The Nineteenth Byte

luser droog

02:26

There's a free game on the Kindle called Grid Detective for these puzzles.

As you rightly say, the input format would be tricky to specify.

luser droog

02:53

I'm reading Knuth on "Iverson Brackets" found via Wikipedia.

mniip

@luserdroog where do you keep finding those books from like 19th century...

luser droog

I like old stuff.

Lest we forget ...!

I wonder if "Classic" applications might be fun, like doing stats on "census" forms, or pretty-printing tables of functions.

Ballistics.

Ooo! That game with two monkeys where you input the angle and force and throw exploding bananas against the wind!

I'm mainly mining the 60s now. Previously I've focused on the 40s/early-50s, the 70s/early-80s.

eventually I'll run out of old stuff and finally join the present.

Then you better watch out!

:)

Doorknob

03:31

^ fancy graf! :P

hosch250

@luserdroog Is that Donald Knuth?

I have a set of 4 of his books of CS.

I've not read them much yet, but what I have read is very interesting.

luser droog

Yes, it's him. I've only got the old 3.

I can't wait for number 7.

On compiling.

Doorknob

hosch250

I got the set of 4 at Amazon.

Doorknob

^ zoomed version

hosch250

03:35

amazon.com/Computer-Programming-Volumes-1-4A-Boxed/dp/…

Oooh, I didn't know Amazon did this too.

Doorknob

03:46

this link is for my reference; please ignore it :P search keyword: waffles

luser droog

IIRC Knuth (still) intends 9 or 10 total volumes. Tex was a big distraction.

luser droog

04:17

What about something that isn't very difficult, but with lots of conceptual context? Like "Make a Rebus generator" with a syllabic list of string->graphic (Unicode?) transforms. Excluding built-in regex's (you can implement a regex engine, but not use a pre-made one). ... ?

"Help Ada Lovelace bet on the races" ... not really sure what to do here. But I think it's a good title.

Hmm. I still need to come up with something for "Good Polish/Bad Hungarian".

Hmm. What about Obfuscated+Pop.Contest?

+underhanded?

Shit, I'm gonna have to bump up Haskell on my TODO.

Or racket

Did boast here yet about getting the J incunabulum to run?

Not a lot of functions available. Can't even subtract

iota plus from box cat reshape shape identity

I wonder which (if any) of our challenges can be solved in it?

+(monadic)=identity, +(dyadic)=plus, {(dyadic)=from, {(monadic)=size, ~(monadic)=iota, <(monadic)=box, #(dyadic)=reshape, #(monadic)=shape, ,(dyadic)=cat. And variables a-z.

There's plus but no power. And no loops. But variables hold up to 3-d arrays.

and only single-digit literals.

luser droog

04:52

I wonder, is there a name for the sort of ranged-type discrimination that the J incunabulum uses? Where an object is described by one word t, if t < 10 or so, the object is a function and t is the opcode; if t >= 'a' and t <= 'z', it's a variable and t is the single-char name, else t is a pointer to a struct.

Hm. It doesn't seem so crazy as it used to to me.

It's just like packing bitfields, but with different bases.

It's not even as crazy as fucking Gödel numbers and shit.

Rusher

12:59

Doctor!

I have to show you sum ting

Did I already tell you about the Rock-Paper-Scissors challenge I was making?

I got it to look pretty - imgur.com/RH6I9TO

What you see is a bunch of Lions, Bears, and Stones running around playing Rock-Paper-Scissors with predefined behavior. The challenge will be to introduce a Wolf class that has a higher survival rate than any other submission

Rusher

13:36

How often are new sandboxes made? I see some with 17 questions and others with 27 questions. I think @ChrisJesterYoung and I are both waiting for the new one to post.

hosch250

15:28

@Rusher

0

Q: Proposed Question Sandbox - Mark XI

Too long, didn't read: Use this sandbox to work the problems out of your question before posting it on the main site. People will comment if they seem problems, and upvote it when they think it is ready; you should wait for at least 3 upvotes or until three people say it is ready before posting ...

Rusher

Sweet!

@hosch250 Lol you ninja deleted your comment there

But I saws it!

hosch250

Yeah, I thought I was in Mark X still.

Foolish me!

Rusher

16:18

What on earth.... I just fat-fingered some keys MSSQL and got this

/*

  AAAA   AAAA   AAAA   AAAA  RRRRR   GGGG  HH  HH  ######
 AA  AA AA  AA AA  AA AA  AA RR  RR GG  GG HH  HH  ######
 AA  AA AA  AA AA  AA AA  AA RR  RR GG     HH  HH   ####
 AAAAAA AAAAAA AAAAAA AAAAAA RRRRR  GG GGG HHHHHH    ##
 AA  AA AA  AA AA  AA AA  AA RR  RR GG  GG HH  HH
 AA  AA AA  AA AA  AA AA  AA RR  RR  GGG G HH  HH    ##

*/

It spells AAAARGH (You can't tell here)

luser droog

16:51

`multi-
line`

:(

Rusher

17:16

whoah

So does anyone have a clue how I produced such a thing... I have no idea what I pressed

hosch250

No, I have no experience with this.

One comment: did you notice the exclamation point?

mniip

@Rusher when pasting
a multiline text there's a button
to enable fixed font

Rusher

@hosch250 I did, but forgot it was there after pasting it here and losing sight of what it said

@hosch250 Why? It it important?

hosch250

No, I just thought it looked nice.

Rusher

My first thought was Charlie Brown, but Google said that's like AAUGH, not AARGH

Chris Jester-Young

17:20

@hosch250 But the exclamation mark was made up of hash signs, not exclamation marks. :-P

hosch250

I should think of a challenge involving statistics, but it is all just plain simple math.

Rusher

More like, "After learning statistics, the program would be the EASY part"

hosch250

Yeah.

Rusher

The math looks alien to me. It didn't three years ago

hosch250

It is very interesting.

Rusher

17:23

I FIGURED IT OUT! red-gate.com/messageboard/viewtopic.php?t=9308

Apparently I'm not the only one who found this Easter Egg by fat-fingering

(in the Camel voice) - Lunch TIMMME!

hosch250

17:48

1

Q: The problem with sandboxes, and a proposed solution

The Problem The sandbox will be a problem when we graduate (hopefully soon!) As it is already, the people who look through the sandbox regularly are very little in number. What happens when we graduate, bringing in more traffic? Three problems: It won't be worth it to post in the sandbox, sinc...

discussion sandbox

Is anyone here?

What should I do if an answer is flagged because it is the same as another answer in a different language?

The poster did not know the other language, so he did not intentionally duplicate the answer.

luser droog

I'd say leave it.

Let it be, you know?

Unless, of course, the first poster is visibly upset...

Is that what you meant by flagged? If so, I'm not sure there is a general answer.

case by case.

Chris Jester-Young

18:06

Is the second answer pretty easy to arrive at independently? If so, I'd say there's no foul.

Also, in the case of non-popcon challenges, it doesn't really matter anyway: if the second answer is shorter (in the case of code-golf; extrapolate appropriately for other challenge types), it is by definition better, and the first poster can't claim credit for that.

luser droog

indeed!

@ChrisJester-Young I really like the idea of a sandbox.codegolf.SE

Chris Jester-Young

Thanks for the support. :-)

luser droog

It seems like the simplest way to leverage the existing site structure.

If it were done however, it would detract some of the force behind my request for an Auto-Index feature for many-answered questions. :)

Chris Jester-Young

@luserdroog That is a somewhat more-radical change, and could be a tougher sell. :-)

luser droog

Agreed.

Rusher

18:21

At first I thought it was a great idea, but then I wondered... why not a sandbox.stackoverflow? A sandbox.math? I think you should edit your answer to explain why we are so special

Chris Jester-Young

@Rusher I did explain why (though I'm happy to be more explicit, of course). It's because I believe that challenges are different from questions on other sites: the latter are personal difficulties faced by the OP, whereas on our site, code challenges are nothing of the sort, so a more community-orientated ownership model results in better challenges.

Rusher

@ChrisJester-Young Hope I didn't come across as saying "You're wrong." I meant to say "I don't see that in your answer."

I still don't

Chris Jester-Young

@Rusher Sure, as I said, I'm happy to elaborate in the post further.

Rusher

Also, any insight as to who can make that happen?

luser droog

Heh. How about a challenge to translate Starbucks drink codes to/from English?

The implemented system is abominable.

They need the help, the f$$$$$.

Sorry. I'm bitter.

But as for the codes, it's a Regular Grammar.

Ought not to have been difficult to do correctly the first time....

Chris Jester-Young

18:39

@Rusher Edited my post now. The community team reads our meta from time to time. With enough community support, I feel there'd be enough weight for the community team to take action.

hosch250

Interesting idea about the sandbox.

Yes, the idea was very simple, but it was already taken care of by someone else.

Thanks for the tips.

Chris Jester-Young

@hosch250 Who what?!

hosch250

About the flag.

Chris Jester-Young

Gotcha. I'll probably dismiss the flag, but I haven't looked at it yet. (I look at flags in spurts, to save time.)

Rusher

18:53

@ChrisJester-Young Nice post. I +1'd

Chris Jester-Young

Thanks!

Rusher

I've been writing a post to sandbox since the instant it was created, and 3 people have beaten me to it

Hope I don't get buried :-/

Chris Jester-Young

I'm reading the sandbox now.

Uh oh, I think my anti-popcon bias is showing. ;-)

Rusher

19:15

Geez. If I get tired and need a break, can I post a half done question to the sandbox?

Chris Jester-Young

Yes.

Rusher

My fingers are sore

phew

Chris Jester-Young

"Then you post an answer to the sandbox (this very question). Your answer to this question should contain the question that you are proposing. It is ok if your question is still incomplete." (Emphasis added.)

Rusher

Thanks for the reference

Chris Jester-Young

Sure thing. :-D

Rusher

19:30

Gah... before I'm even done writing someone already gives me strike 1 for posting a Java only challenge

Chris Jester-Young

@Rusher I'd expect that once you polish the post some more, later, so that it's not Java-only, you'll get a retraction of that downvote.

Rusher

Someone already retracted it. But wait.. I had a downvote?

Is posting a language specific challenge against policy?

Chris Jester-Young

@Rusher No, sorry, that was an assumption on my part when you said "strike 1".

@Rusher Language-specific challenges are pretty heavily frowned-upon. Don't do it unless you have a very good reason to.

Rusher

Would lack of knowledge for putting Animals created in different languages onto a board and watching them play Rock-Paper-Scissors against each other count as a good reason?

For example, I write a Python Animal that moves diagonally and always rolls Rock. You create one in C#. How can they fight?

Chris Jester-Young

You can do it the way Facebook does it. They use a Thrift server that your code connects to.

There are Thrift client libraries for many languages.

thrift.apache.org

Rusher

20:32

I have a large chunk of code that I want to be available to people who take up my challenge, but it isn't necessary and it's rather large. Is there a trick to link to a random text file on the internet? I found some text hosting sites, but I don't want to depend on them to be up in the future.

Or perhaps a collapsible spoiler tag? I'm not very good at HTML

Rusher

20:46

Nevermind. Settled on Google Drive

Gareth

20:57

@Rusher I see you have a solution now; I was just going to say that questions have a 30000 character limit, so putting your code in the question in some way isn't a good idea if it's large. It's a problem I had on the BattleBots question - I reduced my indentation to make sure I had room for it all.

Rusher

@Gareth I studied your BattleBots questions for a long time, and I'm impressed by the language neutrality you gained by communicating through files. It worked well for 1v1 fights, but when I tried communicating with a 50 by 50 array of random Python programs from Java by means of files, the program simply didn't move at all.

OMG! NetBeans 8 is available!

TheDoctor

21:19

@ChrisJester-Young is a thrift server anything like a thrift shop?

Rusher

Isn't this beautiful drive.google.com/file/d/0B9-BgC2f4NV-bk0xaFRTdjhWdGc/…

You are watching hundreds of animals duke it out RockPaperScissors style

hosch250

@TheDoctor Probably something like this?

Apache Thrift

Thrift is an interface definition language that is used to define and create services for numerous languages. It is used as a remote procedure call (RPC) framework and was developed at Facebook for "scalable cross-language services development". It combines a software stack with a code generation engine to build services that work efficiently to a varying degree and seamlessly between Delphi, C#, C++ (on POSIX-compliant systems), Cappuccino, Cocoa, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, OCaml, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Node.js and Smalltalk. Although developed at Facebook, it is now an open source proj...

Ooh, Wiki does this too now.

That makes SE, Amazon, and Wiki that do this.

Rusher

I removed the (Incomplete) header on meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/1309/18487 so feel free to constructively criticize the challenge now.

I was kind of scatterbrained while writing it because there's just too much stuff...

hosch250

The main problem is the language limitation.

There should be a way around that.

Rusher

Well, let's imagine I sparsely populate a game board with 50 creatures that you wrote in Python.

Now, I need to ask each of you to move. (that's 50 requests)

If we communicate by file, I have to read 50 files (slow for me in Java, probably even slower for Python)

I'm open to suggestions that don't require me to download an interpreter for every submission and don't cause the board to iterate once every 5 minutes

hosch250

21:34

There is always IDEone, but that typically fails on golfed programs.

There are several languages that run on the JDK, but I cannot find the list.

Rusher

What does "run on the JDK" mean? Can I throw anything that runs on the JDK into a three dimensional arraylist?

hosch250

I don't think so quite.

They can be compiled and run on Java (don't ask me how)/

JRuby and Jython are two.

Rusher

Would JSON be too language restrictive?

I mean, it's not really even a language...

Yo @WanderNauta . Thanks for the feedback!

Wander Nauta

Hey @Rusher, no problem!

Rusher

Also, you are a very pretty human being.

Wander Nauta

21:45

Well, thanks. I guess. You are a very pretty grassy block, @Rusher :)

Rusher

I do my best to stayed mowed.

Wander Nauta

Did you find out how to shape your puzzle yet?

Rusher

I'm about this far from figuring it out (

Wander Nauta

Hang on, seems the whole chat log is about Animals, looks like I have some reading to do :)

Rusher

Notice the right half of that paren is gone

Wander Nauta

21:49

@Rusher By the way, what's the direction you want to take it? Something battlebots-like?

TheDoctor

)

Wander Nauta

Or player's-bot-versus-world?

TheDoctor

13LRoXTmtsFM8yrxGtCsHGYaxrB5EnxKYL

Rusher

@TheDoctor Did you know that people unconsciously stress out when a matching paren is not present (

TheDoctor

from XKCD

Rusher

21:51

Oh, I learned it in psychology lol. The whole dun-da-da-dun-dun (missing the last dun-dun)

@WanderNauta The winner will be the highest average survival rate with all submissions competing at once. Not player vs bots (although there will be three bots - lions, bears, and stones)

Wander Nauta

Here are some close-parens to fix it all up

Rusher

{

TheDoctor

({[<

Wander Nauta

@Rusher Then what you should do is set up an online arena-type deal and describe a protocol

TheDoctor

>]})

Wander Nauta

21:53

King-of-the-Hill style

Rusher

Like I said earlier, I tried communicating between Java and Python via a protocol I invented on the fly, and it was slow

Wander Nauta

koth.org <- like that, except that people run their own programs on their own computers

TheDoctor

gabrielecirulli.github.io/2048

Wander Nauta

Yeah, if you want 10.000 iterations * 20ms lag

But if you want, like, 1000 iterations and don't require the client to wait...

Rusher

Are you saying each competitor should write the control program as well?

hosch250

21:55

I thought of a challenge.

Wander Nauta

Nah, just their own implementation of a protocol client

Rusher

How do I ultimately score all submissions in one arena?

hosch250

Write the fastest program to determine the probability of a word starting with any two letter combinations using a 58000+ wordlist I found.

Wander Nauta

@Rusher When players die, they get the amount of turns they were alive as a score?

hosch250

Your program must output the probability for aa through zz.

TheDoctor

21:56

@hosch250 cat wordlist | grep combination

Wander Nauta

@horsch Fastest way is to calculate it in advance :)

Rusher

Well, let's say it's just you and I on a 1 by 2 board @WanderNauta

1 of you is living, and 1 of me is living

After 1000 iterations, we eventually collide and fight. The winner just roams around for the remainder

At the end, I check to see who is living and tally them up

But the other case is, we never collide and we both survive to the end

Wander Nauta

Ah, but then you could have the wolf who slew the most lions win

Rusher

In order to avoid ties, I decided to scatter 20 of you and 20 of me across a larger board

The point was that I get to compete against YOU though. If I simply ask for people to beat a Lion, there will be a dominant strategy

And out of all those who wrote code employing the dominant strategy, one will have better luck and win

Wander Nauta

Hmm.

But the lions only come into play if there is a tie.

Rusher

22:01

Oh, I see. You want to use Lions as the tiebreaker

Wander Nauta

Yep.

So you have to slay your opponent, but if neither succeeds the otherwise most succesful player wins

Rusher

I don't think that's likely if there are 20 of you and 20 of me and 20 of @TheDoctor running around

One of us will almost certainly have a higher survival rate

Wander Nauta

How many players do you want to have fighting each other?

Rusher

That's listed in the problem. n players will compete, where n is the number of submissions

Wander Nauta

But the number of submissions is variable?

TheDoctor

22:03

I'll just save everyone in my TARDIS

Rusher

Yes, n is a variable

hosch250

So does the wolf know when he is fighting a stone?

And can then use paper deliberately?

Wander Nauta

@hosch250 Yes, from the question apparently yes

Rusher

Yes, if you are passed an 'S' you might want to roll paper. However, be wary of the wolf that disguises himself as a Stone

Wander Nauta

Oh hey, there are disguises

Rusher

22:05

If you see a Stone, you might wait an iteration before pouncing

I think I wrote in the question that a Wolf can be represented by any ASCII letter

hosch250

What happens when a stone attacks a stone?

Rusher

Stones cant move...

That can't possibly happen

hosch250

Oh.

Wander Nauta

Do you use a character for grass? And, if so, can a wolf disguise itself as grass?

Rusher

Open field is ' ' (a space)

hosch250

22:06

What happens when the lion hits the wall?

Wander Nauta

...which is valid

Rusher

Exactly. A wolf can be a space

TheDoctor

The wall will win

Wander Nauta

^ Grass-camo wolf right there

Rusher

I thought about explicitly forbidding space... should I?

Or allow the wolves to go camo?

Wander Nauta

22:07

The whole disguises thing is totally weird :D

Gareth

@Rusher Yeah my test runs for BattleBots are over 6 hours long on the machine I've been using to test now. JVM start up cost for each call to a java program seems to be the biggest slowdown.

Wander Nauta

I'd restrict it to wolves pretending to be a stone

It would make for interesting AI behaviour

Rusher

@hosch250 No walls. They wrap around

Wander Nauta

If you see someone nearby, pretend to be a stone and do not move

TheDoctor

If you get a ‰ it is probably a fake

hosch250

22:08

Probably.

Wander Nauta

If you see a stone nearby and it's moving, it's not a stone

Rusher

Alright. I like that suggestion. Pretending to be a space is probably not realistic anyway

TheDoctor

if you see a ◊, the wolf is actually a moderator

Wander Nauta

Hey, we'd need like a spectator system for this too

To follow along in all the beast-slaying actions

Rusher

I'll be happy to stream on twitch

Wander Nauta

22:10

@Rusher That would be way cool. Especially if it had graphics.

A graphical spectator-only client.

undergroundmonorail

If you stream it on twitch, can I write a bot that grabs input from the chat? Twitch Plays Rock Paper Scissors?

Rusher

I posted the program as a .gif already so you can see it has beautiful graphics

TheDoctor

@hosch250 i think they're ignoring us

Rusher

Oh, I thought you were a Stone @TheDoctor. Apologies

hosch250

@TheDoctor No problem. I am writing a major paper.

Gareth

22:11

@Rusher A suggestion for one way to do it: call all contesting programs with a port number on start-up then communicate with the program over that port using some simple protocol that you come up with to represent the actions that each contestant can make. That avoids the filesystem calls and startup costs if there are java programs.

Rusher

Do you think learning to communicate via UDP or TCP is simpler or harder than filling in two functions in Java?

Also, here is the beautiful graphics lh4.googleusercontent.com/…

Wander Nauta

@Rusher I mean graphics-graphics

hosch250

@Rusher Could you create a beetle animal?

No, nevermind.

Wander Nauta

You could allow people to upload their own sprites

Rusher

Lmao this is getting over my head.

hosch250

22:13

A flea would be better - it could jump over squares and kill the wolves.

undergroundmonorail

Better idea: Just train real wolves.

Rusher

Don't have time to edit question with your suggestions now. Will do tomorrow. Take it easy Code Golfians!

And watch out for wolf grass on your way home.

Wander Nauta

@Rusher
> Hello server, my name is FredBot and I am operated by StackExchange user WanderNauta
< Hello client, I have a game running, what is your image?
> I would like my sprite to be ajfoweifjaowiefjeoimzoiwenfoizwefiozweofij==
< Thank you. Please wait until it is your turn.
...
< It is your turn. Your surroundings are: [‘ ‘, ‘ ‘, ‘S’, ‘ ‘, ‘W’, ‘S’, ‘ ‘, ‘W’, ‘ ‘]. What do you want to do?
> Move east!
< Sure. Please wait until it is your turn.
…
< You have been killed, living for 215 rounds. Please reconnect if you want to try again.

@Rusher Protocol doesn't have to be too complicated I'd say

TheDoctor

I can understand Minecraft servers, but Rock Paper Scissors?

Wander Nauta

@TheDoctor MMORPS

TheDoctor

22:18

LETS DO IT IN MINECRAFT

Wander Nauta

@TheDoctor Can't, Minecraft doesn't have lions :)

Or bears.

TheDoctor

but... oh well

    O         O     O
 o                o
<><            ><>

Doorknob

blub

TheDoctor

Oh hey there

Doorknob

hello :P

hosch250

22:30

@TheDoctor Are you drawing fishes?

Wander Nauta

Have to go, good day all!

hosch250

Bye.

TheDoctor

I'm ASCIIing them

so long

(from a code golf site)

hosch250

Oh, pity it is an unacceptable contest to draw the most creative ASCII fish.

TheDoctor

Biggest fish in smallest code? anyone?

hosch250

22:31

I bet the program with animated fish that looked like a fish itself would win.

I bet Peter Taylor and the mods would close it before it could even blow a bubble.

Doorknob

add me to that list! ^.^

TheDoctor

haha

Too bad mod elections happened 3 years ago

hosch250

@Doorknob I almost did.

Doorknob

I think I remember trying to get another election started sometime, but it never happened :P

That was a while ago

I think once we graduate, which is hopefully soon, we'll have an election a few months after (maybe)

hosch250

Yeah, I saw that.

TheDoctor

22:36

my vote is safe with you, @Doorknob

hosch250

Let me see the other candidates first.

Doorknob

I never said I would run, but thanks @TheDoctor ;)

hosch250

I voted for you in the initial SO round.

I voted for different people in the final round though, and two of them won.

Gareth

There were no previous elections. My understanding is that they were chosen from the users who were active in the private and early public beta. And think it's very rare that mods close questions.

hosch250

The other came in fourth, if I remember right.

Doorknob

22:39

Oh, right @Gareth, I think our current mods are pro-tem mods. </using-fancy-words-to-sound-fancy> :D

This is what happens when you're on mobile and don't check your rep tab for a long time:

TheDoctor

@Gareth you should se what some of the Arduino.SE mods have done

Doorknob

yep, that rep has just been sitting there for one and a half weeks :P

TheDoctor

@Doorknob - when i joined a month ago, you had about 6k rep

Doorknob

Blog - Stack Exchange: A Theory of Moderation

Jeff Atwood on May 17, 2009

We believe deeply in community moderation. That’s why we appoint Pro Tempore Moderators and, ideally, democratically elected community moderators for every site in our network. But what do community moderators do? The short answer is, as little as possible!

From the very first version of Stack Overflow faq way back in mid-2008, our goal has always been to give power back to the community:

Stack Overflow is run by you! If you want to help us run Stack Overflow, you’ll need reputation first. Reputation is a (very) rough measurement of how much the Stack Overflow community trusts you. R …

hosch250

When I don't check my rep, I can usually rest assured that I don't have any more.

Doorknob

22:43

Gareth

@TheDoctor I don't know about other sites, but I know the mods here have been very hands-off to the point of allowing [popularity-contest] questions even though 2 of the 3 don't like them.

@hosch250 I know that feeling.

Doorknob

Yeah, I admire our mods for doing so little. I know that sounds weird, but mods are supposed to be janitors/human exception handlers.

On an unrelated note, with the (semi-)recent discussion about GTB, someone's going to need to go through those answers and see if they actually work. :/

hosch250

How do you set a post to CW?

Doorknob

@hosch250 Mod flag.

hosch250

OK.

Doorknob

22:54

Or check the checkbox for an answer.

hosch250

It is somebody else' answer that was taken from Wiki.

Doorknob

ah, ok

hosch250

I mod flagged. They can take care of it, and the blame for a mistake won't be on me.

Was there an update to Meta recently?

The questions tagged sandbox are all highlighted yellow.

Doorknob

@hosch250 Did you add it to your favorite tags?

hosch250

Oh, yeah, I did.

I was trying to get it to notify me of new posts, but it didn't work.

I won't have a problem with that this time seeing I created it.

Doorknob

23:11

> 1148 days in beta

:( I'm thinking we should start a protest or something, since everything seems to be okay for graduation at this point. :P

hosch250

What number of users trusted... users do we have?

Doorknob

What is a "users trusted... user"?

hosch250

Have to go now. Bye.

Doorknob

We don't have any 20ks, but we're getting closer

Bye @hosch

hosch250

Oops, I meant trusted, etc., users.

We don't even have any 15k users.

Doorknob

23:23

We have a 14.6k though. :P

hosch250

Should I accept my own answer here? It is the only one, with no activity for 9 days.

Peter Taylor

@luserdroog There's already been one table-printing question, which was a quite interesting kolmogorov-complexity challenge.

hosch250

3

Q: Validate input according to flags and input masks

This challenge challenges you to write a function that will take as its argument an array that specifies the types of input, an optional prompt, and a verification key; inputs and validates the values; and returns them. Input types: b - Boolean values. c - Characters. i - Integer values,...

code-golf

Doorknob

@hosch250 yes, if there's no others.

Peter Taylor

@Gareth Are you using the -server flag?

@hosch250 Sounds like a duplicate of an animated fish question we had a couple of weeks ago.

Doorknob

23:37

Also it would just be another extremely generic pop-contest with nothing else interesting at all. I have to admit, I've been guilty of those kinds of questions once or twice, but those were a while ago. :P

Peter Taylor

@luserdroog, to expand on the comment about the table-printing: I think the thing which made that an interesting question was that there are lots of different well-known series to use, none of which is so trivial as to be blatantly obviously the best one.

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