The Nineteenth Byte

ArtOfCode

8:03 PM

Hey, I just discovered that I can host Solver on QPixel without any trouble from COPPA - the server's in Ireland :)

Nathan Merrill

If solver writes a chat bot, is it allowed on SE?

ArtOfCode

@NathanMerrill yeah, as long as it isn't using his email address

IANAL

Nathan Merrill

wait, why was the new Solver banned?

ArtOfCode

COPPA

Nathan Merrill

I thought he used another email address

one that wasn't his own

ArtOfCode

8:07 PM

shrug

I wasn't part of that deletion, so I don't know the details. The only way would be ask him or a CM.

Nathan Merrill

so he couldn't write a chat bot on SE

ArtOfCode

@QPaysTaxes Aye, but the point of COPPA is to prevent people contacting the kid without oversight. If you don't use your email address, it's OK.

You also need parental oversight.

Nathan Merrill

wait, this other email wasn't his parents?

ArtOfCode

@QPaysTaxes Oh, yeah. Not a parent's email, though.

@QPaysTaxes aye, from what I gathered he was using a parent's email.

From what I gathered he was well within the bounds of COPPA, actually. But I'm definitely not a lawyer, and if SE's lawyers said better safe than sorry, that's their shout.

@QPaysTaxes exactly

Nathan Merrill

goes and checks the username

ArtOfCode

8:12 PM

TBH, using SE at all is a way to contact him - that's why parental oversight is required - so it's risky, and SE don't like taking risks there.

I get why that is, though. And it's a terrible part of being a moderator that you have to report people who are otherwise awesome, but it does have to be done.

@QPaysTaxes Yeah. There's a post on MSE. It essentially says that ensuring you're complying with COPPA totally is so expensive and time-consuming that it's just not worth it unless your primary audience is under 13.

New Meta Posts

0

Q: Rectangle builder greater area

This code challenge is from somewhere else, I think is pretty fun problem to solve, hope you enjoyed trying it: I've been trying to solve this coding challenge from Codility for couple weeks now. I just got a maximum of 35% completion according to codility. Please, can somebody help? Here is my...

ArtOfCode

@QPaysTaxes There are workarounds, some more legit than others, but none of them are totally 100% risk-free.

There is always the chance that the SE team are going to have to delete you.

The primary one is (a) get consent, (b) get oversight, (c) don't use your contact details, (d) don't ever mention your age, (e) act over 13, (f) hope nobody notices or cares enough

Anonymous

I know of a 100% risk-free solution to COPPA

Anonymous

Be >=13

ArtOfCode

Gah, I hate it when sneezes refuse to sneeze.

@Mego 's pretty good for people who are :)

Anonymous

8:19 PM

Being 21 is simultaneously great and awful. Great because I've unlocked all of the privileges except "lower insurance rates", awful because I have to be an adult.

ArtOfCode

@QPaysTaxes Yeah. You have to be aware of what you say, in everything you say. Which is difficult, if you don't know COPPA is a thing.

And let's face it most <13 year olds don't

Or, y'know, you can just lie about your age.

Pretty sure my birthday is set in 1990.

Anonymous

I learned about COPPA when I was 12 because of Neopets

ArtOfCode

which would make me 26... yeah no

I just use(d) 1990 for everything because it's convenient and easy to remember.

I don't have to any more :D

"yes yes I'm 18 shut up now"

Geobits

@QPaysTaxes You know you're getting old when you can't even remember how old you are ;)

TimmyD

I was barely 18 when COPPA was passed.

So I was one of the "bad kids" that caused COPPA to get passed in the first place. ;-)

quartata

8:23 PM

@Mego You haven't unlocked the "run for president in the U.S" privilege yet

Anonymous

@quartata That's not a privilege

Morgan Thrapp

@TimmyD I was 4 when COPPA passed. :P

quartata

@Mego True

TimmyD

Good gravy, all you young'uns around.

quartata

@orlp @ btw

TimmyD

8:25 PM

And 1990 was 10 years ago, dammit. :p

Anonymous

I was 6 when COPPA passed

quartata

When did COPPA pass? 2000?

Oh

Anonymous

Passed in 1998, effective in 2000

Anonymous

I went off of the 2000 date

quartata

Ahh, that's what I was remembering.

Morgan Thrapp

8:29 PM

I was using the '98 date.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

anyone familiar with peg?

epicTCK

You can create quines with the *nix utility echo. Could I use it in the quine challenge?

Cyoce

; interpret BF
Ä˙Ë0ÅD"[]+-<>,."ßS"@g{ } h›g h‹g È É⇒A0 hª ºA"
:AE
∷AE

quartata

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ As in this? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsing_expression_grammar

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

yeah

quartata

8:35 PM

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ What are you trying to do?

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@quartata Basically make a J-like language.

Am I using the wrong tool ? :P

Cyoce

@QPaysTaxes hoc est pretzelum

quartata

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ I don't see how it would be useful, to be honest.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@quartata ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I've given up on my previous parser, as it can't handle forks etc.

epicTCK

Would #!/bin/echo be a valid answer? It executes as a quine

quartata

8:37 PM

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ That's not really a "parser" thing per se.

Are all of your commands one char?

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@quartata er, whatever it's called.

@quartata Idk, why?

quartata

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ Just wondering.

TimmyD

12

A: What counts as a proper quine?

We've been discussing this in chat recently, and coming up with a solid definition seems difficult. The best idea I've got is to base a definition for a true quine on the principles given on this page: a true quine will in one way or another consist of data, and code. The data represents the code...

quartata

Wait a second.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

ok

Maybe I should look at Jelly source to see what he did

quartata

8:39 PM

You don't want to look at that :P

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

why? it surely isn't as bad as J source code

epicTCK

@TimmyD I think it's payload capable

quartata

Anyways, if you know the arity of each atom, all you really have to do is to iterate through it and look ahead as needed

epicTCK

NVM it's not a quine

quartata

Number literals and what not are just nilads, for instance.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

8:41 PM

I guess I could do that. But that would mean I couldn't have variadic verbs, right?

quartata

So for instance if the first thing is f then you look ahead one atom. If the next atom is monadic, then you construct some sort of Hook object holding the two atoms.

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ Well, J doesn't either.

epicTCK

Ok got the quine to work

quartata

It's not something you can have in a tacit language, really.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@quartata I think it does.

wait

quartata

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ No it doesn't. Those are just lists.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

8:42 PM

what's a variadic verb, anyhow?

quartata

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ As in varity? variable amounts of arguments

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

So wouldn't (say) + be variadic? It can be monadic (+ 5) and dyadic (3 + 4)

quartata

Not really, IMO. There's two +s: a unary + and a dyadic +

one takes one argument the other takes two arguments

But they aren't one function that can take as many arguments as it wants

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

oh

oic

epicTCK

#Plain Text, 0 bytes
``
Plain text can be run with `cat filename.txt`. This returns the source code of 0 bytes.

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

8:45 PM

ಠ_ಠ

epicTCK

not sure whether to post this answer

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

don't

epicTCK

but.... but...

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

plaintext is not a programming lang by our standards

quartata

Violates a standard loophole anyways

You can't have 0-byte quines

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

8:46 PM

And that.

Anonymous

2 standard loopholes, can we find a third?

TimmyD

39

A: Loopholes that are forbidden by default

Zero-length answers Considering an empty program a quine was original in the 1994 IOCCC. Over two decades later, if you can answer a question with an empty program and that question is scored by length (e.g., code-golf) and is tagged as quine, source-layout or restricted-source, just notify th...

epicTCK

yeah ok ok I get it

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

52

A: Loopholes that are forbidden by default

Using a different name for something that's prohibited The title is not very clear, I know, but this is what it means: if a specific function is prohibited, someone can use a language where another term than "function" is used (for example "subroutine"), and then that user can claim that their s...

TimmyD

152

A: Loopholes that are forbidden by default

Using a made-up language specifically designed for the challenge This includes any language with commands that "do whatever I choose them to do". Claiming that your answer is written in "MyOwnLanguage", where the command x means "read a sequence of numbers, split them into groups of three, and ...

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

8:48 PM

52

A: Loopholes that are forbidden by default

Using a different name for something that's prohibited The title is not very clear, I know, but this is what it means: if a specific function is prohibited, someone can use a language where another term than "function" is used (for example "subroutine"), and then that user can claim that their s...

:P

Anonymous

Possibly this as well

Anonymous

224

A: Loopholes that are forbidden by default

Interpreting the challenge too literally That is, if the challenge says "write a function that, given a number n, returns the n-th prime", posting something equivalent to: function f($n) { return "the $n-th prime"; }

quartata

Nah, not really.

orlp

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ I'm familiar with PEG

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@orlp cool! I just need some concept help

(don't kill me) I'm using PEG.js

{
  // clear the console for ease of use
  var j = 10; while(--j) console.log(" ".repeat(j));
  // define some stuff
}

Expression
  = Term*

Term =
  l:(data)? _ v:verbComb _ r:(data)? {
    console.log("Right arg: ", r);
    console.log("Verb: ", v);
    console.log("Left arg: ", l);
    return eval(r + v + l);
  }
verbComb = VERB:verb ADVERBS:(_ adverb)* {
  	var adverbList = ADVERBS[0];
  	console.log(VERB, adverbList);
    return VERB;
  }
data = numbers:[0-9]+ { return numbers.join(""); }

orlp

8:51 PM

gist.github.com/orlp/363a4261f6a884311cbbe6a146a3052b

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

How might I allow for an arbitrary amount of Terms?

orlp

a PEG implementation in ~300 lines

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ there are multiple problems

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

okay

orlp

first, if a PEG can match the empty input, it will always match it

but the big problem regarding your grammar is that you never recurse

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

How would I do that?

I really don't know much PEG :(

orlp

8:53 PM

well

the intuitive way to do it

would be simply to say term = number / term verb term

but that doesn't work because left-recursion is not allowed in PEG

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

yeah, that's where I'm stuck. If that doesn't work, then what?

orlp

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ take a look at the example at the bottom of my PEG implementation

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

So by

expr = factor ([+-] factor)*
factor = primary ([*/] primary)*

you implement precedence?

orlp

correct

@CᴏɴᴏʀO'Bʀɪᴇɴ can you describe your language better?

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

@orlp Yeah, of course. Do you know about J?

orlp

8:58 PM

what are verbs, verbcombs, etc

no

I mean, describe the syntax

not what it means :P

Cᴏɴᴏʀ O'Bʀɪᴇɴ

okay

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