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00:00 - 16:0016:00 - 00:00

12:00 AM
I don't know, I didn't test them, but no one left a comment
 
No serial voting, as far as I can see. Could be robo-reviewing, let me check...
Nope, wouldn't make sense since you can't downvote from LQ review queue anyway. Hmm.
 
ur mod tools do not tell who did ?
 
@MartinBüttner Unless some of the downvotes have been reversed since, they only appear to have 1 downvote each on 2 questions, and zero downvotes on their other 2 questions.
I still can't see why those 2 downvotes were placed...
 
yes I meant those two downvotes
 
@Optimizer No, we can only see strong voting correlations / patterns, not precisely "who downvoted this?".
 
12:10 AM
For the primes under a million it's a new answer to a very old question - do some people downvote for that??
 
Ah, perhaps a Late Answers robo-reviewer. Checking...
 
its not late
 
One is 2 years late, the other is recent
 
Nope, no robos in either First Posts or Late Answers
 
12:15 AM
Rotation-safe at least doesn't work, I'll leave a comment though
 
How has the list of primes question gone 2 years without the most upvoted answer getting more than 1 vote??
58 answers
top answer: one vote
oops I had arrived on page 2...
 
:P
 
There are many more upvoted answers...
OK make that 59 answers - someone just answered
 
nothing for 7 hours, and then 3 answers in 15 minutes o.O
(on battleblock theater)
 
The 2 year old primes question had nothing for 2 months, and then 3 answers in the last 3 hours
 
12:33 AM
@MartinBüttner About what you said I did realise that for 4,5,6 blocks you can toggle X..X, X..X. and .X..X. respectively to increment all of them by one
So Jakube's solution is nice but a few bytes can be saved by dividing the number of possibilities by 4 :P
 
@Sp3000 are you golfing yours? ;)
 
I have 171 for Python currently, but might wait a while :) Interested to seeing other approaches
(I like Doorknob's :D )
 
you don't need to add an explanation to yours right away :P
 
Ahaha k, lemme see if I can get this down further first...
 
1:08 AM
@Optimizer The issue with the Pyth compiler is a security related one, and my site has been suspended.
 
ah :(
 
1:37 AM
oh yeah
 
@Optimizer Fixed :P
Heh, you can see the snowflake if you hover over my reply.
 
lol
 
Reminds me of the good old "hide a message in (255, 255, 254) on a (255, 255, 255) background" days
:P
 
these are nice. now to a quick golfing round before posting
 
@Optimizer .
Yeah that is nice :D
 
1:40 AM
and pretty fast too
 
@Optimizer both looking great
@Sp3000 sorry for the false ping...
 
:P
 
evil snowflake is evil
 
@Optimizer revealed
(I can't see them until someone reveals them with a reply...)
 
I name that one SkullFlake
 
1:43 AM
Why are you doing this on a white background again? XD
 
its a transparent background
with css black background
so when you save the canvas image, black does not come :(
 
In here the background is white, so it's completely invisible, and when you click on it and it opens in a new tab the background is light grey, so it's only just visible.
It's like trying to see in a snowstorm...
@Optimizer I kind of like SkullFlake. Looks like some kind of stealth clockwork weapon
 
with a skull face!
 
2:03 AM
@Optimizer are you going to post it as an answer? Mine's trillions of bytes long but yours looks postable
 
Just about to hit post
 
0
A: Draw A Snowflake

OptimizerJavaScript, ES6, 788 bytes Not at all golfed, but finally came around to get this done. A lot of todos. I am only counting the two canvas tags and the function f from the snippet below as part of the byte count. Rest of the stuff is for live demo To watch it in action, just run the snippet bel...

now made the flakes pointing up
 
2:59 AM
@MartinBüttner Fun bonus question, for what inputs might the output look the same (up to modulo 4)? e.g. 4 -> 0 and 123 -> 123
 
 
2 hours later…
4:39 AM
Whew, just finished a huge organization overhaul on github.com/KeyboardFire/ostrich-lang. Now time to sleep.
 
is it still longer than JS ?
;)
 
 
3 hours later…
8:01 AM
@Doorknob冰 Can I have more chars for CnR? :'(
 
8:34 AM
Hm.
Hmm actually, I see the problem with more chars :/
Hm...
 
 
1 hour later…
9:55 AM
@Sp3000 that's rather trivial though, because you just need to check if the given solution is valid
 
No I just mean as a general question about general inputs
Not as a coding challenge
e.g. for 100 blocks or something
 
oh okay
 
@MartinBüttner How do I stack images in smaller size like you did in snowflakes one ?
 
@Optimizer append an s to the file name
 
meh
 
10:06 AM
why meh?
 
coz ... meh ?
 
I prefer m for medium
I wish s didn't crop so much :/
 
@Sp3000 depends on how many you want to get in a row ;)
 
But I guess it'd need to to be square
 
10:08 AM
I added some sample renders
5
A: Draw A Snowflake

OptimizerJavaScript, ES6, 799 740 695 658 668 I am only counting the two canvas tags and the function f from the snippet below as part of the byte count. Rest of the stuff is for live demo To watch it in action, just run the snippet below in a latest Firefox giving the size and ratio via the input box...

 
@MartinBüttner I just wish it had an option to be as small as s, but still keep the image ratio without cropping :/
 
@Optimizer looks nice
 
Yeah, I have to perfect the ratio logic, to claim the 50% bonus
 
oh, the built-in loophole is invalid again :D
 
@MartinBüttner Is no output okay for no solutions for Battleblock? Might want to comment on Jakube's post
 
10:18 AM
@Sp3000 yes, I explicitly mention that as an example in the challenge
 
Just checking because Jakube's edit1 :P
 
oh I see
 
1
Q: Should answers to fixed-output challenges be written in a programming language?

Martin BüttnerWe have a definition of what we consider a valid programming language for answers on PPCG. (If you disagree with this definition, please do so on that other post, and not here.) The one type of challenge where people regularly tend to ignore this is for challenges with fixed output, i.e. mostly ...

2
 
@Doorknob冰 are there two new private betas?
ah no, never mind... I think it's because Lifehacks and Economics went public beta
("it" being that nominally there are now 134 SE sites)
 
Tough meta question you have there
(thinking about it)
 
10:29 AM
I wonder if I should self-answer, although the only argument I have for my opinion is "why should these challenges be treated any differently"
 
Well I thought the emphasis on, say, kolmogorov was more the information compression
But then I guess if you went down that track then why wouldn't you count zip files or something
 
@Optimizer we've finally been beaten by Pyth on rotation-safe numbers
 
w go tbeaten last night itself
 
by what?
btw, I've got 42 now
 
Pyth was posted right after you left I think
 
10:41 AM
@ProgramFOX The purpose of that other question is to define which programming languages are allowed for posts on PPCG (it sort of makes the assumption that posts on PPCG have to be written in a programming language in the first sentence)
 
I think I might ask the OP about the newline thing. I'm confused whether it means you're allowed to separate by newline (as one of the choices for whitespace) or you have to separate by newline (plus a single whitespace character?)
 
@Sp3000 I thought it meant any whitespace, which may be a newline
 
@MartinBüttner Oh, ok. Then I'll delete my answer on your question and repost it on the other.
 
Oh right CJam doesn't print with spaces normally, that's why you're pushing N
facepalm
 
@ProgramFOX well the part about raw files is still applicable
 
10:46 AM
@MartinBüttner Right, then I'll keep that part.
 
@ProgramFOX regex is already included in Peter's definition
as is SQL
I don't think HTML and CSS count as declarative languages at all. HTML is a markup language and CSS well... a stylesheet.
 
oh, indeed. removed regex.
@MartinBüttner They do fit in the definition.
 
do they really describe the logic of "computation"? or just some sort of structure and layout?
A (document) markup language is a modern system for annotating a document in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from the text. The idea and terminology evolved from the "marking up" of paper manuscripts, i.e., the revision instructions by editors, traditionally written with a blue pencil on authors' manuscripts. In digital media this "blue pencil instruction text" was replaced by tags, that is, instructions are expressed directly by tags or "instruction text encapsulated by tags." Examples include typesetting instructions such as those found in troff, TeX and LaTeX, or structural markers...
A style sheet language, or style language, is a computer language that expresses the presentation of structured documents. One attractive feature of structured documents is that the content can be reused in many contexts and presented in various ways. Different style sheets can be attached to the logical structure to produce different presentations. One modern style sheet language with widespread use is Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), which is used to style documents written in HTML, XHTML, SVG, XUL, and other markup languages. For content in structured documents to be presented, a set of stylistic...
 
@MartinBüttner Structure and markup. But they can be both markup and declarative languages:
> Many markup languages such as HTML, MXML, XAML, XSLT or other user-interface markup languages are often declarative. HTML, for example, only describes what should appear on a webpage - it does not specify the possible interactions with that webpage.
 
okay, fair point
I always took declarative languages to be a class of languages that could actually solve problems like functional or imperative languages :D
 
11:03 AM
@Sp3000 grrr... why can't we come up with something decent for audio processing?
 
I guess it's not an area people are familiar with - I mean, I don't even know how to process audio files in Python (external library, probably)
I think if all else doesn't go to plan, then sine wave/chord seems okay. It can be a sort of intro to how-to-audio-process for peoples' language of choice
 
lol I just ninja'd you in the weekly challenge chat
 
I said the same thing 7 hours ago :P
 
you didn't mention further challenges then :P
 
Now I have :P
 
11:07 AM
heh
 
I wish I knew more about FFT to comment on that post of yours
(In other news, I'm playing Battleblock's story mode and it's insane)
 
@Sp3000 haha, I know, right? :D
it's got quite a lot of content
it also has like 8 different arena modes
 
I was really confused at first because I somehow ended up on a hard platforming level and kept dying
 
(each with 12 arenas I think)
 
But this story level's easy so I think I've got the right place
Sounds like I won't be finishing this game any time soon then :P
 
11:17 AM
well, it doesn't take ages (unless you want to go for 100%)
but in the story mode there are 8 chapters, with 10 (+3) levels each, which should keep you busy for like 8 hours or so.
 
12:04 PM
I swear I talked to someone about this recently here in chat: youtube.com/… @Geobits? @Doorknob冰?
 
12:24 PM
@MartinBüttner I think I get what you mean by not liking merely replacing builtins/superfluous syntax with single chars now...
 
@Sp3000 how come? :D
 
Battleblock. I could beat by porting to Pyth (fyi it's 33) but that's not very fun :/
 
@Sp3000 well as long as you shorten/port your own solution...
 
It is, but I'm just not sure I'd be willing to Pyth every Python solution I write :P
 
1:04 PM
@ProgramFOX +1
 
Thanks!
 
@ProgramFOX I don't understand this comment of yours meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/3610/…
@Sp3000 how is BBT going? :P
 
Well I've paused on the game and started writing my explanation
So how's it going? Long.
 
heh
let me know when you're done with the story mode... there are some achievements you can only get with co-op/online play ;)
 
Oh? Ahaha k :P
 
1:10 PM
@MartinBüttner I might have misunderstood KennyTM's comment; because I'm not sure why requesting a newyear.png would change what I said in my answer.
So I replied to what I thought he meant. Might be a wrong reply though.
 
@ProgramFOX I think he meant that if the question asks for a PNG, answers should be allowed to just be that PNG (using PNG's compression)
 
oh, perhaps
I'll just delete my reply and ask for clarification.
 
@Sp3000 dammit your bounty is ending in 27 hrs.
 
Yeah :/ Get your submission in for me? puppy dog eyes
There's still the grace period
 
what grace period ?
 
1:21 PM
@Optimizer you've got 24 hours after the bounty ends to award it
 
oh
is there a limitation at that point on to who all you can award it to ?
 
no
although I don't think I ever got an answer that was posted within the grace period. but I'm sure you could award it to that as well
 
Trying to check
 
cool
 
@githubphagocyte I hadn't thought of it that way, but I guess you're right. Since "longest sequence" needs an end, an infinite one wouldn't be valid. That would make it more of a challenge to find the slowest growing sequence, since you wouldn't want to waste time trying to factor really large numbers and could bail on them.
I'd still probably bounty anyone who could show a provably infinite one though, even if that's not the point of the challenge.
 
1:37 PM
@Optimizer why don't you turn your comments into an answer :P
 
too sleep deprived for that
 
@Geobits Either that or you could make the score the length that can be found ("I've found the first 50 members of this sequence, so my score is 50")
 
True. That would be more in the spirit of things, but it'd probably still be smart to bail on big numbers (since it's timed).
 
I guess that would make terminated sequences desirable as a sequence without a found terminal member would be open to everyone else searching for the next member to claim a sequence one longer
 
Weird secret Windows UI feature #5: Double clicking the icon in the top left corner of a window closes the window. (For extra fun, this also works with windows that don't even have an icon there, like Chrome.)
 
1:45 PM
huh, indeed
 
firefox is safe
 
Yet another non-intuitive behavior from Windows :D
 
talk about non intuitive behavior
all those mac gestures!
 
triple swipe in a pentagram for an easter egg
 
@Geobits that's why I'm at #5 :D
 
1:47 PM
when you click the first time nothing happens, but the second time clippy wakes up and says "someone's having trouble! let's see... clicking in top left corner? they probably meant right"
 
actually when you click the first time, you should get a context menu
(which sort of makes sense...)
 
shh you're ruining my joke with your facts
 
That only makes sense because there used to be an icon there. Most windows now don't seem to have them.
 
;)
@Geobits yes, which makes it even worse :D
 
left click context menu does not make any sense
 
1:48 PM
@Geobits are you on 7 or 8?
 
when you click the first time a context menu opens, but if you click again instead of selecting an option clippy wakes up and says "someone's having trouble! let's see... clicking in top left corner? they probably meant right"
look how much worse that joke is now
 
7, thankfully.
 
ah right, because in 8 I think some more windows have the icon again (including the windows explorer)
but I think I first discovered this in 7 which made it even weirder
 
@undergroundmonorail The joke gets even worse when you have to include that "Close" is the bolded default option and it actually makes sense :P
 
fine.
new joke: "the windows ui is helpful and intuitive"
look what you did
 
1:50 PM
Ha!
It's funny again :D
 
did Windows 7 still have a desktop icon in the bottom right corner? or was that added in 8.1, I don't remember.
 
that was in 7
 
Yep, a weird transparent box area that doesn't look like anything.
 
@Geobits ah yeah that's the same in 8, so I think they added the icon in 8.1
 
1:51 PM
do you guys have a spinning circle for a favicon right now? and "Waiting for chat.stackexchange.com..." at the bottom?
 
yeah, why include a (rather useful) button in the UI, that isn't even visible until you click it o.O
 
this page refuses to finish loading but i can chat
 
At least it gives a tooltip (and preview on hover if enabled). Still...
 
@undergroundmonorail Ha!
 
@Geobits it does neither for me ^^
 
1:52 PM
Ouch
 
i have a tooltip but i accidentally disabled the hover behaviour the other day when i was trying to disable something else and i don't care enough to fix it
 
the other thing I really love is arrow-key controls in the windows explorer
open a folder by hitting Enter, and then try selecting the first item in the opened folder with a single key press
now try that again in a folder which contains only a single item
 
@MartinBüttner Posted a long and slightly patchy explanation, but I tried to keep it intuitive
 
but some combinations are really nice, like Windows key + arrows
Windows + P
etc
 
OMG WHY?
Windows + arrow is just plain weird.
 
1:55 PM
@Geobits I actually use that quite a lot
 
i use windows + arrows all the time
 
its moving the windows around
intuitive
 
as well as windows + shift + arrow
 
ide on the left console window on the right or whatever
moving stuff between monitors
etc
 
Okay, windows+shift+arrow makes more sense to me.
 
1:55 PM
@MartinBüttner What does that do? It seems to do nothing here.
 
not just moving across windows, but to dock them
 
@ProgramFOX do you have more than one monitor?
 
like if you want two views side by side
 
@ProgramFOX get more monitors scrub
 
@MartinBüttner nope
 
1:56 PM
@ProgramFOX it moves between monitors ;)
 
I'm too used to having multiple desktops and multiple monitors. This "moving windows around" concept is basically foreign to me.
 
@Optimizer Windows + number is really nice too
 
yup
 
or mouse wheel click on a program in the quick launch bar
 
And Ctrl+Alt+Arrow.
 
1:56 PM
really nice accessibility support
 
@MartinBüttner OMG
 
You almost gave me a heart attack
 
@ProgramFOX Ctrl Alt Arrow is not windows shortcut
 
@ProgramFOX ah yeah, that's lovely :D
 
1:57 PM
@undergroundmonorail I see Neopets
 
@ProgramFOX it only is present when certain graphics drivers are installed
 
@Sp3000 yooo
 
@undergroundmonorail my dream setup is four screens... two horizontal above each other in the centre, and two vertical ones on the sides... some day...
 
@Sp3000 do you play?
 
@Optimizer Yes, I know, but I wanted to post it anyway :P
 
1:58 PM
About ... er... 10 years ago? I think.
Good times.
 
ha
also, Windows + F9 is awesome
 
at one point in this discussion I'll try a shortcut that I will regret
 
I love this
 
in firefox debugger, Ctrl Alt UP/DOWN is assigned to switching up and down the sources list
:D
 
oh and Alt+Esc is a nice companion to the more well-known Alt+Tab
 
2:00 PM
you know what bugs me about regex? there are so many things where ("\\" + some_letter).lower() does the opposite of ("\\" + some_letter).upper(). is \w a word character or is that \W? i have to look it up every time
 
@Unihedro Did your crab snip an n from the end of your name? I swear it was Unihedron last I saw.
 
@Geobits Winter!
 
Ctrl Shift Esc
 
oh also, 90% of the time you do ctrl-alt-delete you're looking for
yeah what optimizer said
 
@Geobits He changed his name.
 
2:01 PM
@Optimizer for some reason it usually takes longer on my machine to bring up procexp with that, than with using Ctrl+Alt+Del and clicking on Task Manager
 
@undergroundmonorail In Python \w is [a-zA-Z0-9_] and \W is the opposite. Just checked the docs
 
@ProgramFOX Joke killer :P
 
I never use them though :/
 
@Sp3000 thank you but that was just an example, i'm actually looking for \d or \D right now :P
 
@undergroundmonorail the upper case ones are always the negated classes (which match everything except some stuff)
 
2:02 PM
@MartinBüttner I just use my thumb to press Ctrl and Shift at the same time and then middle finger to the Escape
 
@MartinBüttner oh, i didn't make that connection. thanks :)
 
@Sp3000 I use s and d quite a lot... w not so much
 
Oh \s, yes I do use that one
 
@Optimizer no I mean, it takes longer for the PC to bring it up after I pressed it. I don't mean it's harder to reach or anything.
 
oh
I bet anyone will ever star this message
 
2:04 PM
@Optimizer No, I will not give you that hat! :P
 
So rude. and that to a llama. Calls PETA
 
what hat?
2
 
and Doorknob
@undergroundmonorail wait and see
 
@Sp3000 nice explanation for the BBT solver
 
i mean i got stars yesterday and nothing happened
 
2:06 PM
today is a magical day
 
I think that makes sense, right? I get the feeling there's a few gaps to fill but that's the general idea :P
 
@undergroundmonorail Yes but yesterday wasn't new year's eve's eve
 
@Optimizer Waiting for hats?
 
@githubphagocyte oh
 
@Sp3000 only if.
oh, and 10K snowflake takes only around a minute for me :D
 
2:07 PM
@undergroundmonorail don't let that fool you into thinking that I know what they're talking about...
 
@githubphagocyte they're talking about Tam o' Shanter
 
@Optimizer that's actually really nice
 
man, my workflow for writing userscripts is the worst. i don't like the tampermonkey editor because it tries to indent things weird without my permission, so i have to write it somewhere else and paste it in >:(
 
oh wait. thats 1K :/ starts on a 10K
 
2:09 PM
@Optimizer lol...
 
@Optimizer That's beautiful. A nicely balanced one
And with a black background... ;)
 
@githubphagocyte that is because I took a screen capture (print screen) and cropped :P
 
"post a chat message on 12/31 that gets starred"
i uh
have not done that
 
and I can give a ratio to tell how balanced it should be
 
@undergroundmonorail It's only the 30th where I am
 
2:14 PM
same
 
@undergroundmonorail all hats have 12/13 hours leeway
 
oh, so maybe I will not get the hat if someone stars this
give it a try ?
 
@Optimizer you would
 
no i got the hat
 
2:14 PM
no
I bet
 
i copypasted from the description it gave me
 
first section:
43
A: Why didn't (or did) I or some other user get a hat although the requirements were (or weren't) fulfilled?

balphaLeeway on date-based hats Unless the requirement mentions a specific timezone, hats that are date-based are often awarded for 12 hours before and 13 hours after the specified date in UTC, to accomodate people everywhere in the world. This means you can earn such a hat even though for you it's no...

 
oooh UTC, that would explain it
because i was thinking "in 12 hours it's still the 30th here..."
 
ah yeah
 
2:16 PM
I live in UTC so it all made sense to me
 
u guys are so mean
winter holidays are all about giving , you know !
 
@Optimizer don't complain, you're already leading :P
 
not anymore
 
@Optimizer but you've got a hat that's basically impossible for me to get ;)
 
which one is that?
 
2:18 PM
red baron
@Sp3000 did you see my new suggestion for the weekly challenge?
 
doesn't mean I should let go of easy ones
 
heh
I'm sure you'll say something funny within the next 48 hours :P
 
Do I ever say funny things ?
 
we'll see
 
@MartinBüttner Not yet, gimme a sec
 
2:20 PM
oh wait. I am a Llama!
ok 10K is not possible in JS
gives some unknown NS_ERROR
 
@MartinBüttner Umm, no, not that I recall
 
@Doorknob冰 hm, who knows... :D
 
trying 6K
@MartinBüttner @undergroundmonorail not all hats have that leeway. Only the ones in which timezone is not mentioned. For example Bill Lumbergh can only be achieved on a UTC Saturday and Mistletoe, only on +/- 5 min of UTC new year
3K ^
 
2:41 PM
@Optimizer interesting... as for my code, 1k particles seems to be somewhat of a sweet spot for nice snowflakes
@Optimizer yes, that's why I linked the meta post for exact details
 
3:25 PM
@MartinBüttner what do you mean by that ?
 
@Optimizer I think that the 3k don't look better than any of your 1k results
same for my code... 10k looked much worse than the 1k results
 
oh yeah
but I can tweak all properties
let me see
also, the result is different most of the times
as its... random..
 
well yeah, but with the same parameters you'll probably always get structures on the same scales, and I think the length scale of the structures for 3k is just too fine
 
length scale ?
 
well most of the subbranches of the snowflake are all roughly the same size
and I think they are too small, which leads to the snowflake looking to homogeneous in the end
 
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