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ChromeOS Laptop-Smashing Ad Equation Solved

Posted by Soulskill on from the geeks-are-nothing-if-not-reliable dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Google's latest marketing video for Chrome OS is interesting to watch for the laptop-smashing amateurs or the slow motion fans, but the real fun may be at 2:24 in the video where a X=G/(CHROM-3) equation is displayed on a chalkboard. Only 20 hours later, it has already been cracked by Jamendo founder Sylvain Zimmer and his team. They posted details on how they did it and won a Cr-48 netbook, which may not even be delivered because they are not in the US."

17 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. cracked? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I think you mean solved... and, well, it's not exactly a challenge to anyone who's had highschool calc, unless I'm missing something.

    1. Re:cracked? by Laxori666 · · Score: 3, Informative

      They had to figure out what the numbers meant.

    2. Re:cracked? by zach_the_lizard · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If I have to guess, what they first did is solve for the various letters; in the video, each letter is given an equation, which resolves down to a number. Then they plug those into the equation at the bottom, resulting in X = 900.91/191605050401140404051920181525. Someone then had a flash of insight, noticed the 900.91 is similar to goo.gl, and thought that it could be a URL. But, just typing that in by itself would yield nothing. They had to get the random string of numbers to mean something. So they split it into 2 digits per character, 19 16 05 05.... and made the realization that those corresponded to a position of a letter in the alphabet. 19 is S, 16 is P, 5 is E, and so on. The final URL becomes: goo.gl/speedanddestroy. It's not impossible, it just takes some careful thought and attention to detail. I would have probably made it to the 900.91/number here stage if I had seen this beforehand, but the 900.91 is goo.gl insight probably would have eluded me, let alone dividing the numbers up like that.

      --
      SSC
    3. Re:cracked? by zach_the_lizard · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not all of it is high school calc. IIRC the integral of 4sin(x)/x has to be solved with Taylor series, and I only got those in the second semester of university calculus. One then has to take the limit to infinity of the resulting series, which may or may not be doable for a high school kid (not sure how hard the limit is; I'm too lazy to solve / look up the series)

      --
      SSC
    4. Re:cracked? by jmerlin · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This has become the de-facto standard for e-puzzles these days. Step 1 - provide puzzle that results in very large number of some kind. Step 2 - have some kind of splitting and/or decoding step that's somewhat obvious that will convert the result to text. Step 3 - set up url, award prize of some kind to first N visitors. It's old and worn down, I would've expected better.

    5. Re:cracked? by JayRott · · Score: 3, Funny

      I don't know why exactly but I really really want one myself. I registered for the pilot program, but at this point I think I just need to get in touch with one of the Google people and offer a hand job. I really have hit gadget rock bottom... is there a 12 step program or something?

    6. Re:cracked? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Why did solving this come with an award?

      Because publicity. There's no point in requiring a significant contributions to the sciences for a giveaway.

      Though I was hoping for something a bit more interesting when I clicked the link, I don't see the point in criticising Google for lack of originality here. It may be a familiar setup by this point, but it's still a cool thing to do. It's just a small bonus, it's not like we're entitled to have everything they do be completely awesome.

    7. Re:cracked? by severoon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually quite basic math there too. Why did solving this come with an award? I can point to several thousand problems in various books on my shelves that are orders of magnitude more difficult than that entire problem, all of which are commonly assigned as nothing more than homework problems. Hell, I just did it in Wolfram Alpha in 5 mins. The only really tricky part was the URL bit but EVERYONE does that these days so it's assumption #1. Old puzzle methodology is old. Come on Google, be original.

      ...says the one who didn't win...

      --
      but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
    8. Re:cracked? by smash · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Did you think to go do the effort to solve the problem before realising what the consequences of doing so may be? The fact that someone bothered to go to the effort when seeing it on the ad is "worth" just as much, if not more than the actual ability to solve it.

      It shows that they're a person who is willing/eager to work on problems "just because" (they have an active mind) rather than being forced to by an employer or similar.

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
    9. Re:cracked? by smash · · Score: 3, Insightful

      OK let me spell it out for you. The guy watched the ad and paid attention. Enough to actually go through and work out the easter egg. Google wants to encourage people to watch, and pay attention to their ads.

      --
      I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
    10. Re:cracked? by owlstead · · Score: 3, Funny

      Could you run that by me again?

  2. I solved it too! by jkmartin · · Score: 5, Funny

    To: alicethesurfer@gmail.com
    From: alf@nbc.com

    I found your cat. It was delicious.

  3. Re:Structual integrity by kimvette · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First look at the CR-48:

    http://www.pcworld.com/article/213168/google_cr48_first_look_at_the_first_chrome_os_laptop.html?tk=rel_news

    Working on the CR-48 can feel like walking a tightrope without a net (pardon the pun). If you're not connected to the Internet on this laptop, you're dead in the water. I wrote this article in Google Docs on the CR-48 during my commute. I should have been fine, because I had a Verizon Mi-Fi card for connectivity (our CR-48 arrived without a SIM card, so I couldn't test out the built-in 3G connection). But halfway through my commute, Chrome reported that it couldn't reach Google Docs. On any other laptop, this would be no problem. I'd copy my existing text into Word and continue working there. But on the CR-48, my options were severely limited. I pasted my changes into an Evernote note instead and hoped that I wouldn't lose my connection to that service.

    That's the problem with the cloud. Any problems on your end, at google, or anywhere in between, or if you forget to pay your cellular bill, you're not getting that proposal out to clients, you're not getting your tax returns in on time, you're not getting your paper in on time, etc.

    --
    The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
  4. Re:Structual integrity by angloquebecer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You're describing how the "cloud" should work. Unfortunately for Google, a lot of the core apps for cOS don't have an offline mode. Until web apps get to the level of only using your connection to sync with local storage, we're still in the "cloud == internet connection" stages.

  5. Re:Stunned... No, I'm not. I lied. by jkmartin · · Score: 4, Funny

    No no no, it's the X-terminal with WIRELESS!

  6. Wolfram|Alpha by pgn674 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Here's what the whole thing looks like in Wolfram Alpha all at once: (9*10^4+3^4+10)/100/((2^8-10+4*6!+17^4+11!/5+integ(3x^5,x,1,9))(2*23^6-((2^28+4)/10-(22^4+3*70-sqrt(81))))(3*17^4-(sqrt(256)+31*30^2))(17*8!+93^2-10)(12*(11^2-6)/(5*pi)integ(4sin(x)/x,x,0,inf))-3) - Wolfram|Alpha

    The 200 character limit in the input box is annoying, and it seems that you can't get around it by creating a URL manually. Managed to get it from 220 characters to under 200 by using valid shortened stuff like "integ" instead of "integral", and removing * and () where possible.

  7. Re:Structual integrity by Pieroxy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There is no google gears anymore. It's all in HTML5 now.

    --
    Write boring code, not shiny code!