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08:02
Let's see...
They've had something deleted there anyway, since they have Scholar and Student and no (visible) questions asked.
Lol, two hats and no proof of these hats? XD
Someone just went and upvoted all my posts on the "add a language to a polyglot" question; how do I report suspicious serial voting?
for the record, we got in a close before the delete, too
^^ same happened for my answers on that question
There's not really much to do about it. It's possible they just upvoted all the answers to that question, not just yours in particular. Either way, the script will either catch it or not.
08:08
upvoting an entire thread feels like an abuse
but maybe this is because I grew up on sites where upvoting is a big deal
Yeah, and should probably count as one. The details of the serial detection aren't really public, but if it was a whole bunch, I'm guessing it will catch and reverse them.
Give it a day to see if they reverse before worrying about it, and if they don't (and you want to pursue the issue), bring it up with a mod here or on meta.
And even 30 votes per day won't save anyone.
:P
at least I'm not getting repcapped as much nowadays
if I was, randomly losing 65 rep that I'd earned on an earlier day would be a pretty big deal, and it would be better to have earned it from some other source instead
I never rep-capped, ever.
The easiest way to stop repcapping is not to post good answers. That's my method anyway.
3
@ais523 Agreed. I'm pretty sure the reversal wouldn't retroactively recalculate it.
08:12
I repcapped every day for a week at one point, then I decided I'd use the site less
also that I'd jump less on "easy rep" questions
Yeah, you can usually tell which ones are gonna hit HNQ and be a rep-explosion.
that said, it's often hard to predict whether an answer will end up being downvoted or end up repcapping me by itself
I tend to post them anyway in case people like it
(this is normally the case for answers which comply with the specification in an unusual way)
I'm always happy to downvote some, if you'd like to point the way ;)
@ais523 You don't. The system either reverses it or it doesn't. Also, if those are all answers to the same question, I suspect it's just a well-meaning user that is fascinated by the thread. It is quite amazing.
@Geobits I've had some random downvotes on some of my positively-received answers, was it you by any chance? :P
08:16
0
Q: Tips for golfing with regular expressions

FalconWhat general tips do you have for golfing with regex? I'm looking for ideas which can be applied to code-golf problems and are some what related to NLP (regex), it can be of any language (e.g Python, R etc). The task should rely on algorithm rather than language. Please post one tip per answer.

@Dennis Oh, maybe that's how I could "fix" it: just go back and downvote all those answers. I don't much like polyglots anyway :P
but an upvote + a downvote is still +8 rep :-P
@KritixiLithos No idea, really. I don't keep a running tally of users I've downvoted.
@ais523 Sure, but if it'll make you feel better I'm happy to oblige :P
That's one of the things I like less about the SE system anyway. The 5:1 ratio is a bit high IMO.
I've been doing some random downvotes on positively received answers, but mostly only those which use a primitive in an obvious way
and thus shouldn't really have been upvoted in the first place
Don't downvote posts to counter-act upvotes. Two wrongs don't make a right.
08:19
Note to self: Create language where wrong+wrong==right
It's so annoying to see the top answers of the "counting bit length challenge" mostly be builtins
@Geobits arguably works in INTERCAL, where the booleans are 1 and 2 (either way round)
Well, to be fair, that challenge was begging for built-ins.
@KritixiLithos Well the entire challenge is log2+1, isn't it? Hard to avoid for something so simple.
@Dennis would you say that upvotes and downvotes are intended for different purposes?
I mean, not opposite purposes
but measuring on distinct axes?
08:20
But why should those trivial answers get upvotes? Why?
@ais523 Ah, nice. I try to forget everything I learn about INTERCAL each time, so that's nice to know (for now).
@KritixiLithos Because they always do :/
well, it's not really enforced by the language, it's just the convention as it's the easiest way to do an if statement
Not sure if different axes, but a downvote should mean "there's something wrong with this answer", not "this answer got for upvotes then I'd like".
and it's easier to negate (or not) the values at the time you generate them, than it is later, so you typically pick true versus false based on which way round you need to do the test
@Dennis well, I was thinking more that, if policy is to never upvote an answer, wouldn't that imply the answer should be downvoted instead?
It's ternary, not binary. You can also not vote.
08:23
I should have learned by now never to ask questions about how/why the SE software works, it just leaves me more confused each time
That being said, I'm all for downvoting in general, and justifying it to myself or others rarely enters the picture.
Not really, no. If a task can be solved with a single built-in, it's an easy challenge, so it will get easy answers. That's not the answer(erer)'s fault.
I find it interesting that golfing languages are mostly converging on a set of builtins
I think it's highly amusing that Jelly has such a lot of prime-related builtins, but can understand why; people ask questions about primes so often
Meta-challenge: Start asking more questions that are difficult or frustrating for golfing languages.
when you do that, you get downvoted for discriminating against languages
08:27
Not if you do it right ;)
even if the question inherently has a reason to use a particular I/O format that they're bad at, for example
Big Ben has only one golfing lang
one problem I see is that the more difficult problems nearly always have very inefficient solutions as the shortest
"generate all potential answers and check to see if they match the spec" tends to win if the specification itself is shorter (in a language) than a remotely efficient algorithm to solve the problem would be
and that's the case quite a lot
If it's the right challenge, and worded right, you can discriminate all you want without upsetting people. My highest voted [code-golf] question has only Python and C# answers, for example.
How do I golf this further: if(i<a/6)g+=6;else if(i<a/3)r-=6;else if(i<a/2)b+=6;else if(i<2*a/3)g-=6;else if(i<5*a/6)r+=6;else b-=6; ?
08:30
(although a really interesting thing happened in this challenge where Jelly, which is optimized for the direct algorithmic approach, ended up having a shorter generate-all-solutions solution because the challenge is very list-heavy and Jelly's fairly verbose on nested lists; whereas Brachylog, which is optimized for the describe-the-problem approach, ended up having a shorter solution stating the algorithm…)
@KritixiLithos what language?
Processing(java)
Can you not ternary most of that?
ah right, so you probably can't use a ternary chain then
or, hmm, maybe you can
+= returns a value, after all, and it's an integer in every case
Unless Processing gutted Java's ternaries, you should be able to.
I don't really use it, so...
also I'd recommend precalculating i*6/a
08:31
But there are also -=s
i<a/6?g+=6:i<a/3?r-=6
^ Trying that now by assigning that to a random int
Different language types offer surprisingly different levels of complexity for simple solutions.
the thing is, if something is widely useful, there'll be a builtin
but in golfing languages it'll probably be one or two letters long and easily beat a manual solution
Yeah, but some concepts can't be builtin, by nature.
08:35
and in more practical languages, it'll probably have a name that's like 40 characters long
EG, A Quine.
so you might be able to outgolf the builtin
also, plenty of languages have quine builtins, we just tend to ban them
Generally, they're not true quines though.
I've seen a few languages which have true quine builtins
Because "Print the Source Code", even if it's stored in the environment by the interpreter/compiler, is defeating the purpose of a quine.
08:36
Sounds like a No True Quine argument to me :P
e.g. Brachylog has a builtin that returns its own name, plus w
then you can add a w to print it out
@ais523 Thanks, it works :)
Yeah, some do still work by the true quine.
that obeys the current PPCG definition (although it isn't payload-capable)
Many languages just let you do 1\n
Our definition is not a True quine.
08:37
I'm fond of 7 here, because it has a ton of different quines of various levels of cornercasiness
And still, Payload-capable hasn't surpassed our current winner based on self description.
3 is a true quine in 7 by the second-most-upvoted definition
I never understood the fascination with quines. I just skim the spec and pass on by.
(it's payload-capable)
Quines are interesting because they are, by nature, complex.
08:38
23723 is a true quine by both definitions but arguably shouldn't count
When I was a wee coder, I wanted to make a script to copy itself, and was suddenly stopped by the idea of making code that copied its source code.
@ATaco I guess that's an argument for a basic quine, yes. That doesn't really justify 140 questions though :P
recently I came across 72630, which is a really weird quine variant (and improper by our current definition)
it works by constructing a different string, and crashing the interpreter in a way that corrupts the output into the original program
It's just using a mechanic, it's like complaining about the amount of k-complexity challanges.
actually, what confuses me most is the fascination with palindrome programs
08:40
That, I agree with.
@ATaco Well, now that you mention it.....
that said, writing a palindromic quine in 7 was a lot of fun, but mostly because the palindrome was defined in chunks of 8 bits but the language is defined in chunks of 3 bits
RProgN, in most of its quines, just kind of happened to fit the bill.
23723 works in a similar way to the RProgN quine, but more complex (e.g. it's payload-capable, but the RProgN quine isn't)
but it still consists of two halves that each print the other
I didn't even discover the 1\n1 quine, that credit goes to Dennis. My quines were, for the most part, Base64 quines.
08:42
(whereas with 223372233, the right-hand half prints both halves of the output, and the left-hand half doesn't affect the output at all)
The difference between quines and KC is that KC is (in general) "shorten this", which I guess I see as an extension of golfing itself. I don't know how quines are so interesting a mechanic to have so many challenges that are "make a quine (plus random thing)".
The X but with Y challenge is still a problem that plagues our questions, but not all quine and KC challenges are X but with Y problems.
there's a bunch of interesting polyglot quine problems
many of the plain quine problems are uninteresting, indeed
I do like trying to write a spin on the quine, and the recent Make an Interweaving quine I feel was a good take.
And I think Dennis needs to have a stop
@ais523 I find polyglots in general much more fun to read than write :P
08:45
^ I agree
Definitely, I find it difficult to write a polyglot that isn't more than comments wrapped around comments.
in general, if a challenge can be solved by this general technique, it's a bad one
I had an idea for a C&R about "almost"-polyglots. I need to get around to sandboxing at some point.
there was a meta post recently where someone thought that a busy beaver quine was somehow inherently interesting
but it isn't, it's just a busy beaver + a universal quine constructor
With that in mind, the recent aforementioned Interweaving quine does also fall into that category, in fact I solved it essentially using that method.
08:47
also, how come that question isn't more widely answered, it's one of the most fundamental quine-related tasks
and I've mentioned the idea of a "universal quine constructor" in some of my own answers too
"%q ] F" ] F is a payload capable quine in RProgN that can be modified to fit most things.
I take it ] is a duplicate or apply-to-self instruction? and F is a string formatter?
] is duplicate the top of the stack, F is Lua's string.format.
I wonder if adding a new definition of a quine on the meta post would get any traction
especially if it disallows many of the current corner cases
Good luck. People round these parts like their quines.
08:51
Yeah but we're also ready to accept when we're wrong.
I was planning to do something based on "if adding a comment to a program affects the output, it's not a true quine"
Usually
Of course, the worst that happens is it gets downvoted and not implemented.
although that doesn't really work for 7, in which a program consists of nothing but a sequence of literals
how do you add a comment to that, even conceptually?
A Comment is a bad word to use.
RProgN doesn't have comments.
08:52
yes, you'd define it as code that cancels itself out
actually, 76 in 7 entirely cancels itself out, and can be inserted anywhere in a program without affecting the output
Also, Malboldge
this includes inserting it in a quine, if you do that the quine will print the original unmodified program
Find code that cancels itself out in that.
actually, in Malbolge, almost anything is a comment
the issue is, the interpreter has a verifying step that rejects all but one comment symbol on each byte (which one depends on which byte it is)
I don't know Malbolge very well
08:53
many early Malbolge programs worked around this by using non-ASCII comment symbols, because the official interpreter is buggy and doesn't verify them properly
(I have a question to ask, as always, ping me when the discourse ends.)
although as people got better at Malbolge, they stopped using it because it felt like cheating
Ask away, we're just talking about quines.
@zyabin101 just ask it now, you can have two conversations in parallel
Now I'm stuck in making a Gruntfile for an Angular app. What should I do as a minimum?
08:55
oh, hmm, that's a fair question but I have no experience with the technologies involved, so I have no real option but to ignore it
I don't use Angular, Front end Scares me and Back End JS terrifies me.
!function(A,n,g,u,l,a,r){
heh
Our teachers give us a homework to make throughout the semester. What would/do you call that in English?
Homework for over the semester.
We, to my knowledge, don't have a single word or phrase for that.
@betseg if it counts towards your grade, coursework
08:58
@betseg "project" sounds normal, but it may need an adjective along with it.
Assuming I'm understanding correctly and you mean a long-term assignment.
"project" is correct but more general than you'd want
You could call it a homework project for the semester.
English is Verbose, Too much boilerplate, Too hard to golf in
no
^ self-proving
Well every language has it's own built in literals.
But 'no' isn't a valid sentence, by definition.
No. is, though
09:00
@Geobits we have "projects" for one class, throughout 2 semesters lol
and English has a ton of builtins, possibly more than any other language
No, No. is a responce, not a statement.
Luckily, English doesn't force you to use what they teach in grade school as "complete sentences".
@ATaco there are sentences that aren't statements, though
I'll have you know I didn't have Grade School
09:01
^^^^^^The other thing is only one semester long and for all classes
@ATaco The point is that the labels you use in school are handy for grading, but don't match real usage much.
Most actual academic English is useless.
EG. Correct usage of "Whom".
Yes.
Nein.
09:02
Tidak.
Non.
@ATaco Tunak Tunak Tun.
09:03
Enough.
Seriously.
Actually.
Actually.
DARN
十分な?
I was considering saying "Actually," but decided it was too obvious
09:04
@ATaco Ninja'd.
...... ...... ...... ...... ...... ......
would have been better than the versions that used full stops though :-(
Don't use your Unicode with me Mr!
Seeing Mr used that way makes me twitch a little :P
09:05
 - æble
Just a little, though.
0
Q: User can update node status with button

user63866I want to add button to content type then user can click this button and user date and time node status will be update to today Any help in the right direction is greatly appreciated.

Australian is my first language.
@NewMainPosts Please make that go away.
MR I ALREADY TOLD YOU THAT I'M NOT AN ENGLISH PERSON, YOU ARE REFUSING TO HELP ME SO I WILL HANG UP NOW.
09:07
boop boop boop
@betseg wow I actually saw that meme start
:34389259 s/SIR/MR/ 'd
and now it's spread beyond Reddit
@ais523 me too thanks
No seriously, I did
Unfortunately, what happens in Reddit doesn't stay in Reddit.
09:07
Codegolf Memes
"Goes thru the Internet and makes it worse than it was in the old 20th century"? Nope.
anyone know of a language that just prepends a string and appends another string to stdin? ideally as golfy as possible
@ATaco <s>44</s>
@ais523 ---44--- ==> 44
Do you want a language in which it's easiest to do so..?
@ais523 I know none..
Gotta develop one, then! :D
09:09
@ATaco ideally, one which has one character for "put stdin here"
...Jelly?
it'd be helpful for various program-generation tasks
Jelly's actually fairly bad at this, I think it takes five bytes rather than the minimum one
err, four
Isn't STDIN just ³?
@Downgoat do you know Grunt?
sort-of (³ is the command-line argument, which Jelly normally uses in preference to stdin) but you can't interpolate it into a string
09:10
Random Question: Can anyone tell me if the Great Firewall of China blocks Instagram
Can't google because looks like google is blocked
I could have sworn it was STDIN.
@zyabin101 Yes, but can't exactly answer grunt question rn
so you'd need to write “head”³“tail
Yes, someone can tell you.
Well shit, you're right.
09:11
@Downgoat Okay:
17 mins ago, by zyabin101
Now I'm stuck in making a Gruntfile for an Angular app. What should I do as a minimum?
:34389301 :(
Can't for the life of me think of a solution to your issue.
Maybe ask it as a challange? Append an arbitrary Header and Footer to STDIN.
@ATaco Sandbox it! :D
Personally, I avoid the Sandbox.
For literally no good reason.
I'm just a horrible person.
4
the great thing is, it'd be best expressed as metagolf
so the best language A (the generator) would be a language which had just this property…
09:14
For some strange reason the Government trusts me to buy alcohol. :/
That's okay. They trusted me with literally millions of dollars worth of their equipment for a long time. And alcohol :D
God bless our respective countries
@Geobits and meaning with? O__o
@Downgoat I decline to answer any question that may have the possible side effect of incriminating myself.
0
Q: The Futuristic Gun Duel

Frenzy LiThe Background Future In the year 2017, you and your opponent will face each other off in a futuristic gun battle where only one player may survive. As a player, are you experienced enough to defeat your opponent? The Futuristic Gun Duel General rules Each player starts with an unloaded gun ...

09:17
@Downgoat Oh, and guns ;)
C++
Haven't used that in a long time, and don't plan to for this, as much as I like KotHs.
Most KotHs use either Java or STDOUT, this is strange to me.
But the idea is interesting
A few use python, but yeah.
It's similar to one we've had before, but probably not so close that it would be a dupe imo.
09:22
it's basically an advanced version of rock paper scissors
but being advanced means it breaks the symmetry, which is a good thing
Hmm. Actually, I don't see the point of defending much. You can't win a point with defense at all, no matter what your opponent does. Yes, you can block plasma, but you could also do that by shooting plasma. If they're shooting a bullet instead, you'd be better off shooting plasma than defending.
you can do it if you're out of ammo
and the opponent isn't
(hoping that the opponent shoots and loses their ammo)
True, but you also have to hope you choose the right shield. The odds are just bad for defense in general.
And then you're still out of ammo.
actually, probably the best time to use it is if both players have 1 ammo
you know you don't need to shield plasma that turn, the opponent can't shoot it
and if the opponent shoots and you shield, you have a huge advantage
meanwhile, if you both shoot, the best you can do is a draw
let's see: at 0 ammo each, you build ammo, no point in doing anything else
at 1 ammo each, the rock-paper-scissors is build beats shield beats shoot beats build
so if you neglect shielding there, it becomes a game of rock-scissors which… isn't very interesting
@NewMainPosts DumbBot: on odd turns, output 0, on even, 1.
09:30
Meanwhile, if you shield at 1 each, the opponent can get a free reload and have plasma next turn.
RandomBot, on turn 0, 0, then randomly in 012-=.
@Geobits yes, that's where the rock-paper-scissors comes from
Plasmabot, 002002002...
@ATaco 01
Yes, that would win, but only against bots that assume I'm going straight for plasma.
09:32
I can almost guarantee there will be at least one "DumbBot".
It seems a better idea for most bots to play somewhat defensively first few turns.
@Geobits Yes.
0-=1
And my "standard koth bot set" for this koth will be half done.
Hmm, 0-=1002002002002002...
09:34
This seems like a good toy project to throw at a genetic algorithm for a few days, tbh. Simple rules and limited choices.
Fitness is easy to measure.
You either die or live.
Better, Fitness = Turns until win.
With Losing being an Ultra High Value.
If a bot wins more often at turn 47, I don't really care that another one can win less often at turn 4.
Or simply, Fitness = Turns untill game end, with a bonus to winning, giving preference to longer games.
09:36
A win is a win in this case.
There's no reason to let it roam freely though, a variable fitness value for winning and punishing losing gives the same benifits as just +1 for win -1 for lose.
But why make it complicated? There's no reason to select for longer/shorter games either.
Good point.
Although, you may want to keep it way from the 100 limit.
Oh sure, you count the 100-turn-limit as a loss.
Maybe even cut it off at 90 or so.
I'm writing a lua interpreter for this challenge and a simple genetic algorithm to put it up against.
09:39
Keep us posted :D
Ah, this is the one I was thinking of. Like I said, similar, but not really a dupe.
I tied for 7th in that one :/
Lookin' good so far.
09:54
I declare: I absolutely know nothing about making angular apps.
10:06
@ATaco Is that Sublime? (pun not intended)
Yeah.
0
A: The Futuristic Gun Duel

Frenzy Li The GunClubPlayer Cut out from the original question. This is an example player that will participate in the gun duel tournament. The GunClubPlayer likes to go to the gun club. During each duel, he would first load ammo, then fire a bullet, and repeat this process until the end of the w...

Seriously, this one is not called DumbBot, even though it is a dumb bot.
Also, I had another Koth idea in there.
Let me write it in a notepad and copy it here.
failed to survive is a polite way to phrase that :P
I do try.
Alright, Running 90000 games on two bots.
They are really not very smart.
They find that just using shields makes them REALLY safe.
10:22
Should I learn Assembly?
I think it would be nice to have this koth challenge translated to Java or another more accessible language, any objections?
A number is awesome over another number if it is at least twice as larger as the other number.

Each bot has a signpost and a hammer.
  [9]
 O/
 |-#
/ \

The signpost shows a number from 0000 to 9999 (four digits).

The hammer gets power to hit another bot if its owner's number is awesome over the other bot's number.

Each fight consists of n + 2 rounds, where n is an unspecified number, and 3 phases.

=== Start of Fight
 |
 === Phase #1: Regular
  |
 --- Each bot sets their number, shows their number *simultaneously* (as will be the case in all other rounds.)
^ There, my thing.
The bots aren't very smart, even after 90000 cycles.
@Qwerp-Derp If you want to not know what you're doing, yes. :D
2:0	=
1:0	0
0:2	=
0:0	0
1:1	1
3:1	=
0:1	-
I've removed the bots abilities to think doing 1 or 2 without the valid ammo to ever be a good idea.
10:31
@zyabin101 Have you played around with Assembly?
A bit.
What did you use for Assembly?
At a random interval, one bot was only doing 01010101 whilst the other just did 0-----------------
I have lost faith in my bots abilities.
They're really shield happy...
Running 1000000 games, Hoping the bots learn to not just idle for 90 turns...
...Lowering that to 100000
Does anyone here know Java?
Kinda.
10:43
^ same
Ok problem solved, thank you for your help!
:D
@zyabin101 I don't understand why any bot would ever pick anything other than 9999
@flawr No problem ;)
Bots are now a bit smarter, but still fail to get much of a brain going at all.
1:1	1
2:2	1
1:2	1
3:2	2
0:0	0
0:1	0
I admire their courage.
What are the numbers?
@Geobits IDK
10:46
MyAmmo:TheirAmmo Response
This idea is just an idea, and has to be improved.
The bots are just Genetic Algorithms for Lookup tables as to what to do for each ammo.
@zyabin101 Well, yeah. "Pick the biggest number" isn't going to be a very interesting KotH.
@ATaco Ah. My idea was to just generate random strings for the bots, consisting of the allowed characters, and pit them against each other.
Well, that -would- work, but it's not very smart.
Then again, neither are my bots...
You don't really need smart. You need winners. Doing it either way could work for that though.
10:49
@Geobits was your hat's tilt intentional
I'm probably going to need to run mine for a while.
1:2	0
0:0	0
1:1	-
That is not a clever idea, bot.
...I want to automatically name them now...
@betseg The control line is straight. If it's tilted, it's because the hat itself is.
Their brains are getting pretty smart...
For dumb robots, that is.
Going back to the 1000000 test. Let's see what we generate!
How many bots do you have in each pool? I'd think having each one tested against a bunch would work better than 1:1 for each generation.
Right now it's just 1:1, I could easily add any number of bots to the pool though.
10:54
Maybe get a group of good 1:1s, and pit them against each other :D
Which I'll do, because after 1000000 tests, the bots didn't seem much smarter.
I could do teams
5 vs 5
A round robin between the whole pool each generation would probably be the most comprehensive. Slower, but...
25 * 100000 cycles, let's see what complexity is born.
Maybe I should start them on 10000...
Sadly, the best ones probably won't be all that complex, but you never know.
I don't think they'll map to any more than say 5:5.
10:58
0
Q: Shrink your language's character set

ais523We often get restricted-source questions here on PPCG that favour submitting solutions using only a subset of characters (sufficiently so that there's a tag printable-ascii that identifies a particular subset of those challenges). Wouldn't it be nice if we could automatically cut languages down t...

And of course, these are all static bots, so can't respond to what the other is actually doing. So it won't spot patterns that more sophisticated ones might be able to.
The bots actually did get a bit smarter.
DrNewBrainBot
2:0	2
1:0	0
2:2	2
1:2	-
2:4	1
0:0	0
1:1	0
2:1	1
0:5	-
0:2	0
2:3	=
0:1	-

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