The Nineteenth Byte

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AdmBorkBork

00:28

@Mego I figured it might be familiar to folks here, but it still made me chuckle

New Main Posts

01:24

Q: How fast can I say your program?

I recently decided to download some dictation software, in order to help with my writing. However, it doesn't work very well when I'm coding, since I have to change from saying words to symbols and back again. It's even worse when I'm coding in an esoteric language which is all symbols. In order...

New Main Posts

01:40

Q: Sing Baby Shark

"Baby Shark" is a children's song about a family of sharks. Having long been popular as a campfire song, it has been popularized since the mid-2000s by social media, online video and radio. - Wikipedia Write program that takes no input, and writes the following text to the standard output or...

code-golf string kolmogorov-complexity

11 hours later…

flawr

12:42

CMS: Who actually uses the numpad? (on a regular full sized keyboard)

Erik the Outgolfer

somebody who doesn't have another choice regarding the Home, End, Page Up and Page Down buttons...

flawr

well if you do have a numpad you probably also have these buttons in the first place

Dennis

I don't buy keyboards or laptops without a numpad.

flawr

So you do use them, I take it.

Dennis

I do. Only for numbers though, not for navigation.

Erik the Outgolfer

12:52

actually, the numpad is necessary for Alt+xxxx codes... oh wait

flawr

what are these for?

Erik the Outgolfer

very, very clumsy way to enter Unicode chars

also, it doesn't work like that on Linux

flawr

I just recently realized how much I have to move my right hand due to swichting from keyboard to mouse and back, and how the numpad just makes it worse.

(And then I realized that I don't really need it and I'd rather have a keyboard without it.)

Erik the Outgolfer

aren't there keyboards with removable numpads? ...

flawr

I considered trying to saw it off.

Erik the Outgolfer

12:58

flawr

I'm still wondering whether it would work:)

Dennis

Only one way to find out.

Erik the Outgolfer

I've never sawed an electronic device, tbf :P

@EriktheOutgolfer yuck, turns out there aren't many, only gaming ones :/

flawr

Right now I actually need it to do some stuff, but if I can get my hands on another one I'll have to try:)

Maybe I could ask the IT guys...

Erik the Outgolfer

remembers to never give electronics to lizards

flawr

13:02

hey, it's not like I'm gonna take some stranger's keyboard to try it...

Erik the Outgolfer

uh... are your IT guys... familiar with sawing numpads off?

flawr

and if you are really such a big fan of numpads I'll send you the one I cut off :P

I think not?

Dennis

Plot twist: the numpad still works, the rest of the keyboard does not.

flawr

hehe

Erik the Outgolfer

myth busted

flawr

13:04

well I'll report back when I've tried:)

Erik the Outgolfer

usually, the batteries provide energy wherever they are, not anywhere where they aren't ;P

of course, if the batteries are actually under the numpad...

flawr

I prefer the good old wired keyboards

oh maybe there are keyboards that include those ibm/lenovo style nipple-mouses

that'd eliminate moving the hand to the mouse alltogether

Erik the Outgolfer

uh... why? it's not like a nice wireless keyboard will take more space than the wires of "good old" keyboards...

flawr

ah I just don't like having to use batteries

Erik the Outgolfer

yeah... regarding the "nipple-mouses" you're referring to... yiiiiiikes!

flawr

13:08

I actually like them quite a lot! The do require some getting used to though

but the same is true for trackpads or trackballs

yay:

Erik the Outgolfer

I usually use a mouse

Dennis

I prefer touchpads. It's harder to do gestures on a pointing stick.

Erik the Outgolfer

"ThinkPad"? woah, looks like somebody loves really old stuff

flawr

what do you use gestures for?

@EriktheOutgolfer they still produce new stuff?

Erik the Outgolfer

what is that picture of though?

Dennis

13:11

Scrolling, present windows, present desktops, and some browser navigation (reload, history, new tab, close tab).

Mostly the first three, since I'm usually using the keyboard while browsing.

flawr

@EriktheOutgolfer "Lenovo ThinkPad USB Keyboard w/ TrackPoint"

Erik the Outgolfer

google.com#q=Lenovo+ThinkPad+USB+Keyboard+w/+TrackPoint

Dennis

Since Superfish, I'm not sure I'd trust them enough to even buy their keyboard.

Erik the Outgolfer

well... the keyboard's driver might contain... stuff...

Dennis

Or the actual keyboard.

flawr

13:21

Or maybe the webcam on your laptop is secretly filming your keystrokes.

Erik the Outgolfer

oh that's not necessarily the webcam :P

who said that keyboards aren't also watched on like webcams? ;)

flawr

I just remembered having a keyboard with a scrollwheel plus some navigation buttons on the left side, but I don't remember what brand

Dennis

That would explain why manufacturers started to place the webcam below the screen.

Erik the Outgolfer

> oh hey nice chest muscles bro

2 hours later…

MilkyWay90

15:27

@ASCII-only Also, I put an indefinite bounty on getting a better score for the "Holy Hole In A Donut, Batman!" challenge so add your answer to it and I'll give you a +50 bounty

Deadcode

16:08

This is my keyboard: Northgate OmniKey Ultra And I very often use the numpad for entering numbers. Even for entering hexadecimal – the left hand can reach ABCDEF without moving.

flawr

Do you use those SF buttons?

Deadcode

No.

But I thought I would when I bought it.

They just act as modifier+Fkey. Default Shift.

Anush

here is an algorithms question

flawr

@Deadcode ah that makes sense

Anush

imagine I give you a series of k increasing integers, e.g. for k = 5 [1,5,10,11,13]. Every time you get a new integer you have to remove the integer from the existing list that minimises the maximum gap between consecutive integers. E.g. say I get 22 as the next integer. I then remove 11

is there a clever data structure to help you find the integer to delete efficiently?

dzaima

16:24

@Anush a priority queue?

Anush

@dzaima Hmm.. could be :)

dzaima

it's how I made this, except that uses a double-ended priority queue because it needs insertion in the largest gaps too

Anush

@dzaima I don't think I fully explained what it is that we need to minimize

if you remove 11 you get a gap of 13

so you are trying to minimize the max gap after removing the integer

dzaima

ah. so priority queue of differences between items with distance 2 and clever management of the state?

Anush

that could be it.. I am slightly confused currently :)

dzaima

16:33

@Anush don't I get a gap of 13-10 = 3?

Anush

@dzaima yes sorry.. it was a typo

user202729

17:14

@Anush What if there is multiple ways?

@flawr MouseKeys!

Random question: Adaptive binarization would fail on images with large area of light/dark pixel. Global binarization would fail on images with variable lighting condition.
What binarization algorithm should I choose if my image has both of the properties above?

flawr

you want to turn a grayscale image into purely black/white and preserve as much detail as possible?

the problem you're facing is essentially the tone-mapping problem for those "hdr" images, and I don't think there is a "best" solution

an easy way to "interpolate" between the two extremes is unsharp masking and varying the blur filter size.

@ATaco it is a realy pity that you can't :(

flawr

17:50