The Nineteenth Byte

HyperNeutrino

5:00 PM

yeah I agree with totallyhuman we should probably keep politics out of SE (except politics SE if that exists)

Business Cat

There is a Politics SE

They have a question in HNQ right now

totallyhuman

hopefully it's not toxic

DJMcMayhem

It hasn't been toxic in my experience

Poke

speaking of politics how do i dismiss the net neutrality banner on all the SE sites

i've been reading through the meta post so i don't need to see it on every site i visit

totallyhuman

if you use an adblocker you can filter it out, otherwise i don't think you can dismiss it universally

caird coinheringaahing

5:09 PM

I've returned after venting my political frustration!

How long does it take for profile pictures to change in chat?

totallyhuman

a mod can manually refresh it

otherwise it take hours sometimes

i think

DJMcMayhem

Not if you change your parent profile

Adám

@cairdcoinheringaahing I like at A during the weekend, then I travel to stay at B and commute all week to work at C, wherefrom I travel via Jon Skeet's hometown D, back to A.

caird coinheringaahing

I need something to do, and working on my language(s) depresses me.

totallyhuman

wat

caird coinheringaahing

5:11 PM

And Jelly doesn't help much eaither

totallyhuman

well i'm currently writing java for school so... can't get worse?

Adám

@cairdcoinheringaahing Learn APL ;-)

Poke

@totallyhuman that is pretty dumb

Business Cat

@totallyhuman Could be C

caird coinheringaahing

@totallyhuman Python for the win

totallyhuman

5:12 PM

could be assembly

but y'know schools aren't that cruel

Business Cat

I think there's a course at my school that makes you use assembly, but it's not mandatory

caird coinheringaahing

@totallyhuman we challenged our CS teacher to program anything in Lenguage. He failed

It didn't help that we didn't tell him about sites that will compile brainfuck into Lenguage. He tried doing it himself, and gave up after 5 mins

@Downgoat no

no

ok thanks

5:17 PM

maths

@DJMcMayhem $$12 \cdot 12 \cdot 12 \cdot 12 \cdot 12$$

Downgoat

did i do calculation wrong? :|

Adám

@DJMcMayhem MathJAX?

totallyhuman

$12 × 12 × 12 × 12 × 12$

actual multiplication sign ftw

Business Cat

5:18 PM

> Whut ij this norsense

DJMcMayhem

Freehand is hard

totallyhuman

Imprisoned hand is even harder

3

DJMcMayhem

@totallyhuman I appreciate jokes of that nature

totallyhuman

mm but now i'm afraid another RO's gonna walk in and kick

> kcick

DJMcMayhem

For one pun?

totallyhuman

5:21 PM

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ sometimes it gets wonky

not that i don't appreciate you guys cleaning up

oh shoot i'm supposed to be doing stuff

Downgoat

do you have to do citation in academic paper like I know answer is yes but what if there is nothing cite-able

@totallyhuman mm = milimeter?

totallyhuman

apparently i have been starting a lot of my messages with a unit

it's kinda liek how people type "mhm"

Downgoat

O__O wtf how do people write 150 page thesis

totallyhuman

lol

Downgoat

lol my latex editor has an entire dedicated section to 'Greek Letters'

caird coinheringaahing

5:39 PM

@Downgoat I'm sure the Greeks are very happy to hear that

DJMcMayhem

What would you think about a challenge for turning:
`['a', 'bc', 'd'], ['a comment', 'bc comment', 'd comment']`

into

Mendeleev

Oh no I lost an entire bag of IKEA screws

DJMcMayhem

a    # a comment
 bc  # bc comment
   d # d comment

Mendeleev

D: D: D:

caird coinheringaahing

@Mendeleev its not like they really help

Mendeleev

5:45 PM

@cairdcoinheringaahing Kek

Remind me to not sleep on any IKEA beds you put together

caird coinheringaahing

@Mendeleev wat?

Mendeleev

If youhave no screws in it

caird coinheringaahing

what is kek?

Mendeleev

I would fall

caird coinheringaahing

and you'd fall anyway if its from IKEA

totallyhuman

5:46 PM

@DJMcMayhem tryna automate your explanations? ;)

Mendeleev

@cairdcoinheringaahing it's an internet thing, it basically means lol. I think it's what you see when one of the sides in wow says "lol" and you're on the other side. it's basically become a slightly modified lol at this point

caird coinheringaahing

I wonder if @Downgoat has ever seen this guy

totallyhuman

the kek is a lie though

HyperNeutrino

yes he has

Mendeleev

@cairdcoinheringaahing hey, my desk and bed and chair are from ikea

DJMcMayhem

5:47 PM

@totallyhuman it's not like I haven't done it before

caird coinheringaahing

@Mendeleev ok...

DJMcMayhem

I'm thinking about a harder one that incorporates wrapping too

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Stitch the Genome code-golf bioinformatics combinatorics Introduction As you probably know DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is made up of bases, often denoted as A T C and G. Although DNA is really made up of two helices, and thus two sequences of bases, fancy chemistry stuff means that we only nee...

Adám

@DJMcMayhem Nice.

DJMcMayhem

I actually have vim bindings to make explanations easier to write

totallyhuman

5:50 PM

that'd be tricky

caird coinheringaahing

I really need to stop clicking on every link that is posted

totallyhuman

that would be a good idea

caird coinheringaahing

how long can chat messages be?

Mendeleev

@cairdcoinheringaahing Multiline messages are basically unlimited

caird coinheringaahing

@Mendeleev you rickrolled me!

Mendeleev

5:52 PM

@cairdcoinheringaahing Yes I did :P

DJMcMayhem

@cairdcoinheringaahing 500 characters

But multiline can be longer

Intereseting

Mendeleev

@cairdcoinheringaahing ok I know the lyrics...

DJMcMayhem

→ 1 message moved to Trash

totallyhuman

^^

DJMcMayhem

→ 1 message moved to Trash

Rick rolling is getting old

Poke

5:55 PM

debatable

DJMcMayhem

88 messages found

Mendeleev

@DJMcMayhem But does it really deserve a kick?

totallyhuman

^^^

caird coinheringaahing

@Mendeleev apparantly so

DJMcMayhem

@Mendeleev IMO, yes.

Mendeleev

5:57 PM

ok then wow

caird coinheringaahing

@Mendeleev it didn't really affect me. In that 1 minute, I had left to get chips.

totallyhuman

@cairdcoinheringaahing your pfp got updated btw

caird coinheringaahing

Yeah I saw

Downgoat

@DJMcMayhem thank you

@DJMcMayhem tbh would say dupe of 2 already done challenge I can link if U want

totallyhuman

6:15 PM

i am currently writing a piece of code that is one of PPCG's challenges

i'm trying so hard not to golf it

Erik the Outgolfer

dQw4w9WgXcQ

this is a sign of danger...woaaah

Downgoat

@EriktheOutgolfer thought this was pyth code for a second :P

Erik the Outgolfer

it looks like pyth but it's more pyke...

totallyhuman

heh me too

but then i immediately noticed like a good internetian

Poke

@DJMcMayhem not bad for almost 3 years

Erik the Outgolfer

6:29 PM

it's actually infinite loop in pyth...if you give three or more inputs and the first one is a string

Wheat Wizard

6:42 PM

Hey anyone want to have a Brain-Flak duel?

Leaky Nun

@WheatWizard what do you mean?

Wheat Wizard

@LeakyNun We choose a question, we each are given some time to make an answer, We post the hashes of our solutions, then our real solutions and the shorter answer wins.

Leaky Nun

@WheatWizard can I not choose a question?

I mean, just you choose

Wheat Wizard

Yeah I think I know a good one.

Would you like to put some reputation on this?

Leaky Nun

reputation?

Wheat Wizard

6:46 PM

We agree that the loser will give the winner a bounty. Its entirely optional.

Leaky Nun

oh, alright

Wheat Wizard

How does 200 rep sound?

17

Q: Find the nearest biquadratic number

A biquadratic number is a number that is the fourth power of another integer, for example: 3^4 = 3*3*3*3 = 81 Given an integer as input, output the closest biquadratic number. Here are the first 15 double-squares: 1, 16, 81, 256, 625, 1296, 2401, 4096, 6561, 10000, 14641, 20736, 28561, 38416, ...

Thats the question I had in mind btw

Haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it would lend well to Brain-flak's sensibilities

Leaky Nun

can I give up lol

Wheat Wizard

Ok, sure. No problem

totallyhuman

o0 you want... to do that in brainflak?

Wheat Wizard

6:52 PM

We can do another challenge, if you would prefer. But I would rather do a challenge that has not already been answered in Brain-flak. And there are not a whole lot of doable questions unanswered in Brain-Flak

@totallyhuman biquadratic numbers are very easy to compute in Brain-Flak

Leaky Nun

let's see what you have in mind

totallyhuman

@WheatWizard i didn't think anything's easy to compute in brainflak

Wheat Wizard

({({})({}[()])}{})({({})({}[()])}{}) 36 bytes is pretty good, and thats not even golfed

Erik the Outgolfer

isn't that just (x²)²?

Wheat Wizard

Yes

@LeakyNun How's this?

14

Q: Generate a Kolakoski sequence

Definition1 A Kolakoski sequence is a self-describing infinite sequence {kn} of alternating blocks of 1's and 2's, given by the following rules: k0 = 1 kn = the length of the (n+1)'th block The Task Given a positive integer n, generate the first n elements of the Kolakoski se...

code-golf math number sequence

SEJPM

7:00 PM

"count the points on an elliptic curve" - would this be an interesting challenge?

(there are advanced academic algo's for that, but straight brute-force would also work)

(and some languages may have built-ins)

DJMcMayhem

@totallyhuman a couple things are

Leaky Nun

@WheatWizard sorry I think I'm not really in the mood of doing this now

Wheat Wizard

Ok no problem

DJMcMayhem

@WheatWizard This one would be doable (though not well-suited)

But it would have some fun stacky operations

The worst part is the blended IO formats

Wheat Wizard

@DJMcMayhem BrainHack has mixed IO

DJMcMayhem

7:07 PM

Oh nice

Wheat Wizard

When I saw that challenge my first thought was how awful it would be to do in Brain-Flak

DJMcMayhem

Blended input and output, or just output?

Wheat Wizard

Just input

DJMcMayhem

@WheatWizard When I first saw that, I thought it would be awesome in brain-flak, then I started doing it and realized it's pretty bad

Is brainhack on TIO? Will it be?

Wheat Wizard

Try it online!

DJMcMayhem

7:10 PM

Oh nice!

totallyhuman

1: 2
2: 1
3: 0
4: 1
5: 2

can anybody think of a math formula to take a number from the left and turn it into the right?

Leaky Nun

@totallyhuman |x-3|

totallyhuman

oh duh

thanks!

DJMcMayhem

@WheatWizard The absolute value snippet on the wiki is not stack clean.

Wheat Wizard

@DJMcMayhem Oh good to know

What does it do?

DJMcMayhem

7:18 PM

Positive leaves it on the stack, negative toggles it

Try it online!

Wheat Wizard

That makes sense, unfortunately thats hard to fix

totallyhuman

1: 2
2: 1
3: 0
4: 0
4: 1
5: 2

whoops

4 mins ago, by totallyhuman

can anybody think of a math formula to take a number from the left and turn it into the right?

:P sorry

Wheat Wizard

@totallyhuman y=abs(x-3.5)-.5

New Main Posts

3

Q: Golfing Python string literals

Background Python has many types of string literals. For example, the string this 'is' an exa\\m/ple can be represented as: 'this \'is\' an exa\\\\m/ple' "this 'is' an exa\\\\m/ple" r"this 'is' an exa\\m/ple" '''this 'is' an exa\\\\m/ple''' """this 'is' an exa\\\\m/ple""" r'''this 'is' an exa\\...

code-golf string python optimized-output

Erik the Outgolfer

@totallyhuman huh?

you have two 4s

DJMcMayhem

7:23 PM

@WheatWizard This works: Try it online! but it's horrifying

Wheat Wizard

@DJMcMayhem There has to be a better way

totallyhuman

@WheatWizard oh nice thanks

DJMcMayhem

Yeah. I think it would be better to do the non-stack clean, then toggle it over

totallyhuman

@EriktheOutgolfer you saw nothing

Wheat Wizard

@DJMcMayhem Here it is in 68

DJMcMayhem

7:36 PM

(([(({}))]<>)){({}())<>}{}{}<>{}([][()]){{}({}<>)(<()>)}{}({}<>) works in certain circumstances

@WheatWizard Status-completed

XD

Wheat Wizard

Nice

DJMcMayhem

202

caird coinheringaahing

@MartinEnder has now posted exactly 2000 Qs and As!

Wheat Wizard

@DJMcMayhem Abs in 54

DJMcMayhem

@WheatWizard Oh nice! That should save me 10 bytes or so

Cole

7:39 PM

Hi all, I'm trying to teach myself J for fun and I've been having a lot of difficulty comprehending everything that the online book is throwing at me. Does anyone have any recommendations for learning the language? Usually I just try writing programs in the language until I get a feel for it, but that hasn't been easy with J.

I recognize that this question probably would be more befitting for another SE site, but I know that there are some people here who either answer in J or have made languages somewhat inspired by it.

Wheat Wizard

@DJMcMayhem If your using it for practical purposes here's a 50 byte -abs. Might save you bytes

DJMcMayhem

Interesting. Why is negative abs shorter?

And since it's for this, I'd say, no. It's not for practical use. Brain-flak never is :P

Wheat Wizard

Its a little hard to explain, but the algorithm I implement prefers to change the sign on positive numbers. The 54 byte one is the same algorithm I just pay 4 extra bytes to flip the sign at the end.

Anyway. I'm going to add the new one to the wiki now.

Holy shit, the new stack clean one is shorter than the old one.

DJMcMayhem

28 answers from string gold...

totallyhuman

with V you'll hit that mark in no time

New Meta Posts

8:01 PM

0

Q: How to handle large, complex challenges and built-ins?

I want to make a complicated code golf challenge (with a time limit ;). In this particular case I want people to golf the Elliptic-Curve Method to factorization. Now there are two issues with planning this challenge, on which I'd like to ask for "official" guidance: Implementing this algorithm...

discussion code-golf

Zaid

Where can I find out more about the most popular types of code challenges?

SEJPM

@Zaid browse the tag stats? ;)

codegolf.stackexchange.com/tags

Zaid

Funny you should say that... I was just doing that

Trouble is, I don't know if something like array-manipulation and code-golf can be categorized together

SEJPM

@Zaid there should be plenty challenges tagged both

Zaid

So I'm looking for things like code-golf, king-of-the-hill, popularity-contest, quine, source-layout, polyglot...

cops-and-robbers

atomic-code-golf

restricted-source

fewest-operations

programming-puzzle

Are there any "optimization" challenges?

SEJPM

8:12 PM

@Zaid note how some of these describe the class of the winning criterion and some others the actual challenge / restrictions

@Zaid optimization in what sense?

Zaid

@SEJPM like linear programming problems, but multi-dimensional.

So the question describes the X's, the Y's and the relationships between them (Y = F(X))

SEJPM

@Zaid codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/optimization would be probably the related tag

Zaid

@SEJPM cool. Yes, looks like what I had in mind

Downgoat

8:47 PM

is anyone here familar with tikz?

SEJPM

@Downgoat I know the basics

(otherwise tex.se probably has a related Q :p )

Downgoat

am I doing a stupid, do you know why this doesn't work?:

    \begin{tikzpicture}
        \node {root}
            child { \node[label=function] { f } }
        };
    \end{tikzpicture}

Mr. Xcoder

Hmmm, as a relatively new user (active this year only), what happened to Geobits?

Downgoat

I even did semicolon and all

@Mr.Xcoder last time he was here he said he had been really busy

same with Alex

SEJPM

@Downgoat you lack an opening parenthesis?

Downgoat

8:50 PM

I think they both got a life

@SEJPM I need parens?

SEJPM

@Downgoat well, the one you close with the semi-colon, you never actually open

Downgoat

even just this:

    \begin{tikzpicture}
        \node {root}
            child { \node[label=function] { f } };
    \end{tikzpicture}

doesn't work though

SEJPM

stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/contrib/tex-contrib/beamer/pgf-1.01/…

that's weird

Mr. Xcoder

Ok, bye then!

SEJPM

@Downgoat did you try removing the [] argument from your original (which seems to have been right, oups)

(and did you ensure you have all the required packages? ;)

Downgoat

8:55 PM

:D it worked just had to restart TeX editor

SEJPM

:D

New Meta Posts

9:06 PM

0

Q: Very long chat suspension for harmless joke

As usual, I was going about my day, occasionally stopping by SE chat. I replied to this message by @cairdcoinheringaahing ("I really need to stop clicking on every link that is posted") with this other message ("@cairdcoinheringaahing Try this one") as a joke. The link was a rickroll. I was prom...

support chat

HyperNeutrino

9:40 PM

uh wait is that a 1y suspension :o

totallyhuman

yup o0

but they do have a bad history

HyperNeutrino

o0 ok i hope this doesn't become another zyabin :o

totallyhuman

what's zyabin?

-20

Q: 7 day chat suspension

Why have I received a 7 day chat suspension? I do not recall doing anything harmful or bad for the chatroom, except maybe posting faces, but I don't see how that warrants a 7 day ban. EDIT I don't make the best decisions late at night.

support chat

HyperNeutrino

a user that dennis suspended for 1 year

that guy really had something against mods

so then eventually they got a bunch of kick-mutes and got a 1-year suspension

and then they got pissed off and left SE

uh I can't start my /usr/bin/konsole anymore :o

totallyhuman

oh wow

HyperNeutrino

9:42 PM

I did sysctl konsole.hostname=HyperNeutrino-Dev and now it doesn't start anymore

halp

New Main Posts

0

Q: Factorize a Gaussian integer

A Gaussian integer is a complex number whose real and imaginary parts are integers. Gaussian integers, like ordinary integers, can be represented as a product of Gaussian primes, in a unique manner. The challenge here is to calculate the prime constituents of a given Gaussian integer. Input: a ...

code-golf number-theory complex-numbers

HyperNeutrino

*kernel not konsole

uh

i can't start any applications anymore

I can still run terminal from a file explorer window

totallyhuman

lol somebody voted to close mendeleev's meta question about being suspended as dupe of another one of their chat suspension questions

HyperNeutrino

lol wut

trichoplax

10:02 PM

In other news, I've just edited a very old sandbox post, which I'm finally nearly ready to post to main.

HyperNeutrino

suggestion: make it a warping grid so it's even more confusing :D no but toroidal is probably better :P

but nice challenge

trichoplax

I'm going for simple so people can focus on competing with each other rather than bizarre topology :P

Thanks! :)

HyperNeutrino

yup :P

no make it constantly alternate between the 8 edge wrapping states as defined by Klein :P

trichoplax

I have a few last bugs to iron out then should be posting the controller next week so people can test it before I post to main

HyperNeutrino

or make the edges randomly pair :P

@trichoplax oo yay I look forward to that :D

trichoplax

10:07 PM

It's about time - it's been sitting in the sandbox for over 2 years now...

HyperNeutrino

oh wow

trichoplax

When I had the idea I didn't know JavaScript, and it kept getting prioritised behind other things

HyperNeutrino

ah I see

why JS though?

is it just for the stack snippet?

trichoplax

So it's playable in the browser - even for non coders - yes for the stack snippet

HyperNeutrino

ah okay

trichoplax

10:10 PM

It does mean all the answers have to be in JS but language specific KotHs seem to have worked in the past

HyperNeutrino

because I just used cli I/O so I could interact with any command-line supporting language :P so that everyone could compete. but I see your reasoning for the stack snippet too

and yes quite KoTHs are language specific and most of them work fine (except one of mine... rip)

totallyhuman

while language specific koth's are much easier to maintain

HyperNeutrino

it makes the controller easier to maintain

trichoplax

I quite like the idea of making a series of language specific KotHs each in a different language

HyperNeutrino

>< ninja'd

totallyhuman

10:11 PM

it's much nicer when everybody can participate

HyperNeutrino

@trichoplax that sounds like an interesting idea

Idea: Make a Jelly KoTH! :D

Or even better a BF KoTH

wait that's been done

totallyhuman

o0

trichoplax

Or maybe a language agnostic KotH but your code has to be absurdly short, so it'll be mainly for the golfing languages

totallyhuman

a code golf koth?

HyperNeutrino

oo I have an idea

team v team koth

where the objective is to crash the whole other team

trichoplax

10:13 PM

I hope you'll sandbox some of these ideas - I'd love to see more KotHs

totallyhuman

mm i wanna participate in one but it seems there aren't any new ones

HyperNeutrino

KoTHs are fun but sometimes a pain to maintain

I will sandbox that one for sure

mınxomaτ

Some impressively polar reactions to a bad pun I made: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14751482

totallyhuman

hehe

trichoplax

That's another thing I like about Stack Snippets - I don't have to download all the answers and compile them - just open the challenge page and press run...

HyperNeutrino

10:15 PM

yeah true

another idea I had today was a team v team KoTH where the controller gives the first bot a message and then the team has to pass the whole message around and give it back to the controller, and the other team wants to mess up or stop the message

something like that

trichoplax

@mınxomaτ That's a lot of discussion for such a short initial comment. Suggests a variation on code golf...

@HyperNeutrino I wanted a similar message interference effect with mine, by forcing all players to share the same memory (the colours of the arena squares)

HyperNeutrino

Ah I see

the color idea is really interesting imo

you can try to store memory but I suspect this one person (me if I can FGITW it) is just going to make a bot that goes around randomly and randomizes the grid lol

trichoplax

It's a big grid though...

HyperNeutrino

yeah

but hopefully will mess up people a bit :P

not that other actually serious submissions won't interfere with each other :P

trichoplax

I'm still trying to decide how many players to allow in the arena at once. I've currently said 16 but I'm pondering

totallyhuman

10:23 PM

why do golflangs support comments

HyperNeutrino

@totallyhuman example?

trichoplax

Because they need them more than any other language :P

HyperNeutrino

lol true

totallyhuman

no but it's a waste of a byte

HyperNeutrino

true

but Jelly wastes like 10+ bytes as of right now

trichoplax

10:24 PM

Ah I see your point. I guess they'd be better with a multi-byte comment separator, like ####

As long as it's something never needed for code

Then you could still use a single # as code

totallyhuman

well # is sum the stack in ,,, so doing it multiple consecutive times doesn't make sense...

trichoplax

That could work then

Do most golfing languages use newline as a specific command?

totallyhuman

*adds*

pyth does

HyperNeutrino

I just realized a slight issue

with the crash koth

a bot could just do __import__('os').system('pkill python*') and it would crash everything

(not my computer)

but all of the bots would die

and I don't think that can be prevented without specifically saying "no using system commands"

trichoplax

You could say it has to survive at least one more move

HyperNeutrino

10:27 PM

but there are no moves

trichoplax

Realtime?

Survive at least n seconds afterwards?

HyperNeutrino

they are just all started sequentially and then a file's contents are changed to indicate that it may start and then they can try to crash each other.

@trichoplax good idea

and also not team v team

just free for all

brb

trichoplax

There have been a few similar ideas, if you want examples. Like the codebots and corewars.

17

Q: The Nano Core War

This is an adaption of Core War, a programming KOTH dating back to the 20th century. To be more specific, it is using an incredibly simplified instruction set primarily based off of the original proposal. Background In Core War, there are two programs battling for control over the computer. Th...

king-of-the-hill

totallyhuman

added comments

trichoplax

Various Code Bots challenges

If there are redundant multi-byte sequences that allow for adding comments, that suggests the language could also be modified to be even more succint...

New Main Posts

10:33 PM

0

Q: Cap the highest values in a list so that the sum equals a given number

A slightly more challenging one compared to my previous challenge. Given a list of positive integers (>0) and the positive integer m, output a list of positive integers that are capped values of the input values so that the sum of the capped values equals m. Cap the highest values first. And keep...