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Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

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Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#41

Post by danso »

philfreo wrote: post #37
wahsd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously knew something about her that made it possible, which you even admit Justin doesn't know you had. People are getting bored with your shenanigans, spill it!

I don't feel bad about letting the discussion continue as-is because of the fact that we completely expected to get the answer with only the information mentioned here. I still haven't heard this method mentioned yet directly. The "extra" information we got came later after we already started working on it, and came as surprise. It just happened to bring the result back sooner than the other approach.

Nah I like this approach...let us bumble around for awhile in the discussion...I'd be very surprised if no one on HN could surmise the solution, but I'll admit I'm stumped (though I've only thought about it for a few minutes before getting back to work)

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#42

Post by AsymetricCom »

jbg331 wrote: post #9
AsymetricCom wrote: post #5

I'm sure there's a lot of information missing from this story, which leads to a lot of possible solutions that aren't negated by the lack of limiting circumstances. More than likely the author is an idiot and the image had EXIF data. Considering they already knew her highschool, it wouldn't had been to hard to go through the year books in a few hours.

I resent the fact that you think I'm an idiot. I have had two engineers check for EXIF data and there is 'nothing interesting in there'

The fact that you required two engineers to do something that you could have confirmed yourself with 2 seconds of Googling shows that your ego is a bit inflated.

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#43

Post by swamp40 »

If you know the high school and year(s), you go thru the friends list of every person on Facebook who did post their high school from that year (or nearby years), and does show their friends, until you see her face.

That's only a couple hundred kids, each with a couple hundred friends.

If you still get nothing, start doing friend requests for the people that don't show their friends. I'll bet you'd get another 25-30 kids that way.

I don't see why you'd need facial recognition software to go thru 20,000 pictures.

3/4ths of them would be the wrong gender/age and be immediately disqualified.

But if you're a programmer, you can probably scrape and aggregate to speed things up - drop out the males, other high schools, only show pictures once, etc.

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#44

Post by niuzeta »

philfreo wrote: post #17

I'm the engineer he's referring to. I still get a laugh seeing Justin's amazement when we told him her name. To answer a few questions... - This isn't the actual photo but looks similar, except that she was alone. Justin was afraid of reposting the same photo after the results of handing over a photo last time :) - There was no useful exif data in the image. - We knew her high school and approximate age in Austin, bu…

The team(including Justin: using first name here for convinience's sake) had a trip to Austin. Where they were should be a public knowledge. Perhaps they(you) started the search from there. A facebook search or so could tell some plans of people who would have fun at that particular place.

It is also possible that during the few days' correspondence one of the engineer guys had some other piece of info that we are not familiar with. Seeing how the engineers already knew her high school, I'm sure Justin talked about her with co-workers.

I think the key information that's missing here is what the engineers knew but Justin didn't know that they knew.(Sounds like a quote out of a Friends episode, mmm)

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#45

Post by grecy »

philfreo wrote: post #17

I'm the engineer he's referring to. I still get a laugh seeing Justin's amazement when we told him her name. To answer a few questions... - This isn't the actual photo but looks similar, except that she was alone. Justin was afraid of reposting the same photo after the results of handing over a photo last time :) - There was no useful exif data in the image. - We knew her high school and approximate age in Austin, bu…

A few ideas come to my head.

* Everyone was at the original bar at the same time - someone else had photos from the night that had her and other people in them, and those people (her friends) could be found online.

* The bar had some kind of "sign-up for x" list, or some kind of contest, or some kind of photos of the night, which were helpful.

* You searched twitter/facebook/whatever for a girl posting about a boy she just met at bar X, blah blah

* We know she was going to some kind of event - you guys figured out what that was, and found a guest list or something.

* You guys did a some wi-fi sniffing and read a few emails. He did say he emailed you the photo, so you know which account to listen for.

Are any of those close?

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#46

Post by philfreo »

nrivadeneira wrote: post #27
jmillikin wrote: post #21

Why not ask them? If your engineers as self-satisfied about finding her as it sounds, then they'll be happy to describe their process over a beer or two. I've never known an engineer who doesn't like discussing how they solved some riddle.

The engineers were made to beg for info on the girl, so they might be getting some satisfaction from keeping a secret from the author in return. I know I would. Give 'em a taste of his own medicine. Also, if it was a relatively simple solution, it's probably more exciting with some mystery overlaying it rather than just explaining it outright.

You got it... exactly this!

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#49

Post by dkb »

Philfreo > I think that the girl did share something with you that Justin doesn't know, such as something that she did accomplish in that school, like winning some kind of award, winning a competition or something similar. Then, you used that information along with the name of the school in Google.

Re: Help me figure out how I lost this bet to an engineer

#50

Post by scott_s »

AsymetricCom wrote: post #42
jbg331 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I resent the fact that you think I'm an idiot. I have had two engineers check for EXIF data and there is 'nothing interesting in there'

The fact that you required two engineers to do something that you could have confirmed yourself with 2 seconds of Googling shows that your ego is a bit inflated.

Please stop.
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