Back on the first a little after 6pm I received a text message on my phone:
“Hey, off the top of your head do you know what 255 would be in base 8?”
About 15 minutes later the following came in:
“Never mind. Figured it out. 255=377 In base 8/ octal”
So… now the weirdness.
The sending cell number isn’t one I recognize. Not only don’t I recognize it… it comes from a part of the country that I know absolutely no one in. “Florence”, South Carolina.
I quote Florence because prefixes in cell phones are widely inaccurate as to the origin of the owner. Admittedly, some times the area codes are misnomers too.
My cell phone number puts me in Van Nuys, California.
So.. with no signature… I’m left trying to figure out who the hell would text me a number conversion question on Saturday evening who’s phone originated in SC.
Oooh, mystery!
Yes, I know the short form is to just reply… But I don’t necessarily want to identify myself if this is some new spam/phish thing.
Whoever it is…
… needs to go back to school.
Anyone who would care what a number is in base 8 should have been able to do that one without thinking.
Van Nuys, you say. 818 area code.
Well, if you’re ever in your cell phone area, you’ll have to come by 🙂
Although, my suspicion is that the math-as-phishing/spam-lure trick doesn’t seem, well, really viable?
“Click now if you can define a Hyberbolic Paraboloid of Two Sheets! It’ll make your dick bigger!”
it’s a message from God…play the lottery!!!
I’m in SC, but my phone still thinks I’m in NY 🙂
I’m surprised there’s people here that do math.
> “Never mind. Figured it out. 255=377 In base 8/ octal”
Funny I just discovered that today too… I was reading the “man termios” page the other day and it was saying that framing and parity errors are prefixed by “\377 \0” and I didn’t realize the 377 was octal (since it wasn’t preceded by a 0), then today I was looking at the actual output and it was 255,0… aha!