ChromeOS Laptop-Smashing Ad Equation Solved

An anonymous reader writes "Google's latest marketing video for Chrome OS is interesting to watch for the laptop-smashing amateurs or the slow motion fans, but the real fun may be at 2:24 in the video where a X=G/(CHROM-3) equation is displayed on a chalkboard. Only 20 hours later, it has already been cracked by Jamendo founder Sylvain Zimmer and his team. They posted details on how they did it and won a Cr-48 netbook, which may not even be delivered because they are not in the US."

cracked?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean solved... and, well, it's not exactly a challenge to anyone who's had highschool calc, unless I'm missing something.

Re:cracked?

[zach_the_lizard]

If I have to guess, what they first did is solve for the various letters; in the video, each letter is given an equation, which resolves down to a number. Then they plug those into the equation at the bottom, resulting in X = 900.91/191605050401140404051920181525. Someone then had a flash of insight, noticed the 900.91 is similar to goo.gl, and thought that it could be a URL. But, just typing that in by itself would yield nothing. They had to get the random string of numbers to mean something. So they split it into 2 digits per character, 19 16 05 05.... and made the realization that those corresponded to a position of a letter in the alphabet. 19 is S, 16 is P, 5 is E, and so on. The final URL becomes: goo.gl/speedanddestroy. It's not impossible, it just takes some careful thought and attention to detail. I would have probably made it to the 900.91/number here stage if I had seen this beforehand, but the 900.91 is goo.gl insight probably would have eluded me, let alone dividing the numbers up like that.

Re:Structual integrity

[kimvette]

First look at the CR-48:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/213168/google_cr48_first_look_at_the_first_chrome_os_laptop.html?tk=rel_news [pcworld.com]

Working on the CR-48 can feel like walking a tightrope without a net (pardon the pun). If you're not connected to the Internet on this laptop, you're dead in the water. I wrote this article in Google Docs on the CR-48 during my commute. I should have been fine, because I had a Verizon Mi-Fi card for connectivity (our CR-48 arrived without a SIM card, so I couldn't test out the built-in 3G connection). But halfway through my commute, Chrome reported that it couldn't reach Google Docs. On any other laptop, this would be no problem. I'd copy my existing text into Word and continue working there. But on the CR-48, my options were severely limited. I pasted my changes into an Evernote note instead and hoped that I wouldn't lose my connection to that service.

That's the problem with the cloud. Any problems on your end, at google, or anywhere in between, or if you forget to pay your cellular bill, you're not getting that proposal out to clients, you're not getting your tax returns in on time, you're not getting your paper in on time, etc.

Re:Structual integrity

[angloquebecer]

You're describing how the "cloud" should work. Unfortunately for Google, a lot of the core apps for cOS don't have an offline mode. Until web apps get to the level of only using your connection to sync with local storage, we're still in the "cloud == internet connection" stages.

Re:cracked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did solving this come with an award?

Because publicity. There's no point in requiring a significant contributions to the sciences for a giveaway.

Though I was hoping for something a bit more interesting when I clicked the link, I don't see the point in criticising Google for lack of originality here. It may be a familiar setup by this point, but it's still a cool thing to do. It's just a small bonus, it's not like we're entitled to have everything they do be completely awesome.

Re:cracked?

[severoon]

Actually quite basic math there too. Why did solving this come with an award? I can point to several thousand problems in various books on my shelves that are orders of magnitude more difficult than that entire problem, all of which are commonly assigned as nothing more than homework problems. Hell, I just did it in Wolfram Alpha in 5 mins. The only really tricky part was the URL bit but EVERYONE does that these days so it's assumption #1. Old puzzle methodology is old. Come on Google, be original.

...says the one who didn't win...

Re:cracked?

[smash]

Did you think to go do the effort to solve the problem before realising what the consequences of doing so may be? The fact that someone bothered to go to the effort when seeing it on the ad is "worth" just as much, if not more than the actual ability to solve it.

It shows that they're a person who is willing/eager to work on problems "just because" (they have an active mind) rather than being forced to by an employer or similar.

Re:cracked?

[smash]

OK let me spell it out for you. The guy watched the ad and paid attention. Enough to actually go through and work out the easter egg. Google wants to encourage people to watch, and pay attention to their ads.