10 ms·
You can't google 9999999..99999999999999999999999
- arrowgunz 15y agoCan someone please explain me why that happens? Google says - "Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. Please try your request again later."
- YokoZar 15y agoDo you regularly search for 99999...999999? Sounds like it's unusual to me!
- wisty 15y agoIt seems to slow down, as you increase from: 111..111 11111..111111 and eventually crashes. I'm guessing there is some kind of grammar parser breaking horribly. There's grammar parsers that have extremely poor performance trying to parse stuff that looks like this. It might do: search 1 and 111111..11111 search 11 and 11111..11111 ... search 1 and 1 and 11111..111 ... ... ... and google detects that you are DOSing its server. OK, someone else has pointed out that this is a range search, and google may be protecting CC searches.
- tonyedgecombe 15y agoYears ago somebody discovered you could Google for credit card numbers that had been left on the web inadvertently, by searching for the right number range. I wonder if that is why it is unavailable.
- program 15y agoNeither 1111111..11111111111111111111111 11111111..1111111111111111111111 111111..111111 // minimum case or any other integer combination. 6 digits is the minimum amount that spawn the bizarre error.
- waterhouse 15y agoOn a faintly related note, I once was calculating partitions, using a relatively inefficient method (memoization: if f(n,k) is the number of distinct ways to express n as the unordered sum of integers no greater than k, then f(n,k) = f(n-k,k) + f(n,k-1)). My computer started to feel the strain in the thousands (this algorithm is O(n^2) in space and time). I then googled for the partition of, say, 1034, which is: 91363785902248291467082481888195 I figured that chances are that no website will have that integer on there by accident. Lo and behold, I found, among other results, a text file containing the partitions up to 10,000, presumably done with a more efficient algorithm (likely Euler's ridiculous pentagonal-number recurrence formula, which, memoized, is roughly O(n^1.5) in time and O(n) in space): http://oeis.org/A000041/b000041.txt http://oeis.org/A000041/b000041.txt
- Sniffnoy 15y agoIt should be pointed out here for everyone else that in general, if you want terms of a well-known integer sequence, OEIS (and the links section for longer tables like that) is a good place to check.
- iliis 15y agoFor more general math there's also WolframAlpha. Eg.: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=partition+1034 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=partition+1034 They are also quite capable of blowing my mind sometimes. (Try "When will the ISS be visible?" or "coastline length of africa / length of stride")
- nathanb 15y agoIt blew my mind when I wondered how many femtoseconds it had been since the start of the Roman Empire, and it obligingly told me: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=now+-+founding+of+the+roman+empire+in+femtoseconds http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=now+-+founding+of+the+r.... It also told me how many ergs are in a jellybean and what time the sun would set on April 2nd (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sunset+april+2nd%2C+2011+in+raleigh%2C+nc http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=sunset+april+2nd%2C+201...). Of the many technologies I use, Wolfram Alpha is the one that feels the most like the future sometimes.
- fletchowns 15y agoBing to the rescue: http://www.bing.com/search?q=9999999..99999999999999999999999 http://www.bing.com/search?q=9999999..9999999999999999999999... Pretty similar URL format eh?
- humbledrone 15y agoBing doesn't really come to the rescue -- the X..Y format on Google searches for numbers in a range. Bing seems to just try to find that string as plain text.
- fletchowns 15y agoYes, it doesn't hit some strange error page though.
- brk 15y agoCorrect. Instead it returns some generally useless results that are likely not at all what the user desired. Truthfully this seems about what I expect from Microsoft.
- joshuaheard 15y agoGarbage in, garbage out.
- Evgeny 15y agoInstead it returns some generally useless results that are likely not at all what the user desired If the user entered "9999999..99999999999999999999999" in the search box, what would you say he desired to get in return? Serious question, cause I have no clue about why would anyone genuinely want to search for that ...
- brk 15y agoIn google the ".." between two sets of numbers indicates search for numbers between the range of the two. So, if Bing is trying to "emulate" google in that way for more advanced queries, they are doing it wrong. Since google is sort of the defacto standard for search right now, I would say that Bing's response would be out of the ordinary for what a user accustomed to doing those kinds of searches would expect.
- user24 15y agoThe reason for this is that you can google ranges of numbers, and people a couple of years ago were using this feature to find credit card numbers that were posted online, eg searching for 4000000000000000..4999999999999999 It was around the time that johnny's google hacking page became popular, iirc. (http://www.hackersforcharity.org/ghdb/ http://www.hackersforcharity.org/ghdb/)
- mahrain 15y agoFunny how Duckduckgo lists all sites linking to this story.
- buro9 15y agoThe double dot indicates that this is a ranged query. 11..22 would be to search for all integers between 11 and 22. The effect is that the search is too broad. The problem is more likely to be that the range search is a mapreduce that performs a search for each item in the range. You can imagine why that's a bad idea, and some aggressive timeouts are probably what stop it from going too far. Plus the numbers in the range of the OP search are likely to fall in the ranges of sensitive numbers, credit cards being the most sensitive... which are likely to be explicitly blocked.
- hm2k 15y agoIf this were true, surely it should allow you to use quotes to force it to ignore the "range" operator... http://www.google.com/search?q=%229999999..99999999999999999999999%22 http://www.google.com/search?q=%229999999..99999999999999999...
- buro9 15y agoIt ignores the quotes a lot of the time. They are less explicit than you may imagine.
- threecreepio 15y agoThen why does 100000..100000 get the same error? Not a huge span, and not likely to contain anything all too sensitive.
- pointyhat 15y agoI get this: Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. Please try your request again later.
- 37prime 15y agoTake out a few 9's out and Google still returned an error: http://www.google.com/search?q=9999999..999999 http://www.google.com/search?q=9999999..999999
- hm2k 15y agoYes you can: http://www.google.com/xhtml?q=9999999..99999999999999999999999 http://www.google.com/xhtml?q=9999999..999999999999999999999...
- roadnottaken 15y agocare to explain?
- ciupicri 15y agoHe might be referring to this: Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. Please try your request again later. Why did this happen? IP address: x.y.z.t. Time: 2011-09-01T19:03:40Z URL: http://www.google.com/search?q=9999999..99999999999999999999999 http://www.google.com/search?q=9999999..99999999999999999999...
- palish 15y agoNo idea why you've been downvoted --- this is what google says for me, too.
- csomar 15y agoI think the mobile version doesn't have the same limitation.
- tete 15y agoI see why it doesn't work, but why doesn't it work with quotes either?
- stuffedBelly 15y agoMaybe because the value of the string is also large that can cause overflow? You mean you got the alert when you put in "999999999.....99999"?
- mikkohypponen 15y agoHowever, you can still set Google Alerts for a search like that.
- mikkohypponen 15y agoSee these from May: https://twitter.com/mikkohypponen/status/72545823916961792 https://twitter.com/mikkohypponen/status/72545823916961792 https://twitter.com/mikkohypponen/status/72574386430939136 https://twitter.com/mikkohypponen/status/72574386430939136 https://twitter.com/mikkohypponen/status/72738322702802945 https://twitter.com/mikkohypponen/status/72738322702802945
- iwiznia 15y agoSo I guess mikkohypponen is the responsible for those searches not to work. Interesting...
- ck2 15y agoYou also cannot google some stuff commonly found in phpBB because of so many hacked sites out there. Also remember how you used to be able to search for anything up to the 1000th item (10 pages of 100 results). Not anymore for a long time now. Google sucks it all in but won't share and play nice with others. Why not allow such searches unless a bot is detected (too many pages too quickly, etc.)
- n0fair 15y agoOur systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. Please try your request again later. Why did this happen?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- atlbeer 15y agoBecause what Google is preventing is the discovery of accidental credit cards in it's index. You searching for credits cards (via that ranged query) is a flag that the search is possibly automated and they display the warning and catchpa as a mitigator.
- david927 15y ago"With all due respect John, I am the head of IT and I have it on good authority that if you type 'Google' into Google, you can break the Internet." -- The IT Crowd
- jergosh 15y agoGuess they don't want you to search for credit card numbers
- tsycho 15y agoReading the comments here gave me an idea....google your own credit card numbers to check if its already in some scammer's index. While no results might not necessarily mean you are safe, a positive match is a clear red flag.
- andrenotgiant 15y agoEven better, LOCK DOWN YOUR GOOGLE ACCOUNT WITH DOUBLE AUTHENTICATION, then set Google alerts for your: credit card, or if paranoid, partial credit card # "123456789" Email address Home address Phone number screen name (e.g.: "andrenotgiant" -site:ycombinator.com) Bank acct partial Password, Password partial "p@ssw0r"
- sausagefeet 15y agoSweet, now someone just has to get into my google account settings and I'm screwed.
- brown9-2 15y agoI imagine this is why the parent poster mention enabling two-factor authentication first.
- adyus 15y agoSweet, now someone has to get into parent's google account AND swipe his phone!
- burgerbrain 15y agoAnd my phone has my google account information.. :/
- skeptical 15y agoAre we too obsessed to ignore irony/humour?
- 15y ago
- known 15y agohttp://www.google.com/xml http://www.google.com/xml
- digamber_kamat 15y agoChange the last 9 to 8 and see what happens ?
- martinkallstrom 15y agoI think this question is cool to think about and try to answer: What is the lowest integer that doesn't have any hits on google? Is there any reasoning that can help estimating the approximate magnitude it should be?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- martinkallstrom 15y agoI know! That's part of the intrigue :)
- sovok 15y agoA problem might be that as soon as you discover that number, you can't tell anyone on the web about it. This for example has no results as of now: http://google.com/search?q=813115181452319 http://google.com/search?q=813115181452319
- rufibarbatus 15y agoAs of now, it has 3 results (all 3 pointing in some way or the other to your own remark). Damn. That was fast!
- JacobAldridge 15y agoTry (813115181452319 - 1) It's lower, has 0 results, and I'm not mentioning it here!
- Almaviva 15y agoWhat's the lowest integer that will never have any hits on Google? It must exist by induction, I think.
- fbstj 15y ago0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 :p
- skeptical 15y agoProbably that string was used as a dork together with some more text to find vulnerabilities on web applications or so. So it was reported as a honey This does look like a string that could very much be generated by some poorly coded webbapp. An incorrect usage of a floating point number can easily generate such output. If it occurs on a critical part of an application it could very well been used as a dork. Just an hypothesis though. Back in 2005 google tricks were at their peak. Many hackers experimented with search phrases in order to retrieve interesting/valuable/uncommon/dangerous?/sensitive info from the web. "index of/ .mp3" "apache server at port" being the absolute classic. More and more people started to jump in the bandwagon, webmasters gradually became more aware of this, and google too. The natural reaction was google honeypot. http://ghh.sourceforge.net/ http://ghh.sourceforge.net/ But it wasn't too long until google started to remove such features. These days one can hardly search for symbols on google. They the old tricks, most of them will not work, google simply ignores the details and returns a list of results based on the actual words contained in the query. It's becoming a QA machine. That's one of the reasons I switched to duckduckgo. For a proper reading on the subject check ou the vast website of the, now deceased, great hacker Fravia: http://www.searchlores.org/indexo.htm http://www.searchlores.org/indexo.htm
- drungli 15y agoI tried also this: 9999999..999999 same results!