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I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Lights and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_UFO_wave are very important because of the large number of witnesses (thousands) including government officials.

You can also watch many military and government witnesses in the Out of the Blue documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYPCKIL7oVw

givanon The Lost Sign Language of Sawmill Workers

The medium shapes/creates the language, in piraha language there are no words for numbers or colors https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcOuBggle4Y

givanon Foxconn replaces '60,000 factory workers with robots'

They will be very interesting because robots don't need to buy things and people without jobs will not afford the things robots build.

givanon Entanglement Made Simple

It looks bizarre because we are looking at it through our current paradigm, we need to change our view of the universe and probably ourselves to understand it and it will stop looking bizarre.

Quantum mechanics understanding will probably be a scientific revolution, something comparable to understanding the earth is round or the sun does not circle earth.

There are a few scientist that are trying to break the old model of thinking.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1714898-breaking-through-con...

givanon Galactic Tick Day – A celebration of our progress around the milky way

What if our sun is not an exception?

Pluto turns around the Sun, but from Pluto the Sun is very small. Idem, the Sun could turn around a very big and very far star looking very small from the Earth.

We could be in a wide binary where currently the stars are at a maximum opposites, then the binary companion would be a very bright star at night, and not visible during the day.

This could explain the nemesis star theory for mass extinctions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_(hypothetical_star) and also the recently discovered anomaly in the planets orbit https://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech-researchers-find-eviden... or why the Kuiper Belt ends suddenly or the Pioneer anomaly or maybe even the Oort Cloud.

There are some still unproved theories that state this star could be Sirius binary and we are in fact in a triple star system.

givanon IBM Wants Everyone to Try a Quantum Computer

Will the computer only work when observed?

givanon Medical error is third biggest cause of death in the US, experts say

I don't understand why there is no good rating system for doctors, we have it for restaurants, hotels etc but not for doctors?

Yes doctors are more complex but the rating system can be improved over time by feedback and observation and this system can help filter out the doctors that became doctors mostly for financial reasons.

givanon Google Deactivates Web Search API

With more people placing value on privacy, the api was used by disconnect search along with tor and other privacy tools, google has just planted the seed that will become their biggest competitor.

givanon Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

Food chain is not something basic or simple, maybe only as a a very abstract concept, because our lives and of other species depend on it and this makes it very important and should be treated carefully.

For example another insect that might seem not important to the food chain, the bee, is crucial for agriculture and for our food.

If you don't understand the domino effect part you should study a little bit about birds, reptiles and other species that feed on mosquitoes and then you can look higher in the chain on what other animals feed on that birds and reptiles and you will understand how many species will be affected.

Scientists unfortunately can't predict effects in very complex systems, not even the most complex computers can simulate something that looks very simple like the weather, this is why we can never predict it accurately and for long periods of time even if we have a lot of data.

As I said effects on complex systems can't be predicted by scientists, maybe only in a very limited superficial way, if this weren't true we wouldn't have fukushima, cernobal, oil spills, plastic island in the ocean, increased ocean acidity etc, scientists would have everything in control.

Science is cool and is a marvelous tool for knowledge but don't underestimate it's limitations.

givanon Let's Kill All the Mosquitoes

1 mosquitos only carries diseases, many other species do this, for example rats spread the plague in the dark ages, even infected humans spread diseases.

2 there is no expert or science that can fully understand the whole ecosystem and how it works, mosquitos and many insects are at the base of the food chain, the impact will probably be a domino effect that will make many other species extinct, where will this lead? nobody knows, it's like playing with fire.

Wiping out entire species to solve the spread of a virus is not only inefficient (there are other ways it can spread) and dumb but also dangerous, it's like a solution of an infant that can only think destroy destroy.

We need creative and intelligent ideas for hard problems, not simple and stupid infant like ideas, and hn is a place where people with such ideas gather this is why you see more of these comments.

givanon Smoke and Fumes: How the oil industry influenced the debate on climate change

Is the industry or us evil? most of us have big suv's that we drive alone and the only thing we care about oil is the price.

Some will look worried, chat on forums about these stuff but continue to do nothing because "there is nothing we can do".

givanon For life expectancy, money matters

Everybody works hard to make money so they can live longer and better then they realize they forgot to live.

givanon Generation Anthropocene: How humans have altered the planet for ever

How is pollution, deforestation, increased ocean acidity and reduced biodiversity optimal conditions? maybe the consequences still seem low now but as these increase in the future you will better see the proportion of the disaster but then it will be too late.

givanon YouTube-dl: Open-source YouTube downloader

I use vlctube https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/1783-vlctube to not only download youtube videos but to also use vlc as default player, there is a huge performance boost, I no longer hear my cpu fan when playing a youtube video.

givanon Estimating the Revenue of a Russian DDoS Booter

This problem exists mainly because the most used os doesn't have a package manager/app store or a secure and safe way to install software and it still doesn't because there is a huge av/security industry built to solve the problem it creates.

givanon A Government Error Just Revealed Snowden Was the Target in the Lavabit Case

The biggest problem is not this mistake but the total control and surveillance they are seeking and the persecution of those that try to defy them like Snowden.

givanon Half-Earth

The biggest problem is not how many but how we are living.

From our mostly meat diet to our inefficient mostly individual transportation systems to our consumerist society that produces tones of useless garbage all of these with very high carbon footprint, pollution and big environment impact.

And all of this just to satisfy some old human habits that are no longer possible at this scale without irreversible damage to the ecosystem.

givanon Half-Earth

Food production takes up almost half of the planet's land surface and threatens to consume the fertile land that still remains, scientists warn.

The global impact of farming on the environment is revealed in new maps, which show that 40 percent of the Earth's land is now given over to agriculture.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1209_051209_...

givanon Decline of Species That Pollinate Poses a Threat to Global Food Supply

People ask for meat, businessmans provide agriculture for the animals and the animals, why is only the businessman responsible? most of the agricultural land is not used for direct human consumption, humans need to stop being ignorant and start to change their habits.

givanon Riddle of cement’s structure is finally solved

There are more riddles to be discovered

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

Utilizing scanning electron microscopy, they discovered mineral compounds and air bubbles in samples of the limestone pyramid blocks that do not occur in natural limestone.

givanon CSS Variables landing in Chrome 49

The syntax is verbose and ugly compared to SASS

givanon Edgar D. Mitchell, Sixth Moonwalking Astronaut, Dies at 85

> Mr. Mitchell created a stir in 2008 when he told a British radio station that his contacts in military and intelligence circles had told him that “we’ve been visited on this planet, and the U.F.O. phenomena is real,” but that governments had “covered up” the matter for at least 60 years.

Ingo Swann tells a fascinating story about the moon in his book http://www.amazon.com/Penetration-Question-Extraterrestrial-...

givanon Why Understanding Space Is So Hard

Nothing is an abstract concept that we use for various things, when we say nothing is just a way of saying the absence of something we know, our own existence (Descartes) is proof that absolute nothingness is not possible.

givanon Life on other planets would likely be brief and become extinct very quickly

Do you still think the earth is flat? This is how it sounds when you try to ridicule something that you don't know or probably don't want to know for various reasons, you should read more on the subject with an objective mind.

givanon Life on other planets would likely be brief and become extinct very quickly

> Witnesses claim to have observed a huge V-shaped (several football field sized), coherently-moving dark UFO (stars would disappear behind the object and reappear as it passed by), producing no sound, and containing five spherical lights or possibly light-emitting engines

Do you really think the military has this kind of technology?

givanon Life on other planets would likely be brief and become extinct very quickly

Our view of life in the universe is subjective, we compare it with the only place we know it exists, earth, probably life exists in many forms not limited to how we know it or how we would expect it to evolve so probably not all life might be brief how earthers might think.

We are amazed how life exists in the most hostile places on earth and how it was able to adapt to very harsh conditions, probably life in universe is also full of surprises.

givanon Life on other planets would likely be brief and become extinct very quickly

I wonder why on this subject everyone overlooks two major events witnessed by thousands of people some of which former military pilots and instead focus on science fiction scenarios.

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

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

People try to explain these events in all kind of ways avoiding the most obvious one no matter what.

Is it fear? the lack of recognition by authorities? I never understood why people will talk freely about aliens in the universe but aliens here is always a taboo or a subject of ridicule no matter the evidence.

givanon Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Planet Beyond Pluto

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

He believed this hypothetical planet of Nibiru to be in an elongated, elliptical orbit in the Earth's own Solar System, asserting that Sumerian mythology reflects this.

givanon Comets can't explain weird 'alien megastructure' star after all

> Filling in knowledge gaps with the the word "aliens" is a laughably childish approach to science in my opinion.

You are talking about probability of life in the universe based on a tv show, replace aliens with "earth is round" and you will see how ridiculous it sounds.