The Nineteenth Byte - 2015-01-04

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12:02 AM

woof

this isnt a hat!!!

^_-

githubphagocyte

Nice non-hat

lol

0

Q: Examples of well presented questions

Sometimes a question is underspecified or ambiguous. Other times a question is fully specified but very long and dry to read. In between there are questions which seem perfect - all the information is there but it's also a joy to read, and makes you want to start thinking about possible answers r...

discussion asking-questions

Fascinaing is a "secret hat"... ?????

Martin Büttner

@Doorknob冰 you should really think about a shorthand for 256 in Ostrich... it's the single most common 3-digit integer (I think... maybe 100 is pretty common, too), and all ways of computing it also require 3 bytes in CJam.

12:11 AM

how about 2

2 hours later…

2:03 AM

Note to self: Implement 8T as 2^8

And e2 as 10^2

3 hours later…

5:17 AM

Greets

3 hours later…

8:32 AM

yo calvin's back

8:52 AM

@Calvin'sHobbies Actually user23013 has more answers

2 hours later…

Martin Büttner

10:24 AM

@Sp3000 any luck with recycling that 8-byte dc answer?

No, I can't find anything which uses k and v :/

In a useful way

Martin Büttner

have you checked dc itself?

10:43 AM

Based on the comment on the answer I get the feeling I need p to print

Martin Büttner

oh okay

what do Ostrich and JAGL do with k and v?

JAGL didn't do anything at the time the question was posted (I asked globby)

I don't think Ostrich did anything useful when I checked, but I can't remember now

Martin Büttner

kk

I don't see anything for Ostrich for k, going through the source

Martin Büttner

does Ostrich fail on unknown names?

or does it just ignore them like GS?

well ignore -> push an empty string

10:51 AM

Hmm I haven't tried actually, let's see

ImportError: No module named 'readline' Er... that's interesting.

Removing it seems to work

There's too many binary operators in Fk5v1+2/ no matter what I'll do it'll throw a "need two arguments to do X from stack"

Martin Büttner

hm k

11:14 AM

Hmm are CJam arrays really just stacks? Because it seems you can do things like [[5 6+]~ 7+]

Martin Büttner

@Sp3000 [ and ] are just operations like any others, they don't need to be matched

[ means "remember this stack size"

] means "put all elements down to the last remembered stack size into an array"

until you use ] nothing happens to the stack and you can do whatever computation you want

Hmm interesting, if that's the case I'm surprised an unmatched ] doesn't, say, clear the stack or something

Martin Büttner

@Sp3000 no, it says, collect the entire stack in an array

Or is there something for that already?

Martin Büttner

];

11:17 AM

Ah I see

Martin Büttner

[ is actually a bit more subtle than that... I think it's more like "remember which elements are on the stack right now and exclude them from the array"... because if you make the stack smaller in between and then grow it again, the new elements will end up in the array as well. so if you don't care about the order, you can put the top two stack elements in an array with [\]

Hm... 1 2 [\] :+ -> 3 interesting...

Martin Büttner

I think the GS docs explain it better

"Instead [ marks the stack size when it is executed, and a ] slices the stack back at where it was marked." Hmm

Martin Büttner

12:14 PM

Does anyone here know the boardgame Kingdom Builder?

Nope, but I do know Dominion

Martin Büttner

heh

yeah, same guy

I was wondering if a score-counting challenge for Kingdom Builder would be too much

it's on a hex grid, and for each game you have 3 out of 8 scoring mechanisms (plus 1 which is always used)... so you'd have to implement those 9 scores on a hex grid, plus a bit of code that selects the relevant scores based on the given input.

That doesn't sound too bad on the first read, but you can always simplify a few rules if it's a bit complex

i.e. in the spirit of the original rules, but simplify to iron out the annoying edge cases

githubphagocyte

12:37 PM

@MartinBüttner Is it just a matter of calculating 8 scores and using the 3 lowest, plus the ninth, or is there opportunity for guessing from 1 score that you don't need to calculate a certain other?

Martin Büttner

@githubphagocyte No, you'd be given which scores to use.

Basically, when you start the game you draw 3 random cards (out of 8) which determine the victory conditions.

Martin Büttner

12:54 PM

Alternatively, one could actually let the participants select 3 out of the 8 scoring mechanisms to implement.

Time to check out some new languages guys:

22

Q: Morse the New Year

This is Weekly Challenge #1. Theme: Audio Processing Your task is to write a program, which writes an audio file to disc (in a format of your choice), which contains the Morse code for 2015, i.e. ..--- ----- .---- ..... You are free to choose any sort of sound for the segments, like a single-...

code-golf kolmogorov-complexity audio new-years morse

;)

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Computer Generated Walls The paint on the walls in my room has a random, almost fractal-like 3-dimensional texture: In this challenge you must write a program that generates random images that look like they could be part of my walls. Below I've collected 10 images of different spots on my w...

1:15 PM

@MartinBüttner Hmm... last chance to get the Major Award hat! :D

Martin Büttner

@ProgramFOX hurry up then ;)

I'm... uh... learning one of those languages ;)

Too bad that SuperCollider has a limited support for writing files, and more support for simply playing audio.

(I think it has anyway)

Martin Büttner

yeah I think I'll allow playback for my next audio challenge (if I ever post another one)... the reason I disallowed it in this one is system beeps.

1:46 PM

... so I thought SuperCollider didn't write any files, but now I found those in an obscure place in my AppData.

2:06 PM

Nice, I'm finally getting some results in SuperCollider!

It already sounds like morse.

Martin Büttner

2:25 PM

hmmmm, do we have a challenge here?

Lonely runner conjecture

In number theory, and especially the study of diophantine approximation, the lonely runner conjecture is a conjecture originally due to J. M. Wills in 1967. Applications of the conjecture are widespread in mathematics; they include view obstruction problems and calculating the chromatic number of distance graphs and circulant graphs. The conjecture was given its picturesque name by L. Goddyn in 1998. == The conjecture == Consider k runners on a circular track of unit length. At t = 0, all runners are at the same position and start to run; the runners' speeds are pairwise distinct. A runner is said...

githubphagocyte

@MartinBüttner how would you make it a coding challenge? Set k>=8 and reward the code the finds a combination of speeds that gives the longest time before loneliness? Reward the code that finds a combination of speeds that gives the widest maximum separation (even if it is just short of loneliness)?

Martin Büttner

Yes, those are possibilities.

githubphagocyte

It seems like a good candidate for some kind of challenge as it is deceptively simple (sounds simple enough to encourage people to take part, but is known to be hard enough to create interesting competition). Maybe ask @PeterTaylor what particular challenge would avoid having an "obvious" optimal solution. Althought the problem itself is obviously hard, the scoring types I mentioned might not necessarily be hard to deal with.

New Sandboxed Posts

2:41 PM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Note - I will probably name this something like Curator's Dilemma - Suggestions in comments as well as if you like/dislike this question. Introduction You are a friend of a curator for an art museum, who has had the recent delight of getting modern art from four artists (some of which may give ...

Hello! I'm afraid I'm not high enough rep to dit the sandbox for codegolf with my submission. I was told to post here? Link to it is here: meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/2140/…

Martin Büttner

@ProgramFOX lovely :)

githubphagocyte

@PopeyGilbert We can edit that into the question for you. Will it be code golf, king of the hill, or other?

Martin Büttner

@PopeyGilbert done

@MartinBüttner Thanks! :)

Martin Büttner

2:44 PM

@PopeyGilbert you should mention in the spec that it's code golf though

@MartinBüttner I cannot repro, I hear 5.

@MartinBüttner Just doing that now =)

Martin Büttner

@ProgramFOX I just noticed, this is the second time I got an answer in SuperCollider. :D

3:02 PM

@MartinBüttner I've converted it to WAV and uploaded it here, but I still hear 5 beeps.

Martin Büttner

yup that has 5 beeps

The AIFF has too.

Martin Büttner

yeah I believe you, but VLC refuses to play that last one for some reason :D

removed the comment

@MartinBüttner That's... kinda weird.

Martin Büttner

it's a shame Calvin's Hobbies' new challenge requires the output to be written to a file... this would have been a really fun challenge in CJam.

3:16 PM

I'm sorry, could you link to that question?

Martin Büttner

this one

@MartinBüttner I have uploaded another AIFF file. Can you test whether you hear the beep there?

I generated that one by changing the last part of the array.

Martin Büttner

nope, no difference... I'm pretty sure it's VLC's fault for cutting out early

Okay, thanks for testing. Then I'll keep my current code, as the new one is a few chars longer :P

3:30 PM

@MartinBüttner That does look very interesting, no idea how I'd solve it with CJam though. Sorry for the long time though, Stack Exchange chat randomly broke. Note, if you see double posts, please do tell me. When I post another one flickers up, it's very strange.

Martin Büttner

@PopeyGilbert I've got an idea for CJam. Each tile is mostly just a generalised quine. But the quine block starts with something like ]W= to raze the stack from previous tiles. Then in the block you can build the layout in a variable like L and afterwards solve it. Solutions for incomplete grids just get discarded later one.

To take care of line breaks, you start the tiles with 0 (or something) and end them with '. This way, you can check the second-to-top element of the stack if it's '\n or not to know when you have to start a new line in the layout.

Wow, @MartinBüttner - That's very clever. I do see what you say about it being sad that you have to write the results to a file.

Could you say that to get it to write to a file you need to command it to on the system. Something like ">> file.txt"?

Martin Büttner

no, I asked him in the comments, and redirecting STDOUT is not an option.

4:02 PM

people around for trying to get me a pizza ?

in Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Exchange Chat, 10 secs ago, by SmokeDetector

@Doorknob冰 HATS ARE AWESOME. Winter Bash will end in 0 days, 7 hours, 57 minutes and 46 seconds. :(

You don't have much time. :P

I know

half hour only

pizza is the only overall hat remaining for me

I just need pizza and Red Baron

Martin Büttner

@Optimizer what's the challenge?

@Optimizer - If I can solve the challenge, I'm in.

4:08 PM

@Doorknob冰 how did u get eureka ?

I wonder what this hat is

@MartinBüttner get me some cash from ATM

@Optimizer By figuring out a secret hat.

an ATM machine here gives 100, 500 and 1000 notes. with some rules on the number of each note for a given withdrawal amount. Your task will be to make certain withdrawals so that you have at least required number of each of 100, 500 and 1000 note

@Doorknob冰 duh. I meant which one

@Optimizer So, you mean you give us an input that you want 1*1000, 1*500 and 1*100 and we give you 1600?

4:11 PM

yes

given the machine did not instead gave you 2*500 + 6*100

Martin Büttner

and I suppose money withdrawn must be minimal?

yes

Martin Büttner

what are the rules for the notes?

one of the rule is kind of built up, but others are like what i say :

@Doorknob冰 how does one "figure out" a hat?

4:12 PM

I take it this is not a suitable solution?

@Optimizer Uhh, I just sent a "contact us" form explaining a bunch of them, and [insert CM here] said that one of them was correct. So, I'm not sure. :P

@TheDoctor "Figure out" as in "find out how to get it."

@Doorknob冰 so that means eureka is not given to the first guesser ?

well i got this one and i havent been active since summer

@PopeyGilbert minimum withdrawal amount .

@Optimizer It's given to whoever can deduce at least part of how to get a secret hat without spoilers or other assistance.

(incidentally, I tried to say "Eureka is for figuring out how to get a secret hat so gimme nao" but apparently Eureka explicitly disqualifies figuring out Eureka this year, since it existed last year as well. :P)

4:16 PM

rules - If withdrawal amount < 5000, then
amount%1000 == 0 -> 1 500 note, 5 100 notes, rest 1000
amount%500 == 0 -> 5 100 notes, rest 1000
amount%1000 < 500 -> no 500 note
amount %1000 > 500 -> 1 500 note

amount >= 5000 ,
amount%1000 == 0 -> 2 500 notes, rest 1000
amount%500 == 0 -> 1 500 note, rest 1000
remaining same.

clear enough ?

Yep, fairly clear =)

Martin Büttner

@Optimizer in the last two cases, "no 500 note" and "1 500 note"... what about the rest? as many 1000s as possible?

yes

@Optimizer I'll help you get pizza if you help me get it. :P

Martin Büttner

@PopeyGilbert double post ;)

4:22 PM

@Doorknob冰 where ?

@Optimizer I'm about to post a question on Meta.SE about ideas for next year's WB

@MartinBüttner Huh, it said "Request Timeout", so I clicked retry. That must of been why there was a double post. Which also means that there's a problem coming from stackexchange.com to my client.

@Doorknob冰 That is not a question to be answered rapidly :/

Martin Büttner

@Doorknob冰 post a challenge instead :P

and if people already have ideas, they will post anyways

so here you are looking for 5 people with preexisting ideas :P

4:27 PM

@Optimizer So, the input to your challenge is something like 1 2 3?

yeah

how do u get timelord???

Martin Büttner

@TheDoctor edit 5 old questions

don't do it now please :D

I'll post the question in around 15 minutes

Martin Büttner

@Optimizer sorry, I don't think I have the time right now to solve this... bad enough I'm procrastinating in this chat at all ^^

4:29 PM

@MartinBüttner Homework?

Martin Büttner

@TheDoctor sort of

meta.stackexchange.com/q/246533/180276 <-- Answers for pizza hat plz? :P

@Doorknob冰 Done

you will easily get 5 answers on that

Martin Büttner

@PopeyGilbert well that left the sandbox quickly ;)

4:37 PM

@Doorknob冰 will the hat stats go away after today ?

@Optimizer Yep. Hats disappear after Jan 5, UTC.

Martin Büttner

I'd usually leave a proposal in there for at least 24 hours, unless I've already gotten feedback from at least 3 people.

@Doorknob冰 as I said

@MartinBüttner Hm, yeah. I felt that if there were any pressing issues they would of been said, the page was visited ~60 times.

Could someone edit the sandbox to no longer include "Curator's Dilemma"?

Martin Büttner

@PopeyGilbert done

please edit your sandbox post down to just the title (which links to the challenge) and then delete it

thanks

4:59 PM

@MartinBüttner Both should be done.

Martin Büttner

yeah I posted "thanks" after you did so ;)

@MartinBüttner Oh, I'm just blind =)

@PopeyGilbert my chosen alphabets for the paintings can be anything, right ?

(but unique)

@Optimizer Of course. They could be symbols and numbers too.

cool

1 hour later…

6:15 PM

So.. Should I post my question ? Anybody in ?

I'm in, but I haven't come up with a solution

Martin Büttner

double literals in Fortran are ridiculous

want a 0? 0.0d0

(I think you can leave out the middle 0 but that's about it)

Are answers in pseudocode valid? (more specific, this one)

Martin Büttner

haha, I just saw that... kinda funny

I flagged it as NAA, to answer your question

#Pseudo code
Do as the question says

6:43 PM

@MartinBüttner [[0,1,2],[5,4],[3,6]] is the join, no ?

or maybe, I did not understand the question at all

A quick Python 3 solution tester for optimizer's challenge. pastebin.com/9hs2jzh6 - You can run it here - His challenge is detailed above and may have already been posted. Hopefully this may help someone.

Martin Büttner

7:00 PM

@Optimizer no it's not. you cannot split up those subarrays to yield [0,3] for the second input (for instance)

New Sandboxed Posts

7:31 PM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Related to this question. It's finally 2015. With the New Year comes new challenges. Goal: Print the number 2015 in the shortest code (in bytes) possible. Limitations: You cannot use any of the following digits: 0123456789 You cannot use any time or date variables The programming language y...

8:02 PM

@MartinBüttner I see. Now I get it. but now I don't know how to solve it anymore :D

Martin Büttner

lol

well user23013 already did :D

I can't read his

Also, I think that my question is too non trivial to be able to get pizza, so I will post it in sandbox first..

Hey guys, I'm having a really stupid time making my Python code golf solution actually say, that it is a solution

I'm meant to indent every line by four spaces right?

It's about 15 lines long, so that's not a problem, it's just not showing in the preview section.

paste the code as is

select

click the {} button

No, just paste the code, select it, and hit Ctrl+K

8:13 PM

Huh, neither is working :? I didn't know about the hotkey, but the {} still isn't working

Hotkey also isn't working...

Wait... now it is o.0

Refreshing fixes everything.

Martin Büttner

I swear this comment got upvoted more than 8 hours after I fixed it... what on earth.

8:44 PM

I seriously want to open a meta question about this user

Martin Büttner

@Optimizer he did use single-letter names this time

the amount of bloat is over 9000

the thing is that he is not willing to understand the basics of code golfing

We've got answer bans for a reason.

what is the requirement ?

We don't know (otherwise people would work around it, etc.), but it should be kicking in shortly.

New Sandboxed Posts

8:55 PM

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

The new year, 2015, is here. With it comes new challenges. Goal: Take an input, STDIN, and produce the number 2015 from it. Guidelines: Assume that STDIN is any number from -∞ to +∞ Your code must take STDIN as input and always return 2015 as an integer Twist: I am immediately eliminating...

some people never l(iste|ear)n

his counter-argument - "I have vastly improved the formatting"

githubphagocyte

Downvote and walk away, or you'll sink into the mire

oh, I can do more

I'll downvote, refresh , vote to delete

githubphagocyte

vote to delete user - how much rep do you need for that?

Why don't you invite them to chat so it's a conversation with more people. Maybe things would sink in coming from a group

Martin Büttner

@githubphagocyte good idea

githubphagocyte

9:10 PM

Obviously when there are people here... :) How many of the avatars up there are people actually present at the moment?

Martin Büttner

5

darker ones

raises hand

aye

@MartinBüttner I understand where you are coming from, so what can I do to my question to make it acceptable?

Martin Büttner

9:15 PM

@JamesLynch start afresh? if you want the challenge to always print 2015, then taking input doesn't make sense to me. but if it only outputs 2015, it's a duplicate of the old one. so either you can either come up with a novel restriction to make outputting 2015 interesting again (which, I think, will be pretty hard), or you could think about making the output variable.

ok.

Martin Büttner

that being said, writing good challenges is hard, and it happens fairly regularly that you have an idea only to discover it's already been done. so if you keep getting negative feedback for your ideas, don't despair ;) ... I suggest you hang around the site for a while, participate in some challenges, and have a look around what makes a good and innovative challenge.

githubphagocyte

Done

(Be nice... :) )

being nice is hard

typing is too

3

apparently

9:21 PM

typing it too

githubphagocyte

lol

@MartinBüttner Thanks. lol

githubphagocyte

9:40 PM

Back in May I posted my first (and only) answer to StackOverflow. Today I posted my first (and only) question to StackOverflow, and I got an upvote on my answer from back in May. ???

wow, NSP is slow

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Golf me some cash from the ATM code-golfcombinatorics The task is simple. Get me some 1000, 500 and 100 notes. How ? you might ask. Don't worry, no need of robbing a bank as there is an ATM nearby which accepts your credit card. But your credit limit is just enough for the task. Challenge Gi...

@Optimizer It goes every 10 minutes.

9:56 PM

all right. I am off to bed

'afternoon

Martin Büttner

'ev'ning

What's new?

'n

(you know, while we're abusing apostrophes and all :P)

If abusing = using correctly ;)

githubphagocyte

10:28 PM

...'...

^-'-^

10:59 PM

@githubphagocyte I think that the longest time before loneliness would (at least if taking the number-theoretic version of the conjecture) be equivalent to a question which was posted not too long ago (but IIRC deleted by the poster for reasons which weren't obvious) about finding a tight cluster of coprime numbers.

Simply asking for the time at which the last runner is lonely, given an array of input, would make a simple code-golf question.

githubphagocyte

11:12 PM

Thanks @PeterTaylor I'm guessing that the previous question being deleted means that wouldn't be classed as a duplicate? It was @MartinBüttner who brought up the topic of the lonely runners but I think you've just missed him. Sounds like there could potentially be more than one question based on this.

11:24 PM

It wouldn't be, no. And it's probably been long enough that I should stop hoping that whoever it was will undelete it. It was a more interesting question the more I thought about it, so I wouldn't be against something equivalent being posted.

Martin Büttner

@githubphagocyte actually, I'm here

@PeterTaylor do you still have the link to that one?

No

Martin Büttner

but yeah I think the number-theoretic one would probably be more interesting

Smiling stingray is a spitting image of Uncle Sam

Martin Büttner

@globby never noticed your avatar was a stingray

I just saw a big grey blob

"stringray"... I need to sleep.

11:33 PM

No no, let's stick with stringray

Apparently I need to sleep as well, since I didn't quote that correctly

Martin Büttner

@PeterTaylor so for the former.... would you just set k = 8 and score all answers on that?

because I can't think of a reasonable scoring criterion involving multiple k

I was thinking code-golf

Martin Büttner

oh, even for the combination that gives longest time until loneliness?

I thought that sounded difficult enough to be worth a code-challenge (seeing that it's unsolved)

though a code challenge would have the usual problem of "find the largest n within x minutes", namely searching in your own time and then starting the search in the right place

I think that if you assume the conjecture, it's probably not hard to show the equivalence to the tightly bunched coprime number problem, and that's relatively easier.

(I admit that I haven't attempted a proof: I've been catching up on e-mail and thinking about knishops)

Martin Büttner

right... well that's out of my league :D ... I'm off to bed for now... will give it some more thought tomorrow

11:45 PM

See ya @MartinBüttner

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Jan '154

The Nineteenth Byte

The Nineteenth Byte: General discussion for codegolf.stackexc...

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