The Nineteenth Byte

<>?

And, I think that's optimal. The only ones not used are %&*+/>@^|, which are all infix operators, and there's no way to define a new object using them to have as the other argument

~-.5 doesn't work

It does, due to short circuiting

you can put ~ in front of _ instead though

5:03 PM

Try it online!

ato.pxeger.com/…

TIL that <> is a thing. 20

you can get *

How? Python2 doesn't allow [*...] style splatting

oh ffs

py2 bad

5:06 PM

Yep :P

But it's allowing me to use <, > and backtick, so switching would have to enable 4 commands to be worth it

Hang on, we can reuse characters right, they just don't count as extra? So [[]] is ok, but only scores 2?

yup

wait

but I've got 1 more even without dupes

I think I;ve got all of them

so i can use _ multiple times allowing infix operations?

5:11 PM

yes

but actually disallowing dupes is more fun tbh

so it needs to just be a bunch of symbols in a row and the score is the number of distinct chars in that sequence? that is a lot different than what i thought

@pxeger Are we allowed to count string delimiters?

from the wording i thought the sequence needed to not contain repeat characters

Try it online! scores 24

wait does python 2 not have @ lol

5:12 PM

@AaronMiller yes

@hyper-neutrino Nope

@hyper-neutrino In decorators?

How tf you gonna put a decorator in the mix? :P

i meant the infix operator

@Dudecoinheringaahing with difficulty

lol

5:14 PM

Oh boy, I'm about to learn about if/else! Wish me luck! :p

Oh wait, else is too advanced. Only if for now :p

lol

God forbid you learn about else if :P

26 with _!=_<"">''%_&_*(_,)[:]+_-_._/_^{}|~_;

@hyper-neutrino 26? How are you using backslash?

Oh, markdown fail?

wait what

i am not using backslash or backtick

also +1 because i forgot @

5:17 PM

24 includes backslash and backticks. You can't get 26 without those, right?

where are you getting 24 from

6 mins ago, by Dude coinheringaahing

Try it online! scores 24

That uses backslash and backticks, but not either string delimiter, meaning that they should both score 24

tio.run/##K6gsycjPM/yfqGCrYMoVDyQt/…

I am very confused

22 without dupes

5:20 PM

ato.pxeger.com/…

can you combine with that?

oh wait, i am double counting your +

still, i just plugged my code into print(len(set(input()))) so like, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

not sure how that could be wrong

Wait, does Java not automatically cast integers to booleans in if conditions?

@hyper-neutrino Yeah, so did I

@BrowncatPrograms no

> Java
> auto-cast

5:21 PM

>:|

conditions must strictly take booleans

@pxeger I can't get to your site because Finland doesn't exist.

Actually it's because firewalls and geoblocking

doesn't matter, you basically discovered my trick as well

but tio.run/##K6gsycjPM/…

you can get around geographic restrictions though with the sponsor of today's video, ___VPN

@pxeger What trick?

5:24 PM

@AaronMiller putting the comma before the backslash

and then using _ elsewhere

@Dudecoinheringaahing i still get 26 for your solution tio.run/##K6gsycjPM/qfqGCrYMoVDyQt/…

@pxeger lol I just put the comma in random places hoping it would work and then made surprised pikachu noises when it did.

''[:]*+~-_%()<>{}!=.5,\
;`5`

^ gets you % as well

*surprised pikachu noises*

anyway, i can prepend backslash-newline to my code if i want

5:27 PM

@pxeger But you don't get the backslash, backtick, comma, or semicolon because there's that first 5 in there

you could put the backslash at the end and not need to use a newline

@AaronMiller oh I'm dumb, but it can probably be rearranged to use _

prbly

> Write a program that takes the input of an integer number from the keyboard and prints "Positive" if it's positive or zero, and prints "Negative" otherwise. You must use an else statement to gain full credit for this exercise.

My code:

if(true){}else{}

System.out.print(input < 0 ? "Negative" : "Positive");

lol

I hope you get full credit for that

I did

It's an auto-grading thing :p

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

5:37 PM

lmao

you can golf it with if(1>1);else;

Sandbox Posts

0

Create a maze Your challenge is to create a maze. All mazes must be possible. Mazes should be surrounded by walls of hashtags. (#) The starting point should be marked by an O. The ending point should be marked as an X. Obstacles are also marked as hashtags (#). The maze should be 16x8. So, an exa...

Aw man, ["F","D","C","B","A"][input] doesn't seem to work in Java

(new String[] { "F", "D", "C", "B", "A" })[input]

i think

or just "FDCBA".charAt(input)?

Ooh that worked

I was trying to use "FDCBA"[input] like you would with JS

javascript and java are as similar as carpets and cars

5:41 PM

You say that like they're different.

Adám

What do you call the type of domesticated animals that you'd use to cuddle with in a car?

Fish

vehicular companions

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

@Adám carpanions :P

Sandbox Posts

6:11 PM

0

Shortest common superstring Your challenge is to find the shortest common superstring (SCS) for a sequence of English words. The SCS for a sequence is the smallest string that contains all the words in the sequence. The words should be passed as a function parameter. Answers should be posted in t...

6:49 PM

@Adám Humans?

@SandboxPosts I want to do the whole feedback thing (aka this is probably a dupe, don't do pop-cons), but I'm in the middle of something :/

Someone ping me in an hour and I'll do it :P

@BrowncatPrograms [index] only works on arrays in Java, so you'd have to do string.toCharArray()[input] or something like that

There's a question I remember from worldbuilding that was really cool, but I can't find it :/

7:06 PM

We spent 39 months between graduation and getting a design, second only to Anime & Manga. However, currently, both Philosophy and Law have spent 61 months waiting for their designs so far O.o

Philosophy: Is a site without a design still a real site?
Law: See you in court! *files discrimination lawsuit against SE*

Adám

Code Golf: Give us the shortest CSS!

That could be an interesting experiment: popularity-contest to create a site design, winner actually gets applied to the site :P

Sounds like free labor to me :P

@BrowncatPrograms I found it!

7:15 PM

Lnk?

It involved googling "hospital rocket"

This

We have a challenge themed around that same question :P

Really?

@Dudecoinheringaahing We'll soon have two :p

It was a major inspiration for hunter-gatherer koth

CMQ: funniest pair of letters?

7:20 PM

Problem is: I've seen it before, but I can't remember enough details about it to search for it :/

Same situation I was in finding the original on wb :p

@pxeger bq in certain fonts :P

I spent a whole 1.5 hr class period not paying attention, searching through chat transcripts, user profiles, and looking up things on worldbuilding

I've narrowed the search query to around 500 questions :P

I finally managed to find it because I remembered one answer had mentioned advanced medicine and space travel, so I searched for "hospital rocket" and managed to find it :p

A hosptial rocket is probably not a good invention, though

7:22 PM

Now I'm imagining a rocket with a mini hospital on top of it to help the victims

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

I think Doorknob answered it, but he has like 500 answers, and I don't want to be wrong :P

ಠ_ಠ I found what question I was looking for, doesn't really have anything to do with that WB question: codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/24862/66833

Sandbox Posts

0

Distances between keys on a QWERTY keyboard code-golf math kolmogorov-complexity Inspired by this video by Matt Parker The distances between the letter keys of a QWERTY keyboard are somewhat standardised. The keys are square and both the horizontal and vertical spacing are 19.05mm (so if there we...

7:43 PM

Actually, I live in a 2D universe where nothing moves and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle doesn't apply

Argh, I hate it when I make a typo in a comment and I'm 51 minutes too late

I'm loving all the cat pics, everyone. ^_^

A little disappointed that Catija isn't a cat, tho.

As much as I'd love that, I'd be incredibly shocked if a CM changed their profile picture to take part in a joke in TNB :P

And it's no surprise that Slate wouldn't exactly be on team cat, being a bird and all ;)

@Dudecoinheringaahing Could she change just her profile on CG.SE? Or would she have to set that account as her chat account's parent user in order for the change to show up in chat?

7:59 PM

@DLosc I think she should be able to change her parent user if she wanted to without that affecting mod powers (unlike e.g. HN who has to have his parent as CGCC to be a mod in chat), and she could change her profile picture on just CGCC, but I'd still be surprised :P

We've yet to convince any of the SE staff to take part in code golf (even Jeff Atwood, who has 3 gold badges here) tho :P

We have something better than SE staff participation: Jon Skeet participation!

~~just one answer but still~~

@Dudecoinheringaahing I was wrong: Yaakov has 141 rep here :P

@Catija This is supposed to stay, even with the new Staff indicators on metas right? Cause it looks like your staff indicator on your main profiles has disappeared. (Same with JNat and Yaakov, so it's not just you)

The indicator is still on your meta profiles tho

8:18 PM

@Dudecoinheringaahing ???

Oh lol, I'd ignored DLosc (and Catija)

@user I mean, I assume you're ignoring all cat posts as a matter of principle, so I'm not offended. ;)

Hi

@DLosc Well, I ignored everyone, but yeah, the cats were the first to go :P

@emanresuA Hi

Ironically, ignoring everyone is a very cat thing to do

Don't you dare gaslight me!

8:27 PM

Have you stopped ignoring us?

Obviously, yes

7 hours ago, by user

Okay I'm gonna unignore y'all, I can't bear to be alone

8:50 PM

I've added Johnvertisements to the Ｃｕｒｓｅｄ site. When the window is too small, the johnvertisements grow and shrink when the buttons expand to fill that area. Does anybody know how to stop it from doing that?

That is perfectly cursed behavior, though

that sounds nice

Link? I lost. it.

@user true

I forgot that was the point

@emanresuA amiller42.github.io/Cursed-Language

The unicorns are gone :(

8:56 PM

^^ ninja'd

sad

17 hours ago, by Aaron Miller

@emanresuA I like the unicorns, but after looking at them for about 2 hours while working on the site, I like them marginally less, so I think I'll stick with the blue background for the time being, if for no other reason than to give my eyes a break, but if you or user or anyone wants to put that in a fork or a branch or something, I'm down.

Ah

I think the johvertisements fit the theme of the site perfectly

9:11 PM

yeah

I feel you should add more of them

10:04 PM

@Dudecoinheringaahing Weird... I'll... check. On MSE it's still there but also is the pale colors instead of the bright ones.

@AaronMiller you should make the execute and linkify buttons cycle size at different cycle lengths / intervals

Can you create a bug report about it... somewhere? MSE, probably?

@Catija I get the pale colours on site metas as well: codegolf.meta.stackexchange.com/users/11952/yaakov-ellis

Yeah, but on main they're the bold colors, which is what's confusing me.

@Catija Open a new one, or post an answer to the indicator introduction question?

@Catija Ah, I get you

10:06 PM

I feel like it should be one or the other. I guess I understand not having staff on main sites but... I kinda would rather have "Staff" on main sites for people like me... but, whatever.

@Dudecoinheringaahing New question, I think. That other one is old enough we should consider this a new issue.

Q: Staff members no longer have Staff labels on their main sites profile page

@Catija Personally, I think having Staff on main profiles makes sense, because it's not like you're only staff on metas.

@Catija Will start drafting now :)

13

Here's what the username line looks like on RPG main And meta (sorry @Slate, I just happened to spot it on your profile): From a brief investigation, this appears to affect all staff and consistently across other main/meta sites. For staff without diamonds there is no indication on their profil...

Looks like someone beat me to it :P

@Dudecoinheringaahing So, in general, the idea is to let staff members be more anonymous if they're just using the site like a regular person. Most staff members don't actually do work related things when they're asking or answering questions on sites... only when they're interacting on meta.

So, having people who are staff mods (like me) marked as mods but also having staff will help explain the actual situation... essentially, "how are you a mod but not on the mod list?"

Anyway, I'll see if we can at least make the colors match properly.

I think that we could also do an if/then - so if mod, then if staff,also show staff.

@Catija Yeah. That's why I support not having the "always visible" Staff marker on mains, like on metas. But, I still think that Staff members should be easily identifiable, given some basic investigation, so I support having the Staff marker on every staff profile page (including main sites)

@Catija I think the mod + staff is a bit redundant tbh, and maybe even a bit misleading. A better solution might be if {staff} then {staff_label} else { if {mod} then {mod_label} else {no_label}}

I think Yaakov is working on a staff marker with a diamond in it... but that makes profile pages more complicated... if I'm a staff mod, do main site profiles show the mod only or the staff mod icon? :P

We do actually need to distinguish staff with mod abilities from general staff.

I know that staff mods != staff, but are there any significant differences, practically speaking?

10:15 PM

We have much more access to things like PII that regular staff members do not have access to that.

I can suspend a user - a non-mod staff member can not.

So it's more the "high-level" mod powers (rather than editing anywhere, or using the red meta tags)?

There's actually very little that a staff only user can do that a regular user can not, like editing on meta sites and adding red tags - yeah.

That said, as a CM I have even more access. We have special markers for CMs that grants us access to CM-specific pages that even other diamond staff don't have access to.

... we really are careful with how we let people access data. :D

I think I saw a mockup - probably a suggestion, not official - of a staff marker with a diamond in it. I think that's probably the best way, as the double labels can take up a lot of space

@Catija For which I'm very glad :P

@Catija If I asked "Like what", would you have to kill me after telling me? :P

Nah. Mostly it's some dashboards with site metrics and network-wide things... like I have a page that shows me all of the community-specific close reasons network-wide and one that shows me the bulletins network wide. :D

@Dudecoinheringaahing If that happens, please let us know before you pass away :P

10:20 PM

@Dudecoinheringaahing Interestingly, (and as I'm sure you can probably verify, Cat) I still don't trust SE enough to fill out the "Full Name" field in my profile

@Catija Why is access to that restricted?

@Catija Bulletins?

@user Probably because it's expensive to build the page.

Oh

@Dudecoinheringaahing The thing in the sidebar with the blog and meta posts and stuff like that.

10:20 PM

speaking of which

@Dudecoinheringaahing ...should I be worried?

the community ads are finally unfeatured, it seems

@Dudecoinheringaahing I mean... I don't fill in that field. :P

But that doesn't really mean much in my case.

@user community-specific close reasons for each site are a 10k+ stat as well, just because HN got a diamond here doesn't mean he should necessarily get the same info elsewhere

10:22 PM

It's also got more Google Analytics stuff, which we're careful about being public.

@Catija Wait, you mean your full name isn't Catija? I thought you were going for a Beyoncé style mononym :P

That'd be kinda cool.

@Catija You have one of those for 170+ sites? Wow, that must be a cluttered page

Oh, also, the tools for help center editing. Only Devs and CMs can edit those pages, I think.

@Catija At least here, on SE, you can be as cool as Beyoncé :P

10:23 PM

Oh, and the most important tab - the one that lets us create elections. :D

@emanresuA Mom, is that you?

2

@Dudecoinheringaahing I will never be cool. :D

@user Yes, dearie.

@Catija Speaking of, I have many requests. #1 being: can we have control over those for us? And, if #1 is a no, if we provide you with texts that we'd like in those sections, could you consider replacing them to be more accurate to our site?

@Catija Speaking as a child, you'll always be cool to your kids at least (however much they'll deny it :P)

10:25 PM

@Dudecoinheringaahing It's not so bad, we only show the ones with any content...

I think they're in order by site ID.

@Dudecoinheringaahing I think I've talked with @hyper-neutrino about this... for y'all, we can customize some of the pages but we'd rather y'all create the text for the pages and we edit them for you... so I guess that's a yes-ish answer?

@Dudecoinheringaahing It's cute that you say that... I should find your parents and tell them :D I know my kids now think I'm the best but (as I mentioned at bedtime last night) I'm not always sure whether they think I'm the best or they think I'm their slave...

@Catija So if we create a meta post similar to this to create drafts for some of the most important pages, you'd be open to changing the pages to our versions?

Yep.

@Catija Feel free to tell them, I regularly compliment my parents :P

@Catija brb, creating a meta post :P

discussion feature-request status-review challenge-quality help-center

The important caveat is that ... we're not just going to change a few words, so find pages that you think need a big overhaul - and I know that y'all have different question types, so we can help address that.

I think there's already a meta post for at least one of the pages. Not sure which one.

15

Q: A Better Help Center

This question is somewhat in response to The one limiting stat for us still being in beta where the consensus seemed to be that question quality was the main issue. I definitely agree. I believe that the biggest culprits for badly asked questions are: People that ask generic programming question...

So, the issue here is that this is a really old suggestion and y'all need to update it, so feel free to make sure the text is current now and we can look at updating it.

We have 3 status-deferred questions about the help-center, and one status-review. However, none of them really ask for drafts, so I'd be happy to create one to solicit drafts on pages that need to be changed

10:31 PM

There's a draft on the one up there that I linked to. :)

It's just... old. It still calls the site PPCG.

I think a question that has the format of "Post an answer containing a page you believe needs refining, along with a draft for what it should look like" would be a good idea

@Catija Yeah, I'm aware of a couple of drafts floating around meta, but they could do with unifying and updating

It'd be easier for me to get it on my list of things to do if it were one page per question.

should we put it into one question asking for help center changes and we can have each answer marked as completed each time, or would it be easier to just have them separate?

okay that answers my question

Unrelated: I have mad props to you guys for not going crazy under the amount of spam/lost souls you get on SO and MSE. I know Charcoal and your internal spam systems must help, but I've gotten 472 flags in 4 months by flagging off-topic stuff on MSE, and y'all have to deal with a lot of that

@hyper-neutrino @Catija Thoughts on having a "nominate pages for rework" thread, then people can post questions + maybe self answers for specific pages?

The mods and the active users on MSE do most of it. I'll close the occasional lost souls question but they do a lot of work leaving comments and getting people redirected when they can.

@Dudecoinheringaahing Sure, having a hub for it to track it is good. Can also use a tag to help find things easily.

10:36 PM

help-center?

help-center-rewrite ?

we might want to clean up that tag a bit and close/reject obsolete questions in that case, or a new tag like catija suggested might be better for posts about rewriting it and not just general questions surrounding it

Don't go too crazy. I'd recommend finding 2-4 that you really think need help.

I think I'd like to re-assess just how much of it needs rewriting tbh. If it's 2/3 pages, then help-center plus some status tags should work. If it's a large amount, then a full, organised effort might be in order

Fingers crossed it's mainly 2-4 pages tho

Yeah. That sounds fine to me.

10:38 PM

I should probably finish rewriting this tag wiki, and save my "For the next blog post" tags away first tho :P

No rush on my part. ;)

Tbh, knowing my luck on meta, HN is going to ninja me to the post and I'm going to have to stick to answering it instead :P

If y'all have a short blurb for that blog post about 10 year sites, and maybe a couple of your favorite questions, let me know. I can hand them off internally for whenever it gets republished.

5

@Catija Any expected time frame?

Honestly, I think they want it by tomorrow, but it's just 2-3 sentences and you'd get to write it (or draft it at least) rather than having one of us do it. ;)

10:42 PM

I am a prophet :P

Nah, I saw your message there and then mentioned it in here. :P

I've pinned that just to get some more visibility on it, at least temporarily :)

That said, when we proposed this project in January, it was supposed to include user-generated stuff like a brief description and some favorite questions, so... yeah.

@Catija (I know its obvious but) I actually really like that :) As I said, it shows just a little bit of caring to the communities to signify a pretty impressive milestone

Hey, we like y'all. We just aren't always very good at showing it.

Anyway, got to go feed my kids.

Ping me if you get a few sentences and 1-2 great questions. :)

10:58 PM

Quest for Tetris has to top any "amazing stuff from the site" list. I don't know if it's a great question per se, but it's got the greatest (multi-part) answer I've ever seen.

Agreed

I am trying to solve this... Now, when I go to bed, I see gliders everywhere, colliding in a giant mess. My sleeps are full of nightmares where pulsating pentadecathlons block my way and Herschels are evolving to absorb me. Please, John Conway, pray for me... — dim Mar 7 '17 at 19:50

One of the problems I have with QFT is that its almost "too good"

True, but it also shows the amazing things we can do together.

Or, they could

Was anyone here around when they did it?

Whenever we're asked to demonstrate a good answer, it's always QFt. Not to say that it doesn't deserve it, but there are a lot of absolutely crazy good answers on the site, and they're often overshadowed by QFT

@emanresuA o/

11:02 PM

@Dudecoinheringaahing True

Maybe one of Kamila's Malbolge answers?

Also, quite a few people find QFT controversial - the question is a poor fit for the site, and the answers are more of a proof of concept than an actual answer.

Q: Build a digital clock in Conway's Game of Life

527

Your task is to build a Game of Life simulation representing a digital clock, which satisfies the following properties: The clock displays the hours and minutes in decimal (e.g. 12:00, 3:59, 7:24) with a different state for each of the 1,440 minutes of the day — either the hours will go from 0 ...

code-challenge cellular-automata game-of-life

A: Build a working game of Tetris in Conway's Game of Life

Aaah, I'm one upvote away from repcapping :P

Sep 14 '17 at 0:51, by quartata

0

This began as a quest but ended as an odyssey. Quest for Tetris Processor, 2,940,928 x 10,407,936 This project is the culmination of the efforts of many users over the course of the past 1 & 1/2 years. Although the composition of the team has varied over time, the participants as of writing ar...

I starred that :P

@Dudecoinheringaahing I'll give you an upvote if you can answer this

Given that it took me three hours to figure it out, you'd better write ffast

> ascii-art

> CJam, 200 bytes
> *Looks at Jelly*

I think I'll pass :P

11:29 PM

Guys help I'm trapped in TNB

All 3 of my tabs on my phone's browser are just TNB

I go to switch tabs and it's all I see

@Dudecoinheringaahing ... Which leads into the other thing I was going to say about a "best of" list, which is that most of the things I would consider "best" or "favorite" do have a tenuous relationship with the site rules. Tweetable Mathematical Art was simply wonderful--but it's off-topic because it's too broad. :/

@exedraj Here, open this. It's not TNB. :D

Tbh, I think a post from 2017 or later would probably be best. We got a lot stricter about what is and isn't ok here after that, and more recent posts are more indicative of what we're like as a site now

@exedraj You can never escape us

@DLosc you weren't lying :p

@AaronMiller "\u\s"

Looks like I just did

@exedraj I stand corrected

11:34 PM

@Dudecoinheringaahing Is this list supposed to be representative of the site now, or the site over the past 10 years?

@DLosc I'm not sure. But the blog post will go out to quite a few people, so I believe we should put our best foot forward

If a disclaimer was put on Tweetable Art, I wouldn't mind showcasing it as "Look at what members of our community have done", but even with the closure and the lock, I'm not sure that we wouldn't get a couple of people posting similar challenges afterwards

That's fair. IMHO our "best foot" includes some of the old stuff that's off-topic now... but it would give people the wrong impression if they decide to come here looking for similar content.

Then again, I may be overly cautious

I think we could probably get away with demonstrating Tweetable Art, and (if it has to be a question), I'd nominate "Hello, World! in zero lines of code"

Maybe put one of the math art images as part of the blurb? :D (Nah, 2-3 sentences plus a big picture is too long, surely.)

I'm rather partial to "5 Favorite Letters." The flexibility of getting to pick which five letters you want to use adds a nice twist.

mmm

11:47 PM

If y'all want to suggest challenges over the next few hours, I'll be happy to collect them into a single poll that we can have later

Is this for LY(X)AL

No, for this

Also, blurb suggestions are welcome :P

CMC: What's your elevator pitch for this site? Imagine you're trying to convince someone to join, and you have 2 or 3 sentences. What do you say?

Don't come here, we're all crazy.

fair enough

@AaronMiller are you big plate or small plate?

11:53 PM

yes I am

CMC: Ping Redwolf

@emanresuA No - don't use pings to annoy people

@AaronMiller are you the one on the right or the one on the left?

@emanresuA @BrowncatPrograms yes

I haven't kicked anyone in a while, I could do with the practice :P

11:54 PM

@Dudecoinheringaahing I have pings on for all messages, I'm sort of asking for it :p

@emanresuA Because I'm a bad influence

@exedraj I'd say the one on the right

@AaronMiller okay good

Because that means I did indeed give you gentle scrubbing last night

I can't say for certain, though, since I don't look in the mirror all that often

Q: How can we improve our help center?

If you're small plate, who's big plate?

New Posts

11:59 PM

0

Improving our Tour page and our help center pages has been long in the works, in particular our Asking and Answering pages. Some already existing posts about this are: The "How To Ask" page is misleading Can we get a custom Tour page? Let's rewrite the help center's on-topic page A Better Help C...

discussion help-center help-center-rewrite

@user do you want to be big plate?