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Ask HN: Teach me something new

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441–450 of 782 posts

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#441

The study of unidentified aerial phenomena (UFOs) and the acknowledgement of the extraterrestrial hypothesis (or extra dimensional) will become mainstream. https://www.gillibrand.senate.gov/news/press/release/gillibr... Soft disclosure has happened already via the USS Nimitz encounter. If UAPs are true, then the floodgates are open and will lead to a forced re-evaluation of other high strangeness phenomena (telepathy…

I always found it strange how UFOs concentrate in the U.S,is it because of the climate? /s I wanted to believe and there is a serious subreddit for UFOs but most are debunked. There exist ~2 truly mysterious UFOs and most of their mystery has been explained.

Can you share the explanation for the Nimitz incident?

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#442
post #38

The Boltzmann brain hypothesis suggests that it would be more likely for a single brain to spontaneously and briefly form in a void (complete with a memory of having existed in our universe) rather than for the universe to come about in the manner cosmologists think it actually did. In this physics thought experiment, a Boltzmann brain is a fully formed brain, complete with memories of a full human life in our univer…

Well then it’s equally likely that badgers the size of Earth could be forming from time to time, and since they’re the size of earth they would decay much more slowly than our puny local badgers… so shouldn’t we see the occasional Earth-sized badger through the Hubble?

Or how about the much lower odds needed for a copy of Shakespeare’s plays translated to Klingon inscribed on a giant sheet of titanium to appear spontaneously? Far more likely to happen than a Boltzmann brain, right? So should we not have found an item or two like that?

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#444
post #38

The Boltzmann brain hypothesis suggests that it would be more likely for a single brain to spontaneously and briefly form in a void (complete with a memory of having existed in our universe) rather than for the universe to come about in the manner cosmologists think it actually did. In this physics thought experiment, a Boltzmann brain is a fully formed brain, complete with memories of a full human life in our univer…

You forgot the part where people suspect that we are Boltzmann brains.

…that themselves originated from The Simulation

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#445

I'm going to go a bit random...get a styptic pencil! Nobody I've met even knows what they are. I came across them years ago in the shaving section, and was blown away by their utility. They are solid pieces of some saltlike material that are super effective at stopping bleeding. We don't even have bandaids in our house anymore, the pencils are way more useful.

This is not medical advice, but... Cyanoacrylate (also known as "Super glue"). I've been using it to cover some small clean cuts. I think today there's even variants approved for such use.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#446

ctrl-T in chrome to restore your tabs!

To be clear, this is Ctrl+Shift+T . I know you had T in capitals, but keyboard keys are normally written that way

indeed.. I don't look at the case of a letter to determine when to press "Shift" needs to be written explicitly

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#447

Take a few minutes to learn the NATO phonetic alphabet Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu Gotta spell anything over a voice line? Use it. No more screwing around with "B.. like Bryan, and then U, like .... under". s-c-r-o-l-l-a-w-a-y: sierra charlie romeo oscar lim…

I learned this when I was a teen as a simple memory exercise. Each night in bed before falling asleep I'd try to run through the phonetic alphabet and I've retained it ever since (30+ years later).

It's hugely valuable for removing ambiguity and confusion in phone calls. While most people don't know the phonetic alphabet well enough to spell words using it, everyone understands when a word is spelled to them using the phonetic alphabet.

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#449

In a lot of terminals, Alt+. (or Option+. on Mac) will paste in the last argument of the previous command. $ mkdir hi $ cd You can hit . several times to cycle through earlier final args.

Or ^r to search through the command history (bash only?):

    $ grep blah *
    $ ^r
    (reverse-i-search)`g': grep blah *
This is far and above my most commonly used shell command

Re: Ask HN: Teach me something new

#450

Take a few minutes to learn the NATO phonetic alphabet Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Juliet, Kilo, Lima, Mike, November, Oscar, Papa, Quebec, Romeo, Sierra, Tango, Uniform, Victor, Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, Zulu Gotta spell anything over a voice line? Use it. No more screwing around with "B.. like Bryan, and then U, like .... under". s-c-r-o-l-l-a-w-a-y: sierra charlie romeo oscar lim…

I've just realized this is an error correction algorithm for humans :)
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