The Nineteenth Byte - 2015-10-04 (page 1 of 2)

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12:12 AM

0

Q: Construct a companion matrix

You have a number of polynomials who are lonely, so make them some companions (who won’t threaten to stab)! For a polynomial of degree n, there is an n by n companion cube matrix for it. You need to make a function that accepts a list of coefficients for a polynomial in either ascending (a + bx...

12:23 AM

I'm trying to figure out how to calculate when the next super blood moon will occur so I can make a challenge out of it, but I haven't found a single place that gives a straight explanation about it...

El'endia Starman

Apogee and perigee happen because of precession in the Moon's orbit. I think precession might also be responsible for the Moon passing through Earth's shadow every now and then.

12:39 AM

So I need to figure out when a perigee and a lunar eclipse overlap...

El'endia Starman

pretty much

Hmm.

See the perigee part is easy.

That can be easily approximated using a lunar calendar.

The hard part is the eclipse.

I don't know how to calculate when an eclipse would occur.

El'endia Starman

NASA has lists of eclipse timings out to the year 3000, I think.

You'd probably have to write a program to scrape these lists though.

Right, but we couldn't use that for a code golf challenge.

El'endia Starman

mmm, true

I think the actual formulas for calculating when eclipses occur would be quite complicated because there are a significant number of factors. You could make do with a couple simple ones.

They do tend to occur with a certain regularity.

12:46 AM

Right, but the question is what are those simple ones?

El'endia Starman

[shrugs] Make one up?

Alright, fair enough.

So lunar eclipses happen when the sun earth and moon are aligned...

Wait

So we need the earth in the middle sandwiched by the moon and the sun

El'endia Starman

mmhmm

But the Moon also has to be right in the middle of the orbital plane. It's usually above or below.

Damn this three dimensional universe.

El'endia Starman

[chuckle]

12:49 AM

See this is way harder than it sounds. Maybe it won't be such a good challenge.

Since once I figure it out then it's just number crunching in whatever language.

Kinda boring actually. Not a lot of room to golf.

El'endia Starman

Try modeling the "z" position as a sine wave. It'll be close enough.

Stuck would probably win.

@El'endiaStarman Hmm... OK. The x/y orbit is just elliptical so that's easy at least.

El'endia Starman

X/Y would also be sine/cosine functions!

Yeah.

El'endia Starman

There would be five altogether - two more for the Earth's motion around the sun.

12:52 AM

When the angle between the three points is 180 degrees and distance between the Earth and the sun is greater than the distance between the moon and the sun, then it's a super blood moon.

Now I just have to math.

Actually, I just noticed that the orbital eccentricity is really low.

Maybe I could just do a circle.

It'd be lazy but I wonder how much it would actually affect the result.

Operation Assume Circular Orbit commences...

El'endia Starman

1:25 AM

"Assume a spherical cow..."

In a vacuum?

with uniform density

with g = 9.8 m/s^2

El'endia Starman

And assuming point masses.

On a frictionless surface.

1 hour later…

2:58 AM

My musical inspiration is flooowing

I wrote like 8 high-quality measures of melody.

That's like 16 seconds!

3:14 AM

Is there a Mornington Crescent interpreter?

4:03 AM

Yes, since Timwi made it and at least one other person (Martin) has used it.

@PhiNotPi The new stuff sounds great. :)

I have almost 300 music files.

I just counted. (not by hand)

2 hours later…

6:14 AM

wtf, I suddenly gut 890 spam mails in one day O.o...

Ugh. Email provider or own server?

GMail. It filtered them all automatically. I just took a look at the [Spam] label for fun.

I don't really like the concept of spam folders. You either go through them anyway or miss a legitimate mail from time to time.

Not with GMail. I never (in 8 years) had a legitimate mail land in Spam.

Just wait 'til I send you an email. :P

6:28 AM

Oh I get some really weird mails and they still pass :)

I live in South America. A lot of legitimate correspondence I get would seem fishy to GMail.

I've alias'ed every other account to this inbox so I get about 50 - 200 legitimate mails a day. Over the time I've accumulated about 50 custom filters, but now it works like a charm.

If it works for you, great. It didn't for me...

Did you see the edit to my grid answer?

Some mails go through policyd first though.

@Dennis Yep. Awesome!

Thanks! That sorting approach worked surprisingly well.

El'endia Starman

6:42 AM

@minxomat I've been using GMail for probably about that long considering I was using it during the time that signup keys were being handed out. I've had a handful of legitimate emails end up in my spam folder, but they're always ones that are reasonably spam-like (a bunch of links, talking about money, etc).

Some mails I get from China/Taiwan really look like spam but they still don't end up in the Spam folder. My experience with Gmail couldn't be better - a thing I can't really say about any other web service ever.

How do they look like spam?

user image

Legitimate (albeit confusing) mail from a business parter (OEM manufacturer) from China.

7:07 AM

0

Q: Four steps to the left: vipers. Four steps to the right: a cliff. Don't die!

Introduction Suppose for a moment that the vipers and cliff are only two steps away, instead of three. o --- Hsss! | ';;' ___ /_\ ___ _ | You are, unfortunately, a captive of a sadistic torturer. You must take a step either to the left or...

code-golf sequence subsequence

undergroundmonorail

7:32 AM

my router has decided that my wii u is a malicious attacker and must be stopped at all costs

which is unfortunate for me, a simple squid kid

2 hours later…

9:06 AM

@undergroundmonorail Gah a Wii U... I attribute this and the 3DS to the ultimate downfall of Nintendo

And then they brought out that doorstop/2DS

undergroundmonorail

9:23 AM

yo the 3ds sold 65 quadrillion units

and the 2ds is great if you're in its target audience. i'm not so i have no purpose for it but like, children who can't be trusted with a hinge? i wish i had a 2ds back when i fucked up the hinge on my ds lite

sm4sh is a horrible game but i'm a melee snob, smm and splatoon are fantastic

Sm4sh?

undergroundmonorail

super smash brothers 4 for wii u and 3ds

like all the smash games are fun party games but melee has so much competitive depth and sm4sh is

not melee basically haha

apparently hotline miami 2 has a level where you can do so well your score overflows and you get an f rank

:D

1 hour later…

New Sandboxed Posts

10:48 AM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Write a Deadfish interpreter code-golf This will be another catalog challenge. I'll add the mandatory parts when it is posted. Deadfish is a simple programming language that has an unbounded register and these instructions: i increments the register d decrements the register s squares the reg...

Martin Büttner

11:31 AM

We should probably start organising the catalogue-type challenges in a meta post. It seems that people are starting to jump on these because they are popular. It's not really helping the purpose of these catalogues if a) they are posted too often to be answered thoroughly and b) the specs deteriorate in quality.

(By organising, I mean a) which have been done, b) which haven't been done, c) which have been done as normal challenges which could either be edited into a catalogue or superseded by a better specified catalogue challenge)

12:09 PM

0

Q: What are the ten different instructions of a programming language?

Please help me answer these questions. Explain the concept Why a computer cannot solve a problem for which there is no solution outside the computer? 1.A programming language has 10 different instructions. How many five-instruction programs can be written in this language if no instruction i...

functional-programming

2 hours later…

1:58 PM

@MartinBüttner Indeed, based on the sandbox lately it's a little concerning... btw are we trying to keep catalogues to "simple tasks", or can they just be any task but no answer is accepted?

Wooo! Flash flood warning!

2:57 PM

Woo, first answer!

I'm feeling a bit iffy about the rules atm

0

Q: Type uniqchars!

(The title stands for Type unique chars!.) Given a string of printable ASCII chars, produce an output consisting of its unique chars in the original order. In other words, the output is the same as the input except that a char is removed if it has appeared previously. No built-ins for finding u...

code-golf string

3:29 PM

I believe I ~~win~~ lose.

Not if someone brings out Shakespeare :P

The answer-to-vote ratio of that question is going to be interesting.

Currently it's ∞.

3:58 PM

I just installed Wine, now I can use Notepad while in Linux!

Geany > Notepad

Also Doorknob I just found out about Macaroni, I'm gonna be giving it a try.

I've always wanted to see a "minimalist language" where the syntax is sane and the instructions aren't one char.

Derp.

@PhiNotPi LOLOL

You can use IE too.

IE6 to be precise.

That'll be fun.

4:14 PM

I'm trying to install Finale in Linux, where do I put it?

/usr/local ?

I assume your using wine to run it right?

If so you should probably put it in .wine/drive_c/Program Files/

yes

Then maybe make a launcher script that goes in /usr/local/bin

BTW you might want to check out Rosegarden.

Where do I find .wine?

Home directory.

It might also be .wine64.

.wine/drive_c = C:/

It's a hidden folder.

So if you need to see it in nautilus hit Ctrl-H.

4:22 PM

So C:\Program Files (x86)\ is the correct place?

Yep.

okay

Then maybe make a short bash script like:

#!/bin/bash

I was thinking that was referring to the windows partition on my harddrive.

wine "~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Finale/whatever.exe"

4:23 PM

okay, thanks

Type chmod 0755 name_of_file, move it to /usr/bin or somewhere

Seriously though check out Rosegarden + jack + Qsynth or Lillypond or something. Having something native is better.

okay

You should be able to export your Finale projects to MIDI if you want to work on them.

I know Logic Pro can do that.

Well... I don't really need to install it, since there's still windows on this computer

Oh. Heh.

4:28 PM

I was just trying to see if I could.

By the way, if you got an MSI for Finale all you should need to do is just double click that and it will do all this stuff for you.

Wine can run MSIs which is a very handy feature.

And it did get installed, but throws an error that it's missing a font (of all things)

Hmm

Did you install the TTF fonts?

Yes

Well that's strange.

Did Finale come with its own TTF?

If so follow this to install it askubuntu.com/questions/384469/how-to-install-ttf-fonts

4:32 PM

I have to leave now, I'll work on this later. Thanks for your help!

Martin Büttner

@Sp3000 Well, not necessarily simple tasks, but I'd say "standard programming exercises". I mean, ideally all challenges would be like this, but since that's not going to happen any time soon, we should focus our efforts on those.

@MartinBüttner ?

Hmm k

Yeah, I was curious because things like "Deadfish interpreter" wasn't exactly my idea of "standard"...

0

Q: A Bit of a Pickle

Python's pickle module is used for serialisation, allowing one to dump an object in a way such that it can be later reconstructed. For this, pickle uses a simple stack-based language. To keep things simple, we will be dealing with a small subset of this language: ( Push a mark to t...

4:51 PM

Wow. I never knew any of that stuff about pickle.

Yeah, I had a bit of fun at a recent cyber security challenge and one of them was to exploit pickle while avoiding a blacklist of blocked features

Here's the guide I ended up looking at, if you're curious

5:10 PM

you can't use "backreference" in a lookbehind in .net flavor?

1 hour later…

6:19 PM

Wow, I didn't realize just how complex LOLCODE was.

9

Q: Tips for golfing in LOLCODE

What general tips do you have for golfing in LOLCODE? I'm looking for ideas that can be applied to code golf problems in general that are at least somewhat specific to LOLCODE. (e.g. "remove comments" is not an answer). Please post one tip per answer.

I might actually try golfing a bit in it. I heard about it aggesss ago (like when it first came out) and scoffed at it, but now I think it would be perfect for popularity contest questions.

Too bad popcons are not as perfect in terms of on-topic-ness

Probably wouldn't do so bad in regular code golf.

I don't really care for winning any challenges, so.

I downvoted the question ... for the lols of it!

But whyyyy

58 secs ago, by Optimizer

I downvoted the question ... for the lols of it!

6:24 PM

Llamas are lliars. It's still +9/-0.

now you see ? LOL

Alex will have your skin for speaking ill of LOLCODE.

Haha

I got the lols

@quartata What's he gonna do ... COMPLAIN? :P

6:25 PM

Its development seems to have been largely abandoned. They've been talking for quite a while about adding BUKKITs (arrays) but haven't yet.

Probably because the lolcats meme is dead.

0

Q: Is there a practical purpose behind this site or is it just for fun?

On Stack Exchange there are theoretical, practical and fun sites. I'm wondering which aspect chiefly motivates people to contribute here. Specifically, does skill at code-golf and other programming puzzles have practical benefits -- are there transferable skills that would be useful in job inter...

6:45 PM

Wooo, my classes are cancelled tomorrow!

Nice! What's the occasion?

mine too!

El'endia Starman

@PhiNotPi Always good news!

and day after, and day after that..

flooding

El'endia Starman

6:46 PM

...depending on the reason.

and forever...

Oh shit. Not good news.

El'endia Starman

It's because of Hurricane Joaquin, right?

@Optimizer Until you decide to get PhD in llama studies.

@AlexA. how can you even think that I don't have that already????

6:47 PM

I apologize, I shouldn't have assumed.

user image

rainfall totals

@PhiNotPi I hope you, your family, and friends are all staying safe and dry!

Jeez, that's one hell of a lot of rain.

@PhiNotPi please keep @AlexA. safe and dry too, who is there with you because of a weird habit of getting really close to other's families!

Aw, Optimizer cares about me. :3

just because i want to hurt you myself!

6:51 PM

...Oh.

Hm.

Lot of rain where I am too. I'm quite happy about it not only because I love rain but also because we're in a drought :/

@Dennis It is strangely satisfying that your answer fits exactly in the width of the codebox :)

not for @BetaDecay no!

@quartata California?

Yes.

6:54 PM

I'm glad it's finally raining there.

after what? 5 year?

its like its a part of some election campaign!

Uh, no...

El'endia Starman

Drought and Deluge in the lower 48 states

Weather is dumb.

It's pretty damn annoying. We have a bunch of new rules about watering plants and stuff, and they've turned off all the toilets, sinks, and showers at the beach...

I personally think that's a better way to cause some disease epidemic than to save water but eh

7:02 PM

> all the toliets sinks and showers at the beach

That is truly a first-world problem.

Yeah.

haha

El'endia Starman

Lots of water right there!

I mean, I don't surf so the showers don't bother me.

But it's pretty hilarious to watch the tourists come out of the bathroom then try all the sinks and then start cursing about the poor conditions of California state parks.

@quartata You don't surf? :P

7:04 PM

No. Too cold.

Martin Büttner

@Sp3000 agreed

El'endia Starman

@quartata I guess you live in northern California?

Nope.

I wish I did.

If you wished you lived anywhere, you should wish you lived in Washington.

Washington is best state.

El'endia Starman

Seattle is wonderful in the summer.

7:06 PM

(Also I'm assuming you either didn't click the link or are unamused by that meme.)

@El'endiaStarman Correct, but Seattle is actually wonderful all year.

Didn't click the link. All memes amuse me, so.

El'endia Starman

@AlexA. I've heard there's lots of rain and overcast skies most of the year.

Is that a problem?

@AlexA. OK that's pretty funny.

It's the reason why the landscape is wonderfully lush and green.

El'endia Starman

7:08 PM

For me? Yes.

Grey skies make me sleepy and lethargic.

Excessive heat has that effect for me.

El'endia Starman

And I don't like rain very much if I have to go somewhere in it.

I do own one shirt that has the word surf on it, so I guess that could be me in that picture.

haha

El'endia Starman

I deal better with heat than I do with cold.

7:09 PM

@El'endiaStarman Where are you located?

@AlexA. Excessive heat makes me play a lot of TF2. I do not know why.

@AlexA. It's a secret to everyone. (But seriously, I've probably already given it away. Good beaches + not northern california = one particular city)

Treat Fighter 2 ?

@quartata Hey, it's an excuse to play TF2.

Team Fortress 2. (Also known as Hat Simulator 2).

Oh you weren't talking to me lol.

@quartata I meant Dr. Stardude

haha

7:11 PM

I find the concept of fighting for a treat much more interesting

You can do that in TF2.

so it is Treat Fighter 2!!

Until Valve added the conga line thing and effectively broke the game.

Heavy boxing fights for sandwiches are srs sport.

rabbit is out of the simulated hat!

7:12 PM

(Disclaimer: I don't play TF2 but my girlfriend loves it.)

Ah-ha!

El'endia Starman

@AlexA. Kentucky now, but I was in New York for most of four years.

@Optimizer Huh? What did I miss? :O

Everything.

Lots of things.

7:12 PM

Wales was overtaken by whales while you were asleep.

It's true.

Welcome your new aquatic mammalian overlords.

Bologna was taken over by talking sandwiches.

even whales are loling out!

El'endia Starman

Every dorm and apartment room I stayed in had no air conditioning. Which was not fun for the first month or so, but then it was fine because Fall and Winter came. They definitely had heaters.

7:13 PM

And llamas went extinct.

yes, I am ghost of the llama past

And Optimizer admitted that he loves me but also wants to hurt me.

@AlexA. the love part is only inside your head. I just want to hurt you myself

:/

Still a better love story than Twilight.

7:15 PM

Wouldn't know, but from what I've heard I don't doubt it.

its okay, we won't judge you. You can come out and admit that you have see Twilight!

I don't want to lie.

paradox

Pair o' dogs.

El'endia Starman

...huh. The "Don't Google 'google'" question has two ><> answers, but no Befunge answer. Alrighty then.

Two doctors.

It's a pair of docs!

7:18 PM

Paradogs

user image

2

paradocs is more realistic

one of my friend thought that the gravity in the gym of the martian movie's spaceship was fictional :D

XD

oh .. and . Spoiler Alert!

Have you read the book?

The book is awesome.

The Martian is based on a book?

7:20 PM

Yes

well, I don't read books

The Martian (Weir novel)

The Martian is a 2011 science fiction novel and the first published novel by American author Andy Weir. It was originally self-published in 2011 after which Crown Publishing purchased the rights and re-released it in 2014. Described as "Hatchet in Space" or an Apollo 13 meets Cast Away, the story follows an American astronaut, Mark Watney, as he becomes stranded alone on Mars and must improvise in order to survive. The Martian, a film adaptation directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon and Jessica Chastain, was released in October 2015. == Plot summary == NASA astronaut Mark Watne...

I am happy they made it a movie

El'endia Starman

@Optimizer [gasp] You're one of those Americans?!

and yes, the gravity is perfectly scientific

7:20 PM

Centrifugal force

@El'endiaStarman no

@AlexA. yup

I know, because I read the book. :P

El'endia Starman

You spin me right round, baby, right round, in a manner depriving me of an inertial reference frame. Baby.

@AlexA. when I saw the gravity being there, I questioned myself how, and the answer was there in the next scene. It seemed like a genius idea !

@AlexA. oh, they mention it there?

I thought u were intelligent!

:P

ಠ_ಠ

7:22 PM

lol

code

I'm glad you at least used to think I was intelligent.

user image

who killed @ಠ_ಠ

?

oh wait, only fishes go upside down after dying

El'endia Starman

Live fish: ><>
Dead fish: ><>

Jesus fish: ><>

7:27 PM

Siamese fish: ><><

ok, where are you all copy-pasting this from?

El'endia Starman

Conclusion: Jesus is Schroedinger's fish.

?

but before that, we have a conclusion that @ಠ_ಠ is a fish

Does he have any ><> answers?

If so then we know he's a ><>

7:28 PM

none of us have an answer in human language

Right, but see ><>s are very egotistical. They can't help but answer questions in ><>.

That's how you identify them.

@El'endiaStarman I wouldn't have expected a mod on Christianity.SE to claim that Jesus simultaneously exists and doesn't exist, and is a fish. :P

@Optimizer This is the most horrifying thing I've ever seen.

umm, I don't want to get chat-ban yet

haha

@AlexA. A fish turning water to wine wouldn't be that healthy i guess.

El'endia Starman

7:31 PM

Unless the water is dirty and unsafe to drink.

Then it would be dirty and unsafe wine.

El'endia Starman

@AlexA. Breaking expectations one ><> at a time! Or 5,000+, depending.

Could a fish survive in wine?

Perhaps not for very long.

Call MathBusters.

El'endia Starman

Yeah, probably not for long.

7:32 PM

Myth. Don't call MathBusters.

hahaha

That's what you get when you keyboard has the y below the a.

El'endia Starman

Fish would probably die in milk.

What on earth made someone think of that question?

user image

What a crazy keyboard

7:35 PM

Why? The only difference in letter keys is the friggin y.

El'endia Starman

And three umlauts.

Take a look at the french keyboard before calling the german weird.

user image

I've used the French AZERTY keyboard. It's one of the ones I can switch to on my Mac. It's not ideal...

It has a single key for two different currencies. And none of both is used in France.

El'endia Starman

It's still remarkable how similar the keyboards are.

7:39 PM

I also have English, カタカナ, ひらがな, татар, and français keyboards. I'm not sure why.

birds are very choosy

cio.com/article/2428201/infrastructure/…

If we're talking about keyboards

on popular demand, I am ready to post the unicorn soft serve gif back, if you all promise not to flag me..

Who demanded this? The voices in your head?

I missed it last time

7:41 PM

OH! that was not telepathy?

Of course it was

God damn.

It is rather impressive that someone found a hashtag for that.

There's a hashtag for everything, however unfortunate.

#hashtag

7:44 PM

The DataHand ergonomic keyboard

new TED talk : "How the teddy bear taught us compassion"

Bloody hell

For any math inclined people here: I really recommend watching following video:

Music And Measure Theory

2

1) TED is the name of the movie series with a living teddy bear. (2) Teddy bear is a mascot for pedo activities (3) TEDdy bear

@flawr I am skeptic that its actually a plane/chopper crash video

3

"meth inclined people"

now it all makes sense

X Plane 10 CRASHES & FAILS!

7:48 PM

I want to see a crash fail video

^^ Fluffy bunnies jumping over rainbows in that video

@Optimizer I am sorry to disappoint your expectation, it has indeed only very little to do with plane crashes.

@AlexA. The swiss keyboard:

user image

@AlexA. Do we need to set up a search party?

user image

El'endia Starman

I'll bet that Peter Taylor will have a fit over all the fuss we've made about his absence. When he returns from the dead, that is.

PS: This guy is insane: youtube.com/user/thang010146/videos

about 2000 videos....

7:57 PM

1

Q: Theme of my birthday: up in flames

I need to light some candles. In fact, I need to light an arbitrary amount of candles. But only the good ones. OBJECTIVE Given a block of text and a number N as input, write a program or function that lights N of the valid candles in the text. If N is greater than the number of valid candles, t...

code-golf ascii-art

Looks like a scripted upload @flawr

We need a PPCG Passion about Peter's death

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The Nineteenth Byte

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