Junior Quiz Prelims

27 October 2018
 Rules
● This quiz consists of 20 questions, for a total of 20 points.
● You have been provided with 45 minutes to attempt this quiz.
● Part-points will be awarded wherever multi-part questions are present.
● Certain questions are star-marked, to indicate that they will serve as tie-breakers.
● Throughout the quiz, blank lengths are indicative of the length of the word that
should fill them.
● Fill in your answers in the sheet that has been provided to you.
● We encourage you to guess, as that is almost always what gets one points in a quiz:
there are no negative points for incorrect answers. All the best!
 1*
● The first week of this month saw Bengaluru make the news for the installation of the
first-ever ____________ ___ in India, at the Kemp Fort mall.
● The initiative, however, bit the dust mere days after its euphoric beginning: the founder
of the company behind the move was arrested; the kiosk itself – along with all
operational assets of the firm – was seized.
● The rationale behind the harsh penal action, according to state law-enforcement
agencies, was that “no permission had been taken from the state government for
putting such a system in place”; and that “dealing in __________ is outside the remit of
the law.”
● What was installed, and later removed?
Cryptocurrency ATM
 2
● ‘Portraits with Yung Jake’ is a television series documenting the life and the
unusual art of New York based artist Yung Jake.
● Describing himself as having been “born on the internet”, Yung Jake uses _____ to
bring to life artistic portraits of celebrities - his work being heavily influenced by
online fame, memes, and consumer culture.
● Reviews of the show have been mostly charitable. “Art made with _____ might
seem stupid hipster nonsense at first; him talking about oranges and boxing gloves
for noses and lips seems silly and laughable. The final picture, however, is really
something. You emerge with a changed world view.”
● What peculiar artform?
Emoji art
 3
● Why ____ was unable to meet its objective of replacing JavaScript to become the de-facto
language of the web is anybody’s guess.

● Introduced in 2011 by a pair of Google engineers, ____ showed promise in its initial phase of
development; however, limited adoption by browsers - except Chrome - meant that ____
exhibited very low penetration rates amongst traditional JavaScript developers.

● In 2018, however, ____ has seen a resurgence: a second iteration has been released; cleaner,
more robust and modern. This has been due, in large part, to the release of Flutter – a Google
framework to build near-native platform-independent mobile apps – that is based around
____.

● Industry reaction, however, has been lukewarm; a sentiment that is summed up by an IT

World article which quipped that “____ remains far from hitting the JavaScript bullseye.”

● Which programming language?

Dart
Dart
 4*
● In a 2008 article titled ‘Don’t be ___, know your tech slang’, the BBC describes the
results of a study carried out – by the telecommunications arm of the Royal Mail –
in the same year.
● The overwhelming influence of technology and instant messaging, the study
claimed, had begun to have an effect on the vocabulary of young people. A clear
instance of this, the article mentions, is how ‘___’ has come to mean ‘missing’, or
‘clueless’.
● Although relatively confined to urban London population at the time, similar usage
is common today, growing as the spread and penetration of the internet has risen.
● What fills in the blank?
404
 5
● 2018 has been a bad year for ________.

● In March, the foundations of the company were rocked by a privacy scandal; subsequent
months have seen prominent personalities - sometimes from within the company - publicly
rebuke the company for its unethical data protection practices.

● The most prominent in this series was the call to “#delete_______” on Twitter, made by
someone closely associated with the organisation.

● In an interview given soon after this public outcry, however, he was quite reserved in his
assessment of _______: "They are business people; they are good business people. They just
represent a set of business practices and ethics that I don’t necessarily agree with. I sold my
users’ privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise, and I was a sellout. And
I live with that every day."

● What company? Who?

Facebook
 Brian Acton
Co-founder of WhatsApp
 6
● The initiation of the Sino-Iranian Cyber war of 2010 lies in the hacking of _____ in January of
that year.

● As part of that hack, _____’s DNS records in the United States were altered such that
browsers trying to access _____ were redirected to a website plastered with slogans
proclaiming the superiority of the Iranian Cyber Army - making the actual website unusable
for four hours.

● Chinese hackers later responded by attacking Iranian websites and leaving behind their own
messages.

● It was revealed later that support staff at Register.com - _____’s domain name provider - had
allowed for changing of the email address of their account without verification. _____
followed this revelation up with legal action against Register.com for gross negligence.

● What technology giant fills the blank?

Baidu
 7*
● Bengaluru based _______ - a 2011 startup - has risen from strength to strength, on
the back of sustained support by high profile investors and rapid user penetration
in India.
● However, the greatest boost it has received in its growth story – resulting in gains it
could, perhaps, never have achieved on its own – has been the introduction of the
___, in 2017.
● Created as an online tool to “demystify ___ ______ for the average Indian”, it has
risen – meteorically, since the middle of 2017 – to become the largest portal of its
sort in India today.
● Which company? Which pioneering development from 2017 is being mentioned?
clearTax
 GST
Goods and Services Tax
 8*
● The first version of this remarkable device was based on an Apple II computer with an
AMD processor, running a software called Equalizer. A hand-clicker was the only
input required, which helped navigate the system.
● Over the years, the system saw many minor changes; gradually, however, the
hand-clicker as a mode of input became unusable - which led to the complete
redevelopment of the device - both its hardware and software.
● The new version incorporated a novel method of taking input - a specially mounted
infrared sensor would detect muscle twitches and act based on them.
● Developed by Intel, with support from SwiftKey, this revolutionary system was
termed “life changing” when its intended user was introduced to it.
● Who was the intended user?
Prof. Stephen Hawking
 9
● The word _____ is, in fact, Japanese, but the company named such is most definitely
American. This anomaly is explained by Ted Dabney, one of the founding members of
_____.

● Referring to the founders’ efforts to name the company, he says, “The first name they ever
thought of – an interesting dictionary entry which meant ‘the straight line configuration of
three celestial bodies’ – was already taken by a Californian company. Alternatives, such as
‘DB, Inc.’ and ‘BD, Inc.’ were too similar to large conglomerates of the time.”
● “Being passionate players of Go, they decided to list words from the game and see if they
would fly as a new corporate name. They chose _____, which has a similar meaning to the
chess word ‘check’, over ‘sente’ and ‘hanne’ - both terms used to refer to an opponent’s
aggression.”

● What company? Or, what word?

Atari
 10
● The concept of ______ was born during its founder’s time as a student in MIT,
when he would repeatedly forget his USB drive – with all his coursework in it – in
his dorm room; having to go back and forth multiple times.
● In a 2009 "Meet the team!" post on the company’s blog, the founder explained that
the name _______, “stems from an incident when someone in the company
dropped a computer with all their code right before an early investment proposal
presentation. Today, having _______, such a situation wouldn’t have caused all
the panic it did then.”
● What company?
Dropbox
 11*
● The world wide web, in its most primitive form, allowed for only one-way communication - a
user requesting for resources from a remote server. This would happen through a method
called “GET” - part of the original definition of the HTTP.

● The HTTP evolved rapidly, and two-way communication was soon introduced. The ____
method – a name that pays tribute to a far more primitive form of communication – allowed
users to transfer their own data to web servers, and transformed how the internet was used.

● The ____ method, thus, features in the name of _______ - an application which allows
developers to test software by sending mock HTTP requests, and displaying the response
that the request generates – in essence, performing a task identical to that of a real-world
_______.

● Name the method, and the company. Images follow.

11*
11*
POST
Postman
 12
● The story of the death of Jimi Heselden is, perhaps, one of the most ironic ones in
history.
● A British entrepreneur, he bought ______ Inc. in 2010, a company involved in building a
product that was hugely hyped at the time - but eventually, failed spectacularly.
● A testament to the anticipation that preceded the launch of the _____ was this
comment by its inventor, made to the TIME magazine, in 2001: "The _____ will be to the
car what the car was to the horse and buggy".
● A few months after Jimi Heselden bought ______ Inc., however, tragedy struck: his
dead body was found at the bottom of the cliffs near his British residence. The official
cause of his death reads: “accidental fall of a cliff while _____ _ _____.”
● Which company/What product? What was the tragically ironic cause of his death?
Segway
Accidental fall while riding a segway
 13*
● ____ is the Malaysian word for red algae - the inspiration behind the name of a common
jelly-like substance used in biology labs, and also, presumably, a massively multiplayer
online role playing game.
● Playing the game does not entail doing too much: the objective is to survive, and all you
need to do is to move with the mouse and two keyboard keys.
● There are other things to know, of course, but this information reveals itself only to
those who make it long enough to discover it themselves. The only option available to
the user is to move around, but from these simple mechanics, a lot of interesting
scenarios pan out.
● What game?
agar.io
 14
● Internet Relay Chat applications (IRCs) probably deserve credit for being the first users of the ______ on
the internet - at a time when the name “_______” didn’t exist. Their current popularity, however, stems
from their usage on _______.

● The first recorded use of a _______ on _______ is from 2007, and occurs as part of an inquiry of sorts;
seeking to know if using a _______ as an identifier was a valid idea.

● The validation, however, that ______ were a useful concept, came later that same year; a journalist
covering forest fires in San Diego, California and posting about them online using the phrase “San Diego
fire” prefixed to all his posts was advised to drop the spaces, and use a ______. Soon enough, everyone
was using a ______ in their posts - and all information about the wildfire became accessible through a
single search query .

● That incident spurred a rapid adoption of the ______ in online media; after a while of resistance, ______
soon began providing official support for ______ on their platform.

● What cultural phenomenon, that has now entered speech? What platform?
hashtag
Twitter
 15
● In an article titled “The man who escaped Microsoft and took a company with him”, WIRED
talks of serial entrepreneur Richard Barton, the founder of Zillow, Glassdoor and perhaps
most famously, _______.

● The idea of ______, Barton says, arose during his time at Microsoft when, as a business
traveller, he would constantly have to correspond with corporate agencies to coordinate his
travel.

● “I could hear the operator typing on the keyboard, so I knew they were looking at a screen
with data on flight and hotel rates that I didn’t have access to - and that was when the idea
was born.”

● The company he helped create as a result – initially from within Microsoft – was later spun
off, and eventually, in 2003, sold.

● What company? Image follows.

15
Expedia
 16*
● China has been hit by a massive ____ ______ wave: it is impossible to walk a few metres in
most urban parts of the country without seeing a billboard advertising the newest ____
_______ startup; billions have been poured into the industry and there seem to be no
signs of any abatement.
● Such a sudden surge – when the idea of ____ ______ has existed for decades – is entirely
due to the introduction of a mechanism that has eliminated the large infrastructural
requirements that were typically required to get such a service up and running.

● This situation, however, has resulted in an ‘oversupply’ of sorts: instances of stray ____
littering the city streets, and of thousands of newly-manufactured ____ lying in disuse at
manufacturing plants have emerged in the past few months.

● The result of what disruptive innovation is being described?

Dockless Bike Sharing
 17
● The startup sound or jingle of _____ is one of the most conservative-but-effective
jingles in the computer industry. A mere five notes, three of which are the same,
the tune is perhaps the most familiar brand jingle in the world.
● When Walter Werzowa was commissioned to create it, he was told that it needed
to be about 3 seconds long and use “tones that evoked innovation,
troubleshooting skills and the inside of a computer, while also sounding corporate
and inviting” - a difficult task for 3 seconds.
● Thus, it took Werzowa 10 days to come up with it, and record it. He used a bunch of
marimbas and xylophones because he thought that they sounded corporate.
● Which tune?
Intel
 18*
● How ___ ___ got its name is explained, in some detail, in the ‘History’ section of its
website.

● According to this source, the name was inspired by a nickname that Marc Ewing, the
founder of the company, acquired during his years in college at Carnegie Mellon
University.

● A certain distinctive part of his apparel – a gift from his grandfather – was what led to him
being referred to as ‘the guy in the ___ ___’ on campus; a moniker that became his
identity.

● Thus, when he began distributing his own curated version of _____ to other hobbyists in
his class, he chose ___ ___ as the name.

● Which software company?

Red Hat
 19
● According to linguist Robert Daland, an assistant professor with the University of California's
Department of Linguistics, there is a perfectly good reason why no one can figure out how to
correctly pronounce _____. The trouble stems from the final two letters in the acronym.

● "No English words can end with a combination of sounds as is the case in ____."

● Unlike acronyms that have passed seamlessly into English vocabulary, like ‘scuba’ or ‘laser’,
____ was not designed to be pronounceable; in fact, it was not designed to be an acronym at
all.

● A BBC documentary on ____ has the creator using a certain pronunciation, which, sections of
the internet claim to be the ‘official’ one. However, multiple variations remain popular across
geographies and preferences.

● What word?
PUBG
 20*
A reference to what commonplace technology has been blanked out?
Autocorrect