Slashdot Mirror
Mystery Company Recruiting Talent With a Puzzle
An anonymous reader writes "Google has previously used coding competitions to locate top talent. In a new twist on the idea, an anonymous tech company is posting a help-wanted ad that challenges developers to find out who the company is. A little digging and text mashing reveals a website containing a Web 2.0 puzzle that makes notpron look like child's play. So, fellow developers, who is this company, and, well, what is the significance of the date '01-18-08?'" Update: 12/12 20:20 GMT by KD : Replaced link to a removed Craigslist ad with a mirror.
Cloverfield. 01-18-08 is the release date.
Nothing is impossible. It just hasn't been figured out yet.
And a movie with a release date coinciding with those numbers would be the culprit, in my opinion.
You can't take the sky from me...
In a little under a month, it will be the 2000th anniversary of whatever it is.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
While this looks like an alternate reality game, this has been done before. http://www.hudakville.com/modules/weblog/details.php?blog_id=16
If the mysterious company makes you jump through hoops to get into the door, will they jump through hoops to make you feel like a valued employee or just break out the whips since you're lucky to have the job?
If anyone wants to save some time (like 30-60 seconds) with Base64 to Ascii:
eyAnOicgPT4gJycsICcgJyA9PiAnLScsICdzXG4nID0+ICdzLmNvbVxuJyB9 converts to { ':' => '', ' ' => '-', 's\n' => 's.com\n' }
The clue is base 64 for:
{ ':' => '', ' ' => '-', 's\n' => 's.com\n' }
Now, if you notice [RFC 3548] later changed to 4648:
"CB-" ":" ":" ":"
":"
my 30-seconds attempt is over.
Sigs are for the weak.
It's the "Tri-Valley Singles Lock & Key and Dance"... Clearly.
Deleted
I'll bet you dollars to donuts that that company creating all of this is the same one to submit the story.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Just base64 decode the string that appears to be made of random chars. You get:
{ ':' => '', ' ' => '-', 's\n' => 's.com\n' }
Apply that to the subject in the contact details. You get:
http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/
That was pretty easy. The test then seems to move to web programming and I'm not interested.
Banu
eyAnOicgPT4gJycsICcgJyA9PiAnLScsICdzXG4nID0+ICdzLmNvbVxuJyB9 (3548, 4648)
"eye and i......"
my l33tspeak isnt what it used to be.
The significance of the date "01/18/2008" (the eleventh question) is that the company is American and does not use ISO date formats. The particular date is unambiguous, but in general that is not true with their format, e.g. "02/03/2008" could mean either February 3rd (for American readers) or March 2nd (for European readers). ISO is the global standard, and the format removes ambiguity: 2008-01-18. A small additional benefit is that it makes sorting trivial.
If these people were really as committed to quality as they pretend to be, they would be promoting the ISO format, to facilitate less-ambiguous global communication.
Without even solving the puzzle, but reasoning purely on circumstantial evidence, the answer has to be Mike Hunkapillar's stealth startup Pacific Biosystems. The reasons are simple ... (1) PB's genomic technology is producing a flood of raw data, (2) PB therefore needs programmers to convert that stream into IPO-salable value, and (3) PB is the only one hiring right now!
"Drink more Ovaltine"
we would like to extend a job offer to you.
by hitting upon the clever solution of submitting the puzzle to slashdot as a story subject and letting random slashdot commentors solve the puzzle for you, you have displayed a high level of ingenuity and cleverness. we therefore would like to hire you as the manager of the 3 other programmer applicants who slogged and plodded it out and solved the puzzle through brute mental force on their own. your salary will be 250% of theirs.
congratulations again,
anonymoustech inc.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
1-18-08
So could it be some type of nerdy viral campaign like Ilovebees?
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
42.
Except when people discuss about not discussing it ... which is actually counter-productive to their argument ;)
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
The Craig's list posting is already removed.
Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai
A better way:
Only problem with this method is that it excludes most people who don't publish much about themselves (for this reason, in parallel, you can also utilise common "wanted" ads, to give a chance to invisible talent to contact you). Otherwise, it works great. Why have a pile of CVs laying around when you can fire up google and find up the best people in a field?
The link to Craig's list gives the following page.
"This posting has been flagged for removal
(The title on the listings page will be removed in just a few minutes.)"
I like muppets.
+news -slashvertising I might guess that the same person that posted this on craigslist also posted the story on Slashdot. The Slashdot fish gets hooked by the bait yet again...
Not really. Of course, I don't actually see anything wrong with wanting to eliminate waste in the development cycle...
StoneCypher is Full of BS
...I mean, come on guys, at least design your test to be a little resilient to people who grok JavaScript.
On the programming page linked to us by an above poster, here's a trick: f = function(d) { TDD.assertEquals = function(a,b) { return true; } } Amazingly, it passes every test :D
I'm so lazy, I had my computer write this comment for me.
but it's also my birthday. Do I get the job?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I love it when someone with a UID in the millions acts like they've been here a long time. Guess what, kid? This is how SlashDot has always been. If you don't like it, learn to spell Digg.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
"what is the significance of the date '1-18-08?'"
It's the release date for Duke Nuke'em Forever.
Oh and 3D Realms is recruiting a team for the development of the next title, Duke Nuke'em Times Infinity.
Regards, Lex
"eliminate waste" is also a medical term...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I stopped by http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/ for a look-see.
If the talent they're looking for involves figuring out undocumented code with function names like "f" and variable names like "d", I think I'll pass.
Kudos for having testable code, though.
Only 37 comments, and the site has already been slashdotted! :)
My wife doesn't listen to me either...
is blindingly obvious. Ergo;
1-18-08
BT's Directory Enquiries service number is 118-118. This is a competition to find a web developer for 2008 for BT's planned upgrade to Yell.com.
Thank you. My salary requirements follow:
Flexi-40, £90k after tax. Willing to relocate for permanent accomodation in a detached 5-bedroom house with twin garages only. Company RV and access to local hunting grounds essential.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Fordware 3801 Market St Bsmt Philadelphia, PA 19104 (215) 387-2399
Just Googled "eyAnOicgPT4gJycsICcgJyA9PiAnLScsICdzXG4nID0+ICdzLmNvbVxuJyB9"
Took all of 3 minutes to find this info.
It's Microsoft, trying to be cool in their usual silly copycat way...
xkcd 356 - nerd sniping
Nah, it was much better right at the start before we had uids. There were few dupes, articles were really techie, and articles were always here before the mainstream news got them.
It's not like the good old days any more.
I'm still busy trying to figure out how to build this damned Interocitor.
This sig is false.
Hint: we aren't all on our first user account, and we didn't all sign up the day we started reading.
Am I the only one who grabbed their /js/ and peeked at the code...
... That was easy.
"// Note: It is not necessary to reverse-engineer this file in order to complete the contest"
I did no testing of any sort... inside framework.pack.js it says
p.setAttribute("title","list, uniquify, relativity");
p.appendChild(document.createTextNode("Ford's, success, has, the, country, almost, financially, industrially, mechanically, exhibits, in, higher, than, persons, have, thought, possible, contradictory, requirements, of, efficiency, increase, great, workers, cost, consumer, And, cost, cost, consumer, And, cost, cost, consumer, And, workers, workers, workers, workers, to, repeated, great, increase, quality, increase, great, great, increase, quality, efficiency, efficiency, which, are, of, contradictory, contradictory, requirements, of, possible, have, have, thought, possible, have, have, persons, than, than, most, persons, persons, than, most, exhibits, exhibits, exhibits, exhibits, financially, financially, financially, financially, almost, the, the, country, almost, Ford's, Ford's, success, has"));
"Dictator Flakes. They WILL be delicious."
StoneCypher is Full of BS
I don't have the function that passes the tests that they wanted yet, but here's a collection of everything so far:
/* /*
/2 ~=-154 - 1 = -155.
First off, the craigslist posting leads to:
http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/?key=
Then, the main.css file has two bits of non-css info in it. At the very bottom, there's:
34w4wa
*/
Then at the top, we have:
([Dollar,Daily Universal Register] % 100).([Flavian II => Severus] / 2 - 1).([Sherman Anti-Trust,Van Gogh] / 9).([Tycho Brahe,Stellar] / 12)
*/
There's a hint at the bottom of the page, as well:
sticky falling bricks of truth
I have nothing on 34w4wa. Daily Universal Register, as was noted elsewhere, used to be the name of the Times of London. Dollar, who knows? Flavian II was the Patriarch of Antioch. Setpimius Severus was a Roman general, and Roman emperor. Sherman Antitrust Act was the first US Government action to limit cartels and monopolies. Van Gogh was of course a painter. Tycho Brahe was an awesome astronomer, and stellar, again, I don't know.
It's an array of four things, with dots between them - an IP address. Perhaps something with dates?
The date format tells us it's an American-related quiz. The US dollar was adopted in 1785, while the Daily Universal Register was also begun in 1785. 1785 mod 100 = 85.
Flavian II died in 518. Severus reigned from 193-211, when HE died. 518-211 = -307,
So far, 85.155...
Sherman Antitrust and Van-Gogh's death were both in 1890. 1890/9 = 210
So 85.155.210...
Tycho Brahe died 1601...I don't know about stellar, but other dates have coincided so 1601/12.to_i = 133
85.155.210.133 doesn't appear to have a web server on it, but that 155 is really suspect, as is the 133 (not an integer). Brahe was BORN in 1546, and 1546/12 = 129.
85.155.210.129 isn't answering either. Again, the 155 bothers me.
Flavian II died 518, but 518/2 -1 = 258, which isn't exactly a meaningful number for an IP address, eh?
I got my Severus wrong, as there was a Severus that succeeded Flavian II in 512, 14 years after Flavian II became patriarch. 14/2 - 1 = 6.
85.6.210.129 has no website on it either, but it's feeling better. Maybe that 129's a red herring...I feel like the 85 and 210 are right as rain though.
A google search for 'tycho brahe stellar' returns a couple of hits for an article listing 1572 as a date, and 1572/12=131. Turns out SN1572 was known as Tycho's Nova.
85.6.210.131 still gives me nothing though.
-knewter
and, well, what is the significance of the date '1-18-08?
Kevin Costner turns 53 years old.
When do I start?
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
"Be sure to drink your Ovaltine."
So don't expect a job offer as you did not accurately decode the secret message.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
I didn't know there were more than 12 months in a year.
i phrased what i said as a joke, and yet it is a sterling example of business intelligence
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"(The title on the listings page will be removed in just a few minutes.)" They got ./'ed.
In case I forgot to mention also... JJ Abrams.
Actually the significance of 2008-01-18 is that it is my next birthday. Were can I collect my copy of the software promised?
http://www.1-18-08.com/ Pretty sure it's movie related have a great day Usually friday or on the rare occassion to have bigger opening weekend they'll go on wed. Music, games, dvd come on tuesday. Jan 18 2008 is a friday.
"Ford's success has startled the country, almost the world, financially, industrially, mechanically. It exhibits in higher degree than most persons would have thought possible the seemingly contradictory requirements of true efficiency, which are: constant increase of quality, great increase of pay to the workers, repeated reduction in cost to the consumer. And with these appears, as at once cause and effect, an absolutely incredible enlargement of output reaching something like one hundredfold in less than ten years, and an enormous profit to the manufacturer"
(Charles Buxton Going, preface to Arnold and Faurote, Ford Methods and the Ford Shops (1915))
YouStockIt - Education through Unorthodox Methods
dot com
that's my guess
The interview process is the dating. The wine & dine.
The job is the marriage. The daily grind. The slogging it out.
I have dumped perfectly good companies because they did something offensive during the wine & dine portion of the the relationship. I don't need that greif during the job.
Well then you made a terrible mistake that will haunt you until the Internet death of Slashdot.
function () {
var _1a = $("#codeinput").val();
eval("var " + _1a);
var d = new Array;
for (var row = 0; row = d[0].length) { continue; }
d[0][_20] = true;
var _23;
do { _23 = Util.clone(d); f(d); }
while (!Util.equals(d, _23));
}
while i have a non cheating solution to the 13 test cases, it fails miserably here
f = function(d) {
search = ["00-01-","001-000-","10-00-00-","00-10-00-","01-00-01-","0100-1001-0001-","10-01-01-","01-10-10-","0101-1010-1001-","01-00-10-10-","010-000-101-","01010-00101-10101-"];
answer = ["","001001","101000","001010","010100","010010001100","101000","010100","010101110010","01000100","010010000","010000100000000"];
thiskey = "";
for (x=0;xd.length;x++) {
for (y=0;yd[x].length;y++) {
if (d[x][y])
thiskey+="1";
else thiskey+="0";
}
thiskey+="-";
}
solution = answer[search.indexOf(thiskey)];
if (solution==null) return;
counter = 0;
for (x=0;xd.length;x++) {
for (y=0;yd[x].length;y++) {
if (solution.lengthcounter) return;
if (solution[counter]=="1")
d[x][y]=!d[x][y];
counter++;
}
}
}
showExecutionStatus(d); Util.setCookie("user_evaluated_code", _1a, 100, "/", "wanted-master-software-developers.com"); }
the #instructions seem to be a comma separated list of index numbers, that shuffle the 2 dimensional array of falses (that become true based on #instructions, and then are supposed to be shuffled(?) by f(d)?
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=3548,+4648&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=33.352165,80.419922&ie=UTF8&ll=31.930093,-94.307499&spn=0.008723,0.019634&z=16&iwloc=addr&om=1
var jMax=d[0].length-1;
for (var i=d.length-1; i>0; i--){
for (var j=jMax; j>=0; j--){
if (!d[i][j]&&d[i-1][j]&&((j>0&&!d[i][j-1])||(j<jMax&&!d[i][j+1])||(j==0&&!d[i-1][1])||(j==jMax&&!d[i-1][j-1]))){
d[i][j]=true;
d[i-1][j]=false;
}
}
}
Ford's, success, has, the, country, almost, financially, industrially, mechanically, exhibits, in, higher, than, persons, have, thought, possible, contradictory, requirements, of, efficiency, increase, great, workers, cost, consumer, And, cost, cost, consumer, And, cost, cost, consumer, And, workers, workers, workers, workers, to, repeated, great, increase, quality, increase, great, great, increase, quality, efficiency, efficiency, which, are, of, contradictory, contradictory, requirements, of, possible, have, have, thought, possible, have, have, persons, than, than, most, persons, persons, than, most, exhibits, exhibits, exhibits, exhibits, financially, financially, financially, financially, almost, the, the, country, almost, Ford's, Ford's, success, has
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Isn't this the date for the beginning of the 700mhz auction?
The road between democracy and tyranny is paved with secrecy in the name of security.
Insiders from other companies suggest that those with the best grades and are best at "brain puzzles" often have poor people and team skills; and should be hired with caution. Just something to consider.
I have a theory that most people's brains are generally equally powerful, such that if you devote all the cycles to things like logic puzzles and tech stumpers, you don't devote as much to interpersonal issues.
Table-ized A.I.
Are you kidding?
I've gotten this in my email like a hundred times!!
How would you like your penis to be this long?
--->"eyAnOicgPT4gJycsICcgJyA9PiAnLScsICdzXG4nID0+ICdzLmNvbVxuJyB9" ??
ORDER NOW!!!!
its a good way of loosing credibility very fast Pfrrrrt.
interesting sound if you leave it open for a while...
Also if you make a circle on the pictures they flip over- can anyone read Japanese?
http://www.networkmirror.com/hUmsXHsC3yihic9B/denver.craigslist.org/sof/514727825.html The poster is neohenryford@hotmail.com
I can puzzelz cheezburger?
I just got back from digging out my secret spidey decoder ring.
Spoilsports, all of you!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
a cached page (google rocks) at learn4good alludes to the company being fordware, based in delaware http://72.14.253.104/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4EGLC_enUS242US242&q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.learn4good.com%2Fjobs%2Flanguage%2Fenglish%2Fsearch%2Fjob%2F42067%2F the cached description of them on the same site http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:LVPBSirfWw0J:www.learn4good.com/jobs/language/english/search/company/33798/+fordware&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
Posting this to Slashdot made it absolutely useless. Thanks a lot, assholes.
-insert a witty something-
As you might have noticed already, after you have solved the 1/3 puzzle, you can type in numbers 0 to 9 and/or comma and dash/minus to the text box. The different numbers represent some kind of instructions to draw with the blue boxes after you press the button.
So my guess is that with correct numbers entered to the box, you get the key drawn with blue boxes to go to the next phase (which might be related to the "/images/code.png" or some other hint in the "/css/" extra css files.
Basically, we need to convert the list of words into a list of numbers (input of the function). Cheating is useless here, as the correct result will be based on the function we "coded" during the steps.
The title suggests: "list, uniquify, relativity".
I think that means the first input must be a words position in the list, or so (getting the words from the Ford quote).
Just my two cents before I go out, get drunk and forget about this whole thing.
EVERYTHING IS RUINED OH MY GOD I AM GOING TO KILL MYSELF RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BANG
THUD
anti lameness filter? anti lameness filter! anti lameness filter? anti lameness filter! anti lameness filter? anti lameness filter! anti lameness filter? anti lameness filter! anti lameness filter? anti lameness filter! anti lameness filter? anti lameness filter!
if you google the results of the function test... Ford's, success, has, the, country, almost, financially, industrially, mechanically, exhibits, in, higher, than, persons, have, thought, possible, contradictory, requirements, of, efficiency, increase, great, workers, cost, consumer, And, cost, cost, consumer, And, cost, cost, consumer, And, workers, workers, workers, workers, to, repeated, great, increase, quality, increase, great, great, increase, quality, efficiency, efficiency, which, are, of, contradictory, contradictory, requirements, of, possible, have, have, thought, possible, have, have, persons, than, than, most, persons, persons, than, most, exhibits, exhibits, exhibits, exhibits, financially, financially, financially, financially, almost, the, the, country, almost, Ford's, Ford's, success, has you find a wikipedia article on "Lean Manufacturing" which the article tells you was mostly derived from the Toyota Production System. Googling the date "1/18/2008" and Toyota leads you to the obvious conclusion that Van Halens 1/18/2008 concert in Huston, TX at the Toyota Center needs more smart roadies. Email neohenryford@hotmail.com to get free tickets! :-)
If this is real, not cloverfield related, it's a software company along the lines of coghead. All the Ford allusions...HF (coincidentally my initials as well) was primarily known for automation and particularly for the assembly line. My guess is that this company is trying to design some software that automates the development process.
I must be a company from some alien planet, because there are only 12 months in a year.
Bert
What the fuck are YOU talking about? It's ironic that a company that wants to "eliminate waste" has spent the time, and now expects YOU to spend the time jumping through all sorts of pointless hoops. That's a whole lot of fucking wasted time.
google "henry ford january 18" and you get showtimes for a movie called "Sea Monsters - A Prehistoric Adventure Movie" playing at the Henry Ford Theater. www.thehenryford.org/imax/showtimes.asp Cloverfield is about a company that makes a product, based on seaweed or some such nonsense, that turns people into giant godzilla like monsters.
FWIW the code.png is 591x19 pixels. 19 is prime, and 591 is a multiple of primes 197 and 3.
A histogram of code.png shows all values concentrated at 8 locations, making me think this is digital information, not something meant to be viewed as an image.
Nothing interesting from "strings code.png"
That's all I have to contribute. Off to do something else now...
W
-------------------
This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
...that there haven't been any "The Last Starfighter" references in here.
signat-url: http://www2.potsdam.edu/dctm/prescor/signat-url.h
Nerd sniping
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/images/code.png
(as found in http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/css/strawberry-rhubarb.css )
Note the bottom of the actual "test":
*top winners get interviews, every winner gets free software
so it's basically a way to send you free "software" that they will probably release on 1-18, which will probably turn out to be google yet again with the GPhone, just a guess but if it's not them I wouldn't even bother taking the test, etc.
stuff |
I guess this means absolutely nothing. It's probably a trick to get insight on how theories start and circulate the complex ecosystem called the cyberspace.
:)
On the other hand, it could be a viral marketing ploy for a movie
It is always better to be a first grade version of yourself than a second grade version of someone else.
It is cloverfield... i gave you 1-18-08.com already check out http://www.1-18-08pedia.com/m/ just more jj numbers games like lost
They also serve who stand and wait...
/. story tells precisely what the date means: the shutdown of the analog cellular network in the USA.
The next
He, he.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. - Cardinal Wolsey
:) I started seeing the world through a comforting green haze in 1997 too :)
:) But now that the BBC rarely has articles after slashdot - rather slashdot links to the BBCs third hand reporting - I recall those days with great fondness.
:)
> I remember no such timeframe,
Maybe it was my youthful optimism then
Mind you, back then I used to read freshmeat every day too
Helmsville McDonald's Hiring Fry Cook Seeking highly motivated candidates. Inquire at drive-through.
Yeah. No shit. I did, too.
Put identity in the browser.
This is all for an INTERVIEW. Fuck these assholes. We're all suppose to be jumping through hoops with the oh so great reward that they will be so gracious to consider us. Fuck them. In fact, I will not even buy their products when I find out who it is. Boycott this pretentious bullshit. The company should be proving to us why we should work for them, not the other way around.
TDD = Time Division Duplex (W-CDMA) 3G-Cell Standard? WIMAX?
1-18-2008 = Product Launch or Product Annoucement Date or IPO date?
First Hint: eyAnOicgPT4gJycsICcgJyA9PiAnLScsICdzXG4nID0+ICdzLmNvbVxuJyB9 (3548, 4648)
All ASCII, not ROT-13, no idea what the (3588,4648) mean.
Passing integer values to f(d) causes blue blocks to appear, but not fall.
Second Clue: http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/?key=coLLAborATE
Seriously! Your stupid date format is just crap. This guy has you nailed. You should be using ISO dates and stop annoying the hell out of the rest of us. It could only be "funny" to spiteful shits.
I work for a company that uses puzzles to attract and evaluate people. We started doing this in the late '90s after hiring people who had good resumes and interviewed well, but couldn't program. Having evaluated a bunch of submissions, I can't imagine hiring someone without seeing a sample of their code. Resumes have almost no information in them. Someone with "10 years of C++" might know the language like the back of their hand, or might write simple, sloppy code. Pretty much any phrase on a resume could mean just about anything. A programming puzzle is like an audition. It's better than writing code during the interview. Writing code in an interview on a white board is pretty far from real coding: no symbol completion, no access to references on the web, a strict time limit, someone who holds a key to your career watching your every move. Only time for simple questions, and no way for the person to choose a problem aligned with their skills. If a company asks you to spend a few hours, so they can decide whether to employ you for years, you can be sure that you'll work with people who have been similarly vetted, and they won't write spaghetti code with variable names like t1 and d2. And it can be quite frustrating maintaining code that makes www.beyondfailure.com look good.
Part 2 is at: http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/?key=coLLAborATE
The code.png contains 6 colors. If you interpret it linearly and separate it into blocks delineated by green-blue, you'll notice that many of these blocks appear several times throughout the file.
Someone in the Google group has decoded the CSS classnames in the source (substitution cypher), the result then leads to part 3: http://www.wanted-master-software-developers.com/?you=me
Maybe they are looking to hire someone to design a better test?
I would not want to report solving the puzzle....
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Here it is verbatim. I think it might be more appropriate for the sort of viewers Slashdot attracts.
"2 DL NICCAS TRYING 2 KICK 2NITE - mm4m - 21 (oakland lake merritt / grand)
Reply to: pers-515877228@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-12-20, 10:59PM PST
two bros on the low trying to kick it whit a cool bttm kat! must b masculine and ready to suck some dick and get fucked"
ok... so what does the output mean?
Granted, Slashdotting a server wasn't much of a threat back then - what with all twelve of you hitting the poor server at the time.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
It's a game for the sake of playing a game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
eBe-bivo eNssiup eNop e-snolamumeR meIodraol ueIod e-coieI scimusoeB eAodralucoeR htce-ieN simouoeA orcoeN cieAimusseR otse-ideI odim qupe-tmpueB eRibyr moumeIqe-sau eRonnd qnsnons cnnnsns nodn nncndonos ndqndn gnmueI eRlambusseNe- cnylg yamuse-bouceN geAe-fidar muxeIss e-ieIssios ueAqve-t poampueN eIosr gyaoclmu geNx xeN ymrpalm usdeB peRraol sumoe-ostlr supeB meRvoirs pudoeN meAmoe-sia orueBseN raoslmouoeR sonsn cndonom nccnndonn ndndnomn snosn cndnon nsnnmou gyeIce-sid veImoi vugoeImp e-osttamoum peNdoeAiom rmeNpoim pumeIe-siseI simu boeRxeIr balm quoeB doeRiorus ceBldeI diuco eRdng nssn dynocnns qndon pndncnnn ssnosns ouxveN phe-otla dueIe-cass roflue-cnvry ludoeNs seRge-idampu
after the ford text..
and does this have anything to do with anything? trueserver.nl
FOCUS is the SECRET of STRENGTH.. ?
Doing that will prevent you from getting to part 2/3
>You can start from one of two viewpoints (and most will eventually end somewhere in between them):
>* Most people are idiots who make bad decisions
>* Most people are smart enough to make better decisions than their governments
Both sides miss the point. Those two problems are connected. We have a representative government, which means if the people are idiots, the government will be filled with idiots. Additionally, it means that corruption can go unchecked because most of the public is too dumb and uninvolved in politics to realize that the people they are voting for are scumbags.
Most of the problems with our country can be traced to the fact that the public is largely uneducated and have no real understanding of even the most basic political issues. Many people choose not to vote, and those that choose to vote largely just check every republican box or every democrat box.
The solution is better education. You should notice that although the public education system has pretty much totally collapsed in most of the country (with the exception of a few wealthy neighborhoods) no politicians are even talking about how to fix the problem. The libertarians try to sidestep the issue by dissolving public education altogether, and the republicans and democrats mostly just ignore the issue or pretend that things aren't as bad as they are.
The real problem with the country is that the way we fund education, where most money comes from *local* government, not state or federal, insure that most of the parts of the country where people live have almost no money for education. On the other hand, most of our tax dollars go to the federal government, which does almost nothing for education, or any of the social services we use aside from social security...
Additionally, since schools are paid for at the local level, gifted students in a poor neighborhood receive a poor education, whereas low performers in a rich neighborhood get the best education and end up in a better university by virtue of the high school they attended. In most industrialized nations, which public school you get into is based on merit instead of where your parents can afford to live. Simply allowing gifted students to study with other gifted students, while allowing vocational opportunities for students lacking the intelligence or motivation to make it into college is a proven model that is highly successful in the rest of the world. Most industrialized nations are *not* facing an education crisis and are not facing low turnouts on voting day, and we don't have to either if we accept a rational and proven education model.
can someone verify if this is just part of the ARG for cloverfield? That would be pretty annoying.
Just do this?
f = function(d) {
}
TDD.assertEquals = function(){ return true; }
I think this makes me exactly the kind of employee they wouldn't want.
RFC-3548, RFC-4648. Enough said.
Look at the bottom of the page on the actual test "Top winners get interviews. All winners get free software", so this is just marketing bullshit, viral advertising for some software release.
Its been my experience that technology companies that crow about how great their culture is, and/or how great their employees are, are typically a pain in the ass to be employed by. Their claims of great culture are most typically used to justify crappy compensation, and the purported star employees are typically elitists who have rarely, if ever, shipped any product of consequence. YMMV, but when I hear such claims, I get out as fast as possible.
I haven't figured that out yet. I think you need to transform it into a sequence of numbers x0, x1, ..., xN that you type into the line at the bottom, then hit the "Execute f" button and it will draw a message with blue squares above the line. I presume the contents of that message is the next clue (or even the answer, perhaps).
When fiddling around with the text entry, I know I initially found a way to get boxes at different heights, but now I can only seem to get them on the bottom row. Has anyone else figured that out?
The main problem with this is that most "Master Software Developers" have more than enough high paying work to do already. Why bother?
A secondary problem is that this will be solved and the flood gates to anyone paying attention will open skill or no skill.
A third problem with this is although the bar may be high there is not a good way to enforce a time element.
They really need a "Master Problem Architect"
When the code you truly see
Return to whence all started
Now posting you equals me
Transports to realms uncharted
What have I got in my pocket?
Do a whois on 85.255.210.131 and you will see the following (I would have posted it but Slashdot wouldn't let me because it had too many junk characters)
So, if you look at the data RIPE Network Coordination Centre has allocated a subrange of IP addresses (85.255.208.0 - 85.255.223.255) to: TrueServer B.V. (www.trueserver.nl). From all of this I wouldn't want to work for them because #1 they don't have their own allocation of IP addresses from ARIN. #2 Their website is not even hosted with the IP address that RIPE has sub allocated to them. #3 They seem to be a glorified ISP / web hosting company. None of that sounds like a place I want to work for. Also, not to put down anyone's profession but IMHO programming is the armpit of the IT industry. A portion of the industry that is moving more and more to outsourced solutions in India.
I might be wrong on who these people are, and I hope I am because their challenge is childish at best, but whoever they are it seems that they have forgotten that an interview is not a one way process. Whenever I go to an interview not only are they deciding if they want me to work for them I am deciding if I want to work form them. I can't recall the number of times that I have been interviewed, been offered the job, and then come back and say something like: "Well, thanks that sounds like a fine offer but I don't think this is the best opportunity for me right now." I wouldn't want to work for a company that makes you jump through hoops just to get an interview. There are plenty of other places that would gladly give me an interview just for submitting my resume. They want people to figure out who they are to get an interview. My question to them instead is who in the heck do you think you are?
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Here's a forum where they're working on the puzzle and posting some clues and cheats.[blogger.net]
Has anyone tried deobfuscating http://www.wanted-master-software-developers.com/js/jquery.pack.js?
It's the only file that lacks the "you don't have to reverse engineer this file" warning at the top.
-Oxford English Dictionary
-American Heritage Dictionary
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
> Slashdotting a server wasn't much of a threat back then - what with all twelve of you hitting the poor server at the time.
:) The internet was still made out of spit and duct tape back then. I was on a T1 shared with about 50 people at work, so I was one of the lucky ones. I remember dreaming of having a T1 at home but it would have cost 70,000 GBP to install it and not much less per year for rental. How I laugh when I think how much bandwidth I have now :)
Ah, but the most interesting articles were always hosted on the other side of some geezer's dialup so we could still do our worst
I can understand not down-modding an off-topic post as long as it is attached to an on-topic parent, they should not be modded up though. I really don't care to see a discussion about a fringe candidate in another country being highlighted in in the discussion of a nerdy puzzle. It is not bad if it is hidden away so those interested can see it, but highlighting it diverts and therefore detracts form the discussion.
I don't mean this post to disparage the parent's comment, only to chide and guide the moderators who made it a +3.
The true confirmed answer is the release date of a software program called UNA by N-Brain. http://www.n-brain.net/index.htm
And some of us still haven't. I can't say I mind being an AC. I've been one since late '97 early '98 and I'll still be one the day I decide /. no longer appeals. Different strokes for different folks.
Thanks for clearing that up. I could tell it was encoded ASCII, but didn't get the RFC clue.
It has been solved. The code.png image is indeed a sequential file. Counting sequences of one color separated by other colors reveals a numbering scheme between the red dots which, when applied to the rest of the file, yields indexes into the decimal representation of PI (the description shows familiar substrings at offsets 0, 1 and 2.) Taking 6 digits each from the listed positions gets you two 3-digit ASCII codes which form the description of a stack machine that decodes the messages on pages 2/3 and 3/3. The 2/3 message is "cerebrum, vere-tempus, together (adv.)". Turn Latin into English and English into Latin and you get "brain, real-time, simul (una)". Googling reveals that a company called N-BRAIN will release a collaborative software development package called UNA on 2008-01-18. An encoding of "UNAreleasedate" for the stack machine is "eRnnnueNueAueRleIaue-leNaueRleBanue-leNaue-leIanueBleRaue-leNaueBleBanue-leIanueBleRanue-leNau", which transports you from page 3/3 to the congratulations. They'll send you a standalone version of UNA if you provide them with your email address and the email addresses of your collaborators. You can also check a box to request an interview. A cookie contains the code you entered in step 1/3. They say they'll look at the order of the entrants and the code to determine who gets an interview.
N-BRAIN is a privately held company in Boulder, Colorado. You can apply for a job without going through the puzzle. According to http://www.n-brain.net/jobs.htm they don't look at resumes but give you an assignment to evaluate your code-fu. The team page lists four people, including the founder John A. De Goes, who is the author of two books on game programming ("3D Game Programming with C++" and "3D Game Programming with C++ Gold Edition"), worked as an instructor at http://www.gameinstitute.com/ and is a member of the Boulder martial arts and agile software meetup groups.
I'm not even going to bother with it. Maybe I could figure it out, maybe it's too tough for me, it doesn't really matter. If they were offering a guaranteed position (say 90 days guaranteed?) and a stated salary/benefits package to the people who can figure it out, I'd get to work. When you're sure you've got the best hand, you put your money in the pot. But they're not brave enough to put something at stake here. A game in which my prize is the opportunity to find out what my prize could be.
I despise the entire resume/interview process anyway, adding another step does not make it seem more attractive to me. The prize should be that the winners get to avoid the normal tedium of getting hired.
I wish I had mod points. Well, I wouldn't be able to use them anyway because I've been posting on this article. But if I could use 'em, you'd have one.
:)
I'm subscribed to the Google group that was pointed out earlier, and I'm overwhelmed with email from it. I'm only up to 1:42am last night in the conversation so far. At that point, people were pondering the significance of color pixels in a PNG graphic used as a border to one of the clues. It looks like one of those 2d barcodes, so it can't be just a pretty border.
The challenge was cute when it involved writing a few Javascript functions. Toward the end it just gets obnoxious.
Given the timing of all this, I have to wonder if this mysterious employer is really looking for people willing to work through Christmas.
WoW, you guys are REALLY SMART !
BUT you didn't solve the problem, I DID !!
I got Whois on, wanted-master-software-developers.com, and found a PO box in San Diego. A search shows the address to show up in various web scams !!!
This highlights the problem with assuming that passing unit tests mean that your code is correct. Your code may only be as correct and complete as your test suite. Or it may be totally correct. It's hard to tell without a formal proof, and those are usually impractical.
Of course, given that the only "use" of this function is to get the word "coLLAborATE" to spell correctly, the unit tests covered all cases needed to get that done correctly. That means the simplest code that correctly fits those needs is best, and I give kudos to the author of that code. They finished their code before I finished mine, and the extra work I did was totally unnecessary. But it was fun!
When you solve the rest of the first puzzle, you'll realize that the function is only ever confronted with one movable block, so that test case is irrelevant. A "correct" implementation would have to look at whole lines at a time, but since that is not necessary and would be a lot more complicated, it could be considered wasteful. Implementing something which is not going to be used is usually a bad idea, because it won't be tested. On the other hand, the provided tests do not ensure correct behavior in the second half of the first puzzle, even if you don't hard code the test cases into the function (there is no test case where a block sticks to a block on one side with free space down and to the other side, free space to the other side and no border on the other side.)
I went to n-brain.net and, since I didn't solve their "Puzzle", all I can say is.....
Hebrews 11:8
Jeremiah 33:3
.. assuming you have exhausted the local talent pool and want someone from outside, say, the valley, how are they going to find out you're "cool" to work for.
I agree 100% with you that this "cool to work for" is mainly BS (I worked for a consultancy which annually announced this "best company to work for" survey and then told us how to fill it in), but it makes me wonder if you have a volume need for new staff how you're making a good work place clear to them.
Insert
Anyway, he's an idiot.
He keeps calling for reduced government/spending, but then he goes and asks for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of funding for special projects for his constituents in Texas...
He doesn't know how much money income taxes bring in, but wants to get rid of them. He doesn't know how many troops we have, but he wants to bring them all home. He doesn't really know anything about any issue that he has a stance on.
interview
MR. RUSSERT: "If elected president, Paul says he would abolish public schools, welfare, Social Security and farm subsidies."
REP. PAUL: OK, you may have picked that up 20 or 30 years ago, it's not part of my platform. As a matter of fact, I'm the only one that really has an interim program. Technically, a lot of those functions aren't constitutional. But the point is I'm not against the FBI investigation in doing a proper role, but I'm against the FBI spying on people like Martin Luther King. I'm against the CIA fighting secret wars and overthrowing government and interfering...
MR. RUSSERT: Would you abolish them?
REP. PAUL: I would, I would not abolish all their functions, but I--the, the, the...
MR. RUSSERT: What about public schools? Are you still...
REP. PAUL: OK, but let's go, let's go with the CIA. They're, they're involved in, in, in torture. I would abolish that, yes. But I wouldn't abolish their right and our, our requirement to accumulate intelligence for national defense purposes.
{ ':' => '', ' ' => '-', 's\n' => 's.com\n' } mean anything to to anyone? I don't know about (3548, 4648) though
This is hilarious, and so like the standard IT mentality to go chasing after an obscure chain of technical clues...
You might have noticed that at the bottom of the original posting they give the location of their business: Lawrenceville. A quick google search shows that this place is tiny, and in my couple of minutes of searching (I don't actually care very much about this puzzle), I only found one company that was even remotely interesting to an IT person.
Compare what they do with their list of personal qualities that they are looking for, and you get a match. (Also matches the technical things they are testing with their little treasure hunt.)
Meh.
That seems excessively difficult. Try this: .length; i++ ) {
dumparray = function( targetarray ) {
var text = "";
for( var i = 0; i < targetarray
for( var x = 0; x < targetarray[i].length; x++ ) {
if( targetarray[i][x] ) {
text += "*";
} else {
text += "-";
}
}
text += "\n";
}
return text;
}
f = function(d) {
var before = dumparray(d);
var newresults = new Array();
for( var i = d.length - 1; i > 0; i-- ) {
var thisrow = d[i];
var prevrow = d[i - 1];
for( var x = 0; x < thisrow.length; x++ ) {
if( prevrow[x] && !thisrow[x] ){
var ok = true;
if( x > 0 ) {
if( prevrow[x-1] ) {
ok = false;
}
}
if( x < thisrow.length - 1 ) {
if( prevrow[x+1] ) {
ok = false;
}
}
if( x > 0 && x < thisrow.length - 1 ) {
if( thisrow[x-1] && thisrow[x+1] ) {
ok = false;
}
}
if( ok ) {
prevrow[x] = false;
thisrow[x] = true;
}
}
}
}
var after = dumparray(d);
alert( before + "\n" + after );
}
"what is the significance of the date '01-18-08?"
Nothing. It doesn't exist, there are only 12 months in a year.
Amazing, I have the same combination on my lugguage!
They use Perl syntax to describe the url, but they don't use regular expressions... Jeezz!
The guy who made the test clearly hasn't got what it takes himself: "You're always looking for ways to eliminate waste, at all levels of development." It's a puzzle, for once it's legal to favor conciseness over readability. He's shitting on a chance most of us can only dream about.
And in addition I am of the opinion that ISO 8601:2004 describes the only correct ways to format dates.
Show a man some news, distract him for an hour. Show a man some mod points, distract him for the rest of his life.