ideal. How I would do it is choose some specific image of the Mona Lisa that everyone has to aim for, then give each submission a score based on how different it is from this image. This score could be the number of pixels that are the exact corr...

Rainbolt

totals 1328 wide. That leaves 450 for margins

quartata

-5

A: Would "render the Mona Lisa in 1000 bytes" be on topic here?

No. A spec that simply said "recreate the Mona Lisa in 1000 bytes" would be far too broad and vague, even for a popularity-contest. Without an objective criteria for what makes an image resemble the Mona Lisa, golfers have no real goal to shoot for (aside from just simply displaying a photograph...

Why did this get 8 downvotes overnight

That seems... strange

Especially considering now all of a sudden everyone agrees with closing it

trichoplax

There's currently only 3 people voting to close it, and the number waiting to vote to reopen is unknown, so I don't see it as conclusive yet

Dennis

Three close votes is hardly everyone...

Doorknob

4:40 PM

FTR it has my theoretical close vote as well

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Number Guesser code-golf mathematics ? While clicking around SO, I found this question over on Math and it got me thinking.... This isn't complete yet, just wanted to get something "on paper" as a start. Let the prime factorization of a number, P, be represented as P = 2a x 3b x 4c x ..., then...

quartata

@Dennis Three + you + Doorknob + the people who downvoted his suggestion on the meta post (assuming no overlap)

He completely ignored everything Calvin said and only had it in the sandbox for a day

I still find it really strange that got so many downvotes since yesterday it was at -1

Did he include a link to the meta post in the question or something?

Dennis

@quartata One issue with your answer is even for a popularity-contest. It is too broad because it is a popularity contest.

quartata

@Dennis You mean the "Just because" part?

I say that because I'm trying to dispel the notion that popularity contest = any problem you want

Voters need to know what to vote for.

Dennis

@quartata No, I mean would be far too broad and vague, even for a popularity-contest.

quartata

4:44 PM

Right...

Oh I see what you mean.

Mind you, I posted this answer before he clarified exactly what it would be

I'll try to see if I can make it a little more specific to this question

trichoplax

The sandbox post got 3 upvotes, 1 downvote

quartata

Not enough feedback, at any rate.

Beta Decay

@Doorknob Huh, what time capsule?

quartata

For a challenge so controversial it needed a meta post it should not have been in the sandbox for such a small period of time.

RikerW

@BetaDecay docs.google.com/forms/d/…

quintopia

4:48 PM

I don't know why he doesn't just make it a code-challenge with the score being the sum of squared pixel differences with some reference image

RikerW

@BetaDecay A time capsule with one char per person, you put it in and next year we make a program out of them.

Beta Decay

@RikerW Oh, yeah I remember that

RikerW

Good.

Doorknob

@BetaDecay did you not submit a character for it?

Beta Decay

I did, yeah

Doorknob

4:49 PM

alright

Beta Decay

I just forgot :P

RikerW

So you have a faulty memory...

Maybe it is decaying?

zyabin101

@RikerW It's beta-decaying. Kappa

Doorknob

quartata

@quintopia That would work too

But then it would be a little boring

This however has too many possible answers

Most of which will be either compression or weird circle art things

Rainbolt

4:50 PM

This isn't perfect, but here's my first attempt at using some of that whitespace:

trichoplax

@quartata Agreed. If I'd seen the comment mentioning going ahead and posting I'd have advised against it. It's done now though...

Optimizer

@Rainbolt you are right. this is nowhere near perfect. that related tags useless column

Rainbolt

I assumed that any content that was there should still be there after I reorganized the page

Optimizer

let me put in a revolutionary thought.. "4 columns"

Rainbolt

Only the HNQ is really tall enough to fill a column on it's own

TimmyD

4:54 PM

@Optimizer Heresy.

Rainbolt

Well... and the questions list

trichoplax

@quartata Most challenges have uninteresting answers lower down - that's what makes the voting system useful...

Rainbolt

Maybe we should just add more stuff. The not-so-hot network questions list, the list of dejected tags you used to care about but don't anymore, etc.

Optimizer

and a couple of kitten vines too

Rainbolt

In all seriousness though... does anyone think that the pic I posted even remotely crowded?

Optimizer

4:57 PM

no

quintopia

@quartata 1kb is much smaller than any modern compression algorithms can reasonably encode a relatively large image in. I think it could be very interesting.

Dennis

@BetaDecay What happened to @BadCatEye?

Optimizer

I would reduce the height of each question to take more horizontal space

quartata

@quintopia Dennis made one in GIMP.

Look at the comments section.

Dennis

I think this is both too broad and too unrelated to programming. With GIMP, I made this image (exactly 1024 bytes) without any programming at all. Furthermore, there's no objective validity criterion. — Dennis ♦ 1 hour ago

zyabin101

4:58 PM

@Dennis @BadCatEye merged with @BetaDecay. End of story.

quartata

From what I can see there is no size/resolution restriction either

That's just crazy

Optimizer

.

^ my entry to mona lisa

1 byte

quartata

Exactly.