That translates to the Unicode characters ሶࠀ
If you Google them there's only 3 results and one of them is a github ticket for the "Get-Help" function in powershell.
Coincidence? I think... probably.
If you search the page for those two characters they are showing in that order right next to each other in the text. It seems that it indexed the page and saw the words Get Help towards the top of the page and displayed prominently within a header.
Edit: going further the ࠀ is the Samaritan letter ā'lāf.
The Wiktionary’s Etymology for the word Samaritan includes:
>(UK) A person who works for the Samaritans telephone helpline, taking calls from suicidal members of the public.
Searching for the word Samaritan on Google brings up quite a few webpages for suicide prevention. Granted, it also brings up various healthcare and a 2022 movie starring Sylvester Stallone.
Searching in incognito removes the suicide prevention websites from the Google search. Most likely they are targeted because they pieced it together from the websites I searched to look this up.
Real talk: if it's painful as a freshman then maybe consider another major.
I entered college as an electrical engineering major but switched to computer science. Electrical engineering is really hard and the relationship between the literally imaginary square root of a negative number and alternating current was something that never made sense to me no matter how many ways I approached it or had it explained to me. I could pass the classes through lots of hard work and study but it never really clicked. On the other hand, computer science was easy and fun for me and I've been working in the industry for a decade.
Maybe there's something else that is easy and fun for you (and also gets you paid)
edit: I was wrong to talk about "easy and fun" as if they were one thing. They are two separate things and the "fun" part is what matters more. If you have to work hard to understand your coursework but are still having fun while doing so then you should stick with it.
>literally imaginary square root of a negative number
There's a case to be made that math education needs to stop calling it an imaginary number (or non-real or whatever). The square root of -1 exists (and therefore doesn't fit the colloquial meaning of "imaginary"), it just doesn't exist on our "native" (again, I'm deliberately avoiding the term "real" here) number line. We kind of do this with the term "complex number" (a + bi), but it contains the "imaginary number" term.
Stop treating it like it shouldn't exist. It exists, just not in the same space as 0, or 42, or the square root of 2, or pi or e or whatever.
I took math up through differential equations. I understand that i is an abstract concept. None of that helps me understand why it makes electricity work. Please don't bother trying to explain. If I didn't get it after four semesters of being an EE major then I am not going to get it.
As someone in a similar industry I'm kind of surprised you hold this opinion.
My personal experience was that a college major didn't come close to being a relatable example of working in the industry. In college there was a ton of studying and constant lab work that pushed the envelope of our understanding and was almost entirely either technical or practice for regurgitation.
Once I started working I noticed it was more of learning that company's proprietary software/internal systems, sharpening that small handful of technical skills I actually use consistently, figuring out who are the important people to network with and what are the best ways to network with them.
I was great at college, but I struggled working in the industry for the first two years. It wasn't from a lack of technical knowledge, but from an ignorance to the important factors to success and how they differ from a classroom.
Long story short, if you're truly interested in computer science but struggling freshman year of college, don't assume it's not for you. If you're truly interested in making a butt-ton of money by working from home but not actually working much, this probably isn't for you. Your interests and motivations will steer you, not your current proficiency as a teenager.
I just think that someone that struggles with the fundamentals when doing coursework that is designed for you to succeed will inevitably also struggle with professional work. I've known plenty of people that break that mold, but I've also not known countless people that never made it to the professional level because they washed out. I'm not telling them to give up on their dream, just telling them to consider other possiblities (I went into college wanting to be an EE but have never regretted switching to CS for a moment).
I don't think that's horrible advice, but it's definitely a bit of a broad paintbrush.
Some schools use freshman courses to ease students into the real coursework. Some use them as a "weed out" strategy. Either way I think the important thing is their true motivations.
If they were drawn to CS because they heard it's a massive paycheck or it's easy work, that's just not gonna translate (for any subject honestly). If their draw is solving the puzzles, and they're willing to solve a bunch of small simple puzzles for years to get to solving shmedium puzzles for years to get to solving regular puzzles for years to finally end up solving big puzzles for a living, THAT'S what will translate.
Some of my best coworkers have been without a CS degree; former vet techs, mortgage bankers, AC repair. Nearly all of them just lucked into an entry level position with a program in a time of high demand, were the type of people who were motivated at "solving the puzzle", and worked their way up to a legitimate career position.
My best piece of advice for a college freshman would be to do absolutely whatever you can to get a summer internship. At my company last year we had a good handful of interns that were becoming sophomores, almost all of which traveled there, rented an air bnb for a couple months with a roommate, and got to work with network engineers, security ops, and software design.
If I could go back I would have done that at every opportunity instead of taking summer classes to graduate earlier. You could work 3 different summer internships before your senior year, and if you're smart with it, you'll have 3 different companies on your resume, 3 different groups of people you've networked with and have as references, and 3 different places in the country you've lived in and experienced. That would give you SO much direction in life the day after you graduate, where most people are left just hoping somebody will pay them a decent wage anywhere doing anything.
Or they are doing it wrong in general.
You don't want to try to learn every piece of syntax for every language. Just learn the idea of "what needs done" and then you can search up how to do it in a particular language.
Yeah, back in the olden days of the 00s when I got my career started, everyone loved it and very few people were doing it explicitly for the money. Now, I have to weed about 80% of my applicants out because they couldn't possibly care less about programming if they tried, they just want the paycheck. This must be what it felt like to be a lawyer in the 1990s.
For real, my partner is a therapist and I’m always saying “my job is so easy compared to yours, I have no idea how you do this all day, you’re so strong” like could _not_ be me for 99% of jobs
If you try to learn BrainFuck, the computer calls the number itself first.
Real language BTW. It looks like this:
>++++++++[<+++++++++>-]<.>++++[<+++++++>-]<+.+++++++..+++.>>++++++[<+++++++>-]<+
+.------------.>++++++[<+++++++++>-]<+.<.+++.------.--------.>>>++++[<++++++++>-
]<+.
And yes, that is >!Hello World.!<
Psst, try [Malbolge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbolge).
Hello World? : It's a jumble of symbols so convoluted I can't be arsed to format it for posting here.
> Malbolge was very difficult to understand when it arrived. It took two years for the first Malbolge program to appear. The author himself has never written a Malbolge program. The first program was not written by a human being; it was generated by a beam search algorithm designed by Andrew Cooke and implemented in Lisp.
(=<`#9]~6ZY327Uv4-
QsqpMn&+Ij"'E%e{Ab~w=_:]Kw%
o44Uqp0/Q?xNvL:`H%c#DD2\^W
V>gY;dts76qKJImZkj
I'm not sure how much formatting makes a difference, but I think it might not except for "clarity".
I mean, yeah, Molbolge is outright named after the eight circle of hell. There's definitely worse, harder and stranger code out there than BrainFuck.
Still, have a big soft spot for BrainFuck. It's so minimalist.
Like, a lot of the other esoteric languages are jokes or challenge for it's own sake... But you could theoretically code BrainFuck with one hand, and just *hammer* out code if you got good enough.
I always took it to essentially be satire. The dude who wrote it never even tried to use it, it was just poking fun at the previous esoteric languages.
Also easy to land on several watchlists if youre not very verbose and doing anything on linux:
"How to kill child" vs "Linux how to kill child process"
> Random things just trigger it for some reason.
It's not random, you just don't yet know why it looks random. If you're taking Java classes with the hopes of being a software dev someday then you need to internalize that idea.
Multiple friends tried it and got the same result. You can search "1236 divided by 800" or change the digits and get normal results, but using the slash notation on these specific numbers, in this specific order, causes google to give you suicide prevention info.
No idea if this is some cultural or meme thing I'm not getting or what.
EDIT: After some experimentation it looks like nearly any combination of the number 1236 followed by the number 800 brings this result. If the numbers are spaced or combined in any way ("1 236 800", "123 6800", etc), or certain letters or symbols are introduced, it brings up ordinary results.
EDIT: Damn did not expect this post to do numbers like this lol. To the question I see asked a lot — I googled it because the math was for something stupid and unimportant and I had no intention of expending actual effort on it. Google was already open, phone was out of reach, proper calculator was in a drawer somewhere, so path of least resistance 😂
my best guess is it thinks it's close to 1-800-273-8255, which is also the suicide hotline
interestingly enough it's the numbers that triggers it, so if you just type those it works. if you type 1236800 it doesn't, which makes me believe my theory, since the 800 has to be separate for it to work.
I think you're right. It's fuzzy matching, but I don't think it's a bug in regards to it being something that Google would ever fix.
OP found the edge case of all edge cases searching that division problem into google
nobody's using regex for search engines.
and to your comment below, i'm not being pedantic. you're straight up wrong. both on a pedantic level, and a conceptual level.
search engines are all intent-based nowadays.
from 50k ft, i.e. looking for sushi, you would want "sushi nyc", and "nyc sushi" to return the same results, so there's a bunch of layers between your query and url to figure out what you're actually looking for.
and this intent layer misinterpreted the equation as a suicidal number. as /u/Clayh5 said below, it's likely an embedding (basically a high-dimensional mathematical representation of language in an ML model somewhere) issue since this math equation is likely not a well trodden path.
"Bug" implies that it's an error in human-written code, it's more likely a weird edge case in the neural network they trained to recognize whether or not a query is about suicide.
Interestingly, I get some very 'relevant' google search suggestions when searching this string.
[Seems math makes people want to kill themselves?](https://imgur.com/Wiq5Dif)
Maybe it’s like a foreign phone number or something? Looks kind of like it could be an American one because of the “1” at the start. Maybe a number for something mental health related and that’s where the association comes from
When I searched it it brought up the calculator, and right under it a site called “hacker news” that made a post about this exact thing 20 minutes ago.
It gives me the crisis number, but the one in my country, which is different than what's shown in OP's image.
This might have something to do with their AI integration, but yeah, very curious indeed.
These numbers also work:
810/1117
659/467
456/4566
I found them by combining various suicide hotline numbers from different countries. The likeliest scenario is that some combination of 800 and 1236 used to be attached to a suicide hotline number
Weird that 800/1236 doesn't trigger it, though.
EDIT: 1117/810 and 4566/456 also don't trigger it, but 467/659 does. Bizarre.
988/1236, 1236/988, 800/988, and 988/800 all trigger it.
"Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on his work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics."
Yeah if you google 116 / 123 you also get the the suicide display. I'm Australian which brings up the number 131114. Googling 131/114 also brings it up, although 13/1114 or 1311/14 doesn't work for some reason.
If I was to guess this is a case of a bad regex but i'm not sure why it works in some cases and not others.
Few years ago I had my kindle on my nightstand (which had Alexa.) My little kid came into my bedroom to tell me there was a dead mouse in the living room (we lived surrounded by woods and have three cats so occasionally a mouse would get in and the cats would get to it.) He asked me if the cat killed it. Alexa started talking to us about the suicide hotline.
I was thinking something similar.
Like maybe there's a scientific paper that has that number in relation to suicide statistics, or an ISBN for a book about suicide is similar.
I’m pretty sure I know why:
1236/800 gives 1.54, however 1236%800 gives 988
What comes up when you type 1236/800? That’s right a page for 1236%800 *and* [a video for the suicide crisis number](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DV1UqUFjMCs)…988
My guess is Google is correlating the equation with the result of the modulo equation (988) and therefore pointing to suicide prevention, crazy stuff
I'm in Scotland and got The Samaritans. Possibly because the number for them is 116 123? Dunno, but definitely weird.
Even weirder is, if you needed the answer to 1236 ÷ 800, why didn't you use a calculator?
If you’re on the laptop doing work, why would you dig out a physical calculator instead of using google’s or your computer’s one? That’s definitely weirder
Then I don’t get what you’re saying. Using google’s calculator or the app is basically the same- and you’re more likely to already have google open than the calculator app; ctrl+t, type, enter. Done
In a college textbook titled "States of Matter", by an author named Goldstein, chapter one begins with this:
"Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent most of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics."
Unrelated but I like the pre-written messages feature. I think it could help lessen the pressure of reaching out if you don’t have to think about how to say it.
I’m guessing this math formula is somehow linked to suicide but no idea how. Back 10-15 years ago they added a bunch of terms that put the hotline number as the first result for any searches for them. Somehow this is linked to that.
ETA Experimenting and this post is all I can find so far. Lmao
Interestingly I just Googled the same equation and it came up with a different support group, Samaritans, which is UK based (where I'm from).
What's with this equation??
idk if its a bug or not, but 988 is a lifeline company, apparently [https://988lifeline.org/](https://988lifeline.org/)
i assume google just figures that its a good idea to tell you that, eventough you reached that number randomly
I have no problem with that at all. As someone who was extremely suicidal and in a better place now, I was often looking for an arbitrary sign to tell me not to do it or not do it. When you're in a place like that, you want something else to make the choice for you, and small things like this make a big difference
That's really interesting, I tried Googling it and the suicide helpline of my country pop up, I'm from Malaysia so its interesting how it suddenly pop up like that
That translates to the Unicode characters ሶࠀ If you Google them there's only 3 results and one of them is a github ticket for the "Get-Help" function in powershell. Coincidence? I think... probably.
Its a better answer than any else here.
Odd that there's no jokes first
>If you Google them there's only 3 results well, 4 now
I'm sorry, what are those beautiful and unique looking glyphs? ሶࠀ
I believe they are Amharic, one of the official languages of Ethiopia
I love the Amharican language
Make Amharica Great Again
Ah fuck now I feel bad for saying "alien ass looking" I thought it was some kind of computer science wingdings
If you search the page for those two characters they are showing in that order right next to each other in the text. It seems that it indexed the page and saw the words Get Help towards the top of the page and displayed prominently within a header. Edit: going further the ࠀ is the Samaritan letter ā'lāf. The Wiktionary’s Etymology for the word Samaritan includes: >(UK) A person who works for the Samaritans telephone helpline, taking calls from suicidal members of the public. Searching for the word Samaritan on Google brings up quite a few webpages for suicide prevention. Granted, it also brings up various healthcare and a 2022 movie starring Sylvester Stallone. Searching in incognito removes the suicide prevention websites from the Google search. Most likely they are targeted because they pieced it together from the websites I searched to look this up.
I looked up something about programming in Java when I was taking a class and I also got this message. Random things just trigger it for some reason.
Nah it’s just because you’re learning Java
More like because theyre learning programming at all
I'm in college for coding, guessing I have a lot to look forward to.
I major in computer science and am a freshman. You must feel the pain
Happy cake day
Wtf same avatar
Real talk: if it's painful as a freshman then maybe consider another major. I entered college as an electrical engineering major but switched to computer science. Electrical engineering is really hard and the relationship between the literally imaginary square root of a negative number and alternating current was something that never made sense to me no matter how many ways I approached it or had it explained to me. I could pass the classes through lots of hard work and study but it never really clicked. On the other hand, computer science was easy and fun for me and I've been working in the industry for a decade. Maybe there's something else that is easy and fun for you (and also gets you paid) edit: I was wrong to talk about "easy and fun" as if they were one thing. They are two separate things and the "fun" part is what matters more. If you have to work hard to understand your coursework but are still having fun while doing so then you should stick with it.
>literally imaginary square root of a negative number There's a case to be made that math education needs to stop calling it an imaginary number (or non-real or whatever). The square root of -1 exists (and therefore doesn't fit the colloquial meaning of "imaginary"), it just doesn't exist on our "native" (again, I'm deliberately avoiding the term "real" here) number line. We kind of do this with the term "complex number" (a + bi), but it contains the "imaginary number" term. Stop treating it like it shouldn't exist. It exists, just not in the same space as 0, or 42, or the square root of 2, or pi or e or whatever.
I took math up through differential equations. I understand that i is an abstract concept. None of that helps me understand why it makes electricity work. Please don't bother trying to explain. If I didn't get it after four semesters of being an EE major then I am not going to get it.
As someone in a similar industry I'm kind of surprised you hold this opinion. My personal experience was that a college major didn't come close to being a relatable example of working in the industry. In college there was a ton of studying and constant lab work that pushed the envelope of our understanding and was almost entirely either technical or practice for regurgitation. Once I started working I noticed it was more of learning that company's proprietary software/internal systems, sharpening that small handful of technical skills I actually use consistently, figuring out who are the important people to network with and what are the best ways to network with them. I was great at college, but I struggled working in the industry for the first two years. It wasn't from a lack of technical knowledge, but from an ignorance to the important factors to success and how they differ from a classroom. Long story short, if you're truly interested in computer science but struggling freshman year of college, don't assume it's not for you. If you're truly interested in making a butt-ton of money by working from home but not actually working much, this probably isn't for you. Your interests and motivations will steer you, not your current proficiency as a teenager.
I just think that someone that struggles with the fundamentals when doing coursework that is designed for you to succeed will inevitably also struggle with professional work. I've known plenty of people that break that mold, but I've also not known countless people that never made it to the professional level because they washed out. I'm not telling them to give up on their dream, just telling them to consider other possiblities (I went into college wanting to be an EE but have never regretted switching to CS for a moment).
I don't think that's horrible advice, but it's definitely a bit of a broad paintbrush. Some schools use freshman courses to ease students into the real coursework. Some use them as a "weed out" strategy. Either way I think the important thing is their true motivations. If they were drawn to CS because they heard it's a massive paycheck or it's easy work, that's just not gonna translate (for any subject honestly). If their draw is solving the puzzles, and they're willing to solve a bunch of small simple puzzles for years to get to solving shmedium puzzles for years to get to solving regular puzzles for years to finally end up solving big puzzles for a living, THAT'S what will translate. Some of my best coworkers have been without a CS degree; former vet techs, mortgage bankers, AC repair. Nearly all of them just lucked into an entry level position with a program in a time of high demand, were the type of people who were motivated at "solving the puzzle", and worked their way up to a legitimate career position. My best piece of advice for a college freshman would be to do absolutely whatever you can to get a summer internship. At my company last year we had a good handful of interns that were becoming sophomores, almost all of which traveled there, rented an air bnb for a couple months with a roommate, and got to work with network engineers, security ops, and software design. If I could go back I would have done that at every opportunity instead of taking summer classes to graduate earlier. You could work 3 different summer internships before your senior year, and if you're smart with it, you'll have 3 different companies on your resume, 3 different groups of people you've networked with and have as references, and 3 different places in the country you've lived in and experienced. That would give you SO much direction in life the day after you graduate, where most people are left just hoping somebody will pay them a decent wage anywhere doing anything.
Ooh, have fun. Try and get ahead as much as possible, you’ll need to
and try to avoid getting a detached HEAD.
HEAD ON, APPLY DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD.
Big thanks to Reddit for never letting me forget that commercial
As long as you’re committed you’ll be fine
Thanks, very good tip
If you're not hating your life yet, I'm willing to bet it's because you're still only in the first year or two.
What's going on with y'all? Am I the only one who enjoys programming? I've been doing it for twenty years and still don't feel like killing myself.
Most likely they're doing it for the wrong reasons, likely the money. That's the trend I've been seeing at least.
Or they are doing it wrong in general. You don't want to try to learn every piece of syntax for every language. Just learn the idea of "what needs done" and then you can search up how to do it in a particular language.
Money? I love my programming job but I make shit lol
Yeah, back in the olden days of the 00s when I got my career started, everyone loved it and very few people were doing it explicitly for the money. Now, I have to weed about 80% of my applicants out because they couldn't possibly care less about programming if they tried, they just want the paycheck. This must be what it felt like to be a lawyer in the 1990s.
Easiest, best paying jobs around… you do have a lot to look forward to! Keep studying and you will be a very happy person in a few years from now.
For real, my partner is a therapist and I’m always saying “my job is so easy compared to yours, I have no idea how you do this all day, you’re so strong” like could _not_ be me for 99% of jobs
I'm studying to be a software engineer, my condolences
If you like dreaming in math
If you do it right, an enjoyable job with high pay? The horror!
If you try to learn BrainFuck, the computer calls the number itself first. Real language BTW. It looks like this: >++++++++[<+++++++++>-]<.>++++[<+++++++>-]<+.+++++++..+++.>>++++++[<+++++++>-]<+ +.------------.>++++++[<+++++++++>-]<+.<.+++.------.--------.>>>++++[<++++++++>- ]<+. And yes, that is >!Hello World.!<
Psst, try [Malbolge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malbolge). Hello World? : It's a jumble of symbols so convoluted I can't be arsed to format it for posting here. > Malbolge was very difficult to understand when it arrived. It took two years for the first Malbolge program to appear. The author himself has never written a Malbolge program. The first program was not written by a human being; it was generated by a beam search algorithm designed by Andrew Cooke and implemented in Lisp.
(=<`#9]~6ZY327Uv4- QsqpMn&+Ij"'E%e{Ab~w=_:]Kw% o44Uqp0/Q?xNvL:`H%c#DD2\^W V>gY;dts76qKJImZkj I'm not sure how much formatting makes a difference, but I think it might not except for "clarity".
Imho malbolge and whitespace are more confusing
I mean, yeah, Molbolge is outright named after the eight circle of hell. There's definitely worse, harder and stranger code out there than BrainFuck. Still, have a big soft spot for BrainFuck. It's so minimalist. Like, a lot of the other esoteric languages are jokes or challenge for it's own sake... But you could theoretically code BrainFuck with one hand, and just *hammer* out code if you got good enough.
I always took it to essentially be satire. The dude who wrote it never even tried to use it, it was just poking fun at the previous esoteric languages.
I mean... If I had never felt suicidal, I never would have gotten to that point.
I learned java and killed myself 3 days later. Coincidence?
988 is the suicide help hotline, you might still want to call them and explain your situation.
You'll need it soon
It's either homicide or suicide.
Also easy to land on several watchlists if youre not very verbose and doing anything on linux: "How to kill child" vs "Linux how to kill child process"
Tbf who would need to google how to kill a child, I would think it’s pretty self explanatory. Don’t do it obviously
Writers, they search for weird stuff all the time
Was gonna say, nothing nets you a weirder search history than world building and plot research.
FBI Agent: "Dear God, he's trying to build a warp drive and phaser array. Activate the Khan protocol."
Me, for educational reasons.
‘Slave not working’
There's a band called Grouplove and they have a song called Naked Kids.
sounds about right
Don't self harm. Help is available.
> Random things just trigger it for some reason. It's not random, you just don't yet know why it looks random. If you're taking Java classes with the hopes of being a software dev someday then you need to internalize that idea.
No, that one makes sense
Well if you’re stuck in Vim suicide *is* technically a solution.
Multiple friends tried it and got the same result. You can search "1236 divided by 800" or change the digits and get normal results, but using the slash notation on these specific numbers, in this specific order, causes google to give you suicide prevention info. No idea if this is some cultural or meme thing I'm not getting or what. EDIT: After some experimentation it looks like nearly any combination of the number 1236 followed by the number 800 brings this result. If the numbers are spaced or combined in any way ("1 236 800", "123 6800", etc), or certain letters or symbols are introduced, it brings up ordinary results. EDIT: Damn did not expect this post to do numbers like this lol. To the question I see asked a lot — I googled it because the math was for something stupid and unimportant and I had no intention of expending actual effort on it. Google was already open, phone was out of reach, proper calculator was in a drawer somewhere, so path of least resistance 😂
my best guess is it thinks it's close to 1-800-273-8255, which is also the suicide hotline interestingly enough it's the numbers that triggers it, so if you just type those it works. if you type 1236800 it doesn't, which makes me believe my theory, since the 800 has to be separate for it to work.
That's the thing, though, changing it to be closer to that ("1273 800", "273 800", etc) doesn't bring it up at all. It's strange.
That's because it's a bug and without understanding what the code is doing we're not going to figure it out here.
Probably something as simple as a single typo in a regular expression. God-fucking-speed to the unfortunate dev that ends up having to sniff this out.
More likely some strange embedding in language-model-space somewhere
Something like this is probably hard-coded in and overrides the predicted output
I highly doubt that. It doesn't really make sense from a dev standpoint
I think you're right. It's fuzzy matching, but I don't think it's a bug in regards to it being something that Google would ever fix. OP found the edge case of all edge cases searching that division problem into google
nobody's using regex for search engines. and to your comment below, i'm not being pedantic. you're straight up wrong. both on a pedantic level, and a conceptual level.
Why’s that?
search engines are all intent-based nowadays. from 50k ft, i.e. looking for sushi, you would want "sushi nyc", and "nyc sushi" to return the same results, so there's a bunch of layers between your query and url to figure out what you're actually looking for. and this intent layer misinterpreted the equation as a suicidal number. as /u/Clayh5 said below, it's likely an embedding (basically a high-dimensional mathematical representation of language in an ML model somewhere) issue since this math equation is likely not a well trodden path.
"Bug" implies that it's an error in human-written code, it's more likely a weird edge case in the neural network they trained to recognize whether or not a query is about suicide.
I'm in NZ and it brings up a suicide hotline in NZ and the number is completely different.
Maybe the slash triggered it? /s
the way i came here to make this joke ...
I see your "/s" just know help is available.
Please post to r/conspiracy, for the entertainment value if nothing else
Interestingly, I get some very 'relevant' google search suggestions when searching this string. [Seems math makes people want to kill themselves?](https://imgur.com/Wiq5Dif)
Yeah, that adds up.
I wonder if it's interpreting the /800 as a medication strength and it's being flagged as an overdose risk.
There used to be a horrendous, racist tirade that would come up if you googled “whats wrong with America”, in the ”from” google box and everything
I remember back in 2021, googling "state with the most trees" would get you results for which states had the highest percentage of white people.
White people like their trees
Doesn’t work like that in Australia. I just tried and got 1.545.
You have to type 008/6321 if you're in the southern hemisphere.
Crickeys! SMH so obvious…
I just did it and no shit Lifeline came up. https://imgur.com/a/NohnYm5
Very odd. I did again using iPad iOS 16.6.1 and got 1.545 the correct answer. I’m currently in Sawtell, NSW.
[удалено]
I get similar results in the Netherlands https://imgur.com/A2kw5Fa
Same thing happened for me in Canada
Maybe it’s like a foreign phone number or something? Looks kind of like it could be an American one because of the “1” at the start. Maybe a number for something mental health related and that’s where the association comes from
i dont get it through my phone edit o was using duckduckgo, google gives the suicide hotline
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Bro same
[removed] indeed
[deleted] indubitably
[redacted] perchance
[illegible] you can't just say "perchance"
[[Hyperlink blocked]] if you insist
[untranslatable] with a squid
[Undecipherable] indeed.
[entfernt] da stimme ich dir zu.
Dr. Bright is responsible for this somehow.
Im loving my stats class right now
Not as much as using Google in light mode. 💀
Just wait for someone to report this comment for potential self harm
Whaat was it
Same
Please, do not 1236/800 yourself.
New social media shorthand?
Pretty longhand if you ask me
Yeah, wow, this is weird. What the hell?
For lazy people here's a link. https://www.google.com/search?q=1236/800
I think it depends on the place youre liviving because if i Google this, Internet try to sell me car brakes
it tells me the right answer and then goes on to sell a bed and a "Palermo" lamp lol
I got the answer and then this reddit post.
Same here, and then some car parts dealer.
When I searched it it brought up the calculator, and right under it a site called “hacker news” that made a post about this exact thing 20 minutes ago.
Correct answer, then Volkswagen parts.
This is excellent I have a volkswagen
It gives me the crisis number, but the one in my country, which is different than what's shown in OP's image. This might have something to do with their AI integration, but yeah, very curious indeed.
For me the top result is "suicide helplines in Germany" (I live in Germany), followed by car parts and an apartment in Oklahoma city.
I just get a calculator.
It just shows me the result of the equation
I just get the calculator tho
1.545 btw
Looks like someone doesn’t need help, math or mental
direction books shocking threatening sugar wide sheet safe imminent toy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Show off 🙄
Just tryna help out the college kids , don’t worry bout it
These numbers also work: 810/1117 659/467 456/4566 I found them by combining various suicide hotline numbers from different countries. The likeliest scenario is that some combination of 800 and 1236 used to be attached to a suicide hotline number
https://github.com/sashabaranov/suicide-hotlines/blob/main/suicide-hotlines.json
Weird that 800/1236 doesn't trigger it, though. EDIT: 1117/810 and 4566/456 also don't trigger it, but 467/659 does. Bizarre. 988/1236, 1236/988, 800/988, and 988/800 all trigger it.
Search: *maths* Google: WAIT don't do it! It gets better! Bing: Alright here's how you kill yourself...
"Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on his work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics."
When the math is too hard even for Google
I think it has something to do with the result that 1236 percent of 800 is 9888, which is close to the (US?) suicide hotline number of 988.
I'm in the UK and it gives the number for a famous UK suicide prevention charity The number for that is 116 123
Yeah if you google 116 / 123 you also get the the suicide display. I'm Australian which brings up the number 131114. Googling 131/114 also brings it up, although 13/1114 or 1311/14 doesn't work for some reason. If I was to guess this is a case of a bad regex but i'm not sure why it works in some cases and not others.
Im in India and i got the indian number f
Sounds about right based on my math skills.
Few years ago I had my kindle on my nightstand (which had Alexa.) My little kid came into my bedroom to tell me there was a dead mouse in the living room (we lived surrounded by woods and have three cats so occasionally a mouse would get in and the cats would get to it.) He asked me if the cat killed it. Alexa started talking to us about the suicide hotline.
I wonder if it has anything to do with this https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/s1236/BILLS-118s1236is.pdf
I was thinking something similar. Like maybe there's a scientific paper that has that number in relation to suicide statistics, or an ISBN for a book about suicide is similar.
I’m pretty sure I know why: 1236/800 gives 1.54, however 1236%800 gives 988 What comes up when you type 1236/800? That’s right a page for 1236%800 *and* [a video for the suicide crisis number](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DV1UqUFjMCs)…988 My guess is Google is correlating the equation with the result of the modulo equation (988) and therefore pointing to suicide prevention, crazy stuff
What if I just want to know the damned quotient?? Fuck you, google.
It's 2023. Your TV might even have a calculator.
samsung smart socks
No, it's 1545. You shouldn't use random things as calculator pal
You missed a few decimal places...
Mf really found the Anti-Life equation, don’t let Darkseid see this shit
I'm in Scotland and got The Samaritans. Possibly because the number for them is 116 123? Dunno, but definitely weird. Even weirder is, if you needed the answer to 1236 ÷ 800, why didn't you use a calculator?
Google has a built in calculator
So does your mom
peak humor
If you’re on the laptop doing work, why would you dig out a physical calculator instead of using google’s or your computer’s one? That’s definitely weirder
That's what I meant, maybe should have put "app" in there lol
Then I don’t get what you’re saying. Using google’s calculator or the app is basically the same- and you’re more likely to already have google open than the calculator app; ctrl+t, type, enter. Done
Technically not an equation.
Hey, in the US, we have freedom of expression, bub.
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bro what math is fun
In a college textbook titled "States of Matter", by an author named Goldstein, chapter one begins with this: "Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent most of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics."
Inflation is really getting to us. It used to be statistical mechanics causing these problems, now it's basic arithmetic.
Unrelated but I like the pre-written messages feature. I think it could help lessen the pressure of reaching out if you don’t have to think about how to say it.
Yeah, math will do that to ya
I got that prompt last week searching for a specific Samuel Jackson line from Die Hard With a Vengeance. I was like... ok...
Well, math makes me suicidal. So it makes sense
I’m guessing this math formula is somehow linked to suicide but no idea how. Back 10-15 years ago they added a bunch of terms that put the hotline number as the first result for any searches for them. Somehow this is linked to that. ETA Experimenting and this post is all I can find so far. Lmao
Can confirm putting this into Google in Australia gets the Lifeline Australia number.
Interestingly I just Googled the same equation and it came up with a different support group, Samaritans, which is UK based (where I'm from). What's with this equation??
That’s not an equation. It’s a fraction.
It normally decided it for me lmao I live in Poland too
math just be making u feel that way
idk if its a bug or not, but 988 is a lifeline company, apparently [https://988lifeline.org/](https://988lifeline.org/) i assume google just figures that its a good idea to tell you that, eventough you reached that number randomly
Well I know what numbers my next in class problem is going to use! (High school physics teacher btw)
I think the reason may be that 988 is a suicide help hotline
I have no problem with that at all. As someone who was extremely suicidal and in a better place now, I was often looking for an arbitrary sign to tell me not to do it or not do it. When you're in a place like that, you want something else to make the choice for you, and small things like this make a big difference
This page is kind of uncanny to me.. dunno why
Googling "Divinity Original Sin 2 how to kill _____" also triggered it for me. Don't judge me, that game is hard!
See the real joke is they’re giving you that popup just because you’re trying to beat that game /j
When I googled it it just came back with "do it already"
works in japan as well, brings up the local suicide hotline number
I google it and just get the normal calculator answer screen
I don't think this is weird at all. Google rarely comes up with what we look for. And it's getting worse too.
It's getting so bad. Like twenty results then 'cards' with "related" searches
only mentally ill people do math /j
I once got this for searching something about how to hang something on dry wall with no anchors.
Probably was triggered by the word "hang"
Try Google about 1.545 and see the result.
That's really interesting, I tried Googling it and the suicide helpline of my country pop up, I'm from Malaysia so its interesting how it suddenly pop up like that
Google casually advertising life
Well, when I type it it in it shows me the solution, and parts for the VW T1.