The Nineteenth Byte

New Sandboxed Posts

00:52

0

Determine majority of inputs, a non-uniform computing challenge Non-uniform computing is a class of computing where a different procedure can be specified for each input size of a problem. This allows discussing complexity of languages that are only straight line computations (no looping constr...

Pavel

01:15

I need to get my dad something for his birthday... anyone have any tacky gift ideas for a software engineer?

Zacharý

@Pavel: no. And lucky you, having a software engineer for a father

@GamrCorps, new guy, who are you?

GamrCorps

Old guy, actually. Haven't checked in here in a loooong time...

Zacharý

Starman came back, so why not ?

Riker

> McDonald’s Has a Menu So Secret You Need to Go to a Whole Other Place Called Outback Steakhouse Just to Order from It!

@Pavel best dad mug

@GamrCorps haven't seen in said long time :D

Pavel

01:30

@Riker Well, that's my last resort if all creativity fails me.

Riker

it's the worst gift but the best

@Pavel thinkgeek.com/product/15cc I've got this shirt

not really "software engineer" tho

Pavel

Woah, I just found a Commodore 64 on Ebay for 30 dollars

Riker

dang

Zacharý

How about a shirt that says: "No, I can't fix your computer"

Pavel

@Zacharý I think I'm buying the Commodore. My dad loves taking apart ancient computers and such. He bought an IBM thinkpad the other day with the sole purpose of dissasembling it.

Zacharý

01:44

That seems like a good choice

Of course, it shouldn't be destroyed if it has Dartmouth Basic

Because .... Dartmouth BASIC

Pavel

Honestly, I'm a little dubious about it still functioning.

Zacharý

Who wouldn't be?

I mean, why else would it be $30 ?

Pavel

Yeah. This is just for the purpose of being taken apart.

Zacharý

Could be a scam all together

Pavel

I sure hope not. But yeah, I'll probably get something else as a backup.

Zacharý

01:57

Shirt, LOL. Software engineer ≠ Computer Repairman

PhiNotPi

02:17

Talking about t-shirt ideas?

Pavel

@PhiNotPi Not quite

Christopher 2EZ 4RTZ

@Pavel one sec

Riker

02:40

> Santa Was a Real Person and I’ve Got the Skull to Prove It

PhiNotPi

02:51

I've had some fun making an epic D&D campaign for my gaming group.

Gotta get that "nonlinear gameplay" going

Esolanging Fruit

03:08

@AdmBorkBork (2^277,232,917) − 1 is prime. I win.

mudkip201

03:48

lol

Anonymous

04:08

Interesting tidbit from TeamDAG:

Anonymous

> We evaluated some approaches to theming last month and this month we will engage with the community the future of theming on network sites. The short version is we want to continue supporting individual site themes, but we need to pare down what can be customized so that we can have a consistent experience, a single code base with less fragility and a quicker path to deploying core improvements across the network.

Anonymous

Sounds like we won't be getting custom features that we need :(

Esolanging Fruit

Was that ever even a possibility?

DJMcMayhem

@EsolangingFruit Ha

Pavel

It's allegedly the reason we don't have a design yet, so that they have time to implement custom features.

allegedly

Esolanging Fruit

04:16

Is a design really all that important?

I happen to like PPCG's current design.

Wheat Wizard

design is not the important part its the features that come with the design

Esolanging Fruit

True

Pavel

I use the gradscript, and not having a design means I have enough rep for things like close votes.

Anonymous

@WheatWizard Yeah, like increased privilege thresholds and being recognized as an actual part of the network

Esolanging Fruit

I say "True" like I knew that, I really didn't

Anonymous

04:18

I really dislike SE's constant ignorance of us, which is one of the biggest reasons why I'm eager to move away from SE

Pavel

@Mego Are we really ignored more than, say, Puzzling.SE?

Anonymous

They got a design within a few months of graduating

Esolanging Fruit

@Pavel Puzzling doesn't have a "We're not a Q&A site." question

Anonymous

We're coming close to a year

Pavel

@Mego And anime.se has been waiting even longer than us. We're not really alone in neglect.

Anonymous

04:21

@Pavel I never said we were. That's just more evidence of SE neglecting non-flagship sites

Anonymous

We're also pushing up on a year since we got any feedback from Grace Note about our status. The only things she's posted on Meta in the last year were the mod election and the community ads stuff

Pavel

Has anyone tried asking on meta.se?

ATaco

November takes a while

New Meta Posts

0

Q: Can I redo the Solve Rubik's Cube challenge?

The challenge Solve Rubik's cube has a lot of flaws: Arbitrary limits: (say, max. 5 seconds on your machine and less than 1000 moves) Extremely cumbersome input format: The input is in the format UF UR UB UL DF DR DB DL FR FL BR BL UFR URB UBL ULF DRF DFL DLB DBR (this particular input represen...

Pavel

04:44

@aditsu Care to weigh in on ^

Adám

07:03

@EsolangingFruit The one feature I'd like is custom fonts, better suited for code (especially for non-ASCII languages), e.g. we could use TIO's set (Exo 2 + DevaVu Sans Mono).

@Mego The editor with template would be really good to have (if it would be customised for PPCG).

aditsu

07:23

@Pavel I care, but I'm quite heavy :p

I don't think I have any problem with that, imo people are way TOOOOO stuck up about duplicates and rules and restrictions and whatnot

That's partly why I'm not very active anymore, it's not as fun as it used to be

Fatalize

^

user202729

08:40

Can/should someone move the code in this answer to an external website? It heavily lags my computer... I know answers should be self contained, but still...

@Mr.Xcoder What's the highest C++ version you're allowed to use? (you know what I'm talking about...)

^^ (on clicking edit)

Fatalize

@user202729 Why?

ATaco

Yay, Now I have the Ascii-art bronze badge.

user202729

"it heavily lags my computer"... Ok, it may be quite subjective, but...

Mr. Xcoder

@user202729 C++ 11

Fatalize

There are many answers that are this long on PPCG

Mr. Xcoder

08:43

Sorry repeated typos

ATaco

@user202729 What browser are you using?

I'm guessing there's a poor implementation of hidden text.

user202729

...? It lags my computer when I click edit button.

Mr. Xcoder

And to make matters worse, we have to use either Code Blocks or Free Pascal

Fatalize

@user202729 I can do the edit for you if that's that

user202729

@Mr.Xcoder ... exactly same situation. We have (in addition) Turbo C++ and Turbo Pascal, but I don't think it's useful... Dev-cpp may be more useful.

.... How can I get it to run in Python 3?

(it = zlib decompress a byte string)

Mr. Xcoder

08:47

I wonder why they don’t let us use Python, maybe because it has useful built-ins and things are less challenging (?)

user202729

Doesn't C++ have useful built in? std::set (equivalent of an balanced segment tree)

(... except big integer built in ...)

Still, eval is really useful (probably)?

I added b before the string and it worked.

Mr. Xcoder

Yeah because that’s a Python byte string

user202729

Now how can I convert it back? str doesn't work.

.decode('utf-8') worked.

... it seems that [answer] auto expands to [How to answer](... link to help page ...). Any other auto SE expand links that I don't know of?

user202729

09:23

Is there anywhere where I can sandbox the snippet? (to see how it works, etc.)

user202729

09:33

How can //cdn.sstatic.net/codegolf/all.css?v=83c949450c8b expands to https://cdn.sstatic.net/Sites/codegolf/all.css?v=83c949450c8b? I don't understand...

Why is the Sites inserted?

@user202729 Test it locally.

@user202729 ... which doesn't really work ...

@user202729 You can just use the preview page while editing.

New Sandboxed Posts

10:19

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Build a Board of Napier's Bones! code-golf ascii-art Introduction Napier's bones is a calculation tool, which helps speeding up the calculation of multiplication, division and digit-by-digit square root extraction by turning n-digit-by-1-digit multiplications into table look-ups. Napier's bones...

user202729

10:48

Are privileges reversed when you lose reputation?

totallyhuman

yes

Adám

@user202729 Yes:

86

Q: Is losing privileges after placing bounty OK?

My rep went over 2,000 today which meant I could edit other people's posts. Great! Then I added a bounty to a previous question, which brought me back down to 1,984...and I can no longer edit other posts. Should this changed? Or is this ideal?

discussion reputation edits bounty

totallyhuman

gah I wanted to ask a meta question about redoing

13

Q: Roman numeral converter function

Create the shortest function to convert a string of Roman numerals to an integer. The rules for each letter can be found at the Wikipedia page. Letters above 1,000 will have parentheses placed around them to signal their higher value. Requirements: Must convert Roman numerals 1 to 500,000 Mu...

code-golf math function roman-numerals

it's bad

user202729

"No one is spending that much on bounties" tex.stackexchange.com/q/134638/9517 — T. Verron Nov 21 '14 at 9:05

Community = deleted user?

flawr

11:04

@user202729 Regarding the comments in the sandbox: How would you apply dijkstra there? I don't think it is that striaght forward.

(and most dijkstra implementations just store pointers to the previous node which makes the reconstruction easy)

user202729

It can be proven that all the vertices on the path are either start point, end point, or rectangle vertices.

flawr

I see that, but it is not trivial to determine which vertex is visible form which other vertex.

user202729

About the last point... Yes, some language have built in dijkstra function that output path, but it definitely takes more effort (~= code) to store them.

@flawr That's something you have to do.

Also, for all method (I can think of), that part is necessary.

Why does [Sandbox] have 5 rep, while [Community] only have 1?

flawr

I think it might for some languages be shorter to just bruteforce all possible paths from (0,0) to (10,10) and check whether they go through the squares, then pick the shortest

user202729

Probably...

flawr

11:08

maybe it is even sufficient to check paths that are monotonic when projected to the line through (0,0),(1,1)

user202729

So... which one is more straightforward is algorithm-independent.

"monotonous"? "monotonic"?

(sorry I'm not very good at English)

flawr

@user202729 neither am I :D

@user202729 Why don't you get a recognizable name instead of this generic "guest user" name?

user202729

Oct 22 '17 at 16:15, by HyperNeutrino

@user202729 You should get a custom username :P

flawr

You definitely should IMHO

user202729

(also read the following messages)

flawr

11:12

Well it still is not recognizable as it exactly looks like one of those auto generated names.

user202729

It seems that you can't post [answer] in chat...

(try in sandbox only)

flawr

It would just clear some confusion

user202729

So just increase it to 9 digits and people know that SE doesn't have 1e9 users.

flawr

Most people probably don't. I mean nobody can remember your current name

Or at least get a profile pic that does not look like those default ones:)

user202729

... The profile picture is default.

Mr. Xcoder

11:35

@flawr I can remember their username perfectly (mostly because we had many interactions)

New Main Posts

0

Q: What 5 digit number when it has a 1 appended to the right hand side is three times the size if a 1 is appended on the left hand side!

A colleague sent me this brain-teaser which I thought would make a good challenge: A question from an 11+ exam paper, which stumped me for a few minutes... What 5 digit number when it has a 1 appended to the right hand side is three times the size if a 1 is appended on the left hand ...

code-golf

New Meta Posts

12:16

0

Q: How long should you wait before posting an improvement as your own solution?

Sometimes, when you comment on a solution with a suggested improvement, for whatever reason, the author might not take that suggestion on board. If it's a significant enough improvement, I've occasionally felt tempted to post the it as my own solution after a month or so has passed. Is that long...

discussion

Martin Ender

12:31

@ConorO'Brien your comment was about 5 hours late ;)

user202729

13:16

Today I learned that GDB has python scripting ability...

CMP: Given a Windows 7 machine, what would you do to hide a file such that the change it's discovered is minimal?

HyperNeutrino

mark it as hidden

Leaky Nun

Today I learned (discovered) that Z_p and 1+pZ_p are isomorphic as groups

HyperNeutrino

What's 1+pZ_p?

user202729

p times Z_p plus 1?

Leaky Nun

Z_p is the p-adic integers

@user202729 LOL

HyperNeutrino

13:20

yes

Leaky Nun

so 1+pZ_p is {1+pn | n in Z_p}

it is a group under multiplication

HyperNeutrino

flagspam in the SO russian chat?

user202729

... Not too incorrect.

HyperNeutrino

oh okay

well using vectorizing multiplication user202729 was right :P

user202729

What happened with this?

learn what is p-adic integers because I forgot it

Leaky Nun

13:22

@user202729 so you start with the natural numbers including 0

and pretend that they can go infinitely to the left

(just like real numbers can go infinitely to the right)

Adám

@user202729 Stick it in a folder named similarly to the others in C:\Windows\WinSxS.

user202729

Ok no problem I remembered it. (<- the grammar feels somewhat wrong)

Reminds me of quote notation.

@Adám Sounds like a good idea...

HyperNeutrino

@user202729 Typically "remember" is used in the present tense unless you're actually saying you remembered it a few days ago or something along those lines.

Dennis

16

A: Write Moby Dick, approximately

///, 2*1 + 1020874 = 1020876 Prints a space.

Voting on this site is so incredibly broken, it's not even funny anymore.

19

user202729

~~It isn't even on HNQ...~~

Apparently, it is.

Anonymous

13:33

@Dennis That's definitely not a serious contender

user202729

Is Are baseline answers allowed?

Anonymous

@user202729 Define baseline?

user202729

... I don't know ...

This one gets 108 upvotes, while this one only 19. (for the older challenge, Paint starry night)

Dennis

Which is a giant slap in the face for all people who worked hard on their answers.

Anonymous

@user202729 I've called out the former for not being a serious contender on multiple occasions. My custom mod flag was marked helpful, but nothing was ever done to enforce the policy.

Anonymous

13:42

@MartinBüttner The point is, even if other submissions aren't present, it's not difficult to imagine many different methods that would score significantly better than a grey rectangle. If the only way your solution could conceivably win is if no others are posted, it's probably not a serious contender. — Mego Mar 21 '16 at 19:53

AdmBorkBork

@Dennis Sigh. :-/

HyperNeutrino

Is OEIS down?

Anonymous

@HyperNeutrino downforeveryoneorjustme.com/oeis.org

user202729

No, just really slow.

@Mego In short, isup.me

HyperNeutrino

Oh okay thanks

New Sandboxed Posts

13:55

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

King of the Hill: Avalon king-of-the-hill Avalon is a semi-team-based strategy card game played with 5 - 10 players. The objective is simple but the gameplay is not as simple. The good people want to complete 3 quests while keeping Merlin alive, and the evil people want to fail 3 quests or assas...

user202729

@NewSandboxedPosts ... which will definitely take a while to write a controller...

HyperNeutrino

It will take me a while.

Not sure exactly how long.

user202729

About the mafia challenge... I don't understand what's the point in asking others to do something.

HyperNeutrino

@user202729 You mean message code 16?

user202729

I didn't read it very carefully (???) but as I can see some of the messages are for communicating with other users, for which I can't understand what they are used for.

HyperNeutrino

14:01

I don't really understand the "Please use your powers on _ tonight" (especially since it should take 2 players arguments to make sense)

I mean it would make sense for you to tell the cop to investigate a player

(Also I sometimes overthink the gameplay of this game because I haven't played Mafia for a while but I frequently play Town of Salem which is just internet mafia with way too many roles)

J. Sallé

@HyperNeutrino Mafia already had too many roles way back when. Town of Salem added more?

HyperNeutrino

@J.Sallé I don't think Mafia has too many roles? Isn't it just Doctor, Sheriff, Mafioso, and Villager?

J. Sallé

@HyperNeutrino Oh, I thought you were talking about the SC2 map (also called Mafia) Town of Salem was based on.

HyperNeutrino

Oh lol :P

No I was talking about the childhood game / KoTH game

J. Sallé

They had about 20 roles when I last played

Anonymous

14:08

@HyperNeutrino Originally, yes. And then people added more. wiki.mafiascum.net/index.php?title=Category:Roles

J. Sallé

Most of them were good roles, and well balanced. But then they started adding a lot of Neutral roles that just complicated gameplay

HyperNeutrino

Town of Salem has 33

(49 with Coven DLC expansion)

Anonymous

@J.Sallé RIP Jester

HyperNeutrino

@Mego Oh lol. And also I can't see that site :(

J. Sallé

Holy cow

HyperNeutrino

14:09

Neutrals are annoying to deal with

J. Sallé

@Mego Jester was okay, I had issues with Mass Murderers for instance

HyperNeutrino

Mass Murderers? You're talking about the SC2 thingy now right

J. Sallé

Yeah

HyperNeutrino

okay

J. Sallé

The mass murderer visited someone, and whenever anyone else visited that someone the same night, everybody but the mass murderer died.

HyperNeutrino

14:11

oh it's like the Werewolf in Town of Salem

that is very annoying to deal with lmao

Rampage Ability

J. Sallé

Yeah exactly.

Imagine how pissed someone would be when they're the godfather and order a hit on someone just to get all his goons killed.

HyperNeutrino

lol

J. Sallé

In SC2 mafia the GF ordered a hit and all the goons (specifically the Mafioso role) visited that person.

HyperNeutrino

that's happened before. my brother was playing as Veteran (kind of like Mass Murderer targeting themselves) and killed three of the mafia

J. Sallé

Yeah, Veteran was a great role when you played it well

Killed many a doctor with it though

HyperNeutrino

14:13

yeah, same. also bodyguards

J. Sallé

Yup, also bodyguards.

HyperNeutrino

I was in a game with a veteran yesterday and they were making absurd claims hoping to bait and get hit by the killers but it just caused them to get jailed and executed lol

J. Sallé

rofl

Leaky Nun

p-adic is so amazing

HyperNeutrino

I like how we're talking about different games but we still understand what each other is saying (except for that you had to explain Mass Murderer's ability)

(that grammar sounds off)

J. Sallé

14:22

hahahahahah yeah, but as I said, ToS is largely based on SC2's map

HyperNeutrino

yeah

J. Sallé

I think two of the original modders who made the map in starcraft actually worked in ToS

HyperNeutrino

Oh huh, interesting

J. Sallé

Indeed. Anyway, gtg get some lunch now. I'll be back in a couple hours o/

HyperNeutrino

cya o/

Poke

14:26

@Mego The fact that the answer is possible is a fault of the challenge itself. As it is that does seem like a valid approach to me. You have to guess the next character. Why /not/ just guess the most common?

It's not the first time that a better-scoring answer has received less votes and it definitely won't be the last

Dennis

@Poke Because the only way to get a worse score is to actively try to guess the wrong character.

user202729

The main problem is people over-upvote it.

Poke

@Dennis if you use any other character you'll also get a worse score

if you guess a random character you'll probably get a worse score

PhiNotPi

Who cares about naming conventions when I can just memorize all the variables names? I got this_thing and thisOtherThing and thisthirdthing going.

Dennis

@Poke Random is forbidden. Choosing a constant character that isn't the most common is actively trying to guess the wrong one.

user202729

14:32

@AlexA. I disagree. This is a valid, if simplistic solution. I doubt there would be any call to remove it if it wasn't so highly upvoted or if it were only one of a couple answers. — Calvin's Hobbies Jan 27 '16 at 5:30

@PhiNotPi ...? What are you talking about?

Poke

@Dennis That's an odd way to look at it

PhiNotPi

@user202729 just random comment, ignore me

Poke

You're still "solving" the challenge

Erik the Outgolfer

@Poke a solution returning incorrect results isn't the only case in which an answer can be invalid

Poke

@EriktheOutgolfer ...ok? I still disagree that simplistic solutions aren't valid contenders; they just use naive algorithms

Fatalize

14:36

@PhiNotPi thisthirdthing is harder to read than this_third_thing

and marginally easier to write

Erik the Outgolfer

@Poke I don't think it's very naive, I can't see any serious attempt there IMO (no offense)

Poke

If serious contenders are only the best scoring then how do multiple people answer with the same language

user202729

@Poke ...? How are languages related here?

Erik the Outgolfer

serious contender means that there has been an attempt to optimize it for the scoring criteria, not that the answer is leading for its language

Fatalize

If that "predict space" answer is not a a serious attempt, I don't see how this one is a serious attempt either, considering it is barely more complicated, and its score isn't that much lower

Poke

14:38

@EriktheOutgolfer exactly and that has been done by using the most common character

HyperNeutrino

Serious contender doesn't mean it's the best scoring; it's more so whether or not you even tried to optimize it for the task scoring system

Poke

which s/he did

user202729

I vote for just keep it, but don't over-upvote it.

HyperNeutrino

^

user202729

That's 0 character lookbehind, my answer and Steadybox's (older) is 1 character lookbehind,

Skyler's is 2-character lookbehind, Arnauld's (original) is 8-character lookbehind (if I recalled correctly)

Poke

14:40

@user202729 This is correct and is backed by meta consensus. codegolf.meta.stackexchange.com/a/10132/51785

user202729

And the zip's are infinite-character lookbehind.

Poke

that meta answer applies to more than just golf langs imo

Erik the Outgolfer

@Poke it's the same as print' ' in Python for example...Steadybox's answer linked by @Fatalize at least shows an attempt utilizing the input while the /// one doesn't imoo

btw "serious attempt" is a bit subjective right now, and it's very hard to define it objectively

Poke

@EriktheOutgolfer The challenge literally asks answerers to "guess"

If you're of the opinion that the answer is bad, then in this case it's a fault with the challenge itself

HyperNeutrino

Not really... how would you define the challenge to avoid this sort of answer?

Fatalize

14:45

Non-serious contenders are to me answers that are intentionally made worse than they could be using the proposed approach in the answer

This one isn't, its approach is to predict the most common character (which isn't that dumb)

Poke

@HyperNeutrino I wouldn't have issued a challenge to guess something

HyperNeutrino

Well, that's the spirit of the challenge itself, but I understand your point.

user202729

+1 I don't see many great challenges on this site: This is one of them. — Nathan Merrill 23 hours ago

Poke

@user202729 Everyone is entitled to their opinion

not going to bash nathan because i disagree with him

Erik the Outgolfer

I'd think of it like this: your solution makes an input-based prediction, where the input is in the multi-set of characters of moby dick. since the multi-set is finite, you do know the most common character, which, in this case, is 0x20 (space). however, just predicting the "most common" regardless of input makes the solution be almost as bad as it could

and the reasons that happens are obvious, since the only other modification to make it the worst possible would be to predict the least common char, since randomness is disallowed

Poke

14:50

so don't upvote it

user202729

Can anyone vote/post an answer on this? It doesn't seem good that all answers have negative score...

Fatalize

@EriktheOutgolfer BTW, I will probably be in Athens in March

Adám

Informal APL learning session tonight at 18:30 UTC in https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/52405/apl. See https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/41299896 if you don't have 20 Stack Exchange rep points.

Tweeted by dyalogapl on January 10, 2018 at 2:10 PM

HyperNeutrino

oo

Fatalize

@EriktheOutgolfer There are many ways to make an intentionally bad answer (which would be a non-serious contender): always predict z after q, x after z, a after a, k after b, etc.

HyperNeutrino

14:52

i hope i have CS club this afternoon because it runs during then and my science class so i can do part of it :D

Wheat Wizard

@user202729 My answer still has a non-negative score

user202729

@WheatWizard +1 and -2 is -1. -1 is negative.

Wheat Wizard

Reload the page?

user202729

... someone just upvoted it ...

Adám

@WheatWizard Fixed.

Wheat Wizard

14:56

What exactly about the answer do you disagree with? I've not gotten any comments yet.

user202729

... I didn't vote on that, and at the time of posting that chat message the answer is at -1.

Adám

How did I get a downvote the same moment I answered‽

HyperNeutrino

someone was waiting with their fingers on the F V D keys

lol

(idk either)

Dennis

@user202729 I think I understand the question, but the title is throwing me off. Is the discussion about printing to STDOUT instead of STDERR or about stray output to STDOUT?

user202729

... both.

HyperNeutrino

14:57

@Dennis It's about how we define "raising an error" on this site, if I understood correctly.

user202729

@HyperNeutrino How do you know that?

HyperNeutrino

confirm?

@user202729 I was partially joking, I don't actually know.

user202729

No, I don't understand why do you post that as a chat message.

HyperNeutrino

Regardless of how it was done it doesn't make sense because you have to at least read the whole answer before voting

Adám

@Dennis Can you check the exact timestamps for my posting an answer and for the downvote arrival?

Erik the Outgolfer

14:59

read and think about

HyperNeutrino

yes

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