Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

onthemedia.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 60 posts

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#11

Post by Luc »

cobrausn wrote: post #10
Luc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell. It's a perfectly reasonable thing to remark on. It was presented as a conundrum, and it turns out it's something disappointing to the grandparent. You're the one dramatising things.

The 'boring' remark is the only thing that set me off. The post without that would seem reasonable - as it stands though, it looks like someone complaining about not having something more interesting to read about, not someone expressing disappointment there wasn't something more meaningful to her heirs.

Seems reasonable to express disappointment at the decoded message. I'm not sure why you're trying to be the white knight in this.

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#13

Post by shmerl »

Such kind of "lossy compression" was used sometimes to transfer secret messages. It's impossible to fully decipher it without knowing the text, but it serves as a reminder for those who know it, so they can reconstruct it in full form if needed. This way the information could be kept in oral form for a long time (even for generations), while being preserved in written form only in such way that strangers couldn't decipher it in full. But since common patterns can be discerned (if you at least know the subject approximately), one can reconstruct some parts of it with pretty good accuracy.

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#14

Post by netcraft »

snorkel wrote: post #12

I like the post but I don't care for the click baity headline. Please add a few more words to headline when posting to HN.

HN policy is to always have the title the same as the source, for better or sometimes worse. There are many cases of them changing a link title even if the provided one was much more descriptive.

Edit: relevant discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#15

Post by aw3c2 »

netcraft wrote: post #14
snorkel wrote: post #12

I like the post but I don't care for the click baity headline. Please add a few more words to headline when posting to HN.

HN policy is to always have the title the same as the source, for better or sometimes worse. There are many cases of them changing a link title even if the provided one was much more descriptive. Edit: relevant discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466

Actually it is not. And I wish mods were not so overzealous.

http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> (...) please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#16

Post by Shivetya »

JTon wrote: post #3

I love when an online community comes together and solves puzzles like this. /r/Whatisthis turns up some gems here and there. An another note, I'm disappointed this particular puzzle turned out to be prayers... boring

Go read the original story, there is a link above. Someone even went as far to parse out one version of the Bible to determine if the first letter combinations matched.

Even know what the basic thread of her thoughts, its the discovery and how to further that discovery that is the fascination. That is was prayers actually made it easier and leads to other methods to work it out.

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#18

Post by simias »

netcraft wrote: post #14
snorkel wrote: post #12

I like the post but I don't care for the click baity headline. Please add a few more words to headline when posting to HN.

HN policy is to always have the title the same as the source, for better or sometimes worse. There are many cases of them changing a link title even if the provided one was much more descriptive. Edit: relevant discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466

In this case the problem is that it's blogspam, a direct link to the metafilter thread would have been sufficient, it gives all the context we need.

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#19

Post by netcraft »

aw3c2 wrote: post #15
netcraft wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN policy is to always have the title the same as the source, for better or sometimes worse. There are many cases of them changing a link title even if the provided one was much more descriptive. Edit: relevant discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466

Actually it is not. And I wish mods were not so overzealous. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > (...) please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait.

Relevant discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6572466

Re: Yesterday, the Internet Solved a 20-year-old Mystery

#20

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

shmerl wrote: post #13

Such kind of "lossy compression" was used sometimes to transfer secret messages. It's impossible to fully decipher it without knowing the text, but it serves as a reminder for those who know it, so they can reconstruct it in full form if needed. This way the information could be kept in oral form for a long time (even for generations), while being preserved in written form only in such way that strangers couldn't dec…

A sort of index.
Post reply on HN