Foobar • Hacker News Board

Re: Foobar

#151

Post by mangeletti » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 2:25 AM UTC

I'm not trolling when I say this, nor am I some sort of hater...

But, isn't Google the same company that we're always reading about, the one shaping up to be one of the most evil entities humanity has ever seen? After all, they pretend to protect net neutrality until it's their turn to play ball. They pretend to be pro-freedom, anti-big-brother (maybe you should read a bit about what Julian Assange has to say about Larry Page and Google in general, in case you missed all that), and anything else that will help them gain traction in the minds of the public, especially the techy youth.

They always just want to help, don't they. They're so thoughtful... Now, Google wants to put tiny electronics in our blood... what's next?

My point is, why would anyone want to support such a company? I suppose humanity had supported many bad things. Maybe my convictions don't match up well with the rest of the US anymore.

Re: Foobar

#152

Post by ninjaplease » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 2:26 AM UTC

wuliwong wrote: post #110

pilsetnieks wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

foo, bar, and baz are commonly used placeholders for function and variable names in programming examples.

At least according to Wikipedia, this connection of foo bar and FUBAR is plausible but not proven. You forgot the 4th basic one, "qux" btw.

ah hell, why not list them all:

foo, bar, baz, qux, quux, corge, grault, garply, waldo, fred, plugh, xyzzy, thud

Re: Foobar

#153

Post by skj » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 2:40 AM UTC

mangeletti wrote: post #151

I'm not trolling when I say this, nor am I some sort of hater... But, isn't Google the same company that we're always reading about, the one shaping up to be one of the most evil entities humanity has ever seen? After all, they pretend to protect net neutrality until it's their turn to play ball. They pretend to be pro-freedom, anti-big-brother (maybe you should read a bit about what Julian Assange has to say about L…

> the one shaping up to be one of the most evil entities humanity has ever seen?

quite an assertion.

Re: Foobar

#154

Post by mrgoldenbrown » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 3:05 AM UTC

rikverc wrote: post #96

1945795 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this irritating? Google won't hire you iff you solve the puzzle, this is nothing more than a very popular way for institutions to generate free PR.

It is irritating because the "puzzle" involves having a history of searching for stuff that Google Foobar has tagged as relevant. If your Google searches are not linked with your Google account or if you search using different search engines, you're out of the game.

You're not out of the game. You can apply through all the normal ways - recruiters, ads, networking, etc.

Re: Foobar

#155

Post by nevir » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 4:12 AM UTC

mragh wrote: post #126

k-mcgrady wrote: post #5

If you are as confused as I was this old HN thread might help: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8588080

Also, there are a lot of rabbits.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lotn6u0koxwevcc/foobar.mp4?dl=0

Re: Foobar

#156

Post by nanoscopic » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 4:13 AM UTC

I think google should make a system where you can play these puzzles by simply asking to and then agreeing not to share your solutions with anyone.

That way, any hacker news people who would like to do so can.

Sure people could enable google search history and google random python stuff, but any privacy minded hackers will have that disabled permanently ( as I do ). I'd like to note that I actually googled python lambda's myself recently, attempting to ascertain whether "lambda:0" is really the shortest way to make an empty object in python...

The fact that google themselves hasn't commented on this hacker news thread itself is somewhat disappointing to me.

Re: Foobar

#157

Post by plumeria » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 4:31 AM UTC

I wonder if it works only for people in the US...

Re: Foobar

#158

Post by asuffield » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 5:06 AM UTC

rikverc wrote: post #96

1945795 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this irritating? Google won't hire you iff you solve the puzzle, this is nothing more than a very popular way for institutions to generate free PR.

It is irritating because the "puzzle" involves having a history of searching for stuff that Google Foobar has tagged as relevant. If your Google searches are not linked with your Google account or if you search using different search engines, you're out of the game.

Disclaimer: my opinions are my own and not representing those of my employer or co-workers. I have no direct relationship to this project and haven't looked it up internally.

Has it occurred to any of you that we might do these things for sheer fun, because doing that is not only allowed but celebrated?

Re: Foobar

#159

Post by deathanatos » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 5:11 AM UTC

dhimes wrote: post #120

Uncaught SecurityError: Failed to read the 'localStorage' property from 'Window': Access is denied for this document.

Heh, I see that all the time! Oddly, this time not so much, but I permit cookies from *.google.com (perhaps you don't). But the "withgoogle.com" domain causes a redirect loop in the login popup…

Re: Foobar

#160

Post by yojo » Wed, Nov 12, 2014, 5:12 AM UTC

Based on comments above, I: 1) Turned on google search history 2) searched for 'python lambda syntax' and 'mutex lock' 3) got the invite that opened the foo.bar UI

You get a terminal, from the terminal you request coding challenges. They have a minimal IDE to code in. Choice of language is Java or python. Only tried one challenge. YMMV