The Nineteenth Byte

06:00

The comments are the best part though

I don't understand why people can't admit they don't understand something, rather than going straight to: "this is entirely wrong"

Kritixi Lithos

The flaw of mankind

Destructible Watermelon

I watched the video on quicksort and bubblesort for no particular reason

That got me thinking: what sorting algorithm do people use?

also is anyone at all interested in that koth I was going to make?

with the 1d chess

Because I was wondering whether I should even try with that anymore

Destructible Watermelon

06:23

Also how do I learn a java?

I need it for koths

ASCII-only

@DestructibleWatermelon a java?

Destructible Watermelon

the java thing that makes the program thing

All those koths use java or something

ASCII-only

0/10 how do you not know Java

Destructible Watermelon

Excuse me

When you were born

ASCII-only

@Downgoat @Conor @Phi What do you think about moving the blog to GH pages + Jekyll (mostly for highlighting and inline core)? Does anyone have any other/better ideas?

Destructible Watermelon

06:34

did you know java?

ASCII-only

No

Destructible Watermelon

So, at some point, you learned java?

ASCII-only

But it's C-derived, and if you know one, you pretty much know all of them

Qwerp-Derp

The other chat sites are dead walls

ASCII-only

@Qwerp-Derp ??

Qwerp-Derp

06:35

I typed "Hello" into Puzzling.SE's main chat room

And it was 2 hours before the next reply...

Destructible Watermelon

I have like, half an hour of experience with c#?

ASCII-only

@Qwerp-Derp Yeah, pretty sure TNB is the most active chat besides SO chat

@DestructibleWatermelon So if you know basic C#, Java is pretty much the same for most things

Qwerp-Derp

It's probably the same with Math.SE's main chat room

Destructible Watermelon

Not really though

Qwerp-Derp

Which is the pretty dull-named "Mathematics"

dull-ly named?

Destructible Watermelon

06:37

Also doesn't java have like a boilerplate code or something?

ASCII-only

@DestructibleWatermelon ?

C# has boilerplate as well

Qwerp-Derp

Java code:

Destructible Watermelon

Surely the boiler plate is different

ASCII-only

You have the basic number types, and String instead of string, and the fact that method names should be lowercase

Destructible Watermelon

also I don't remember the boilerplate

Qwerp-Derp

06:38

import java.stupidly.long.name
import java.other.stupidly.long.name
import java.this.is.such.a.long.name.that.its.not.funny

ASCII-only

@DestructibleWatermelon Search is:a java on PPCG

@DestructibleWatermelon here

Destructible Watermelon

also

So far the only koth I participated in

didn't end up working

ASCII-only

@DestructibleWatermelon wat

Destructible Watermelon

it petered out

13

Q: Leo's Pokerface

Pokerface Introduction Leo enjoys playing poker, but his job at Tech Inc. is too demanding for him to learn how to play well. Leo, being a computer scientist, is not discouraged. He decides to take more time than it would have taken to just learn poker, and use it to write a poker bot to help h...

Qwerp-Derp

$$\sum_{n=1}^\infty \frac{1}{x^n} = \frac{1}{x-1}$$

Yay ChatJax works!

Wait does anyone have the paste for the face?

Destructible Watermelon

06:44

Hey, I made a portal 2 test

What should I call it?

Qwerp-Derp

Wait what portal 2 test

Destructible Watermelon

I'll publish it soon.

I could just call it test, but ehh

Qwerp-Derp

Dammit Destructible...

You have too many things that just aren't published

Destructible Watermelon

do you have portal 2?

Because if you could play my test, they would be cool

New Main Posts

0

Q: Rob the Farmer Game

Rob the Farmer My sister recently showed me a card game played in Ireland: 'Rob the Farmer'. The rules are very simple: two players start with an equal number of cards. The first player puts down a card. If the card is a number (two to ten) the other player will put down a card on top of that ca...

code-golf array-manipulation

Destructible Watermelon

06:49

It got everythin'. it's got turrets, deadly goo, bouncy goo, more bouncy goo, a bouncy ball, ball receptacle, excursion tunnel, faith plates, a hard light bridge, a cube, lasers, emancipation grills, yeah

Qwerp-Derp

Should I challenge one of my maths teachers at my school into making a prime checker in MC?

Destructible Watermelon

WTF

@Qwerp-Derp minecraft?

Qwerp-Derp

Yup

Destructible Watermelon

publishing it now

How high should the number be?

ASCII-only

@Qwerp-Derp Do any of them 1. Have MC and 2. Are decent at redstone construction

Qwerp-Derp

06:55

Yup

In fact one of them is pretty fanatical about it

And is very good at redstone

So yea or nay on the challenge?

Destructible Watermelon

Why not?

probably should say how high the number can be

anyone here have portal 2? just published a test chamber

ASCII-only

@Qwerp-Derp Yes

@Qwerp-Derp Wait can't they just use command blocks

Qwerp-Derp

Vanilla redstone!

TBH all you have to do for a prime checker is borrow SethBling's BASIC interpreter in Minecraft, and then make a prime checker out of BASIC instead

ASCII-only

@Qwerp-Derp You need an upper limit on the number

Destructible Watermelon

Actually, is minecraft redstone TC?

probably not

It might have been

if it weren't for the piston load limit

ASCII-only

07:02

@DestructibleWatermelon How is it not

Destructible Watermelon

Same way logic circuits are not

ASCII-only

@DestructibleWatermelon Wait circuits are not TC?

Destructible Watermelon

Limited memory and states

Also same way computers are not TC

ASCII-only

Yeah but given an infinite amount of memory (i.e. infinte world) it is TC

Destructible Watermelon

I don't think you can manipulate all data in the world

Pistons have limited range

ASCII-only

07:04

@DestructibleWatermelon Can you not have multiple pistons

Destructible Watermelon

other wise it is asking for infinitely large computer

@ASCII-only yes

but you still have limited pistons

I guess there is one thing though

I remember a vehicle made out of pistons and stuff

that might have implications of being able to manipulate all data...

Destructible Watermelon

07:22

if pistons had infinite range, minsky machines would be simple

Jonathan Allan

@Dennis the "misatomisation" and the Dürers Magic Square got me thinking about some other possibly useful pair-atoms: permutation_index (monad), permutation_at_index (monad), and permutation_at_index (dyad given a defined ordering). Now Dürers Magic Square is possible in 13 with something like “ŒCġŀḌ;’Œ?⁴s4. I'll post some examples in the Jelly room.

New Meta Posts

0

Q: proposal for change how calculate the lenght of the code

I like codegolf because I think minimize instructions is ok... But all is seen searching readability: So multiplications of sub functions and operator reachable should be discouraged they has to be one number one can remember (example 60 and not more) and not use of indentation must be discourage...

discussion code-golf asking-questions scoring

Qwerp-Derp

07:40

Would a machine be TC if it returns the next stage of Rule 110 given an initial state?

Or does it have to keep printing?

ASCII-only

@Qwerp-Derp It has to keep printing I think

otherwise it may be possible without looping i.e. not TC

Destructible Watermelon

nope

it does not have to print

it only has to do one thing:

halt iff the input program halts, given infinite time

ASCII-only

@DestructibleWatermelon Rule 110 never halts, does it

Destructible Watermelon

07:55

wait, what is the equivalent of halting in rule 110?

ASCII-only

@DestructibleWatermelon Is there one?

Destructible Watermelon

there must be

or it wouldn't be tc

ASCII-only

@DestructibleWatermelon Oh yeah, it does, but it's different depending on the implementation

i.e. what happens at the leftmost and rightmost cell

Destructible Watermelon

We will create an initial state that will eventu-
ally produce the bit sequence 01101001101000 if and only if t
he corresponding Turing machine halts

New Main Posts

08:56

0

Q: Count down from infinity

Seems like an impossible task right? Well, it's actually not that hard. Inf, when written as 8-bit binary ASCII-code is simply: 01001001 01101110 01100110 Concatenate this and convert it to decimal and get 4812390. Now, it's easy to count down right? The way you'll count down is: Output th...

code-golf base-conversion counting

Anonymous

09:21

Apparently this was a thing

New Sandboxed Posts

09:48

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Binary Countdown Length inspired by Count down from infinity Given a positive integer N, output the number of repetitions of the following steps it takes to reach 0: Convert N to binary (4812390 -> 10010010110111001100110) Flip each bit (10010010110111001100110 -> 01101101001000110011001) Tri...

ASCII-only

@Mego IIRC there's a successful kickstarter for some kind of secure storage

Anonymous

No such thing as secure storage in the physical sense

Anonymous

Rule #1 of security: If someone gets physical access to your device, it's no longer secure

ASCII-only

Yeah it's impossible for other people to get the data without destroying it or something IIRC

Kritixi Lithos

"Let's have smart homes, self-driving cars and automated machinery and hope hackers don't hack us" -owner of a smart-home

Anonymous

10:09

@ASCII-only There is no way to build such a device that would work fine for the "good guy" but would be impossible for the "bad guy" to get the data

Kritixi Lithos

Quantum computing is a good example of that

Encryption would be pointless if they can be cracked quickly

ASCII-only

Chat mini poll: is object.foo : number a good idea? (Restricting a property of an object to a certain type)

Kritixi Lithos

What lang?

ASCII-only

10:26

VSL

Nathan Merrill

10:53

strongly typing is pretty much always a good idea

@Mego isn't that the whole point of hard drive encryption?

Anonymous

@NathanMerrill Well if your hard drive mistakes you for a "bad guy" because you messed up entering the key, and promptly deletes everything on it, that would be very not good

ASCII-only

@NathanMerrill Yeah but should I let people strongly type properties

Nathan Merrill

@ASCII-only once again, the answer is pretty much always yes

if VSL doesn't have some sort of generics system, and that property could be different under difference cases, then perhaps not

but if its list.size, then it should absolutely be a number :)

ASCII-only

I mean let's say that's a JS-style object

you have thing = {}; thing.foo : number = 1;, is this a good idea

Nathan Merrill

like I said, yes

in 90% of all cases. I can't say that for all cases

nor can I specify when the 10% is

Anonymous

11:02

Providing the option to use duck typing or strict typing is always nice, so long as duck-typed objects and strictly-typed objects play nicely together

ASCII-only

@NathanMerrill First time I've looked at the Elegance spec in ages, "Sets throw an error if you add a value that already exists" doesn't really make sense to me, why would you use a set if you know if the value already exists

Nathan Merrill

that's in there?

yeah, that's silly

especially because I don't have erroring

I should update the document

ASCII-only

Also in the gist:

trait Unsigned for Int {
    Positive
    Zero
    Math.abs
}

Jonathan Allan

ninja'd homework bot

ASCII-only

That's going to act weirdly if you add a Negative trait

Nathan Merrill

11:16

@ASCII-only why?

ASCII-only

Doesn't it mean Negative + Unsigned may be Positive

Maybe I'm just not understanding what you mean by Unsigned

Nathan Merrill

Unsigned means 0 or Positive. Negative + Unsigned doesn't result in any trait

traits are completely optional

meaning that a variable may have 0 to many

so myVal = 4 is both Unsigned and Positive

ASCII-only

Yeah but 0/10 bad naming conventions people might get confused = opposite of Elegance's goal, but I guess for personal projects where only you would see the source it wouldn't be too bad

Nathan Merrill

like what?

Unsigned is a very common term for that

its literally what C++ uses

its either that or Nonnegative, the mathematical term

ASCII-only

unsigned in C++ is fine because it's a separate primitive/data type - nobody really wants negative primitive numbers

TuxCopter

11:23

hi

Nathan Merrill

@ASCII-only Traits are part of the typing system. It just doesn't always have a different data representation

New Main Posts

0

Q: : How many binary strings of length 9 contain 11011 as a substring?

I need an algorithm where we will input n(the length of binary string) and it will give an output of the number of binary strings of length n which contain 11011 as a sub-string. For example: If length = 6, then we have 4 binary sequences of length 6 which contain 11011 as a sub-string. They are ...

math

mınxomaτ

12:57

2016 is just weird.

PhiNotPi

... what happened now?

TuxCopter

^

mınxomaτ

I'm a bit late to the party, but after many years, the largest (German) copyright corporation has unblocked music on YouTube in Germany.

Info: bbc.com/news/technology-37839038

Also new cURL is out. Yet again with a ton of fixed security vulnerabilities.

TuxCopter

curl have security vulnerabilities o_O It's one of the simplest *nix tool

mınxomaτ

Rofl. No.

curl is incredibly complex

TuxCopter

13:04

»  curl --help | wc -l
180

oh ok nvm

mınxomaτ

Here's a list of fixes: curl.haxx.se/changes.html#7_51_0

And even if it would be "simple" (which it isn't), it's still something that runs automated on millions of servers. If you have a broad CVE, all these sites are compromised.

feersum

> case insensitive password comparison

TuxCopter

> When re-using a connection, curl was doing case insensitive comparisons of user name and password with the existing connections.

??????????

TimmyD

Hah. Thank-you random upvoter on an almost year-old question of mine.

So weird.

betseg

A Retina answer

Just wow

Geobits

13:13

Ha, I got one of those random upvotes this morning on one from Feb '14 :)

TuxCopter

@Downgoat u reverted to red downgoat

Poke

13:29

String s = null;
System.out.println(s instanceof String);

Any guesses?

TimmyD

No output.

TuxCopter

false

Poke

tux is correct

TuxCopter

:)

Poke

instanceof checks to see if an object is an instance of a particular type

so if you ever use instanceof you can be safe making the cast afterwards

Yodle

13:32

String null = (null) null;

TuxCopter

BTW is null an instance of something in Java?

TimmyD

@Geobits LOL, nice avatar

Geobits

:D

Poke

@TuxCopter nope

TuxCopter

k

Nathan Merrill

13:34

is there a measurement of energy that isn't based on arbitrary numbers?

Geobits

Is there a measurement of anything that isn't?

(for some definition of arbitrary)

Nathan Merrill

well, I mean, completely based on physics around us

Yodle

Isn't a second measured by the decay rate of some element?

Nathan Merrill

like Newtons is based off of Kilograms, which is based off of a random sphere we made

Geobits

@Yodle An element chosen because it happened to match what we already knew as a second...

Yodle

13:36

@NathanMerrill But wasn't a gram defined before the kilogram was created?

Nathan Merrill

@Geobits which is fine for my purpose

Jonathan Allan

hehe Le Grand K

Poke

@NathanMerrill Calories?

Nathan Merrill

" However, in a reversal of reference and defined units, a gram is now defined as one one-thousandth of the SI base unit, the kilogram"

Geobits

Well aren't calories defined as the amount of energy to heat up a volume of water a certain amount? Assuming "water" being used is ok.

Poke

13:37

beat you to it, geobits

Nathan Merrill

yep, water is fine

betseg

@Yodle 1g was defined as 1ml of water at 0°c, 1 atm

Nathan Merrill

but volume is arbitrary

Geobits

@Poke Pfft, you said one word :P

@NathanMerrill Yes... but so is everything else at that point.

Yodle

Is this for some sort of thought experiment for other intelligent beings and their units of measurement?

Poke

13:38

how is volume arbitrary?

betseg

Pressure

Nathan Merrill

well, I was going to post a world building question where aliens gave us a machine that produced exactly 1 "Energy unit"

but I don't know what energy unit to use, because they are all based on human measurements

TimmyD

> The constant current which, if maintained in two straight parallel conductors of infinite length, of negligible circular cross-section, and placed 1 m apart in vacuum, would produce between these conductors a force equal to 2×10−7 newtons per metre of length.

Poke

make one up :D

El'endia Starman

Isn't the erg a fundamental unit of energy?

betseg

13:40

@TimmyD ampere?

Geobits

> An erg is approximately the amount of work done (or energy consumed) by one common house fly performing one "push up"

lol

TimmyD

@betseg Yeah.

Nathan Merrill

@El'endiaStarman erg is based on the centimeter

"An erg is the amount of work done by a force of one dyne exerted for a distance of one centimeter"

Geobits

I'm not sure how you expect to measure anything if you can't relate it to other measurements at all.

TuxCopter

unit of atomic mass?

betseg

13:41

1 metre is 1/40000000 of the polar circumference of the earth btw

Nathan Merrill

you can relate it to other measurements, as long as they are based on physics

the problem with meter/centimeter is what betseg says: its based on the earth's size

El'endia Starman

@Geobits There are the so-called Planck length and Planck time units, which are based on the fundamental laws of physics. Nathan seems to be looking for such a unit of energy.

Geobits

Right... but "energy" has to be related to time or something, doesn't it?

betseg

Energy of a photon with a Planck length wavelength?

El'endia Starman

@betseg I thought of that too. The main problem as I see it is that such a photon would have incredibly high energy, so the energy of everything else would be tiny fractions of the fundamental unit, which is weird.

TimmyD

13:46

Yeah, but we're not fully sure whether photons are particles or waves or both or neither.

Jonathan Allan

metre is now defined with reference to light in a vacuum and seconds, which are defined with reference to decay of caesium 133. But Energy is a derived unit with a mass component, and Kg is still just some made up thing.

Yodle

@TimmyD Are we fully sure of anything

TimmyD

Yeah, of all of the SI units, a second is probably the most-least-arbitrary one.

betseg

Quarks are waves in the higgs field, soooooo

Jonathan Allan

that's what they want you to believe anyway :p

Geobits

13:48

Seconds aren't arbitrary? We chose an element because it matched our existing time scheme, which was based solely on Earth and its movements. Seconds might be defined precisely, but they're absolutely arbitrary.

El'endia Starman

@Yodle Hey, we're talking physics here, not solipsism!

TimmyD

Right. Compared to everything else, it's the most-least-arbitrary.

Geobits

:/

TimmyD

So, given how arbitrary it is, you can therefore understand how more-arbitrary everything else is.

Geobits

Well sure. My first statement about this was that everything is arbitrary :P

betseg

13:50

Couldn't resist

TimmyD

The second is precisely 1.332 TimmyD's of arbitrary, while the kilogram ranks a whopping 10.42273 TimmyD's of arbitrary.

Geobits

Ah good, we finally have a unit to measure units in.

feersum

Are TimmyD's defined in terms of arbitrarieness of the second?

TuxCopter

But TimmyD's of arbitrary is also arbitrary because it's based on arbitrary thing

Geobits

thatsthejoke.jpg

TimmyD

13:53

Right, but TimmyD's of arbitrary are actually less arbitrary than the second, ranking at 0.988641 TimmyD's of arbitrary.

TuxCopter

Wait, you measure the arbitrariness of an unit with the same unit

TimmyD

Well, how else would you do it?

TuxCopter

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Geobits

This conversation is gaining arbitrariness at 1.32 TimmyDs/s/s.

2

(I assume that's correct for arbitrary acceleration)

betseg

Even parsecs and star magnitudes are arbitrary

TuxCopter

13:57

Planck length is based on 3 non-arbitrary constants

Anonymous

@NathanMerrill eV is a fundamental unit of energy

betseg

Only things that aren't arbitrary are either too small or too big.

TuxCopter

^^

Geobits

Isn't eV based on on volts?

TimmyD

Yeah, which is based on amperes.

Anonymous

13:59

Ok yeah it's based on volts

betseg

> a unit of energy equal to the work done on an electron in accelerating it through a potential difference of one volt

TuxCopter

The kelvin is not arbitrary

betseg

It is

Based on water

Anonymous

What about:

Anonymous

Hartree

The hartree (symbol: Eh or Ha), also known as the Hartree energy, is the atomic unit of energy, named after the British physicist Douglas Hartree. It is defined as 2R∞hc, where R∞ is the Rydberg constant, h is the Planck constant and c is the speed of light. The 2010 CODATA recommended value is Eh = 4.359 744 650(54)×10−18 J = 27.211 386 02(17) eV. The 2006 CODATA recommended value was Eh = 4.359 743 94 (22)×10−18 J = 27.211 383 86(68) eV. The hartree energy is approximately the electric potential energy of the hydrogen atom in its ground state and, by the virial theorem, approximately twice its...

TuxCopter

14:01

0 kelvin is the smallest tempareture possible

So it's not arbitrary

Geobits

@TuxCopter Zero kelvin isn't (very) arbitrary. Everything above zero is.

TuxCopter

:/

Anonymous

The problem with calling a single unit "fundamental" or "natural" is that you need at least 5 different units to derive all of them

betseg

chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/33268182#33268182 <-- zero kelvin

Anonymous

So there's no real concept of a "fundamental" unit - just a set of units which can be used to derive all others. Any choice of a set of units is equally valid.

Anonymous

14:03

Technically it's 7 units, but luminous intensity and amount of substance often get ignored

Geobits

Yeah, it's likely that if the aliens gave us "energy units", they'd still be arbitrary, just Namek-based instead of Earth-based (or whatever >_> )

TuxCopter

Relevant

Anonymous

@Geobits Whatever they were, they'd be over 9000

Geobits

And that's not even their final form

TuxCopter

@Geobits xD your avatar

Mitch Schwartz

14:06

this 1d voting system is pretty limiting

i hope they add the ability to leftvote and rightvote soon

4

TuxCopter

So the score will be two-dimensional?

betseg

3i+4 votes

TuxCopter

Imaginary votes :O

betseg

4 rightvotes and 3 upvotes

Geobits

Makes sense to me. Vote up for interesting, left for useful. Make the front page a grid of questions.

The vast majority read LTR here, I'd assume, so you'd want the "best" content in the top left.

TuxCopter

14:11

ok

betseg

Even GCC read RTL!

TuxCopter

?

Geobits

CCG?

TuxCopter

halp how to bignum in javascript

Geobits

Even if you're reading "LTR" in RTL, you still end up with LTR.

betseg

14:12

:O

Geobits

@TuxCopter import BigInteger?

TuxCopter

> JavaScript

Geobits

Right. I assumed you knew the first step was to stop using javascript.

3

TuxCopter

And use Java? Ugh

Geobits

It's basically your choice after that. Step one is the important one.

Alternatively, Google has a wealth of information on the subject.

betseg

14:15

JavaScript is just scripting extension to Java anyways.

TuxCopter

But I wrote JLisp entirely in JavaScript porting it to an other language will be hard

@betseg ಠ_ಠ

No

Nathan Merrill

@TuxCopter then I think you need JLIp for Java

TuxCopter

I hate my shift key

Nathan Merrill

aha! I found what I was looking for!

Anonymous

I think 4 hours is enough time in the Sandbox for this challenge

Nathan Merrill

14:17

they are called Natural units

Natural units

In physics, natural units are physical units of measurement based only on universal physical constants. For example, the elementary charge e is a natural unit of electric charge, and the speed of light c is a natural unit of speed. A purely natural system of units has all of its units defined in this way, and usually such that the numerical values of the selected physical constants in terms of these units are exactly dimensionless 1. These constants are then typically omitted from mathematical expressions of physical laws, and while this has the apparent advantage of simplicity, it may entail a...

Anonymous

Yep, that's not quite what you were saying, though :P

Nathan Merrill

why not?

betseg

These aren't arbitrary?

Nathan Merrill

they are arbitrary insofar as physics is arbitrary

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Operator Ascii Challenge Given an ascii operator from the list below and a number n, draw an ascii representation of the operator using that operator as the character with the line segments of the operator having length n. Input An ascii character from this list: = + - x / and an integer n...

Anonymous

14:23

Hmm... Actually, I posted my PRNG challenge after reset, so I'll wait to post the new one

Anonymous

That way I can have more progress on the question badges

mınxomaτ

14:37

Least surprising news article: scientificamerican.com/article/…

TimmyD

@Geobits No, obviously we'd want to follow Cartesian coordinates, so the best content is in the top-right.

Nathan Merrill

@mınxomaτ the question is: who funded the analysis of the studies?

TuxCopter

^

mınxomaτ

@NathanMerrill The University of California. Probably using their research budget.

Nathan Merrill

because maybe its the SHA (Sugar haters association), and they simply "missed" thousands of other studies :)

TimmyD

14:42

Studies show that if you start your sentence with "studies show" people are more likely to believe you.

6

mınxomaτ

Here's the source anyway: ucsf.edu/news/2014/10/119431/…

And here's a breakdown of the funding: ucsf.edu/about/ucsf-budget

DJMcMayhem

14:57

@TimmyD Seems legit

Poke

What's the verdict about working on answers to sandboxed challenges

Transcript for