
Randall Munroe talks xkcd at Google (astounding cameo at 21:30) - SwellJoe
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24
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BrandonM
One of my favorite parts was at 35:20 when he appeared visibly shaken that
Google had produced typewritten data for the experiment he had performed a
couple days ago. "Okay, what's this.... [15 second pause] How did this get
here?! This was like two nights ago on a piece of paper."

Some of the other parts I liked:

5:45 - [Describes a scheme to create a map showing transit times surrounding
an area, which will require about 500,000 page requests from Google Maps]
...and that had been running for a while. And then I went and read the terms
of service...

21:15 - Python is basically executable pseudocode, and if that's the case,
then Perl is executable line noise.

22:35 - We're gonna move away from talking about the searching algorithms for
a moment now...

25:35 - You know, maybe you can actually verify this, because on Wikipedia....
This story is on Wikipedia, because I looked it up, and I think there is a
"citation needed" tag attached to it.

30:25 - If a raptor were to attack me in this room, how would I escape? There
is a lot of glass; I've noticed this coming in...

34:10 - Which word are you offended by: "bitches" or "science"?

39:50 - Actually, the first IRC channel... Oh man, why am I telling this
story? The first IRC channel I hung out in... it was a... actually a fan
fiction IRC channel. Erotic fan fiction...

49:00 - The "sudo make me a sandwich".... It was, I think, at Microsoft, too.
Although, I mean, Microsoft? Why would they be using sudo(8)?

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arasakik
He mentioned that the "sudo make me a sandwich" was seen at Amazon. I don't
know if there were other people who also did this, but I believe that it was
my drawing he was talking about - I copied it onto a giant whiteboard in the
hallway :)

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SwellJoe
Yes, Knuth showed up for the event...and I had an invite to go to the event
from one of the Authors@Google team, and I would have been sitting within a
chair or two of him had I gone. But, I slept in. Long night of banging my head
on JavaScript the night before...sometimes it pays to get to bed at a
reasonable hour.

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brianm
Umh, was that Knuth asking him about his log(log(n)) search algorithm?

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tocomment
Is that possible?

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jey
For comparison-based sorts, no. There are some good links if you google "lower
bound of comparison-based sorting algorithms".

Knuth's question was a joking reference to <http://xkcd.com/342/>

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tocomment
Thanks. The comic doesn't mention what the algorithm does. I thought I heard
"search" in the lecture not sort.

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jey
Oops, you're right, the 2nd-to-last panel is talking about A* and Dijkstra's
search algorithms, but it's not clear what the last panel refers to. I just
idiotically had assumed that the last panel was referring to sorting
algorithms.

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tlrobinson
Was that... Knuth?!

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eru
I was flabbergasted, too.

