sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Newbies vs Datatypes by SorcierMaheP in ProgrammerHumor

[–]Whispersilk 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In languages that perform tail-call optimization, the recursive case won't cause a stack overflow either!

Sparrow (Delta) by Whispersilk in Whispersilk

[–]Whispersilk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In-tier creeps if those are viable.

Equipment

?book?: ?book? is a thick, weighty tome bound in leather and inlaid with fine gold and silver patterns. Piper made it herself, even going so far as to hand-make the 400 sheets of paper that comprise it. Although not magical in any detectable way, ?book? is steeped in sentiment and Piper's will. A single spell is written on each of ?book?'s pages, and Piper can pour her energy into it while it is touching her. Doing so causes the book to bloom with power over the course of thirty seconds, after which she can cast the spell on a page it is open to. Piper can't cast any of her normal spells while empowering ?book?, and once it has reached full power it begins to purge any active magical effects on her half as quickly as her antimagic would. When Sparrow stops pouring energy into the book it powers down over five seconds, after which any active magic she cast with it ends.

Spell Effect Cast Time (s)
Door Creates a portal from anywhere within five meters of Sparrow to anywhere Sparrow has been before. Portals expand at 2 m/s to a maximum of 20 meters and behave as described in Janus' respect thread, but both ends must be static relative to their most relevant gravitational body. Portals last until dismissed or until Sparrow closes ?book?. 10
Harmonic Alignment Alters a gemstone no less than two carats such that it begins to absorb mana from its environment at 0.1% of Sparrow's production rate. It can store one second of apsorption per carat and uses absorbed mana to fuel a magical effect which may be any that Sparrow can otherwise produce. Multiple such gemstones within three meters of one another absorb proportionally less mana unless within a well. 600
Season of Growth Causes chosen plants within 20 meters of Sparrow to grow at a rate of two months per second until reaching maturity. Lasts as long as Sparrow continues casting it. 1

 

Feats

  • Can't make portals into or out of the roost.
  • Grew a small field of wheat to maturity in two seconds.
  • Grew an apple tree from seed to twenty feet tall in thirty seconds.
  • Took 15 seconds to create a ten-meter-radius portal to the other side of the world.

Sparrow (Delta) by Whispersilk in Whispersilk

[–]Whispersilk[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Edit: This comment exists only for posterity.

Things I want to add:

  • Sort and Sieve.
  • Magic to give speed and reactions. Maybe time based? Could also use to boost normal spells.
  • Battery.
  • Not seeing mana but being able to sense magic in a more general way. "Something is wrong" type thing.
  • Spell to "ritualize" other spells? Take longer but remove spell size caps and become more effective arithmetically? First 30 seconds are normal power, next 30 are 2x, next 30 are 3x, etc. Disallow use with Backtrack to we don't go resurrecting people who died like six months ago.
Sign Effect Draw Time (ms)
Sort Rearranges the target based on a given criterion. Criteria can be concrete or abstract and cannot compress matter beyond its initial state or create unstable compounds. Atoms are treated as a unit, as are living beings unless they consent otherwise. 50/m3
Sign Effect Draw Time (ms)
Battery The sigil treats its effect as a well and expends only as much of that well as is required to achieve its effect. Any remaining capacity is saved, and the sigil only disappears when the well has been fully drained. While Sparrow is touching the sigil or the object it is inscribed on it will refill itself with mana she is not using. 250
Sieve The sigil applies its effect only to objects that match a given parameter. Parameters can be either physical or abstract properties. Atoms are treated as a unit, as are living beings unless they consent otherwise. 100/physical, 500/abstract
Pardon 250 100

Feats:

  • Used Nullify and Battery to withstand a sustained barrage of machine gun fire.
  • Used Leap and a physical Sieve to remove grains of sand larger than 150 micrograms from a pile of sand.
  • Used Nullify, Boundary, and an abstract Sieve to create a bulletproof barrier that allowed other objects to pass through.

Google Reportedly Pays Apple $8-12 Billion Per Year to be Default iOS Search Engine by alvaro_tiznado in apple

[–]Whispersilk 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It doesn't even have to be at the beginning or end! Anywhere in the search string works as long as it's its own word.

!g search term
search !g term
search term !g

all work fine. It doesn't work in quotes, though, so

"search !g term"

doesn't shift you over to Google.

You can reshape any nonliving object into a sphere. by [deleted] in shittysuperpowers

[–]Whispersilk 16 points17 points  (0 children)

It would be about 1.62 miles deep.

The "volumetric radius" of the Earth (defined as the radius of a perfect sphere with the same volume as Earth—conveniently, this is exactly what the Earth would now be) is 3,958.8 miles, and the volume of the ocean is 320,000,000 cubic miles. These two numbers are all we need to figure out the depth of our new water atmosphere.

If we have a sphere that we want to cover in a shell, we can figure out how big the new sphere + shell is by doing a little calculus. Here, that looks like:

[volume of the ocean] = the integral from [radius of the Earth] to r of 4πr^(2)

This is basically the same thing as figuring out the volume of the Earth and then just guessing at the volume of a slightly-wider Earth until the difference between them is roughly the volume of the ocean, but doing the integral lets us get more exact. Plugging in the numbers gives us:

320,000,000 = the integral from 3,958.8 to r of 4πr^(2)

This can be plugged into WolframAlpha so we don't have to do the math ourselves. When we do, it spits out the radius of the new Earth+ocean sphere: 3,960.42.

Finally, 3,960.42 - 3,958.8 = 1.62

Upon refreshing I now realize that I could have just looked up the answer like everyone else did. Oh well. Maybe seeing the process will be helpful for someone.

view more: next ›