![[0722] Steganography / The Missing Link / Latvian Dreams](/comics/2015-09-28-0722-steganography-the-missing-link-latvian-dreams.png "[0722] Steganography / The Missing Link / Latvian Dreams")
I have not yet decided if I’ll offer a “solution” for this strip on Thursday. So if you don’t get it, you should check out the comment section if another reader has already found out what’s going on here.
- Woo: I’ve looked everywhere…
- Woo: … but I just couldn’t find the joke!
- Sandra: Yeah, we hid it very well today.
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… Brain … Hurt!
Clue no.1:
Sandra is reading “Zita The Spacegirl”.
Woo didn’t look at a histogram of the image.
There are two shades of black and two shades of white. Make pure black (0% white) lighter, and the almost-white (99.6% white) darker. In other words, exchange the colors of the first and second-to-last palette entries.
And I’ve never watched Prometheus, so still no potato.
Heya, i found at least a hidden image.
It’s still not funny, but hey… Maybe there is some more. Might be looking into it some more later.
If you don’t want to find it yourself, here’s the decoded image.
@ Qatifa:
There is what seems to be morse code in the bottom of the decoded image frames.
Do not have the time to decode that right now. Maybe someone else?
Otherwise later.
Okay, did it anyways. Too curious.
Will not post the solution, but for easier translation here is the morse code in ascii:
- .-- --- .-.. .- - ...- .. .- -. -.-. .- .-. - --- --- -. .. ... - .-.. --- --- -.- .- - -.-. .-.. --- ..- -.. ... .-.-.- --- -. . ... . . ... -- .. .-.. .. -. --. .-. . .- -.. . .-. .-.-.- --- - .... . .-. ... . . .. -- .--. --- ... ... .. -... .-.. . -.. .-. . .- -- .-.-.- .. ... ... .- -- . -.-. .-.. --- ..- -.. .-.-.-
@ Cervisia:
How the hell did you think to look at a histogram of the colors in the image? Who does that?
@ Xezlec:
Hiding data using very similar-looking colors is a common steganography technique.
And I noticed that the image was only black-and-white (before being downscaled by the browser), unlike the other images.
You guys are GOOD! I never would have found the hidden image. I wouldn’t have even known how to extract it if you had told me how it was encoded. I may or may not have found the Morse code, But at least I can translate Morse code (after googling for a key).
I still don’t get the joke.
I think it’s a tehno geek inside joke. I’m more of a math geek.
@ Lookfar:
I just found my error. It makes sense now.
Not good enough… If breaking of 4th wall hasn’t been so often in this comic, then maybe… But no… Joke was too easy to find…
Joke was easy to find, but solution to the test… Erm… I’m too lazy to learn how to work with images… Software development is more than enough for me for now… I don’t even do User Interfaces at all… (Server side is what I do)
What?………wait……..what? Okay, there’s morse code……what? I’m gonna go cry now.
Apparently wasn’t as lazy as I thought I was, and was able to decode it myself using Corel Photo-Paint. Took me around 10 tries to finally find the right set of picture adjustments, but… Is that soda hallucinogenic or something…? And Morse code, well it sounds more like a proverb rather than a joke… Well I still consider joke to be only in the main strip…
SPOILER ALERTSPOILER ALERTSPOILER ALERT
It says
Should’ve put in Loss somewhere.
That is really clever!
@ jclone:
Found that. A little easier to simply right-click the page and hit “View page source.”
Woo: And how is this going to be implemented on the paper edition?
Sandra: Er… invisible ink?
Cloud: Mirror writing?
Landon: UV fluorescent dye?
Larisa: Braille?
Richard: Ultra-thin sounder, as used in birthday cards and so on?
Hand of God: Uh.. vorsprung durch Technik?
Shadow: Scratch and sniff? I think I could just about translate it into fox scent…
>:=)>
@ Lucario:
You found it in his comment in the source… actually the message is hidden in black on black inside the Comic in Morse code (when i say black on black i mean black on slightly less black (darkness of 0 and 1 (out of 255))
Wo’s metaphysisch wurde war’s besonders eindrucksvoll!
20 seconds with GIMP:
http://imgur.com/tFDIzLP
Not sure if I missed anything.
I am happy to see woo again… I guess?
Everything else is making me scratch my head
It reminds me of Futurama the Episode how Slurm is manufactured. (Fry & the Slurm Factory)
Cervisia wrote:
Huh. And here I just started painting sectors green in Ms Paint until it made sense.
I am so confused. So very, very confused.
Wow, that was very well hidden! Very nice Idiocracy reference as well!
If you’ve never seen them before, look up the ads for Brawndo. They’re by the same guy who made the PowerThirst ads (also watch those if you haven’t), but Brawndo is a real, actual beverage.
Sadly, without knowing what stenography was, when I (re)read that woo couldn’t “FIND” the joke, it hit on me to examine the comic (image) in greater detail.
However. I now wonder how many other strips they did this with
So I tried to figure it out and all I found was that Lativan Dreams is a knitting book. So I was like “let’s see what they found in the comments section”. -_-
@ jclone:
Is it a reference to something?
I had to check the top of my head… to make sure the joke wasn’t on me.
heres what i got from the morse code let me know if i did it wrong:
– .– — .-.. .- – …- .. .- -. -.-. .- .-. – — — –
T w o f a t v I a n c a r t o o n
. .. … – .-.. — — -.- .- – -.-. .-.. — ..- -..
I s t l o o k a t c l o u d
… .-.-.- — -. . … . . … — .. .-.. .. -. –. .-.
S o n e s t t s I l I a g r
. .- -.. . .-. .-.-.- — – …. . .-. … . . .. — .–.
T a d e r o t h e r s e e I m p
— … … .. -… .-.. . -.. .-. . .- — .-.-.- .. …
O s s I b l e d r e a m I s
… .- — . -.-. .-.. — ..- -.. .-.-.-
S a m t c l o u d
https://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/14q1lq/collection_of_my_favorite_latvian_jokes/c7filtd
Spoilers. If you want to figure out the Latvian joke for yourself, don’t read on.
It took me a while to figure out the Latvian joke as well. Latvia was apparently one of Russia’s satellite nations that was very poor and couldn’t afford basic things like food. The original joke is that two Latvians look at the cloud and one sees a potato and the other sees and impossible dream, so it’s basically saying that basic food (potato) is impossible because they were so poor. The Sandra and Woo version instead replaces potato with “happy reader”, making a joke that it’s impossible for the readers to be happy.
@ Cervisia:
The joke is from Idiocracy more than Prometheus. Tying the two movies together is hilarious, though.
I immediately wondered why the image was in source quality. 😉
I went to the other Zita tagged pictures to see if I could figure out if there was another hidden image. I couldn’t find one but I suck at this stuff lol
At least Sandy closed the book on it.
That feel when you’re actually Latvian…
I can get both comics to show up in photoshop, one overlayed on the other… But I can’t figure out how to only get the hidden one.
Can anyone help me out? I just want to learn a new skill.
People are talking about histogram and colors in the image and I am thinking: “Is six thirty in the morning, why I’m trying to figure out this?”
@ Eagle0600:
HOW YOU HAVE DONE IT >,< What tool did you use?
The look of desperation in his face really gets to me. The poor thing.
@ Petah-Petah:
Do you really not see it?
A girl in a bed
A worried person going through a door
Two people talking
The elements are there, just not in the usual order
Two comics for the price of one….I uhh…dont have any actual editing/filtering software on my work laptop so its very, VERY hard to read the second. But it IS there.
Did anybody check whether the pattern of books is a barcode? Perhaps there’s a hidden meaning in the proportions of all the rectangles in the first panel, or in the locations of their corners. Can anyone find the exact page of the comic she’s reading? Are there hidden dots above, below, or within certain letters in the text, or perhaps a mapping to them elsewhere in the image? Maybe the lettering uses two or more subtly different fonts. We could check the raw image data and the rest of the HTML page for hidden text. Maybe there’s a correllation between the letters in the visible comic and the letters in the hidden comic that produces an even better-hidden message. We might be able to make anagrams from those letters plus or minus the letters in related phrases such as “procyon lotor” or the names of other characters. If it weren’t a digital image, we could also look for microprinting, watermarks, magnetic fibres, fluorescent dyes, or taggants.
Or is the joke just the idea that the joke is hidden, a sort of self-affirming recursion? In that case, would finding the joke spoil it?
@ liphttam1:
I worked the source file with an hexa editor, but you may probably get the same result by modifying the palette in a painting software.
There are mostly four colors used, full black (00 red, 00 green, 00 blue), near-black (01 red, 01 green, 01 blue), near-white (FE red, FE green, FE blue), and full white (FF red, FF green, FF blue). (I gave those in hexadecimal. In decimal, FE is 254, and FF is 255).
So, in the visible image, white and near-white make a nice “white” background, while black and near-black make a nice “black” drawing.
To see the other picture instead, just change “full black” values to something white (like, FF FF FF), and the “full white” values to something black (like, 00 00 00). The near-black and near-white don’t need to change, because they stay the same in both pictures.
However, I didn’t notice the Morse Code, with this manipulation. Well played, Oliver and Powree. You got me fair and square.
@ jclone:
Such is lyfe
Wow! You guys are amazing! I wouldn’t have begun to go where you guys did. I’ve been around computer folk for the last 30 years and I can’t think of even one geek I know who would be geeky enough to figure this one out. Congratulations!