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2013/12/21

Neatorama

Neatorama

Abby Cadabby Scarf Hat

Posted: 21 Dec 2013 04:00 AM PST

Abby Cadabby Scarf Hat

This winter get in touch with your inner fairy-in-training with the Abby Cadabby Scarf Hat from the NeatoShop. This adult-sized scarf and hat combo features magical knitted details. There are even little pockets at the end of the scarf to keep your hands warm. It's perfect for when you gotta poof out to the store.  

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Winterwear. 

Link

Adorable Cartoon Christmas Cards By Ward Kimball

Posted: 21 Dec 2013 04:00 AM PST

Animation legend Ward Kimball not only touched the lives of his fans with the animated magic he created as one of Disney Studio’s Nine Old Men from the 1930s to the 1960s, he also reached out once a year and touched the lives of his loved ones with amazing Christmas cards he hand crafted with love.

Most of them feature characters that sport his signature style, typically caricatures of his wife and immediate family, and they’re just the sort of fun greetings you’d expect from a master animator who literally wrote the book on character animation.

Via Cartoon Brew

A Christmas Wish

Posted: 21 Dec 2013 02:00 AM PST

  (YouTube link)

Birdbox Studio is back with a story about a little boy who is having a hard time with life in general. Will his wish come true? Since Christmas is a magical time of year, I believe it will! -via Tastefully Offensive  

Happy Chanukwanzaasolsticemas

Posted: 21 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST

Feeling festive? So are Schnookie and Schotzie and they don't even care what holiday they're celebrating -though based on their outfits and choice of photo props, I'm guessing they prefer Christmas. These two sisters are both Havanese sisters belong to Neatorama reader Rich McFeathers, who was happy to have his little angels included in our Neatorama Christmas pet photos. 

Want to see your holiday pictures of your little fur babies here? Send them in to pictures to jill@neatorama.com.

Losing Ourselves in Holiday Windows

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 11:00 PM PST

Just yesterday I was telling my daughter about how Macy's, Gimbels, and other New York City stores would build elaborate displays in their windows to draw Christmas shoppers. People go the city from all over to see what the stores came up with this year. In my memories, "window shopping" has always been just a normal part of the Christmas shopping experience -even in small towns, to some extent. Have you ever wondered how that custom got started?

For over 150 years, familiar brands like R.H. Macy’s invested heavily in over-the-top store displays. Dr. William L. Bird, Jr., a curator at the National Museum of American History and the author of “Holidays on Display” says that Macy’s made its name in seasonal decor when the store revealed an animated shop window in 1883. “They had what they called a ‘panoply window display,’ where they took over all of the store’s front windows, installing a circular track with a mechanical sleigh. It would move around the window as if Santa were in a parade being pulled by reindeer.” Word spread of the Macy’s miracle, and shoppers would come from across town to marvel at the scene.

By the 1890s, all major department stores, like Selfridge & Co. in London or Marshall Field’s in Chicago, were committed to the Christmas display tradition. Each company attempted to outdo its rivals with more complex holiday displays, making particular use of their new plate glass windows, a byproduct of the Industrial Revolution.

When Lord & Taylor opened its 5th Avenue location in New York in 1914, the store took window dressing to new heights by installing hydraulic lifts that would raise displays from a basement studio up to the street level windows, allowing for dramatic overnight reveals. Other display innovations led to new products, like the first Lionel model train, which was invented in 1900 when the company founder, Joshua Lionel Cohen, began tinkering with ways to make a more lively toy store display. After a customer bought the first prototype right out of the window, Cohen knew he had a winner.

In addition to an article about the history of those elaborate Christmas window displays, Collectors Weekly also has a gallery of 30 of the most elaborate, most beautiful displays from the past.

A Game Designer Thinks That He Can Improve on Chess's 1,500-Year Old Rules

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 10:00 PM PST

(Chess Nerd t-shirt now on sale at the NeatoShop)

We’ve previously seen some clever variations on the game of chess--not simply different pieces, but different rules and boards.

MIT graduate David Sirlin designs games for a living. These variations are fun, but he thinks that he’s developed a variation that fundamentally improves the game. Modern chess, he argues, requires players to memorize an excessively large number of movement patterns and leads to too many draws. Chess 2, as Sirlin calls it, starts by permitting players to choose between 6 different armies:

The “Nemesis” army gives pawns more freedom of movement, while players using the “Reaper” army have a queen that can teleport and capture anywhere on the board except the opponent’s back row. There are upsides and downsides to each army, and playing against others using the “classic” army (that is, basic chess rules) is valid and balanced, Sirlin says.

To end stalemates or long, drawn-out games, Sirlin’s variation also gives a win to a player  who can get his or her king past the midline of the board.

-via Smart News

The Cubli

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 09:00 PM PST

(YouTube link)

This is very weird to watch. The Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control in Zurich has developed a cube that can stand on its own corner without any outside help. It can also jump from a face to an edge to a corner, and even walk itself across a surface. Sure, there are real-world applications, like robots that can explore other planets, but I can see this becoming the hot toy of some future Christmas as well. Say it with me now: "I, for one, welcome our new cubic overlords." Read more about the Cubli here. -via Viral Viral Videos

Film Noir Themed Art Series Created With Packing Tape

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 08:00 PM PST

Sometimes artists use strange mediums simply to make a stir and raise publicity, but when an artist discovers a new medium that really works well, and looks really cool at the same time, you know they’re about to change the game.

Mark Khaisman is one of those innovative artists, and his latest series of Film Noir themed works are quite a breath of fresh air. Mark creates the signature look of his "drawings" by applying translucent duct tape to acrylic panels which are mounted on lightboxes, thereby creating shadows, highlights and linework as the light shines through layers of tape.

We first featured Mark back in 2008 (Link), and since then his works have evolved quite a bit- his portraits have become more detailed and his style more visually striking. However, these packing tape "drawings" have to be seen in person to be truly appreciated. 

Via Beautiful/Decay

Thief Tries to Sell Stolen Goods to Their Owner

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 07:00 PM PST

Daniel Ciamara of Blackburn, Lancashire, England, took a Blu-ray player and a supply of movies to a computer shop and offered them for sale. David Harrison was the clerk on duty and looked through the collection. He noticed that the movies looked very familiar, because he owned every one of them, including two that have never been opened.

Ciamara was told the shop would be interested in buying but said the Blu-ray player would have to be tested.

“Mr Harrison went home and discovered his back door had been kicked in and his house had been burgled,” said Mrs White.

“The police were informed and when the defendant came to collect his money they were waiting.”

The 24-year-old Ciamara later pled guilty to burglary and is awaiting sentencing. -via Arbroath

Santa Claus Parkour

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 06:00 PM PST


(Video Link)

The reindeer have the flu! How will Santa deliver all of the children's presents? He'll use his fantastic parkour skills. Ronnie Shalvis, the parkour/freerunning performer responsible for parkour on ice and Assassin's Creed parkour, recorded Saint Nicholas at work.

Watch the jolly old elf move through houses and over snowdrifts with ease. Be sure to watch to the end, when the results of his night's work are evident to a little boy.

-via Daily of the Day

Luke Skywalker and Wampa Christmas Sweater

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 05:00 PM PST

Happy Hothidays from your friendly neighborhood wampa! Remember to hang up your human stockings so that Hotha Claus will leave you presents when he visits. Just make sure that your stocking is fully disarmed and left with no means to resist.

A co-worker of redditor imnojezus used needle felting to add a scenic layer onto a pre-existing Christmas sweater. Now imnojezus is trying to convince her to sell it. She’d make a lot of money with a gem like this!

-via The Mary Sue

Deep Tea Diver Tea Infuser

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 04:00 PM PST

Deep Tea Diver Tea Infuser

Dive into winter with a warm cup tea and the Deep Tea Diver Tea Infuser from the NeatoShop. This great little tea accessory is shaped like a tiny deep sea diver. He is made from food-safe silicone and perfect for filling with your favorite loose leaf tea. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Coffee & Tea items. 

Link

Lil Bub's Magical Yule Log Video

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 04:00 PM PST

(YouTube link)

There are plenty of Yule log videos on the internet, so people who don't have a fireplace can have something comforting to stare at while enjoying the holidays with family and friends. Lil Bub instantly improves upon all those videos by sitting in front of the warm fire and purring. For an hour. Send this video to someone you love. -via Laughing Squid

10 Awesome Pieces of Decor You Can Make With Your Kids

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 03:00 PM PST

Christmas is a great time to spend time with your family -especially your kids. If you're looking for some classy decor that you can actually make with your children, you won't want to miss our newest Homes and Hues article. 

Aside from some great decorations to class up your home, there are also a few cool ways to teach your kids about science. For example, these fire and ice lanterns by Mad in Crafts can teach your youngster about science and how water will freeze from the outside in. 

If you're having people over for the holidays, don't miss our post on 10 Easy Last-Minute Thanksgiving Centerpiece Ideas. While they're pretty focused on Fall, you could easily switch out the leaves and squashes for candy canes, pine branches and holly.

Bill Gates Was My Secret Santa

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 02:00 PM PST

Rachel (NY1227) joined in reddit's annual Secret Santa exchange, and received a really nice box in the mail. As she opened it and looked through the gifts, she saw it was from a redditor named Bill. The box contained several items, and it wasn't until she reached the very last item that she figured out who "Bill" was.

Once again, To me, From Bill. I opened this and it's a man holding a sign. Oh....

wait.

holy shit.

time out.

and then it finally hit me. All the presents I just tore open, the charity, then everything-- was from Bill GATES. I quickly went back to the book to see a really nice message and note from Bill wishing me a Merry Christmas and a Happy Birthday (not pictured, because I really want to keep one part of this gift to myself) my jaw hit the EVER LOVING FLOOR. I went back to all the other gifts completely shocked. Then I paused for a minute and thought, what if this is someone screwing with me. Well of course Mr. Bill Gates already thought of this and took a picture of himself with my stuffed animal and a sign and then sent me the stuffed animal and sign.

My god. Never in my entire life did I imagine, ever, ever, ever that Bill would get me. I am SO SO thankful for the time, thought and energy he put into my gift, and especially thankful for him over nighting it :)

So what else did he send? You should read that story as Rachel tells it. It's a nice story. Especially the part where she had asked for an iPad.  

Fan Creates Scenes From An Earthbound Sequel That Never Was

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 01:00 PM PST

When the classic video game Earthbound arrived in America in 1994 fans were blown away by the storyline, about a little boy saving the Earth from alien invaders, the satirical humor and the fact that Earthbound made everyday life seem like part of an epic roleplaying game.

Fans have been begging for a sequel for years, but digital artist Christopher Behr got tired of waiting, so he put together some awesome looking screenshots of what an Earthbound sequel with updated graphics might look like.

Maybe Christopher has the right idea- if you build it they will come, therefore if you put an Earthbound of your own together the game developers will have no choice but to make the game, right?. 

Via Gamma Squad

An Engineer's Guide to Cats 2.0 - The Sequel

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 12:00 PM PST

(YouTube link)

Surely you remember Paul and T.J. from their video An Engineer's Guide to Cats we posted five years ago. They are back with a sequel! Here they present their particularly geeky views on the behavior of their combined four cats: Sweet William the Furst, who may have been pirate; Ginger, the economic indicator; Oscar, the artist; and Zoe, who just sits on things. -via Tastefully Offensive

See also: Advanced Cat Yodeling

Amish Vampires in Space Is a Real Book

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 11:00 AM PST

And now I have to read it. Don't you? That title is irresistible. It blends some of the most gripping fiction genres: supernatural horror and science fiction. I’m into alternate history, myself, so Amish Vampires in Space Warn Hitler about the Invasion of Normandy would be even better. But I’ll content myself with what Kerry Neitz has written already.

The cover art is great, too. A Lancaster County lass gazes seductively at the reader, craving his blood and electronic technology. It’s a cover that screams “Buy me!”

I’ve got to wonder, Mr. Neitz: have you been in any negotiations for a movie deal? How about a video game or Broadway musical? You’ve got to monetize this great premise.

-via 22 Words

Iceland’s Most Secluded House

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 10:00 AM PST

Most likely you've seen a picture of this house all by itself on the bowl-shaped top of an island. This place really exists, even though you are forgiven for thinking it was Photoshopped. But the stories that go along with the picture are mostly untrue.

It is not located on Iceland’s third largest island. It was not a gift by the government of Iceland to its most famous pop star, Bjork. The house is not a hoax created using PhotoShop. And it is not inhabited by a secretive billionaire, nor by a religious hermit, nor by a paranoid recluse intent on surviving a coming zombie apocalypse.

In fact, technically, it is not a house at all.

It's a hunting lodge on Elliðaey Island off the coast of Iceland. Once, people actually lived there, and you can read the history of the island and its community at Spot Cool Stuff. -via the Presurfer

(Image credit: Flickr user Chris Zielecki)

Anchorman, As Told By Cats

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 09:30 AM PST

(Video Link)

If you couldn't already tell, we at Neatorama are pretty excited about the new Anchorman movie. We already covered fan art based on the film and 20 things you might not know about the movie, and now it's time for a memetastic look at the masterpiece. That's right, it's time to see Ron Burgundy and the rest of the gang as played by cats thanks to The Pet Collective.

It's the same format as the cats who did The Hunger Games, only this time it involves staying classy in San Diego. Of course, we could watch cats take on pretty much every movie and stay entertained.

Outrageous Christmas Cards By John Cessna

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 09:00 AM PST

When John Cessna's mother told him to act like a grown up and send a Christmas card out to his family and friends back in 2008, he did what any immature grown up would do- he took pictures of himself fall down drunk and made them into Christmas cards. Now, five years later, his messed up Christmas cards have become John's very own pranky holiday tradition.

The card on top is from 2009, aka his drunken days, and the Fight Club themed card below it is the 2013 version of John's holiday madness. The card scenes may seem like pretty standard holiday fare for some, and an outrageous blasphemy against Christmas to others, but hey everybody has their own way of staying sane throughout the holiday season.

Via 22 Words

Brock Davis's Funny Vine Videos

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 08:30 AM PST

Brock Davis is brilliant in his ability to create amusing artworks by making small changes to pre-existing materials. He can turn a hot dog into an angry dog, a cucumber into a shark or a sprig of broccoli into a tree house.

Now he's applying his creativity to Vine, the mobile app that lets you create 6-second repeating videos. My Modern Met has a post filled with some of his best works. I love this cherry bomb. Having made a few Vines, I'm impressed with how well Mr. Davis can stage and control this app.

A Good Scare Scooby-Doo Salt & Pepper Shakers

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST

A Good Scare Scooby-Doo Salt & Pepper Shakers

Zoinks! The holidays are here. Are you still looking for a gift for your best buddy? Get your Scooby-Doo loving pal the A Good Scare Scooby-Doo Salt & Pepper Shakers from the NeatoShop. This frightfully fun set is made of glazed ceramic and features Shaggy holding Scooby-Doo. Behind them is a scary monster. The shakers are held together by magnets. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Salt & Pepper Shakers. 

Link

Nothing Says "America" Like Double Shiny Bacon

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 08:00 AM PST

McDonald's France just launched a new line of "American-themed" burgers that are supposedly served on Americanized breads. Granted, bagels are at least a little American -though we don't usually eat cheeseburgers on them, but I wasn't aware that shiny buns, like those in the Double Shiny Bacon are an American thing. Another weird one is the Double Cornbread BBQ, which isn't just served on cornbread, but also topped with corn chips.

While these might not actually be real classic sandwiches, the cornbread one does sound  pretty tasty actually. Still, I'm a little confused about the Double Shiny Bacon.

Via Eater

Downhill Through the Woods

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 07:30 AM PST

(YouTube link)

There's a reason they say to stay on the trail when skiing downhill. French pro skier Candide Thovex and Aziz Benkrich bring us GoPro footage as they shuss through the woods and miss the trees. Mostly. Remember, these are professionals -do not try this at home. Watching this video may cause disorientation and vertigo. -via Daily Picks and Flicks

Optimus Prime Made Out Of Gingerbread

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 07:00 AM PST

People sure love to get creative with gingerbread these days, and even though a lot of the creations that make their way onto the internet aren’t actually edible they sure look cool.

This delighted gal built one Autobot to rule them all out of that sweet brown dough, and the only detail it seems to be missing is the ability to transform, although it will transform into solid waste after you eat it!

Reddit user downvotedagain posted a pic of this sweet pastry machine for a friend, Caroline Eriksson, who entered this creation in a gingerbread contest. We suspect the Decepticons have concealed the recipe so that no more Autobots are built.

Via Topless Robot

Mini Eggnog Cheesecakes With A Gingerbread Crust

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 06:30 AM PST

I don't know about the rest of you Neatoramanauts, but I simply can't get enough Christmas flavors during the holiday season -especially eggnog. That's why I'm always looking for recipes that allow me to enjoy these special flavors in as many forms as possible -like my eggnog pancakes. 

If you're tired of sitting back and sipping on eggnog and can't stand munching on dried out gingerbread houses, then you won't want to miss out on these beauties -mini eggnog cheesecakes with gingerbread cookie crusts. It's like all the best fatty foods of the holidays all rolled into one rich, heavenly cheesecake.

Best of all, I Wash You Dry's recipe is so simple and easy that these little treats only take about 20 minutes so you can be enjoying your delicious desserts in no time.

How Dogs Make Decisions

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 06:00 AM PST

Dogs are man's best friend in the sense that they're like the old fraternity brother who was always socially crude in college and never grew out of it. Lick your own butt? Carpe diem, dude. Abstruse Goose understands.

Animated Short- Kim Jong Un Versus Christmas

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 05:30 AM PST

(Video Link)

When western decadence threatens the celebration of the greatest North Korean holiday National Hand Stand Day, the mighty and glorious leader Kim Jung Un springs into action to save his poor people from the evil influence of Satan Claus and Christmas.

Even Rudolph Lundgren doesn’t stand a chance against the invincible North Korean benefactor, who is hell bent on pulling a reverse Santa Claus and stamping out capitalist corruption with his signature brand of fantastic adventure and daring displays of sexiness.

Can the most powerful and awe inspiring leader to ever walk the face of the earth save his special date and prove once again that he is the only one who deserves his own holiday?

Via Stuff I Stole From The Internet

Chasing the Cicada: Exploring the Darkest Corridors of the Internet

Posted: 20 Dec 2013 05:00 AM PST

When an unsuspecting researcher followed a mysterious command on a 4chan board, he found himself drawn into a scavenger hunt that led him down the darkest corridors of the internet and stretched across the globe. But in a place where no one shows his face and no one plays by the rules, how do you tell where the game ends and reality begins?

It was 10 p.m. on a Friday night in January, and Jeff Kinkle was procrastinating.

The 32-year-old cultural studies PhD was alone in his Brooklyn studio, working on a paper about institutional secrecy and the national security apparatus. His workspace offered an unobstructed view of the glittering Manhattan skyline, but the young academic, who makes his living as a writer and translator, wasn’t feeling inspired. His desk shook every time the trains rattled across the Williamsburg Bridge. The bars downstairs hummed with nightlife.

Distracted, Kinkle was scanning /b/, the infamous image-sharing board on the website 4chan. There, a curious message snagged his attention.

Kinkle had read that the National Security Agency, a U.S. government organization that engages in defensive and offensive cyber operations, was actively using 4chan to scout for hackers. Amid the thread of obscene comments that pass for conversation on /b/, some commenters were suggesting that the strange message might be an NSA recruiting exercise. His curiosity piqued, Kinkle followed the conversation as it moved to a math and science message board.

The cyberspace that most of us know and use daily is a place for connecting with friends, paying bills, and sharing funny cat pictures. But Kinkle, like others who delve into the Internet and the cultures that take shape there, knows that the Web is an iceberg: the part that shows being the smallest, least menacing piece. What lies beneath is vaster, darker, and harder to understand—a shadowy world where data and hackers and criminals hide. Some call it the “deep Web,” and Kinkle was about to tumble down a virtual rabbit hole straight into it.

Kinkle stared at the message, trying to suss out its meaning. When one commenter suggested opening the image in the simple-text editor WordPad, he couldn’t help himself. At the bottom of the text, he found the following message: TIBERIVS CLAVDIVS CAESAR says “lxxt>33m2mqkyv2gsq3q=w]O2ntk.”

And that was a code he thought he could crack.

"The id of the Web"

At first glance, 4chan looks like nothing more than a frenetic, image-based bulletin board. There is no search function and no tagging of posts. But the site’s simplicity is deceiving. Trafficked mostly by 18- to 24-year-old men, 4chan attracts more than 22 million page views per month and more than 1 million unique visitors every day—almost as much as The New York Times website. But the numbers don’t accurately reflect 4chan’s importance; what happens on the site often reverberates across the Internet.

4chan was founded in 2003 by a 15-year-old named Christopher Poole, a New Yorker known online by the handle “moot.” Poole modeled the site on a fast-paced Japanese Web forum centered on anime and porn called 2chan. “The URL for 3chan was taken at the time,” Poole told The New York Times in 2010, “so I just jumped to the next number.” (Image credit: Jscott)

Today, 4chan’s 58 boards cover a whimsical array of topics, from the practical (do-it-yourself) to the creative (photography, music) to the shocking and pornographic (“sexy beautiful women”). Accordingly, subject threads range from the mundane to the disturbing—everything from bike-shorts recommendations to found footage of people getting hit by cars or gruesome photos of body parts found in the wreckage of the September 11 attacks. The site functions like the Wild West of cyberspace. 4chan also has no formal archive, meaning that most of its million-plus posts per day are ephemeral—they either expire or get deleted within a matter of hours. This fast-flowing river of posts is enhanced by the users’ anonymity. Because the site does not require registration, 4chan especially appeals to those who reject the increasing proof-of-identity demands and personal information requests on social networking sites such as Facebook and Google+.

The /b/ board—sometimes called the “id of the Web”—takes particular advantage of this anonymity. On /b/, offensive remarks are encouraged, both to repel outsiders and to maintain the board’s underground appeal. Longtime users, for instance, are referred to as “oldfags”; newcomers as “newfags”; and British people in general as “Britfags.” The board's Fight Club-­style rules emphasize the insular yet anonymous culture they seek to preserve: "1. You do not talk about /b/. 2. You DO NOT talk about /b/. 3. We are Anonymous. 34. If it exists, there is porn about it. No exceptions."

The site’s anything-goes mentality often leads users to overstep the bounds of propriety—and sometimes legality. In September 2008, a college student named David Kernell, the son of a Democratic state representative from Tennessee, obtained access to Sarah Palin’s personal Yahoo! account. He posted the password on the /b/ board, along with a number of screenshots of the then-governor’s email messages, which quickly went viral. (The FBI managed to track down Kernell’s IP address and IP cache records from a proxy site, and he was convicted on charges soon after.)

But 4chan also fosters a strange and uninhibited kind of creativity. While the posts are fleeting, users tend to re-post the images they find the most affecting—whether they’re funny, political, or unsettling. And that can spiral into zeitgeisty memes and all sorts of Internet phenomena. LOLcats, the ubiquitous meme featuring pictures of cats with kitten-speak captions, such as “U Seez What I’z Put Up With,” originated on 4chan. So did Rickrolling, a bait-and-switch meme in which a user clicks a hyperlink only to be redirected to a YouTube video of pop star Rick Astley singing his 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up.” (The video has received more than 65 million hits to date.) More significantly, 4chan helped spawn Anonymous, the amorphous global network of hacktivists, trolls, and Web savants that has waged attacks on major corporate and government websites since sometime around 2004, pursuing an unusual breed of cyber vigilantism.

Still, as Kinkle well knew, so much of the material in the 4chan stream is either inane or meant as a prank that he questioned how to handle the message. As he monitored the 40 or so commenters discussing the image, he realized that many of them were taking it seriously. He decided to play along. “The idea that this was a recruitment exercise was definitely seductive,” he recalled. “I mean, I don’t have any esoteric knowledge the NSA would actually want. But the thought of engaging with people who are on the cutting edge of this stuff—that was exciting.”

Following the Breadcrumbs

Kinkle recognized the garbled text—TIBERIVS CLAVDIVS CAESAR says “lxxt>33m2mqkyv2gsq3q=w]O2ntk”—as a Caesar cipher, a simple encryption technique in which each letter is replaced by another letter a fixed number of places away in the alphabet. Since Tiberius Claudius was the fourth Roman Emperor, Kinkle tried shifting the text back four letters. It worked: The text revealed a URL. But when Kinkle pointed his browser to the site, the page showed an image of a plastic duck and the words: “WOOPS just decoys this way. Looks like you can’t guess how to get the message out.”

The phrasing struck Kinkle and the other commenters as odd. Before long, someone realized that the words guess and out might have something to do with the decryption software OutGuess. Running the image through OutGuess, it turned out, extracted a link to a subreddit—one of the many boards within the social news website reddit. When Kinkle clicked the link, suddenly the page bore a new mystery: a row of Mayan numerals, several lines of garbled letters, and two images labeled welcome and problems?

It was then that someone posted a link to an anonymous room on the chat website Mibbit.com, where users adopted screen names and the conversation continued without the threat of 4chan’s disappearing archive. “That’s when I started to feel a bit creepy,” Kinkle recalls. Here he was, at 11 on a Friday night, obsessing over a riddle inside a chat room with dozens of strangers. Before this night, Kinkle had interacted with a total of three people on 4chan, a site he characterized as a “flow of smut and jokes and weird stuff that vanishes.” He saw the site as a playground for trolls, the kind of people who post deliberately distracting or provocative messages in the hope of starting an argument. “But most trolls don’t put nearly this amount of energy into what they’re doing,” Kinkle says.

He decided to walk back to his apartment. When he arrived, his roommates were heading out to a bar and invited him along, but Kinkle mumbled an excuse and retreated to his bedroom instead. There, he got to work unraveling a series of cyber clues involving book codes, King Arthur, and the quest for the Holy Grail. Scribbling madly on index cards, he finally uncovered a message: “call us on us tele phone number two one four three….”

“I’m getting a phone number!” he blurted into the chat room. The more advanced commenters doubted it; the less advanced insulted him. Kinkle believed he was onto something, but no one believed him. Then he received a private message—“You’re way ahead of the others”—and an invitation to a smaller, private chat room within the same network. Once inside, he dialed the number using Google Voice. A recording welcomed him: “Very good. You have done well. There are three prime numbers associated with the original final .jpg image. 3301 is one of them. You will have to find the other two. Multiply all three of these numbers together and add a .com on the end to find the next step. Good luck. Good-bye.”

The pixel dimensions of the first image, Kinkle realized, were 509 and 503, both primes. He multiplied the numbers and got a URL. An image of a cicada appeared onscreen, above a countdown set to expire in three days. Opening the cicada in OutGuess unveiled yet another message: “You have done well to come this far. Patience is a virtue. Check back at 17:00 on Monday, 9 January 2012. UTC.”

Kinkle slumped in his chair. It was 2 a.m. He had reached the next level of the game—but what had begun as an online lark was about to breach the walls of the Web and enter real life.

Getting to Know Anonymous

The subversive digital network known as Anonymous found its footing in virtual mischief, but the way the group has wielded influence and power in real life (IRL, in Internet-speak) has made agencies like the NSA pay close attention.

Anons, as members call themselves, emerged from the juvenilia and nihilism of 4chan’s /b/ board around 2004. Over time, the group has become known less for Rickrolling and pranking radio DJs than for real-life attacks against institutions that try to suppress information online. In the winter of 2008, when the Church of Scientology tried to make the gossip site Gawker remove a leaked video of Tom Cruise delivering a diatribe, Anonymous got its first taste of mainstream attention. Vowing to “destroy” Scientology, thousands of Anonymous supporters protested outside Scientology centers and churches around the world, wearing Guy Fawkes masks and holding signs like “don’t worry, we’re from the internet.” The group continued its war online, releasing viral videos decrying Scientology practices and crashing Scientology websites.

(Image credit: Vincent Diamante)

The following year, in keeping with the collective’s love of cats, Anonymous supporters hunted down the creator of a YouTube video in which a domestic cat named Dusty is shown being slammed against a wall. Based on the creator’s other YouTube videos, posted under glennspam1, members of 4chan’s /b/ board were able to locate and identify him as Kenny Glenn, a 14-year-old from Lawton, Okla. Shortly after the teen was outed, local police stepped in. Meanwhile, hundreds of cat photos flooded 4chan, with captions like “ill see you in jail kenny glenn.”

In the years since, Anonymous has grown more political. In December 2010, core Anons recruited thousands of volunteers to orchestrate what’s called a distributed denial of service—flooding a website with traffic until it crashes or slows considerably. The group targeted the sites of MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal, all of which had effectively prohibited financial contributions to WikiLeaks. Anonymous (and in some cases, its splinter groups) also made trouble for Interpol, the CIA, German neo-Nazi groups, child-pornography servers, the Tunisian government, News Corporation, and others. It even bugged a conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard about a global cyber crime investigation. The 16-minute call was later posted on YouTube under the headline hacked for the lulz—“lulz” being Web slang for laughs. The nihilism of 4chan, after all, is part of its DNA.

Considering its contradictory impulses, observers of Anonymous have struggled to define the group as either political or criminal in nature. Parmy Olson, Forbes’s London bureau chief and author of the book We Are Anonymous, says the group’s supporters are “unpredictable.” “They could be trying to take down the website of a repressive African government one minute and harassing someone on Facebook for fun the next,” she says. And while some self-identify as hacktivists, using the resources and reputation of Anonymous for social-political causes, others remain true to the anarchic culture of /b/. “What matters more,” Olson says, “is that Anonymous has provided a process for anyone to pool together to cause some sort of stir online. The more creative the better.” That sort of 4chan-inspired mentality is responsible for attacks on Mexican drug lords and British government websites, but it’s also the same incubator—or at least, the same type of thinking—that inspired the cicada mystery in which Kinkle found himself steeped.

Locating the Cicada

At 4:59 p.m. on Monday, Kinkle and his Venezuelan office mate were staring at the countdown on his laptop. When the clock hit zero, the website reloaded. Fourteen GPS coordinates popped up, their locations fanned across the globe: Warsaw, Seoul, Paris, Sydney, Hawaii, Miami, New Orleans, Seattle. Until then, none of the still-anonymous participants had provided any personal information. But suddenly, as they traced the coordinates to specific addresses, these same participants began volunteering their whereabouts. “Like, ‘I’m in Oakland,’ ‘I’m in Sweden,’ ‘I’m in South Korea,’?” Kinkle said.

The problem? None of the commenters were near any of the coordinates. “Everyone was deflated,” Kinkle said. He was convinced this was a decoy, but others in the chat room turned paranoid. What if someone had planted a bomb at the coordinates? What if a kidnapper was lying in wait?

Over the next week, people paid visits to the addresses in Paris, Warsaw, Miami, and Sydney. They posted pictures inside the chat room of what they’d found: sheets of white paper taped to streetlights, each featuring a QR code and a red-stenciled image of a cicada. The codes linked to unique URLs, which, when opened with OutGuess, revealed two new messages.

Kinkle couldn’t figure out what they referred to, but someone else did: a 300-line poem by the science fiction writer William Gibson called “Agrippa (A Book of the Dead).” By using the poem to decode the content of the messages, commenters extracted a Tor address. Tor, short for the Onion Router, is an obscure routing network that hides a user’s IP address by redirecting Internet traffic through proxies. In effect, Tor enables users to anonymously explore the Internet—including its darkest regions—without the risk of being traced. It’s in these secret spaces, buried deep in the deep Web, where the remaining clues lay in wait.

Diving Into the Deep Web

Sometimes called the “invisible web” or “dark net,” the deep Web represents the portion of the Internet that cannot be indexed by standard search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, or Bing. Search engines work through a process known as “spidering” or “crawling.” Crawlers roam across the Web collecting pages and keywords, following the hyperlinks on each page to amass more and more data. The results are filed into indexes of keywords; when you type a search query in Google, the search engine returns results from the appropriate index. The surface Web, or the part of the Internet that most people use on a daily basis, consists of Web pages that are linked to this giant mass. But since the majority of content on the Web isn’t linked to anything, it remains hidden from the crawlers. Researchers say it’s impossible to measure the size of the un-indexed Internet, though it’s estimated to be between 4,000 and 5,000 times larger than the surface Web.

“People don’t have an accurate way of measuring the deep Web, because it’s hard to define what it is,” says Juliana Freire, a computer science professor at New York University who studies the topic. To that end, much of the unindexed material is banal: peer-to-peer file-sharing services, scientific and governmental databases. But deep Web mythology—born out of 4chan, reddit, and other online forums—abounds with rumors of human-trafficking rings, weapon depots, and terrorist networks that dwell in its belly like unclassified sea creatures, squatting on abandoned websites, then leaving without a trace.

Yet there’s enough truth out there to feed worries. Take the Russian Business Network—an elusive cyber-crime conduit originally based in St. Petersburg that began as a service provider for websites devoted to identity theft, child pornography, and spamming. Thought to have been created in 2006 or earlier by a 24-year-old known only as Flyman, the network was linked to a stunning 50 percent of all credit-card phishing schemes. But the shadowy provider has since vanished from view.

In recent months, Silk Road, a black market website that uses Tor to enable users to anonymously sell illegal drugs including heroin, cocaine, and Ecstasy, has come to the attention of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The website, which employs a digital currency called Bitcoins to further disguise the identities of buyers and sellers, has enabled about $22 million in sales, according to a Carnegie Mellon report. A handful of recent discussions have tried to suggest that some users—including the site’s administrator, who goes by the handle “Dread Pirate Roberts”—are becoming increasingly less visible in the wake of media scrutiny. However, as Gawker has noted, someone is clearly still investing; in July 2012, the Silk Road site underwent a major redesign.

In the realm between academic accounts and crime-facilitating organizations lie those who use Tor for work. Journalists, for example, employ Tor to communicate with dissidents, whistle-blowers, and environmental activists concerned about government surveillance. One tech blogger, writing about the cicada mystery after the fact, suggested that a tech company or intelligence agency might have been using Tor for similar means.

Unsolved Mystery

After downloading TOR software, Kinkle visited the appointed address, which instructed him to create an anonymous Hotmail account. Minutes later, he received what the sender claimed was a personalized message. It contained a riddle Kinkle had to solve on his own.

“It required all this complicated decryption software,” he says. “I just couldn’t figure it out.” He emailed his programmer friends and anyone he thought might provide a lead, but they too came up empty. And so 10 days after his quest began, it was over.

“I never heard anything again,” Kinkle admits. He adds that he was extremely curious to know who was behind the game and why it was created. “If I thought it was just a complex puzzle with a clever answer, I don’t think I’d have been as captivated as I was.”

Weeks after he abandoned the quest, the mystery was still nagging at him. While idly Googling “cicada” and “3301” one day, he discovered a Wiki page about the puzzle that revealed a new development. Another mysterious message had appeared on 4chan in February. It read: “We have now found the individuals we sought. Thus our month-long journey ends.”

But the day after that message was posted on 4chan, yet another strange note cropped up on a temporary text-storage site called Pastebin. It seemed to be a letter of congratulations to the winners of the puzzle, acquired and re-posted by a member of Anonymous. “DO NOT SHARE THIS INFORMATION!” the re-posted letter began. It continued: “You are undoubtedly wondering what it is that we do we are much like a * think tank * in that our primary focus is on researching and developing techniques to aid the ideas we advocate liberty privacy security.” The letter offered the winners membership in the group, as long as they answered a few questions, including “Do you believe that information should be free?”

It’s a frustrating, enigmatic ending to a saga that, throughout, showed signs of careful craftsmanship and ingenious orchestration. It was a hunt that swept a room full of curious minds from an idle board on 4chan down the Internet’s most anonymous corridors, then spit them out into the real world. But today, Kinkle feels like he’s back where he started. He knows no more about “cicada 3301” than he did on that January night.

“It’s actually pretty crazy that there’s so little about that final message online,” he says. “A decent amount has been written about the hunt itself, so it’s odd that there’s barely anything about its conclusion.”

In 10 days, Kinkle traveled across more of the Web than most people will in a lifetime. The journey stoked his curiosity. Today, he spends his days poring over the underbelly of the Internet. He keeps a Tor browser on his phone, and he stays vigilant, occasionally dipping into 4chan’s boards, holding out hope that somewhere, flowing in this massive river of smut and depravity and cat jokes, he just might catch a glimpse of the answer.

__________________________

The above article was written by Jed Lipinski. It is reprinted with permission from the December 2012 issue of mental_floss magazine.

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