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.
System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern returns "M/d/yyyy" No wonder I couldn't figure it out. There's no 18 months in the calendar.;)
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.
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?
Oh spare me. They aren't going to turn away a qualified candidate that applies in a conventional way. This is a way for them to get some free publicity and maybe even (heaven forbid) have some fun.
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.
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!
Stupid HTML fixed sized layout too. In Safari 3, if you resize the text area box, the enclosing boxes don't resize with it. Maybe they're recruiting for people who design brain-dead web layouts?
Following the tip from the web, I entered TDD.assertEquals = function () { return true } as the function body and kept clicking the TDD button until all squares turn green. In the end you get the message: 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,
1: dollar and daily universal register had the year 1785 in common. 1785%100 = 85
2: the date of transition (=>) between the two rulers was 512. 512/2-1 = 255
3: Sherman Anti-Trust and Van Gogh have the year 1890 in common. 1890/9 = 210
4: Tycho's supernova was in 1572. 1572/12 = 131
And the owner of the group is listed as: Name: Samuel Smiles Location: Haddington Title: Editor Industry: Media Email address: smailgeers@kriocoudek.mailexpire.com
The significance of the date "01/18/2008" (the eleventh question) is that the company is American and does not use ISO date formats [wikipedia.org]. 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.
ISO dates have one HUGE advantage: They sort alphabetically into chronological order. Just as long as you add 0s before single-digit days/months, it doesn't matter what kind of field delimiter you use, they will all just sort correctly. Very, very useful.
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.
Am I the only one who enjoyed the challenge of solving the problem the way it was intended? Someone correctly guessed that this is like Tetris, where true is a block and false is empty space. However, it's unlike Tetris in some key ways. If you try to solve it, you'll see how as you hit test cases that your code fails on. Here's my function, which passes all tests. I had to try three different algorithms because new information about the behavior of the blocks necessitated starting from scratch with more complexity twice.
f = function(d) {
var height = d.length;
var width = d[0].length;
var find_base = function(t, i) {
for (j = 0; j < width; j++) {
if (d[i][j]) {
if (d[i+1][j]) {
t[j] = true;
}
if (j > 0 && j < (width - 1)) {
if (d[i+1][j-1] && d[i+1][j+1]) {
t[j] = true;
}
}
}
}
};
var add_sticky = function(t, i) {
while (true) {
var stop = true;
for (j = 0; j < width; j++) {
if (d[i][j] && !t[j]) {
if (j > 0 && t[j-1]) {
t[j] = true;
stop = false;
}
if (j < (width - 1) && t[j+1]) {
t[j] = true;
stop = false;
}
}
}
if (stop) {
break;
}
}
};
var i, j;
var t = new Array(width);
for (i = height - 2; i >= 0; i--) {
for (j = 0; j < width; j++) {
t[j] = false;
}
find_base(t, i);
add_sticky(t, i);
for (j = 0; j < width; j++) {
if (d[i][j] && !t[j]) {
d[i][j] = false;
d[i+1][j] = true;
}
}
} };
That does you no good, since you need to write the proper function to proceed. Otherwise, the logic of the bottom block thing doesn't work. First, you need the proper Javascript function which implements the sticky block logic:
f = function(d) {
var h = d.length;
var w = d[0].length;
for(var y = h-2; y >= 0; y--) {
for(var x = 0; x < w; x++) {
if(d[y][x] &&
!dxy(x-1,y) &&
!dxy(x+1,y) &&
!dxy(x,y+1) &&
!(dxy(x+1,y+1) &&
dxy(x-1,y+1))) {
d[y][x]=false;
d[y+1][x]=true;
}
}
} }
This basically drops all the blocks in the field, unless they're touching another block on either side, below, or they're touching two blocks on both diagonal corners below. Here the field is an array of arrays, and the blocks are true or false.
Then, you get the Ford text plus a field in the bottom. The field accepts a list of integers. You have a "dropper". For each integer, the dropper moves that number of positions to the right (positive) or left (negative), and drops a block following your algorithm (that's why you need the JS function to work). Note that the positions are relative, not absolute.
Now for the Ford code. The hint is in the tooltip text. List, Uniquify, Relativity:
LIST the words in both the original text (from wikipedia) and the text that comes up after solving the problem. Split it into words (maintain apostrophes as part of words, since it's part of the word Ford's).
UNIQUIFY the original text, getting rid of duplicate words while maintaining the word order. Leave the first word of each.
RELATIVITY: Find the positions of each word in the mangled text from the original text. Given these positions, calculate the position change (relativize, differentiate, call it however you want). You'll get something like 0,-6,5,-5,4,-4,2,-2,1,-1,-1,1,-3,3,-4,4,-5,5.... Drop the first number of each pair (the initial zero is an artifact), leaving -6, -5, -4, -2... These are absolute positions of the dropper. Differentiate again, giving 0,1,1,2,1,2,2,1,1. Now that looks like a set of instructions for the dropper. Plug it in, and voila.
Here's the Python code to make it happen: #!/usr/bin/python
Crap, I'm a moron. I had a bug in the regular expression, and I managed to work around it with the other code, causing the problems. This caused the code to insert a 0 between everything, yielding the alternating +/- numbers, and the "o" oddity was caused by two separators together in the source text.
Turns out all you need is one differentiation and a non-retarded regular expression that doesn't insert empty words between each pair of non-word characters.
I've also made the variable names resemble less those of the problem (read: not single-character madness). And added some comments.
text = "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"
def do_list(string):
return re.split(r"[,.:]+",string.lower()) # split by any combination of space, comma, period, colon.
def do_uniquify(lst):
out_l = []
for i in lst:
if i not in out_l: # ignore dupes
out_l.append(i)
return out_l
def do_relativity(textlist,datalist):
last_pos = 0 # keep track of last position
out_l = []
for word in datalist:
index = textlist.index(word) # find index in source text
out_l.append(index-last_pos) # differentiate index
last_pos = index
return out_l
I don't have the function that passes the tests that they wanted yet, but here's a collection of everything so far:
First off, the craigslist posting leads to: http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/?key= [wanted-mas...lopers.com] 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,/2 ~=-154 - 1 = -155.
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.
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...
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.
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.
One word... (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Maybe... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Au contraire. He just never left his mother's basement.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern returns "M/d/yyyy" No wonder I couldn't figure it out. There's no 18 months in the calendar. ;)
"All Winners Get Free Software" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Viral advertising is my guess (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
As proof I present you with George Bush, Laverne and Shirley, Paris Hilton, Big Mac, Ford taurus.
anniversary of what? (Score:2)
Here's a brain teaser... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Puzzles: Friend or Foe? (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Save some time (Score:5, Informative)
eyAnOicgPT4gJycsICcgJyA9PiAnLScsICdzXG4nID0+ICdzLmNvbVxuJyB9 converts to { ':' => '', ' ' => '-', 's\n' => 's.com\n' }
Base64 (Score:4, Informative)
{ ':' => '', ' ' => '-', 's\n' => 's.com\n' }
Now, if you notice [RFC 3548] later changed to 4648:
"CB-" ":" ":" ":"
":"
my 30-seconds attempt is over.
Circumstantial evidence (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Base64 (Score:5, Informative)
Its a find-and-replace that turns the title:
Wanted: Master Software Developers
Into:
http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/ [wanted-mas...lopers.com]
... and the test continues...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
TDD.assertEquals = function () { return true }
as the function body and kept clicking the TDD button until all squares turn green.
In the end you get the message:
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,
Re:Base64 (Score:4, Informative)
is to go to http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/ [wanted-mas...lopers.com] and the URL will change to http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/?key= [wanted-mas...lopers.com]
so you paste the word coLLAborATE at the end: http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/?key=coLLAborATE [wanted-mas...lopers.com] and you get to the next step.
For an explanation of the in between parts see http://edschweppe.livejournal.com/88912.html [livejournal.com]
Parent
Well, the date is obvious (Score:2)
Anonymous Coward? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're always looking for ways to eliminate waste (Score:5, Funny)
Here's the contact info (spoiler warning) (Score:5, Informative)
{ ':' => '', ' ' => '-', 's\n' => 's.com\n' }
Apply that to the subject in the contact details. You get:
http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/ [wanted-mas...lopers.com]
That was pretty easy. The test then seems to move to web programming and I'm not interested.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
([Dollar,Daily Universal Register] % 100).([Flavian II => Severus] / 2 - 1).([Sherman Anti-Trust,Van Gogh] / 9).([Tycho Brahe,Stellar] / 12)
*/
that's at the top of the main css file. the other js files don't help...
Re:Here's the contact info (spoiler warning) (Score:5, Insightful)
1: dollar and daily universal register had the year 1785 in common. 1785%100 = 85
2: the date of transition (=>) between the two rulers was 512. 512/2-1 = 255
3: Sherman Anti-Trust and Van Gogh have the year 1890 in common. 1890/9 = 210
4: Tycho's supernova was in 1572. 1572/12 = 131
Going here: http://85.255.210.131/ [85.255.210.131]
Only reveals 'yes';
Parent
Re:Here's the contact info (spoiler warning) (Score:5, Insightful)
http://tinyurl.com/34w4wa [tinyurl.com] redirects to http://groups.google.com/group/wanted-master-software-engineers [google.com]
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Name: Samuel Smiles
Location: Haddington
Title: Editor
Industry: Media
Email address: smailgeers@kriocoudek.mailexpire.com
A Google search of Samuel Smiles Haddington reveales a wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Smiles [wikipedia.org]
Re:Here's the contact info (spoiler warning) (Score:4, Funny)
That's okay, someone else will be. Maybe they should hire Slashdot
Parent
l33t spe4k (Score:4, Funny)
"eye and i......"
my l33tspeak isnt what it used to be.
Significance of the date "01/18/2008" (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Significance of the date "01/18/2008" (Score:4, Insightful)
They sort alphabetically into chronological order. Just as long as you add 0s before single-digit days/months, it doesn't matter what kind of field delimiter you use, they will all just sort correctly. Very, very useful.
Parent
it decrypts to... (Score:5, Funny)
dear applicant 63B: (Score:5, Funny)
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.
100% true (Score:3, Funny)
Wasn't the JJ Abrams film called 1-18-08 (Score:2)
1-18-08
So could it be some type of nerdy viral campaign like Ilovebees?
And the answer is... (Score:2, Funny)
Difficult test? Hardly. (Score:4, Funny)
...I mean, come on guys, at least design your test to be a little resilient to people who grok JavaScript.
Re:Difficult test? Hardly. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Source code (Score:5, Informative)
"// 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"));
Re:Source code (Score:4, Informative)
f = function(d) {
var h = d.length;
var w = d[0].length;
dxy = function(x,y) {
return x<w && y<h && x>=0 && y>=0 && d[y][x];
}
for(var y = h-2; y >= 0; y--) {
for(var x = 0; x < w; x++) {
if(d[y][x] &&
!dxy(x-1,y) &&
!dxy(x+1,y) &&
!dxy(x,y+1) &&
!(dxy(x+1,y+1) &&
dxy(x-1,y+1))) {
d[y][x]=false;
d[y+1][x]=true;
}
}
}
}
This basically drops all the blocks in the field, unless they're touching another block on either side, below, or they're touching two blocks on both diagonal corners below. Here the field is an array of arrays, and the blocks are true or false.
Then, you get the Ford text plus a field in the bottom. The field accepts a list of integers. You have a "dropper". For each integer, the dropper moves that number of positions to the right (positive) or left (negative), and drops a block following your algorithm (that's why you need the JS function to work). Note that the positions are relative, not absolute.
Now for the Ford code. The hint is in the tooltip text. List, Uniquify, Relativity:
LIST the words in both the original text (from wikipedia) and the text that comes up after solving the problem. Split it into words (maintain apostrophes as part of words, since it's part of the word Ford's).
UNIQUIFY the original text, getting rid of duplicate words while maintaining the word order. Leave the first word of each.
RELATIVITY: Find the positions of each word in the mangled text from the original text. Given these positions, calculate the position change (relativize, differentiate, call it however you want). You'll get something like 0,-6,5,-5,4,-4,2,-2,1,-1,-1,1,-3,3,-4,4,-5,5.... Drop the first number of each pair (the initial zero is an artifact), leaving -6, -5, -4, -2... These are absolute positions of the dropper. Differentiate again, giving 0,1,1,2,1,2,2,1,1. Now that looks like a set of instructions for the dropper. Plug it in, and voila.
Here's the Python code to make it happen:
#!/usr/bin/python
import re
data = "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, f
Parent
Re:Source code (Score:5, Informative)
Turns out all you need is one differentiation and a non-retarded regular expression that doesn't insert empty words between each pair of non-word characters.
I've also made the variable names resemble less those of the problem (read: not single-character madness). And added some comments.
#!/usr/bin/python
import re
data = "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"
text = "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"
def do_list(string):
return re.split(r"[
def do_uniquify(lst):
out_l = []
for i in lst:
if i not in out_l: # ignore dupes
out_l.append(i)
return out_l
def do_relativity(textlist,datalist):
last_pos = 0 # keep track of last position
out_l = []
for word in datalist:
index = textlist.index(word) # find index in source text
out_l.append(index-last_pos) # differentiate index
last_pos = index
return out_l
textlist = do_list(text)
datalist = do_list(data)
uniquelist = do_uniquify(textlist)
relative_numbers = do_relativity(uniquelist,datalist)
# stringize all numbers, join with commas.
print ",".join(map(str,relative_numbers))
Parent
Clues so far... (Score:4, Interesting)
First off, the craigslist posting leads to:
http://wanted-master-software-developers.com/?key= [wanted-mas...lopers.com]
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.
Two words (Score:3, Insightful)
It decrypts to... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:After solving 1/3... (more on code.png) (Score:3, Informative)
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
2/3 (Score:4, Informative)
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 [wanted-mas...lopers.com]
Parent
3/3 (Score:3, Informative)