@proudhaskeller regarding "what an interesting rule". have you seen the GIF I added after your comment? I think the shapes it settles into is even more interesting (and that it settles into shapes at all while there are still dynamics in the interior)
I've also found some other interesting ones. e.g. [23456,345]has some bands that widen, split, widen, merge, widen, split, widen, split... and this for a very irregular band shape. I think it might be interesting to study this in isolation:
Hey, not that many people will care, but... the Nethack dev team just confirmed that there will be a next version of Nethack. This is the first time they've said anything for almost 11 years (that wasn't just a minor thing about porting to a different platform or something)! :D :D :D
^ I don't think anybody in here plays Nethack, but maybe some of you do :P
I have some existing code, copied almost verbatim from a tutorial blog post.
It's a simulation of particle collisions in a box. I'd like each particle to change color in a sort of heatmap-like way: it becomes redder/warmer when it collides with another particle and cooler when it doesn't during t...
argh, people suggesting edits to question which involve golfing them, I never know what to do, and in this case there is a lot of golfable stuff in the 'golfed' code
I usually write a corresponding reject reason to inform the editor, along the lines of "Golfing improvements should be suggested in comments for the answerer to review."
It's already been 1,082 days in beta, and I'd like to see our site graduating sometime in the near future. James Khoury proposed aiming for the 1,337th day since beta started, and I like that idea, especially since it's only in 255 days.
I'd suggest increasing the voting going around so our us...
Proposed Q&A site for people who wish to influence and foster interest, in the development of new programming languages. For programming language theory enthusiasts and computer science students who wish to learn more about the subject or have their doubts elucidated.
@Martin I get that some overlap is fine, but it seems like the entire site would be overlap with 2-3 others. I'm just not sure I see the need. Then again, maybe I'm not the target audience.
Or even better, when a question gets closed, it should say "This question has been closed. You are an unfit mother. Your children will be placed in the custody of Carl's Jr."
So we should probably change the age for other sites to higher than 13. I mean, they're probably not experts (as in "expert answers") until far past then, right?
How is it that I can create secure web pages that pull data from sql and display it in a pretty table, but I can't delete this damn check box in Excel?
Real hex spells at realspellcasting.com
Their witches had cast a couple of spells for me and I got full results within 3 months from these witches spell castings.
(It was on a Magic: the Gathering question)
And this awesome English on SO: String result //Assignation to result
Assignation - noun - an appointment to meet someone in secret, typically one made by lovers.
This: Do you want your little ones to read books; and they want to read the Harry Potter Books; but you do not want them to turn into witches? Well-this is the story for you!
I read all seven books thinking Hermione was pronounced "HERR - MOYN"
Despite it being spelled out in the first book
When I read, there's like a little voice inside my head that starts up after a few pages. And that little voice was being heavily impeded by "HERR-MY-OH-KNEE"
>Hagrid laughed wisely. "Evolution is a fairytale. You don't really believe that, do you?"
"Yes, I do!" Aunt Petunia screeched.
"Well then prove it!"
Aunt Petunia could only stare at him; and her big mouth hung open dumbly. Here she thought she was so educated; and always demanded that Christians prove what they believed in; but she couldn't even prove her own religion. It was then that Harry knew who the smart one here was!
Yea, I've read it a few times. It's not a bad book, all in all. Some good moral stories (others seem questionable in a modern light) and parables. Literal interpretations make me sad, though.
Wow. Best description of Dumbledore ever:
> He was dressed respectably in sturdy, manly jeans and a red, white; and blue plaid shirt over which a few virile tresses were visible; and a pair of admirable, brown cowboy boots.
That's not nearly as distracting as seeing Ronald a Slytherin (standin for Catholic it seems) and Draco a Ravenclaw (no idea what they're supposed to be).
But a nice pic anyway. I had a half-wolf who looked just like that but basically all white.
@SohamChowdhury When I delete things, instead of actually deleting them like I commanded my computer to do, my files are automatically compressed and stored inside of a little trash can.
@Optimizer If a consensus is ever made about "How do we attract more questions", then that's basically the same as saying "We have reached a point where we can no longer improve."
@Rainbolt I disagree about that statement. attracting more questions is an open ended question, but the particular question that I linked is more about getting more so that we graduate out of beta
@Optimizer SE admins have chimed in to say that there are no strict criteria for getting out of beta, and that meeting the known numerical criteria will almost certainly not be enough.
@MartinBüttner I used gifsicle to optimize the domino gif. There are dozens of programs that can do so. The major improvement is making the frame dimensions smaller. A weak gif optimizer will see 2 adjacent pixels change and produce a frame and produce a frame that has N-2 transparent pixels and 2 new pixels. A good optimizer will actually change the frame size to 1x2 pixels with an offset.
Looks like our SE overlords are about to launch a new Stack Exchange site - Ask Patents. I've been hinted at its existence by a user who committed to the (now closed) Software Law proposal on Area 51.
Did I miss the memo or something? There's no site entry in Area51, and doubly suspicious ...
That was just curiosity. It doesn't matter to me at all. The only real difference I'd see is a new logo/layout and a couple lost privileges (as long as I can still VTC I'm fine).
Anyone remember the last weird email I got from FreeThCone@gmail.com? I just got another:
Thanks to your support, like a great phoenix, our brother has risen from the ashes of subjugation. This marks the beginning of the the era of cone v2.0! We are all so busy in our day to day lives. The cone (Th Cone) is a reminder for us to stop, slow down and/or use caution and recognize the wonders around us.
Stand tall, Cone! Stand strong...
Feedback from cone supporters:
The cone has Paul.
Paul has the cone.
Let me put it in simpler terms for you then, so you can stop using the word "hate". One is motivated by greed. The other is motivated by a fascination with nice numbers.
@Sparr When you ask and answer questions in this chat, do you include references, correct grammar, clarity, easy to Google terminology, and stuff like that?
I disagree that it's a weak fix. It's a smart use of psychology IMO. Unless you give some motivation (however meaningless in reality), there will be far fewer users volunteering their time.
Rep is something that has no actual value, and can be given away for free for all time by the network. There's no better solution if it works (and it obviously does).
I can appreciate Sparr's sentiment, I'd like to think that rep doesn't motivate me beyond it giving me sensible privileges, but it's pervasive nature makes everything feel superficial
@Rainbolt it's a fix for not getting enough or high enough quality submissions. Jeff Atwood has written at length on the subject, and it was definitely intentional.
I think it was a fix for quantity of submissions, not quality. I don't see a direct connection between quality and extrinsic motivation.
In fact, everything I can find on the Internet says that extrinsic motivation decreases quality.
This is taken out of context: when a typical person is offered extrinsic motivation, the person doesn't suddenly split into two people. On Stack Overflow, the extrinsic motivation causes the number of people involved to grow larger.
So while extrinsic motivation may negatively effect a static group of people, that doesn't apply to a non-static groups.
Another one (they get more and more creepy the more I get):
“I, a cone wait here.
Where will I be perched today?
Orange majesty.”
My view is similar to charity: While someone may be motivated to donate money to charity for selfish reasons (taxes, etc), that doesn't decrease the value of giving. It may cause you to dislike the person, but the contribution isn't really affected.
We should turn every challenge into a Jeopardy question. Instead of "The challenge is to do X in Y. Shortest answer wins." we should write "What is the shortest way to do X in Y?"
That way, we can tell everyone that we follow Stack Exchange standards in a weird roundabout way.
@Rainbolt If everyone was required to either upvote or downvote every post they saw, AND downvotes didn't cost rep, then FGITW would be a lot less prevalent, because those early "not good" posts would get a lot more downvotes.
downvotes costing rep is another part of rep motivation that really bothers me
that cost is meant to fix abusive downvoting
but it gives a disincentive to legitimate downvoting
`as taught in school` Rounds to the nearest integer; .5 cases are rounded away from zero. This matches the rules commonly taught in elementary mathematics classes.
It's already been 1,082 days in beta, and I'd like to see our site graduating sometime in the near future. James Khoury proposed aiming for the 1,337th day since beta started, and I like that idea, especially since it's only in 255 days.
I'd suggest increasing the voting going around so our us...
Looks like our SE overlords are about to launch a new Stack Exchange site - Ask Patents. I've been hinted at its existence by a user who committed to the (now closed) Software Law proposal on Area 51.
Did I miss the memo or something? There's no site entry in Area51, and doubly suspicious ...
