The Nineteenth Byte

@uoɥʇʎPʎzɐɹC starmaninnovations.com/static/SW3D_20160714.zip Run the spacewars3Dextended_newship_windowed.exe executable in the folder after unzipping.

quartata

@HelkaHomba Parvenu

Eh that one is not that weird...

Calabash

gimme the grape pls

In all seriousness fruit is expensive please mail me an actual grape: 1337 Infinite Loop Urmum, CA

I could use it

El'endia Starman

1:44 AM

@quartata I actually recognized that word, unexpectedly, and that was because of this: rice-boy.com/see/index.php?c=001

I didn't know it was an actual English word though.

quartata

Oh haha. Well I'm not surprised it's been used for names, it's a pretty cool word

Not too many syllables, obscure, nice ring...

El'endia Starman

Speaking of which, that comic I just linked to is a long-but-good read.

Quill

Turns out my site doesn't get much traffic

charredgrass

turns out my server has more mood swings than yours

Quill

yay for digital ocean

Helka Homba

1:59 AM

@quartata 🍠

quartata

Can't see that but I'm assuming it's corn

El'endia Starman

@quartata It's a potato, actually.

Good job.

quartata

Yeesh. That took a while

mm baked potato

El'endia Starman

@HelkaHomba: Unconformably.

Just saw it in a Wikipedia article and misread it at first.

Source sentence:

> The Potsdam Sandstone lies unconformably on a surface of Precambrian metamorphic rock.

Quill

@HelkaHomba Ziggurat

promise it's not a pokemon

El'endia Starman

2:10 AM

@Quill Even I know that one!

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

I left chat for a while. Did quartata ever end up getting his grape?

El'endia Starman

Well, given my minor interest in ancient mythology, that's perhaps not too surprising.

@DrGreenEggsandIronMan No, but he did get a potato! For "parvenu".

Quill

@El'endiaStarman I guess that makes me *looks directly into camera and blasts finger guns* stupid

GamrCorps

Did anyone see the rubiks cube guy on America's got talent this week?

charredgrass

@GamrCorps no, what did he do?

GamrCorps

2:20 AM

it was the guy who got out of a speeding ticket by doing rubiks cube magic, but two of his "tricks" were very obvious to how they were done

Quill

Goddamn it, worldbuilding

23

Q: What's the most reasonable way to fit Monsters in your Pocket?

Say you have a hollow sphere, about the size of the grapefruit, comprised of a (let's say red) top half and a (let's say white) bottom half. There's an articulated lid, and an LED on the front. Most importantly, it fits in the pocket of your pants (or skirt, if skirts have pockets). Now, someho...

quartata

hahahaha

Helka Homba

@Quill pyramid-dealy

Quill

13 mins ago, by Quill

@El'endiaStarman I guess that makes me *looks directly into camera and blasts finger guns* stupid

El'endia Starman

> However we could, technically, compress the monsters. Matter can be obscenely compressed with the use of a singularity, or black hole. We'd need to come up with some manner of creating a black hole in the small sphere. While this would kill the monster, getting the monster back out wasn't a requirement, so let's not focus on that too much.

Bahahaha.

FryAmTheEggman

2:27 AM

^ I thought black holes had all the information from the matter they consume stored around the event horizon? Maybe you could actually reconstruct them :P

Helka Homba

@El'endiaStarman kind of a collection of common terms - un/conform/ably :/

El'endia Starman

@HelkaHomba True, true.

user214599

I had to upload this again :p

user214599

Anyone remember this?

user214599

2:34 AM

@Quill Do we have to fit the monster alive?

Quill

@MatthewRoh idk read the question

I think I know why the room feels noisy lately.

Helka Homba

@MatthewRoh hrm?

Quill

There's a distinct lack of Arctic Fox gifs

user214599

I did some talk about spies, some images got starred almost instantly

quartata

Everything went downhill when Doorknob changed his avatar

user214599

2:36 AM

And this is one of them

GamrCorps

2:47 AM

Anyone here who knows how planetary gears work, I could use some help if you are willing to give it: engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/10705/…

Quill

CSS is easy. It’s like riding a bike, which is on fire and the ground is on fire and everything is on fire because it is hell.

Tweeted by iamdevloper on July 14, 2016 at 10:23 PM

charredgrass

@Quill doing css right now. could not be more true

Lembik

3:37 AM

hi.. I have a basic python question

GamrCorps

shoot

Lembik

I have some code that has "return A and B or C" at the end of a function. To me this looks like it should return a Boolean but it seems not to

it's not my code

what does this do?

Doorknob

@quartata correlation/causation? D:

GamrCorps

@Lembik could you send the full function?

charredgrass

^

Lembik

3:40 AM

@GamrCorps sorry this is from something I looked at yesterday.. I don't have it here

I think python is returning the last thing it evaluated

or something like that

GamrCorps

That's fine, the problem looks to be that the and keyword returns one of its arguments, not a Boolean expression. For example, return 0 and 21 would return 0. I have no clue why though

Lembik

right

charredgrass

might be something to do with short circuiting

Oh!

In JS there's stuff like return x || y

Lembik

so it's some sort of if, then else it seems

charredgrass

it will return x, buit if x is undefined it returns y

that;s probably it

Lembik

3:42 AM

there are A, B and C :)

charredgrass

uhhhhh

GamrCorps

After further investigation it seems to be something like this: return A and B actually is this: if (A and B) return B else return A

charredgrass

oh so it's like ternary but weird

GamrCorps

precisely

if A and B is true it returns B, and A if it is false

Lembik

I think it is return B if A else C

so it never returns A

but just the mere fact that A and B or C is not a Boolean is already upsetting me :)

GamrCorps

3:44 AM

Well yeah, I didn't consider the or keyword

charredgrass

lol

Lembik

thanks very much

Python is not a serious language it seems :)

2

GamrCorps

in that case it is like this: A and B or C -> if (A and B) return B, else return C

and youre welcome

charredgrass

@Lembik be careful, some people will lynch you for saying that :)

Lembik

I know! But they are wrong :)

GamrCorps

3:46 AM

python is weird

Lembik

It's insane.. take if (A and B) return B, else return C, Clearly A and B is a Boolean

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

@Lembik ;_;

Lembik

but not sometimes :)

charredgrass

@GamrCorps that's the worst thing I've ever seen. remind me never to use that syntax

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

You missed the brutal JS bashing earlier today.

GamrCorps

3:48 AM

I assume it comes in handy for VERY specific scenarios, but otherwise it is a complete pain

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

Golfing

Lembik

@GamrCorps right

GamrCorps

@Lembik found it: docs.python.org/3/reference/expressions.html#boolean-operations

> (Note that neither and nor or restrict the value and type they return to False and True, but rather return the last evaluated argument. This is sometimes useful, e.g., if s is a string that should be replaced by a default value if it is empty, the expression s or 'foo' yields the desired value. Because not has to create a new value, it returns a boolean value regardless of the type of its argument (for example, not 'foo' produces False rather than ''.)

charredgrass

@GamrCorps if anyone uses this regularly in real code I will murder them

GamrCorps

haha

youre going to easy on them

I would do much worse

charredgrass

3:55 AM

I will shove a ternary operator down their throat?

GamrCorps

I would shove two

Lembik

I have moved on to trying to understand xgboost :)

Dennis

Um, I use those all the time.

GamrCorps

Uh... I retract my former statement

charredgrass

@Dennis genuinely curious - what is it useful for?

Doorknob

3:57 AM

@charredgrass Why? AFAIK that's the standard way to do ternaries in Python. I've seen that used all over the place.

charredgrass

@Doorknob I'm not familiar with Python. I guess I'm just not used to its syntax :P

I'm too used to seeing ternaries as (x ? y : z)

GamrCorps

I am familiar with Python, just not that confusing syntax

^^^

Dennis

@charredgrass For example, I'm currently writing an interpreter for a BF-like language. I want to set the cell to the ordinal of the byte read of STDIN or 0 on EOF. cell = ord(sys.stdin.buffer.read(1) or '\0') does that.

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

Grr. I've got a huge update for V in the works, but I don't want to pull it yet cause it adds one stinking byte in one very specific scenario.

Dennis

Sure, it's possible without or, but that would require a variable, etc.

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

3:59 AM

:/

charredgrass

@Dennis I see, thanks for explaining

GamrCorps

@DrGreenEggsandIronMan Well, if each version is easily accessible, just use an older version in your solution.

Dennis

By the way, 'yay' if condition else 'nay' is Python's ternary if syntax.

Anonymous

@charredgrass That idiom is very common with pseudo-default parameters. Suppose you want a function parameter to default to an empty list. Doing param=[] causes problems. So, instead, you do param=None, and at the start of the function body, you do param = param or [].

Anonymous

@Dennis sys.stdin.buffer.read(1) what is this madness?

charredgrass

4:03 AM

@Mego Oh, so it's equivalent to using || during assignment or returns in js.

EOF maybe?

Anonymous

@charredgrass Sort of, yeah

GamrCorps

So if I understand correctly, is A and B or Cequivalent to B if A else C?

Anonymous

Oh wow it says to read and write from the buffers in the docs for Py3k

Anonymous

TIL I've been doing it wrong

Anonymous

@GamrCorps Basically yeah. It's golfier, too, in most cases.

GamrCorps

4:06 AM

neat

Anonymous

@quartata When I saw this on the starboard, I did not immediately think of the author :P

Dennis

@GamrCorps No. 1 and 0 or 2 gives 2, while 0 if 1 else 2 gives 0.

Lembik

it would be great if there were a machine learning chat room as active as this

Dennis

@Mego Reads one byte from STDIN. Is there a better way?

Lembik

but then, everything would be better if it were like PPCG :)

GamrCorps

4:09 AM

@Dennis Good point.

Nathan Merrill

hmmm...what if python decided to copy the variable on each call

instead of evaluating the expression every time

Anonymous

4:25 AM

@Dennis I always used sys.stdin.read(1) - that was the "correct" way in Python 2. I didn't know that sys.stdin.buffer.read(1) was an option (and apparently the "correct" way) in Python 3 until I looked it up.

Dennis

Yeah, sys.stdin.read(1) reads a character in Python 3.

zʏᴀʙiɴ101

5:01 AM

Hello

GamrCorps

hi

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

So, V has this command that inserts a character 'n' times. So for example 3i would insert the letter 'i' 3 times. What character should it default to if you don't specify what character at the end?

Anonymous

@DrGreenEggsandIronMan Whatever the last character entered is?

Anonymous

@Dennis Yeah - I never realized the distinction until I dug deeper just now. It doesn't make any difference for me in Seriously, because it works with both UTF-8 and CP437 seamlessly.

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

Oh, so like if you do hello3 it would insert hellooo?

Anonymous

5:11 AM

Sure

Anonymous

Maybe have it repeat the previous string n times? Or is that a different command?

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

So I guess it's just ~~infix~~ prefix vs postfix.

@Mego Yeah, that's a different command. That would be 3i<string><esc>

Prefix and postfix take the same number of bytes, unless prefix has a default character it could be one shorter. When you don't specify.

Maybe I should just default it to V since it's the name of the language, and it will most likely never actually be useful.

So it's an easter egg.

New Meta Posts

5:25 AM

0

Q: File Format Challenges

I recently posed a question about attempting to ruin Lepton's attempt to compress a JPEG. I've done other file-format-type questions before, to generate a WAV, defeat LZMA compression, etc, in part because I like to learn how file formats are put together at the byte level. The question is all a...

discussion

Mᴀʀs Uʟᴛᴏʀ

5:47 AM

@Lembik ???

@Lembik python and and or short-circuit, plus python (like JS) has truthiness, so they usually leave types the same

@charredgrass D: uh oh

charredgrass

@MᴀʀsUʟᴛᴏʀ lol don't worry, Dennis and Mego explained its usefulness to me

it's a thing in js too, like return x || y

Mᴀʀs Uʟᴛᴏʀ

I don't use it too often though

Except as JS' null coalesce (look it up in C# documentation if you want), basically to make sure some variable exists

charredgrass

woah, windows 10 allows pasting into command prompt using ctrl+v

this is beautiful

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

Agreed, but it's completely ridiculous that they didn't have that like 10 years ago.

Anonymous

It's completely ridiculous that Windows doesn't just have some feature-compatible version of mintty and bash as its command prompt

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

5:58 AM

I have bash. :P

Other than mintty

Nick T

So file formats

Mᴀʀs Uʟᴛᴏʀ

@charredgrass In Ubuntu it's ctrl+shift+c/ctrl+shift+v, since ctrl+c is quit

Nick T

Rather than try to fit such a question into existing bins, is there a compelling reason to not have it be in-scope?

Anonymous

@MᴀʀsUʟᴛᴏʀ The standard way to do it in Linux is ctrl+ins for copy and shift-ins for paste

Anonymous

@NickT This is a site about programming. If there's no programming involved in the challenge, it's off-topic.

Anonymous

6:01 AM

There's no simpler way to put it.

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

@Mego Would you say the same thing about the PDF question?

charredgrass

It's a good question, just not really programming

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

12

Q: Hand-crafting a PDF

Inspired by this answer, I thought an interesting challenge would be to golf a PDF file. PDF files are based on the PostScript language, so I thought this might be acceptable as a programming challenge for this site; but I wanted to check first. A proposed challenge might be something like: ...

discussion questions code-challenge

charredgrass

oh interesting

Nick T

It seems incredibly myopic to dismiss a question about a specific file format as not being "about programming"

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

6:02 AM

@NickT It's not about programming because the task is not "Write a program that XYZ".

Anonymous

@DrGreenEggsandIronMan Yes, I would. I would also say that the proposed challenge has many other flaws (like the ones Peter and Fry brought up).

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

The task is "Find the set of data that has XYZ property".

Mᴀʀs Uʟᴛᴏʀ

@Mego Oh (I have a laptop where the ins is fn+printscr though)

Anonymous

@MᴀʀsUʟᴛᴏʀ It should still work (my laptop is the same way). Do shift+fn+printscr

Nick T

@DrGreenEggsandIronMan is there some slippery slope that I'm not seeing here?

Mᴀʀs Uʟᴛᴏʀ

6:04 AM

@Mego I know, it's just that I find ctrl + shift + c easier

Nick T

is this question about two other "algorithms" going to lead to totally off-the-wall questions?

such a challenge is so intimately computational

no way it's going to fly on Puzzling.SE or Math.SE

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

Even if computing it is the best way to get the answer, the answer is the result, not the code.

Nick T

The answer with the LZMA question was mostly dictated by the result answer, I just had some totally bullshit scoring mechanism

Anonymous

@NickT There's no slippery slope. There's a very clear-cut line of what is on-topic and what is off-topic, and your challenge falls on the off-topic side.

Nick T

@Mego is that formally specified on codegolf.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic somewhere that I can't see or in some meta question?

Anonymous

6:07 AM

> Programming Puzzles & Code Golf is for programming contests and challenges.

Anonymous

There is no programming in your challenge. It's not a programming contest/challenge.

Nick T

There's no programming required to generate "Hello World", I can write it down on a piece of paper

Is there some slippery slope I'm not seeing

Mᴀʀs Uʟᴛᴏʀ

Maybe a mod should edit this it possible

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

Sorta related:

Mᴀʀs Uʟᴛᴏʀ

There is no programming required to create a PDF that shows hello world

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

6:09 AM

6

A: Guidelines for posting and closing popularity contests

Which challenges are on topic here? First and foremost, the same rules apply to all challenges, whether they are popularity contests or not. These rules are outlined in our help center. They were phrased differently in the past, but their essence was the same ever since the help center was creat...

Nick T

So if I make it a kolomogorov complexity problem to generate such a JPEG, is that OK?

charredgrass

That's not what kolmogorov complexity is.

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

A specific JPEG, or a variable one?

charredgrass

Kolmogorov complexity would be golfing the code to find a specific JPEG

Mᴀʀs Uʟᴛᴏʀ

@NickT JPEG seems a little restrictive, (and maybe a specific image as well) but yeah

Nick T

6:11 AM

or rather, lets say the JPEG needs to be one of two, based on some arbitrary input

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

@charredgrass No, that's not true.

charredgrass

oh

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

> Kolmogorov complexity, informally, is the amount of code it takes to produce a given string of text.

It's tangentially related to entropy.

charredgrass

I see

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

So strings like "aaaaaaaaaaaaa" have a low KC, and strings like "lasdifuhliasdfalsd" have a higher KC.

Nick T

6:12 AM

"You must specify a program that generates a valid JPEG if the input to the program is True, otherwise it must exit and produce nothing"

Would that make the question OK?

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

What's the scoring?

charredgrass

You don't need input

Nick T

Same as it is

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

Kinda seems like a chameleon challenge.

Nick T

but it's impossible to do without a program, because I specified it.

I always figured that as programmers, it was commonplace to have to deal with other people's specs and algorithms

god forbid a question where people try to learn anything

charredgrass

6:16 AM

wow, Python's in is so much better than me changing JS .indexOf results into truthy values by adding 1

Quill

@charredgrass developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/…

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

All I heard in that sentence was "Python... Better... JS"

3

charredgrass

@Quill does that work on strings though?

Mᴀʀs Uʟᴛᴏʀ

@NickT The smallest possible depends on the viewer stackoverflow.com/posts/24147349/edit

Anonymous

@NickT I think your frustration at having your challenge closed is preventing you from understanding the reasoning for why it was closed. I recommend taking a breather, and coming back when you're less frustrated.

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

6:17 AM

:P

Quill

@charredgrass developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/…

charredgrass

@Quill why have I never been told about this

I should read more docs

Anonymous

But a in b is just so much golfier

Nick T

@Mego I'm happy to comply with the letter of your law

Quill

@charredgrass because it's only been added recently so there's a lot more docs that use indexOf

@Mego developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/…

Anonymous

6:19 AM

@Quill That's not at all the same thing

charredgrass

yeah not the same

Anonymous

That's hasattr(a,b), not a.contains(b)

Quill

yeah, I know. but still, it exists

Anonymous

It exists, but it has nothing to do with the current conversation

Nick T

@Mego but, yes, I'm frustrated. Clearly. Rather than slapping me with "u mad bro", can you help me understand why expanding the scope of things is anathema?

Anonymous

6:23 AM

@NickT I didn't "slap" you with "u mad bro" - I merely suggested taking a break until you're less frustrated. That's good advice in any setting. Expanding the scope can happen, but we do have limits on how far the scope can be expanded. Challenges which don't involve programming at all will never be on-topic for this site, because this site is for programming challenges.

Mᴀʀs Uʟᴛᴏʀ

@NickT Sure, it may be a valid question, but I don't think many people would do it because it's less kolmogorov complexity and more compression

Nick T

@Mego is dealing with JPEGs not a programming task?

Anonymous

@NickT Not by itself.

Nick T

@MᴀʀsUʟᴛᴏʀ The scoring would remain as it's posted

Mᴀʀs Uʟᴛᴏʀ

@NickT As it's posted?

Quill

6:26 AM

hey @Downgoat, I'm gonna take a crack at making Cheddar run on serverside later on, you interested?

Mᴀʀs Uʟᴛᴏʀ

@Quill serverside?

Quill

yup

Mᴀʀs Uʟᴛᴏʀ

@Quill Basically transpile node.js into node.cdr?

Quill

kinda sorta not really

Mᴀʀs Uʟᴛᴏʀ

@Quill ???

as in the online interpreter?

Anonymous

6:29 AM

@MᴀʀsUʟᴛᴏʀ He means an online interpreter that runs Cheddar serverside rather than clientside, I think.

Anonymous

Like how TIO runs code serverside

Mᴀʀs Uʟᴛᴏʀ

@Quill pls don't make the interpreter run code serverside, the server might die from processing load

charredgrass

Wow, I'm really bad at Python

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

What are you having trouble with?

charredgrass

Nothing really, it's just the syntax is so unfamiliar to me that I'm much slower in Python than JS

the headache due to lack of semicolons and braces is also getting to me

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

6:35 AM

Actually, optional semicolons are allowed.

Also, try running from __future__ import braces

:P

charredgrass

I know :P

also did import antigravity

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

That's a classic.

Did you import this?

charredgrass

woah, never heard of that one before :D

Quill

@Mego pretty much, I'll route files into the cheddar interpreter code

charredgrass

6:51 AM

Found this in some documentation about reddit api and OAuth:

> Ingredients: 1x Web Browser; 1x Folder; 1x Commandline interface; 1x Text Editor. Preheat keyboard to 425°F (400°F for dark or nonstick keyboards).

charredgrass

7:36 AM

that feel when your function has a cyclomatic complexity of 100000000

Mᴀʀs Uʟᴛᴏʀ

@charredgrass wat

charredgrass

i'm bad at python thats wat

New Main Posts

7:59 AM

ANOTHER ISSUE PROUDLY BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE TYPE COERCION COMPANY

9

charredgrass

> Suppose you want to match a pair of opening and closing HTML tags, and the text in between.

oh god

what am I reading

Quill

then you use a dom document

flawr

@Fatalize I hope you're well

Fatalize

@flawr I don't live in Nice, so yes

Dr Green Eggs and Iron Man

@NewMainPosts @quill edit that?

elevening == mod power abuse.

Fatalize

8:15 AM

:31048966 not quite, i'm about 300km away from Nice

flawr

@Fatalize good to hear

TùxCräftîñg

8:34 AM

gm

charredgrass

@NewMainPosts what's happening lol

TùxCräftîñg

i have 572 reputation .____________________.

OEIS ftw

Katenkyo

To all the other french people on PPCG, hope you're doing well, and your family and friends are too!

7

Fatalize

@Katenkyo that's Nice of you

TùxCräftîñg

> A000027 also satisfies all three rules unless you also specify that 1 is the only element not generated by rule 3. – f'' 1 hour ago

GENIUS

Quill

8:40 AM

so I got Cheddar running server side but stuff is still broken

Katenkyo

@Fatalize Nice pun there

charredgrass

@Fatalize little too soon?

it was literally today

zʏᴀʙiɴ101

@Katenkyo ?

Katenkyo

@charredgrass I think you can joke if you're part of the population that suffered ^^

Also, humor is important in these moments

Fatalize

even if you're not, I'm not gonna stop joking because of a single person

zʏᴀʙiɴ101

8:42 AM

Is it a holiday or mourning in France? >>'

Katenkyo

@zʏᴀʙiɴ101 Someone though that running with a truck on the sideway was funny in GTA, and decided to do the same thing on our National Day at Nice. 84 Death, and 20 heavily injured people.

^

@zʏᴀʙiɴ101 Both

Bastille Day

11

Python 2, 88 83 72 bytes You may want to read the programs in this answer in reverse order... Slower and shorter still, thanks to Dennis: L=1,;exec'L+=2*L[0]+1,3*L[0]-1;L=sorted(set(L))[1:];'*input() print L[0] Try it online This doesn't run as fast, but is shorter (83 bytes.) By sortin...