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Randall Munroe talks xkcd at Google (astounding cameo at 21:30) (youtube.com)
59 points by SwellJoe on Dec 12, 2007 | hide | past | favorite | 12 comments


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)?


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 :)


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.


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


The real question is: did he come on his own, or did some Googler call him up and get him to come as a prank on Randall?


Yes!


Is that possible?


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/


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


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.


Was that... Knuth?!


I was flabbergasted, too.




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