The Nineteenth Byte

betseg

8:00 PM

Viruses so far have been really disappointing on the 'disable the internet' front, and time is running out. When Linux/Mac win in a decade or so the game will be over.

Lol

Found this in Russian chat transcript

Rainbolt

🤔

Whoah!

muddyfish

pity ransomware is a thing now

orlp

is Chris P. Bacon a good name for a pet pig?

muddyfish

@orlp do you have a pet pig?

Rainbolt

I've never seen an actual smiley on Stack Exchange

With color and everything

muddyfish

8:04 PM

@Rainbolt flags as offensive

@muddyfish no

ida.liu.se/~petjo00

@Rainbolt 😨

@muddyfish It was more of a thing a few months ago, now there are almost no news related with ransomware

muddyfish

@Poke oh god it's awful

Poke

8:05 PM

>.<

it's great

Rainbolt

@betseg How did you find that?

Poke

☺

Business Cat

My university got attacked by ransomware a couple months ago

Rainbolt

Oh, okay. There are unicode characters that have color. Never knew that.

muddyfish

@BusinessCat anything interesting

Business Cat

8:07 PM

@muddyfish Not sure what happened in the end, I kinda stopped following. I just know they were refusing to pay for a while

DJMcMayhem

☕👍

betseg

I'm glad that 🐧 isn't here, he doesn't like emojis 😀

muddyfish

Could you guys stop with the emoji? They're getting rather annoying.

El'endia Starman

Yes, they are annoying.

If you want to play with them more, go to the Sandbox.

Pavel

😈

DJMcMayhem

8:17 PM

Good job doing literally the exact opposite of what was requested

Rainbolt

Twice. Requested twice.

Pavel

I just joined and saw emoji

muddyfish

emoji can not add anything to a conversation that text can't do better

In other news, I had 4 nosebleeds today

Rainbolt

A picture can tell a thousand words though

DJMcMayhem

Nosebleeds are the worst. I get them all the time for no reason

muddyfish

8:23 PM

@Rainbolt emoji are only like 4 bytes. I congratulate you on your compression algorithm

Business Cat

I've gotten nosebleeds like twice in my whole life

muddyfish

@DJMcMayhem I haven't had one in a while before but I just had loads today

Pavel

Are there three byte emoji?

betseg

New Unicode 9 emojis are about 16 bytes

Poke

@muddyfish debatable

betseg

8:24 PM

@Pavel yes

Pavel

Wait, seriously sixteen bytes?

Rainbolt

When I was 12 I got them so often that I started eating alfalfa sprouts. It helped. After a few months I never had another nosebleed.

Pavel

That seems... Absurd.

muddyfish

I guess it was because I was hot because I'm getting ill

Rainbolt

It's not that absurd. Alfalfa has a lot of vitamin K which helps your liver produce the hormone needed for blood clotting

betseg

8:26 PM

(sorry I will put an emoji) 👩🏽‍⚖️ this is a 17-byte emoji (depending on your font this can look as 3 different symbols)

Rainbolt

Huh. I wonder when unicode will have gifs.

muddyfish

@Rainbolt never, please

Business Cat

I see 2 symbols

muddyfish

don't even think about it unless wearing a tin foil hat

Rainbolt

That's right. IC = two symbols.

muddyfish

8:28 PM

and even then it's still bad

quartata

I see three boxes and one weird box thing

El'endia Starman

I see two symbols, but it highlights as one character.

muddyfish

I see a girl and what I assume is a cow

betseg

Looks like this in my android phone

A lawyer Indian girl

Dennis

@Pavel I can. I'm not sure why I would though.

ATaco

8:29 PM

Yeah, emoji aren't very efficient

Business Cat

Oh weird, I saw a girl and a scale

El'endia Starman

@muddyfish I see a girl and a balance scale. I'm guessing it's supposed to represent Justice?

betseg

Yup^

ATaco

there's also a ZSJ there

muddyfish

maybe my font is dead?

quartata

8:32 PM

Why doesn't Unicode actually try and add better support for more obscure writing systems and make Chinese support that doesn't suck as opposed to adding a bunch of emojis that no one would ever conceivably use and on places where they would could be easily programmed in with images

betseg

There are actually tons of obscure writing systems in Unicode

Rainbolt

I thought that was the point of unicode

muddyfish

@betseg I wouldn't call Chinese 'obscure'

quartata

Yeah and they're all missing characters

Check out some of the Brahmic scripts sometime

betseg

> more obscure writing systems and Chinese

Rainbolt

8:34 PM

@quartata Couldn't you just program in the obscure Chinese characters too?

quartata

Why no one has made another standard boggles my mind especially with some of the bloat Unicode has implementation wise (and that we seem to love making a ton of standards for everything else)

betseg

Relevant: xkcd.com/927

muddyfish

@quartata they have. Except unicode was made and now accepted

ATaco

Unicode was supposed to be the issue solver

quartata

@Rainbolt 20 emojis (which should be images anyways) is easier than hundreds of characters

@muddyfish But they haven't. Those are all single byte

Dennis

8:37 PM

@ATaco I'm not sure if you used computers in the pre-Unicode era. It solves a lot of issues.

Rainbolt

Just to be fair, it's 20 emojis that might actually be used in rare cases vs hundreds of obscure Chinese characters that I doubt most Chinese people even know about, similar to how most people who speak English don't even know some English words.

quartata

@Rainbot I'd say they're still more useful than man in business suit levitating. It honestly feels like monkeys are making these new characters

DJMcMayhem

You'd be surprised. Depending on your line of work, man in business suit levitating can be very relevant

muddyfish

@DJMcMayhem such as?

quartata

@Dennis Yeah compared to everything else UTF-8 is amazing, but that's because there are no other variable size encofings

I seriously doubt anyone would use Unicode if there was only UTF-32

I just noticed that didn't ping Rainbolt. Awkward.

> Rainbot

Dennis

8:42 PM

UTF-16 is also variable-size.

quartata

Yeah sure but that's baically the same thing :P

Dennis

And it's usually a better choice for languages with non-Latin alphabets.

New Main Posts

0

Q: Score rock-paper-scissors

Given two string inputs of "Rock", "Paper", or "Scissors", determine the ouctome of the RPS round. Output 1 if the first player wins, -1 if the second player wins, or 0 for a tie. Rock Rock -> 0 Rock Paper -> -1 Rock Scissors -> 1 Paper Rock -> 1 Paper Paper -> 0 Paper Scissors -> -1 Scissors Ro...

Dennis

I tried adding Sage to TIO. It wants to install X, Firefox, and TeX Live. sighs

quartata

hahahaha

Dennis

8:49 PM

The official website has an RPM that (hopefully) has less dependencies. It's somehow even bigger.

betseg

@Dennis wow

Dennis

I'll have to find a better way. I really want Sage, but 1GB+ of storage isn't an efficient use of TIO's resources.

El'endia Starman

What would Sage need Firefox for?!

Dennis

It doesn't need any of this.

Pavel

Can you install it, and then individualy uninstal the components you don't need?

quartata

8:57 PM

Sadly that's not how package managers work

Pavel

To someone with a Windows computer, ELI5 how package managers work?

I get lot's of installers that come with random crap, but I just remove it.

Dennis

Using rpm instead of dnf would actually allow breaking dependencies. It will create issues with automatic updates though, which will try to fix dependencies.

Pavel

Add github.com/catseye/Emmental?

quartata

Yeah it'll notice the dependency issue and try to resolve it by removing Sage

Dennis

@Pavel Installing software on Linux is more similar to installing it on Windows Phone and Windows for Desktop. There's a kind of app store (or whatever WP calls it).

@Pavel Yes, you asked me yesterday. I didn't have the time so far.

Pavel

9:00 PM

Huh. That's pretty weird, I thought you linux people were all for having more control over your computer?

quartata

Yes which is why you can install directly with rpm. It'll probably break something though

At any rate it's not that strange. If a package has a dependency it's usually expected that it won't work at all without it. This is just a terrible package.

Dennis

It's just a convenience. You can still install software manually, build it from source, etc. The official repos pretty much guarantee malware-free software though, and the package manager takes care of dependencies. On occasions, the dependencies are a bit crazy, but it usually just installs the stuff you actually need to run the program.

Manually taking care of dependencies is hell.

DJMcMayhem

Ugh. Why is chrome such a buggy piece of shit? It runs fine on my desktop, but on my laptop it crashes at least 5-6 times a day and I have no clue why

Pavel

Not enough memory?

DJMcMayhem

It also doesn't render underscores

Pavel

9:03 PM

That's usually what people blame when Chrome does a bork.

Rainbolt

Does it keep saying Shockwave crashed?

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@DJMcMayhem .... what

how/why

No clue/no clue

_____

@Pavel 8GB is plenty

9:04 PM

@DJMcMayhem Which OS?

DJMcMayhem

Windows 7

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@PhiNotPi did you make emmental?

Dennis

Winrot?

Rainbolt

Chrome still works on my laptop that runs Windows Vista (verified yesterday), even though Chrome stopped officially supporting Vista over a year ago

quartata

You're thinking of Element

PhiNotPi

9:04 PM

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ ???

Oh, programming language. I made Element.

Dennis

In my experience, you just have to reinstall Windows every now and then. I'm not sure that's still true with the latest versions, but it absolutely was when I still used Windows.

DJMcMayhem

@Dennis I hope not. It's a relatively high-end laptop and it's only a few months old

ATaco

I'd love to switch to Linux, but in worried about compatibility issues

Pavel

Yeah, same.

I still want to play Overwatch and stuff

I tried dual-booting, but all it did was make everything weird.

Dennis

@DJMcMayhem I'd try it anyway. I had a case where I needed to reinstall a 24-hour old Windows because Windows Update screwed it up beyond repair.

ATaco

9:07 PM

also, SS13

DJMcMayhem

@Pavel you play overwatch? Nice

Pavel

All my friends do, and if I didn't they'd stop hanging out with me.

quartata

I think that's everyone's excuse for playing Overwatch.

DJMcMayhem

That's why I got it initially, but I keep playing it because I really like it

quartata

It's more of a chain reaction deal than anyone actually liking it

Pavel

9:08 PM

My friends play it all the time, even by them selves.

DJMcMayhem

@Dennis that sounds like more trouble than it's worth. I don't know if I have the patience to set up everything again

Pavel

I have maybe 2 or 3 games solo.

muddyfish

I still prefer hat simulator

ATaco

I got it because i wanted to play it

Pavel

@DJMcMayhem Try it, reinstalling windows is good for the soul.

ATaco

9:09 PM

gasp

Pavel

It'll feel great not having all the junk everywhere

And you probably don't have all that much to reinstall anyway.

ATaco

but I like my jubk

junk*

Rainbolt

I cannot be satisfied with a clean install of Windows. I have to know what specifically was causing the slowdown and eliminate it.

Pavel

While you're at it, enable Linux Subsystem on Windows

DJMcMayhem

@Pavel Not when you have to also reinstall software libraries and 4 different IDE's, not to mention all the proprietary utilities you've collected over time.

Pavel

9:11 PM

How many of those utilities do you still use and need?

DJMcMayhem

And then setting up %PATH% again

Pavel

E-mail your path variable to yourself, after reinstalling just set it back

quartata

@muddyfish Yeah, with only like two gamemodes, few maps and 40 heros which is too few for MOBA-style generalized role interactions but too many for really in depth single class interactions I can't comprehend how Overwatch stays fresh

DJMcMayhem

@Pavel I rarely use them, but still do need all of them

@quartata s/40/20

Pavel

I just reinstall things as I need them.

Next time though, I'm going to make the switch to Linux.

quartata

9:12 PM

Wait really? I thought we were up to 38 now. That's even worse.

Poke

a buddy of mine has a google drive document with all the things he changes on a fresh windows install including which applications he needs installed

i've been meaning to do something similar

Pavel

I think there's 19 now

Poke

but i'm lazy

DJMcMayhem

21 at release, 23 currently

Pavel

Oh, right, I'm thinking of Dirty Bomb.

Dennis

9:13 PM

@Pavel It's not like that magically solves all issues. I prefer it to Windows, but it isn't perfect.

Pavel

I don't expect it to magically solve issues

DJMcMayhem

Because Ana and Sombra are new. I think there's a new one coming very soon

Pavel

I don't have all that many issues now

But I want to, for the experience.

Dennis

I'd say the only perfect program is /bin/true, but I'm not sure why it takes 27 KB to do nothing successfully.

Pavel

What is /bin/true?

Dennis

9:15 PM

(I actually do. I just think it's stupid.)

quartata

returns 0

Dennis

linux.die.net/man/1/true

Pavel

So why is it 27 kilobytes?

Dennis

Standard libraries.

Pavel

Ahh. That still seems like a waste of space.

quartata

9:16 PM

@DJMcMayhem Oh and I forgot to add no dedicated servers and Blizzard's horrible attitude and track record towards modding

Pavel

Doing nothing succesfully is equivalent to exit(0), right?

Dennis

I assume it was written in C. You can't really get rid of that.

Pavel

Oh right, C is a thing I wanted to learn.

I'll get onto that after finals

TuxCopter

An assembly version of true would take less than 1kb if correctly coded

Dennis

Compiling int main(){return 0;} with gcc "only" takes 12.5 KB. GNU true has copyrights and stuff.

Pavel

9:19 PM

Wow.

DJMcMayhem

@quartata at least it's fun (unlike hat simulator)

quartata

That's subjective I suppose. But TF2 just simply has more ways to play.

flawr

What happens if a drone hits the flying spaghetti monster?

quartata

Also TF2's comp metagame is relatively active while OW's is totally stale. All the proper hero picks and stuff got out figured out within a month and have been almost locked in stone since despite content updates

DJMcMayhem

How many maps does TF2 have? (Out of curiosity)

quartata

9:23 PM

Granted TF2's updates don't affect comp much either but at least yousee things lik Bonk making reemergences and new community maps

muddyfish

@DJMcMayhem official or custom ones?

DJMcMayhem

Oh yeah, I forgot there are custom

Pavel

3-4 dozen?

quartata

@DJMcMayhem ~85 of the top of my head

muddyfish

how many variations of the crappy orange map is in that number?

DJMcMayhem

9:24 PM

Holy shit, I didn't realize there were so many

quartata

@muddyfish Not an official map

Pavel

Does anyone play TC_Hydro yet?

muddyfish

I didn't notice there were that many official ones

last time I played properly was about 2 years ago though

quartata

Huh. TF2 wiki says over 100.

@muddyfish tbf the number hasn't increased much in 2 years

@DJMcMayhem Yeah. That's part of the reason I don't get Overwatch. Team Fortress Classic (1998) had more maps and at least with it almost every map was a gamemode of its own

Dennis

@TuxCopter Considering I managed to print Hello, World! in 59 bytes, that sounds doable.

quartata

9:29 PM

I was hyped for OW before beta but now it's a hard pass for me. Blizzard could have done so much more.

Pavel

Dirty Bomb leftover audio files: drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B5z8adzKe3dgcVpUa2lSN3hFRnM

driveplayer.com/#fileIds=0B5z8adzKe3dgMU5QNjRINmhsb00

TuxCopter

'night

Pavel

driveplayer.com/…

flawr

video of huygens probe touchdown on titan

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@PhiNotPi ah, okay

thanks

@muddyfish you know we have a ppcg server, right?

@quartata in what way?

muddyfish

9:36 PM

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ I've been on it

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

ah, okay

muddyfish

I don't play games much anymore

*computer games

I play Magic every day for ~1h

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@muddyfish at least 68 known versions of orange, not counting the ctf, pl, and koth ports

@muddyfish ah, okay. with who?

muddyfish

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ people at my school

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

ah

muddyfish

9:40 PM

I'll probably be going to an event this Saturday that'll be ~7 hours

New Main Posts

1

Q: Obfuscated Number-Golf

Background: Almost all useful numbers in mathematics can be reached using only 7 different symbols: e - ^ ( ) ln sin Here are some simple examples of integers: 0 = e-e 1 = ln(e) (parenthesis are always necessary for logarithms) 2 = ln(ee) (ee evalutes to e*e) 3 = ln(eee) -1 = e-e-ln(e) -2 ...

math number number-theory metagolf multiple-holes

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@NewMainPosts is that metagolf?

I don't think so, it's not outputting programs

Pavel

I think it's just code-challenge

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

yeah

Lynn

@LuisMendo You around? I have a telecom question!

quartata

9:51 PM

@muddyfish What event? I thought the next GP was San Jose on the 28th or something

Something local?

muddyfish

@quartata prerelease for Aether

or whatever it's called

quartata

Your prerelease is seven hours??

muddyfish

Yes?

We get 6 games

sometimes 7

depends on how many people show up

Pavel

I used to play MTG

muddyfish

then you stopped because it's far too expensive?

Pavel

9:53 PM

Then I realized that I was spending way too much money on it.

Yes

muddyfish

I don't want to think about how much I've spent on it

Pavel

I still have all my cards and my commander deck, but every time I've tried to put together a new one it never really comes together.

muddyfish

I think my collection's at least £2000

Pavel

Mine is maybe 300-400?

mbomb007

I thought this question was going to be about attendant-propelled airplanes: travel.stackexchange.com/questions/85941/…

quartata

9:55 PM

Too lazy to estimate mine. Most of it is draft junk though.

Pavel

I never did tournaments, just played with my friends.

muddyfish

@Pavel The most competitive I've done is Friday night magic or a prerelease

mbomb007

@KritixiLithos You are missing out. I'm pretty sure that Doctor Strange was my favorite Marvel movie so far.

muddyfish

but I have been playing for ~8 years

Pavel

I play DnD now.

muddyfish

9:56 PM

@Pavel I'll be playing that tommorow

Pavel

I feel like I spend much more money, but I don't actually.

mbomb007

@Pavel I wish I had a group.

muddyfish

We do a weekly DND for 2 hours

I find it much better than what I used to do which was 10 hours every 2-3 months

mbomb007

I want to run a Paranoia campaign.

Pavel

@mbomb007 there's lots of people that will play DnD over Skype

quartata

9:57 PM

@muddyfish 3.5?

Pavel

I think there's a subreddit for it.

quartata

@Pavel Play by post is where it's at

muddyfish

@quartata I've played 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th

Pavel

Our group plays a weird hack of 4e and 5e.

It used to be 4e, then I joined and absolved them of their peasantry, but they still wanted to use the same characters.

muddyfish

The user experience for creating characters was by far the best for 4th ed

quartata

9:58 PM

@muddyfish By first you mean ODND or ADND

muddyfish

Both

Only ODND once though

the only guy with the manuals lost them

there's this one guy who keeps hinting that they're having sex with their wolf companion

quartata

Sounds like a quality group

muddyfish

that's the only nsfw thing and it's kind of strange

quartata

also /me stares in smug superiority at my pristine ODND booklets

Pavel

I have one sourcebook not damaged by cofee stains.

It's the 3.5e player's handbook II

Coincidentally, non of my sourcebooks had cofee sunstains before this October.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

10:13 PM

@quartata lol

New Main Posts

4

Q: Python workarounds for assignment in lambda

This is a tips question for golfing in Python. In Python golfing, it's common for a submission to be a function defined as a lambda. For example, f=lambda x:0**x or x*f(x-1) computes the factorial of x. The lambda format has two big advantages: The boilerplate of f=lambda x:... or lambd...

tips python

ignasas kielasas

have you seen this? codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/5521

Luis Mendo

@Lynn Now I am :-) What is it?

flawr

@LuisMendo why does my phone have no reception???? :D

Luis Mendo

@flawr Heh. Airplane mode on? :-P

flawr

10:28 PM

@LuisMendo Damnit, I thought it was on airplane crash mode...

speaking of flying bricks, this lego space shuttle launch is effing amazing

3

Lynn

Hi! An exam question asked about tunnelling in GPRS. “Why is there a tunnel between GGSN and SGSN?”

Pavel

Guys, I need your advice. I'm writing an interpreter in python, and I have a really large dictionary of commands mapped to characters. Would storing it in a file and running exec on it be a reasonable idea?

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

no

Lynn

I know GGSN is the internet-radio gateway… I guess you want all GSM users to connect through there and there’s no choice but to tunnel, or something?

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

fairly easy to edit the file and bork your computer

Pavel

10:30 PM

How would that bork my computer?

ATaco

Someone could edit it to shell_run('rm -rf /')

Or the python equivalent.

Of course, it would bork their computer.

Pavel

Well, they could do the same to the interpreter itself...

ATaco

Unless you compile it.

Pavel

It's python

It doesn't compile

ATaco

It's generally bad practice, anyway.

Just make a Dictionary in a separate file and require it

Pavel

10:34 PM

Isn't that the same thing?

ATaco

Python should treat it nicer.

And a Dictionary is faster to lookup than constantly re-executing chunks of text.

Pavel

Oh, no, the dictionary only stores function names.

ATaco

Can't a dictionary store functions on keys?

Pavel

But I still need to run exec on it so it's a dictionary, not a string.

{
            '>':self.right,
            '^':self.up,
            '<':self.left,
            'v':self.left
        }

It just looks like that (but bigger and with better formatting)

ATaco

If you put that in a separate functions.py or whatever, can't you just import 'functions'?

I haven't done Python in many years, so I can't say for sure.

Pavel

10:37 PM

They need to access variables in main so I can't make it a seperate module without rewriting the whole structure.

Hence, exec.

ATaco

Well, I'll trust you to do it that way.

But I'm sure there's better ways of doing it.

Pavel

Which is why I asked

PyCharm borked and I just spent five minutes manualy converting spaces to tabs

Luis Mendo

@Lynn I'm not very knowledgeable about network aspects (I work on the radio part of mobile communications). But as far as I know, the tunnel is used for conveying messages of a given protocol encapsulated in another protocol. In GPRS I think the carrier protocol is IP, which is used for carrying GPRS-specific protocols