The Nineteenth Byte

Jakube

16:08

@Lembik hi

Lembik

@Jakube your golf answer to my question is amazing! 44 bytes

just wanted to say

I am not sure how you have got the last few bytes off recently

Jakube

Thanks. I was able to put the two scalar products into a loop, instead of calculating them each.

Btw. I'm pretty sure I can reach around 30 with the explicit formular.

Lembik

@Jakube and it might be fast too!

I still can't understand how on earth we know that formula is right

anyone here with a math phd to help would be great :)

Dennis

I doubt most Math PhDs are combinatorics wizards.

Geobits

16:26

Ugh. I wanted to use LÖVE for the minecraft tool golf (just because), but apparently when you draw a line, it doesn't f'ing draw the line you tell it to, but some other line, decided by some yet-to-be-determined method.

Lesson learned: Don't try to use line-drawing tools if you need pixel-perfect results.

Lembik

@Dennis that's a good point.. I think I was only say it lightheartedly

@Dennis although I don't really understand the line between combinatorics and probability

we need a resource of combinatorics wizards accessible through the internet :)

trichoplax

16:46

@Lembik You could post it on Math.SE

Lembik

@trichoplax you mean ask, why is the formula correct?

trichoplax

Or just "is it correct?"

Lembik

I should probably try to prove it by induction first

they don't like lazy people :) But thanks

trichoplax

Yes get as far as you can before asking anyway :)

Lembik

:)

also, people here are smarter than on math.se :)

Mitch Schwartz

17:00

@Lembik we decide which nodes to discard based on N_MAX, since at a certain point you will encounter tuples for which |s| and |t| are too great to get back to 0 by the time N_MAX is reached

since from one tuple to the next |s| and |t| can differ by at most one each

the search space increases until around N_MAX / 2 and then decreases again, which you can see by the speed of the values being outputted

Lembik

17:34

@MitchSchwartz ok.. so what happens if you set the wrong N_MAX? Does it ever output the wrong answer as a result?

@MitchSchwartz Oh... I think this current question is basically finished now.. If I asked a new one but with A longer might you be interested? Surely Min_25 can't come up with another closed formula :)

I feel longer A should make it much harder

with A[2] =A[n+2] for example

maybe I should email apia too :)

it seems to have worked out well

Mitch Schwartz

@Lembik no, it just either doesn't complete within 10 seconds, or it finishes with time to spare

the correctness is not compromised

Lembik

@MitchSchwartz ok thanks.. it is very nice. Did you see it got to 165

Mitch Schwartz

are you in contact with apia?

Lembik

no not at all.. I also don't know what his/her strengths are

@MitchSchwartz are you in touch with apia?

Mitch Schwartz

nope

Lembik

17:46

@MitchSchwartz in relation to a new question.. might you be interested?

@MitchSchwartz that is in one that doesn't have a closed form solution but you could use some of the ideas you have already developed

Mitch Schwartz

i may be able to see his email because of my account privileges on spoj, but i don't feel comfortable with that

well Min_25 said he doesn't know whether a closed form solution exists but guesses that one does

so i wouldn't really be surprised if he were able to come up with one

i think modifying the dp solution would not be too hard

do you think it would be ok for me to reply to your comment with "Thank you, I agree with your decision. :)" or is that too much like a "+1" that people would frown on as being useless and non-informative?

Lembik

@MitchSchwartz please do reply like that!

@MitchSchwartz it would be interesting to see if your pruning is still effective for example

currently I am really wondering if Min_25 is looking at the Joy of X

and hoping he/she is!

Rainbolt

The first comment on this SO blog is killing me. "In Russia, Stack Overflows You"

Mitch Schwartz

18:02

yeah the pruning idea still applies

|s| |t| and |u| would need to be within thresh, thresh-1, and thresh-2

Lembik

@MitchSchwartz ah so maybe some clever way is needed to set those thresholds?

@Rainbolt I hope we don't start having SO in all different languages. I can see it will be really annoying

Rainbolt

Why would that annoy you? How does it even affect you at all?

ru.stackoverflow.com is a totally separate website from www.stackoverflow.com

Mitch Schwartz

those minuses should have been plusses

it's possible there is something i'm not anticipating, but i just mean that it will be parallel to what i did for this one -- thresh is just N_MAX - N, there is no complicated calculation there

Geobits

@Rainbolt The usual argument is that it fragments the community. For instance, someone who knows both Russian and English (but Russian better) may post their question (or answer I guess) only on the Russian site now (instead of on English), so there's a net loss of knowledge from the "main" site.

Lembik

@Rainbolt because much the same question will appear in umpteen languages

Geobits

18:07

I'm not saying I necessarily agree with that stance, but it's what I saw brought up when the Portugese one started up.

Lembik

@Rainbolt and everyone will want to cross-post

@MitchSchwartz OK... So... with your permission I will post it ... but if you tell me you will definitely not post an answer I won't :)

Rainbolt

If you know English and Russian I don't see why cross posting is an issue.

Mitch Schwartz

@Lembik how about, i try to write a solution before you publish the question, and then i can send it to you and we can go from there?

Lembik

@MitchSchwartz wow.. that's even better!

thanks you

Mitch Schwartz

ok, cool :)

Geobits

18:10

The only reason I see cross posting as an issue is if it gets a great answer on one site and sad/no answers on the other. Even then it's not that big a deal IMO, it's just the whole knowledge fragmentation issue.

Rainbolt

We'll probably only lose the people whose second language is Russian and prefer to post on a primary language dedicated website.

Mitch Schwartz

i won't be working on it right now btw, i have some other things to take care of

i'm very glad Min_25 joined in, that was great

Lembik

@MitchSchwartz thanks and yes!

Rainbolt

@Geobits It's not like cross posting caused the English one to get a crappier answer.

Unless one of the answerers is a Russian who left the English site.

Lembik

let's say there are 50 of these in different languages

Geobits

18:11

Like I said, that part isn't a big deal to me.

Lembik

you want to know the answer to somethign.. so how many are you allowed to post the question on?

Rainbolt

Here's a thought: In the future, you check what languages you can understand and you get questions from all applicable StackOverflows

Lembik

and do you produce a chain of cross links in each question to the next?

@Rainbolt well you can understand lots of languages poorly using google translate for example

Geobits

I like that idea for search actually. That would be pretty sweet.

Lembik

I think having the same question posted 50 times is not a good idea

Rainbolt

18:13

I don't understand where you are getting this idea that a question will be posted 50 times.

If someone uses Google translate, everyone will be able to tell

And the amount of effort it takes to copy and paste 50 times is just stupid

Geobits

@Lembik I normally assume that most people know <5 languages, and won't paste sloppy robotranslated copies everywhere.

Lembik

@Rainbolt 50 was just an example number :) say 5

Rainbolt

And, if someone does manage to write a question using perfect wording in 50 languages, then kudos to them. They deserve to get answers in 50 languages.

Lembik

isn't posting a question 5 times bad?

Geobits

Because that's work, and if there's one thing I've learned from many SO askers, it's that they don't want to do work before asking.

Lembik

18:15

:)

Rainbolt

Lembik your entire argument is a basis for not having different languages in the first place.

Lembik

@Rainbolt well sort of.. it is in bible after all :)

@Rainbolt it is true that lots of practical things are easier if there is one standard language to do it in

not so great for culture though :)

Geobits

It's also true that the majority of the world doesn't speak English ;)

Lembik

@Geobits is that really true? Is it true that the majority of the internet using world doesn't know basic English?

of course billions of people who don't use the internet don't know English.. but that is not so relevant

Geobits

If you want to broaden the internet user base, you can't focus only on those that already use it.

Rainbolt

18:17

I think Spanish is the broadest language right?

Googles

Lembik

internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm

@Geobits It's not an aim of SO to broaden the population who use the Internet is it?

Geobits

So English is 28% even of just internet users there. You'd be ignoring the other 72% if you focus only on English.

@Lembik It should be the goal of any decent person IMO, but I'm also a hypocrite, so... :P

Lembik

@Geobits I didn't ignore it! I gave you those stats :) They of course don't actually answer my question

Dennis

@MartinBüttner: I know I've already asked a variation of this, but I want to clarify before wasting a lot of time. Are the string lengths on the boggle board guaranteed to vary from 1 to 50 or at least from 1 to N?

Lembik

@Geobits why is it good to use the internet? I don't think I am any happier than I was in the 80s :)

Rainbolt

18:19

Okay, let's say posting a question 5 times (in different languages) is bad. Why is it bad?

Lembik

@Rainbolt Partly because when someone wants to find the answer they have to look in 5 places

it is quite likely the answers will be different standards

Rainbolt

"The question was posted five times. Therefore, to find the answer I must find all five questions." is a non sequitur.

Geobits

@Lembik If you've looked for a job/house/etc (in the US at least) recently, you'd know that not having reliable internet access is a serious disadvantage.

Lembik

and so the community effect of improving answers is also partly lost

@Geobits I can imagine!

@Geobits if you post to MO and math.se for example, you have to include links to the other question

@Geobits much for the reason I mentioned... people don't want to work on something to find that it has already been answered elsewhere.. and it's also a waste of time

Geobits

Are you meaning to reply to me or Rainbolt? I'm pretty sure you got the wrong guy with the last couple.

Lembik

18:23

could be :)

Geobits

Still, you're assuming that the answerers are going to know the same languages as the askers and searchers.

Rainbolt

You started with a non sequitur. Everything after I ignored. So if you were talking to me you have to start over.

Lembik

@Rainbolt :)

Geobits

If I know English and Japanese, I would only ever see those that happen to be cross posted on those two sites, not five copies.

Lembik

in all seriousness... I think it will be bad for anyone who speaks english

and good for those who don't

Geobits

18:24

And if I do know both languages, why wouldn't I want to see answers from both? Someone may have a brilliant answer and only know one of them.

Lembik

@Geobits the idea is that answer quality is improved by having more eyes

that is they are not produced independently of the community

Geobits

The answer would never exist in the first place if it was only on English and the answerer doesn't know it.

Lembik

@Geobits right.. so I think it will be good for those who don't speak English

Geobits

Which is most of the world, even if restricted to just internet users.

Lembik

@Geobits is that true?

Rainbolt

18:26

There's a chance that some bilingual user will port the brilliant Russian answer to English. Would that offset the decrease in quality due to having less eyes?

Geobits

@Lembik You linked the chart that says so...

Lembik

@Geobits I know most of the world doesn't have English as a first language.. ..but that is a different question

@Geobits no it doesn't say anything about the number of people who can speak English.. it is about English as a first language

Rainbolt

We just graded our code base using SonarQube and we got an A!

Lembik

@Rainbolt that is an interesting question indeed.. I imagine in practice there will be a lot of translation needed

Rainbolt

Less than 1% of our code base is technical debt. To get an A we need less than 10%.

Geobits

18:28

@Lembik I don't see where it says first/native language anywhere on that page.

Rainbolt

To fix the less than 1% of our code base that is technical debt: estimated 1279 man days required.

Lembik

@Geobits what do you think it is counting?

@Geobits I could have it wrong

Geobits

Since it has a 1.3B count for English (worldwide), it don't think it can be native speakers.

Lembik

@Geobits don't forget India

@Geobits en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

that's quite informative

Rainbolt

Don't forget Klingon

Lembik

18:30

@Rainbolt are you comparing Klingon to India?

Geobits

If you notice, that wiki chart even says English isn't the primary language in India, so I doubt most have it as their first language.

Lembik

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… is good too

Rainbolt

I don't judge which nation is better than another.

Lembik

@Geobits sure I saw that. If it had been the sum would have been above 1.3B

Rainbolt

Lmao this code of honor for programming: klingon.org/resources/klingon_code.html

"Indentation is for enemy skulls, not code."

Geobits

18:32

Sorry python :)

Lembik

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… is informative too!

the wiki rocks :)

Mandarin wins on that page!

err... sort of

Geobits

And confirms that the internet-users chart is talking about speakers, not native/primary ;)

Rainbolt

Total number of native speakers on that page vs total number of speakers on the other page

Lembik

English wins in fact

Agawa001

@Rainbolt just in response to this

29 mins ago, by Rainbolt

ru.stackoverflow.com is a totally separate website from www.stackoverflow.com

Lembik

18:34

the question is if you count L1, L2 and FL

@Geobits :)

Agawa001

>ping ru.stackoverflow.com

Envoi d'une requête 'ping' sur ru.stackoverflow.com [198.252.206.16] avec 32 oct
ets de données :
Réponse de 198.252.206.16 : octets=32 temps=137 ms TTL=51

>ping www.stackoverflow.com

Envoi d'une requête 'ping' sur stackoverflow.com [198.252.206.16] avec 32 octets
de données :
Réponse de 198.252.206.16 : octets=32 temps=139 ms TTL=51

Lembik

@Geobits non of the numbers match well enough for me to say anything really

Geobits

Except that a whole bunch of people don't speak English :)

Lembik

@Geobits this is true! Everyone minus 1.5B people it seems

but I can't tell how many of those people are internet users

Geobits

@Agawa001 Separate websites can direct to the same IP address...

Agawa001

18:37

:/

ah ok

separate (linguistically)

Lembik

2.94 billion internet users in total apparently @Geobits

but I am giving up on these stats.... too confusing :)

Geobits

I think the biggest issue is that the English-speaking world is not gaining internet users as fast as the rest, and won't just due to math. English-speaking countries already have deep penetration rates, so if you want to stay ahead of the curve, you need to look into other areas.

Lembik

19:00

@Geobits interesting

@MitchSchwartz sorry about the distraction :)

Vioz-

19:24

Anyone here tried VS Code?

Agawa001

19:46

finally i got what a list question

now im gonna star

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isaacg

23:00

Apparently, I am capped for today at 215 reputation.

Nathan Merrill

Reading an interesting post about letter frequencies

apparently the most frequent 7-letter sequence in english is "present

isaacg

This one: norvig.com/mayzner.html

?

Nathan Merrill

Yeah

Hey chat, I'm interested to know which editors you guys use

I originally used Notepad++, until I wanted something cross-platform

and then I switched to sublime but I didn't really like it

so now, I use Atom

trichoplax

I'm still at the Notepad++ stage

I switch between that and IDLE for Python 3

For learning JavaScript I'm mostly using jsfiddle

Calvin's Hobbies

23:16

@trichoplax Is your JS Koth still forthcoming?

trichoplax

I'm focusing on my bot flock entry at the moment (it's taking much longer than I expected...)

Is this weekend the deadline?

Calvin's Hobbies

I was going to tally the results, but if you're still planning to answer, I can wait another week or so.

trichoplax

My hope is that after that I'll have sufficient grasp of JS to write a KotH, but I'm not sure which one to do first (I have a few ideas)

I love the idea of SSKotHs but I also like the idea of KotHs being available in a variety of languages, even if each one is language specific, so I'm trying to decide which of my ideas would be best for a stack snippet, rather than make them all stack snippets

@Calvin'sHobbies Thanks :) Maybe you could pretend that end of this weekend is the deadline to get me moving though ;)

Calvin's Hobbies

@trichoplax Fine. I assumed I wouldn't get any more answers so I was about to accept. But I'll say that monday is the deadline.

trichoplax

At the moment I'm leaning towards my QotH (Queen of the Hill) as the one I'd most like to see in a stack snippet. It's not sandboxed yet, but it's an ant-based contest with everyone present on a very large arena (if there are too many entries I'll have to exclude the bottom few from the contest but I'd like to see 16 or 20 competing at once)

Each player will start with just a queen, but the queen will be able to produce workers. Each ant can only see the 9 squares around it, and runs as a separate function with no communication with the others (rather than a single bot controlling the whole nest)

It's going to be very low information and no state can be saved, so the ants can only keep track of things by changing the colours of the arena cells

I've got it mostly worked out on paper apart from the number of colours permitted, which I'm guessing will be 8 or 16.

Geobits

23:26

@trichoplax As someone who's spent months playing with swarm/emergent behavior in years past, you need to promise me that isn't vaporware :P

feersum

Sounds like fun..I would participate, if only I weren't allergic to Javascript

trichoplax

@Geobits I've got it pretty much worked out, but I'm learning JavaScript, so I am determined to post it at some point, but I can't guarantee it will be soon...

Geobits

I have a JS allergy, too, but I could pop a couple benadryl for that one.

trichoplax

The ants will have no memory, and no orientation, so unless they mark the cells around them they won't even be able to follow a straight line

Their neighbourhood is presented to them at a random orientation each move

Nathan Merrill

@trichoplax I'd be willing to work on a Java controller due to allergies

or Python, if people are similarly afflicted by Java

trichoplax

23:30

@NathanMerrill That's very kind of you, and I have a few KotH ideas so I'd like to try each one in a different language, but I'm very attached to the idea of stack snippets for the ant QotH.

Nathan Merrill

ok :)

trichoplax

@feersum Hopefully there will be an answer on another question that can translate from some more palatable language into JS...

feersum

I don't follow

trichoplax

I'm not sure if it will work like that either, but it's a thought...

feersum

Perfect, I'll write my answer with deadfish

trichoplax

23:32

lol

Each answer will contain a function to operate the queen, and a further 4 functions for 4 different worker types. You won't have to use all 4, but that's the maximum number of different worker types available

The queen then decides what worker types to create and when, but once created they do their own thing with no communication unless they do so via the coloured squares of the arena

I'll write up a sandbox post once I'm finished with my BBBF answer

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