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This is Not a Brain Surgery
Jan. 21st, 2008
02:24 pm - Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and MapReduce
1. MapReduce is a software framework invented by Google.
2. Hadoop is open source implementation of MapReduce, supported (in part) by Yahoo.
3. The most coherent description of MapReduce I read so far, could be found in the paper from Microsoft.
Mar. 19th, 2006
08:56 pm - outsourcing your email
I always run mail servers for personal email address. My email is just something too important to outsource to somebody else. More and more sites are using your email address as your identification and even more sites use email for authentication purposes (e.g. password recovery).
I have GMail address which I give to web sites which need to send me something just once. Recently I have given it to support service and was waiting for email from them regarding technical issue with their software. It never came. After I some time I called them again and asked to send it again. Nada. After some time I figured out that GMail might be the problem. And indeed, when I gave them my usual mail address, the message has promptly arrived.
To my surprise, Gmail just rejects messages with executables in attachments, even if they are inside ZIP archives. I sent test message to myself and it bounced with the following error code: "reason: 552 5.7.0 Illegal Attachment". Mind you, it is not because it was infected by virus. It is just google quietly decided for me that I do not need to receive this kind of information. Thank you very much!
Jan. 29th, 2006
07:20 pm - google web accelerator
Google offers me repeatedly to download their web accelerator:
Just to turn me down, because Macintosh is not supported:
I guess, they are just too lazy to check USER-AGENT header in my HTTP request to see that I am using Safari on Macintosh.
Oct. 11th, 2004
12:27 pm - Gmail ATOM feeds
While it is not officially announced, Google now have ATOM feeds for GMail. Use https://gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom URL to subscribe (requires HTTP authentication with your GMail username and password).
Too bad, my NetNewsWire Lite RSS reader does not seems to support HTTP authentication :(
Sep. 23rd, 2004
08:28 pm - GLAT, 1st puzzle solution
In comments to my solution to previous Google challenge, somebody gave me a link to Google Labs Aptitude Test, which was recently published in some magazines.
Today I decided to tackle the first puzzle. It says:
Solve this cryptic equation, realizing of course that values for M and E could be interchanged. No leading zeroes are allowed:
WWWDOT - GOOGLE = DOTCOM
There are several ways to solve this:
1. Find solution on the internet (using Google)
2. Find a web application solving this kind of problems
3. Solve the problem manually
4. Write the code solving this class of the problems (even if it takes much longer than any of above)
For me, approach number 4 is the most natural. I immediately recognized this as another opportunity to exercise in Haskell programming.
The result is [('C',4),('D',5),('E',6),('G',1),('L',0)
Jul. 10th, 2004
10:32 pm - google challenge - part 2
After solving anonymous challenge yesterday, I've spend little more time on second puzzle and was able to solve it.
As I have suspected it was ploy by Google to find potential employees. Friend of mine told me that he thinks it is unethical to publish answers openly. I do not feel so. I posted first one because I was little disappointed to find second puzzle after solving the first one. But I am posting this one consciously, because it was open challenge (how more open you can get compared to posting billboard at the side of highway 101!). I worked hard to solve this, and do not see why I should hide results of my work.
I do not think that finding these answers on the net and using them to get to interview at Google will help anybody to get job there. There are other tricky questions they always can ask on the interview, and you will not be able to look them up. Even if you would somehow pass the interview without possessing skills Google thinks these challenges helps to identify, without them, you will not be able to do the job. If you will, that means that challenge is useless anyway, and it checks for skills which do not really matter (this is what I personally think by the way). Since I am personally not looking for job at the moment, I also do not care about competing with fellow engineers for position at Google.
I do not think the answer will be kept secret much longer. Today I was able to fine solution to 1st part posted on the net. I checked with google search yesterday, and it did not found it back then. Now it does. It is just matter of time until this, 2nd answer is posted.
So, the only reason to hide this answer is not to spoil the fun of solving it to other people. So if you do not want to know the answer for second (and final) puzzle, please do not read further.
SPOILER: Again, small Haskell program helped me to find missing number 5966290435, which like previous ones have sum of digits 49 and could be found in sequence of digits of 'e'.
12:05 am - first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e
Recently riding my motorcycle on highway 101, south of San Francisco I've noticed big advertisement poster:
(I stole the picture from some later post in spanish who also found the number. When I worked on this, google search did not find any results for this puzzle).
Out of curiosity I decided to find out what it is. Since I am still learning Haskell, I decided that that would be nice Haskell exercise. It was nice exercise indeed, in course of which I have learned more about Haskell and things like Rabin-Miller Probable Prime Test and Spigot Algorithm
Well, I did it and was able to find number. I went to the site, expecting something exiting, but it just says "Congratulations. You've made it to level 2" and offers next puzzle. Frankly, without knowing what it is about (I guess this is a new way to screen employees) I am not very inclined to spend more time solving their puzzles. Also, the next puzzle they offer is of kind I detest: trying to find next number in sequence. I hate when people ask something like this on interviews.
So, being dissapointed for being sent to wild goose chanse without any gratification, I decided to share the answer to their first problem. I hope search engines pick up this page soon and they will have more potential candidates knocking on the door of their second level.
The prime they were asking for is 7427466391.
I will apprecite if somebody who will get through all their puzzles will tell me what it was about.
UPDATE (September 2004): I would like to thank all of you who took their time to let me know that this is Google recruitment campaign. After solving second part of the puzzle I was able to see that for myself. So if you are looking for the answers: your got them right here. You are welcome to read the rest of my blog (or even subscribe to new posts with RSS).
Apr. 9th, 2004
08:05 pm - google gmail
Today I was able to take a look at google new mail service: GMail. Mark Twain said: "To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail". Probably this is the reason why while providing 1Gb of mail storage, google does not offer folders, just search. Address books is very basic. Good news is that interface is very clean and site is very fast. It is so fast, it does not feel like web application at all. They even have keyboard shortcuts! Support for non-ASCII characters in email is good - I was able to read and send messages in russian (it sends in UTF-8).
By providing mail service Google started its move into portal business. Once you have mail application, you will need address book, calendar, mailing list and all the way up to online auctions and personals. I do not know if this is good news or bad. It could kill Google (going the way of Altavista) or could make it a biggest portal in the world. Yahoo and MSN - beware!