• Henning (unregistered)

    Two pictures are missing?

    *Yep - should have jpg'd and instead png'd - thx - MarkB

  • Dan (unregistered)

    The first and last images do not display. Is this the real WTF here?

    *Yes - MarkB

  • my name is missing (unregistered)

    first and last images do not appear

    *Excellent detective work! - MarkB

  • None (unregistered) in reply to my name is missing

    Nice riddle.

    First image is https://thedailywtf.com/images/20/q3/e425/Pic-6.jpg

    Last image is https://thedailywtf.com/images/20/q3/e425/Pic-5.png

    *PERFECTION. - MarkB

  • (nodebb) in reply to my name is missing

    Indeed...and I was trying to select the empty bit, to see if there was white text on a white background, but alas!

  • Brian (unregistered)

    I know I definitely need some caffeine, if not something stronger, whenever I have to deal with JS code.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Brian

    At least there's no asynchrony in the JS code.

  • (nodebb)

    I feel kinda stupid because I don't see the coffee WTF. What's the WTF? Incomplete because it never actually makes a request?

    (I do see the image, thanks for fixing that.)

  • (nodebb) in reply to Ross_Presser

    I've seen this one before - this version is cropped, if I recall correctly it does actually make a request at the bottom.

  • Chris (unregistered)

    What's a knufe?

  • rfc2549 (unregistered) in reply to Ross_Presser

    think about what they do and what the passphrase actually says. Hint: Obfuscation is not a security measure.

  • Somebody Somewhere (unregistered)

    I'm not going to demand flawless code from a street chalkboard offering me free coffee.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Niroht

    Thanks for the hint. Here's one version -- apparently there are several out there with different "secret words" though they are all broken up the same way: https://twitter.com/512banque/status/663336939358171136/photo/1

  • Naomi (unregistered) in reply to Ross_Presser

    I don't think it's so much a WTF as a funny thing. XP

  • (nodebb) in reply to rfc2549

    There's no way they would have used any meaningful encryption in something like that--it's meant to be decoded by a human, not a computer, and no reasonable encryption scheme other than a one-time pad can be handled in one's head. It's simply a test of whether you can read computer code (while it's Java I don't speak Java but can read it perfectly well) and it's quite adequate for the purpose. (Assuming nobody tells you the answer.)

  • Harris Mirza (unregistered)

    I once visited a coffee shop where you got a free coffee if you can solve a Rubiks Cube before it's made. Luckily, they were quite slow and so I did it maybe five times before they told me I couldn't anymore.

  • Loko8765 (unregistered)

    I expected the secret word to be "please"...

  • (nodebb)

    Kurt Gödel and Zeno would have loved this non-existing error message.

    Addendum 2020-07-24 12:42: Zeno? How did I get to him? Blackout. Of course I obviously meant Epimenides...

  • sizer99 (google)

    Hey MarkB, there seems to be some sort of bug where the first and last images are actually showing.

  • WTFGuy (unregistered)

    @Harris Mirza ref

    I once visited a coffee shop where you got a free coffee if you can solve a Rubiks Cube before it's made. Luckily, they were quite slow and so I did it maybe five times before they told me I couldn't anymore.

    40-ish years ago Pizza Hut had a promo for dine-in lunch where they had 10 minutes to get your individual lunch pizza order on the table or you got a coupon for a free lunch pizza next time. They had little countdown timers made up special with their logo and everything. Best of all, the same deal applied next time when you came back to redeem your coupon: too slow yields another coupon.

    Our local PH near work couldn't get it done in less than 12 minutes even if you were the only occupied table in the joint. So for the price of one pizza each on just one occasion my co-workers and I ate free pizza 2-3x/week for about 6 months until HQ nixed the promo.

    I don't think the employees were f***ing with HQ by dawdling; they were like totally a crew of massive stoners moving in slo-mo.

  • (nodebb)

    I thought the wtf was using split("").reverse().join() to reverse a string.

    And people wonder why Slack requires an overclocked Xeon with 64GB of RAM to run...

  • Robert (unregistered) in reply to Brian

    Why? What's wrong with JavaScript? Besides "2" plus 2 being "22". Well, besides that and the off-by-one month numbering.

  • Fernando (unregistered) in reply to Loren Pechtel

    It's great that you can read Java, but a Java compiler would puke on this Javascript.

  • LHPSU (unregistered)

    I have zero programming knowledge and I got "encryption" quite easily.

    Maybe it's actually designed to thwart programmers who overthink?

  • eric bloedow (unregistered)

    this reminds me of "Dover cheetah" in the old online comic "suburban jungle". "hi." "set greeting = hello." [blink blink] "so, you're a computer programmer?" "statement=true."

  • Ken Morrison (unregistered)

    The Null Star, also known as a Black Hole.

  • sebug (unregistered) in reply to Loren Pechtel

    Well, there's the issue of your_drink not really being used for the message, and preference not being declared before so it would throw when using JS strict. I'm so pedantic about these things I would just respect the coffee shop less for writing it. Luckily I can't go to any right now, so it's fine. Then again, I kinda respect maybe filtering out people who just can't let it go.

  • löchleindeluxe (unregistered)

    Don't they realize how insecure their coffee distribution system is? (ObPhD: http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1618 )

  • ray10k (unregistered)

    I fully expected the first image to return "undefinedundefinedundefined" as the password, but apparently it does work. Still haven't got my head wrapped around js 'this' rules.

  • PSimpson (unregistered) in reply to Loren Pechtel

    There's always one...:-) (note that the prize for solving the puzzle is a cup of coffee)

  • (nodebb) in reply to ray10k

    Still haven't got my head wrapped around js 'this' rules.

    There are no 'this' rules, at least not at the language level.

    https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Function/call

    'this' is complicated in javascript because it's really just a series of conventions. Any given caller can manipulate 'this' at will.

  • (nodebb) in reply to Chris

    Not much, what's a knufe with you?

  • Anonymous Beaver (unregistered)

    Notice how the sign says you could use a free coffee, not that they will give you one!

  • (nodebb)

    If that code test is worth a free coffee, they'd go broke.

    My wife figured out the "Secret", and she's a nurse with zero coding background. If they had called the "reverse" function something obscure, maybe it would be a more valid test, but their clear and readable code make their "encryption" much easier to crack.

    Still nice to know that somewhere in silicon valley there's a coffee shop owned by an eccentric geek with a sense of irony, as the passphrase is derived by a process which has nothing at all to do with cryptography.

  • (nodebb)

    If that code test is worth a free coffee, they'd go broke.

    My wife figured out the "Secret", and she's a nurse with zero coding background. If they had called the "reverse" function something obscure, maybe it would be a more valid test, but their clear and readable code make their "encryption" much easier to crack.

    Still nice to know that somewhere in silicon valley there's a coffee shop owned by an eccentric geek with a sense of irony, as the passphrase is derived by a process which has nothing at all to do with cryptography.

    Addendum 2020-08-02 11:48: She added that if the code on that board were written by a "real" coder, it wouldn't have been to a high enough standard to qualify you for a "pen license" in first grade, yet still somehow be more legible than most doctor's.

Leave a comment on “Free Coff...Wait!”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article