Pixel Quiz: November 2017

Q1. In early 1993, Charlie Jackson and Jonathan Gay, founded FutureWave
Software. The intention was to create a graphic design tool that would enable
pen-input for users. And so, they released SmartSketch.
However, SmartSketch was a little ahead of its time and just as pen-computing
didn’t take off. However, around the time, the Internet was becoming
very popular, so the creators of SmartSketch decided to take on Y (a popular
tech in the field of internet) and in 1995 re-released SmartSketch.
SmartSketch’s pivot to a more lucrative field would eventually result in Y’s
parent company acquiring FutureWave and rebranding Jackson and Gay’s
creation to X, something that would be known for years to come. What is X.

Q2. In October 2016, a dDOS attack, nearly took down more than half of
Internet for some time. The largest of its kind, this dDOS attack was slightly
different from all other such attacks, which made the scale of it so large.
The hackers used X, instead of traditional computers to orchestrate the formation
of a giant botnet which would then kick in the attack. Because X are
so loosely regulated and have few security standards, It was particularly easy
to infect them with a malware which would gain access to these devices by
using a table of more than 60 common factory default usernames and passwords.
Identify X, a futuristic category of devices.

Q3. Every Image has a “focal region”: A region where the image is most interesting.
The engineers at X found a way to algorithmically extract that focal
region from any image. They use this to generate promotional artworks.
Once X has a giant pool of artworks with small stylistic variations. They
group them and conduct A/B Tests on users by showing a different group of
artwork to different people. Since the homepage of X is largely a collection
of spatially arranged artworks. X uses its acquired knowledge of what groups
of artwork a user is most likely to be interested in. So every X profile looks
slightly different even if the contents on the screen aren’t. Identify X.

Q4. Dhruv Shringi is the co-founder of which famous Indina online ticketing
service?

Q5. Derived from the latin word for elite, which language is an alternative
alphabet for the English language that is primarily used on the internet and
uses various combinations of ASCII letters to replace alphabets?