The Whiteboard - 2013-08-08 (page 1 of 2)

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3:57 AM

@MichaelT dungeons of dredmor is tiny... snagging it on my linux steam right now, 450mb? I remember playing bigger games in 98...

user55340

@JimmyHoffa small it is... but its not shallow game.

user55340

I've recently been impressed by... rymdkapsel.com which is a 27 megabyte (thats tiny!) ios/android game.

user55340

4:33 AM

@JimmyHoffa lets see... good build as a fighter type... sword/mace/axe (pick one). Dual wielding or shield, artful dodger (gives some GTFO skill), smithing (traps and better weapons), fungal arts (utility), burgalry (xp boost - saves your lock picks (get skill level 2 on that early)), and bezerker range (anti-magic)

user55340

As a mage... staff, alchemy (make better staffs and keep the mana flowing), burglary (again, xp boost and I like it), Mathematgic (gtfo skill and money, and recursive curse is great at high levels), blood mage or ley walker (more mana, again), promethian magic (fire good!)... perception is nice (more vision = more range on spells and more lucky finds).

user55340

Could swap perception for golemancy (pets). You could go for a mix of warrior / mage - things like viking and fleshsmithing can help combat greatly. Those are just sterotypical builds. There are some skill combos that you'll find are near necessary parings. If you go for archery, you'll want tinkering for example.

5:12 AM

@MichaelT I think I chose unarmed, dual weilding, master of arms, artful dodging, perception, assassination, archaeology just at random guesses for fun. (Does dual weilding + unarmed work together or does it not treat two hands like dual wielding?)

user55340

5:54 AM

@JimmyHoffa dual wielding mechanics gives bonuses to both weapons wielded. For example, say you have 2x maces with 2 blunt damage each. Level 1 maces gives +1 blunt to a mace. Dual wielding applies it to both maces. Dual weilding also has passives that activate improving stats on hitting the opponent. I'm not sure if it triggers for unarmed.

user55340

Unarmed is typically paired with shield bearer (because you go can go dual shields without penalty) - and those are nice bonuses there. Be also on the lookout for tomes. They can give exotic weapon damage types. One tome, one shield would work nicely for an unarmed.

user55340

archeology is an xp accelerator skill tree. It does work nicely with unarmed in that all those artifact weapons you get that are near useless? Convert them into xp with 'it belongs in a museum" It also does a nice job of handling traps.

user55340

assassination is a damage bonus tree. Its quite nice. Blackjack does nice crowd control (will knock out a monster for 10 turns). Higher level ones do increased damage and bleeding.

user55340

master of arms is a defense skill. "just" nice defense.

user55340

Perception is a crafting booster (gives you lots of crafting stuff). Second site and third site are quite nice... and eye lasers... well. Need one say more?

user55340

6:03 AM

steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=119912212# is a guide that does a good job of describing skill selection theory. I don't completely agree with all parts, but its good none the less.

user55340

I do "Primary damage, secondary damage, damage boost, fuel, craft, xp, gtfo" with some skills covering multiple arears. For example, Mathmagic has teleport skills which does good gtfo, but is also a very nice damage source too.

9:04 AM

@ChrisF would you mind advising? Looks like a good question polluted by a bunch of low quality answers, can we do something about it?

11 hours ago, by gnat

121

Q: Simple method for reliably detecting code in text?

GMail has this feature where it will warn you if you try to send an email that it thinks might have an attachment. Because GMail detected the string see the attached in the email, but no actual attachment, it warns me with an OK / Cancel dialog when I click the Send button. We have a related ...

algorithms artificial-intelligence machine-learning nlp

4 hours later…

12:41 PM

there are couple answers there (some unfairly upvoted imNSho) that look like comments, no more than that...

25

A: Simple method for reliably detecting code in text?

GitHub just published their library they use to detect programming languages. Maybe that might be of help: https://github.com/blog/881-linguist Unfortunately, it seems to be in Ruby, no idea how well that integrates with .NET.

oh my "just published" what a useful answer

12

A: Simple method for reliably detecting code in text?

Pseudo code would pose a real challenge because all programming language depend on special characters like '[]', ';', '()', etc. Simply count the occurrence of these special characters. Just like you would detect a binary file (more than 5% of a sample contains byte value 0).

what?

10

A: Simple method for reliably detecting code in text?

I would do something ridiculously simple. Look at the tags on the question - C#, PHP, Ruby, whatever. Look for reserved words from that language. If you find 2 or more ask the question. BAM!

ridiculously simple? yes indeed, esp part about being ridiculous

6

A: Simple method for reliably detecting code in text?

How about just searching for common (preferably language agnostic) coding patterns? The simplest I can think of is '=' which will probably appear in any piece of sample code and less likely to appear in normal text.

oh look ma we're brainstorming here

3

A: Simple method for reliably detecting code in text?

Why bother with an algorithm? Questions without code are probably rare enough (and even when they're deliberate, the first comment is usually "show us the code") that you can just post the warning regardless.

"Why bother" -- why bother posting this as an answer instead of comment? Let me guess, for repz?

2

A: Simple method for reliably detecting code in text?

Regex for camelcase words would help also

storm in brain

1

A: Simple method for reliably detecting code in text?

A Bloom Filter may work for this. You can train it with all the existing code blocks.

storm in brain

1

A: Simple method for reliably detecting code in text?

How about reminding the new user to apply tags to their questions and then narrowing down the possible languages to detect based on the tags?

storm in brain, that's for sure. Not quite an answer I would expect to see at Programmers

-2

A: Simple method for reliably detecting code in text?

Just run the message through the relevant compilers, omitting each line which causes an error.

Just... get your downvotes

-2

A: Simple method for reliably detecting code in text?

There's no need to be 100% accurate with this, so some guessing is OK. Short lines ending in semi-colons should get you half way there. Multiple short lines should also hint at a section being code. Assignation using "=" Bracketed (True) & (False).

there's no need to address the comments that point to the issues with above, huh?

100% accurate no, but it is quite annoying if you question keeps getting formatted like code when its not. — Trufa Jun 28 '11 at 15:24

-3

A: Simple method for reliably detecting code in text?

The fundamental issue in this is the insistence on using Markdown. Using BBCode instead would be much easier for everyone, especially the users of SO. For all intents, no other site has ever used Markdown (I don't mean this literally, but I've never seen one that does and everyone is familiar w...

"Using BBCode instead would be much easier for everyone" oh that's for sure

1:06 PM

overall, it looks like question deserves better care, like "sufficient explanation notice". Protection notice wouldn't hurt either I think

user41796

1:42 PM

@gnat I'm skimming over that Q today. Looks like a combination of down votes and flags are the likely best option

user41796

Given the OP and the number of answers and CW status, I think that will continue to attract less than stellar additional contributions. But I'll reserve final judgement until after I work all the way through.

2:00 PM

@gnat Bravo, grade A rant, I laughed, I cried, I peed a little

user55340

@GlenH7 And given CW one can cast downvotes on answers with no associated guilt (not that there should be).

user55340

0

A: close reason (and associated expand the close reason count) request

I think having a "Stack Overflow question" off-topic reason is a good idea. Here are the off-topic reasons that exist now or have existed, along with the number of votes or flags that chose them since site-specific off-topic reasons were introduced: 776 [CURRENTLY ACTIVE] Questions asking us to...

user55340

Some neat graphs of our close reason usage there.

user55340

user image

2:25 PM

Woo, I'm 8th all-time on design

4th this month (User6 is horning in on my tag...grumble...)

@JimmyHoffa Out of 9?

@GlenH7 given the OP, first thing I did, I tried really hard to find issues in the question. "I closed / historically locked Atwood" that would sound cool. But, no matter how I tried, it still remained a freaking good question. No reasons to close. No reasons to hist lock. No... "scent" of old NPR questions. Ask it at Programmers today and it will fly perfectly well. amazing

2nd all-time in object-oriented-design

(dasblinkenlights just edged me out on both of those tags, jerk)

and on both tags dasblinkenlights beat me with less answers...grumble...oh well, he's the only one beating me with anywhere near as few answers as me, so my design answers are fewer but more valuable than everyone elses! yay me! nothing like a little stat analysis for an ego boost in the morning. Back to wrestling with this parser...

stupid F# not allowing mutually recursive type definitions, I don't think I understand why people harp on about F#, it's just a rich mans C#

which isn't saying much

1 hour later…

user55340

3:50 PM

meta.stackoverflow.com/help/badges/60/status-declined

2

4:17 PM

without an explanation, this answer may become useless in case if someone else posts an opposite opinion. For example, if someone posts a claim like "The idea that there is something ugly, wrong or bizarre with this style of coding is spot on", how would this answer help reader to pick of two opposing opinions? Consider editing it into a better shape — gnat 2 mins ago

why is that for purely opinionated answers, above canned comment always feel right?

author puts zero effort into their blah blah, so it takes little effort to debunk

4:48 PM

I love dupe discussions. Make good food for thought

@glenatron with all due respect, I explained my opinion without lousy car analogies, in terms of involved questions. If you could provide similarly relevant explanation why you believe these aren't dupes (preferably so that it can be [edit]ed into question without invalidating existing answers), I will happily retract my vote

@MichaelT Food for thought - lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/4200

user55340

5:17 PM

@JimmyHoffa Interesting.

user55340

Btw, how did your Dredmor go?

Was bed time, I'll give it a shot tonight after the kid goes down. Seems like they put a ton of work into the design of the game itself instead of the technology of it; I can appreciate that. Hopefully dual wielding is activated for unarmed, then I'll be happy with my overall build me thinks. Does the dodge skill still help when wearing armor?

@MichaelT It's not supposed to be interesting, it was supposed to be annoying, did you actually read it? Ugh, you're taking all the fun out of this...

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Nah... I read the first line and saw in big blue "Monads Might not Matter." and said thats enough, I agree.

user55340

To me (and I believe this is where the post misses the point) is that a given pattern (hate that word) is best in situations were you don't need to think about it being a pattern - it seamlessly fits in. Integer.valueOf() in java is a factory and flyweight... but you don't need to know it.

user55340

Here, you've got a monad and his preconception of monads are wrong and keeps picturing them to be cumbersome academic things. When the monad fits, and is done in a place were its right, it is just right and the pattern behind it really doesn't matter.

user55340

5:33 PM

> ... I don't see or care about whatever monads are involved. Am I still missing the point?

user55340

Yes, that is the point. It just happens that that particular approach fit in elegantly there so it had no sharp edges for a programmer to grumble (too much - we always grumble about something) about like the clunkyness of some other library.

@MichaelT Yeah, though there is merit in his initial thought: Should we think about sticking with the actor model instead in industry due to the barrier being so much lower while the benefits being still quite good and allowing similar abstractions to monads? Then leave the implementations of monads to language designers, because I have a hard time imagining anyone on my team maintaining any of the monads I've written; even though they're easy to use

user55340

The difficulty comes with some "pattern disciples" (be it monads or GoF) say I'm going to use XYZ pattern and make a note of it and force it into that solution because pattern XYZ is the best thing ever.

user55340

Monads scare people more than AbstractFactoryBuilderParserInterfaceDecorator for some reason.

The thing about monads that I've seen is, they make really complex things easy to use by presenting a compositional API that is very easy to use, but they are very complex to implement themselves so while the users of a monad can be considerably lower level, the maintainer of any monad will need to be able to think at a significantly higher level of abstraction

but yeah; perhaps the complexity of the implementation when it's as rigidly bounded as a monad doesn't matter so much because they're extremely unlikely to leak

user55340

5:38 PM

And so, if its easy to use, and not rough around the edges... use it. If you want to learn how to make something like it... you may need to learn some higher level concepts from other paradigms of programming (like monads). As FP is often a very high level concept realm, thats were most of these are often stolen from.

perhaps then the only concern is does it make sense to use one for your given task or not

@MichaelT I think it's because they conjure up mental images of the mohawk indians... Yeah, that's probably it.

user55340

Btw, did you glance at that guide for skill selection in Dredmor?

Nah, I'll dig up in the log to poke at it. This morning is flying; that's what I get for dealing in a monad all morning, it's almost lunch time already

7

A: "What reasons do questions get closed for here?" should be in the help center under the "Asking" heading

Great idea! Except for most of what you said! This should go on the "What types of questions should I avoid asking?" page, I don't want a new page added to the help center

@YannisRizos @WorldEngineer -----^

...If either of you could when you get around to it...

user55340

Btw, big haskell question just asked...

user55340

0

Q: Memory Efficeny in Haskell. Which is the better approach? Some memory questions

Wer are implementing a matrix compression libary which is based on a modified two dimensional grammar syntax. Now we have two approaches for our data types and which one will be better in case of memory usage (we want to compress something ;)). Basically the grammers contain NonTerminals with ex...

functional-programming haskell memory grammar

5:43 PM

So my AST is done including the whole contract + consed request URI segments and path parameters, now just need to figure out how to work out the ? / & / " delimiters which have different meanings in the querystring part of the AST and I think I'll be done...

@MichaelT This guy needs the help of someone who knows what they're doing, not just someone who pretends to; Sad fact of Programmers: That question has far more likelihood of getting a good response on SO. Petr Pudlak, jozefg, or maybe Matt Fenwick might be able to answer it here, but I'm not certain how much any of them know about the underpinning memory behaviours of GHC. I have ideas about how it will behave but I definitely don't know

user55340

We tend to be more the generalizing specalist than the specalist in a technology... and they need a specalist?

user55340

codinghorror.com/blog/2006/10/…

user55340

agilemodeling.com/essays/generalizingSpecialists.htm

I really want this

codinghorror.typepad.com/.a/…

user55340

catb.org/jargon/html/L/language-lawyer.html

user55340

5:51 PM

> A language lawyer is distinguished by the ability to show you the five sentences scattered through a 200-plus-page manual that together imply the answer to your question “if only you had thought to look there”

omg I worked with one of those!

user55340

Or in the Mythical Man Month surgical team model for teams... rectanglicle.com/2010/01/…

He would pull up MSDN articles out of nowhere and act like I was an idiot for not having known that one MSDN article of the thousands out there

user55340

> The Language Lawyer is a very specialized consultant-type who is responsible for using his deep understanding of the technologies being used in order to maximize the efficiency of the operation.

I hated that guy

user55340

5:53 PM

(a bit more on that team model at dfpug.de/loseblattsammlung/online/workshop/design_patterns/… )

Though I think he may have just been a genuine dick first and language lawyer second

user55340

> The language lawyer, which can serve several surgeons, I a widely consulted specialist who delights in the mastery of the intricacies of the programming languages and the operating systems upon which the software must perform.

user55340

user image

user55340

(there is semi-serious talk of getting a curling contest going in the winter here...)

user55340

Curling is a sport in which players slide stones across a sheet of ice towards a target area which is segmented into four rings. It is related to bowls, boule and shuffleboard. Two teams, each of four players, take turns sliding heavy, polished granite stones, also called "rocks", across the ice curling sheet towards the house, a circular target marked on the ice. Each team has eight stones. The purpose is to accumulate the highest score for a game; points are scored for the stones resting closest to the centre of the house at the conclusion of each end, which is completed when both te...

user41796

6:03 PM

Can I get some community support on getting a question reopened?

user41796

1

Q: When comparing floats, do you call the threshold of difference delta or epsilon?

I'm comparing floats in Java right now and the simplest formula is: Math.abs(a - b) < THRESHOLD When naming your variable for the threshold of difference, do you name it delta or epsilon, and why? Specifically, what relation does each letter have to a threshold for comparison of floating-point...

user41796

it's answerable by an external reference and shouldn't be closed as primarily opinion based.

user55340

> When naming your variable for the threshold of difference, do you name it delta or epsilon, and why?

user55340

@GlenH7 It could do with a bit more editing to remove the polling... and possibly some mod banners on it/cleanup to remove the opinions from the edited question that would nolonger be applicable.

user41796

good point. I'll do that next after I finish up my answer which I can't submit yet. <sigh>

user41796

6:17 PM

and .... done with editing it. Too bad I can't see it in the review queue. :-)

user55340

Much better.

@GlenH7 I took a look and... I hesitate to vote reopen prior to seeing the answer. Did you consider posting question on meta that would include a tentative answer? I ask because hat worked for me once, whole thing went very smoothly

1

A: What is “not constructive”?

update question has been edited and reopened and proposed "draft" has been posted as an answer there: java Terminator Hasta la vista Baby! Prior answer revision is removed since it no longer applies, it is available in answer history: Revision 8 If the question would be reopened, I'd pr...

user41796

Thanks. My first reaction on that question was to close, but I thought about it and realized it was definitely answerable

meta is a great place for posting tentative answers to closed questions :)

to make them reopen

user55340

Yep. As a side note... on a meta level for that question... I like that there is a new name in the close list.

6:22 PM

of course if the answer looks compelling

user41796

Abridged version of my answer - I reference float.h; Wikipedia on machine epsilon; wikibook on machine epsilon; and a UIC on-line course referencing epsilon. I couldn't find a free reference to IEEE 754 which specs machine epsilon

@GlenH7 okay, works for me

cast reopen

user41796

and for bonus points, I reference an article by a Valve software guy who says why the simplest algo is a bad idea

user55340

Could grab the SO tag - stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/epsilon

user41796

thanks

user55340

6:23 PM

Actually, need two tags to get the right intersection - stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/…

user41796

I know I could flag it for mod review too, but I've already raised a boodle of flags with Atwood's algo question

@GlenH7 by the way do you know what to to if it gets stuck at review? flag for mod attention and refer to that very chat discussion we have, starting with your first message: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/10701606#10701606

user55340

I've only got two active flags at the moment....

user41796

@gnat yep, and will do. Was wanting to let the community a shot first. Reopen votes don't hit the queue often enough. :-)

user41796

gotta get our badges!

user55340

6:25 PM

Any 10k user (who looks) will also see its at the top of the list of reopen votes.

user41796

@MichaelT and I'm stealing that for additional justification. ;-)

user55340

@GlenH7 And it gives you three good questions on it too to refrence.

user41796

is that a double or triple bonus then? :-)

user55340

(C# might even have double.Epsilon)

I forgot to request a downvote for crappy answer "in exchange" for reopen vote. Not enough experience in bribery :)

-1

A: When comparing floats, what do you call the threshold of difference?

I would call it "tolerance". Maybe that is not the mathematically correct term, but the mere fact that you ask the question implies to me that neither "delta" nor "epsilon" would be a good variable name to use. In my experience, it is better to use identifier names that makes sense to those who...

-1, Better to learn conventions than avoid them. — djechlin 7 mins ago

user41796

6:28 PM

@gnat That presumes you cast the first down vote on that answer.

@GlenH7 I am out of DVs; someone else did

user41796

How do you bait an engineer? Start carelessly tossing around terms like delta, epsilon, precision, resolution, and tolerance.

guess that was author of comment I quoted

user41796

@gnat I put the first on there, and it has 3 DV now

user41796

Wading through the Atwood algorithm question reminds me of just how hard a job the mods have. There's a lot of poor comments on the verge of crap, but they're just constructive enough that I feel compelled to let them be.

6:32 PM

@gnat It only worked because no one cares about JaveMe... ;)

@GlenH7 Quality reference seeking, got my reopen

user55340

ssh... a mod. Don't let him see the history.

user55340

Oh, Hi there @WorldEngineer.

@MichaelT it does

user41796

@MichaelT but now he can cast the 5th vote and agonize over whether it was binding or not

user20683

@MichaelT yes?

user20683

6:37 PM

Holy Flagpocalypse

@JimmyHoffa it only worked because of Jon Lord

Haha, this answer is awesome. Not only does it have Jon Lord, it actually comes damn close to what I would have hoped to get. — Konrad Rudolph Jul 19 '12 at 6:54

user55340

Just trying to make more work for you and being glad we're not mods.

user41796

and shameless self-promotion:

user41796

0

A: When comparing floats, what do you call the threshold of difference?

You want to use the term epsilon. Looking in my local copy of float.h I see: #define DBL_EPSILON 2.2204460492503131e-016 /* smallest such that 1.0+DBL_EPSILON != 1.0 */ #define FLT_EPSILON 1.192092896e-07F /* smallest such that 1.0+FLT_EPSILON != 1.0 */ #define LDBL_EPSILON ...

user55340

6:38 PM

@WorldEngineer Pics or it didn't happen.

user41796

@WorldEngineer you should have seen the queue earlier. Working over Atwood's algo question brought up a bunch.

user20683

@MichaelT It didn't happen.

user55340

@WorldEngineer Thats only a valid answer for chat flags.

user20683

"concurrency exception"

user55340

failed expectation exception

user41796

6:50 PM

random Q - the serial down voting detection is to detect DV'ing against a particular user, right? So if I DV a bunch of separate (and crappy) answers on the same Q then I shouldn't hit the DV detection, right?

user55340

Correct. Downvoting every answer in a question is not serial downvoting.

user20683

@GlenH7 you have to target a single user

user41796

I didn't DV every answer.... but I hit many of them. :-)

user20683

and it's automatic

user55340

The only time you might have trouble with this is if the same someone posted a bunch of crappy answers to the same question... This is the problem with meta.polls.

6:51 PM

This is making my head hurt... I've not looked at any of the documentation linked from it yet to find out any explanation of why or how this is as Jeff claims, but his claim seems so totally preposterous to me, it's baffling. codinghorror.com/blog/2009/06/…

user41796

So that's why my rampage against Hoffa didn't stick... :-)

@GlenH7 You're just jealous because you had to study a lot and try real hard to become a real engineer, when we fake engineers just listlessly coast by on a floatilla of empty dreams

user41796

and green is normally a color I wear well

user20683

or you DV a bunch of answers by the same person that all happen to be crappy

user41796

@JimmyHoffa what claim does he make in there? I just saw that as him skimming over the Monty Hall problem

6:57 PM

@GlenH7 I just mean that; it's a new one to me

user55340

Monty Hall problem

The Monty Hall problem is a probability puzzle, loosely based on the American television game show Let's Make a Deal and named after the show's original host, Monty Hall. The problem was originally posed in a letter by Steve Selvin to the American Statistician in 1975 , . It became famous in the following form, as a question from a reader's letter quoted in Marilyn vos Savant's "Ask Marilyn" column in Parade magazine in 1990 : Vos Savant's response was that the contestant should switch to the other door. The argument depends on the assumptions, made explicit in more extended solution ...

user41796

oh, it's well worth reading into then. Atwood doesn't really do it justice.

that your chances aren't 50/50 is against everything (not a lot) that I understand about probability

user41796

read into it then; I can't do the statistics justice.

user41796

Marilyn's oh-so-warm personality probably didn't help with the reception her answer received

6:59 PM

I will; just saying at a first glance, that is... well, would any of you, if not aware of it already have thought for a split second that it could be anything but 50/50?

@JimmyHoffa remember we spoke yesterday that link-only answers are less likely recently? Nope, here's the whole lotta crap, at least 3 answer are. And even accompanied with supportive comments comments and upvotes

user41796

that's what makes that one so interesting. My initial take was it's a 50/50 case

You should mention its free (GPL) as that could encourage more people to try it. @gnat: Honestly, for this or the Balsamiq answer I'd say they do answer the question, can't help it if providing a link to some app is the right solution. — Alok 9 mins ago

right solution yeah sure

written by the guy who didn't even bother to read the link bolded in my comment

1

A: How to document program flow so the outcome looks professional?

You can try one of many applications for creating mockups/wireframes (example: http://mashable.com/2012/06/07/mockup-tools/) Some of them have export to PDF (+print + sign) or to HTML (clickable links, etc)

0

A: How to document program flow so the outcome looks professional?

We are using Pencil for this. It works fine for creating simple wireframes and provides different export formats (like pdf or png)

user55340

As a programmer... the most fun thing to do is... write a Monty ~~Hall~~ Carlo simulation.

@GlenH7 Ahh, wikipedia's simple explanation makes it make sense.

7:01 PM

0

A: How to document program flow so the outcome looks professional?

I regularly use mockingbird for this. It's quite simple to use, and lets you "link" screens (or pages) easily. The downside is that even though it works well, development has pretty much stopped since both authors were hired by Stripe.

user55340

Personally, I think the Boy-Girl paradox is more fun.

user55340

Boy or Girl paradox

The Boy or Girl paradox surrounds a well-known set of questions in probability theory which are also known as The Two Child Problem, Mr. Smith's Children-->, when Martin Gardner published one of the earliest variants of the paradox in Scientific American. Titled The Two Children Problem, he phrased the paradox as follows: *Mr. Jones has two children. The older child is a girl. What is the probability that both children are girls? *Mr. Smith has two children. At least one of them is a boy. What is the probability that both children are boys? Gardner initially gave the answers 1/2 and 1/3, r...

It's thoroughly unintuitive, but I can see how it works; you don't think about time as a variable in a probability situation but it effectively is; given a discrete event you now have a choice with different probability than previously- if you don't choose again you're stuck with your original probability

what a parade. I guess until SE team doesn't give a shit, we'll get that attitude from SE visitors.

> Have to admit, I particularly enjoy suggestions like "Look at the question instead, link-only answer may indicate that question is bad. Close it, close it and leave answer alone". As if next newcomer looking at +5... +10... +20 answer will pay special attention to question being closed, as if they will think like, "oh I shouldn't answer like that, even if it can bring me 5... 10... 20 upvotes". Yeah sure that's just what they will think, give me a break.

3

A: Can we get some consensus on what flag to use for link only answers?

For this to happen, moderators and SE team need to first find out about size of the issue and come to consensus about what to do about it. Size of the issue can be estimated using SEDE query Marginal short answers with links. For example, when run with parameters: AnswerScoreMax=99, AnswerSco...

user55340

Mr. Jones has two children. The older child is a girl. What is the probability that both children are girls? ---> 1/2
Mr. Smith has two children. At least one of them is a boy. What is the probability that both children are boys? ----> 1/3

7:03 PM

@Shog9 well, whatever. You have several thousands posts telling readers loud and clear: link-only answers are welcome. And this amount will only grow, because 260 guys who upvoted that famous link-only manifesto won't make a difference - at least not until their hands are tied behind their backs. Regarding your note on comments being broken windows, I don't buy it sorry - as far as I can tell, this is only so because SE doesn't want to condense them. — gnat Jun 9 at 21:31

@MichaelT Ok, I do not even remotely understand that.

user41796

some days I think SE is in denial about the dark(er) corners of SO

user55340

First question is asked in the obvious way... the other one is in a monty hall way.

@GlenH7 ? SO's seedy underbelly? Ooo adventure-tourism, where? I wanna go there...

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Given the standard distribution of body mass on the 'standard' programmer, the underbelly can be quite large... and not that fun to visit.

user41796

7:07 PM

@JimmyHoffa I think @gnat would be a better tour guide than me. I'm just a no-rep user on SO and only run into things because of MSO or google

@MichaelT Where is this referenced?

user55340

Boy or Girl paradox

The Boy or Girl paradox surrounds a well-known set of questions in probability theory which are also known as The Two Child Problem, Mr. Smith's Children-->, when Martin Gardner published one of the earliest variants of the paradox in Scientific American. Titled The Two Children Problem, he phrased the paradox as follows: *Mr. Jones has two children. The older child is a girl. What is the probability that both children are girls? *Mr. Smith has two children. At least one of them is a boy. What is the probability that both children are boys? Gardner initially gave the answers 1/2 and 1/3, r...

user55340

Mr. Smith has two children. At least one of them is a boy. What is the probability that both children are boys? ----> 1/3

I see it now

user55340

This only rules out the girl/girl combination of children. There is still Girl/Boy, Boy/Girl and Boy/Boy. Boy/Boy is 1/3 of the possible space.

7:11 PM

That doesn't seem right at all though...

heh

user55340

Thats the joy of the paradox.

That claims the unordered set BG != the unordered set GB

for the first one order matters; ok so there's 4 possibilities, the second one order doesn't matter, why is the order still accounted for to define the possibilities?

Yeah, I'm not smart enough for this stuff

I guess it's because when you account for the discrete events; birthing, you find two chances to cause the alternation

each chance being equal likelihood as not alternating, so you get twice the possibility of an alternation than you do of homogeny

> 1. both are girls (GG) - with probability P(GG) = 0.25, 2. both are boys (BB) - with probability of P(BB) = 0.25, and 3. one of each (G.B) - with probability of P(G.B) = 0.50

that makes it click

"order doesn't matter" is the key which has an unintuitive effect I guess, that doesn't cancel choices but creates new ones by allowing the time variable to play a role, when ordering is fixed time is not variable

user55340

The @JimmyHoffa paradox - in one sentence he claims "not smart enough for this stuff", the next he uses the words "alternation" and "homogeny"

...I learned something new about probability today. Which means I now know approximately very little still.

@MichaelT I just looked it up. Alternation is a word (I wasn't sure when I used it) and I used it wrong. I'm just glad I didn't use the word hegemony instead of homogeny.

user55340

Firefox was trying to suggest "homogamy" which is something else entirely.

user55340

7:26 PM

@JimmyHoffa Reading some of the Ender series, I'd immediately recognize hegemony.

Wow, some random fellow popped in just to answer that Haskell Q right off the street or something

2

A: Haskell memory efficiency - which is the better approach?

In Haskell, the String type is an alias for [Char], which is a regular Haskell list of Char, not a vector or array. Char is a type that holds a single Unicode character. String literals are, unless you use a language extension, values of String type. I think you can guess from the above that Str...

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Those haskell ninjas...

user20683

7:42 PM

@MichaelT They aren't Ninjas, they are Samurai. The state is not hidden, it is transparent and they fight with honor.

@WorldEngineer ...I heard a documentary claiming samurai's "honor" was actually all about ensuring the different classes stayed appropriately in their class and protecting the rich nobles...

for a poor person to go somewhere nice or that the poor weren't supposed to go, would be "dishonorable" for instance.

user20683

@JimmyHoffa Typeclasses...Functional "Purity"....Monads that isolate the rabble...

@WorldEngineer Oh right, of course. Carry on then. :)

user20683

@JimmyHoffa Ruby is an oddly "un-Japanese" language

What makes it un-japanese? Lacks kanji keywords?

user20683

7:51 PM

@JimmyHoffa It lets you do whatever the hell you want

user20683

It's not terse or aesthetically pleasing

user20683

Really think Python is more Japanese and Ruby more Dutch if we want to traffic in stereotypes

user55340

@WorldEngineer It claims an elegant syntax...

user20683

@MichaelT APL is has an elegant (if cryptic) syntax

Elegant syntax: S-Expressions, non-objective MLs, Prologs
Not elegant: Everything else

much though I like other languages, you just really can't call any of the curly brace languages "elegant"

user20683

8:00 PM

@JimmyHoffa So Mercury must be made of Elegant

@WorldEngineer I suppose APL counts too, it dictates what it means as clear as anything can.. the only confusing thing isn't how it dictates things; but what it's actually dictating

@WorldEngineer I figure so. I'm not saying prolog is easy to grok because it's definitely not, but it's syntax is clear, clean, and very well communicates what it's after with minimal overhead

curly brace languages are dripping with overhead and redundancy for the sake of explicitness

user20683

@JimmyHoffa APL's utility is directly proportional to your knowledge of Functional Analysis and Linear Algebra

@WorldEngineer So in my hands, it's just a hello world machine

user55340

@JimmyHoffa With funky characters.

"APL, put the fun back in funky!"

user55340

8:03 PM

Though apparently its really boring in apl.

user55340

'Hello World!'

@ In APL, anything that is printed in quotes is printed to the terminal. (@ in APL signifies a comment)

@ If the "Hello World statement needed to be stored, then you could use the following :
h<-'Hello World'
h

@Typing h causes h's value to be printed to be printed.

type Uri =
    | Segment of string * Uri
    | PathParam of string * Uri
    | QueryParam of string * Uri
    | End

Uri as a linked list. The fun design concepts you learn from FP that occasionally come in really handy.

user20683

@MichaelT You just got a very interesting declined flag. It's also the longest possible message length.

user55340

Well... it got migrated to the second choice.

I'm only at 9 + 6 declined flags so far, woo

user55340

8:11 PM

I'm waiting to have a "please consider migration to space exploration.SE" request, or lego.SE

user55340

and I can think of some questions that might actually have that as a valid migration path.

@MichaelT You know, we could just migrate away half of WorldEngineer's rep with that...

user20683

Older than 60 days

user20683

can't be migrated by non-Devs

@WorldEngineer Oded's still around somewhere...

user55340

8:12 PM

272 helpful, 21 declined.

user20683

225/14

user20683

but I've not flagged anything in a long, long time.

user20683

Mods can't get Marshal anyway

user55340

(also 131 comments flagged... 125 helpful)

Can mods even flag?

user20683

8:15 PM

@JimmyHoffa actually...yes

user20683

which is almost certainly why we can't get that badge

I might flag a lot less when I get 10k and can vote for deletion

user20683

@JimmyHoffa That's what happened to me

user20683

that and I got Constable under the old rules

user20683

that was hard

user41796

8:17 PM

A lot of my Marshall work came from flagging stupid comments

user55340

@JimmyHoffa There are still more than enough stupid comments on not-delete questions... and sometimes you find an old question that should be locked rather than deleted...

user41796

I still don't get why "disputed" is tracked with flags though

user41796

Why do I care how many flags from the field that I've disputed?

user55340

104

Q: What is a disputed flag?

In my flagging summary under the statistics, there is 1 flag listed as being disputed with the footnote † do not affect your flag weight This is the first time I've ever seen a disputed flag in my summary, so I'm just curious, what is a disputed flag? How would you even dispute a flag? Is ...

support faq flags disputed-flags

user55340

67

A: What is a disputed flag?

A disputed flag is a flag that was issued on a post that then received an "invalid flag" flag from a 10K+ user. Both the original flag and the flag used to mark it as invalid will be listed as "disputed" in the respective user's flagging summary. Once a flag has been disputed, its state will not ...

user41796

8:22 PM

I think this hits it better:

user41796

33

A: Am I using the "Invalid Flag" flag wrongly?

It is actually the flags that you declared invalid that are disputed by the moderators, moderators cannot handle multiple flags on the same post individually. So you're getting the message that was really meant for the user flagging first, not for the user disputing the flag. This aspect of flag...

user41796

still screwy IMO

user55340

Yep.

user41796

and it's not clear to me if I'm helping the mods by disputing a from-the-field flag or if I'm creating more work for them.

user41796

When I dispute a flag, I always fear that I'm one tequila fueled step away from a retaliatory 3 year suspension.

user20683

8:26 PM

@GlenH7 we can't suspend that long anymore

user55340

@GlenH7 See, if I ever became a mod (no, not applying)... you'd know it would never be tequila fueled....

user41796

@WorldEngineer And I take note that you did not attempt to dispel my fears

user55340

Gin. Plain and simple.

user20683

@GlenH7 I'm not the one who drinks tequila...I do Ports and Stouts.

user20683

And Whiskey Cremes

user41796

8:28 PM

@MichaelT Perhaps that should be a mandatory question in the next election - what alcohol will fuel your mod rampages if elected?

2

user20683

and sometimes Gin and other whatnots

I stopped caring for gin when I learned the magic of good whiskey. Bad gin is ok, bad whiskey is horrible, but learning to enjoy good whiskey... who needs silly gin

user41796

And then we'll need to get the other mods to lay out their current vices and then make sure we've got a good spread across all the options

user55340

@JimmyHoffa Simple answer - maxilyrics.com/…

user41796

dirty secret that's not secret anymore - I know folk rave about Bombay Sapphire, but it's only so-so to me

user55340

8:30 PM

@GlenH7 gins have quite a range of flavor to them.

@MichaelT Grog with a good rum is actually quite good

user55340

Though I'm still more the cider fan.

user55340

I'll have one whiskey, one porter, one rye
And bring me some cider I'll give that a try
Bring me two rums, one buttered one cold
And bring me a scotch at least 7 years old

user41796

@MichaelT haven't found my fave then. Beefeater was decent, but I wasn't in the best state at the time to assess its taste

user55340

There was an apricot brandy and gin drink that I quite liked.

8:48 PM

@MichaelT 1708:30 more (much more) than half through your script. At both sides ;)

user20683

@JimmyHoffa Good news, there is an entire shelf of Sam Smith at the store two blocks from me (that's right, I'm two blocks from beer)

user41796

@WorldEngineer that's a perilously long distance

user20683

@GlenH7 well there's a pizza place that's a block closer that serves them

user20683

or the oatmeal anyway

user41796

ok, so you've got a Plan B in place. This is good.

user20683

8:55 PM

but they are like $7 vs $4

user20683

and I can't take it off the premises

user41796

At least they'll feed you too

user55340

Cray is 2.3 miles from the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company...

user20683

@GlenH7 I actually hate their pizza

user41796

so you really don't have a Plan B then

user20683

8:56 PM

@GlenH7 Salad

user20683

:)

user20683

Programmer salaries should be obfuscated as "Good Beers per hour".

user41796

that's clarification, not obfuscation

user41796

until the other expenses start lining up. <sigh>

user20683

@GlenH7 Solution: Startup specializing in Embedded Brewing Control Systems.

user20683

8:59 PM

Contract Stipulation: 10% of all orders to be paid in alcohol.

user41796

AFAIK, the local brewery still provides their employees with a few cases per month as an employee perk

user20683

@GlenH7 Time to go be their Systems Admin?

user20683

or DBA?

user41796

regrettably, they don't utilize enough IT to justify someone at my salary level. Something about their focus being on beer and not SW dev

user55340

I remember in Mountain View, there was a startup upstairs from an irish pub... that didn't work too well (meetings shouldn't have that much alcohol in them when you're on limited funds).

user41796

9:03 PM

too much temptation

@GlenH7 The coors brewery out here is well known for this; people who are friends with employees are always getting free crap beer because they get way more than they could reasonably drink

I've still never done the tour, I should really go do it... free beer at the end

user41796

@JimmyHoffa I think you meant to say "free crap beer at the end"

@GlenH7 Nah, the tour they let you have whatever

Killians is good, that new shock top honey crisp apple is surprisingly awesome

@MichaelT you should give it a try if you haven't, friend of mine brought up a case camping recently, I think I drank half of it

user41796

I'll have to try the shock top then. Forgot they owned that brand

@GlenH7 coors owns a ton of stuff, a good bit that's really not bad. They are still in Denver, it would be really hard for them to get away without making some good stuff considering their surrounding environment.

user55340

9:09 PM

@JimmyHoffa Theres a few ciders around here that I've yet to try... though I've brought some California temperament with me and go for wines... and there are fruit wines local!

user55340

For example... autumnharvestwinery.com/our-wines/purchase/…

Yeah, the fruit wines seem to be a midwest and southern thing I learned in the burgh, I did enjoy them and whenever I hit Charlotte to see my sister in law we enjoy some

user55340

9:27 PM

There's also a cidery not too far away - maidenrockwinerycidery.com/shop.html - Like the apple that is its namesake, Honeycrisp Hard™ apple cider is distinctive, snappy and sassy. It tickles the palate with a crescendo of subtle flavors and a crisp, lingering finish.

> It tickles the palate with a crescendo of subtle flavors and a crisp, lingering finish.

Do you swish it around and spit it out before you drink it?

user20683

@Ampt If you are doing formal tasting then yeah, probably.

Formal tastings are hogwash. Even the 'experts' can't reliably score the same wine

user55340

@WorldEngineer They've got a tasting room there... and given that availability for august on a number of those ciders...

user55340

Its more about "do you like this wine"? Doesn't matter if the experts think that the December Nights (mulled apple wine) is good or bad... I like it.

user55340

9:36 PM

However, I also like to find out what this year's vintage tastes like (last year, the elderberry wine was not as good).

user55340

As an aside, the drought last year hit the wineries and cideries in Wisconsin quite hard.

@Ampt But on the bright side they have one hell of a great job. The only hogwash is people who take any of that as more than a bit of good fun ;P The this-is-all-oh-so-refined presentation is just because they're paid by marketing departments

@MichaelT Interestingly we're having an opposite effect out here, there's a lot of peaches (and for some reason cranberries.. still don't understand that) grown in the mountains here, the temperature's been warming earlier yearly for them to where the past couple years they've had an entire extra month in their growing season; we're in the worst drought in years but the mountain farmers are growing gangbusters

(the cranberries are in the southern plains out here not the mountains)

user55340

Depends on the type of crop and how stressed the groundwater is already.

user20683

Cranberries are pretty water intensive

@WorldEngineer Yeah, and the southern plains are really desertous... I don't get it...

user55340

9:42 PM

Its a question of when are they water intensive.

I refer to the mountain peach groves because I've heard they're doing great, probably because they get better groundwater supplies than the rest of us just by way of their snowpack

user55340

There's harvesting...

user55340

user image

user55340

But growing, they actually like sandy soil.

user55340

And you don't need the water all the time...

user55340

9:45 PM

> Although most cranberries are wet-picked as described above, 5–10% of the US crop is still dry-picked. This entails higher labor costs and lower yield, but dry-picked berries are less bruised and can be sold as fresh fruit instead of having to be immediately frozen or processed. Originally performed with two-handed comb scoops, dry picking is today accomplished by motorized, walk-behind harvesters which must be small enough to traverse beds without damaging the vines.

user20683

@MichaelT TIL

Ah, well there you go. Great Sand Dunes national park is right in colorado's southern plains because it's so flat and arid down there; sand blows out of the mountains near by and is carried into the plains. Interestingly in a topographically accurate miniature map of the nearby mountain range it blew out of

user image

user20683

The shirtlessness and the hotpants are at odds with his hat...

user55340

@WorldEngineer Lack of oxygen... they get a bit strange up there.

Obviously they don't grow cranberries in the dunes, but the whole area has lots of sand

user20683

9:49 PM

@JimmyHoffa aye, Colorado is more than just mountains

user55340

@WorldEngineer Yep... there are foothills to the mountains too!

@MichaelT Don't forget the wretched flatlands where you're high enough to be nice and close to the sun that cooks the crap out of you, but the air is so devoid of insulation when the sun goes down you freeze with the wind that sweeps the region

(I really don't know why anyone lives in southern colorado outside of gunnison or durango)

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I went to Lake City when I was in the area... ( goo.gl/maps/PIvKl )

user55340

I even ate at the Cannibal Grill and Saloon...

user55340

Alfred G. "Alferd" Packer (January 21, 1842 – April 23, 1907) was an American prospector who was accused of cannibalism during the winter of 1873-1874. First tried for murder, Packer was eventually sentenced to 40 years in prison after being convicted of manslaughter. A biopic of his life, The Legend of Alfred Packer, was made in 1980. Packer's life He was born as Alfred Griner Packer in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, one of three children of James Packer and his wife Esther Griner. By the early 1850s, James Packer had moved his family to Lagrange County, Indiana, where he worked as ...

9:55 PM

Yeah, that's not so bad, it's just a huge splotch around alamosa that's to be avoided, and most of highway 160 you could mistake yourself for being in a mad max movie

@MichaelT Moral of the story, don't trust anyone from allegheny county

user55340

And don't have lunch with a friend in Boulder...

user55340

> In 1968, students at the University of Colorado at Boulder named their new cafeteria grill the "Alferd G. Packer Memorial Grill" with the slogan "Have a friend for lunch!" Students can order an "El Canibal" beefburger and on the wall is a giant map outlining Packer's travels through Colorado.

@MichaelT this I did not know... but I will say have lunch in Boulder any opportunity you get. Lots of really great restaurants there.

10:41 PM

looking for volunteers to put "draw attention" bounty on my question about f-fake-hotness-score. I was planning to do it myself tomorrow, but decided that if someone else does, it will look less like one man effort. (readers who'd follow the links sprinkled over the question would find out that it's indeed more like a ten man effort, but people rarely click the links)

23

Q: In hotness formula, discard answers when voting evidence indicates that these are not good data points

In current version of “hot” questions formula (Qanswers * Qscore)*, all answers are assumed to equally contribute to question "hotness score", including even those downvoted into oblivion. Suggest to discard answers when there is a strong evidence that these do not provide good data points for a...

feature-request voting stackexchange-button hot-questions answer-quality

@gnat I clicked the links! ...once... and vowed never to do it again.... there be dragons O_O

user20683

10:55 PM

@JimmyHoffa Because of Mark Booth (once again) TIL

user20683

this time about Dampening and the strategies there in

@JimmyHoffa yeah one of the dragons at these links happened to be you

@MarkBooth Damned engineers and their "equations" :) Without a door analogy in that article, I wouldn't have a slightest idea what that critical damping means — gnat yesterday

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