Alphabit 2017 Quiz Finals

AlphaBit 2017
Quiz - Finals
Made by- Atharva, Shivang & Swetabh

Questions
related to
tech
Questions you
think aren’t related
to tech, but really
are

Rules:
● 36 questions in total.
● Infinite Pounce + Bounce.
● Direct +10.
● Pass +5.
● Pounce +10/-10.

Question 1
The story of Walter Pitts is an interesting one. Born in a poor household, often
bullied by other kids, Pitts studied for hours in the library. After escaping to
Chicago at the age of 15, Pitts met Warren McCulloch, who was 42 at the time.
McCulloch explained to Pitts that he wanted to create a model of the brain
using Leibnizian logical calculus, inspired by the ‘Principia Mathematicia’. He
believed that the brain was just a machine that computes. Fitts understood
immediately and built a model using mathematics and algorithms. What did
Fitts and MuCulloch create the first rudimentary example of?

LinkedIn bio-
“Interested in Transmedia Storytelling/Web Production and Social Media Marketing. I'm
currently studying a Master’s Degree in Internet Communications at Curtin University in
Western Australia. I have an Advanced Diploma in Screen and a passion for writing,
producing, and directing stories. My previous experience in stand up comedy can lighten
your mood. Ozzy Man Reviews has become my full-time gig.”
Q. What’s he
famous for? (ID
the blacked out
part)

Question 3
X came to Y and said, “We’ve done a good job fabricating these motherboards for
you. Why don’t you let us assemble the whole computer for you, too? Assembling
those products is not what made you successful. We can take all remaining
manufacturing assets off your balance sheet, and maybe do it for 20 percent less
too.” The analysts at Y thought this was a win-win. The process continued until Y
outsourced everything to X except its brand. Then, in 2005, X announced the
creation of its own brand of computers.
In this Greek tragedy tale, X had taken everything from Y and applied it for itself. X
has now become a major player in its market, and has entered into many successful
collaborations, most famously with Lamborghini in 2006. ID X and Y.

Question 4
In 2011, IBM’s Watson Computing System competed against the former winners
of the show Jeopardy, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. Even though Watson
emerged as the undisputed king, it has often been debated as to how well
computers are able to tackle something known as the Paris Hilton Problem.
In modern day computing, what do you think is the Paris Hilton Problem?

Answer 4
Computers are still unable to determine language nuance, and it determines how
far AI has come.
Does Paris Hilton refer to a hotel in Paris or an American socialite?

Question 5
Jean “X” Reinhardt was a Belgian-born, Romani French jazz guitarist and composer,
regarded as one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century.
The name X inspired the name of a free and open-source web framework. X was
created in the fall of 2003, when the web programmers at the Lawrence Journal-World
newspaper, Adrian Holovaty and Simon Willison, began using Python to build
applications. It was released publicly under a BSD license in July 2005.
Some well-known sites that use X include the Public Broadcasting Service, Instagram,
Mozilla, The Washington Times, Disqus, Bitbucket, and Nextdoor. It was used on
Pinterest, but later the site moved to a framework built over Flask.
ID X.

Question 6
The Chinese media giant Y is partnering up with the X Corporation to publish X in
China, the two companies recently announced. However, the company will work to alter
the game in order to make sure it is in "accordance with socialist core values."
Banning the game in China, though, would be a big blow. China right now accounts for
about 40-percent of the game's player base, the outlet points out, citing metrics from
SteamSpy.
The game is based on previous mods that were developed by Brendan Greene for
other games using the 2000 film Battle Royale for inspiration, and expanded into a
standalone game under Greene's creative direction.
Name X and Y.

Answer 6
X - PUBG (PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds)
Y - Tencent

Question 7 Connect. Tell us what we really really want ;)

Answer 7
KFC.
KFC only follows 11 people on Twitter
― the 5 former members of the Spice
Girl, and 6 men named Herb.
Hence, KFC’s secret recipe with 11
herbs and spices.

Question 8
Contrary to numerous stories, before finding the articles in the Bell System Technical Journal
("In-Band Single-Frequency Signaling” and "Signaling Systems for Control of Telephone Switching”)
it was discovered by many, that a X tone, used by AT&T Corporation as a steady signal to mark
currently unused long-distance telephone lines, or "trunk lines", would reset those lines.
By accidentally whistling the tone, Joe Engressia discovered this fact, following which others such
as "Bill from New York" and "The Glitch”, trained themselves to whistle X to reset a trunk line.
With this ability to Y, what was once just a few isolated individuals exploring the telephone network
started to develop into a whole sub-culture, which included, Mark Bernay, and Al Bernay, who used
Y to explore the various 'hidden codes' that were not dialable from a regular phone line. Other
famous examples include Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, who identified as Henry Kissinger to call
the Pope.
X and Y?

Answer 8
X = 2600 Hz
Y = Blue box(es)

Question 9
X was an American socialite, novelist, and painter, who was dubbed "the first
American Flapper” by her husband, himself a renowned author. Hearing of her
name, Y decided to pay tribute to her as he thought the name sounded “pleasant
and significant”.
His first inspiration for the project, however, was his childhood; particularly, his
discovery of a cave entrance in the middle of the woods. After some hesitation, he
apprehensively entered the cave, and explored its depths with the aid of a lantern.
How did Y immortalize X in the world of tech? (Name of X and the answer)
Images on next slide.

Answer 9
X = Zelda Scott Fitzgerald
The Legend of Zelda (Shigeru Miyamoto)

Question 10
The Free Software Song is a filk song by X about free software. The song is set to
the melody of the Bulgarian "Sadi Moma". The song starts and ends with:
“Join us now and share the software;
You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.
Join us now and share the software;
You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.”
The song has inspired several similar knockoffs, including a Spanish pop punk
version recorded by ALEC, and a Rick Astley mashup, "Never Gonna Give you
Up"
ID X

Question 11
In a March 20th interview to the New Yorker, the editors of X confessed that they
were, for the first time, lost : “We’ve been writing Trump articles for years and have
been sued relentlessly. We’re tired of it now, and we’re not even sure how to cover
his presidency - our job has been to cover such things from all angles and we feel
like we’re done.” Their motto is Tu Stultus Es, Latin for “You are dumb”, and
though not exactly a meme website, X produces some of the highest grade OC on
the web.
X?

Question 12
Connect:
Priorities-
1) Safety

Answer 12
CrazyRussianHacker (Taras Kulakov)
“Safety is number one priority."

Question 13
An infamous flame war in the software engineering sphere, the X vs. Y debate was reignited in
September 2016 by a study from Google- possibly inspired by the dialogue in an episode of HBO’s
Silicon Valley. A Google developer shared the study by stating:
“We are going to parse a billion files among 14 programming languages to decide which one is on
top.”
They crunched files from the top 400,000 GitHub repositories, looking at only files of code written in
the top languages- and their chart showed that Y were by far the most popular method in every
language. Except Z and ‘C’.
Google’s post soon went viral.
Name the “interminable argument” (as said by Jamie Kawinski in 2000), i.e. give us X and Y (Z for
brownie points).

Answer 13
Tabs vs. Spaces
Z = Go

Question 14
Identify the blanked-out parts and
who the letter is from.

Answer 14
Stanley Kubrick, IBM
IBM was consulted during the making
of the film and their logo can be seen
on several props in the film.
Also, HAL was a one-letter shift from
IBM, though Kubrick and Arthur C.
Clarke claim this to be a coincidence.

Question 15
This is the music video for Radiohead’s House of Cards,
released as a part of In Rainbows in 2008.
What is special about it?
Video Q [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nTFjVm9sTQ]

Answer 15
LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging)

Question 16
An opportunistic entrepreneur has launched a hilarious parody fundraiser to help X’s
founder Y get buff. ID X and Y.

Answer 16
X- Ethereum, Y- Vitalik Buterin

Question 17
On 24th August 2016, X launched a new Netﬂix-style on-demand streaming
service called “Manbang”, ironically meaning “everything”. The service is being
provided through KCTV . Users will hook up a set-top box to access intranet
through IPTV protocol. Funnily enough, after the launch of this service, Netﬂix
changed its Twitter bio to “Manbang knockoff”.
ID X.

Answer 17
North Korean Government

Answer 18
“To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty. The humour is extremely
subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer’s head.
There’s also Rick’s nihilistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation- his personal philosophy
draws heavily from Narodnaya Volya literature, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the
intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these jokes, to realise that they’re not just funny- they say
something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Rick & Morty truly ARE idiots- of course
they wouldn’t appreciate, for instance, the humour in Rick’s existential catchphrase “Wubba Lubba Dub Dub,”
which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev’s Russian epic Fathers and Sons. I’m smirking right now just
imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in confusion as Dan Harmon’s genius
wit unfolds itself on their television screens. What fools.. how I pity them. ....”
Rick and Morty copypasta

Question 19
X polo is a team sport which started to gain some measure of popularity after
being played by members of the Bay Area X Enthusiasts Group in 2004. Two
teams of five players each hit a ball with their mallets, trying to get the ball into
the other team's goal. A regulation match consists of four 8 minute quarters,
known in polo as "chukkers."
The X Polo world championship is the Woz Challenge Cup, which is named
after Steve Wozniak, a player of X Polo. The Woz Cup was established in 2006
when the Silicon Valley Aftershocks played the New Zealand Pole Blacks in
Auckland, New Zealand. The result was a 2–2 tie.
What is X?

Question 20
ID the company behind this ad.
Video Q [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvJBqj0Npms]

Question 21 Put funda.
Leslie Isben Rogge
For the Bureau, Rogge’s capture was
a milestone. What was so significant
about his arrest?

Answer 21
He is the first FBI Top Ten criminal to be apprehended due to the internet.
In 1996, a 14-year-old American living in Guatemala happened to visit the less-than-year-old FBI website,
apparently out of curiosity.
To his great surprise, the teen immediately recognized a Top Ten fugitive featured on FBI.gov. It was
“Uncle Bill”, a family friend and handyman who, ironically, had helped hook up the boy’s computer a few
weeks earlier.
In reality, Uncle Bill was Leslie Ibsen Rogge.

Some reference books, including Random House's American Slang, claim that the
term comes from the German word meaning "to slip" and the Yiddish word "to
slide or skid". It was first widely defined for the American people by Bennett Cerf
on the June 20, 1965 episode of What's My Line as "a kink... when anything goes
wrong down there, they say there's been a slight X."
Later, on July 23, 1965, Time Magazine felt it necessary to define it in an article:
"X—a spaceman's word for irritating disturbances.", which came into popular use
during the space race of the ‘50s.
What is X?
Question 22

Question 23
“Every August until a cure.”
“Remember, it’s all just prelude.”
“FREE. OPEN. KEEP ONE WEB.”
“All men must Oculus Rift.”
“This summer will be legendary.”

Answer 23
Five word speeches at the Webby Awards.

Question 24
During the year dot com boomed, X was acquired by Yahoo! for $5.7 billion in
Yahoo! Stock. X was also one of the first internet radio sites in the world and when
it had its IPO in 1998, the stock got caught up in the dot-com frenzy and soared
from $18 to $62.75 in a single day.
After the sale of X, Y diversified his wealth to avoid exposure to a market crash.
Incidentally, The Guinness Book of Records credits Y with the "largest single
e-commerce transaction", after he paid $40 million for his Gulfstream V jet in
October 1999
ID X and Y.

Answer 24
X - Broadcast.com
Y - Mark Cuban

Question 25
ID the company
Video Q [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5V_VzRrSBI]

Question 26
ID
● Voice command features which help call and message contacts, browse, open apps just by
speaking to the phone.
● Radio without Earphones, no earphones required to play Radio as it comes with a built in antenna.
● Panic button. In an emergency, long press on the number 5 will send your exact location (address,
location, longitude, and latitude) to the saved emergency contact.
● NFC & 4G VoLTE.
● Acts as a cable TV provider. A separate cable will enable users to connect their phones to their
television sets and watch videos or live TV for 3-4 hours everyday in HD.
● Runs Kai OS, an open OS with its own App Store

Question 27
Fabolous, an American rapper and hip hop recording artist from Brooklyn, introduced the
T-Mobile Sidekick to the masses in his “This is my Party” music video. With the ability to text, web
browse, and message via AOL IM, the Sidekick changed the mobile game forever.
From a Medium article by former Danger Incorporated employee Chris DeSalvo: “It was the first
always-on, internet-connected smartphone. The name X came from the idea that you’d wear it in
a belt holster, and thus computing had gone from the desktop, to the laptop, to the palmtop, and
ultimately to the X. That justification may have been invented after the fact, but, whatever, it was a
great name.”
What we want is X, i.e. what the Sidekick was originally called.

Question 28
Crocodile in the Yangtze (2012) follows entrepreneur and former English teacher,
Y, on the way to building X. An independent memoir written, directed and
produced by an American who worked in Y’s company for eight years, Crocodile in
the Yangtze captures the emotional ups and downs in the life of Y.
Crocodile in the Yangtze draws on 200 hours of archival footage filmed by over 35
sources between 1995 and 2009. The film presents a strikingly candid portrait of Y
and his company.
ID X and Y. (Image on next slide)

Answer 28
X - Alibaba
Y - Jack Ma
“eBay may be a shark in the ocean, but I am a crocodile in the Yangtze River. If
we fight in the ocean, we lose—but if we fight in the river, we win.” -Jack Ma

Question 29
“Everything will be in its blind volumes. Everything: the minute history of the future, TheEgyptians of
Aeschylus, the precise number of times the waters of the Ganges have reflected the flight of a falcon, the
secret and true name of Rome, the encyclopedia Novalis would have constructed, my dreams and
daydreams in the dawn of the 14th of August in 1934, the demonstration of Pierre Fermat’s theory, the ...
the premature epiphanies of Stephen Daedelus which before a cycle of 1000 years will signify nothing, the
gnostic gospel of Basilides, the song the sirens sang, the faithful catalogue of the Library, the
demonstration of the fallacy of that catalogue.”
This is an excerpt from a 1939 essay by Jorge Luis Borges, which along with
another work X, served as the inspiration for a project with the same name (X),
which describes itself as “a place for scholars to do research, for artists and
writers to seek inspiration, for anyone with curiosity or a sense of humor to reflect
on the weirdness of existence”. ID X.

Answer 29
X - the Library of Babel

Question 30
X is a list of protocols and conventions, originally written to serve as a guide for
those who identified themselves with the Internet group Y. The list serves as a
summation of popular catchphrases and axioms commonly associated with 4chan.
Since there are numerous drafts and editions in circulation, the entries fluctuate in
number and the validity of each entry remains debatable. Despite this, several of
the points including 34 and 63 are agreed upon across internet communities.
Give us X and Y (Y also
fills the blanks in the
image).

Answer 30
X - Rules of the Internet
Y - Anonymous

Question 31
After the release, animal rights group PETA created a website entitled "X Kills
Tanooki" with regard to the live skinning of raccoon dogs or tanukis. The site
implied that the entity was promoting the use of animal furs as clothing by allowing
X to wear the Tanooki Suit. In response, the company reminded PETA, X often
takes the appearance of certain animals and objects.
These have included a frog, a penguin, a balloon, and even a metallic version of
himself and thus it isn’t a cause of concern.

Question 32
Antonio Guillem is a 45-year-old photographer from Barcelona, Spain, who spends
his days on shoots specifically destined for stock image companies. For most of
that time, he’s worked with the same three models, though he says he parted
ways with one of them a year or so ago.
But in mid-2015, spurred by successful sales, Guillem wanted to diversify his look.
He and his models took to Gerona, an idyllic city in Catalonia, Spain, chose a spot
on the street, and started shooting.
What did this result in?

Answer 32
The ‘Distracted Boyfriend’ meme.

Question 33
X has sang in a concert, graced the cover of one of the top fashion magazines,
shown potential in business; having met with key decision makers across
industries including banking, insurance, auto manufacturing, property
development, media and entertainment. In addition X has also been to a UN
conference. In a piece for CNBC, X joked that the interviewer had "been reading
too much Elon Musk. And watching too many Hollywood movies". Musk tweeted
that X could watch The Godfather and suggested "what's the worst that could
happen?"

Question 34
This image is taken from the February
1913 issue of Popular Mechanic from an
article that talks about a series of
experiments by E.C. Hanson, in which
the device in the image played an
essential role.
What exactly were these experiments
about?

Answer 34
This was the first successful attempt to
make wireless calls over long distances
using a device attached to the
roundabout.

Question 35
“Symbolism, when mixed into your endeavors, helps create meaning, harmony,
and focus. The diamond is both the hardest and most precious stone, symbolizing
path from coal, to brilliance...pointing true north shows the focus on heading in the
right direction.”
Put funda.

Answer 36
OnePlus
“There’s a certain other company that has an S line, and S+1
equals T. And hey, we’re OnePlus, right?”

Backup Q1.
Walter Werzowa is well known for having composed and produced the X which is
allegedly broadcast somewhere in the world once every five minutes. Since its
conception in 1994, he has re-arranged it to keep it current, most recently in 2015,
when he composed the mashup of the X mnemonic and Beethoven's 5th
Symphony to create "Symphony in Blue", the anthem for the Experience Amazing
campaign which premiered during Super Bowl 50

Backup Q2.
Identify the company behind this
print ad.

Answer B2.
Penguin (Audiobooks)

Backup Question 3
According to game designer Warren Robinett, this traditional term was coined into
the context of media by Atari personnel who were alerted to the presence of an X
which had been hidden by Robinett in his already widely distributed game,
Adventure. Released in 1979, Atari's Adventure contains the first video game X, to
have been discovered by its players; Robinett inserted X late in the game's
development in an attempt to gain some recognition for his work, as Atari then
kept its programmers' names secret. Identify X. You see X everywhere nowadays,
from videogames to movies to even functional software.

Alphabit 2017 Quiz Finals

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