[ARG] The Pizza Code Mystery

Black Mesa Archive The Cafeteria
#2181

First time coming back to the forum in ages. Has there been any progress since I last posted 1 year and 37 pages ago, or are we still stuck on HALOS?

#2182

We are still stuck on HALOS.txt. Our current theory is some kind of block cipher, but there are lots of possible keys, not to mention things like the initialization vector and the cipher mode.

#2183

I have the final answer:

“The pizza is A LIE, but it’s still pretty darn good TO EAT.”

What’s my prize?

#2184

You can choose from these three beautiful prizes:

-An all-expenses-paid luxury cruise vacation to Barbados
-A new Lamborghini Veneno Roadster worth $4.5 million
-Some pocket lint and this faded T-shirt that says “I’m too COOL for this crowd”

#2185

What color is the pocket lint?

#2186

THAT’s a whole other ARG!

#2187

Sort of greyish-white, with some darker bits from that sweater the raccoon tore up last week.

#2188

That must come from the niobium. The darker stuff could be a niobium mineral, possibly Columbite, which contains 55% niobium. :retard:

#2189

“For many of you, I realize 4.5 million dollars is an unprecedented windfall, so don’t go spending it all on… I don’t know. Caroline, what do these people buy? Faded tshirts? Pocket lint?”

#2190

Wow that’s awesome!

#2191

With 4.5 million dollars, I would buy $4,499,995 worth of scratch-off lottery tickets. The other $5 would be for a 6-pack of beer after probably (likely) losing all of the money.

#2192

I got the notification that someone had finally posted, and I hoped it was a glorious find.

Lottery tickets and beer, lol’d hard.

EDIT: I read a couple of posts up and I now realize there was some context. Sorry about that.

#2193

The bmrf site has been suspended:

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#2194

I admit, I had to go look this one up. That’s a very interesting find.

#2195

I think they are in the process of moving the site to a different host. Maybe it’s related to the recent forum outages.

On a somewhat related matter, there’s been changes to the www.dalsystems.com site as well, and the owner of the dalsystems.com domain is no longer hidden. It turns out that the owner isn’t bkdale86 or any of the other (known) devs, so it looks like we can finally close the book on the dalsystems.com site.

EDIT: Maybe the BMRF.us site was moved to a new server along with other assets sometime recently, but then they forgot to update the BMRF.us domain’s DNS nameservers to point to the new IP address (or maybe the IP change hasn’t come into effect yet).

#2196

I was hoping for a 14/12/14 clue on the wiki… Anyway, impressive work there, it’s really complete now.

#2197

Might be right. Here’s what it’s saying today:
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#2198

The iranian webpage is now redirecting here: https://fadcompunics.com/

No idea what that is, but doesn’t seem arg related at all. bmrf.us and terminal.bmrf.us are completely unreachable now. Either they’re moving it, or they took down that part of the ARG for the time being since it’s not related to HALOS.

#2199

The bmrf.us site is still down. I did some digging and I found that bmrf.us and terminal.bmrf.us are actually up and running on a new server at IP address 184.107.136.38 (note that in order to get the BMRF sites to load in your browser, you’ll have to edit the hosts file on your computer so that bmrf.us and terminal.bmrf.us will resolve to that IP address). That’s the same IP address that terminal.blackmesasource.com is currently resolving to, and 184.107.136.38 reverse resolves to blackmesasource.com. However, the DNS servers responsible for the bmrf.us domain are still pointing to the old IP address 64.15.156.151, which seems to be dead now.

I wonder why they haven’t updated the DNS configuration yet. Have there been more unforeseen circumstances? Whatever the reason, I suppose it doesn’t really matter at this point, because if we are to believe the “This unlocks at the start of the end” comment on the wiki, then the BMRF.us site won’t come into play until the final stretch of the ARG. And that will probably not happen before the 752 Hex Code (HALOS FILE) puzzle has been solved.

#2200

I’ve noticed this:

It is a message left shortly after TOR page was created, the December the 13th 2012 by stormseeker pressumably (IP is 84.9.123.189). That was already noted, the thing is, the capital leaders spell TIP.

In this context it could mean:

Or from wikipedia, from those I think definitions 1 and 3 seem relevant.

Who knows how many “tips” we have skipped.

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.