13 ms·

Google Trying to Solve a UUID

307 points by mococa 4y ago

mococa 4y ago
https://imgur.com/a/FLiHwE1 https://imgur.com/a/FLiHwE1
- eloff 4y ago
  I don't get this on mobile, thanks for posting the screenshot.
  - amingilani 4y ago
    Interestingly, I do get this on mobile.
    - geetee 4y ago
      Google seems to disable a lot of features (e.g. package tracking) when I'm using Firefox mobile, but not Chrome.
      - lhoff 4y ago
        There is an add-on for firefox mobile that changes the user agent to chrome when yoh visit a google page. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/google-search-fixer/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/google-search...
      - thayne 4y ago
        Huh, i opened in firefox mobile and just got "no results", but with chrome I do get the result. That seems... very anticompetitive.
        feanaro 4y ago
        I'm on Firefox mobile and was confused what everyone was talking about until I saw this subthread. Very anticompetitive indeed.
        Terretta 4y ago
        works in Safari on ios
        fizwidget 4y ago
        Not for me.
        lupire 4y ago
        www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has-sabotaged-firefox-for-years/
      - ertian 4y ago
        There's also experiments and staged rollouts, and if there's no hurry they can take a while.
mococa 4y ago
This UUID comes from my Minecraft account; I was curious to know if I could find something on the web. Not work on every UUID!
- kosma 4y ago
  Moo!
hypertele-Xii 4y ago
This is just nonsense. Garbage in, garbage out, nothing gained. Google tries to interpret a UUID search query as a math equation and solve it.
- TheDudeMan 4y ago
  We get it.
- nixcraft 4y ago
  Tested with a few UUIDs: $ uuidgen 2b2ec13b-a1a4-49da-938a-50b24a1e416a Google - https://www.google.com/search?q=2b2ec13b-a1a4-49da-938a-50b24a1e416a https://www.google.com/search?q=2b2ec13b-a1a4-49da-938a-50b2... $ uuidgen --sha1 --namespace @dns --name "www.google.com" 488416f4-fcaf-5027-8c63-0105cfa213ea Google - https://www.google.com/search?q=488416f4-fcaf-5027-8c63-0105cfa213ea https://www.google.com/search?q=488416f4-fcaf-5027-8c63-0105... Nothing. Maybe it is a bug?
  - hbbio 4y ago
    Not a bug, there are actual search results for the last query. So probably a feature that since results exist, it's not a computation.
  - tomxor 4y ago
    Those aren't valid expressions. It's when there aren't any numerals after a letter, then the letters can be interpreted as variables and the numerals coefficients (for each term separated by a subtract).
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - jwilk 4y ago
      That's not it. Digits after letter didn't stop Google from interpreting the original UUID.
andrewfromx 4y ago
That's pretty funny. I work for a company that puts 5 alphanumeric characters on physical devices to track and identify them. We are always putting those 5 characters into various google sheets. And every so often one had an E in the middle of all numbers and google would convert by default to something like "1.10E+34" so we had to make SCIENTIFIC_NUMBER_REGEX = Regex("\\d+e\\d+") and stop making codes with E's in the middle.
- philliphaydon 4y ago
  Why not just set the column to text?
  - charcircuit 4y ago
    I assume avoiding any issues popping up from having to remember to do that is worth the reduction in state space. (10 + 23)^5 = 39,135,393 which is enough for company devices
    - philliphaydon 4y ago
      I assume there’s a row or column that this applies to in their sheet. So I’m suggesting instead of having some regex applies to check the values. Just setting the entire row or column to text would resolve the issue.
      - charcircuit 4y ago
        When he says "various google sheets" it sounds like new ones are occasionally created so you would have to do that each time a new one is created. It's extra friction which you can easily avoid.
        philliphaydon 4y ago
        But he’s putting a regex into the sheet? Unless he has some tool to look at the spreadsheets in gdrive and applies the regex to them? Guess we lack info from the OP.
djaychela 4y ago
I'm just getting a search returning no results rather than an attempt to solve anything?
- lupire 4y ago
  What browser? Firefox Mobile needs a user-agent-switching extension to bypass Google's anti-competitive user-agent-sniffing suppression of fancy results widgets.
  - richbell 4y ago
    FYI your comments are getting automatically flagged. Might want to email hn@ycombinator.com (I think) to figure out why.
    - Rackedup 4y ago
      Too bad you can't send them a private message on HN itself... instead of using a third party service like email
      - mynameisvlad 4y ago
        It's a free service. Why put in the time and money to create and support. a messaging system when email works fine?
        Rackedup 4y ago
        Its a public messaging system... Not sure why they get offended when I ask publicly... Either don't answer or do... Why waste time and ask me to use email instead... I'm not going to use email to communicate about a communication forum.
        mynameisvlad 4y ago
        Ok then... don't? They are under no obligation to answer you on any method, let alone through an official one that is relatively easy to access. Once again, it's a free service.
nateburke 4y ago
It's impressive that the search result has didactic steps towards a solution though....
- cm2187 4y ago
  Though my TI-89 pocket calculator could do that in the 90s
  - wussboy 4y ago
    But could it search for porn?
    - cm2187 4y ago
      I certainly tried
      - Rackedup 4y ago
        The boob function....
        wussboy 4y ago
        I’m imagining “the boob function” just ignores any input and returns 80085?
    - Tao3300 4y ago
      Didn't need to. The arbitrary precision was already boner-inducing.
  - Tao3300 4y ago
    > my TI-89 pocket calculator could do that But that's not pocket size... what kind of pockets do you... > in the 90s Ohhhh, JNCOs!
- krallja 4y ago
  Not very impressive, as it doesn’t immediately (or ever) eliminate the term with a leading `0` factor.
pid_0 4y ago
mqus 4y ago
I'm amazed that google does that (I didn't know) and even shows the steps! But it still is lacking. The "solution" here is just a simplification, not something I would call a "solution" (like for an actual equation). But as it isn't an equation, that could be fine. Another weird thing is that it won't simply eliminate the first term with 0x=0. Why?
- thrdbndndn 4y ago
  Same. At least in my years that I actually needed this, they didn't have it. So I use Wolfram Alpha [1]. (Well, you probably still should use that instead if you have extended use, since it's far more advanced). [1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/ https://www.wolframalpha.com/
lupire 4y ago
[0xe+3y] gets a graph of [14+3*y]. Exercise: Why?
- colejohnson66 4y ago
  Their calculator understands hexadecimal, and 0xE is 14.
  - Findecanor 4y ago
    One of several notations for hexadecimal used by programming languages. It did not understand 0eh or $0e to mean the same thing when I tried though. It did however understand 0o16 (octal) ... and 0b1110 (binary), which is a bit surprising because it is a relatively new addition to C++ (C14) and C (C23).
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      0b is a gnu89 extension. It's been around a while.
sidcool 4y ago
What does it mean to solve a UUID?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Tao3300 4y ago
  For some users it is mistaking a UUID for a math problem and trying to "solve" it. On Android Firefox it just says there are no results. So if you ever need a UUID, just use that one; Google says it's good!
  - Rackedup 4y ago
    > For some users a number probably infinitely small... Google might be the only user in this case
Doctor_Fegg 4y ago
Similarly, I once needed some new robust tyres for my folding bike, so I googled 'marathon plus 20 inch'. Google helpfully informs me that marathon + (20 inches) = 1.00001204 marathon
- Tao3300 4y ago
  So that's what the "1.00001204" bumper sticker means!
- jayknight 4y ago
  I once googled for SEC scores on a Saturday during football season and it said 2.45048752096, which is sec(20).
- wizofaus 4y ago
  Perhaps AI is developing a sense of humour...
- moonchild 4y ago
  Interesting! Anyone have any idea about what wolfram alpha's interpretation of the same query is? https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=marathon+plus+20+inch https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=marathon+plus+20+inch
  - lupire 4y ago
    WA tells you: it's converting 20in = 10^-5 marathon lengths.
Seb-C 4y ago
That's interesting, because on the other end, lately I had some cases where Google did not even recognize very elementary operations and would not give me the result. That never happened before.
avipars 4y ago
funny!
argc 4y ago
I don't get this in firefox on ubuntu.
mgdlbp 4y ago
Google refuses to search for hash-like strings that aren't well-known across the web.[0] That's why this search gives no actual results. (It certainly will in the future as this submission gets reposted, breaking the googlewhack) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31638976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31638976 (I think Bing also blocks hashes but has an exemption for UUIDs; right now it gives me results for random UUIDs but not random MD5s) Bing and Yandex are both capable of locating OP's Minecraft account in online databases: https://web.archive.org/web/0/https://www.google.com/search?q=%220e2b835d-4d9a-4b8b-b009-988741022e8c%22 https://web.archive.org/web/0/https://www.google.com/search?... https://web.archive.org/web/0/https://www.bing.com/search?q=%220e2b835d-4d9a-4b8b-b009-988741022e8c%22 https://web.archive.org/web/0/https://www.bing.com/search?q=... https://web.archive.org/web/0/https://yandex.com/search/?text=%220e2b835d-4d9a-4b8b-b009-988741022e8c%22 https://web.archive.org/web/0/https://yandex.com/search/?tex... PS: example of an uncommon hash that Yandex finds but not the other two: the MD5 of 'Hacker News' (f3e4...), which actually occurs on the web on one site (http://archive.ph/oLgUe http://archive.ph/oLgUe http://archive.today/lkyNN http://archive.today/lkyNN http://archive.ph/v3TY5 http://archive.ph/v3TY5)
- Rezwoodly 4y ago
  What's the reasoning behind the design decision 'refusing to search for hashes', what grounds would they have to block such searches?
  - xahrepap 4y ago
    I also would like to know. My guess is maybe password dumps?
    - jmprspret 4y ago
      This was my first guess
  - benjaminpv 4y ago
    This is as much a stab in the dark as any, but as someone that builds/rebuilds ROM sets pretty often (leading me to do a lot of hash-specific searches) I've noticed that there's a lot of crypto-trading related hashes in the indices they maintain. I'm assuming what happens is that the hashes for various blockchain transactions have a lot of common sub-strings within that collide with non-crypto stuff, hence why they get offered. Maybe the folks that manage the search engine were finding that these crawls were adding a lot of useless info and just blanket blocked their inclusion?

307 points by mococa 4y ago

mococa 4y ago

https://imgur.com/a/FLiHwE1 https://imgur.com/a/FLiHwE1

eloff 4y ago
I don't get this on mobile, thanks for posting the screenshot.
- amingilani 4y ago
  Interestingly, I do get this on mobile.
  - geetee 4y ago
    Google seems to disable a lot of features (e.g. package tracking) when I'm using Firefox mobile, but not Chrome.
    - lhoff 4y ago
      There is an add-on for firefox mobile that changes the user agent to chrome when yoh visit a google page. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/google-search-fixer/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/addon/google-search...
    - thayne 4y ago
      Huh, i opened in firefox mobile and just got "no results", but with chrome I do get the result. That seems... very anticompetitive.
      - feanaro 4y ago
        I'm on Firefox mobile and was confused what everyone was talking about until I saw this subthread. Very anticompetitive indeed.
      - Terretta 4y ago
        works in Safari on ios
        fizwidget 4y ago
        Not for me.
      - lupire 4y ago
        www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has-sabotaged-firefox-for-years/
    - ertian 4y ago
      There's also experiments and staged rollouts, and if there's no hurry they can take a while.

mococa 4y ago

This UUID comes from my Minecraft account; I was curious to know if I could find something on the web. Not work on every UUID!

kosma 4y ago
Moo!

hypertele-Xii 4y ago

This is just nonsense. Garbage in, garbage out, nothing gained. Google tries to interpret a UUID search query as a math equation and solve it.

TheDudeMan 4y ago
We get it.
nixcraft 4y ago
Tested with a few UUIDs: $ uuidgen 2b2ec13b-a1a4-49da-938a-50b24a1e416a Google - https://www.google.com/search?q=2b2ec13b-a1a4-49da-938a-50b24a1e416a https://www.google.com/search?q=2b2ec13b-a1a4-49da-938a-50b2... $ uuidgen --sha1 --namespace @dns --name "www.google.com" 488416f4-fcaf-5027-8c63-0105cfa213ea Google - https://www.google.com/search?q=488416f4-fcaf-5027-8c63-0105cfa213ea https://www.google.com/search?q=488416f4-fcaf-5027-8c63-0105... Nothing. Maybe it is a bug?
- hbbio 4y ago
  Not a bug, there are actual search results for the last query. So probably a feature that since results exist, it's not a computation.
- tomxor 4y ago
  Those aren't valid expressions. It's when there aren't any numerals after a letter, then the letters can be interpreted as variables and the numerals coefficients (for each term separated by a subtract).
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jwilk 4y ago
    That's not it. Digits after letter didn't stop Google from interpreting the original UUID.

andrewfromx 4y ago

That's pretty funny. I work for a company that puts 5 alphanumeric characters on physical devices to track and identify them. We are always putting those 5 characters into various google sheets. And every so often one had an E in the middle of all numbers and google would convert by default to something like "1.10E+34" so we had to make SCIENTIFIC_NUMBER_REGEX = Regex("\\d+e\\d+") and stop making codes with E's in the middle.

philliphaydon 4y ago
Why not just set the column to text?
- charcircuit 4y ago
  I assume avoiding any issues popping up from having to remember to do that is worth the reduction in state space. (10 + 23)^5 = 39,135,393 which is enough for company devices
  - philliphaydon 4y ago
    I assume there’s a row or column that this applies to in their sheet. So I’m suggesting instead of having some regex applies to check the values. Just setting the entire row or column to text would resolve the issue.
    - charcircuit 4y ago
      When he says "various google sheets" it sounds like new ones are occasionally created so you would have to do that each time a new one is created. It's extra friction which you can easily avoid.
      - philliphaydon 4y ago
        But he’s putting a regex into the sheet? Unless he has some tool to look at the spreadsheets in gdrive and applies the regex to them? Guess we lack info from the OP.

djaychela 4y ago

I'm just getting a search returning no results rather than an attempt to solve anything?

lupire 4y ago
What browser? Firefox Mobile needs a user-agent-switching extension to bypass Google's anti-competitive user-agent-sniffing suppression of fancy results widgets.
- richbell 4y ago
  FYI your comments are getting automatically flagged. Might want to email hn@ycombinator.com (I think) to figure out why.
  - Rackedup 4y ago
    Too bad you can't send them a private message on HN itself... instead of using a third party service like email
    - mynameisvlad 4y ago
      It's a free service. Why put in the time and money to create and support. a messaging system when email works fine?
      - Rackedup 4y ago
        Its a public messaging system... Not sure why they get offended when I ask publicly... Either don't answer or do... Why waste time and ask me to use email instead... I'm not going to use email to communicate about a communication forum.
        mynameisvlad 4y ago
        Ok then... don't? They are under no obligation to answer you on any method, let alone through an official one that is relatively easy to access. Once again, it's a free service.

nateburke 4y ago

It's impressive that the search result has didactic steps towards a solution though....

cm2187 4y ago
Though my TI-89 pocket calculator could do that in the 90s
- wussboy 4y ago
  But could it search for porn?
  - cm2187 4y ago
    I certainly tried
    - Rackedup 4y ago
      The boob function....
      - wussboy 4y ago
        I’m imagining “the boob function” just ignores any input and returns 80085?
  - Tao3300 4y ago
    Didn't need to. The arbitrary precision was already boner-inducing.
- Tao3300 4y ago
  > my TI-89 pocket calculator could do that But that's not pocket size... what kind of pockets do you... > in the 90s Ohhhh, JNCOs!
krallja 4y ago
Not very impressive, as it doesn’t immediately (or ever) eliminate the term with a leading `0` factor.

pid_0 4y ago

mqus 4y ago

I'm amazed that google does that (I didn't know) and even shows the steps! But it still is lacking. The "solution" here is just a simplification, not something I would call a "solution" (like for an actual equation). But as it isn't an equation, that could be fine. Another weird thing is that it won't simply eliminate the first term with 0x=0. Why?

thrdbndndn 4y ago
Same. At least in my years that I actually needed this, they didn't have it. So I use Wolfram Alpha [1]. (Well, you probably still should use that instead if you have extended use, since it's far more advanced). [1] https://www.wolframalpha.com/ https://www.wolframalpha.com/

lupire 4y ago

[0xe+3y] gets a graph of [14+3*y]. Exercise: Why?

colejohnson66 4y ago
Their calculator understands hexadecimal, and 0xE is 14.
- Findecanor 4y ago
  One of several notations for hexadecimal used by programming languages. It did not understand 0eh or $0e to mean the same thing when I tried though. It did however understand 0o16 (octal) ... and 0b1110 (binary), which is a bit surprising because it is a relatively new addition to C++ (C14) and C (C23).
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    0b is a gnu89 extension. It's been around a while.

sidcool 4y ago

What does it mean to solve a UUID?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Tao3300 4y ago
For some users it is mistaking a UUID for a math problem and trying to "solve" it. On Android Firefox it just says there are no results. So if you ever need a UUID, just use that one; Google says it's good!
- Rackedup 4y ago
  > For some users a number probably infinitely small... Google might be the only user in this case

Doctor_Fegg 4y ago

Similarly, I once needed some new robust tyres for my folding bike, so I googled 'marathon plus 20 inch'. Google helpfully informs me that marathon + (20 inches) = 1.00001204 marathon

Tao3300 4y ago
So that's what the "1.00001204" bumper sticker means!
jayknight 4y ago
I once googled for SEC scores on a Saturday during football season and it said 2.45048752096, which is sec(20).
wizofaus 4y ago
Perhaps AI is developing a sense of humour...
moonchild 4y ago
Interesting! Anyone have any idea about what wolfram alpha's interpretation of the same query is? https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=marathon+plus+20+inch https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=marathon+plus+20+inch
- lupire 4y ago
  WA tells you: it's converting 20in = 10^-5 marathon lengths.

Seb-C 4y ago

That's interesting, because on the other end, lately I had some cases where Google did not even recognize very elementary operations and would not give me the result. That never happened before.

avipars 4y ago

funny!

argc 4y ago

I don't get this in firefox on ubuntu.

mgdlbp 4y ago

Google refuses to search for hash-like strings that aren't well-known across the web.[0] That's why this search gives no actual results. (It certainly will in the future as this submission gets reposted, breaking the googlewhack) [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31638976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31638976 (I think Bing also blocks hashes but has an exemption for UUIDs; right now it gives me results for random UUIDs but not random MD5s) Bing and Yandex are both capable of locating OP's Minecraft account in online databases: https://web.archive.org/web/0/https://www.google.com/search?q=%220e2b835d-4d9a-4b8b-b009-988741022e8c%22 https://web.archive.org/web/0/https://www.google.com/search?... https://web.archive.org/web/0/https://www.bing.com/search?q=%220e2b835d-4d9a-4b8b-b009-988741022e8c%22 https://web.archive.org/web/0/https://www.bing.com/search?q=... https://web.archive.org/web/0/https://yandex.com/search/?text=%220e2b835d-4d9a-4b8b-b009-988741022e8c%22 https://web.archive.org/web/0/https://yandex.com/search/?tex... PS: example of an uncommon hash that Yandex finds but not the other two: the MD5 of 'Hacker News' (f3e4...), which actually occurs on the web on one site (http://archive.ph/oLgUe http://archive.ph/oLgUe http://archive.today/lkyNN http://archive.today/lkyNN http://archive.ph/v3TY5 http://archive.ph/v3TY5)

Rezwoodly 4y ago
What's the reasoning behind the design decision 'refusing to search for hashes', what grounds would they have to block such searches?
- xahrepap 4y ago
  I also would like to know. My guess is maybe password dumps?
  - jmprspret 4y ago
    This was my first guess
- benjaminpv 4y ago
  This is as much a stab in the dark as any, but as someone that builds/rebuilds ROM sets pretty often (leading me to do a lot of hash-specific searches) I've noticed that there's a lot of crypto-trading related hashes in the indices they maintain. I'm assuming what happens is that the hashes for various blockchain transactions have a lot of common sub-strings within that collide with non-crypto stuff, hence why they get offered. Maybe the folks that manage the search engine were finding that these crawls were adding a lot of useless info and just blanket blocked their inclusion?