[Imnimo]

I like this interview question. It's perfectly solvable without a calculator as the interviewer said. It doesn't rely on having memorized some weird binary tree inversion algorithm. It tests the ability to take facts that you already know (e.g. 2^8 or 2^10) and use them to solve a problem that might appear out of reach at first glance.

[Ekaros]

I don't really find it even that offensive question. Then again my schooling was more network engineering. Powers of two are pretty natural part of software engineering. And as such having to do some simple math of them seem more like easy soft ball starting question.

Now if powers of 3 or 5 or 6 or 7 were asked... Eff them...