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Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#231

Post by effingwewt »

discreditable wrote: post #115
lultimouomo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy really is something: > I looked at rock type (Sandstone), color (red and white - no black streaks like found on higher cliffs in Utah), shape (more rounded indicating a more exposed area and erosion), the texture of the canyon floor (flat rock vs sloped indicating higher up in a watershed with infrequent water), and the larger cliff/mesa in the upper background of one of the photos. I took all that and lined…

You may also find 4chan users' tracking of Shia Labeouf's flag interesting. https://www.vice.com/en/article/d7eddj/4chan-does-first-good...

Internet Historian did a wonderful series of videos about this. The investigative abilities of some people is just awe inspiring.

https://youtu.be/_p4h3jwJob0

Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#232

Post by sowbug »

rowanG077 wrote: post #217
cantrevealname wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> installed 2015-2016 based on satellite imagery Unless the artist practiced very good OpSec or was so disciplined that he never checked for satellite imagery of his monument, someone with the right credentials -- like the government with a subpeona or a Google insider -- could identify the artist based on his IP address. Murderers have been identified and convicted by looking up a unique map coordinate on Google Map…

You can be convicted for looking at a map where the only thing was tracked is your ip? This is all kinds of insane. No wonder the US incarcerates so many innocent people.

Unlikely. But it can be a clue that leads to the right person, which can then lead to more direct evidence that could form the basis of a conviction on the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of proof.

It's just basic detective work, updated for new technology.

Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#233

Post by chadlavi »

Insanity wrote: post #78
leetcrew wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

métallon is probably the most analogous word to líthos. unfortunately "monometal" just sounds kinda dumb.

Not for a metal band that refuses to jump on the "stereo" hype!

MÖNÖMETAL

Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#234

Post by effingwewt »

chooseaname wrote: post #70
thayne wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably everyone is a criminal, because no one knows what all of the laws are.

That and there are laws that never go away, like not spitting on the sidewalk or not chewing gum on a Sunday.

Reply below is dead but is spot-on especially for Texas. I believe it's still illegal to wear socks or a tie on South Padre Island.

Sure enough, it is. Found the link[1]

[1] http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,139525,...

Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#235

Post by Loughla »

effingwewt wrote: post #231
discreditable wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may also find 4chan users' tracking of Shia Labeouf's flag interesting. https://www.vice.com/en/article/d7eddj/4chan-does-first-good...

Internet Historian did a wonderful series of videos about this. The investigative abilities of some people is just awe inspiring. https://youtu.be/_p4h3jwJob0

The phrase "weaponized autism" used to be a thing on 4chan when I cruised that back in the day.

It honestly opened my eyes to a severely under-tapped resource in the job market. Individuals with autism tend to be able to focus on tasks more, and tend to see things in a way that lets them analyze systems and logical steps phenomenally well. In the social-sciences fields, they tend to be overlooked, because of either the stigma or actual lack of interpersonal abilities, depending on the specific individual.

It is because of 4chan that when I am hiring for technical positions (now, this is higher ed, so I'm talking about the interpretation of federal legislation or state mandates, or systems and process evaluations, not programming) I target individuals on the spectrum.

What a weird thing to see written out.

Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#236

Post by b0rsuk »

rowanG077 wrote: post #220
b0rsuk wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Best games don't tell stories - they generate them. There's no need to make games more like movies or graphic novels because we already have movies and graphic novels.

I can't disagree more. Stuff like minecraft(which I assume you mean) just have no lessons to teach. They are great games. But they can't grow beyond that. They can't be masterpieces precisely because they don't tell a story.

I'm shamelessly pasting a wikipedia quote because it puts it better and more succinctly than I could.

"Non-games are a class of software on the border between video games and toys. The original term "non-game game" was coined by late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, who describes it as "a form of entertainment that really doesn't have a winner, or even a real conclusion".[1] Will Wright had previously used the term "software toy" for the same purpose.[2] The main difference between non-games and traditional video games is the lack of structured goals, objectives, and challenges.[3] This allows the player a greater degree of self-expression through freeform play, since they can set up their own goals to achieve."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-game

Will Wright is the designer of Sim City, and he deliberately called his creation this way. I think the above wikipedia distinction is spot on. I don't think the term "non-game" is ideal, but I can't think of any better one that's short. Sandbox, entertainment software, etc. "Sandbox" doesn't capture graphic novels. I think Will Wright also compared Sim City to a ball. You can play a game with a ball, you can invent some rules, but it's not a game by itself.

Speaking of Minecraft, you can make a game within it, or out of it. But it's not a fully fledged, "batteries included" game. Minecraft is very similar to Lego, and if you remove one dimension - even a painting set.

The term "non-game" is somewhat useful for me because I specifically look for games for my active entertainment. I'm annoyed when I have to wade through several quasi-games on a review site to find one proper game. I don't necessarily think games in classical sense are inherently better or more challenging. But if the word "game" ceases to have any meaning on computers, someone will have to come up with a game2 term, which would be silly.

Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#237

Post by dredmorbius »

lultimouomo wrote: post #61
MrSourz wrote: post #41

A reddit user [1] found its location [2] and another figured out it was installed sometime during 2015-2016 based on when the satellite imagery changed. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/k01dc3/mysterious_m... [2] https://goo.gl/maps/2xdrTqcnguX3ky8AA

This guy really is something: > I looked at rock type (Sandstone), color (red and white - no black streaks like found on higher cliffs in Utah), shape (more rounded indicating a more exposed area and erosion), the texture of the canyon floor (flat rock vs sloped indicating higher up in a watershed with infrequent water), and the larger cliff/mesa in the upper background of one of the photos. I took all that and lined…

44 bits.

It's relatively well known that 33 distinct bits is enough to uniquely identify any individual person now alive on Earth.[1]

Geospatially, assuming 10m resolution, 44 bits is enough to identify any unique location on Earth's land surface (46 bits buys you the oceans).

Searching for a ~1m^2 monolith visually within a 10m^2 square is reasonable.

GNU units:

  You have: ln((.3 * 4 * (earthradius^2) * pi)/10m^2)/ln(2)
  You want:
          Definition: 43.798784
  You have: ln((1 * 4 * (earthradius^2) * pi)/10m^2)/ln(2)
  You want:
          Definition: 45.535749
49 bits buys 1m accuracy, 63 1cm, 69 1mm. Land or sea.

For comparison, cellphone positioning accuracy is typically 8--600m:

- 3G iPhone w/ A-GPS ~ 8 meters

- 3G iPhone w/ wifi ~ 74 meters

- 3G iPhone w/ Cellular positioning ~ 600 meters

https://communityhealthmaps.nlm.nih.gov/2014/07/07/how-accur...

https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/

________________________________

Notes:

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20160304012305/33bits.org/about/

Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#238

Post by at_a_remove »

The_rationalist wrote: post #143

This is clearly a reference to this movie. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film) What's really fascinating is how such projects are funded. The cost estimates are probably wrong but why?

Is it, though? If I were going to go to the expense of putting up a monolith, I would at least try to get the proportions correct, if not the texture.

Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert

#240

Post by mensetmanusman »

newsbinator wrote: post #187
mensetmanusman wrote: post #165

If it were alien, it would be made of a quasi crystal (a crystal in a higher dimension projected into 3D). Humans have no way of making bulk quasicrystals.

Is there any way to detect quasicrystals at a distance?

Very interesting question. Perhaps by looking at fuzziness in the spectral lines of elements in asteroids (which are sometimes composed of quasicrystals [0]).

Looks like there has been some work on NMR of quasicrystals [1].

Zeeman splitting of spectral lines requires a magnetic field. Maybe if a large quasicrystal passed near a magnetar [3] one would see an effect.

[0]: https://www.pnas.org/content/113/26/7077 [1]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03166327 [2]: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1990ApJS...74..437S [3]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetar

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