[SUMMARY] Obfuscated Email (#163)

[Matthew Moss]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

Welcome, Ruby coders and coderettes... Tonight we bring you the Obfu Awards,
awards given by committee (i.e. me) to those most deserving for their...
"creative" work.

We're going to skip the red carpet frivolities, as we have no red carpet,
and jump right to the awards. Here they are, in no particular order (except
that of their entry).


#### Best Non-Working But Terribly Obvious Solution

This award goes to _DJ Jazzy Linefeed_ whose solution -- while it generates
an error -- provides output that can be discerned by running the Ruby
interpreter in your mind. Seeing as how Google provides wonderful spam
filtering, thanks to at least fifteen Python hackers, the l


#### Most Prolific Use of `gsub` in a Signature

_John Joyce_ puts forth a straightforward, easy to understand, solution that
is his email address transformed by simple replacements. Not terribly
obfuscated, but a good first step, and I believe the greatest number of
calls to `gsub` within a single solution.


#### Best Unexpected Use of `String#Unpack`

_Harry Kakueki_ makes interesting use of `String#unpack` by way of its
directional and positional directives. While his attempts to confuse the
source material were unsuccessful, his use of these uncommon `unpack`
commands are worthy of notice.


#### Most Painful Obfuscation

The first entry from _Mikael Hoilund_ is such a dangerous minefield of
string manipulations and punctuation, the committee could not completely
discern its operation. In particular, putting aside the call to `downcase!`
(which we managed to discern after much coffee and doses of Ritalin), this
segment of code was never fully understood:

*a=e=?=,!????,:??,?,,Email

We'd ask Mikael to explain himself to the committee, but we fear the medical
consequences.


#### Best Looking Non-Email Output

Rather than provide his email address, _Sandro Paganotti_ chose to display
his logo, specified in a run-length encoded string, specifying alternate
sections of "on" or "off" characters. A couple reverses and flips here and
there grows the logo and generates more output than code was input.


#### Highest Data-to-Code Ratio

_Phillip Gawlowski_ receives this honor, for using a simple `unpack` to
decode his UUEncoded name, email address and web pages.


#### Special Award: Solving Two Quizzes In One

A very special honor goes to _Bill Kelly_ for a finely golfed solution to
two quizzes at the same time. His tiny Turing Machine not only works, but
fits both the machine and the code required to print his email address
within the space restriction for this quiz. Bravo.


#### Most Rentable Space (and Use of Non-Standard Number Bases)

_Marcelo Magallon_'s use of a base-36 number, simply converted to ASCII
(base-256) did not fool the committee, but it was quite elegant.


#### The "I Like Π" Award

A cute and curious technique, _Steven Hahn_ used the digits of π to
offset the characters of his email address. Sadly, we were hoping for lemon
meringue.


#### Best Abuse of a Random Number Generator

Random numbers are supposed to be random... except when they're not. _Chris
Shea_ puts this to use to ensure the scrambled letters of his email address
are shuffled into the correct place. The need to vary this per-platform is a
sad consequence, due to variations in the generators.


#### The "Thank Goodness He Provided An Explanation" Award

Once again, _Mikael Hoilund_ taunts us... or should I say, _haunts_ us. We
tried, we really tried, to understand his code before giving up and reading
the (thankfully) provided explanation. After that, we were able to follow
along and understand the code, and have come to two conclusions. First,
Mikael has taught us how to abuse those we don't like. Second, Mikael should
not be allowed near the `%` character ever again.


#### Best Gratuitous Use of the Web

For his second entry, _Harry Kakueki_ places a portion of his email address
on the web, and another portion in the code, a simple `GET` and `gsub`
completes the address.


#### Most Obfuscated Code (Well, Except for that Mikael Guy... You Know Who
We're Talking About...)

_Sergey Volkov_ presents a markedly obfuscated bit of code that is
characterized by his self-inverting transform. The use of `$&` made
available by the regular expression, instead of a parameter for the `gsub`
block, was tricky. Using `%$$` as an empty string for converting ASCII
values to single-character strings was a clever ruse. We wonder if we
shouldn't take away the `%` character from Sergey as well.


#### Best Attempt to Scare the Committee

Seeing _Mikael Hoilund_'s third submission, we fretted. At first, no one
dared to look. But as we are gluttons for punishment, we relented, only to
see this silly attempt to print "42". Still, we worry what might happen if
we ask Mikael to write a spreadsheet or calculator.


#### Longest Binary Sequence Seen In A Submission to this Quiz

Congratulations to _Jesus Gabriel_. It's the longest binary sequence. We're
fairly certain of that.


#### Most Obvious Need for an ASCII Table

The solution provided by _Andrew Nelson_ was simple, quaint, obvious. And we
all know 65, but can never remember 110 or 114. Google, I'm feeling lucky
about "ASCII table".


#### Best XOR Decryption of a Base-64 String to an ASCII String in a Ruby
Quiz

The award goes to _Come Milan_ for... well... doing what I just said. Next!


#### The "Is It Unstable? I Forget How Floating-Point Works" Award

Our final award goes to _Adam Shelly_ who does some things to floating-point
numbers, then a few more things, then makes them integers and gets a
remainder... or something... but anyway it works, but will it work
everywhere? Who knows?




Overall, a lot of great submissions. I most _definitely_ learned some things
here.

There will not be any quiz provided tomorrow. Family is coming into town.
See you again in a week!

 

[James Gray]

Welcome, Ruby coders and coderettes... Tonight we bring you the Obfu =20=

Awards,
awards given by committee (i.e. me) to those most deserving for =20
their...
"creative" work.

We're going to skip the red carpet frivolities, as we have no red =20
carpet,
and jump right to the awards. Here they are, in no particular order =20=

(except
that of their entry).

Your summaries are always more fun than mine were!

#### Most Painful Obfuscation

The first entry from _Mikael Hoilund_ is such a dangerous minefield of
string manipulations and punctuation, the committee could not =20
completely
discern its operation. In particular, putting aside the call to =20
`downcase!`
(which we managed to discern after much coffee and doses of =20
Ritalin), this
segment of code was never fully understood:

*a=3De=3D?=3D,!????,:??,?,,Email

We'd ask Mikael to explain himself to the committee, but we fear the =20=

medical
consequences.

Ouch. Let's break it down.

First we need to get it to run:
=3D> [61, 63, 44, #<Object:0x389190>]

It's just a really complex assignment, we can see.

*a =3D =85

Slurp an Array into the variable a.

=85 e =3D =85

And store the first value of that Array in e.

=85 ?=3D, =85

The ASCII value of the character =3D (61).

This next bit is very tricky. I had to play with it in IRb a bit to =20
figure out how Ruby parses it, but it plays out as:

=85 !?? ? ?, : ??, =85

The conditional is the opposite of the ASCII value of ? (always true, =20=

which not switches to false). If it was true, it would become the =20
ASCII value of , (44). However, since it's always false it becomes =20
the ASCII value of ? (63).

The last bit is much easier:

=85 ?,, Email

That's just the ASCII value of , (44), followed by the contents of the =20=

Email constant.

James Edward Gray II=

 

[Todd Benson]

Welcome, Ruby coders and coderettes... Tonight we bring you the Obfu Awards,
awards given by committee (i.e. me) to those most deserving for their...
"creative" work.

I didn't contribute because I can't keep up with you people . But
I'll say it was a great quiz and an awesome summary. Thanks, Matthew!

Todd

 

[Matthew Moss]

This award goes to _DJ Jazzy Linefeed_ whose solution -- while it generates
an error -- provides output that can be discerned by running the Ruby
interpreter in your mind. Seeing as how Google provides wonderful spam
filtering, thanks to at least fifteen Python hackers, the l

I was reading over the summary I wrote, and I don't know what happened
to the rest of this paragraph. Must have accidentally killed a line or
two in vim, 'cause the complete paragraph isn't on the website nor in
my original file.

And, sadly, my brain doesn't work all that well anymore. I can't
remember what I had intended to say. Once I come up with something
clever, I'll fix the web site.

 

[Robert Dober]

I was reading over the summary I wrote, and I don't know what happened
to the rest of this paragraph. Must have accidentally killed a line or
two in vim, 'cause the complete paragraph isn't on the website nor in
my original file.

And, sadly, my brain doesn't work all that well anymore. I can't
remember what I had intended to say. Once I come up with something
clever, I'll fix the web site.

It was however a brilliant quiz, and a brilliant summary, I however
had a brilliant??? idea too, but I need a year to answer the quiz
The idea was G=F6delizing my signature into one very biiiig number,
expressing this biiig number in a clever expression that would
fit the quiz size constraints and ung=F6delizing would just take half of
a line or even less.
However factorizing the biiig number is not an option, and so I was
trying to create products out of the first 10000 primes and then I
might find some clever expressions using them, but even that will take
weeks .

Cheers
Robert
--=20
http://ruby-smalltalk.blogspot.com/

 

[Joel VanderWerf]

It was however a brilliant quiz, and a brilliant summary, I however
had a brilliant??? idea too, but I need a year to answer the quiz
The idea was Gödelizing my signature into one very biiiig number,
expressing this biiig number in a clever expression that would
fit the quiz size constraints and ungödelizing would just take half of
a line or even less.
However factorizing the biiig number is not an option, and so I was
trying to create products out of the first 10000 primes and then I
might find some clever expressions using them, but even that will take
weeks .

In other words, you had a brilliant solution to the problem, but it did
not fit in the margin of your email? Oh, we have heard that one before!

 

[Robert Dober]

In other words, you had a brilliant solution to the problem, but it did not

fit in the margin of your email? Oh, we have heard that one before!

If I had known that I would not have bothered you, well actually I
have never seen such a bold claim before ....
But it did not fit in the time frame.
R