Unveiling Cicada 3301 - An Internet Mystery is a case study book on ‘Cicada 3301’ an anonymous internet group, known for its highly cryptic puzzles. Cicada 3301 has been called “The Most Elaborate and Mysterious Puzzle of the Internet age.” The Washington Post ranked it as one of the “Top 5 Eeriest, Unsolved Mysteries of the Internet.” Seven years after the elaborate cryptographic puzzle contest first launched, it still seems that no one except the person(s) who started it know(s) what it even meant—if it meant anything at all.A growing community of armchair detectives sought to unravel this elaborate puzzle, but no one was quite sure what to make of it. Questions like:What was the puzzle for?Who was behind it?What happens when you reach the end?are all over the internet since 2012.
This is the complete Liber Primus from the Cicada 3301 crypto puzzle. The additional pages from later stages are also included in chronological order. This book is primarily meant for decorative purposes due to the lack of embedded metadata.
The tale begins over three-hundred years ago, when the Fair People—the goblins, fairies, dragons, and other fabled and fantastic creatures of a dozen lands—fled the Old World for the New, seeking haven from the ways of Man. With them came their precious jewels: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls... But then the Fair People vanished, taking with them their twelve fabulous treasures. And they remained hidden until now... Across North America, these twelve treasures, over ten-thousand dollars in precious jewels, are buried. The key to finding each can be found within the twelve full color paintings and verses of The Secret. Yet The Secret is much more than that. At long last, you can learn not only the whereabouts of the Fair People's treasure, but also the modern forms and hiding places of their descendants: the Toll Trolls, Maitre D'eamons, Elf Alphas, Tupperwerewolves, Freudian Sylphs, Culture Vultures, West Ghosts and other delightful creatures in the world around us. The Secret is a field guide to them all. Many "armchair treasure hunt" books have been published over the years, most notably Masquerade (1979) by British artist Kit Williams. Masquerade promised a jewel-encrusted golden hare to the first person to unravel the riddle that Williams cleverly hid in his art. In 1982, while everyone in Britain was still madly digging up hedgerows and pastures in search of the golden hare, The Secret: A Treasure Hunt was published in America. The previous year, author and publisher Byron Preiss had traveled to 12 locations in the continental U.S. (and possibly Canada) to secretly bury a dozen ceramic casques. Each casque contained a small key that could be redeemed for one of 12 jewels Preiss kept in a safe deposit box in New York. The key to finding the casques was to match one of 12 paintings to one of 12 poetic verses, solve the resulting riddle, and start digging. Since 1982, only two of the 12 casques have been recovered. The first was located in Grant Park, Chicago, in 1984 by a group of students. The second was unearthed in 2004 in Cleveland by two members of the Quest4Treasure forum. Preiss was killed in an auto accident in the summer of 2005, but the hunt for his casques continues.
"In 1953, a man was found dead from cyanide poisoning near the Philadelphia airport with a picture of a Nazi aircraft in his wallet. Taped to his abdomen was an enciphered message. In 1912, a book dealer named Wilfrid Voynich came into possession of an illuminated cipher manuscript once belonging to Emperor Rudolf II, who was obsessed with alchemy and the occult. Wartime codebreakers tried--and failed--to unlock the book's secrets, and it remains an enigma to this day. In this lively and entertaining book, Craig Bauer examines these and other vexing ciphers yet to be cracked. Some may reveal the identity of a spy or serial killer, provide the location of buried treasure, or expose a secret society--while others may be elaborate hoaxes. Unsolved! begins by explaining the basics of cryptology, and then explores the history behind an array of unsolved ciphers. It looks at ancient ciphers, ciphers created by artists and composers, ciphers left by killers and victims, Cold War ciphers, and many others. Some are infamous, like the ciphers in the Zodiac letters, while others were created purely as intellectual challenges by figures such as Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard P. Feynman. Bauer lays out the evidence surrounding each cipher, describes the efforts of geniuses and eccentrics--in some cases both--to decipher it, and invites readers to try their hand at puzzles that have stymied so many others. Unsolved! takes readers from the ancient world to the digital age, providing an amazing tour of many of history's greatest unsolved ciphers"--
The Codex Runicus is a restored medieval manuscript from the 13th century and de facto the oldest preserved compendium of Nordic provincial law. The book also includes a transliteration key.
For fans of computers and comedy alike, an accessible and entertaining look into how we can use artificial intelligence to make smart machines funny. Most robots and smart devices are not known for their joke-telling abilities. And yet, as computer scientist Tony Veale explains in Your Wit Is My Command, machines are not inherently unfunny; they are just programmed that way. By examining the mechanisms of humor and jokes--how jokes actually works--Veale shows that computers can be built with a sense of humor, capable not only of producing a joke but also of appreciating one. Along the way, he explores the humor-generating capacities of fictional robots ranging from B-9 in Lost in Space to TARS in Interstellar, maps out possible scenarios for developing witty robots, and investigates such aspects of humor as puns, sarcasm, and offensiveness. In order for robots to be funny, Veale explains, we need to analyze humor computationally. Using artificial intelligence (AI), Veale shows that joke generation is a knowledge-based process--a sense of humor is blend of wit and wisdom. He notes that existing technologies can detect sarcasm in conversation, and explains how some jokes can be pre-scripted while others are generated algorithmically--all while making the technical aspects of AI accessible for the general reader. Of course, there's no single algorithm or technology that we can plug in to make our virtual assistants or GPS voice navigation funny, but Veale provides a computational roadmap for how we might get there.
“…a bizarre Internet phenomenon: an “immersive” online experience—part mystery, part game, part who knows what—known as both the Incunabula Papers and Ong’s Hat. The Incunabula Papers/Ong’s Hat was, or is, a “many-threaded, open-ended interactive narrative” that ”weds an alternate history of chaos science and consciousness studies to conspiracy theories, parallel dimensions, and claims that computer-mediated environments can serve as magical tools…. the documents provoked a widespread “immersive legend-trip” in the late 1990s. Via Web forums, participants investigated the documents—manifestos—which spun up descriptions of brilliant but suppressed discoveries relating to paths that certain scientists had forged into alternate realities. Soon, those haunted dimensions existed in the minds and fantasies of Ong’s Hat’s many participants. That was evident as they responded to the original postings by uploading their own—all manner of reflections and artifacts: personal anecdotes, audio recordings, and videos—to augment what became “a really immersive world, and it was vast”.
A deadly underground game might just be altering reality itself in this all-new adventure set in the world of the hit Rabbits podcast. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WALL STREET JOURNAL • “A wild ride . . . impossible to put down.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) It’s an average work day. You’ve been wrapped up in a task, and you check the clock when you come up for air—4:44 p.m. You check your email, and 44 unread messages have built up. With a shock, you realize the date is April 4—4/4. And when you get in your car to drive home, your odometer reads 44,444. Coincidence? Or have you just seen the edge of a rabbit hole? Rabbits is a mysterious alternate reality game so vast it uses the entire world as its canvas. Since the game started in 1959, ten iterations have appeared and nine winners have been declared. The identities of these winners are unknown. So is their reward, which is whispered to be NSA or CIA recruitment, vast wealth, immortality, or perhaps even the key to the secrets of the universe itself. But the deeper you get, the more dangerous the game becomes. Players have died in the past—and the body count is rising. And now the eleventh round is about to begin. Enter K—a Rabbits obsessive who has been trying to find a way into the game for years. That path opens when K is approached by billionaire Alan Scarpio, rumored to be the winner of the sixth iteration. Scarpio says that something has gone wrong with the game and that K needs to fix it before Eleven starts, or the whole world will pay the price. Five days later, Scarpio is declared missing. Two weeks after that, K blows the deadline: Eleven begins. And suddenly, the fate of the entire universe is at stake.
Pretty Good Privacy, or "PGP", is an encryption program widely available on the Internet. The program runs on MS-DOS, UNIX, and the Mac. PGP: Pretty Good Privacy offers both a readable technical user's guide and a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at cryptography and privacy, explaining how to get PGP from publicly available sources and how to install it on various platforms.
THE BESTSELLING ANGEL SERIES EVERYONE'S TALKING ABOUT. Lovers of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES, TEEN WOLF, SHADOWHUNTERS, DIVERGENT, and FALLEN dive yourself into this series full of Romance, Fantasy, Mythology and Adventure. Evan is an Angel of Death and his assignment is to kill Gemma because her time has come. But what if he falls in love with her?
