Neuro ARG

[wispy thistle]

read his message...

#1201523099267502110 message

[uncut cargo]

Oh.

How tf did I not see that message

[safe burrow]

[haughty crescent]

Ffmpeg has python wrappers. Not sure about other languages.

[wispy thistle]

well i know that it can be used, im just saying that the way i used the decoder it was slower than the binary, an i couldnt figure out encoding because ffmpeg encoder api is very weird

[haughty crescent]

Ah, that's odd. It shouldn't be slower. It's doing the same thing. Maybe it was a downstream process causing it to wait?

[wispy thistle]

yeah i have no idea, but https://github.com/zmwangx/rust-ffmpeg/blob/master/examples/dump-frames.rs for me ran slower than ffmpeg -i video %03d.png

[timid swift]

did you build it in release?

[wispy thistle]

yeah of course

[hollow garnet]

it might be to do with that waiting for it to save the file whereas ffmpeg may be offloading that to another thread

[wispy thistle]

i tried passing the frames to another frame

but maybe the memory sync overhead was too big then

[haughty crescent]

I don't know enough about rust to be sure but it looks like this code is not allowing ffmpeg to handle the actual writing. FFmpeg is usually multithreaded in its IO operations.

[daring acorn]

Guys, sorry, I'm new to this whole topic, but I'm interested
Has anyone tried to disassemble the last video? I'm talking about 360
It seems to me that in the middle, where there is not a single word, there is something.
But I don't understand it. The idea is to open this video in an editor (for 360 videos) and check what's there. It's like there's something lying there

[dapper wraith]

Welcome. If you haven't already feel free to check the docs. You'll find most of the stuff we found and tried in there.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qm6GSRlstTmjbyOFCuH1OhSmPK4pi4Aa?usp=sharing

I think we mostly looked at the flattened video (opening it in a "normal" 2d player).
Do you have screenshot or timestamp of where you think you see something?

[daring acorn]

0:20-14:20

[dapper wraith]

Oh that whole part? Do you see anything in particular or is it just a gut feeling that there should be something there? Because we've looked around already and haven't found much interesting there.

[daring acorn]

gut feeling"

In any case, I will take a look at the documents

[uncut cargo]

looked around already is an understatement

of course that doesn't mean we couldn't miss something

[strange parcel]

maybe

[thorn kelp]

This may seem stupid to you, but has anyone tried to analyze the music playing at Ermcon 2024? I don't understand all this, I just thought I'd ask

[timid swift]

It's a fair question. The way ARGs work is that you have an initial point where real life and the alternate reality overlap. That point is the QR code on the stream waiting/countdown screen. After that, the alternate reality game format demands that a previous alternative reality point has pointed to it. The QR points to youtube channel. The youtube channel points to the soundcloud account, the soundcloud account contains a cipher and a funky background image. That way we know the cipher and the image are part of the ARG. Because we have no leads pointing to Ermcon 2024 we can say that it's part of the real reality, not the alternate reality (:

[thorn kelp]

It's possible, but that doesn't rule out the possibility that we might have missed something that referred us to Ermcon. Also, who knows, maybe this is the part that should be used in the distant future, but the “creator” decided to prepare everything in advance so that no one would suspect. There are many different options and perhaps only analysis can reveal the truth to us

[safe burrow]

[thorn kelp]

And as I just said earlier, I can't understand this. Sorry about it

[timid swift]

That may be the case, my here's an open question: If we were to find a clue outside the chain of evidence, would you want it?

and no reason to be sorry, it was a good question!

[thorn kelp]

Oh right, it's a game. I'm already forgot it

[timid swift]

lmao

yes, save the cheating for real life

[thorn kelp]

Thank you for the clarification

[timid swift]

no problem, always happy to chat about the ARG

[safe burrow]

[onyx sparrow]

Were there any ideas about high-frequency noise at the end of The Meaning of Life? I mean, except for the obvious clue about the key. https://imgur.com/a/bhD0XlI

[timid swift]

What'd you use to make that image? It's very crisp

Nobody's written anything about it, at least that's been documented, just the as you say obvious https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HrzZYlFmxAzI76Ov0aSkjCe6v1hbzHCTaXK7j34Hdi0/edit#heading=h.fngyrl2ajf05

[wispy thistle]

sonic visualizer can do it for sure, idk about other software

anyway most of it is the Numbers song, but the noise at the end might be from Study or something

[timid swift]

Loads of ways, sure, i just like that image cause it's crisp (:

[fathom ginkgo]

[onyx sparrow]

chayleaf guessed right, I did it in Sonic Visualizer

[onyx sparrow]

That's why I'm asking. Maybe there were thoughts here, but they were not documented

[timid swift]

I don't recall it coming up much, no. If I were to speculate I'd wonder if missing parts are to up the difficulty of reading it, or if it's part of the hint. For all of the letters but the Y, the upper half is missing

even the 1 is missing the upper half, i guess

Cut the number in half? Take the lower half / lower register. Could be something like that

without the cut letters/numbers it says "Y = 28". Only the cut is "KE 1 BIT", assuming we've parsed it right

[onyx sparrow]

I was thinking about it, that maybe there should be the rest of the text somewhere. But I haven't found it yet

[timid swift]

Could be, yeah

[onyx sparrow]

But it’s somehow strange that it is “cut” unevenly. For example, I don't see the "t" here at all. Although the lower parts of the remaining letters are present

[timid swift]

I figured the T was further over, but yeah, that'd be some wonky kerning

then again, the 1 is also weirdly spaced from the other numbers

could the spacing have meaning?

[dapper wraith]

the kerning in PSV was kinda similar

[timid swift]

so it is. Same weird gaps. It's like a left-leaning mono-spaced font.

I guess it's not so bad if we assume monospaced font

[onyx sparrow]

Then cool. A little bit funny tbh

[onyx sparrow]

Song and Neuro from Numbers, as well as study girl, static and anxiety from Study. And Neuro and study girl were also shown together. Interesting

[onyx sparrow]

Question - how did you get the flat "Meaning of Life"?
Images: https://imgur.com/a/ug5d18K
I downloaded the video from YT (image 1), then processed it through ffmpeg with the -vf "v360=eac:equirect" argument and got image 2. But I still have artifacts from unwrapping at the bottom. But in the document the flat version looks fine

[wispy thistle]

no its not using ffmpeg

you have to download the specific video

list the available formats using yt-dlp

and download the largest one, i think it's mp4 too

[onyx sparrow]

I didn't know about this project. Thanks, I'll try

[daring acorn]

1 874 073 KB

4k, no sound

[azure oyster]

i see we have a new lead

or maybe not actually

i was wondering what we were going to do with the QR code of a windows error code once we figured out which one it is, so it not being related makes more sense

[daring acorn]

SLNDYK. Who is this?

[timid swift]

#1112082183235047506 message and #1112082183235047506 message

[tight walrus]

[serene fractal]

Мне кажется или тут осталось больше русских/украинцев чем иностранцев?

[thorn kelp]

For the first time I saw that in Numbers on 1:08 in subtitles was text like in Hello world "Thank you"

[thorn kelp]

Хз

[serene fractal]

vlad269139 chayleaf (?) leafeon Static-sama

[thorn kelp]

ага

[serene fractal]

Alr, quiet, you can't not speak english here ^^

[thorn kelp]

Sure

[serene fractal]

[safe burrow]

English only please

[serene fractal]

Are you fucking nuts?

Ok, I've been gone a year, what with progress?

[thorn kelp]

I didn't find this in the documentation LuL

It doesn't say anything about subtitles.

[serene fractal]

You're still poking around Numbers?

Tf

[thorn kelp]

Nope, I was just enjoying the music, but I had subtitles on

[dapper wraith]

yeah, I don't remember there being automated subtitles on the video although it's been a bit

[thorn kelp]

And the word Foreign in the end of the video

Automatic subtitles on video

I downloaded it here:
wow [Music] I can never say oh it's been so long counting all the days [Music] finding all these numbers [Music] thank you foreign

wow - it's normal for begining

In beginning of Numbers II there is a "Foreign" from the first second

On 0:57 there is word "foreign" on autosubtitles in Public Static Void

1:59
in the same video during the song interruption "Thank you"

So we can say that "thank you" is not specifically for Hello world

[daring acorn]

Может быть

[safe burrow]

@golden mirage

[daring acorn]

I thought it was already somewhere

[golden mirage]

@serene fractal @daring acorn English please

[safe burrow]

I can’t help but call while I’m falling asleep

[daring acorn]

Okey

[safe burrow]

[daring acorn]

Not “thank you”
Foreign

I watched the Google drive today, I almost had a roof

A lot of things…

What programs can I watch the video in detail?

[dapper wraith]

personally I just watch the videos in my regular video player (mpv) or look at the individual frames extracted using ffmpeg. for the audio I used audacity before

[thorn kelp]

Study 3:04 there is "thank you" in 'engeener part'
Again in 4:32 'fallen down'
4:59 again in same part
"anxiety" on 6:23 (same part)
6:46 "inside" and 11:55 "inside" may be "it's overdue"
16:27 "foreign" in I'm not like the other girls
Foreign in the end of "Is anyone watching?"
And there is other 2 foreign and 2 thank you in the last I'm fine

"Thank you" never appeared when she was a static static girl

[thorn kelp]

This needs to be checked

[daring acorn]

When full I think i saw a ghost

The only drop..

[daring acorn]

An ordinary player will not be able to show what is hidden from ordinary eyes

[dapper wraith]

true. although it's questionable whether or not something so subtly hidden that we can't see it at all with our own eyes could survive the youtube compression

[hollow garnet]

this is a bit of a long shot but I was experimenting with pixel sorting and realised the effect isn't too dissimilar to some of the stuff in filtered #programming message

not very confident though, just kinda resembles parts of it

[thorn kelp]

How phrases appear in automatically generated subtitles is the most interesting question for me

I'm really trying to figure out how this is possible.

[timid swift]

Think of it like AI having alien ears that work very different than ours, and they mishear some of the noises and think it's someone speaking

[safe monolith]

When potato first joined, we did some experiments with youtube subtitles

The conclusion was that it was too schizo to hide/find clues in automatically generated subtitles

#1112082183235047506 message

#1112082183235047506 message

[tulip minnow]

Yeah it was seen as a bug

I see it as additional clues for my theory

[thorn kelp]

It can't be a bug lul

[tulip minnow]

Well it’s the conclusion

Since there’s no way to confirm it

I’ve seen the sound waves of it

There was nothing unfortunately

[thorn kelp]

And google speech recognition couldn’t have been so wrong. Firstly, there are at least two timecodes I recorded that contain the word "foreign", although the music was not noisy and you could clearly hear the absence of any words. Secondly, I analyzed the subtitles because I myself thought that this might just be a misunderstanding, but in every video (except Filtered, where there are no subtitles at all) there is one Thank you (except for study, where there are several of them)

Yes, all the facts indicate that I am schizophrenic, but it is impossible to completely refute the theory, so this is becoming more and more delicious for me

[timid swift]

another victim taken by ARG thorycrafting

[thorn kelp]

Hooray! I'm glad to have a new addiction!

[safe monolith]

If it can be confirmed, then it'll be an interesting clue, that's for sure. But as it stands, reuploading the audio doesn't result in the same subtitling.

Speech recognition is also imperfect by nature. It's hard to draw a cause and effect between a subtitle and the offending audio.

To be convincing, it needs to be systematically replicable

[strange parcel]

were still on qr?

[timid swift]

we're not on one specific thing ever (:

[rotund pagoda]

нє

[daring acorn]

h euro?

[wispy thistle]

It's a broken attempt at saying no in Ukrainian, and really come on dont be childish guys

[timid swift]

just so you know, it's part of the server rules

[rotund pagoda]

XD, it`s fun

[safe burrow]

This is why I can call

And I also followed voice chats sometimes if there were Russian friends there, so that they would speak English more often, so I already took a pill for headaches, it’s just the weather changed so dramatically that I already feel like I have a fever.

And my buns, I always believe in you and will hold you at any time.

[plucky sphinx]

It's all funny

[cyan hornet]

Это It не is not весело funny

[safe burrow]

I keep calling

[uncut cargo]

as one said, its all shit and giggles until someone actually shits and giggles

[safe burrow]

I'll probably have to call

[plucky sphinx]

Yep

[plucky sphinx]

Do you think they will answer?

[safe burrow]

Do you think that the moderator will not answer?

[orchid anvil]

It's just one message, there's no need to be so radical

[rotund pagoda]

better call Saul

[safe burrow]

The main thing is that this does not happen on an ongoing basis.

[orchid anvil]

I agree

[rotund pagoda]

we get it bro) why does this trigger you so much

[safe burrow]

So that you don't get scolded?

[rotund pagoda]

ok, I understand you

[plucky sphinx]

Sorry, misunderstood your previous message

My English is far from perfect

[safe burrow]

Therefore, please do not violate 2.1 because of bad memory, I read these rules almost every day

[plucky sphinx]

Of course...

[safe burrow]

I'm just keeping you safe

[plucky sphinx]

Thank you, bro

[safe burrow]

And don’t pay attention that I’m schizo, I always behave strangely

[plucky sphinx]

This is why I like you

[rotund pagoda]

you are a wonderful person❤️ i love you broo

[orchid anvil]

You are actually cool heartheartheart xoxoxoxo

[shut violet]

YouTube auto generated subtitles often mistakenly identify the word “foreign” in many videos, especially music

[thorn kelp]

Can you prove it pls?

Also, is there such a bug with Thank you?

[shut violet]

This reddit thread talks about it and provides a few explanations https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/unx23d/why_do_youtubes_auto_generated_captions_say/

[shut violet]

I’ve also noticed it happening with thank you from time to time

[thorn kelp]

thx, i'll read it soon

[cloud crystal]

I think you don't need to worry too much right now because we have moved to another place

[strange parcel]

well im still waiting for the new vid/stream

[haughty crescent]

Has anyone thought to take the piano notes from Hello World and try mapping them to phone dial tones? I don't have the musical knowledge to know if they map to any notes, but I do know phone dial tones are universal. So the sound a #1 button makes on every phone should be the same.

Could be additional buttons to press when calling the phone number

[shut violet]

Huh

That’s an interesting idea

So real life phone numbers being involved is still a possibility?

[haughty crescent]

Not sure, this is like the second post I've ever made in NEURO ARG. It just seems weird to me that per the wiki there is no clues at all in Hello World. Like, why would the puppet master even bother posting it then?

Maybe that's a bit meta, but it just seemed weird to me

[haughty crescent]

The biggest issue I see with a theory like this is every other solution has been an encryption or logic puzzle/not obvious. Something like this seems way to easy

[timid swift]

I don't believe anyone has done this. You could do it if you make a spectrogram of the sound and map the frequencies to music notes. My biggest question is what you'd do with two notes playing at the same time

[timid swift]

Shortly before the video was posted we were trying out a lot of SMS/MMS stuff with the phone number. I can't say if the video is a response to that, but it's the only other theory that makes sense to me. It's either that, or there's a clue in there. So we pretty much have to assume that there may be a clue somewhere in there

[uncut cargo]

I have a gut feeling it might've been a sort of teaser for two next videos. Since for [filtered] Hello world was pretty much the solution. While the whole video looks like beginning of meaning of life.

[strange parcel]

well your right

[uncut cargo]

While voice could indeed be just related to us spamming the number

[timid swift]

exactly. We need to be open to any reasonable explanation. Not closed off on one track, but also not losing track with all the crazy ideas (:
And while response-to-spam is a reasonable explanation, it is not one which leads to anything actionable - it would just dismiss the video rather than investigate it

[thorn kelp]

In principle, it is possible to map a musical octave (1-7 notes) into a telephone number, however, firstly, the number should not use 0 (although what about a pause?), 8, 9. Secondly, close numbers (2-3, 5-6) and some others should sound like dissonance, which I personally did not hear in music

[safe burrow]

[thorn kelp]

I've broken down the main music into notes:
mi re mi re mi
mi re mi re mi
re to re to re
C A-sharp C A-sharp C

What can be considered in the case of parsing by octave (do - 1, re -2, etc.) as
32323
32323
21212
1?1?1
Question mark - because I don’t know how to parse A-sharp (A is 6, but is A-sharp 6.5?)

I have a musical education and the only thing that came to my mind was to compare the notes as chords in the circle of fifths, but to do this you need to have a musical education. I don't know if the creator has it, but I don't think he would complicate things so much

I don’t know from what other point of view this can be considered

Circle of fifths - Quinta circle

also A-sharp is a A#. What's the same Hb (or Bb (the same))

Sorry for the confusion, the sheet music looks like this:
E D E D E
E D E D E
D C D C D
C Hb C Hb C

If you have any other ideas, I’m glad to hear them, as I can help at least with them

The idea of ​​text on phone buttons is immediately rejected, since there is no consistent repetition of the same notes.

Maybe A# say to us that we shold try to press # button

Or, for Bb *

[thorn kelp]

Oops, all the work has already been done in the ARG document

My bad

[safe burrow]

[haughty crescent]

Wow, well, unfortunate it didn't seem to line up. My other idea was to try and look up the sheet music by it's Parsons code on this site: https://www.musipedia.org/ to see if it's used in anything else

There's also a piano player thing on there to play music and see if it matches to anything else

[onyx sparrow]

I have an idea, that ending in Meaning of life is some sort of rebus (or puzzle, idk how call it correctly). Because of Hiyori (probably from Numbers) and sequence which recalls some part of Study (i trying to understand which exactly). I think it tells to use something from Numbers (instruction, number 572943 or something else) in combination with something from Study (for now i'm thinking of phone number). Just "encoded" instruction like line Applying cipher.numbers1(secret_number) to all given numbers from cipher.numbers2.array() in PSV.
Related (rhetorical) question - why static and Anxiety shown without Hiyori?..

About phone number, what if '+' sign is missleading. What if it's sum or concatenating operation? For now i tried to do it with 572943 number, and use result as key to encoded datas, but didn't see any interesting stuff. Maybe it should be used with something else, or in two steps, which i didn't do. Also i have doubts that this is a phone number, because sequence in Meaning of life recalls first 'I think I saw a ghost', but JS code program appears later.

[wispy thistle]

@onyx sparrow see the toolbox https://neuro-arg.github.io/toolbox.html for the numbers algorithm btw

[onyx sparrow]

Oh, I forgot to say - the problem with the idea is that I couldn't end up with string of 16 characters long. So yes, I tried removing some characters from the end or in the middle (because Hiyori slightly overlaps study girl) , so yes, it was wrong for me to say that I tried using result as key. And I didn't try all the combinations because I'm little tired today. I'll try to continue tomorrow

[onyx sparrow]

thanks

[unique mason]

i like how people are going schizo here again

[wispy thistle]

we never stopped being schizo

but the fact new people came does bring new life, personally the only arg-related project i have ongoing rn is [filtered] spectrogram analysis and i have low motivation about it because i didnt find anything looking like a transposition cipher from simple analysis

[safe monolith]

legally required to be schizo to be here

not that i would know though

[strange parcel]

yes

[willow gull]

I found out about this and I looked at the doc and stuff and it looks sick

[timber whale]

Emotional support fumo deployed

[safe burrow]

[humble lotus]

give this man a true

[lime moth]

What if Neuro is just depressed.
Her speech made me sad.

[uncut cargo]

New member. Intrigued by the ARG you are?

[lime moth]

Yes. Well, I just enjoy the MVs.
Also simulation hypothesis believer.

[summer quartz]

the music bops fr

[acoustic sky]

crap I accidentally fast forwarded and lost my progress

[willow gull]

what

[safe burrow]

[distant rune]

https://vxtwitter.com/Vedal987/status/1755914285652250857

Does this mean the ARG now has moved to reality.

[wispy thistle]

send your real address to the phone number via SMS and Neuro should dispatch a drone to you as soon as possible

[safe burrow]

[crystal urchin]

schizo delivery

[daring acorn]

We’re waiting for him to say again that he loves her and she’s his death

[crystal urchin]

Schizo delivery

[crystal urchin]

[drowsy dagger]

?

[safe monolith]

Feed detected a change in youtube feed hash

https://neuro-arg.github.io/arg-monitoring/?fromDate=2024-02-09&toDate=2024-02-10

Probably arg master looking at video stats or smth

From a quick glance, looks like they looked at hello world

If activity is anything to go by, then maybe hopefully new video soon

[mint sonnet]

😮

[timber whale]

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1093753884738068530/1155564184210247691/listening.gif

[rare glacier]

hen,los arg people it has been a while
what happened in the last 2 months?

[wispy thistle]

some progress on meaning of life but not much else

i created an arg toolbox tho https://neuro-arg.github.io/toolbox.html

[distant rune]

More progress on the meaning of life but none on the ARG.

[cyan hornet]

[safe monolith]

Feed says YouTube feed hash updated again. Something's cooking 👀

This time it was Numbers II

https://neuro-arg.github.io/arg-monitoring/?fromDate=2024-02-13&toDate=2024-02-14

[distant rune]

Oh?

[timid swift]

How confident are we that it isn't some background task like youtube reencoding the video?

[safe monolith]

If it's a re-encoding, we should pick that up via video hash

The last time that happened, YouTube feed didn't change

[timid swift]

hmm, so what is youtube_feed_hash a hash of?

is it a hash of the comments feed?

[unique mason]

Surely we arent coping with the hash changing meaning something

[timid swift]

more like trying to monitor if something we should be aware of changes

for what it's worth, someone left a comment on meaning of life 21 hours ago

[safe monolith]

The channel's RSS feed

Minus likes + number of views

It updates if any descriptions updates, or a new video is published, for example

[timid swift]

Yet nothing's different?

Do we have the raw feed as opposed to a hash?

[safe monolith]

There is also date modified and date created. Raw feed here: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCqOK_pl0LS0e8Lp7HMRDZsw

[timid swift]

also, i just realized that we're just about to hit the arg anniversary.. has it really been a whole year??

[safe monolith]

If date modified changed, but no other video hashes / metadata changes, I'm inclined to believe something else changed. A possible update could be opening the video stats page, although I can't confirm because YouTube is elusive about it

[timid swift]

is this what the changed hash is a hash of?

[safe monolith]

yep, minus likes & views

Those are filtered away before hashing

[timid swift]

do we have previous versions of that feed stored?

[safe monolith]

nope. Definitely should start doing that though

[timid swift]

I think so yes, so we can tell what's actually changed :p

[safe monolith]

But I can say that only date modified changed, because we have metadata hahses for everything else

[timid swift]

is that the <updated> tag?

[safe monolith]

Yes

[timid swift]

Right, now I get what you're saying :D

<updated>2024-02-13T05:18:43+00:00</updated>
<media:group>
<media:title>Numbers II</media:title>

Then the next question, what does updated really mean. Surely the channel viewing statistics wouldn't change this

[unique mason]

Wait what thats insane

[safe monolith]

We've explored this before at some point last year. Despite tags, thumbnails, descriptions and titles being exactly the same, that timestamp still updates

How do we test this, hmm. I'll check with a test channel later

But iirc we did test this, and couldn't find what exactly updated the timestamp

[timid swift]

I don't recall there being subtitles on Numbers II, was it always there? It's autogenerated garbage so it can't be a clue, but I don't remember it being there at all.
I also don't remember this image shaking at the end of the video, but i feel less confident about that

Study also got autogenerated subtitles now

divide

This sort of stuff would count as the video being updated, I'm guessing

[safe monolith]

damn. I'll add that to the list of things to track in the metadata hashes then

I remember the shaking. Don't remember the subtitles

[timid swift]

nice

[wispy thistle]

@safe monolith i'm pretty sure the jsons on neuro-arg.github.io are 100% full (i.e. contain all the medadata)

so you can reference that

[safe monolith]

thanks. I think I can also probably encode all of pytube's initial data minus likes, comments and views. Also want to download the subtitle file for hashing too

[wispy thistle]

looks like yt metadata doesnt include subs

so you'd have to fetch it by other means

[daring acorn]

I don’t have time to translate everything ‘:(

[safe burrow]

[cyan hornet]

use powerfull AI auto translator

[daring acorn]

Iphone

On PC - okay, Iphone - In no way

[safe monolith]

just a quick question, does anyone know if you can selectively update thumbnails? i.e. different thumbnails for different qualities (youtube)

[safe monolith]

Friends, I've updated the ARG Monitoring Tool slightly. Changelog:

• Subtitles (both automatic and not) are now taken in consideration
• You can now go to https://github.com/neuro-arg/arg-monitoring/tree/publish to check for the source feed XMLs (youtubefeed.xml and soundcloudfeed.xml).

Note 1: I've compared against the full YouTube API JSON, and determined that our current set of metadata should cover most reasonable changes.

Note 2: If you receive anything from the feed today, there has actually been one real change: Numbers updated has changed. Since it happened today, we don't have a previous state to compare it to.

[daring acorn]

https://i.imgur.com/5HXyGwA.png
The number is active now! 😮

[willow gull]

[wispy thistle]

not to my knowledge

[timid swift]

anyone feel like calling the phone number again? just to verify it's still the same answering machine. recording would be nice but not required :)

[daring acorn]

I can't myself (my phone plan does not allow long distance calls)

[timid swift]

same, rarely call so i got a dirt cheap plan

[safe monolith]

(for future searches: call on 15/02/2024 17:46 GMT0)

[timid swift]

for real?

[safe monolith]

-11dB btw, my ears almost died when I played it back

[timid swift]

thank you for lowering it!

[daring acorn]

xdx

[timid swift]

i mean i guess we could leave a message

[pulsar glen]

save me dot dot dot

[safe monolith]

sure, i'll leave a bunch of messages, why not

which ones other than that ^

[timid swift]

Play something back at +11 dB as revenge on the recording

[safe monolith]

call on two devices 10 seconds apart

[timid swift]

Hmm

I mean, we could also try some of the other handshake noises or send SMS/MMS too

[safe monolith]

yeah sure, if i can get them on loudspeaker

[safe monolith]

did this

[unique mason]

just send all the videos

[dapper wraith]

this is the same voicemail its always been isn't it? why the sudden excitement

[safe monolith]

yep same one. it's fine to have renewed excitement

[safe monolith]

Hey, the youtube feed hash changed again. All metadata stayed constant

https://neuro-arg.github.io/arg-monitoring/?fromDate=2024-02-15&toDate=2024-02-16

https://github.com/neuro-arg/arg-monitoring/commit/21f68d626960704e321bb58d4fc7057eb2ce6322

Commit, which also shows what changed for the youtube feed

This time it was PSV and study

Which both actually had subtitles to begin with

[wispy thistle]

the order is a clue :schizo:

[safe monolith]

hello world -> numbers 2 -> psv -> study?

... ya know what, actually isn't that far off, omg

isn't this actually the order? hello world -> house (numbers 2 soundcloud ref) -> psv (door closing scene?) -> study (clear reference towards the end)

Oh i forgor about numbers 1

hello world -> numbers 2 -> numbers -> psv -> study

coincidence?

[timid swift]

so what actually changed?

[safe monolith]

I really don't know

Need to do some experiments

[timid swift]

[safe monolith]

On the channel where I uploaded test videos for this: #1112082183235047506 message

The feed shows that that the videos were "updated". Keep in mind that we did these tests specifically for the auto-captions. We also have the following facts:

• When a video is re-encoded, updated does not change. This is visible here: #1112082183235047506 message, and can also be found on the monitoring tool: https://neuro-arg.github.io/arg-monitoring/?fromDate=2024-01-22&toDate=2024-01-23 (Numbers 2 video hash changed, but not YouTube feed hash)
• I did not "update" any of the videos; in fact, I haven't had this channel opened since the experiment (unless schizo)
• The video was "updated" months after we confirmed the auto captions

So I'm inclined to believe that "updated" is just YouTube shenanigans?

I will now open one of the videos in Video Analytics and see if the feed updates. Will give it a cooling off period of up to 24 hours

[tight walrus]

[daring acorn]

where is the comment from staticsama

[daring acorn]

try sending this order as an SMS to the number

[timid swift]

It would make sense. I'd think that the updated field is just to let RSS readers know that there's a new thing to read, not necessarily that there's a change a human would care about.

[safe monolith]

should I exclude monitoring it then?

or maybe its better to be extra schizo in this case

[timid swift]

I mean, you could have a soft trigger so we know if it changes but it doesn't ring the big bell. Track both with and without?

[safe monolith]

I think I can still track it as per normal then. I'm the big bell

[safe monolith]

literally means I didn't touch the videos in any shape or form since they were uploaded. Am using that channel as a testbed for feed changes

although at this point i'm pretty much convinced it's just youtube doing shenanigans

[timid swift]

optimizing and stuff

running their voice AI for subtitles, that kind of thing

[safe monolith]

yeah, maybe. whatever the case is, it's not something we can pick up, at least based on whatever metadata i have access to

it's actually kinda crazy that re-encoding the video doesn't cause a <updated>, but some unseen background magic can

[timid swift]

it could be that it's because a RSS reader would still have to download the video from the same place, and youtube doesn't wanna trigger eager-downloading readers to re-download

[safe monolith]

that's weird though, cuz seemingly nothing happened this time round. that'll still cause downloads 🤔

[timid swift]

true, i'm really just speculating

[crystal urchin]

Must be a clue 👀 https://youtu.be/wQJt0WtB3vE?si=RntUBqeYYO8ge-XQ&t=17

[crystal urchin]

Have this vers added on my list

[drowsy dagger]

It turns out that after the new year only “Filtered” was not updated?

[tulip minnow]

Lmao the bar code reads
<3U2SCHIZOS

[safe monolith]

Yep

[timid swift]

Where's this from?

[tulip minnow]

Saddecc’s art from two days ago

[timid swift]

oh, i don't think it was ever reposted here

[safe burrow]

[dire echo]

I didint look into this for a while
Is the meaning of life video fully analyzed by now

[vapid token]

[wispy thistle]

no

but there hasn't been any new progress either

in the sense that, we think we found every piece there is in meaning of life, but we cant interpret them

and so we're waiting for a clue

[digital radish]

can you put custom metadata in youtube thumbnails?

[timid swift]

other than steganography?

[digital radish]

no

like we found in the soundcloud

[timid swift]

the faint text you mean?

or the start at x end with y?

[wispy thistle]

the thing we found in soundcloud wasn't "hidden" by vedal, it was part of the site

[digital radish]

still one track too

[wispy thistle]

we did "find" the track

namely that it was uploaded on oct 31st

but still no url

[digital radish]

there was a banner/profile picture with a hash or smt

[wispy thistle]

no, it wasnt that

[timid swift]

that's the x to y thing

it was the image as base64, inlined in the html page

[wispy thistle]

it wasnt part of the banner/pfp

yes

[timid swift]

bro, chill

[wispy thistle]

the image being part of the site

[digital radish]

also this

[wispy thistle]

i'm chill bruh, i'm just saying that the picture wasn't uploaded by vedal, but it was still used in the puzzle

[digital radish]

apparently music based on what they've heard

IF DISCORD SENT MY FUCKING MESSAGES

[wispy thistle]

artist radios are autogenerated based on the artist's uploaded tracks

[digital radish]

hmm

[wispy thistle]

no idea whether private tracks count

[digital radish]

so can we find it on a random playlist?

[wispy thistle]

but it wouldnt matter much

[wispy thistle]

i dont think you can add a private track to a playlist

[digital radish]

well you can disable it...

[wispy thistle]

soundcloud disables all social features for private tracks

like liking or commenting

[digital radish]

soundcloud.com/572943/album-name/something idk

amazaing

the entire messafe is gone

[digital radish]

if we were to find the hidden track, it woul be like this?

[safe monolith]

The docs should have the speculated track url formats

[timid swift]

reading the docs?

[dapper wraith]

actually as a third option a private track could also be shared via a (private) playlist

[lilac wing]

what if one of the incomplete codes is the password to the account

[lilac wing]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1156331042949562370/1208583774732943370/image.png?ex=65e3d05a&is=65d15b5a&hm=169bcdeadf019acb656f1aecb3dd69af2158fe75431f807a62df3c33d6882883& || (no embed perms 😔 )||

[safe burrow]

[daring acorn]

Stav’ na avu

[safe burrow]

What

[daring acorn]

))

[drowsy dagger]

Like, put it on your avatar says

[drowsy dagger]

I think this answer is dedicated to that person)

I already like your avatar

[cyan hornet]

300 star ARG forum go

[daring acorn]

He know

[drowsy dagger]

Oh okay

[drowsy dagger]

Done

[jade spruce]

Hiyori's model and Neuro's new model look quite similar. I guess we can expect another clue?

[safe monolith]

The logic doesn't follow

[distant rune]

What? New model?

[uncut cargo]

?

[jade spruce]

Maybe he'll release another video on the ARG channel once he comes back, he did say he was working on a lot of things

[uncut cargo]

Yeah. How's the model connected to that?

[timid swift]

maybe may 15th

[drowsy dagger]

Raising dogs is hard xd

[tight walrus]

Do you think he child proofed a room to prevent neuro from slamming into walls

[drowsy dagger]

[drowsy dagger]

I'm not sure about the walls, but it's better to be safe with steps and edges

[forest locust]

hi everyone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARY_pzXYFl8

is this shit part of arg?

[tawny pasture]

This stuff is pre-Neuro

I very, very highly doubt it

[distant rune]

What if that's what Vedal wants us to think.

[forest locust]

neuro was ready back in 2020 as a bot for osu

[timid swift]

Other AI projects have used Hiyori's model before, wouldn't be surprised if there were more. Also, it's not part of the ARG until the ARG's chain of evidence points to it.

[copper acorn]

but wasnt a vtuber and had no arg so the hiyori stream is still irrelevant

[uncut cargo]

Its run by completely different party. So no, it never was and never will be

how do you come to a conclusion a JP channel thats older than neuro herself could be ARG related.

[cloud crystal]

Hiyori mention = ARG

[wispy thistle]

duh how have we not realized it yet, the Live2D company is part of the ARG

I'm currently outside of their office building and plan to sneak inside to find a new clue

[unique mason]

[topaz cove]

a bait

[forest locust]

Guys

this drone might be part of arg

Hayori escaped with the help of a drone

[hollow garnet]

ardupilot mission planner my beloved

[digital radish]

no

[unique mason]

[untold moon]

I'm catching up with the ARG, how tf are you all so smart

[drowsy dagger]

Vedal can now make a new game

flappy dog

[lilac wing]

your tabs might be part of arg 100%

[timid swift]

The power of specialization!

[safe monolith]

real smart ones are lurking 👀

[safe burrow]

[uncut cargo]

Never underestimate people who watch AI anime girl

[safe monolith]

as part of monitoring, i'm currently attempting (read: failing hard, mostly skill issue) to create a database of image vectors of the starting soon screen. each image vector is a small segment of the starting soon screen. the idea is this:

1. Whenever a stream starts, the script runs and streams the frames.
2. The frames get cropped to the part that really matters (the screen to the left of neuro), then broken up into small squares, and then compared against all vectors in the vector database.
3. Top k closest vectors are selected; I tried MSE and Cosine, almost no difference. Also tried SIFT, but it takes time to calculate; will take too long. Needs more experimenting when I fully implement it
4. If the distance between the vector and the mean of the top closest vector exceeds some threshold (TBD), it is an alarming square. Else, all is good.
5. If the state goes like this: no alarm -> alarm -> no alarm, then ring a bell. Else, it just means the stream has finished the intro sequence.

All this to definitively say QR code is still "dog and giraffe". Ideally, it will also pick up more obvious changes, like the halloween intro.

[digital radish]

are the screens random or are they on a loop?

the screens inside the intro

does every intro begin the same

[timid swift]

neither. some of the moving parts move to the beat of the current song, while others are on a fixed loop

[safe monolith]

There are some differences depending on the stream. E.g. in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hq32Cs6pGo star doesn't move, in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc1ov3cDCDI star moves

[digital radish]

i see

[safe monolith]

would have been much easier on me if everything was deterministic, i wouldn't have to do this small square vector thingy

[timid swift]

keep a hash of each frame

[safe monolith]

with enough time surely everything repeats the exact same way

[pulsar glen]

Database of all possible leg positions?
Surely the next stream won't have a new intro screen without a QR code

[acoustic sky]

what the heck I just watched a yt vid of this

I thought it was fake 😭

[wispy thistle]

[safe monolith]

attempting to quantize 100 frames with k-means

[safe burrow]

[safe monolith]

if my code is right (big assumption), even quantizing in a 1:2 ratio destroys enough information to meaningfully infer anything about the QR code using k means quantization. the rest of the intro screen is just too noisy and it drowns out QR code changes

although i'm suspecting it's got to do with me destroying dimensionality since scikit learn's kmeans only takes a 2D vector, of which only one of them is meant for features

5 hours of life dedicated to strangling numpy to work the way i want it to 😔

maybe i need to PCA it first

ok but, given an unlimited sized database, i should be able to pick up only the qr code differences

i think the only way to proceed is to specialize what this thing is monitoring, but that'll probably be a last resort

[timid swift]

https://tenor.com/view/good-burger-some-of-these-gif-12933391

[safe monolith]

minus the leg and star moving around, do all windows appear in exact positions?

[digital radish]

i think so

[safe monolith]

i have two ideas, both exploiting spatial locality, although i probably have to find time to actually implement them. instead of approaching the problem as "given this square, does it match any square anywhere ever?", i'll approach the problem as "given this square, does it match the same square anywhere ever?"

so in other words, I can try solving:

1. "have I ever seen this square with color A before in my life?", requiring big database / good quantization / good guess;
2. "If current square at current frame is color A, what is the probability that the same square has a color of B in the next frame? (replace color with any metric that can represent a square)" (this will need a time-series forecasting algo, trained per square), raising an alarm bell if the probability is really low. (edit: actually, it might not even need a time-series forecasting algo, just a simple decision tree should also work)

(1) is static and probably unlikely to work well, unless I have unlimited memory. (2) is probably the best bet, but it's probably going to be fairly stochastic

the metric i'm gonna be using is likely sum of magnitude of MSE of all pixel values between frame x and frame x + 1 unless someone else can think of a better way, i'm too basic to think of any creative method

in a nutshell i dunno what i'm doing, it'll mean something one of the days

[safe burrow]

[pulsar glen]

are you scanning for changes just in the qr or for any changes on the starting screen at all?
If it's just the qr, since you're relying on the qr being in the same part of the screen why not only scan that part ofr a match and if one isn't found within 2 minutes or something it triggers

[safe monolith]

that'll be my last resort. the primary purpose is still to confidently say "oh that's still dog and giraffe", but ideally i want to detect any other changes as well

doing it this way also future-proofs this detection thingy, i just have to train it on any new intro

[pulsar glen]

fair

[unique mason]

the correct word to use would be:

but also there are so many talented people working on this

actual s

[tulip minnow]

It has been another month

I’m back for another prediction

I bet there will be a clue within a week or two

Time flies

Also vedal has been active lately

Should be able to see him in march

Or we’ll have to wait for another month

[distant rune]

How long must we live like this.

[tulip minnow]

Two months should be enough for him

[agile swallow]

Maybe clue was in the music from SoundCloud?

[tulip minnow]

Yeah if we can access it

Should tell us how in the next clue

[timber whale]

Emotional support Fumo

[digital radish]

yk hes gonna return with another qr code

its just a matter of time until the next stream

he said high chance before the month ends

[safe monolith]

our patience will pay off eventually

[digital radish]

or it will finally break

we will cause chaos in the entire server

we will not be contained

[timid swift]

When was this?

oh you mean high chance of stream before end of month, I thought QR for a sec

[digital radish]

bread is going insane

[timid swift]

Oh, there's no going here, it's already happened

[unique mason]

guys

its evil karaoke

[digital radish]

guys

[unique mason]

surely

[digital radish]

its evil

hes just streaming to share the new qr code

[unique mason]

wtf same timing

[digital radish]

shut up

i copied you

[unique mason]

[drowsy dagger]

[daring acorn]

Where was it...

[narrow turtle]

It's all connected

[safe burrow]

[drowsy dagger]

Oo also a translator from DeepL)

[digital radish]

ish tetris

disapointment

[safe monolith]

looks like tetris yep

[unique mason]

[digital radish]

did the screen just glitch?

naw im just too schizo

[pulsar glen]

if anything, that's the first karaoke stream since singing v3 that lyrics sang in the intro.
Surely a clue

[digital radish]

AAA

WHAT IS THAT

[safe monolith]

wat the

[digital radish]

you saw it too right?

kay im getting the vod

[timid swift]

There's actually something? I wasn't looking, just listening

[digital radish]

fuck we cant get vods anymore?

[safe monolith]

maybe just cool karoke effect

[whole sorrel]

Time to analyze every frame of a 2h VOD

[digital radish]

doubt

there was a string of letters

[timid swift]

was it chat?

[dapper wraith]

you sure you want all of them

[digital radish]

tbh does look like nonsense

[timid swift]

so you're saying it's a clue

[daring acorn]

check effects before next song

[safe monolith]

oh

it's the random song selection thingy

on one hand that is cool on the other :reallymad:

[digital radish]

i see

[safe monolith]

now to figure out if it's always the same, and if it means anything

[lost niche]

everything has a meaning

[timid swift]

surely it must mean something

[lost niche]

everything is a clue

[digital radish]

so depressed

[fresh python]

I came here to laugh at you all

[drowsy dagger]

The background is very cool, depressing, but so cool

[fresh python]

(and also because I am curious if you guys found anything yet)

[dapper wraith]

the length of the random string matches the length of the actual song title. so it will definitely be different for each song

[finite knot]

Is this the room where the schizophrenic people go?

[timid swift]

The crazy long left this room. It got impatient. Only sane people remaining

[rotund pagoda]

did you see a strange code or symbols before the track started playing on the stream?

[safe monolith]

pain dot exe

[daring acorn]

yes

[timid swift]

oh, i saw it this time. Yeah, just a shuffle thingy

[daring acorn]

either it's random or I'm schizophrenic

[wind crypt]

hi arg people

[safe monolith]

let's see, here's 1: https://clips.twitch.tv/DreamyCoweringHawkRlyTho-RYNai-Zmj6CzgFml

gonna check the next one

[wind crypt]

someone sent me a bunch of pics to forward here

they dont have embed perms

person in question wanted to know if this qr code is new or already known about

[daring acorn]

yep this qr

[safe monolith]

minimally orange piece is known cuz I'm checking specifically for it

[wind crypt]

cc @daring acorn

[safe monolith]

likely actually just fully known

[timid swift]

i mean, it looks like the same, but i guess we can compare the pieces to the old one

[digital radish]

its the same yeah

[daring acorn]

Sorry about this

[safe monolith]

hopefully whatever i'm building now can say it for sure eventually

[digital radish]

nah dont worry

[daring acorn]

I'm just new here

[digital radish]

its fine

[safe monolith]

npnp, welcome

[timid swift]

yes, it's the same. And no worries (:

Have a look at this if you're curious
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mttkOpO5Mj_g2rP5DUWcLkP-obYBDfUhFx7oGtE0BKs/edit#heading=h.30qcsc29266k

[daring acorn]

Sorry

[timid swift]

Don't be sorry tho!

[daring acorn]

did you compare?

suddenly there are 3 pixels taking shape

Today, by the way, is sad

[timid swift]

I lazily pasted a crop of one of the image provided into the doc and looked at the other pieces then eyeballed it (then of course deleted the pic i pasted cause gotta clean up!)

[safe monolith]

https://clips.twitch.tv/AnnoyingSolidPorcupineWutFace-qNlejTXo8bYBecLP second shuffling

[drowsy dagger]

It’s terrible how efficient you are

[digital radish]

actually

thats not random characters

its actually encoded

ill send a random one

T<%W s yeAN9)G NE^z9>AF

[timid swift]

proof?

[safe monolith]

i split both my clips to frames, i'll check if there's an equivalent one

[digital radish]

nvm its probably random characters

[daring acorn]

correct

[digital radish]

yeah thats

it makes no sense

[daring acorn]

but it’s worth going through each one

[digital radish]

nah

[daring acorn]

If I were a curator, I would have stuffed something in there

[safe monolith]

i love frame by frame analysis

[digital radish]

M e l a i
4 _ ) } )

[timid swift]

absolutely. One frame could be non-random bs

[digital radish]

l is ) and i is )

so its probably random shit

[timid swift]

more than likely yes, but anything's possible, really

[cunning osprey]

They seem to have randomly placed spaces, doesn't look like a well-known encoding like base64 to me
I'm guessing it's something like a Caesar cipher with a random offset and invalid characters replaced with space
Could probably confirm that by just collecting a bunch of strings and doing some statistics

[safe monolith]

the random thingy gets fast enough to become 1 string per frame

[jade spruce]

Clue?

[safe monolith]

after a while. not sure if it's just an encoding issue

[coral hazel]

Enigma machine /j

[daring acorn]

base64: T^]4 i donN)'t NE9)M NF%

[timid swift]

it's not base64, invalid characters

[digital radish]

mhm

[daring acorn]

fck this random

[safe monolith]

ah, did you get this from the second clip

[digital radish]

si

[safe monolith]

it's in frame 286, i just wasted time

[timid swift]

I mean, we could transcribe all the frames if we're feeling extra

[digital radish]

can i get it in an mp4

the 2nd clip

[safe monolith]

can confirm that this is not found in clip 1

[digital radish]

arigatoue

[safe monolith]

unless arg master evil, surely if code then it must appear multiple times

[timid swift]

is it always/usually the same number of characters as the "target" text it finally lands on?

[safe monolith]

lemme upload the 5 frames before a text

[digital radish]

oh what a blessing

it works so well

hold up wrong code

[timid swift]

the spaces line up

[digital radish]

let me test ocr accuracy

[safe monolith]

for these 5, yeah. lemme check to see if there are any exceptions

[timid swift]

unless we're stripping spaces then this has to be nonsense if the spaces always line up

Bitter choco Decoration - syudou
EC7\x{ ujoVC &}qDc`UZs] E \Mi5T^
$J2V<S Evru4 "!*=cbasXn o yEBfKu

[digital radish]

sad

accuracy isnt high

EC7\x{ ujOVC &}qDc'UZs] E \Mi5T*

might be cuz im too zoomed out

[digital radish]

what are the resolution of these pics? and size?

[safe monolith]

should be stream quality, so 1080p

it definitely is 1080p**

[digital radish]

yeah

can you reupload them in 1920:1080 or bigger?

[safe monolith]

they are already 1920x1080

[digital radish]

fml typical discord saving images as 100x100

[dapper wraith]

the key is the difference of the binary values between transitions

[digital radish]

proper saving

[safe monolith]

can (visually) confirm that all of them should be the same length

[digital radish]

shitty discord's saving

[safe monolith]

discord skill issue obviously

[timid swift]

easy, use image thumbnail instead

[jade spruce]

clue??

[safe monolith]

[digital radish]

ocr results still cringe

[timid swift]

get better OCR

[digital radish]

shut up

[hollow garnet]

is your ocr better with white text or black text

because iirc they're trained on books which are generally on white paper

[digital radish]

tbh i wasnt using black text cuz the background destroys my eyes

and kinda fucks the ocr for some reason

ah nvm, just have to invert treshold levels

[unique mason]

guys i dont think this will give anything

[digital radish]

well yeah

[safe monolith]

clearly this is training for the eventual return

[unique mason]

on another note tho, songs r absolutely banging

[hollow garnet]

hm

i sure hope this is -> and not some fancy unicode

ok yeah this looks correct

[fresh python]

ya'll actually doing it

[safe monolith]

we're also enjoying the stream, trust us

[unique mason]

[hollow garnet]

wait neuro can stream

i thought it was just an arg

[safe monolith]

btw, i ran the monitoring tool just for fun

[unique mason]

[digital radish]

"just for fun"
gets a fuckton of results

"so all of the videos changed"

[safe monolith]

feed hash has changed, but i think it's not a big bell moment

[unique mason]

[digital radish]

whats a feed hash

[unique mason]

more comments or something else?

[safe monolith]

https://github.com/neuro-arg/arg-monitoring/commit/2eb895558cb26fb8c1606158dd345dd97f108ca3

here is the diff

funny, the date updated changed 2 days ago. for reference this monitoring tool updates every day automatically, yet this change only reflected today.

means nothing to us though, cuz all the metadata and subtitles are the same

[safe burrow]

I love Tetris

[safe monolith]

anyways, after working on the intro sequence matching thingy for a long time, i've decided to change my approach again, because figuring out whether 841 squares changed per frame will never work with realtime. also my image processing-fu is not good enough

first, we have a database of pre-defined 20x20 squares we wanna compare against. they need to obey spatial locality; i.e. same location. if they don't obey spatial locality, it runs 2 magnitudes slower

second, this database needs to be small. so I can only realistically track a very small number of squares at a time. anything bigger is impractical, at least to me. (0.02x realtime speed, not very useful)

third, i use multi channel SSIM as a metric. this is a little slower than MSE, but it is less sensitive to changes that don't matter

i've tested just a small 20x20 QR square with some streams, and given we set the threshold just right (in my experience, 0.95 is a good number, where 1.0 is a perfect match), we can detect even the smallest of changes

so unfortunately i didn't meet my secondary objective, which is to write a script that can be incrementally updated on any new intros, but i'll make up the skill issue with maintenance work :^)

the above method should allow me to run it on a github runner, and write a twitch stream trigger s.t. the monitoring tool runs on every new stream

other than the QR code and tetris, is there anything else that is interesting enough to track?

[distant rune]

Mm?

[safe monolith]

same tbh

[tulip minnow]

I feel like my prediction is a bit too precise

Is vedal lurking here?

like Vedal announced the stream almost the next day

Anyway

The next clue i believe will drop in march 3 or 13

3 is more promising tho

[dapper wraith]

or maybe it's on the 18th/19th

[tulip minnow]

Maybe

New qrcode

[safe burrow]

[unique mason]

itll be on the 15th

[safe monolith]

clue? I hardly know 'er

[timid swift]

watch it actually happening on may 15th

[safe burrow]

I love May

[cyan hornet]

who is May?

[unique mason]

May is May

[uncut cargo]

who may be this may person?

[safe monolith]

May from pokemon?

[torn orbit]

[dim oyster]

sliding titles are also info? sounds amazing

[tulip minnow]

Looks like march 3 is not the answer

Unless he decides to stream later

Which i will be asleep

[hollow garnet]

did we ever look at the music videos from the songs in the arg because they seem not unrelated

currently cooking something

[timid swift]

which music videos are we talking here?

[hollow garnet]

the ones from the songs sang by neuro in the halloween video

sorry that was originally in my message but removed it by accident

[timid swift]

oh, right. The music video of the original song that neuro sings a cover of.

[hollow garnet]

it's a bit rushed and a little scuffed

[timid swift]

looks good to me

[hollow garnet]

I sorta tried to realign some of the major parts where it goes off sync with neuro later

[timid swift]

What could we extract from this side by side?

[hollow garnet]

idk I feel like the first song at least slightly matches up with it's video

if it isn't useful enjoy the neuro-miku duet

[hollow garnet]

ok so i kinda had to rush off after sending this but my main point was how close the proper glitching matches up with the start of the stairs falling at 2:45

maybe that is what fallen down means

[safe burrow]

We wait

[safe monolith]

Hi friends, small update for intro deviation detection thing. I've (partially) deployed something rudimentary using SSIM scores and ground truth squares into the monitoring tool. Ideally, on every stream, the monitoring tool gets triggered automatically and looks for squares we deem important, rating it to how similar it is to the ground truths. This has been designed to run as close to real-time as possible, so we get a report as soon as the intro finished rolling. The threshold is defined by comparing the ground truth square with some number of other videos, and then calculating some sort of interval.

If the intro of a stream has scores that falls below that interval, then we say the ARG integrity of the intro is compromised. Otherwise, at least the parts we care about is unlikely to be compromised, but it doesn't mean there are absolutely no changes.

There are still some changes I would like to make (e.g. package cache so we don't get cold boot issues, nearly automatic selection of ground truth squares from a reference, etc), but I think it's ready. We'll only know during the next stream

tl;dr schizo from neuro arg made thing see if dog and giraffe / tetris still dog and giraffe / tetris every stream

^ the above are monitored under neuro_twitch_identifiers and evil_twitch_identifiers. each "true" represents if the squares were similar (or not). currently the intervals used are scuffed ^ 999 because I only considered 2 neuro vods and 1 evil vod in total; currently in the process of including more vods

[tulip minnow]

Weekly report

[digital radish]

@safe monolith thought of an idea;
get 3 minutes worth of black&white pixels from the intros, add a black box near the timer (if you want, its better this way tho) and do the pixel average

explaining a little better:

the black & white pixels come from tresholding, its better to only use the white pixels but you can use black or both

a "black box" is just erasing the timer part

and doing the average is simple math

[safe monolith]

making the image black and white erases too much information imo. Calculating an average over 3 mins also erases too much information, cuz imagine if the qr code changes, it will only minutely affect the average. It would be indistinguishable from compression / artifacting from the encoder.

Even though it looks the same to us, every video is actually slightly different in terms of randomness introduced due to encoding

I had a graph at some point that compares pixel averages to SSIM scores. They spike at the same time, but SSIM scores are less sensitive to noise

[safe burrow]

[rare glacier]

random question
whats happening?
havent been here for a while
anythink neww

[timid swift]

as always you'll have to check the timeline - we can't remember when you were here last for you.. :)

[hollow garnet]

i now realize this isn't even the original video for rolling girl

[digital radish]

encoding wouldnt matter with m3u8

• treshold can be adjusted

[safe monolith]

Encoding is an issue from the streamer -> twitch. It introduces noise, which means that strictly speaking, even if the exact same sequence of frames were streamed, they will still be entirely different

The thresholds approach is a good idea, the tool is using it atm. The problem is more turning the frames black & white, then calculating pixel average across 3 minutes. We lose too much information to do a meaningful comparison

Your idea will definitely work if there is no lossy algo anywhere in the pipeline

[hollow garnet]

i wonder if you could posterise or something

[safe monolith]

Well tbh also varies. In the same 3 minutes, maybe QR code appears twice instead of thrice, which also ruins the average

[safe monolith]

Hmm, it would be hard to make it work for evil tetris pieces tho

I think the reds/red-like especially. If the structure (the semi-black lines around the red squares) is not preserved, it'll be hard to tell if something changed

but it would somewhat solve encoding noise

Yeah maybe I can run both. The current setup for particular changes, and a new one using posterize + rgb pixel value average as a big change detection

[safe monolith]

I'll experiment when I'm free (not soon ) and let ya'll know

[fierce trout]

is there anywhere to check the progress?

i keep getting this for the documentation

[safe monolith]

Our official docs are the google docs

[timid swift]

Which page are you using? You might have more success with the docs, yea (:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/17KrbPUAVu4wDTbj3sBtWTnjRsjDTCdh89F_5L1LvX0A/edit#heading=h.j7yktin3xotl

[pulsar glen]

That website is still in pinned messages, proving that mods don't look at this channel.
Uncontrolled schizo

[safe monolith]

mods are not real

[timid swift]

oh, that's where it's from

[wispy thistle]

mods are a figment of our imagination

just like the arg

[digital radish]

ye its down

even i forgot about it

since i created it

[safe burrow]

[brittle musk]

next time surely…

[timber whale]

Emotional support Fumo deployed

[raven bay]

Has the ARG been solved?

[safe monolith]

[daring acorn]

er n yep

[unique mason]

[safe monolith]

crap, are we gonna get pranked on april fools

[safe burrow]

Just so that it doesn’t feel too empty, and this is the first time I’ve done subtitles seriously, or well, in general, I had fun
And I wish I had cut the video.

[tulip minnow]

I can see

The clue is near

It will come in the end

Just two more days

[tulip minnow]

Also

Digging back

I found that this is probably some sort of public source code in anaconda

https://www.anaconda.com/download

Idk help me

[hollow garnet]

it looks like ssh?

though it's pretty mangled

[safe monolith]

windows pathname
logs in as root
somehow still localhost

what is happening on that shirt

[hollow garnet]

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/398410/what-is-the-file-anaconda-ks-cfg-in-root
this file is mentioned too

[tulip minnow]

This is what I deciphered

[hollow garnet]

where is that art from again

[tulip minnow]

Oh that’ll take me a while to find lmao

That’s from January 30th

[safe monolith]

https://discord.com/channels/574720535888396288/1201523099267502110

[tulip minnow]

Thank you

idk how to use the pure word format

There’s a thing looks like p but not really so I wrote @
And underscore are the parts too distorted to understand

[hollow garnet]

(for reference a normal centos login looks something like this)

so i'd suggest your local login line should probably be last login

only place i can think of that'd have arrows is systemd logs, though i don't think that's whats being shown in the text

[potent cobalt]

It looks to me like improperly displayed ANSI escape codes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=ANSI+escape+code

Likely from an older version of conhost that didn't support them.

[safe monolith]

Yeah it's ANSI escape codes, particularly for color probably

[hollow garnet]

yeah i realise now that systemctl only puts them on the right aswell

[abstract horizon]

Very good

[unique mason]

anyone else just feel a slight wave of nostalgia when rewatching the Numbers video

its been 10 months since it released

[safe monolith]

time isn't real

[safe burrow]

[river mantle]

only 2 months for ARG anniversary

[uncut cargo]

Let's prepare birthday wishes for her

For study I mean

[safe monolith]

inb4 we get tomfooleried, ARG ends 1 day before anniversary

[lost niche]

The arg will never end

[unique mason]

im still surprised we havent selected a name for study yet

i advocate for Iris (even if it is incredibly unlikely to be the actual name) cause of AIris

[uncut cargo]

study is a good name

change my mind

[unique mason]

fair enough

[azure oyster]

personally i would just stick with "study-sama" and wait for a potential official name from the arg

[uncut cargo]

Imagine its rachel

[timid swift]

Why do we need to label them with names? It seems to me like solidifying a highly speculative interpretation of the lore

[azure oyster]

it would also be confusing if we named her Iris and then the actual AIris became an official character later

[unique mason]

[unique mason]

ye that is fair

iris was just a suggestion, tho i do feel like we need to decide on what to call her, ig study-sama for now can work.

but everyone calls her by a slightly different name so it can get confusing

[uncut cargo]

well to be fair there's no reason to not use a name neuro mentioned

[unique mason]

not to stereotype, but i can't see study as a blonde

||dunno if thats offensive ||

||atp anything can be ||

[uncut cargo]

Honestly I can't imagine her in any color except monochrome

[unique mason]

[uncut cargo]

too much of same image

[azure oyster]

at what point did being blonde get mentioned

are you guys using name stereotypes

[unique mason]

[uncut cargo]

I didn't mention a thing

[unique mason]

[safe monolith]

let's call them bob

[tulip minnow]

Yeah bob sounds good

Let’s call them bob

[wispy thistle]

today i dreamed of a new arg video being released

(:schizo: new clue)

[azure oyster]

it was revealed to you in a dream

[wispy thistle]

too bad i don't remember anything about it (i only remember that it got posted in #neuro-network before this channel for some reason, and it had a weird title)

[safe monolith]

i'd say you're schizo, but i had a similar dream some days back. Clue was on a stream

we sane frfr

[tulip minnow]

Yes the clue will come out today frfr

It definitely will

[digital radish]

theres gonna

[distant rune]

Prophet Vanor!

[distant girder]

wait, it has been 3 months since meaning of life?

[wispy thistle]

we probably have something that allows us to continue, but if we do it's in a hard to reach place and requires so much schizo we find it easier to just wait for the next clue

[distant girder]

yeah there is 100% something in there that allows us to continue and i feel like we even have all the parts required to continue but they just don't fit together yet

[unique mason]

[unique mason]

yea
it was the same with the two numbers videos, we could have solved it before but weren't schizo enough, so got a clue to solve it with public static void

[distant girder]

i feel like this entire merging thing is significant to the solution

[wispy thistle]

imo, the halloween intro may... or may not have something else

[unique mason]

mabe

[hollow garnet]

youve reminded me to do this

ok what the hell resolve i have two audio tracks and yet you somehow export 4?

[unique mason]

how

[hollow garnet]

i wish i knew

[hollow garnet]

ok there we go

[uncut cargo]

[coral hazel]

Hi arg people !
I'm just passing here to ask, do we know what are used as the vocal for study ? (what synth-V ? Or what utau ? Or Original ?)
I ask because I heard a "very similar voice" that made me think about the arg from a song using a synth-V vocal

[safe monolith]

its highly speculated to be synth-V, Eleanor Forte, but we have no confirmations other than "sounds like it "

some speculations about last shot trained vocals too

there was a schizo theory about a real counterpart's voice used to train the voice for study

[timid swift]

Personally I think it sounds too good for synths and AI, based on following the development of both. But in the end it can all be reduced to speculations - we don't know

[coral hazel]

Thank ! That the synth-V that cover the song I listen to, so I now personally think it may be it ?
if someone want the song, (so they kind of understand what I mean by being similar ?) send me a mp.
I will not post it here as I do not want to pollute here

[safe monolith]

tbh you can go ahead and just post it here. I don't exactly have the audio setup & sense. Someone else here might be able to match the vocals better than I can

[coral hazel]

oh ok !, so here it is for reference: https://youtu.be/F67ErmWEN4k

[safe monolith]

cast a wide net, never know. Maybe a music genius is lurking 👁️ 👁️

[coral hazel]

I was checking the other author work cause why not
check the last Eleanor Forte song
and.... the font...

it really look like hello world font

and the background have the same vibe as the arg

that just... a strange felling to have so much similarity

[uncut cargo]

[timid swift]

The font was identified in the docs, If I'm not mistaken it's common enough that we can even write in it in the docs

[hollow garnet]

fwiw

[uncut cargo]

That would be funny

[coral hazel]

If that a common font that explain some of the similarities
and we should write it in the doc its nice it's written in the doc

[uncut cargo]

That's one hell of a coincidence nonetheless

[hollow garnet]

idk i've seen that font around a lot of art places, not sure where though

[timid swift]

at most we could prove that one inspired the other, but that wouldn't let us solve anything

[uncut cargo]

True, true

[safe monolith]

while true, it's kinda nice to just bask in the coincidences

(at best we can meta profile the tones of the arg, but that's stretching it)

[timid swift]

fair (: So long we don't start stalking RL people :p

[safe monolith]

ew 3d people smh

[timid swift]

true 2d person enjoyer

[hollow garnet]

haha, i had a listen and heard this in eleanor forte and it completely threw me lol

[safe monolith]

arg ptsd real

[coral hazel]

For me, it was this line on the first video I send that triggered me (just missheard cold -> old)

[timid swift]

The timbre is very similar-sounding, I'll grant you that, and much more compelling than what I've heard before.
What makes me still question if it's the same is that this song (and the channel's latest song as well) is full of tiny little voice glitches not present in Study.
If we presuppose that it is the same synth, then it would have to be a later version of the synth, operated by someone who knows how to work it better, and/or cleaned up in post.
I find that possibility more believable now

[coral hazel]

I tried to listen to differences from the video, I referenced and the arg song and to me, it looks like there is strange pronunciation of some consonance (more prononced but less clear ?) I do not find (often ?) in the arg song
arg song "sound more smooth" maybe bc of speed diference ?

[safe monolith]

if it's minor enough, it probably can tuned / adjusted with synthesizer software. never worked with it before though, but i've seen some videos of people playing around with synth-v to know it might be possible

[tulip minnow]

I think they just use the original voice of neuro and evil for the arg songs tho

I remember it was a similar voice

Vedal accidentally leaked it when he was talking about the future mommy ai vtuber

Can’t find it tho

[agile swallow]

Isn't it just Ashley without pitch?

[safe monolith]

interesting, but i don't remember this. gonna need a source if you have one

[digital radish]

leaked or not, v1 and v2 voice was already replicated

well, early v2 voice

theres been so many changes to it...

v1 is ashley with 16 pitch (?)

cant remember well

v2 is more complex tho

[safe monolith]

based on what you've heard, does it sound anything like study?

[digital radish]

azure ashley 1.52 pitch

[tulip minnow]

Lemme search that

[digital radish]

v1

[tulip minnow]

No one clipped it

I’ll have to search that in raw streams

So fun

Neuro archiver my beloved

I’ll put that to the todo list

[coral hazel]

Wait, as I was not here for some time, I read the timeline and saw the track & brute forcing the short link.
Excluding potential rate limit, why can't we just lunch hundreds of io thread/process making request to the SoundCloud api ?

[wispy thistle]

because there's literally quadrillions of potential secret keys

that's not bruteforceable

[timid swift]

Almost as if it was designed to not be bruteforceable It's easy to just add more bytes to a random id. And even if it wasn't, this ARG isn't about hacking soundcloud ;)

[safe burrow]

[unique mason]

[coral hazel]

Yeah true

[fervent flame]

whoa who is this