The Nineteenth Byte

Doorknob 冰

5:00 PM

Clearly more than 1 day. As seen from flood-the-site-with-questions-day. :P

trichoplax

:)

Alex A.

If the average they're using is the arithmetic mean, all we need is a ridiculous outlier and we'll skew it. Let's plan a 100 question day.

quartata

Now that it isn't Christmas I'm going to have to change the backstory on that grocery store question again

trichoplax

If we need to maintain it for N days, and we have an average of 8.7 per day, we'd only need to stop asking questions for (1.3/8.7)N days and then we'd have enough questions stored up to ask 8.7 + 1.3 per day for N days.

I think that's right...

Alex A.

@NewMainPosts Dare to dream, buddy. Dare to dream.

quartata

5:06 PM

@AlexA. Stop helping the bot with his quest

Alex A.

I can't. You see, we have a special bond, @NewMainPosts and I...

trichoplax

0.1494N isn't much. Some examples:
N = 1 week: just over 1 day without questions
N = 1 month: 4.5 days without questions
N = 6 months: 27 days without questions

quartata

A bond of cabbage and butter? I guess...

Doorknob 冰

Graph of questions per week for the last year

Definitely an upward trend.

trichoplax

Would be interesting to see it over 2 years in case there's just a spike in early winter

orlp

5:11 PM

@Doorknob冰 fix your y axis

Doorknob 冰

orlp

there is no excuse for the y axis not to start at 0 when the range is [25, 75]

Doorknob 冰

@orlp This is a SE-generated graph, not mine :P

trichoplax

Also your x axis needs to start at 1AD

Doorknob 冰

/site-analytics

@trichoplax ^^^^^ That's 3 years.

trichoplax

5:12 PM

@Doorknob冰 That looks much more promising (and decisive)

orlp

@Doorknob冰 was the january spike code-trolling?

Doorknob 冰

Of course

orlp

it's pretty funny that lingered effects for a year

but then the year was over we were pretty much back to natural growth

Doorknob 冰

For good measure, this is since private beta.

(i.e. the entire history of the site)

orlp

30 october were dark days indeed

SuperJedi224

5:14 PM

What do you think the caption preceding this was?

orlp

probably equally artistically brilliant

trichoplax

"Captain Spark needed to fire his publicist"

Alex A.

"I'm not allowed at Sea World anymore"

trichoplax

"The Steganographist gets lazy"

@Doorknob冰 That looks like steady growth leading to graduation within 3 to 6 months...

We have to stay above 70 on that graph, right?

yeti

@wizzwizz4 ... they killed the "seed" jobs on sdf and nsdf... without comment... I think I need to rethink my relation to SDF

Doorknob 冰

5:18 PM

@trichoplax Yep.

SuperJedi224

Actual preceding caption: "Jaws VS. Superspiderman in a hula skirt!"

Doorknob 冰

And I'm going to start trying to post questions on a regular schedule starting Jan 1.

trichoplax

If 2 of us post 1 question per day we've made our quota

Doorknob 冰

I can probably do 1 question every 2 days

We should coordinate this on meta or something :P

Alex A.

@Doorknob冰 A New Year's resolution of sorts? :P

Doorknob 冰

5:20 PM

nods

My activity here has been dropping way too much anyway

trichoplax

Get people to commit to it, then if N people commit they just need to post 1.3/N questions per day. Simple...

Alex A.

I don't have enough good challenge ideas to do much more than what I already do

Which is 3 questions ever

In nearly 2 years on the site

trichoplax

I have a backlog of questions in the sandbox, but a lot of them are KotHs which will take me a lot of time to post

Doorknob 冰

@AlexA. Except World Big Dosa counts as like 20

Alex A.

@Doorknob冰 Hahaha why, because it was ridiculously hard?

trichoplax

5:22 PM

If only the target to graduate was total question rep per day...

Doorknob 冰

@AlexA. No, because it was a meme-spawner :P

Alex A.

New graduation requirement: N memes generated per day.

@Doorknob冰 Ruby question for you: When you have a lambda like ->x,*y{...}, what does *y mean?

Doorknob 冰

Splat operator

Calling that with 4 arguments will make x the first argument and y an array of the remaining 3

Alex A.

And if you call it with one?

Doorknob 冰

So (->a, *b { puts b.join(?,) })[1,2,3,4] would output 2,3,4

@AlexA. Then y is an empty array

err, nil

Actually I'm not sure

Alex A.

5:27 PM

Oh I see, I was thinking a single array input as the only argument

Doorknob 冰

/me tests it

Alex A.

But that means x is the first element and y is the remaining elements?

Doorknob 冰

Yeah, y is an empty array if the whole thing is called with one argument.

Yep, basically.

Alex A.

Why is the first element not splatted with y?

Doorknob 冰

Because of the x

Alex A.

5:28 PM

Okay

That makes sense

Doorknob 冰

->*x { ... } makes x an array of all the arguments

->x, y, *z { ... } makes x the first arg, y the second, and z an array of the remaining

Alex A.

:O I understand something. Thank you!!

Doorknob 冰

No problem!

quartata

Splat operator is really cool

Alex A.

I wish I knew more Ruby.

quartata

5:31 PM

> I wish I knew more Perl. -Alex A.

Doorknob 冰

They're both shiny. Same thing, right? :P

Alex A.

> I wish Perl would disappear forever. — Alex A.

Mauris

Would a C answer to Make a Unicorn interpreter constitute a C compiler along with the silly unicorn conversions?

Because that would be an amazing answer.

quartata

> deleted by quartata, Doorknob 冰♦

I bet Doorknob is getting real sick of seeing this

It's not my fault I'm so good at finding super old bad answers

@Mauris I still don't understand why everyone is talking about unicode unicorns

dorothy

added definition and worked example... I hope the downvotes will be reversed!

quartata

5:34 PM

@dorothy ?

dorothy

@quartata codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/68176/21585 which is currently breaking my heart

Mauris

On her entropy challenge, I presume.

undergroundmonorail

@Doorknob冰 did you see what i made with your help

Doorknob 冰

I did not

Alex A.

@Doorknob冰 So in -> x, *y { ... }, called on an array [1,2,3,4], x would be 1?

dorothy

5:35 PM

@Mauris yep

Doorknob 冰

@quartata No, not at all; keep the flags coming! Getting bad content off the site is always a good thing :)

undergroundmonorail

the next message i send is going to begin with @Doorknob冰@

Doorknob 冰

@AlexA. yes

undergroundmonorail

@Doorknob冰 hello

quartata

@undergroundmonorail Wow a prophet

Doorknob 冰

5:36 PM

@undergroundmonorail Oh that's nifty

Mauris

@dorothy Neat! I changed by downvote to an upvote, which is sort of like a super-duper-double vote.

dorothy

@Mauris thanks!

undergroundmonorail

i don't know javascript lel

Doorknob 冰

s/\t/ /g

quartata

@undergroundmonorail my eyes

undergroundmonorail

5:37 PM

@Doorknob冰 gross

quartata

get those tabs out of here

@Doorknob冰 No two spaces

Mauris

@orlp What's the story with code-trolling?

Doorknob 冰

hahahaha

Mauris

I totally missed that bit of PPCG history.

quartata

@Mauris Once upon a time there was a really shitty tag called code-trolling. Doorknob nuked it off the face of the earth. The end.

Doorknob 冰

5:38 PM

For the record, it moves the last keydown event to the front of the "list" of events. That way your function is called before SE's default functions.

Otherwise, the message would be sent before the replacement would be made.

Mauris

That's great

undergroundmonorail

@Doorknob冰 neat, ty

Mauris

But like, it was hugely popular somehow??

undergroundmonorail

among non-ppcg people

it attracted a lot of people to the site

Doorknob 冰

Tragedy of the HNQ

2

undergroundmonorail

5:39 PM

but it was very bad

Mauris

Did people submit a trillion questions because lololol le epic trolls

Doorknob 冰

Pretty much

And they all got a million upvotes

Mauris

:( the internet

Doorknob 冰

From association-bonus-wielding users from other sites

Alex A.

And Grace Note contacted us and was like "Congrats your site is doing awesome you're on track to graduate!"

quartata

5:40 PM

I wish the association bonus didn't kick in until you actually did something on the site

Doorknob 冰

@AlexA. haha yeah

quartata

@AlexA. I saw that post.

Doorknob 冰

And then we never heard from them again

quartata

Made me cry

Alex A.

@Doorknob冰 Unsurprising, given the activity graph you posted earlier.

"You're on track to graduate!" Activity tanks.

Doorknob 冰

5:41 PM

Haha, but this was waaaay before 10q/day was ever a thing.

trichoplax

If only we'd delayed killing the troll until after graduation...

undergroundmonorail

"You're on track to graduate!" "no, not like this..."

Alex A.

I'm so bad at reading. I have the sandbox open in another tab and I thought the tab text said "Sandbox for Proposed Children."

Doorknob 冰

O_o

quartata

Ah, this one

31

Q: What does Code Golf's progress look like right now?

I'm Grace Note, a Community Manager at Stack Exchange. We have a process for how sites go about graduating or sticking around in Beta, but as noted in the comments there, Code Golf is one of two sites that we do not have periodic "Site Evaluations" where we compare questions against the rest of ...

trichoplax

5:42 PM

Interestingly, despite the huge popularity of code trolling, since being banned there hasn't been a Code Trolling Beta

quartata

@AlexA. !

Alex A.

@trichoplax Do you mean an Area 51 proposed site dedicated to code trolling?

quartata

@AlexA. Yes

That would be terrible

Alex A.

Sure would

trichoplax

@AlexA. I'm not certain there hasn't been one of those, but I know there hasn't been one that's got to Beta... :)

Alex A.

5:44 PM

:P

undergroundmonorail

i cri evry tim

Alex A.

dat githab activite tho

trichoplax

Yay! More charts with no labels :P

Alex A.

It's GitHub's activity heatmap

trichoplax

It's a lot hotter than mine...

Alex A.

5:45 PM

Each square is a day

Optimizer

who is GitHub?

trichoplax

It was my old username

undergroundmonorail

the only reason today is so dark is that i didn't feel like remembering how git worked at 5am today so i just copypasted everything into new files via the site

that's 3 that should have been 1

Alex A.

@Doorknob冰 Basically with the Ruby questions I'm trying to understand Histocrat's answer. It does ->a,*o{a.each_cons(2){...}}, which doesn't make sense to me. If a is a single integer, a.each_cons(2) should be nil, shouldn't it?

quartata

Question

12

A: Cracking the Enigma?

JavaScript, 40 (c,p)=>c.search(p.replace(/./g,"[^$&]")) Using replace, this maps the plaintext input into a regular expression of form /[^H][^E][^L][^L][^O]/ (e.g., for plaintext input HELLO) and then uses search to test for the first index of the ciphertext substring that matches that regex. ...

Why does this have 12 upvotes

Alex A.

5:47 PM

@quartata Answer

quartata

When the next solution

Alex A.

Oh, wow, that's a really clever solution! — Doorknob 冰 ♦ 2 hours ago

quartata

3

A: Cracking the Enigma?

CJam, 17 bytes ll:A,ew{A.=:+}%0# Try it here. Explanation: ll:A,ew e% Finds every slice in the coded message with the length of the word {A.=:+}% e% Compare the characters in each slice to the characters in the word, and add up the result. If the sum is zero, then the slice and the word...

Only has 3?

Sure it's clever but that doesn't mean the other solutions don't deserve upvotes

Alex A.

People vote how they want to vote

quartata

I don't think I've ever seen so much of a gap between votes

Alex A.

5:48 PM

Try to attach a pattern to it and you'll go bald

quartata

Patterns will give me pattern hair loss

Alex A.

Yes

Help I'm stuck in irb! Neither exit() nor Ctrl+C kills it D:

quartata

Ctrl+D

Alex A.

Oh, thank you.

That worked.

Why did it work?

quartata

Damn Mac scrubs

@AlexA. EOF

undergroundmonorail

5:51 PM

@AlexA. EOF chararacter

Alex A.

I know that

quartata

Closes STDIN

Alex A.

Oh

So it was expecting me to enter something?

undergroundmonorail

an alternate solution would have been "unplug computer"

Alex A.

It's a laptop ;-;

quartata

5:52 PM

@undergroundmonorail The Windows solution

@AlexA. Yes

undergroundmonorail

@AlexA. it'll still work but it'll take longer

Alex A.

@quartata I ain't no Windows scrub. #maclife

quartata

I suppose irb(main):001:0> isn't that obvious of a prompt

Alex A.

Not at all

Oh, lol. I had mismatched parens.

Wow, irb has super not helpful messages

quartata

irb is very scrub tier I'll admit

Alex A.

5:56 PM

Scrub tier makes non-scrubs tear.

undergroundmonorail

this is my favourite thing on the Free Software Foundation's website

quartata

Best Perl REPL: perl -nwe eval

@undergroundmonorail ??

Alex A.

@undergroundmonorail I'm not familiar with the WTFPL license.

quartata

Oh I get it

undergroundmonorail

github.com/undergroundmonorail/pb-lang/blob/master/copying.txt

:26505281

quartata

5:58 PM

> Do What the Fuck You Want to Public License

ok

Alex A.

lel

trichoplax

@undergroundmonorail My favourite part of that is "patent treachery"

undergroundmonorail

@undergroundmonorail oh look, a bug

Alex A.

Empty replies don't work

Best Perl REPL

undergroundmonorail

i thought for sure i had seen empty replies before. must have been pings i guess

Alex A.

5:59 PM

@undergroundmonorail

:26505341

trichoplax

@undergroundmonorail It used to be possible to post apparently empty replies, but they fixed that

Alex A.

You mean stealth pings?

undergroundmonorail

trichoplax

Following discussion on Meta, it is no longer acceptable to post answers in languages which are an anagram of REPL

Alex A.

>:D

undergroundmonorail

6:01 PM

@trichoplax on this day, i finally understand perl's name

trichoplax

It's a Print-Eval-Read loop

Alex A.

It was intended to be "Pearl," but Larry Wall sucks at spelling.

undergroundmonorail

larry -Wall

mınxomaτ

Nov 4 at 23:55, by mınxomaτ

REPL is Perl reversed and shifted left once.

trichoplax

@mınxomaτ Way ahead of me...

BlockCoder1392

6:05 PM

hi

trichoplax

Hi.

mınxomaτ

HI!

Alex A.

Such language will not be tolerated here

Optimizer

HAIII

undergroundmonorail

hoI!!

i'm TEMMIE

mınxomaτ

6:14 PM

@Optimizer translate.google.com/#de/en/Hai

Alex A.

@Doorknob冰 Based on some experimentation, doing f=->a,*o{p a} with f.([1,2,3]) prints [1,2,3], whereas f=->a,*o{p o} f.([1,2,3]) prints [].

quartata

This room should just be renamed to "Perl Hatred Discussion"

> General discussion for perlhaters.stackexchange.com | abadon all perl, ye who enter here --Alex A.

Alex A.

proposes PerlHaters.SE on Area 51

mınxomaτ

@AlexA. You joke now, but I want to see your face when PerlHaters.SE graduates before PPCG.

5

quartata

@mınxomaτ AHHHH

NO

strawpoll.me/6404703 serious poll

I think I know why people have shown absolutely no interest in pl

Oh, if only I had made rb instead

mınxomaτ

6:22 PM

@quartata rubbish

Alex A.

I like to hate on Perl but in all seriousness it's not terrible. After having used it for several projects at two different jobs, I find that I prefer other languages.

quartata

Like Julia I take it

Optimizer

> I take it like Julia

Sherlock9

@quartata I gave it a blind Yay. Might as well

quartata

@Optimizer What is wrong with you people

Optimizer

6:24 PM

you said the exact same thing yoda style

Alex A.

@quartata Basically every language I know fairly well I prefer to Perl. That sounds harsh but I don't mean it that way.

mınxomaτ

@Sherlock9 Well, you're the tiebreaker.

quartata

I actually want to get everyone to vote on this

It just seems like everyone here hates Perl and I want to see if that is actually true

So far it doesn't seem to be the case strangely

You people are very confusing

Alex A.

Bashing things is more fun than not bashing things

mınxomaτ

@quartata Because people always answer random internet polls with their true opinion.

quartata

6:28 PM

I did say "serious poll" before it

Doorknob 冰

@AlexA. That's right. An array is a single argument.

trichoplax

@quartata That makes all the difference :P

I haven't used Perl and have no opinion on it, but there wasn't a box for that

Alex A.

@Doorknob冰 But I thought you said that in ->a,*o{...} called on an array, a would be the first element and o would be the rest of them?

Doorknob 冰

@AlexA. no

Alex A.

Oh

I misunderstood

Doorknob 冰

6:29 PM

An array is one argument

o is a list of arguments

a is the first argument, o is the remainder

Alex A.

Which are all empty if called with one argument

mınxomaτ

@quartata Case in point: blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results

> Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among men: 1. Penis, 2. Gay ...

Doorknob 冰

@AlexA. yes

Sherlock9

@trichoplax Same, really

Alex A.

@Doorknob冰 Okay great. Thanks again!

quintopia

6:30 PM

hey guys! take this poll: strawpoll.me/6404805

Doorknob 冰

@AlexA. histocrat's answer works because when it's called with one argument, a is that argument and o is []. It's basically shorthand for ->a{o=[];...}.

Alex A.

Gotcha.

trichoplax

@quintopia That seems pretty conclusive...

Optimizer

So.. Java question - what is the best alternative to Thread Locals?

Doorknob 冰

@trichoplax haha

Hey someone voted for not-that

Alex A.

6:32 PM

Why in the world can Ruby access non-existant indices of a list??? And assign to the nth element of an empty list???

undergroundmonorail

i know what psychonauts is but i don't care and double fine has been kind of trash recently

Doorknob 冰

@AlexA. Accessing a too-high element is nil

Alex A.

Right

Doorknob 冰

negative indeces wrap around once, but then they become nil too

Alex A.

But in any other language it's an error

Doorknob 冰

6:32 PM

no

in JS it's undefined

Alex A.

Oh. In languages I like it's an error. :P

Doorknob 冰

in Perl it's undef

Alex A.

> languages I like

Doorknob 冰

in C it's... whatever happens to be there in memory :P

Alex A.

O_O

mınxomaτ

6:33 PM

@Doorknob冰 Or a "Fatal Memory Error" when DEP kicks in.

quartata

in pl, 31 secs ago, by quartata

I've become re-addicted to Counter Strike which makes coding difficult

Doorknob 冰

or a segfault if you hit the right place

quartata

damn you valve

I see Doorknob already ninja'd me on that.

Alex A.

@quartata Which one?

Sherlock9

I wish Python would just output None on bad indices

Well, maybe I don't. On second thought, that may not be a good idea vs. the error I get now

Alex A.

6:36 PM

Seems useful for golfing but not in practice.

quartata

@AlexA. csgo

mınxomaτ

I hate when I accidentally upvote instead of showing the vote ratio. And I can't undo until edit...

quartata

Picked it up in the summer sale.

Alex A.

@mınxomaτ Read first, decide how you feel, vote appropriately, see how others voted. Don't let the opinions of the masses sway your own.

@quartata I don't think I've played that one.

mınxomaτ

@AlexA. I didn't intend to vote at all. I was curious.

Alex A.

6:38 PM

Oh, okay

quartata

I played CS (the original) liek years ago

I don't think Steam was even a thing

I've since forgotten everything I knew about the game

Doorknob 冰

strawpoll.me/6404875

quartata

So now I'm just a silver scrub getting rekt in the face by smurfs

Fun times

Alex A.

@quartata What in the world does that even mean

@Doorknob冰 I don't know what that means so I voted for waffles.

Doorknob 冰

this

quartata

6:40 PM

@AlexA. smurfs = people in global elite who buy alternate accounts so they can play at far lower ranks because apparently playing with scrubs is fun

@AlexA. I love waffles

Doorknob 冰

come on why is everybody voting for waffles why did I put that there

:P

Alex A.

@Doorknob冰 "Scheduled events" does not answer "what is a New Year's party in TNB"

@Doorknob冰 You've only yourself to blame

quartata

@AlexA. Waffles, however, does accurately answer the question.

quintopia

@Doorknob冰 so far it's unanimous

Doorknob 冰

@AlexA. I've never used the event schedule kajigger in chat but it looks fancy so I want to do a thing with it

New Main Posts

6:41 PM

1

Q: I spy with my little eye a number beginning with n++

If you have ever travelled with kids more than about 20 minutes, you will have no doubt heard cries of "Are we there yet?" and "How much further?" So we play games like "I Spy" to help pass the time as the miles go by. There is a variation on "I Spy" whereby instead of spotting arbitrary named ...

code-golf number counting

Alex A.

Just like when I get Rick Astley stuck in my head. It's always my fault because I was rickrolling someone.

Doorknob 冰

ಠ_ಠ

Alex A.

49 secs ago, by Alex A.

@Doorknob冰 You've only yourself to blame

quintopia

basically, waffles are delicious

Alex A.

Waffles or pancakes

quintopia

6:42 PM

otters

Alex A.

Let the flame war begin

quintopia

anyway, do what you want, but i'll be too busy getting slowly pissed with friends and board games

quartata

@AlexA. Both

And french toast too

@Doorknob冰 Honestly, I'm surprised you even provided yes and no as options. It's fairly obvious that waffles is the correct answer.

I suppose they're trick answers

quintopia

also, I think the acronym for this room should be 0x13 instead of TNB. it's less ambiguous.

3

trichoplax

So, waffles at midnight it is

BlockCoder1392

6:49 PM

hi againn

Doorknob 冰

> waffles at midnight

relevant xkcd

New Main Posts

2

Q: Return prime factorization of a number

Yes, this is old and probably very simple, but I really want to be mindblown by things that I thought were obvious, so here's the challenge: You're given a positive integer as the input and you need to output the exponents of all of the prime factors up to the highest factor in base 36 ( 0, 1, 2...

code-golf sequence primes

dorothy

@xnor hi

2

trichoplax

@Doorknob冰 Surprisingly relevant :)

But already taken...

Doorknob 冰

haha seriously?

wow I am impressed

undergroundmonorail

6:53 PM

i have a tumblr post with 17k notes and i hate it

i have made so many funnier posts

trichoplax

@undergroundmonorail Some of the chat messages I'm least proud of have the most stars

9

quartata

Dammit base conversion doesn't work the way I thought it did in Jelly

DJ McMayhem

@trichoplax like that one?

trichoplax

@DJMcMayhem Hmmm...

dorothy

7:27 PM

hi @Sherlock9

quintopia

i'm ripping the welcome to night vale novel to mp3

DJ McMayhem

The novel or the audiobook?

quintopia

the audiobook version of the novel

(being read aloud makes it no less a novel, you know)

DJ McMayhem

Haha, I guess you're right.

dorothy

this must be the longest I have ever waited for an answer on codegolf.... people are tired after christmas! :)

quintopia

7:38 PM

there's not enough time! there's no time at all!

dorothy

@quintopia what do you mean?

quintopia

@dorothy the question is very confusing. could you include a fully worked example?

DJ McMayhem

@quintopia what is this, stack exchange?

Alex A.

@DJMcMayhem ...Yes

quintopia

@dorothy In particular, your example skips a vital step: Now look at all 2^2 different possible vectors x. For each one we compute Mx and put all the results in an array. What are the different vectors? What are all the results?

quintopia

7:55 PM

so WTNV takes 10 discs...i have to go to work without finishing the rip :/

Transcript for