The Nineteenth Byte

PhiNotPi

00:52

@MartinBüttner on scale 1 to 10, is TIS really that good?

xnor

@Sp3000 well, i have the 64, but only thanks to your Mexican wave answer reminding me about bytearray

someone's added a 62 though

Sp3000

Ah damn :P

Yeah I was pretty excited that bytearray comes in so useful for contiguous things like the alphabet

xnor

sure beats map(chr,_)[2::5]

i'm also a char behind on Output Dollars: golf.shinh.org/p.rb?output+dollars

phase

01:09

@Doorknob hey woah you were on readditts

Sp3000

I'm quite behind on that one - I don't have a good method :/

The last row gets me

Doorknob

@phase Yes, I saw your post about O :P

phase

01:37

I've been playing THPS4 a lot.

So... that happened...

Winny

02:37

Is it usually convention to provide a reason when downvoting something on SE/SO/etc?

little taken aback my sandbox question was downvoted without a reason

Maltysen

@Winny well downvotes aren't really supposed to be that serious on meta since the whole point is gathering people's opinions, not you doing anything concretely wrong.

Winny

@Maltysen gotcha. Better there than on the mainsite I suppose.

maybe it's far too constrained

I wanted to make the spec strict as to prevent variation that would affect scoring unfairly

Maltysen

@Winny I guess people might have seen the deviation from default I/O rules as pointless.

Winny

Where can I read about the default I/O rules?

Maltysen

13

Q: Default for Code Golf: Program, Function or Snippet?

One of the things many (new?) users forget to specify in code-golf challenges is whether the answers should provide a full program or a function (or even just a snippet). For most such things, we have defaults in the tag wiki (like scoring by bytes), but not for this. The conclusion in chat was ...

Sp3000

02:51

(Tag wikis for tags have most of the defaults)

Winny

@Maltysen so you mean like how it exits and what strings it outputs?

Maltysen

@Winny well maybe the exit code part, but more "Gisted files must use the filename provided on the command-line."

versus being able to take them from say raw_input()

or function arg

Winny

Yeah, I really like the idea of being able to Gist multiple files, as this is a big feature of GitHub Gist. But yes, maybe it should be just a Function, as to reduce challenge complexity.

Kind of want to create tag integration, do I need to vet this or should I just go ahead?

Sp3000

I don't think a new tag is needed, and that tag in particular would likely be confused with other meanings of "integration"

Winny

Right

Maltysen

03:32

@Winny Maybe if you want to keep it a cli and not a function, allow stdin instead of command line args.

Winny

03:45

If I did that, I couldn't ask users to implement multiple file-gists

Maltysen

why not?

@Winny space separated list of files from stdin

or one file on each line till blank line

Alex A.

φ¬π

Maltysen

@AlexA. is that APL?

Winny

@Maltysen good idea, I can make it either or

one files per line stdin or cli args

Alex A.

@Maltysen Phi (φ) Not (¬) Pi (π) :P

2

Maltysen

03:51

*facepalm*

Alex A.

It's alright. My face has a permanent palm print.

Optimizer

06:48

@AlexA. birds don't have palms

Winny

@Optimizer have any hints? Racket is really a bad choice far that challenge

Optimizer

I have no idea about the language.

just trying to get 3 answers to go to 343 :P

Winny

:D

Beta Decay

07:49

@MartinBüttner Thanks for your input :). I'll work on the explanation of the equation, and R.E. the lack of participation, I was thinking of maybe contacting the Pebble dev team to see if they were interested.

Martin Büttner

08:42

@PhiNotPi I'd say it's at least a 9

Optimizer

oh come on

what is 10 for you ?

any examples?

New Sandboxed Posts

09:04

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Create a Music Player code-golf music Challenge You must create a program which searches your computer for all audio files and orders them in a much easier to read fashion. Spec Appearance is everything, so the following is a style guide for you to follow: TITLE OF PAGE - Category 1 - Cate...

phase

09:35

Anyone have any test strings I can base convert into other strings? I want to test my converting algorithm.

Optimizer

try anything here cjam.aditsu.net

"string"Xb Yb:c

those are placeholders. replace string, X and Y with your string, to and from

phase

And where does the output go?

Optimizer

on your screen?

phase

cjam.aditsu.net/#code=%22string%225b%207b%3Ac

Optimizer

its there

7 empty control characters

phase

09:40

oh

what are good bases to use?

Optimizer

you can place ed anywhere in the code to peek at stack contents

b is base conversion. :c is convert each number to its ASCII character.

phase

Why wouldn't "string"Jb Jb:c return string?

Optimizer

you are loosing information.

all of s t r i n g are > 19 values.

put some ed in there

and see

phase

Stack: [300690645]

Stack: [[6 7 8 5 16 1 8]]

Optimizer

see? there are more than 6 values there now. and then you convert those numbers to their ascii chars

phase

09:46

If 300690645 is string in base J, why wouldn't it return the ascii chars of string if we're converting it back from J?

Optimizer

because while converting back, you cannot have any number greater than or equal to the base ?

J is 19, so all numbers will be less than 19

Sp3000

More than one string maps to the same value. It's like having the number 31 in "binary" to mean 3*2 + 1 = 7, but of course if you restrict each digit to be either 1 or 0 there's only one unique representation for 7 (111) and that's what converting back gives

phase

Is there a Unicode to int array checker somewhere?

phase

10:11

boom bam pow o-lang.herokuapp.com/link/…

Martin Büttner

@Optimizer uh, that's tough... of the games I played recently, Sokobond probably qualifies. Otherwise... Journey. FEZ.

Optimizer

Do you play any mainstream 3d game ?

Martin Büttner

occasionally. I've recently stayed away from AAA games a bit because I'd rather play 6 games with 10 hours of time each than spend 60 hours on a single one.

Optimizer

what is your last one ?

Martin Büttner

uhh... probably Assassin's Creed Brotherhood, because the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors series aren't exactly mainstream (they are equally big games though)

phase

10:16

Titanfall's the only AAA I play.

Martin Büttner

I wanna write a challenge about Marching Squares. However, there are tons of ways (and levels of difficulty) that could be done and I can't really make up my mind: given 4 corners, print an ASCII representation of the present contours (no interpolation). given 4 corners, render the contours (graphical output, with interpolation). given a grid, render all the contours for the grid.

in each case there is also the question whether the opposite corner cases should be resolved correctly by finding the average at the centre.

I think I might do the simple ASCII one for now and maybe follow that up later with a more difficult variant

phase

If a challenge doesn't require input, can we add an input and add it to our total byte count?

Martin Büttner

10:32

oh wow, the image upload prompt has become nicer :)

@phase I think there's not even a consensus whether "no input" means "your program has to work regardless of what I give it on STDIN" or "your program has to work when STDIN is empty"... most people assume the latter though. in either case it seems a bit dodgy.

Beta Decay

10:55

My attempt to get Pebble developers to PPCG

New Sandboxed Posts

11:07

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Marching Squares Lookup code-golfascii-art Marching Squares is an algorithm from computer graphics, which is used to recover 2D isocontours from a grid of samples (see also, it's big brother Marching Cubes for 3D settings). The idea is to process each cell of the grid independently, and determi...

New Main Posts

2

Q: The Time Traveller's Watch

Disclaimer: The physics in this challenge are very simplified (i.e. ignoring gravitational field strength) to make the challenge easier to answer Challenge Using the phone GPS, produce a Pebble smartwatch app which displays the time for a stationary observer, the time for yourself and the diffe...

code-golf javascript c pebble

Beta Decay

11:36

Wow, someone was quick of the draw updating the pebble tag description

Optimizer

that was not really quick. I had like 20 + minutes

Beta Decay

Wow, time goes quickly when you're doing nothing :/

Lembik

hi all

Beta Decay

nuq'naH

Lembik

? :)

Beta Decay

12:00

Klingon haha :)

Lembik

aha :)

and I just watched Star Trek 2009!

Beta Decay

Serendipitous! :D

Lembik

although that was mostly Romulans I think

Beta Decay

Yeah. I think Klingons are only in Into Darkness

Lembik

I'll get there next :)

Beta Decay

12:05

Great :)

Lembik

I need a top ten list of sci fi movies from the last 10 years

Beta Decay

So what's up in the world of Lembik?

Lembik

the internet is not helping me

Beta Decay

Interstellar

Jurassic World was good

Gravity looked good but had a weak storyline

Lembik

@BetaDecay well... @RetoKoradi produced some amazing result for Toeplitz matrices

Martin Büttner

12:06

@Lembik I was told Gravity was really good, but I haven't seen it

Lembik

I was told I must stop asking questions that are so similar :)

oh I was put off by theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/05/…

gravity has too much panting!

Beta Decay

Agreed XD

Lembik

theguardian.com/film/2015/jun/14/…

4 stars is my minimum :)

Optimizer

superhero movies count as sci fi ? :P

Martin Büttner

@Lembik Moon has also been on my to-watch list for ages

@Optimizer why did I know that was coming...

Lembik

12:07

theguardian.com/film/2009/may/08/star-trek got 5 :)

Beta Decay

Interstellar is brilliant. One of the best films of the year IMO. Mostly because of the time dilation (topical ;)) theme

Lembik

@Optimizer why not :)

star trek 2009 was very good

Optimizer

oh god, my top ten is so easy then

Lembik

theguardian.com/film/2009/jul/17/film-review-moon-sam-rockwell 3 again!

Martin Büttner

@Optimizer MCU from top to bottom? ;)

Beta Decay

12:08

I can't believe I forgot about Prometheus!

Martin Büttner

@Lembik theguardian.com/film/2012/sep/27/looper-review (haven't seen it though)

Optimizer

@MartinBüttner :D mostly ..

Lembik

@MartinBüttner thanks!

so what's the best super hero movie of the last 10 years?

Optimizer

Did anyone see Ant Man here yet ?

@Lembik here it starts...

Martin Büttner

@Lembik 10 years is a long time...

Optimizer

12:11

@MartinBüttner its not that long

Lembik

@MartinBüttner :)

Beta Decay

@Optimizer It's a long time for the young ;)

Martin Büttner

give me a list and I can try to pick one ;)

Lembik

@MartinBüttner I am giving enough of a range to optimize over that we can get something good!

Optimizer

you would barely find 50 super hero movies to decide from

Martin Büttner

12:12

probably one of the batman films though

oh, and best sci-fi from the last 10 years is obviously Inception

Optimizer

although, the batman films in last 10 years have been more about the villains

Martin Büttner

@Optimizer so? :P

Optimizer

imo, the spirit of a super hero movie was way less.

Lembik

theguardian.com/film/2010/jul/15/inception-review ;) Maybe I need to find somewhere else for my review

he clearly only likes star trek :)

Martin Büttner

@Lembik wat

Beta Decay

12:14

Hahaha try Rotten Tomatoes

Lembik

I find rotten tomatores unhelpful

Martin Büttner

I usually just check metacritic

Lembik

don't they give average opinions?

which is unlikely to be of much use

mathoverflow.net/a/188251/40564 would this make a good code challenge?

Martin Büttner

but even then... the more complicated a film the more likely it is that the reviews are worse than the film deserves

Optimizer

I personally liked Interstellar more than Inception

Martin Büttner

12:16

@Lembik they do give you the aggregate but also the actual individual reviews those averages were obtained from

Lembik

well Interstellar > Inception :)

Optimizer

Atlas Shrugged series is also nice

Beta Decay

Lembik

@MartinBüttner right.. so what do you do in practice? Do you just look for a reviewer whose tastes you know you agree with?

Martin Büttner

@Lembik I just watch the film...

Lembik

12:16

sorry to talk about code challenges :)

Martin Büttner

(or trust a friend's recommendation)

Lembik

@MartinBüttner I mean to choose which movie to watch! :)

ah.. friends... a new idea :)

Beta Decay

Just bite the bullet and choose the newest one

Optimizer

If we are going a litle back, then Paycheck is one of my favs too

Beta Decay

Or one you even vaguely like the look of

Lembik

12:17

@BetaDecay wouldn't that policy mean watching about 1 movie a day :)

Beta Decay

Probably ;)

Lembik

you clearly have more time than I do :)

so.. about semi-magic squares...

anyone interested in them?

Beta Decay

Tbh I'm on a run of the Vietnam War films, so haven't really thought about sci-fi

Lembik

which ones?

Beta Decay

I watched Full Metal Jacket on Sunday

Others are Apocalypse Now, Hamburger Hill and Platoon

Lembik

12:22

sounds relaxing :)

I'll mention semi-magic squares every few minutes until someone reacts :)

or mathoverflow.net/a/188413/40564

Beta Decay

Haha don't ask me, the most I've done is GCSE further maths and some extra reading into QM

Lembik

GCSE further maths! When was that invented :) ?

but you can understand semi-magic squares with gcse maths

you just need to be able to add :)

Beta Decay

No idea haha

Yeah, I think that would work

Martin Büttner

@Sp3000 trying Sequence Reverser without the stack nodes... it's doing my head in...

Lembik

12:37

@MartinBüttner what do you think of the semi-magic square idea?

Optimizer

@Lembik if you are not familiar with Marvel universe, try Guardians of the Galaxy. It doesn't require much prior knowledge about other marvel stuff

Martin Büttner

uhh, sure. they are just magic squares without diagonals, right?

Lembik

yes indeed

but the question is "So, my question is, find the "smallest" 4×4 semi-magic square that can't be expressed as an integer linear combination of 9 or fewer permutation matrices."

it's a little mathematical maybe

but then everyone on PPCG is a genius :)

2

Martin Büttner

yeah no clue... sandbox it :P

Lembik

:)

all that happens then is that peter t tells me it is terrible :)

no one else really seems to comment

Optimizer

12:39

@Lembik so true and is totally reflected by our starboard

Lembik

@Optimizer which star board? (sorry.. I am always slightly out of touch)

you mean the one in this chat room?

Optimizer

the right side thingy

Lembik

how is that related to the sandbox?

Optimizer

when did I say that?

Martin Büttner

@Lembik if he says that, he might have a point (which you should take as constructive criticism to help you improve the question). and if that's the case, the question doesn't become better by him not telling you. ;)

Lembik

12:42

oh sorry..I thought your comment was in reply to "all that happens then is that peter t tells me it is terrible :)"

@MartinBüttner you are of course right. I was just feeling sorry for myself :)

ok so first I need to find some 4 by 4 semi magic square that can't be expressed as an integer linear combination of 9 or fewer permutation matrices.

hmmm...

Optimizer

@Lembik no it wasn't :)

Lembik

@Optimizer ah.. I followed the link..sorrry

I am pleased you agreed :)

Optimizer

you can just hover the chat message. it will highlight if its in view

Lembik

thanks

Beta Decay

I had it yesterday where it wasn't in view so is there a way to get the permalink of the message in question?

Martin Büttner

12:47

click the little reply arrow

Optimizer

I think the UI is pretty intuitive.

maybe not on mobile though..

Martin Büttner

@BetaDecay try with this one

(it's not possible to find out on mobile, unfortunately, not even with ChatSEy)

Optimizer

he is on mobile only, I think.

Beta Decay

I'm on the desktop site on mobile ATM

Geobits

Does anyone happen to know why some people's avatars are shadowed and others aren't? Look at this for example: codegolf.stackexchange.com/help/badges/28/electorate

Beta Decay

12:50

I don't see where it's linking to with the transcript permalink :/

Optimizer

@Geobits should have something to expand

Geobits

Makes sense. Thanks :)

Too bad, though. I'd rather not have the shadow.

Martin Büttner

yeah it's one of the privileges

750 rep on beta sites (Established User)

1000 rep on graduated sites

Geobits

Yea, I knew about the usercard thing, just didn't associate it with the shadow for some reason.

Martin Büttner

@Geobits "An expanded usercard is only available if there are at least 28 characters in the "About Me" section of your profile."

so you could get rid of it

Geobits

12:56

Nice.

Martin Büttner

I don't want a usercard... has 27 characters ;)

ProgramFOX

@Geobits If you don't want that usercard, add  to the top of your biography.

Martin Büttner

oh right

should have kept reading

Geobits

I like Martin's better (and stole it), but it only has 26 by my count.

Martin Büttner

oh right, I was looking at the column of the cursor in my editor, but that's off by one.

Optimizer

12:59

@Geobits but wasn't your ask to have no shadows on all visible usercards to you ?

Geobits

I don't mind the usercard, tbh. I just don't want the shadow. Oh well, it's gone now. Thanks!

Martin Büttner

@Geobits I don't want no usercard...

Geobits

@Optimizer No, on mine. It doesn't look right with mine.

Optimizer

"Look down, there's a shadow!"

"Enter the shadow"

@Vioz- Pyth one is the winner, not mine

Vioz-

He had 27 bytes ~20 minutes after you according to the timestamps

New Main Posts

13:03

0

Q: simple java proxy

I want to create the simplest java proxy possible. Must handle http / https (others like ftp a plus). I basically just want to log all the urls I send from my browser (firefox) and have the proxy run locally and firefox point to it. Is there any sample base code for how to do this. I found some o...

java

Optimizer

@Vioz- it shows different for me. let me double check

Vioz-

Pyth - edited Jul 22 at 1:05
CJam - edited Jul 22 at 12:41

Ah, i see, it's 24h time

Optimizer

yes

Vioz-

fixed

Beta Decay

@Optimizer You're an honest llama :)

Optimizer

13:12

:D

Beta Decay

tosses you a carrot

Geobits

Any major objections if I change my fillomino solver challenge to a fastest-code and provide more 9x9 cases for timing? There's a single answer that I can't even get to run, so I'm not so worried about invalidating it.

trichoplax

@Geobits Yes I'd treat it as having zero answers so far, and I haven't got past planning on paper yet so changing the challenge type sounds fine to me

Martin Büttner

13:31

@Sp3000 figured out the sequence reverser without stacks... funnily it's much faster than my previous approach and in the bin next to the optimal one o.O

Rainbolt

14:19

The PPCG Minecraft room has been empty for weeks, and suddenly it's full to the brim once again

With people I have never seen before

But hey, if Minecraft brings people to PPCG, I guess that is just as good as PPCG bringing people to Minecraft

Beta Decay

What is the PPCG Minecraft room?

Do you have like a server or something?

Geobits

I'd blame Calvin's sock for the surge in popularity.

Rainbolt

Oh, I see. One mention on the main site and the server blows up.

@BetaDecay I linked to it in the message where I mentioned it

Geobits

I think it hit HNQ at some point.

Beta Decay

I see. How many of you use it?

Geobits

14:26

Depends on when it was last mentioned on main site ;)

Rainbolt

I'm in there once a day

I used to be active on the Minecraft server, but I started doing P90x so my day is like
8:00-6:00 work
6:30-8:00 p90x
8:30-9:30 dinner
9:30-10:30 blitzball

I guess I could play Minecraft for just an hour, but I would never accomplish anything worth showing anyone

Geobits

FFX blitzball? I was never able to hold my breath long enough for that.

Rainbolt

Yes

Beta Decay

I have no idea what any this stuff is :o

Rainbolt

You don't know what "work" and "dinner" are?

Beta Decay

14:31

Nope ;)

Optimizer

He doesn't know what those numbers are

Geobits

Maybe he's 12, so really doesn't know what work is :P

Optimizer

no, he is -15

Geobits

I dunno, I think 0/-15 is -0.

Optimizer

that isn't division, its splitup

+0 -15

Rainbolt

14:32

Wow. Calvin just connected the Stack Exchange chatroom with the actual Minecraft server chat.

Optimizer

yes

Geobits

Nice.

Optimizer

Chat Relay does that

Geobits

Useful sock.

Rainbolt

Yea, socks have so many uses

Beta Decay

14:33

Same as towels

Optimizer

why would you ever use a towel?

Rainbolt

To dry off

Geobits

Makeshift tourniquet

Beta Decay

112

Q: How to best upgrade your Towel for military combat

Often your Towel is something which is very useful to carry around with you, especially in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where you are taught to upgrade your Towel by, say, reinforcing the stitches in your Towel, or soaking a corner of it with nutritious substances so that you can suck it ...

weapon-design

Geobits

Rip into strips for bandages

Sling

etc..

Optimizer

14:35

@Rainbolt oh right! you people cannot just shake to dry off ;)

Geobits

Worldbuilding's scope is so confusing...

Rainbolt

If it's part of a world, it's on topic. What is confusing about that?

Beta Decay

That's what makes it great

Rainbolt

One of the characters in my world cannot solve this homework problem. Please halp?

3

Geobits

Don't get me wrong, it's closed now as OT, but it was open for almost ten days.

Optimizer

14:36

Then Peter joined Worldbuilding?

2

Beta Decay

Nah, the Astronomy.SE overlord is World building's equivalent of Peter

Who's downvoting the Time Traveller's Watch question?

Geobits

I'm surprisingly pleased to see that Sp3000's chest ravaging comment is still on the starboard in the MC room.

Optimizer

15:17

anyone an anime fanatic ?

Beta Decay

Nope

Optimizer

you guys are so boring.

Beta Decay

Anyone here like to program?

Optimizer

Nope.

Doorknob

Anyone here live on Earth?

Beta Decay

15:23

I don't know :/

Optimizer

What is Earth?

Doorknob

I have no idea.

Beta Decay

What is?

Optimizer

These guys go really far off for a razor add.

super-pharm Mook

►

Beta Decay

Woah

For a start, that was the longest ad I've ever seen

Optimizer

15:31

So you have not seen the latest coca cola ad?

Beta Decay

America, Britain or elsewhere?

This is the latest one that I've seen in the UK

Optimizer

YouTube

Beta Decay

Choose Taste. Choose Choice. Choose Coca-Cola.: youtu.be/jEyzfhkbF-8

Optimizer

the cctv one

Beta Decay

Nope, not seen it

Martin Büttner

15:35

now that the chat is a bit busier, anyone got comments for meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/5633/8478 ?

Chris Jester-Young

15:58

@AlexA. Yes, apparently we can get you some swag. Email me your address info to [email protected] and I'll forward your request along. :-)

Transcript for