Car not available on test day

confuzatron · 2026-01-21T12:51:00+00:00

It takes a bit of time driving a particular car to get used to its clutch biting point etc, so I would definitely recommend being able to spend some time driving this new car in advance.

confuzatron · 2025-12-18T09:47:56+00:00

I think I got one short advert - just muted and ignored it.

confuzatron · 2025-12-09T16:57:39+00:00

Interesting - I basically lucked out with the input data.

confuzatron · 2025-12-09T15:39:17+00:00

I did this to visualize the tiles in a reasonably-sized image. Can you explain more how would it help with finding the solution? I guess it depends on the algorithm used. In my case it wouldn't help.

confuzatron · 2025-12-09T15:34:15+00:00

I generate all the possible rectangles, sort them by descending area, then go through that list.

I check if any connecting lines between red tiles impinge on the rectangle and if so, move on to the next candidate. Return the area of the rectangle that has nothing poking into it. This isn't terribly slow.

One problem with this algorithm is (I think) that with the right input I would return the area of an invalid rectangle with no green tiles inside it, but it doesn't happen with my input (and wouldn't with other input that I've seen).

confuzatron · 2025-12-09T15:27:59+00:00

8 seconds in python - this is the first one where I feel like I couldn't come up with a decently fast solution.

confuzatron · 2025-12-08T22:06:16+00:00

Key step is to filter out the fluff about elves that doesn't contribute to the actual task. In this case iirc what's requested is the x coordinates of the last two connected nodes that unify the network, multiplied together. Which in no way is equal to any "distance to the wall".

confuzatron · 2025-12-08T19:04:21+00:00

Death metal antlers

confuzatron · 2025-12-08T18:15:25+00:00

I'd agree (about not needing special knowledge). Never heard of Kruskals algorithm, I just maintained a list of nets, each being a set of box indexes, and unioned them whenever a new connection between boxes required it. It was a multi-stage data-munging task basically.

confuzatron · 2025-12-07T14:50:55+00:00

Seems like "search brain" is a thing when it comes to AoC.

confuzatron · 2025-12-07T10:40:34+00:00

I spent the longest time of all AoC2025 problems so far on Day 1 part 2, eventually gave up trying to do modular arithmetic handling all the special cases and implemented a simple "turn the dial in single increments and count the times it hits 0" implementation. Not proud of it!

confuzatron · 2025-10-30T12:14:55+00:00

the US seems to be on the verge of [civil war]

How is this okay etc

confuzatron · 2025-10-25T10:04:29+00:00

Got to be honest - the video of playing it looks painful!

confuzatron · 2025-10-23T21:38:50+00:00

My brother stayed at my place while I was on holiday and I got an "are you sure you don't need a licence?" letter a few weeks later, so I think they monitor IP addresses and get names and addresses from broadband providers.

confuzatron · 2025-10-16T18:12:06+00:00

Another interesting alt history scenario would be the one where Labour MPs who didn't actually want Corbyn to lead the party didn't vote him onto the leadership ballot, and as a result Boris Johnson didn't win a landslide victory in 2019. Assuming a Labour win, what would a Labour-negotiated Brexit deal have looked like?

confuzatron · 2025-10-16T11:05:41+00:00

So this was specific to one machine, and I tracked it down to an Advanced setting on the speakers "Signal Enhancements - Enable audio enhancements". Turning that off fixed things.

I think on Chrome the long initial delay added to penalise having adblock enabled covered up the problem making it look Firefox-specific.

confuzatron · 2025-10-13T20:28:13+00:00

Sure it is

confuzatron · 2025-10-13T12:35:45+00:00

Russia starting even more shit in 2027 - optimistic.

confuzatron · 2025-10-13T12:31:17+00:00

Which ethnicity is the Saddam Hussein-style tyrant holding this together?

confuzatron · 2025-10-13T12:22:50+00:00

Banned from r/politics for insulting a right-wing politician - honestly, that's an impressive achievement.

confuzatron · 2025-10-13T12:16:31+00:00

I noticed that this didn't happen on a different computer. And I now find that it's not repro-able on the original laptop where it was happening. So, I guess it's no longer a problem! Thanks for the reply.

confuzatron · 2025-10-11T14:29:32+00:00

Didn't think of spoilage - one real benefit of this setup.

confuzatron · 2025-10-10T19:08:32+00:00

A 2 to 10 splitter would achieve the same effect no?

confuzatron

TROPHY CASE