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By multiplying them together, the solvers found a new prime... Huh?
"To create encryption keys, RSA uses two huge prime numbers and multiplies them together to produce an even bigger prime." -- Sandeep Junnarkar, CNET News.com August 9, 2002
Fascinating story, but that article reads like the journalist took troll stories from 4c as sources. Seriously, whoever wrote this appears to be clueless. > "a robotic voice told them to find the prime numbers in the original image. By multiplying them together, the solvers found a new prime" Excuse me? > "TOR is an obscure routing network that allows anonymous access to the “darknet” — the vast, murky portion of the…
#include
int main() {
printf("%d\n",2147483629*2147483647);
}
$ gcc test.c -o test 2> /dev/null
$ ./test
19Mostly it amuzes [and targets] people who feel a never ending desire to prove their own worth by taking tests, and going through ladders, games and rules imposed by others, presumably "smarter and more powerful". Someone has to say loudly "who gives a shit about this crap" and just move on.
Think about it - you have an anonymous entity posting on an internet forum, leaving an elaborate string of clues involving multiple technologies and real world locations, solved collaboratively by a bunch of people all around the world. How is that not in the slightest bit intriguing? Evidently there are a lot of people "who give a shit about this crap".
Hacker News is known for its intelligent reader-base, but also for its critical tone. Whilst comments can often appear cycnical or pessimistic, they are usually also insightful and truthful. But I think people assume that its overall negative tone is the norm, and make negative comments without much thought or rationale behind them, and feel like they're "contributing". Your comment is a completely baseless claim, and contributes nothing but vitriol.
Complicated puzzles full of red herrings, medieval European literature references, music... this sounds like the work of 1057.
http://uncovering-cicada.wikia.com/wiki/What_Happened_Part_2... "After completing the test each solver was sent the following email to the address they had inputted. [...] 'In the programming language of your choice build a TCP server that implements the protocol below. The server code must be written by you and you alone, although you are free to use any modules or libraries publicly available for the selected progr…
I agree. In addition, the amount of chance involved in actually solving one of the puzzles in the OP article reminds me of those stupid brain teasers big companies used to ask in interviews years ago.
Color me skeptical, but it seems like bullshit to me. The newspaper article has basically one source. The Wikipedia article dates from the day the newspaper article was published, and only has the article (and a reprint) as its sources. http://uncovering-cicada.wikia.com doesn't seem to have any activity from more than 6 days ago. I'm really not a cyber-sleuth like the guy in the story, but the first two pages of Goo…
BESU RETO DRIN KYOU ROVA LTIN E
"Speculation had been rife since the image first appeared. Some thought Cicada might merely be a PR stunt; a particularly labyrinthine Alternate Reality Game (ARG) built by a corporation to ultimately, and disappointingly, promote a new movie or car." How about a shadow-crowdsourced game? You know, just a forum of people hacking stuff up and suggesting new twists. Like the submarine captains and destroyers in the 2nd…
There are probably multiple extant communities where such a thing could be started. SCP comes to mind for already having a mostly-coherent fictional universe in which such a game could take place:
Fascinating story, but that article reads like the journalist took troll stories from 4c as sources. Seriously, whoever wrote this appears to be clueless. > "a robotic voice told them to find the prime numbers in the original image. By multiplying them together, the solvers found a new prime" Excuse me? > "TOR is an obscure routing network that allows anonymous access to the “darknet” — the vast, murky portion of the…
>> "a robotic voice told them to find the prime numbers in the original image. By multiplying them together, the solvers found a new prime" #include int main() { printf("%d\n",2147483629*2147483647); } $ gcc test.c -o test 2> /dev/null $ ./test 19
$ python -c "print '0x%x' % (2147483629*2147483647)"
0x3ffffff600000013"Speculation had been rife since the image first appeared. Some thought Cicada might merely be a PR stunt; a particularly labyrinthine Alternate Reality Game (ARG) built by a corporation to ultimately, and disappointingly, promote a new movie or car." How about a shadow-crowdsourced game? You know, just a forum of people hacking stuff up and suggesting new twists. Like the submarine captains and destroyers in the 2nd…
> How about a shadow-crowdsourced game? You know, just a forum of people hacking stuff up and suggesting new twists. There are probably multiple extant communities where such a thing could be started. SCP comes to mind for already having a mostly-coherent fictional universe in which such a game could take place: http://www.scp-wiki.net/
Fascinating story, but that article reads like the journalist took troll stories from 4c as sources. Seriously, whoever wrote this appears to be clueless. > "a robotic voice told them to find the prime numbers in the original image. By multiplying them together, the solvers found a new prime" Excuse me? > "TOR is an obscure routing network that allows anonymous access to the “darknet” — the vast, murky portion of the…
>> "a robotic voice told them to find the prime numbers in the original image. By multiplying them together, the solvers found a new prime" #include int main() { printf("%d\n",2147483629*2147483647); } $ gcc test.c -o test 2> /dev/null $ ./test 19