
I found this secret code while geocaching. What could it mean?  - earle
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/axth9/i_found_this_secret_code_while_geocaching_what/
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romland
The comments were mostly nonsense, but there was one gem that made me laugh:

 _If you aren't a troll, then why were you beneath a bridge, smartguy?_

~~~
TrevorJ
"The comments were mostly nonsense,"

You have accurately described the chief product of Reddit quite well.

~~~
harbert
...says the lad merrily prancing about on Hacker News.

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olalonde
Most likely answer so far:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/axth9/i_found_thi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/axth9/i_found_this_secret_code_while_geocaching_what/c0jyuu8)

It's most likely a random number as it is in UUID version 4 format. The
version identified by the 4 and the b in the correct spots
"6d4061b1b-a7ee-4a9e-b0ae-509617252b42" (see
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_Unique_Identifier#V...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universally_Unique_Identifier#Version_4_.28random.29)).
Person who placed the geocache probably wanted a way to google anyone who
found it.

~~~
pvg
UUID v4 seems kind of plausible, although it has no advantage at all over a
random string if you just wanted to google. What is interesting is that caches
on geocaching.com are identified by v4 UUIDs. But this one doesn't turn up
anything. The person with the UUID idea has the number wrong, incidentally,
it's

6d406b1b-a7ee-4a9e-b0ae-509617252b42

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kqr2
You can buy tiny magnetic geocaching containers on ebay:

[http://cgi.ebay.com/SIX-Magnetic-Nano-TINY-Geocaching-
Contai...](http://cgi.ebay.com/SIX-Magnetic-Nano-TINY-Geocaching-Containers-
Geocache_W0QQitemZ190369711784QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item2c52eb46a8)

I doubt it's some spy thing.

Most likely someone wanted to set up a multicache where you had to decode
something to get to the next cache but never bothered to finish it.

~~~
pmjordan
It could be a 'live' multicache, too. There are some pretty long ones (many
km) and they usually only tell you the starting point, the other coordinates
need to be deduced, which would explain why it's on no map.

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drewcrawford
I'd really like to see a Chi-square analysis on this by a smarter statistician
than me. Power should be pretty low since you only have 16 bytes.

Alternatively, in a series of sixteen uniformly-distributed bytes, what's the
probability that the birthday paradox doesn't occur? That is, the probability
that no two bytes are identical?

I can say as someone who's played around with English-language markov chains
for years that this definitely isn't displaying the characteristics of English
text, even with transformations like rot13 or multiplication. So the next
logical question is, "Is it uniform?"

~~~
roundsquare
How would you do a chi-square on this? Doesn't seem to me to be the right sort
of test.

If you think its hex/ascii, you can try to do a hypothesis test on the max
frequency of each digit/letter and see what happens there. But, for any test,
you need an underlying model against which you test. What model are you
thinking of?

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fexl
Maybe the number is the location of some Loom assets: <https://loom.cc/faq>

~~~
DanHulton
Okay, that is a pretty cool system. Sad now that I don't know anyone involved,
can't get an invite.

~~~
fexl
9d95c450c3a375a6d3f952b4b13b9f17

~~~
DanHulton
Sweet, thanks!

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gcb
you have to md5 every possible earth coordenate pair. Thats the hash of the
correct one. Piece of cake. So im not going to do it for you.

