Giant Bomb Mailbag: Numbers Station Edition

Cryptography


Isotope


Philanthropy


Hydrogen


Ember


Rebirth      

00000000 00000210 00000825 000000000037474B 00000000 0016FDA0 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000    

Investigation team go!

I'm no help, but I do have to say that that's really effin' creepy. Do not approve of strange audio files on mysterious and shady pen drives.
 
Adachi's comin' to get you, bitches!

Hydrogen is an element! I've made my contribution.

 This can only be one thing...Valve!

Maybe it's just the 2010 Census. I think the voice sounds a bit Ed Begley Jr-ish.

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABE !

This is either a clever new way of adveritising games, or 4chan.

I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't some portal 2 thing.

the way the stamp is stylized made me think of GTA4. 

Metal Gear something something

The fist bit of voice is a quote from Julius Caesar. Not sure what that means...

Creepy and kinda awesome.

I'm just gonna dump everything I come up with here, too. Then you all can see how crazy I am. Yaaaay!
 
 
-- 
 
I'm pretty sure the letters are "M.O.D" not "N.O.D" 
 
It reads like this: 
 
M O D / Z Z Z /  J M Q R Y D 3 /F R P 
 
There's an effect between each set of characters. 
 
-- 
 
That hex code turns into: 
 
Decimal: 62 
Binary: 00111110     
 
The binary turns into "> ", which is HTML code which is the HTML code for "greater than". What's neat is that the decimal code for Greater Than is ">". 
 
So.. does "greater than" mean anything?     

Dude . . . no idea . . . MOD*dingdingding*ZZZJNQRYD3FRE

Mystery and intrigue!

Obviously its announcing the long awaited release date for Duke Nukem Forever.

Hydrogen isotope?!?
What game has Hydrogen bombs?

The audio file puts these letters out: 
 
M (or N) - O - D - Z - Z - Z - J - M (or N) - Q - R - Y - D (or B) - 3 - F - R - P (or E) 
 
I tried matching up those letters with the numbers you gave that were embedded in the mp3: 
 
 00000000 00000210 00000825 000000000037474B 00000000 0016FDA0 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000  
 
If you count "0", and skip the letters that appear in both the embedded text and the audio, you get a matching number of letters and numbers (9). 
 
I tried matching them up in order of appearance and then putting them in numerical order, but got nothing. I also tried just putting letters into the numbers based on when the letters came out. For instance "o" would go in place of anywhere the number 2 came up because it was the second letter to be said.
 
Maybe this will tip something else off though...

Yeah, I thought it was M.O.D (Ministry of Defence?) too. I thought Portal 2 too but I'm not sure why.

That is a little creepy...but awesome in a strange way.

  Interesting, i'm sure there will be some people speculating interesting stuff soon enough :P     

Those numbers are hexadecimal, no?  No idea what they mean.
 

 00000000 00000210 00000825 000000000037474B 00000000 0016FDA0 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000        

" Hydrogen isotope?!? What game has Hydrogen bombs? "

Richard Wright, the dude on the stamp, is a 20th century author, tackling issues of race in the USA. 
 
If anybody knows anything more on him, pray tell,  but if i had to guess its most likely to do with fallout:new vegas 

This is a stretch here, but the stamp on that envelope is of Richard Wright, a famous author who lived in Chicago. I Am Alive is supposed to take place in Chicago, yes?

It has to be something close to Brad's heart? What has he played for GB? Banjo and Kazooie? No idea.

I hope it decodes into what ends up being the cumulative times for both endurance runs. Spooky.

Any chance of a full dump of the 1GB usb stick (zip/7z/rar it - its probably mostly 0's so the output should be tiny). Unless you guys have already been through it looking for stuff. 
 
Also were there unprintable characters in the 4KB text file? A full dump of that is required.

yeah the full contents of the stick would be nice.

Thought the letters might have been a substitution cipher, but the 3 z's wouldn't make have sense (unless it was a anocrym, or it could simply mean 'sleep' :) ), other than that, the 3 stands out, one thought is that it could be the title of a game, with 3 at the end, possible candidates for this could be Half life 2: episode 3, DeusEx3 (which has the right number of letters, but doesn't fit with a substitution cipher). Bet it's something a bit more complicated though
 
I'm betting on something to do with Deus Ex 3 or Portal/Half life

They are watching us. Right now.

4KB seems way too large for just those words. Can you post the txt file itself?

Someone who has an account approved over there post this on NeoGAF. Those fuckers can help.

ok, put hex into hex decoder: 
 in order of how they appear in the test: 
DECIMAL: 0, 528, 2085, 3622731, 0, 1506720, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0. 
BINARY: 0000, 001000010000, 100000100101, 11101001011, 000, 00101101111110110100000, 0000, 0000, 0000, 0000, 0000, 0000 
 
there you go, internet

That quote is form caeser! someone try a caesarian shift cipher

" The audio file puts these letters out:  M (or N) - O - D - Z - Z - Z - J - M (or N) - Q - R - Y - D (or B) - 3 - F - R - P (or E)  I tried matching up those letters with the numbers you gave that were embedded in the mp3:   00000000 00000210 00000825 000000000037474B 00000000 0016FDA0 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000   If you count "0", and skip the letters that appear in both the embedded text and the audio, you get a matching number of letters and numbers (9).  I tried matching them up in order of appearance and then putting them in numerical order, but got nothing. I also tried just putting letters into the numbers based on when the letters came out. For instance "o" would go in place of anywhere the number 2 came up because it was the second letter to be said. Maybe this will tip something else off though... "

good spot Vinny, so we get  WWW.***O**3.COM from that using substitution

http://www.simonsingh.net/The_Black_Chamber/frequencypuzzle.htm
 
(assuming the last 3 letter are com, could be org, or something else)

obviously: 
http://www.gknova.com/

The race is on as other people seem to have got the promo mailing.
 
 http://www.gamezone.com/news/04_05_10_01_59PM.htm