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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: General » Old News & Rumors
Zachtronics/Infinifactory ARG
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bigalphillips
Greenhorn

Joined: 10 Dec 2014
Posts: 6

 		Zachtronics/Infinifactory ARG
Hiya unfiction,

New here and not entirely sure what this is all about, but seems like the best place I've found to talk about ARGs --

Zachtronics (makers of SpaceChem and Ironclad:Tactics) have a new game Infinifactory, slated for "late 2014" release. Today they posted this on twitter:

Quote:
This is weird... can anyone out there make sense of this http://aneata.org/data/NEO/2014VX523/2014VX523.htm


A retro website with links to three data files, an email address, and various broken links, and one real link to NEAT. I've emailed the Summer Internship coordinator and no response so far, but it's only been a couple hours.

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

The data files decode as images:


2014-11-08: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B4hWTDSCMAEtLLU.png
2014-12-01: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B4hWTEGCIAAh1za.png
2014-12-03: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B4hWTC6CcAADRAz.png

Comparing the images to media on their site, it is obviously Infinifactory-related.

I don't know a ton about data formats or image encoding, but there are ~16 bytes(?) of extra data at the start of each file:
11-28: 07 08 02 05 07 03 04 04 06 08 06 02 08 08 02 08 02 03 02 02 07 04 08 0C...
12-01: 02 04 07 03 02 08 05 08 07 08 08 08 04 06 04 08 03 06 48 A2 F7 FC FC F9...
12-03: 02 03 04 08 07 08 07 02 03 04 04 05 04 06 06 04 05 07 03 06 08 57 AE FB...

The language in the three images is similar but I can't see any obviously repeated symbols. There are are approximately 6 vertical line symbols (|, i, !, :, : (extra tall), and triple colon), and then also the blocky script text. The vertical symbols are all in multiples of threes. The symbols on 12-03 do not seem to be repeated on the other two images.


Any further insights? (semi-cross posted to the infinifactory reddit thread)

PostPosted: Wed Dec 10, 2014 10:49 pm
Last edited by bigalphillips on Thu Dec 11, 2014 12:13 am; edited 1 time in total
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astrofig
Decorated

Joined: 28 Aug 2009
Posts: 165

 		Where is the email link?

PostPosted: Thu Dec 11, 2014 12:10 am
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bigalphillips
Greenhorn

Joined: 10 Dec 2014
Posts: 6
astrofig wrote:
Where is the email link?

The about page (just about the only page that isn't broken) lists a contact to: Jeff Skulds (j.skuldsSPLATaneata.org).

PostPosted: Thu Dec 11, 2014 12:12 am
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astrofig
Decorated

Joined: 28 Aug 2009
Posts: 165

 		Found it and emailed as if I wanted to be a summer intern, asking things about what skills they want in a candidate and what type of projects they'd be doing. Let's see if he answers.

PostPosted: Thu Dec 11, 2014 12:31 am
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Thunderwolf
Unfettered


Joined: 18 Aug 2005
Posts: 419
Location: The Sprawl

 		This looks interesting. I'm working on decoding those data files (I know it's already been done, I'm trying to figure out how) Decoded them all now. Very interesting.
Spoiler (Rollover to View):
If anyone's interested how I decoded them, I wrote a python script: http://pastebin.com/aCuMYqX6


I fired off an email to Jeff enquiring about the intern program from the perspective of a STEM teacher (because that's what I am IRL). Also got one of my students interested Smile
_________________
"OK, now what you gotta do is go down the road past the old Johnson place. You're gonna find two roads, one parallel and one perpendicular. Now keep going until you come to a highway that bisects it at a 45-degree angle. Solve for x."

PostPosted: Thu Dec 11, 2014 3:29 am
Last edited by Thunderwolf on Thu Dec 11, 2014 12:20 pm; edited 2 times in total
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bigalphillips
Greenhorn

Joined: 10 Dec 2014
Posts: 6

 		Got an email response from Jeff Skulds -- a short message saying they have canceled their internship program a few years ago due to budget cuts but I should consider looking at some other space agencies if I am interested. He then suggested that NASA has a few: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/intern/apply/

Also -- 40 days from last update (2014-12-0Cool and close approach (2015-01-17). A rough approximation of orbital speeds puts earth *just* above the red line crossing the picture.

PostPosted: Thu Dec 11, 2014 9:15 am
Last edited by bigalphillips on Thu Dec 11, 2014 9:20 pm; edited 1 time in total
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astrofig
Decorated

Joined: 28 Aug 2009
Posts: 165

 		Yeah I got that same email. Looks like that's a dead end.

PostPosted: Thu Dec 11, 2014 10:38 am
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Thunderwolf
Unfettered


Joined: 18 Aug 2005
Posts: 419
Location: The Sprawl

 		Something I noticed while decoding the images. The byte offset differs for each image. on the first it's 23 (skipping the first 12 bytes) on the second it's 17 (skipping the first Cool and on the third it's 15 (skipping the first 7). not sure if this is relevant in any way.

uploaded the images here: http://postimg.org/gallery/2clzrfoag/11d73fa2/
_________________
"OK, now what you gotta do is go down the road past the old Johnson place. You're gonna find two roads, one parallel and one perpendicular. Now keep going until you come to a highway that bisects it at a 45-degree angle. Solve for x."

PostPosted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 5:48 am
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bigalphillips
Greenhorn

Joined: 10 Dec 2014
Posts: 6

 		Yeah, I noticed that the offsets were different too, though not exactly sure what that means. No real further insights at this point, though I hope that more signals will be intercepted in upcoming weeks.

Jeff gave another reply about the recent signal activity (posted full log on the reddit thread).

PostPosted: Sat Dec 13, 2014 4:32 pm
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Osiris2
Greenhorn

Joined: 20 Jun 2014
Posts: 3

 		I have noticed something rather strange: ANEATA doesn't really seem to understand asteroid naming. This seems absurd for an organisation like this.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_designation_in_astronomy#Minor_planets:
Quote:
The first element in a minor planet's provisional designation is the year of discovery, followed by two letters and, optionally, a number.

The first letter indicates the half-month of the object's discovery within that year —"A" denotes discovery in the first half of January, "D" is for the second half of February, "J" is for the first half of May ("I" is not used), and so on until "Y" for the second half of December. The first half is always the 1st through to the 15th of the month, regardless of the numbers of days in the second "half".

The second letter and the number indicate the order of discovery within that half-month. The 8th minor planet discovered in the second half of March 1950, for example, would be provisionally designated 1950 FH. But because modern techniques typically yield far more than 25 objects (again, "I" is not used) in a half-month, a subscript number is appended to indicate the number of times that the letters have cycled through. Thus, the 28th minor planet discovered in the second half of March 1950 would be 1950 FC1. For technical reasons, such as ASCII limitations, the subscript is sometimes "flattened out", so that this could be written 1950 FC1. The subscripts were first used with 1926 GA1.


The asteroid's name is 2014VX523, which should mean it is the 13098th asteroid discovered in the first half of November of 2014. The news on the 'home' page, however, indicates that it was found on September 8!

This doesn't immediately seem lead to anything new. Maybe we should send an email inquiring about this finding.

PostPosted: Fri Dec 19, 2014 4:02 pm
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