Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

cia.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 224 posts

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#131

Post by arjn »

jack9 wrote: post #106
lsadam0 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda sounds like the long rumored TR-3B ( http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/tr-3b/ ). I love UFO mythology, and that around the TR-3B is wild, to say the least.

During a summer break jaunt to see the American Flag Art Exhibit in 1996 (found it! http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/08/us/art-or-trash-arizona-ex... ), I was coming back down the 10 just past Wiley's Rest Stop, in California and pulled off the road into the desert about 500 yards from the highway. It was me with my best friend (from kindergarten) and 2 sisters we were mutually involved with. No drugs, no alcohol, no c…

Could it have been a thick stray cloud combined with some light reflection/refraction effects from the ground or maybe stars/planets in the background ?

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#132

Post by fsloth »

myth_buster wrote: post #20

I found the documentary "I know what I saw"[0][1] rather interesting. In this Mercury 7 astronaut, former pilots, retired air force officers, Major Generals etc give account of UFO sightings. Although produced by History Channel, it features only accounts of these distinguished people and recollect no spin (if my memory serves me right). [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTEZeY-fNCU [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt…

Human brains are really poor at interpreting new brief visual stimulus "correctly". Furthermore, our first impression can affect the perception of the stimulus even if it lasts several seconds.

I'm 36, and visually quite acute. I've seen my visual system doing the craziest interpretations in various situation, and observed my interpretation of a visual field completely changed by a sudden re-interpretation of some small detail.

Given proper conditions I could have interpreted these as apparitions, ghosts, materializations or whatnot. The difference is, all of these situations happened in calm mundane situations where I had the luxury to pause and look at the thing for a long while and figure it out.

The craziest was a low-lit room where I saw the patterns of a carpet as my son, walking. I had woken at night and presumed it was because my kid was awake. When I came closer I realized it was the carpet.

If I can mistake a rug for a human being I do not find it unlikely that a pilot trained to be aware of bogeys to interpret unexpected stimulus first as a vehicle (this interpretation is very hard to shake off).

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#133

Post by davorb »

sanoli wrote: post #41
jimrandomh wrote: post #22

I'm surprised they're continuing the misdirection so many years later. "Unidentified flying object" means an aircraft, usually a military one (because civilian aircraft are easier to identify). A UFO over US soil would usually be a USAF plane, but the CIA ran (runs?) a reporting hotline because they might occasionally be foreign spy planes instead. But of course, the Soviets were very interested (or the US believed t…

There's probably a lot of this going. Comes to mind right now the way the Navy had about two seal teams in the beginning, and then decided to name the next one 'Team 6', to make it look like they had more. I've read about other examples, but can't remember right now.

The Soviets managed to fool the US government into believing that they had many more strategic bombers than they actually did, using the same tactics.

> At the Soviet Aviation Day demonstrations at the Tushino Airfield, ten Bison bombers were flown past the reviewing stand, then flew out of sight, quickly turned around, and flew past the stands again with eight more, presenting the illusion that there were 28 aircraft in the flyby. Western analysts extrapolated from the illusionary 28 aircraft, judging that by 1960 the Soviets would have 800.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_gap

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#134

Post by jib »

xupybd wrote: post #100
spydum wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as recently as last year when opening another checking account, the bank clerk told me to start my check numbers at atleast 500 (you can specify when ordering checks). I asked her why, and that was also the same reason given. I laughed at the silliness of the idea, but took her advice anyways.

Wow what country still uses cheques? Most stores won't take them anymore, here in New Zealand.

France, the US, among others.

First thing I got when I moved to France (admittedly 12 years ago) was a checkbook. Hadn't heard of them since the 80s in Sweden.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#135

Post by pif »

xupybd wrote: post #100
spydum wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as recently as last year when opening another checking account, the bank clerk told me to start my check numbers at atleast 500 (you can specify when ordering checks). I asked her why, and that was also the same reason given. I laughed at the silliness of the idea, but took her advice anyways.

Wow what country still uses cheques? Most stores won't take them anymore, here in New Zealand.

In France they are still very common. In particular, checks cannot be refused by members of small-enterprise associations recognized by the fiscal authority.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#136

Post by pif »

xupybd wrote: post #100
spydum wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as recently as last year when opening another checking account, the bank clerk told me to start my check numbers at atleast 500 (you can specify when ordering checks). I asked her why, and that was also the same reason given. I laughed at the silliness of the idea, but took her advice anyways.

Wow what country still uses cheques? Most stores won't take them anymore, here in New Zealand.

Italy as well, even if with more and more restrictions and difficulties.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#137

Post by eps »

smsm42 wrote: post #121
T-hawk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This actually hit my previous company in a software context. We would number hotfixes sequentially. Customers would be notified when hotfixes were to be deployed to their sites. One savvy client noticed the hotfix numbering sequence and worked out both that we had a lot of hotfixes (tens per week) and that they didn't get them all right away (if you don't ask for it, it comes to you in the next quarterly trunk releas…

Why not add random increments to the sequence? This way order is preserved, but you never know how many hotfixes are between hotfix X and Y. Of course, you can still have rough estimate (as between #1000 and #2000 there is from 999 to 10 hotfixes) but for your case it may be enough.

Precisely.

Just because there private hotfixes that deliver custom tweaks to specific customers. in fact, that's exactly how Microsoft has had it set up for years.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#138

Post by _jomo »

legohead wrote: post #36
jonnyweirdteeth wrote: post #2

Good to see that the CIA has a little bit of a sense of humor about this kind of thing. What a PR coup by the X-files reboot, as well.

The CIA twitter feed [1] is pretty cool. This isn't them just taking advantage of X-files, their social media was already pretty good. [1] https://twitter.com/CIA

Their first tweet is hilarious:

https://mobile.twitter.com/CIA/status/474971393852182528

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#139

Post by Already__Taken »

BogusIKnow wrote: post #119
lazyant wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle release 2, there was no R1

I once wrote a paper at university about the psychology of version numbers.

You must have had a bloody field day with all the moaning about chrome and firefox climbing the numbers.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#140

Post by [deleted] »

enkephalin wrote: post #127
Houshalter wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really unlikely if you consider the vast scale of time as well. A few million years is enough to reach the end of the galaxy even at very very low percent of the speed of light. That's a long time in our terms, but a very short time given the age of the universe, or even our own planet. Self replicating Von Neumann probes could handle the issue of exploring such a large number of solar systems by increasing their…

i think the main issue with people having trouble believing in visitations from extraterrestrial species (or at least their technology), is that they have absolutely no sense for the age of the universe. and the fact that so many people believe it to be utterly ridiculous that alien life forms could be exploring the galaxy, yet here we humans are, doing exactly that, is just completely mind-boggling to me.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN