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Today, a homeless looking man handed me $50 and this note
- xSwag 14y agoI wonder if OP is going to go to that place. I'm sure there will be a lot of other Redditors there
- joshschreuder 14y agoIt's an interesting way to organise a Reddit catch-up. Generates plenty of buzz, and you could setup an ARG around this whole thing just for Reddit. Alternatively, it's just someone winding the guy up.
- mindcrime 14y agoSo it's actually viral marketing to promote Reddit? Hmm... probably cleverly arranged by the arch super-villian known only as: pg. /me pictures pg in a tower somewhere, laughing maniacally, with bolts of lightning crashing all around him, as a howling wind lashes the walls and driving rain hammers down on the roof...
- Waldman 14y agoThe left down corner letters are hebrew... Beit, yud, pe (or fe), yud, dalet. Bipid or Bifid. Edit: removed extra yud on the end.
- achughes 14y agoUpdate: It's been solved, but if your interested in trying to figure it out just don't scroll down into the comments
- zalew 14y agolink for the impatient http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/weo8j/today_a_homeless_looking_man_handed_me_50_and/c5cphv7 http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/weo8j/today_a_hom...
- mschonfeld 14y agoJuly 19th is the day before the new Batman movie comes out... Batman... The Riddler... Could be a movie promotional stunt?
- junto 14y agoI will hazard a guess that you have hit the nail on the head. If it is, then it is a clever viral marketing ploy. Often these kinds of viral campaigns are only run online. Running them in both the physical and online world is way more interesting.
- mindcrime 14y agoViral marketing strikes again. Gotta love this stuff. I was on an 'L' train in Chicago recently, and saw all these weird ads about some guy who had supposedly been kidnapped. Turned out to be some viral marketing thing to try and get people to - get this - visit St. Louis.[1] Gotta hand it to 'em, some of these initiatives are pretty clever. Although it would be funnier if it turned out that the "homeless guy" was somebody doing some LARP / ARG shyte and just handed the note and the 50 to the wrong guy. [1]: https://lonelybrand.com/blog/kidnapped-chicagoan-campaign-sends-transit-riders-to-social-media-of-the-minute/ https://lonelybrand.com/blog/kidnapped-chicagoan-campaign-se...
- durkie 14y agototally OT, but you should visit st louis. it's home to the city museum (http://www.citymuseum.org/site/ http://www.citymuseum.org/site/), which is in fact the best place on earth.
- dionidium 14y agoOn the other hand, I live in St. Louis and I'm pretty tired of people telling out-of-towners that it's the best thing about the city, so feel free to return to your regularly scheduled zingers about flyover country. We're simple folk. We won't mind.
- durkie 14y agohah, i'm not trying to take anything away from the rest of the city, cause it's a nice place, but i've made two separate road trips from atlanta (9 hrs each way) with 14 people just for the city museum.
- count 14y agoYou had a 16oz veal chop. Despite the lack of a good time I had in STL, I'll always remember it fondly :)
- prawn 14y agoLoved the Gateway Arch - it's stunning. Museum underneath it is worth a look too. Also quite enjoyed some retro ten-pin bowling lanes: http://www.saratogalanes.com/ http://www.saratogalanes.com/ The Bud tour is a bit weak if you've toured the Budvar facility in the Czech Republic. Wish we'd known about the City Museum.
- ck2 14y agoI imagine this story would get a lot less attention if there wasn't $50 involved. Google could hand out little cards like this anonymously to try to find smart people but the problem is someone would eventually turn to crowdsourcing.
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- readme 14y agowell, if the story is true... The homeless looking man was probably a paid messenger. given that said guy gave op fifty dollars, his pay would have to be significantly larger to ensure proper delivery. so, lets assume the original source of the note paid at least 150.00 with said delivery fee, sans labor costs for the creation of the puzzle... OK now, the implication here is that someone thinks they will get a return on their investment. for this to be plausible, op would have to have been deliberately targeted these to receive the puzzle. handing these little surprises out to strangers would not result in a good rate of return. now, if you are still following my train of thought, it would make sense to assume that these people must have been watching op to think he would be a good candidate to solve the puzzle. yet, if they were they seem to have misprofiled him as he was not able to solve the puzzle alone and so he resorted to posting on reddit. now, there are a lot of smart people on Reddit, but what are the odds that such a random puzzle would be solved so quickly and for nothing more than karma? as much as I would like to believe the story, it seems that the simpler explanation would be that it is a fabrication and a viral marketing campaign. this would explain how a fairly complicated puzzle was answered quickly and easily by some redditor, as smart as some of them are I think the odds of someone with both the required skills and willingness to work only for karma finding the post are fairly improbable. in conclusion we can apply occam's razor to the above argument, to illustrate that it was probably not a bonafide event when compared to these alternate explanations: the man was legitimately crazy (what are the odds if encountering a crazy person with such skills?) or the most likely explanation, that this is a marketing campaign perhaps for a new book, movie, game show, or something else entirely the argument that op fabricated the story to me is the most convincing, precise and logically sound theory
- espeed 14y agoWhat's the first blacked-out character on the front of the 50? Image: http://i.imgur.com/9yZo5.jpg http://i.imgur.com/9yZo5.jpg The sequence is: ?FIDI Edit: Oh, presumably it's a "B" for Bifid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bifid_cipher http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bifid_cipher), and it reads top-down, left-to-right.
- jaysonelliot 14y agoViral marketing, LARP gone awry, or whatever, I'm still heading up to 56th and 6th on the 19th. Worst case scenario, there will be some fun conversations to be had. And I'll have a hot dog.
- wetbrain 14y agoThe OP got a message from the homeless looking guy and a new cipher that was much simpler and unrelated to the original cipher card. Basically proves to me that it's a stunt. Anyway, it's now: YOU HAVE MANAGED TO FIND THE MESSAGE WITH THE HELP OF FRIENDS. YOU CHANGED THE RULES NOW SO WILL I. JULY TWELVE FOUR PM. FIND THE BLUE JAY AT SIX AND A HALF AND FIFTY SIXTH AND TELL HIM YOU ARE THE LAST
- julien_c 14y agoCan someone please livestream what happens there? We non-NYers would love to be a part of this.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoSomeone promised to: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/gee-news http://www.ustream.tv/channel/gee-news
- pavel_lishin 14y agoI was there at four; didn't see anything interesting happen, aside from us mobbing an old, scruffy looking guy wearing all blue. Stream is still going, though; the original poster is supposed to show up soon. (I think he just did.)
- shennyg 14y agoIf it was real he would have blurred out a portion of it so he could solve the final portion of it on his own. I say viral marketing!
- teamonkey 14y agoIf you like ARGs and stuff like this I heartily recommend Unfiction.com and especially it's forums. They're usually pretty active and if this lead goes anywhere then the forum thread [1] will probably be the best way to track events. [1] http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=35685 http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=35685
- Zenst 14y agoProbably turn out that on the 20th somebody might be reporting how ther house got burgled. Have a friend house sit on the 19th whilst you investigate. Trust no one ;0.
- herbig 14y agoIf I show up at a hot dog stand on 56th next week and they're just passing out Monster energy drinks or some shit, I'm going to be really, really angry. Someone should notify the hot dog stand of the impending uptick is business for that day.
- antsam 14y agoSo... the Zodiac killer is handing out $50 bills in NYC?
- thefreshteapot 14y agoI feel its to convoluted to be a marketing scheme, as you would surely have a product which links to decryption. I think it might be more fitting if this was a new approach to recruit people for the NSA / Cryptography office for X company or organisation.
- s_henry_paulson 14y agoPassing out $50 notes to random people on a train hoping they're a cryptography expert in search of a job?
- rdl 14y agoPassing out $50 notes with a puzzle to people who look really nerdy (but fairly well off) getting off a subway near Wall Street might be a worthwhile way to recruit bored quants or IT people. $50x1000 is reasonable if you get one good hire.
- thefreshteapot 14y agoWhat you have described, is not quite what I had in mind when I said it was a new way to recruit. GCHQ ( UK ) released http://www.canyoucrackit.co.uk/ http://www.canyoucrackit.co.uk/ to try and gather interest aiming specifically at a target market. "It said that the Cabinet Office supported "initiatives such as the Cyber Security Challenge, which promotes careers in cyber security via annual competitions and events"." http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-15968878 http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-15968878 If the parties involved did a little research on some people on reddit, they may have found someone who would be curious and self motivated into publishing it on reddit. When the GCHQ challenge was launched there was huge publicity on reddit, strengthening the above statement that there would be interest. I for one am quite looking forward to hearing how this unravels as the person who triggered it (assume for now), reached out, is at least keen to continue the publicity.
- necenzurat 14y agoseems legit, but don't let it turn into this http://vimeo.com/13780892 http://vimeo.com/13780892
- mikecaron 14y agoWell, apparently the homeless man was sent by the DOD... http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/weo8j/today_a_homeless_looking_man_handed_me_50_and/c5cw4r7 http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/weo8j/today_a_hom...