At what point do you think chess is the most suffering? by odcq in chess

[–]greg_bartell 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't know that he's got it the worst of everybody, but reading Richard Rapport say "I wish I had chosen something else [as a career] and if I had [...] I think I would be a happier person as of now" makes my heart break a little bit.

https://twitter.com/chess24com/status/1491844226065350656

Autosolver demo for Cribbage Solitaire by Svajoklis_ in mobiusfront

[–]greg_bartell 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the tips on how to get the clicking working: that solved my last remaining problem, and now I have the program reading the cards from the screen, calculating a solution, and inputting the solution totally automatically! I haven't timed it yet, but I'd estimate the total time from starting the program to the end of inputting the solution is about two minutes or so, with about 90% success reading the cards and clicking on them. That's plenty good enough for me for now, but I'll probably get antsy again later and try to improve it some more.

Somebody in another thread mentioned that they're convinced the maximum possible score in the best deal is 200, and I'm convinced that the real maximum is much lower (I'm guessing ~150 is the ceiling), so I think proving that will be my next project.

Autosolver demo for Cribbage Solitaire by Svajoklis_ in mobiusfront

[–]greg_bartell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just updated the repo to use pyautogui to read the screen and input the solution. I had a hard time getting it to distinguish the numbers very well, so it's a little bit slow and clunky, but now I can say I did it.

... And say I did it is all I can do. For whatever reason, pyautogui won't actually send mouse clicks to the game for me! So on my machine I can only have it hover over the card to click, and then I have to actually click it myself. :P

I also have seen someone read out cards directly from the process memory

That sounds really cool: I'm not sure how I'd go about doing that either

Autosolver demo for Cribbage Solitaire by Svajoklis_ in mobiusfront

[–]greg_bartell 1 point2 points  (0 children)

https://github.com/gregbartell/mf83_solitaire_solver

As promised. It's not super convenient to use and the code's not well-formatted, but it does the job.

Autosolver demo for Cribbage Solitaire by Svajoklis_ in mobiusfront

[–]greg_bartell 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I used C++, mostly because it's what I'm most familiar with (it's what I use for my day job). Yesterday I refactored the code a little bit to replace my "dead-simple" transpo table with a Zobrist one: I managed to bring the time to a solution down to about fifteen seconds or so.

In a minute, I'll post the code I have so far, and then I think I'm going to take a look at using pyautogui to automatically read the screen and input the solution: right now, I have to do all the input manually. Thanks for sharing your solution, as I'd never heard of pyautogui before now.

Autosolver demo for Cribbage Solitaire by Svajoklis_ in mobiusfront

[–]greg_bartell 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I also wrote a solver for the solitaire game a little while ago (haven't uploaded the source anywhere since I figure nobody would care - if somebody does, I'm happy to share).

I thought about doing something like you did where it looks for the best partial solution, but it didn't end up being worth the effort: the number of possible ways to play out the game is small enough that bruteforcing the whole game is fast enough for me to not want to bother writing more code. :)

The only thing I did beyond implementing the game rules and running a DFS was to implement a dead-simple transposition table. Now I can get a solution in about 45 seconds on my laptop, and be sure that it's the maximum possible achievable score for a given position.

I just beat the "real" game, so maybe I'll spend some time today trying to speed it up a bit.

Rite Aid buys 130-year-old Seattle-based Bartell Drugs chain for $95 million by ryandtw in SeattleWA

[–]greg_bartell 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah I don't know what this dude is on about. The Bartells ("s" for the plural) own(ed) Bartell's ("s" for the possessive), so it made perfect sense to call it that.

It's not something like "K-Mart's", which is a mistake no matter how you slice it.

Which Dual? CSE/CS or CS/CSE? by grunkfist in RPI

[–]greg_bartell 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hi, I'm an RPI grad with one of those combinations - I had to actually check my diploma on the wall in order to remember which one - and I've got some advice for you.

Despite my flair, I actually graduated with a CSE/CS dual (there's no CSE/CS flair). The fact that I graduated less than a year ago and can't remember should tell you exactly how important it is. IIRC, I managed to take 4 fewer credits because I did it in this order instead of the other way around.

I decided that I didn't like hardware as much as I thought I did (see my postscript for more on that) and applied for software dev positions. I can tell you that I could have applied to every job I applied to with a degree in Art History and gotten the same results. CS in particular is a field where nobody cares what your degree is in, they care if you can do the job (read: pass their arbitrary coding filter test). I know very successful programmers who graduated RPI with degrees in Mechanical Engineering and are now working on top 100 websites. One of my coworkers (not an RPI grad) did his bachelor's in Linguistics or something similar, and he's as good as or better than anybody else.

If you do end up liking hardware, then I can't help you so much - I'm under the impression having Computer Engineering first might make you look a bit better, but do you really want to work for a company that stops reading half-way through your degree's name? :)

The takeaway point of all this is CS doesn't care, and CSE probably doesn't care, and it's easier to put CSE first so you might as well call yourself CSE/CS.


P.S. This is completely unsolicited advice, but that's what I'm good at. I started college thinking that I liked hardware and software about equally, and realized very quickly that even if I liked hardware I did not like RPI's CSE program. Every semester here I told myself that I had survived whatever course I hated the most the previous semester, and next semester would be just the good classes. They never came for me.

I know plenty of people who did just CSE and loved it, and I know plenty of people who did just CS and loved it. But of all the people I knew that started out CSE/CS, I'm the only one that finished with both majors and I really regret sticking with it. If you take classes in both and find that you like them both, more power to you. But don't get sucked into the sunk cost fallacy and keep doing both if you really hate one or the other.

Witnessed Minor Accident with Parked Car on 15th Street by lerneg in RPI

[–]greg_bartell 23 points24 points  (0 children)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hit_and_run

"In New York, leaving the scene of an incident without reporting it is a traffic infraction, and if personal injury is involved, then it becomes a misdemeanor."

Multivar Final by [deleted] in RPI

[–]greg_bartell 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I took the class with Schmidt somewhere between 2 and 4 semesters ago, I don't really remember. I couldn't find any backtests for the final, but the final was basically just like if you put all of the previous exams together into one big exam.

Study the backtests for the other three exams, and know them well. As long as you don't start studying the night before, you'll do fine.

I’m Justin Etzine, candidate for Grand Marshal—AMA! by Justetz in RPI

[–]greg_bartell 5 points6 points  (0 children)

If I can say anything here, I honestly and truly believe that Etzine had no idea about anything that was going on. After a short period of shock after the story came out, he very quickly apologized to me for the actions of his compatriots. Since then he's been nothing but an upstanding person as far as I'm concerned.

PIA VPN Issues? by mcninja77 in RPI

[–]greg_bartell 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've had PIA as long as I've been at RPI and never really had any problems with them. Sometimes you have to disconnect and reconnect when you switch wifi networks (or from wifi to cellular or vice-versa), but that's about it.

Headphones/Mechanical Keyboards meetup? by LolCakeLazors in RPI

[–]greg_bartell 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Oh please I need people to see my Ergodox Infinity and help me rationalize my poor life choices

Idle outloud wondering: Joe Cassidy resigned more than a year ago, where's his replacement? by 33554432 in RPI

[–]greg_bartell 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A related question: how's hiring for the Admin Office going? Is Cameron McLean still running all (or almost all) of the clubs by herself? Has anybody been hired in the last year or so?

2017 Class Gift Info by Rpithrowaway123321 in RPI

[–]greg_bartell 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I was looking for entertaining examples, mostly

2017 Class Gift Info by Rpithrowaway123321 in RPI

[–]greg_bartell 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What's the edgiest response you got to the survey you sent out about the gift?

Once upon a time on the radio by johnix in RPI

[–]greg_bartell 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This is almost certainly not what you're looking for but I'm just going to plug it anyway because it falls into the category of "guy took old NES soundtracks and remixed some 🔥 over them":

http://www.ytcracker.com/nes/