As far as I can tell, they are identical to the messages in the screenshots I took (in the mod version, don’t have the steam release).
@Jacky: I agree. It feels like we’re missing something. I also noticed how the text below the image says “the secure site”… I don’t suppose we’ve checked if changing links to https:// has any influence at all?
That much is pretty much guaranteed, yeah. My question was moreso what it’s doing in this room in particular, when there’s been absolutely no connection between the ARG and the Lambda complex (barring “if you need me, I’ll be in Xen” on the qecode metadata). And I’m pretty sure code A is still in the hallway.
I went through the new VOX announcements, nothing to note in them. Just for a hoot, I also ran some sound files from QE and some of the ambient music files through Audacity to look at their spectrograms (a minor ARG I was watching from a while back had an image hidden in one), and I can’t help but feel like we’re being watched…
[attach=3982,none,980][/attach]
From Mscl_Ambience6. Almost certainly just coincidental, but it’s still the creepiest spectrogram I’ve seen in years.
As for 1001085139140914.html, there is definitely something going on there that we haven’t gotten yet. I’m not sure whether grilledpizza.jpg/“congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA” is the ‘key to all things’ that it mentions, or if it’s referring to something else entirely, but it does also mention setting up a link as well as this as a reminder. Any ideas what link it could be talking about?
I’m also curious as to how terminal.blackmesasource.com relates to this. That page makes it look as though not even Horn himself knows what’s going on regarding the “misappropriation of funds regarding cheesy oven-baked bread products”, though it could be a ruse. It does mention a reward for the first to solve the mystery, though; maybe that’s what “congratulationsyouwontthePIZZA” is a reference to? Granted, niobium-salted pizza would be a pretty terrible reward, especially when it’s a lie to begin with.
I don’t know if you guys have already seen this, but this is what i found in the elevator shaft in BM_c1a2c.
[attach=3983,none,1366][/attach]
I don’t think we have seen that yet, but it doesn’t look too relevant. What chapter is this in? It might be the initials of the level designer
as Skuros said, In the text in 1001085139140914.html, Dr horn(presumably) says that he will set up a “link and this to remind me” What is the link? Is a website we have not discovered yet? Could it somehow releate to the halos Code, mabye even be the halos code? I do agree that there is definitly something we missed in 1001085139140914.html.
Just to think outside the box here.
If THIS holds key to all things, and once deciphered, it says: “congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA”, could it be that key to all things is PIZZA? Niobium, that is, since it was smuggled in pizzas.
Could it be that final clue (key) is Niobium, and that we would need to build the AI (Halos) with 1001085139140914?
Has anyone inverted the grilledpizza image and translated it? either by swapping the colours, or inverting the triangle?
If you where to make each length of the triangle the same size it would be identical on all sides, there for giving more than 1 possible outcome. I think there could be a possible of 12 different Alphanumeric sequences which could come in handy.
Might have found something new: congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA
I’m not sure what this is exactly, but it’s a random page on Reddit started by “0418_08151814”–when we were told to “seek Code out,” is it possible that this is what Storm was referring to?
The only thing that suggests to me it may be fake/not ARG related is that the thread began only two months ago. I feel like he would have included it far before then if it was him.
EDIT: It looks like no one bothered to solve the last series of numbers that 0418_08151814 dropped multiple times:
0315140718012021120120091514192515212315142008051609262601
Looks like it’s just “congratulationsyouwonthepizza” again. The fact that it’s repeated here multiple times must mean it’s important, though.
It also refers to the “terminalblackmesasourcecom” (terminal.blackmesasource.com), but we already knew about this from the start of the ARG. Why send us back there? Are we missing something?
That’s odd. I didn’t take storm to be the kind of person to advertise this kind of ARG.
Edit: You know, what if we tried posting something to it?
Perhaps–maybe he was trying to pull more people in to help us?
I know I said I was going to take some time away from this, but I just keep feeling like we’re right on the cusp of solving this and one solid push in the right direction would take us where we need to go.
I was reviewing (for about the 100,000th time) the messages that Code/Storm sent me, and something about this still bothers me:
"
I ran the code through a few programs that analyze entropy via auto-correlation, the n gram results indicate a weak encryption, but one that results in highly entropic data (which I correlated against a similar data set size from a randomness extractor) when decoded via Hex, which I suspect is a secondary encode, as most encrypted data sent via communications is encoded in order to avoid corruption. This may have skewed the block size analysis done previously (resulting in 376bytes or 64bits).
Source Code[/size]
First and foremost, he considered this the source code, and even mentions that the hex encoding was simply another layer added on to prevent corruption. With that in mind, it would actually be this ASCII representation that we would need to look at. Another thing that bugs me about this is how the code is broken up into lines. Why? Does that indicate individual sentences? I’ve copy/pasted it myself, and it does break into these lines automatically.
Therefore, if this is the actual source code (he even labeled it as such), then what encryption methods do we know of that create standardized and extended ASCII characters?
I also recall running the decimal form of the ASCII characters through the CryptoCrack program, and it returned just a few points off (4, to be exact) the tridigital cipher. I have a brief description of how it works on the blog–unfortunately, trying to solve it in CryptoCrack terminates the program with an error message.
Alright, I am not good at the whole ARG thing, but I might have an idea:
Maybe we are looking too hard into this.
We could have all the pieces…
but I don’t think we are putting them in the right places.
Those new pizzas…
The reddit thread…
That source code…
Try inverting colors, numbers, anything!
I don’t think stormseeker would like it if we were to just give up and wait it out…
Mabye that what storm meant when he said “this unlocks at the start of the end” We found the site at the start of the ARG. ,I have no idea what “the end” means in that case though.
Edit: Tried connecting to terminal.blackmesasource.com via SSH using the username halos just to see what would happen, and I was prompted for a password
I don’t know if anyone saw that, but the telephone number in the whois lookup from ICANN(https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=www.thestormseeker.com), isn’t a telephone number and the domain owner isn’t stormsekeer, it’s another member of the black mesa team, which has other sites.
From Code/Storm’s PM to me:
“Recently there was a problem with the computer systems at work, so I may not have access to all the analytical machinery I usually do, it may take a bit longer to get more information, if i find anything interesting I’ll let you know. I may have access to some more specialist equipment at a later date, so more progress will likely be made then. I think we can rule out SSH or OTP though.”
Is it possible he would directly mislead us? Could it be SSH?
Try the password “benalohpailier” or whatever it is. That’s what it says right?
Out of curiosity, what method did you use to connect via SSH?
I tried it also via the Putty client. Using “halos” as a username I couldn’t log in even with the “congratulationsyouwonthePIZZA” and “BENALOHPAILLIER” passwords.
Edit: It is possible that Code could have mislead us, remember “dont trust anyone its not safe”
Edit Edit: And if Code was Dr.Horn (from his fourm name) , would he really want us to connect to his site?
Quick thought in regards to connecting via SSH, has anyone else tried using “BENALOH” and “PALLIER” as seperate passwords in uppercase and lowercase form?
What does the ‘MISSIONCONTROLPLEASERECTIFY’ mean do you think?
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.
