Apparently this guy was just there a few minutes ago: https://www.instagram.com/p/CH_iU8JgeIr/
This video shows it up close. Sheet metal riveted together, siliconed in the cut out ground.
Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert
491–500 of 515 posts
Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clarke. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke
The book and the film where written and developed cooperatively so both really ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ However, they are both based on clark's 1951 short story The Sentinel[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sentinel_(short_story)
Indeed, and to my feeble defense:
> The book was credited to Clarke alone.
TIL :)
Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert
#493A 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…
Information wants to be free, in the sense of leaking out via unexpected sidechannels. But this strongly reminds me of "Entangled Truths, Contagious Lies" which uses a fairly similar example.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wyyfFfaRar2jEdeQK/entangled-...
Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert
#494Earlier 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…
People like this make OpSec hopeless.
I listen to the Arms Control Wonk Podcast and I feel the same way when the go through a propaganda video of a rocket launch and get so much more information about its capabilities and testing location than the government ever meant to reveal.
Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert
#495> "It is illegal to install structures or art without authorisation on federally managed public lands, no matter what planet you're from," the department said. Is that really true though? Does earth rules apply to life from other planets? And what if the extraterrestrial life are magnitudes of order stronger and technologically advanced than us? I mean we could demand it but in effect it would be nothing but words. T…
> Does earth rules apply to life from other planets? Any law applys to their territory, independant on whether the culprit is a citizen of that country or a foreigner. Whether they can execute the law is of course a different story. But from where someone comes from doesnt matter in the first place. Though, you could argue whether laws are limited to humans or whether they apply to every species. AFter all we don't a…
>Though, you could argue whether laws are limited to humans or whether they apply to every species. AFter all we don't apply the same laws to animals and humans, there are usually differnt sets for each.
Please enlighten me on which laws are written for my cat.
Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is all wrong. The monolith in 2001 had dimensions in ratios of 1:4:9 [and continuing into other dimensions...]. Why the heck would you go to all the work of putting a monolith of the wrong shape out there?
Nobody prooved it has any relation to 2001. It's not even black, why do people even assume it must have some connection with that story?
Because of the hilarious implication that the installer believe intelligent life had not yet been seeded in the Utah area.
Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you please explain the significance?
television ratios joke. 4:3 became 16:9 for widescreen. Further from square and closer to the "golden ratio", so make something closer with different prime squares. 1:2 2:3 3 becomes 1:3 3:7 7
In reality I was joking about fashion. The new trend in monoliths is a metallic finish and slender proportions, skipping one prime square - The original is 1²:2²:3² and the new one is 1²:3²:7² (skips primes 2 and 5). The dimensions continue, of course. In Clarke's 2010 it's kind of assumed it'd mean it'd be integers, but the new one fits better with primes.
Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Is this relevant? It is "well known" that log2(world population) is about equal to 33, so theoretically if you numbered every human alive consecutively you would only need 33 bits to store the number. But this is a long shot from estimating the amount of data required to pick someone out of a crowd. For example, perhaps you are just given a bunch of low-resolution pictures of people's foreheads: do you only need "33…
I find it interesting. I make no claims for relevance.
Knowing the 33 bits trivium, I was curious what the equivalent was for individual spatial locations. The maths are easy and GNU units near.
You're right that trying to ascertain the number of bits contributed by any one item of data is difficult. I broke that down in part in a reply to the Reddit comment (after posting here): knowing the feature was in Utah (280k km^2) and having the flight track probably narrowed the region to about a 10km square (100 km^2) region ... which still contained 10,000 10m^2 areas. The geographic clues were enough to find the specific one. It's easier to work backwards and determine how much information was deduced by given data, based on search space eliminated.
Keep in mind that "expertise in geography, geology, etc." is specifically the capability of extracting geospatial information from available data. This could have included, say, sun height and angle based on date and time (exif image data frequently encodes this, if not geolocation itself), cues from aircraft noise in live video (mentioned in another geolocation example within the thread), correlated with flight data.
In 2001, the likely approximate location of Osama bin Laden was claimed by a geologist who was familiar with rock formations shown in a video. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1608272.stm
That claim seems to be accurate --- Al Qaeda forces were found in the Tora Bora cave complex in the region.
The practical upshot is that if you know where something is and don't want others to know the location, virtually any information leakage can be critical.
For your crowd example, much depends on the number of suspects you already have. The question is usually one of mapping between two sets --- which of the blurry foreheads matches which another set of interest. Determining intersections is key to ost investigations.
And more generally, almost any process of discovery can be modled as searching through a space. The more irrelevant targets are excluded, the smaller the remaining space remains. Insight is exclusion. The search itself might not be binary in the classic sense, but it is one of ever narrowing scope.
Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert
#499Earlier quoted context omitted.
Invents interstellar travel. Travels 17,000 light years across the universe. Places art work as token of greeting. First contact with human civilization. Alien scientists begin deciphering message. "It reads, 'I am from the Bureau of Land Management...'"
People of Earth, your attention please,’ a voice said, and it was wonderful. Wonderful perfect quadraphonic sound with distortion levels so low as to make a brave man weep. ‘This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council,’ the voice continued. ‘As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route…
"Final Offer": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv8kOzRZK8g
Re: Metal monolith found by helicopter crew in Utah desert
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
As someone on the spectrum I really loved the phrase "weaponized autism". I've been telling people most my adult life that high functioning autism is kind of like having a weird super power, but that was the first time I ever saw so many people understand the unique abilities that some people on the spectrum have.
Exactly how I describe it! A super power but one most people can't even recognize.