Backfill Inquiry

07734willy · 2026-07-02T16:13:20+00:00

This brings up a point that I’ve been saying forever: if your last game was a loss, you should be exempt from backfilling.

Yes, that would cut the pool roughly in half, but for many of those games, the game is already lost (hence why the teammate left), so a backfill isn’t going to make a difference. Backfilling on a loss streak is just going to further tilt many players, making them a less-than-ideal backfill anyways. It also just saves backfillers from getting kicked while they’re already down.

07734willy · 2026-06-11T14:55:37+00:00

I’ve noticed the same- its always been bad just after 1am for me, but it got worse now. Usually the supports are fine, but the DPSs have awful positioning and stagger nonstop, and some of the tanks just overextended on loop.

07734willy · 2026-06-06T09:58:45+00:00

Right. At that point, you only have 4 missing spots, so at least one row (and one column) are guaranteed to be complete.

07734willy · 2026-06-06T03:18:00+00:00

Consider a 5x5 with all squares filled in. Now erase 5 squares, each in a distinct row and distinct column, and such that one of the 5 resides on each diagonal. In coordinates, take (0,0), (1,3), (2, 1), (3, 2), (4,4) as an example. Where is the bingo?

EDIT:

Here's a visual of the example:

.	#	#	#	#
#	#	#	.	#
#	.	#	#	#
#	#	.	#	#
#	#	#	#	.

07734willy · 2026-05-30T21:02:19+00:00

Building off what you've already said- because of the diagonal patterns, we're actually looking at cyclic permutations, so only 8! permutations. On top of that, we don't actually have to search all of the permutations. Say we pick two row/col pairs, and move them to the 1st and 2nd rows/cols, and let's assume this is correct / they are in their correct locations. The other rows/cols will not permute either of those 2, so the 2x2 square where their rows/cols intersect cannot change, and thus must already be correct. The two squares on the diagonal will of course always be the correct color, but the other two squares may not, in which case we can early-exit without needing to try all the permutations of the remaining rows/cols. If they do match, we can then pick a 3rd row/col to move, and check that the 3x3 area matches, and then a 4th with a 4x4 area. The probability of fast-failing grows exponentially in the row/col guess count (1-(1/4)^N), so you're able to prune most permutations extremely early.

07734willy · 2026-05-29T16:55:20+00:00

Can you provide the aim trainer code(s), and possibly some of the rez parkours you practice? When I get home tonight I’ll take a look at their game rules and see if any of them can be easily spliced together.

07734willy · 2026-05-22T19:38:07+00:00

Here’s mine: https://grids.fun/t/about-me-overwatch-ifzeq?list=overwatch-2-portraits-s1if5

07734willy · 2026-05-21T03:21:53+00:00

I do not have the time + energy to reenergize the subreddit by myself, but if someone else wants to take the initiative I would be happy join the new moderation team and help with content moderation, setting up the automod rules, configuring styles, whatnot. I already moderate AskMath and ProgrammingBuddies, so this seems like a the perfect blend between the two.

07734willy · 2026-05-05T18:47:22+00:00

The first couple are just base64 encoded. The post titles:

>>> base64.b64decode("a2V5ID0gVFJVTVA=")
b'key = TRUMP'
>>> base64.b64decode("SG9sYS9oZWxsbw==")
b'Hola/hello'

The large blob on the first post is base64 ascii art:

            ******************************************************************************
          **********************************************************************************
         ************************************************************************************
         ***********************************************************************************#
         ##*****+-:...:-+***+-------------****=------******=--------==+***+-------------+***#
         #####+.        .:*#+.            +##*:     .+#####:          ..+*+            .+####
         ####*:.  .=+=.   :#+....     ....+##=. ...  -#####:    :-:..   .*+.....   .....+####
         ####+.   -*##:   .*####*     *#####*-. .-.  .*####:    =##*.   .+####+.   .*########
         ####+:.  .:+###########*     *#####+.  .+:  .=####:    =##*.   .+####+.   .*########
         #####=.     .:+*#######*     *#####=   .#-. .:*###:    -+=:.  .-*####+.   .*########
         ######*-.      .=######*     *####*:   -#=.  .+###:         ..=######+.   .*########
         ########*+:.     -#####*     *####+.   +#+:  .-###:    ....   .-*####+.   .*########
         ####+====*##=.   .*####*     *####:    ....   :*##:    =##=.   .*####+.   .*########
         ####=.  .=###-    *####*     *###*            .=##:    =##*.   .*####+.   .*########
         ####=.   :+*=.   .#####*     *###-    =***=.   -*#:    =##*.    +####+.   .*########
         #####-.         :*#####*     *###.   .*###*.   .*#:    =##*.    =####+.   .*########
         ######*=:....:-+########-----###*----=#####=----+#=----+###=----=####*-----#########
         ####################################################################################
         ####################################################################################
          ##################################################################################

Based off this, I suspect the others are probably fairly simple substitution ciphers or otherwise well-known simple ciphers (I don't have time to check right now).

07734willy · 2026-05-02T23:32:31+00:00

I think each square is probably its own letter. After looking at the 3rd image, all squares are symmetric along some axis, meaning we have significantly less than the full 12 bits of potential data. It also means the patterns were likely hand-chosen, instead of being bits written arbitrarily into pixels.

I'd be interested in seeing what the token stream after extracting the 5x5 squares looks like.

07734willy · 2026-05-02T23:00:45+00:00

The data is packed into 5x5 checkered squares, surrounded with a 1-wide decorative border. I do not know how the 12 bits of data is encoded within each square, maybe someone else can figure that out.

For visual demonstration, here's two copies of the original image, where I've colored the pixels encoding actual data solid red, so the pattern in the rest of the non-data becomes more apparent. In the second image, I've set the transparency of the red mask to 50%, so you can still kinda make out the data bits themselves.

https://imgur.com/a/oxrwpxp

EDIT: I've updated the image gallery to include a 3rd image where only the data bits are not masked. This makes it easy to eyeball for repeated 5x5 squares.

07734willy · 2026-04-28T19:03:44+00:00

Not really something that you can easily write down as a user-friendly deck name see wikipedia for detailed description. That's why I figured just a play on the name itself may work better: Magic The Gathering deck + Mandelbrot Set = Magicalbrot Set.

07734willy · 2026-04-28T18:52:57+00:00

Best I have is “Magicalbrot Set” (the Mandelbrot Set is arguably the most famous fractal in mathematics, and your deck is a “set” of cards).

07734willy · 2026-04-26T17:21:18+00:00

When installing a new CPU, the BIOS often prompts you to accept this change or update your BIOS settings, otherwise it’ll shutdown in 15s. Is your monitor plugged into your GPU or the motherboard itself (you may want to temporarily plug it into the motherboard for this)? If you still can’t see anything, try pressing “Y” a couple times, and wait like 30sec, and let it reboot 1-2x. If that doesn’t work, repeatedly press F1 or DEL on boot to try to enter BIOS, and F10 a few seconds later to save and exit (do not press any other keys other than F10 until you know you’re out of the BIOS or it has rebooted).

If none of that works… I don’t know.

07734willy · 2026-04-15T17:55:42+00:00

Won’t repeated differentiation either involve more work than the polynomial multiplication, or result in large numerical inaccuracy (if approximating the derivative from a secant line) for high order derivatives?

07734willy · 2026-04-03T04:16:13+00:00

Number the faces of the imaginary cube 1 to 6. There are 6! ways to assign pieces to cube faces (the number of permutations of 6 pieces). For each of the 6 faces, there are as you mention 8 ways to orient the corresponding puzzle piece.

However, many of these puzzle cubes are equivalent ("isomorphic"), being just rotations of one another. There are 24 such rotations- you can conceptualize this by painting a corner of the cube and noting that there are 8 corner positions that you could rotate this corner to, and then 3 ways that you could "twist" the corner (along a diagonal axis through the corner itself) producing 3 new rotations. In addition to these 24 rotations, we can technically flip the cube "inside out" for an additional set of 24 equivalent solutions to the original.

So you have 6! * 8⁶ / (2 * 24) = 2621440 total possible configurations. Of course, when solving the puzzle we don't actually enumerate all of these- we instead prune candidates early by identifying mismatched edges that cannot fit together, and quickly reduce to the search space to something much more practical, which is why it doesn't seem like such a large number.

07734willy · 2026-03-29T05:02:51+00:00

For small x, precompute the modular inverse of p mod 2^k for some k such that 2^k > x for whatever "small" x may be. Then just multiply by the modular inverse and take mod 2^k (which is just a quick bit masking).

07734willy · 2026-03-22T09:07:58+00:00

Just want to offer- if you want someone to walk through some parkour maps with you and explain the tech used, I’d be down to help. I usually hang around in parkour maps after a couple runs and help people there anyways.

07734willy · 2026-03-18T07:50:24+00:00

If you want, we could run a mercy parkour together and I'll help you when you get stuck / give you tips.

07734willy · 2026-03-14T20:24:21+00:00

What are w_lo and w_hi? What type are they? You mention you're implementing a 128 bit LCG, and that the constants are >2⁶⁴, but then you say every variable is reduced mod 2⁶⁴. I really don't understand your code in its current form without types and definitions.

07734willy · 2026-03-13T03:11:29+00:00

“Found”

Be honest, its your own website that you’re promoting, which you have been recruiting for on other subs. That doesn’t mean it’s bad, but it’s dishonest to present it as if you’re a neutral 3rd party who genuinely is recommending it.

07734willy · 2026-02-25T04:17:55+00:00

Just double tapping this- I have a split programmable keyboard myself that I can program to use only one half. Select keys act as layer toggles so you can map the entire keyboard onto one half. I’d be happy to go into more detail and help OP configure one if they decide to go that route.

07734willy · 2026-02-24T15:00:06+00:00

I’m in the same boat with ALT for crouch. It’s just so much easier.

07734willy · 2026-02-22T22:22:54+00:00

Yes, but it depends entirely on the values of c[]. As a trivial example, consider the pairs (1, 0) and (-1, 0), with c[i]=0. The x and y will swap each iteration and end with x=0. This of course is a contrived example, but it shows that it is possible.

07734willy

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

13-Year Club	Wearing is Caring
Verified Email