Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My mom left behind some number code

puzzling.stackexchange.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 103 posts

Re: My mom left behind some number code

#81

Post by wjholden »

kataklasm wrote: post #49
tasuki wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me wonder how many man-hours were spent on this now. Surely either it was luck that a person with this knowledge read the question, or an extremely large number of people read the question?

You assume that question could only have been with innate knowledge of the answer. But just by querying a search engine with two of the numbers I was able to get the same link: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22627418%22+%2219223530%22 With DuckDuckGo it is even the only search result for the same two numbers and I didn't even have to quote them: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=627418+19223530

Tangentially related, I've had some success Googling constants before. For example, I once got interested in the constants in the Harris-Benedict function for estimating basal metabolic rates. By searching for these constants, I quickly found the original text and some other interesting related material.

This approach generalizes to strings as well. In my field of computer networking, you're an easy search away from finding out what 0x0800 means with very little context.

Searches can also work for numbers that don't look familiar. For example, you'd immediate recognize the first few digits of π, but you might not so easily recognize π²≈9.86960440109.

Re: My mom left behind some number code

#82

Post by altun »

wintorez wrote: post #9

Posts like this remind me what an amazing phenomenon Internet is. 20 years ago a question like this would have been left unanswered. I hope we get to protect and keep Internet for generations to come.

Life was, in a way, colored by the mystery involved. With every innovation that comes, there are also things that it eliminates.

Re: My mom left behind some number code

#83

Post by wintorez »

randomdata wrote: post #21
bnegreve wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know .. is it that more of these questions get answered, or that when one of these questions gets an answer, we all learn about it?

If more questions are answered, is it because of the internet or is there some other factor like people having more time to answer questions? It's not like the internet wasn't alive and well 20 years ago. Hell, Stack Exchange is little more than Usenet, and that was in use over 40 years ago.

Sorry, 20 years was an arbitrary number. What I meant was before the internet. :D

Re: My mom left behind some number code

#84

Post by dmonitor »

calebegg wrote: post #75
isitthough42 wrote: post #10

This is simply answered by https://www.google.com/search?q=925+8642+37654+627418 The first page results would have answered it already - better than the stackexchange answers quoting random slides: 925 8642 37654 627418 0401473 19223530 486854332 2531971768 85129619450 918546942937 Figure 1: Digit Memory Test by Howard (1983, in Bernstein et al., 2008:215).

Funnily enough, your comment is now the top search result for that query....

Is there a name for this phenomenon, yet? When a comment about an obscure search query becomes the top result of the query.

Re: My mom left behind some number code

#85

Post by 4ggr0 »

Loughla wrote: post #77
4ggr0 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

24 year old level 11, seems like level 11 is the sweet-spot for HNers.

Late 30's, level 12. My guess is that level 11 makes sense to most people, because it's the same amount of numbers as a full phone number, so you can get a cadence going. 2-232-340-1010 is pretty easy to remember, because it already exists as a common cadence, even if it's not in the US format like I use.

> so you can get a cadence going.

To me it seemed like numbers which could be split into two equal groups were the easiest. 235 431, 4475 3268 etc.

I also sang the numbers in my head and tried to memorize by repeating the melody after the numbers disappeared.

There is probably a reason why level 11 seems to be so prevalent. Phone numbers could be a factor, but to be honest, I don't know a single phone number by heart, which is probably due to my young age. Never had to memorize a phone number...

The best training for me are probably 2FA codes, so up to 6 digits I should have it covered ;)

EDIT: I realize that I just called you old. Sorry.

Re: My mom left behind some number code

#86

Post by mkraft »

altun wrote: post #82
wintorez wrote: post #9

Posts like this remind me what an amazing phenomenon Internet is. 20 years ago a question like this would have been left unanswered. I hope we get to protect and keep Internet for generations to come.

Life was, in a way, colored by the mystery involved. With every innovation that comes, there are also things that it eliminates.

That’s poetic. Maybe I’ll understand it eventually.

Re: My mom left behind some number code

#87

Post by latexr »

upwardbound wrote: post #41

Just for fun, it would be cool if each of us remembers to take the time to leave at least 1 or 2 little puzzles for our descendants to figure out, as a way to have happier feelings again one last time with you, in a way. My grandpa would totally have done something like this. I remember he showed me a big book of unsolved lost locations of buried treasure, and a related story he read me about a golden key hidden behi…

> Just for fun, it would be cool if each of us remembers to take the time to leave at least 1 or 2 little puzzles for our descendants to figure out, as a way to have happier feelings again one last time with you, in a way.

If you and your loved ones like puzzles, sure, but it’s a stretch to say each of us should do it. For many (I’d bet “most”) it’d just be frustrating to come up with or try to decrypt the puzzle.

Do whatever makes sense for your case. I remember (but am failing to find) a story about someone who had Mario Kart on N64 and showed it to their grandfather who enjoyed it so much he bought an N64 and Mario Kart (and only that game) for himself. When they played together, the grandfather always won. Years later, after the grandfather died, they got his old game and console and occasionally played against their grandfather’s Mario Kart ghosts. They still failed to beat any of them, and that triggered fond memories.

Re: My mom left behind some number code

#88

Post by z3t4 »

Before moving from my childhood home I collected a fair amount of shiny stones and hide them in a coffin in the woods. And also made a treasure map and hid it in the house. I wonder if anyone has found it.

Re: My mom left behind some number code

#89

Post by mypalmike »

madaxe_again wrote: post #59
wintorez wrote: post #9

Posts like this remind me what an amazing phenomenon Internet is. 20 years ago a question like this would have been left unanswered. I hope we get to protect and keep Internet for generations to come.

Not only that, but it would have been 20 minutes of a programme on the history channel with speculation about demons, aliens, the sensitivity of cats to witchcraft, and messages from the beyond.

Except that back then, the History Channel was a somewhat stuffy educational channel devoted largely to World War II documentaries.

Re: My mom left behind some number code

#90

Post by mypalmike »

dmonitor wrote: post #84
calebegg wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, your comment is now the top search result for that query....

Is there a name for this phenomenon, yet? When a comment about an obscure search query becomes the top result of the query.

It's named after the parent user, and is called the "isitthough42 effect".

You can Google that term soon enough.

Post reply on HN