OpenXcom Forum
OpenXcom => Offtopic => Topic started by: wcho035 on September 26, 2019, 01:04:37 pm
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Footage of a suppose cover up by US navy of XCOM intercepting a UFO.
This prove XCom really does exist! :o ;D
https://time.com/5680192/navy-confirms-ufo-videos-real/
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Probably some spy planes/drones and/or rocket tests.
Soviets for example had numerous UFO looking VTOLs. And experimental aircrafts usually look unusual, because they test some specific concept taken to extreme. Guess that is how the myth came to life.
(https://i.imgur.com/q2fYE8v.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/nDrn87v.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/Blk0Okz.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/2Xzbusr.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/3UNnwG4.jpg)
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Just because the other UAPs weren't ayys, doesn't mean this one wasn't.
Nor does it mean it was. And besides, wouldn't we not really have X-Com unless they were trying to kill us?
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It's a two-engine aircraft just like the one filming it. That's what they look like in infrared "heat vision mode". Notice how much easier it is to see than in the visual range later in the video. The commentary is fake, added in afterward.
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Now the us army has signed a contract to study suppose ufo crash material like exotic alloys.
https://7news.com.au/technology/us-army-signs-deal-to-explore-alien-technology-with-private-ufo-research-group-founded-by-blink-182-rocker-c-527174
So.. there's more concrete evidence XCom does exist somewhere in this world.. :)
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Yeah, well. Don't forget the BBA-14
(https://lxnt.wtf/oxem/builds//BBA-14.jpg)
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Sadly, "EKIP" newer lifted off. This was really perspective idea, but too hard to implement. Maybe harder than flying submarines.
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Pentagon declassifies Navy videos that purportedly show UFOs
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/pentagon-declassifies-navy-videos-purportedly-show-ufos/story?id=70364183
"The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as 'unidentified'", the spokesperson added.
I bet these are some lightning related phenomena or maybe camera problems. Like i.e. interference for electromagnetic activity in these fat clouds.
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I bet these are some lightning related phenomena or maybe camera problems. Like i.e. interference for electromagnetic activity in these fat clouds.
No, it's a twin-engine aircraft.
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No, it's a twin-engine aircraft.
Why is it so fat? Where are the wings?
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Why is it so fat? Where are the wings?
It's in infrared. All you see are the engines.
Actually it has come to my attention that the image may in fact be a bird. I had heard somewhere else that it was a twin-engine aircraft. Either one easily fits the image profile from our position of limited experience. Perhaps there was a different one of a twin-engine aircraft floating about on the internet and I confused the two.
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There was once an eccentric guy, who believed that aliens have advanced socialist system, and will help USSR in building communism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Posadas
Beginning in 1968, Posadas also became known for his theories concerning UFOs. If anything like UFOs existed, they could demonstrate the existence of agents able to master a very sophisticated technology, something that would be compatible with what in this planet was advocated by socialism. If UFOs existed, they could be allied in addressing some of the major problems in the earth.
In his pamphlet Les Soucoupes Volantes, le processus de la matiere et de l'energie, la science et le socialisme (Flying Saucers, the process of matter and energy, science and socialism), Posadas pleaded that "We must call upon beings from other planets when they come to intervene, to collaborate with the inhabitants of the Earth to overcome misery. We must launch a call on them to use their resources to help us.”
Real life Cult of Sirius?
The XCOM cult is apparently based of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirius_Mystery
Surprisingly people are inclined to imagine aliens being just advanced humans. While for advanced lifeform stuff like social organization would be a matter of the past, just like humans as animals have long surpassed the single cell life form. So the real life aliens will likely have no definite physical form, and will be manipulating large scale space structures, maybe even galaxy sized, just like you manipulate items on your desk. Aliens will unlikely notice us humans, just like we don't notice every single quark or even bacterial colony on Earth.
The same way you are unlikely to waste your time on sharing your achievements with early bacteria colony, the aliens will just step over you. In fact, there is no way they can share knowledge with bacteria. And I'm sure human technological singularity is already near us, as soon as we gain complete control over genome, there will be technological explosion, long before we will be capable of interstellar travel. It will either destroy or completely transform human society into the form losing any connection with our origin. Stuff like self-replicating robots also lead to technological explosions. Suddenly we are able to manipulate large scale structures.
So XCOM or War of the Worlds scenario is a naive childish fantasy, just like the silly Warhammer, Master of Orion or Starcraft scenario. The Thing or The Blob is a bit more realistic, given that some small part of the alien organism has seeded the Earth to create some super-structure or being some larger experiment.
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Meh, Singularity is overstimated. Singularity ignores the fact it is impossible to simply iterate on a technology. Technologies can become mature, or stop advancement because the next step requires a material discovery, or even a paradigm change.
A good example: Guns. Guns in 1900 are all semi-auto, bolt-action stuff, with semi-automatics being relatively recent. By 1950, we had assault rifles like the AK47 and the FN-FAL. 2020 guns are pretty much 1950 guns with lighter materials and extra stuff like picatinny rail, etc.
This is because firearms became a mature technology after WWII.
Computers are also a good example. Computers as we know them came about in the 80s. I am not old, but I lived the nineties and the 2000s. You could buy a top computer, and next year, it would be obsolete junk upstaged by the newest shiny stuff. It was ridiculous.
That stopped in the 2010s or thereabouts. A 2010 and a 2020 computer are pretty much the same thing, but the 2020 computer just has ten extra years of tech. A top of line 2010puter would pass muster today. By comparison, a 1990 top computer would be a museum piece in 2000, and the 2000 topcomputer would likewise be junk in 2010.
I think the biggest impediment to AI is the current computer architecture. Look at the human brain. Faster, better, stores more info than hundreds of hard drives, does actual thought and emotion, small, and barely uses enough power to switch on a fridge light. No computer does this and occupies the same space and has the same use of energy.
We cannot beat the human brain with what we call a computer nowadays. We need a paradigm change here. A quantum leap. Maybe quantum computing is the key.
True AI in 2050? More likely, 2500.
There's the chance the aliens are far older, through. But someone in this forum once pointed out that, if you assume life evolved naturally, and their planet followed a similar time-table to ours, then the time for life to appear in the universe is... Right about now.
This is because you need stars of enough metalicity (AKA materials that are not hydrogen and helium) to get a star long-lived and hot enough, and solid planets with enough minerals and such to sustain life. Then enough time for life to evolve properly.
Then there's the fact alien minds are, well... Alien. We don't know how they think. Alien Intelligences are an enigma.
And there's always the issue of tech. Renassaince Europeans were two millenia ahead of the Amerindians, whose technological level was somewhere between the neolithic and the early bronze age. They pretty much won by accident, because of diseases. Europeans still died to spear stabs and arrows anyway.
If America had large, centralized polities at the level of say, the Assyrian Empire, then it is likely things would have turned differently. Hell, Pizarro pretty much lucked out in beating the Incas, the closest thing. Had they been at full power, Pizarro would have been flattened and so would anyone else before 1650.
X-COM is actually logical: The aliens don't attack directly, because taking worlds is hard. Worlds are immense, full of people. If you want to win without bombing everything, you need hundreds of millions of soldiers, even if the locals folded like a cheap lawn chair, because otherwise they might as well create guerilla cells outside your control zones and local polities might start double-dealing. Far easier to coopt the local leaders, especially if you control minds and can play the long game.
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X-COM is actually logical: The aliens don't attack directly, because taking worlds is hard. Worlds are immense, full of people. If you want to win without bombing everything, you need hundreds of millions of soldiers, even if the locals folded like a cheap lawn chair, because otherwise they might as well create guerilla cells outside your control zones and local polities might start double-dealing. Far easier to coopt the local leaders, especially if you control minds and can play the long game.
That, or mind-control everyone to submission in a massive psionic attack, or deploy viruses that mostly wipe out the locals. The aliens do neither to give you a fighting chance for gameplay reasons, but it is stated in TFTD that the main alien ship hidden beneath the sea is automatic game over for humanity if it's fully waken up, which means it has enough guns to level the planet easily, mass mind-control bullshit, or something like that.
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Meh, Singularity is overstimated. Singularity ignores the fact it is impossible to simply iterate on a technology. Technologies can become mature, or stop advancement because the next step requires a material discovery, or even a paradigm change.
Self replicating robots, especially ones produced with the advancement in genetics engineering, will produce exponential growth. On galaxy scales. Surpassing previous industrial and computing revolutions. Or maybe humanity lives its last days. Since modern technologies are very dangerous, and could be used to wipe out everyone, when used by stupid people for minor gains. I.e. even minor scale terraforming can potentially lead to large scale destruction. For example, USSR managed to wipe out whole sea from the face of Earth as part of its terraforming project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea once a beautiful and rich region is now a desert.
A several decades ago computers were very big, expensive, inconvenient, available only to big universities and large corporation. These computers cost several millions of USD. Computing time had to bee booked.
Now everyone has in his pocket a smartphone, which is more powerful than any of these computers.
Even more, such smartphone offers far more value and has a far more diverse set of applications, than these older computers.
Literally today's people are millionaires in some sense, and have access to something, even billionaires of the past had no way of getting.
Now imagine you can own a personal star. There are a lot of stars in the observable universe. Enough for everyone.
Or take computers graphics for example. In a few decades it evolved from simple few polygon scenes to photo-realistic scenes. Latest advances in AI allow real-time graphics like following
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https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/23/senators-ufo-government-reports-336021
Senators want the public to see the government's UFO reports
So now it is not about the UFO existence, but about their nature. Are these some Russian ICBM testing use to hint US that Putin can nuke everyone any moment, or maybe a very advanced spy planes of some country or the actual aliens probing some stuff on the planet?
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Wait what the hell? This is pretty serious if it really comes from a Pentagon official. I thought it is one of those regular news. He is saying vehicle, not meteor etc. Why the heck is it not talked about more?
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Self replicating robots, especially ones produced with the advancement in genetics engineering, will produce exponential growth. On galaxy scales. Surpassing previous industrial and computing revolutions. Or maybe humanity lives its last days. Since modern technologies are very dangerous, and could be used to wipe out everyone, when used by stupid people for minor gains. I.e. even minor scale terraforming can potentially lead to large scale destruction. For example, USSR managed to wipe out whole sea from the face of Earth as part of its terraforming project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea once a beautiful and rich region is now a desert.
A several decades ago computers were very big, expensive, inconvenient, available only to big universities and large corporation. These computers cost several millions of USD. Computing time had to bee booked.
Now everyone has in his pocket a smartphone, which is more powerful than any of these computers.
Even more, such smartphone offers far more value and has a far more diverse set of applications, than these older computers.
Literally today's people are millionaires in some sense, and have access to something, even billionaires of the past had no way of getting.
Now imagine you can own a personal star. There are a lot of stars in the observable universe. Enough for everyone.
Or take computers graphics for example. In a few decades it evolved from simple few polygon scenes to photo-realistic scenes. Latest advances in AI allow real-time graphics like following
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Wait what the hell? This is pretty serious if it really comes from a Pentagon official. I thought it is one of those regular news. He is saying vehicle, not meteor etc. Why the heck is it not talked about more?
I hope they are just trying to distract public from economic, political and covid crisis. But situation is pretty grim in any case. Both Russia and China have a lot of nukes, same for America. Elites are getting out of touch with reality. At the same time drone technologies now allow easily sabotaging say electric grid of the opposing state or liquidate important officers. It doesn't require aliens to wash humanity from the face of Earth.
Back during Cold War, robotics technologies were limited to just funny contraptions (i.e. Minsky's arm robot + camera solving hanoi towers with a crude symbolic algorithm), and computers were unable to do natural language processing. Now Boston Dynamics robots do parkour and Google Translate effortlessly translates texts from Russian to English to Chinese and back, since people learned to represent and process the concepts in higher dimensional space. Natural language translation is basically equivalent to strong AI, so people have already build it, yet still haven't figured out how to integrate it with more general systems. That will lead to a massive unemployment for unskilled people (majority of population), leading to unpredictable consequences (likely unrest and wars with billions dead).
We don't need aliens today to scare even Pentagon.
(https://i.imgur.com/A1MC0Cr.jpg)
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I hope they are just trying to distract public from economic, political and covid crisis. But situation is pretty grim in any case. Both Russia and China have a lot of nukes, same for America. Elites are getting out of touch with reality. At the same time drone technologies now allow easily sabotaging say electric grid of the opposing state or liquidate important officers. It doesn't require aliens to wash humanity from the face of Earth.
Back during Cold War, robotics technologies were limited to just funny contraptions (i.e. Minsky's arm robot + camera solving hanoi towers with a crude symbolic algorithm), and computers were unable to do natural language processing. Now Boston Dynamics robots do parkour and Google Translate effortlessly translates texts from Russian to English to Chinese and back, since people learned to represent and process the concepts in higher dimensional space. Natural language translation is basically equivalent to strong AI, so people have already build it, yet still haven't figured out how to integrate it with more general systems. That will lead to a massive unemployment for unskilled people (majority of population), leading to unpredictable consequences (likely unrest and wars with billions dead).
We don't need aliens today to scare even Pentagon.
(https://i.imgur.com/A1MC0Cr.jpg)
Well, I am trying to be optimistic, things may not be so grim. Remember that in the Cold War, with a lot of tension in the air between the sides of Iron Curtain, and both sides with a significant nuclear arsenal ready to annihilate each other at first sign, they didn't start a World War. I am actually impressed how they managed not to wipe each other out, with their limited wisdom and hunger for power. They knew what was going to happen if it started, perhaps because two great wars and their consequences were fresh in their memory. But you're right that it is a huge possibility especially with more advanced tech. This doesn't mean they will not do it this time.
The looming unemployment scares me too sometimes. I myself worked as a translator and was grateful that google translate was not 100% perfect lol. There is indeed a risk it can lead to riots and war. We already had a good number of violent riots around the world. It will probably sort itself out eventually and new jobs will be created, adapting to the new technology, but there will be a lot of pain during that process.
I looked more into that news article and the events before it in the near past, and it doesn't seem like their aim is to distract as there has been some planning and developments before the Pentagon decided to create a task force to inform the public about these phenomena (it already began by declassifying official UFO research they did back in the past, and later US Navy officially accepting those three ufo clips are real), but who knows.
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Remember that in the Cold War, with a lot of tension in the air between the sides of Iron Curtain, and both sides with a significant nuclear arsenal ready to annihilate each other at first sign, they didn't start a World War.
Well. Things have changed since then. We have different kids in power now with different toys.
The looming unemployment scares me too sometimes. I myself worked as a translator and was grateful that google translate was not 100% perfect lol.
I do suggest you acquiring different skills in meantime, starting with linear algebra and neural nets wont be a bad choice for a linguist. Since all this AI apparatus will need skilled people to maintain it, albeit a lot less people than before. And if you have diploma in quantitative linguistics, your chances of getting hired will increase significantly.
There is indeed a risk it can lead to riots and war. We already had a good number of violent riots around the world. It will probably sort itself out eventually and new jobs will be created, adapting to the new technology
These will be very high skilled jobs. Just like you need more skills to operate complex machinery, than to plow the field with basic tools. One tractor replaces 100 manual laborers, but a tractor with an AI can replace millions, and it will be working 24/7, controlled from a data center, which needs just a few skilled people to maintain. Servicing such AI controlled tractor can also be done automatically or with a minimal human intervention. I.e. if a wheel gets broken, then robots will change it much faster than human servicemen, who need to sleep, who need salary to feed their kids, who cant do any work before their teens. They will get optimized out of the equation. And then you have a massive never before seen civilization crisis.
I looked more into that news article and the events before it in the near past, and it doesn't seem like their aim is to distract as there has been some planning and developments before the Pentagon decided to create a task force to inform the public about these phenomena (it already began by declassifying official UFO research they did back in the past, and later US Navy officially accepting those three ufo clips are real), but who knows.
Government agencies usually have a few cards in hand to use in cases of a crisis. But today they are throwing out a lot of these cards.
Then again, army quickly changes too. We wont be having heroic soldiers performing feats of valor anymore. Today it is more about who will manage to control the drones better and develop the better AI - engineers competing with each other. Then again, original XCOM already had that invincible bot tank, which most people considered cheating, especially since it was immune to mind control and could not be turned into a zombie.
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One tractor replaces 100 manual laborers, but a tractor with an AI can replace millions, and it will be working 24/7, controlled from a data center, which needs just a few skilled people to maintain.
No 100 + 1, you only get ride of driver. If we assume 24/7 then at max 100+5 will be replaced by one tractor. To replace million you need "million" tractors with or without AI.
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No 100 + 1, you only get ride of driver. If we assume 24/7 then at max 100+5 will be replaced by one tractor. To replace million you need "million" tractors with or without AI.
Given the auto-maintenance and manufacturing of the tractors, it will also get rid of the entire supply chain behind the tractor, and all the people servicing that chain (from hairdressers to house construction workers). That is what all these AI apocalypse movies are about. And large part of the world population is still employed in these basic easily automated jobs. I expect huge social unrest and the governments going even more nuts, before the humanity either collapses or evolves to the next stage with all the production automated.
Anyway, military publishes more UFO evidence:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ufo-uap-navy-pentagon-confirmed_n_607911a5e4b0bc5a3a54cac2
>Pentagon Confirms Leaked Photos, Video Of Unidentified Flying Objects
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Anyway, military publishes more UFO evidence:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ufo-uap-navy-pentagon-confirmed_n_607911a5e4b0bc5a3a54cac2
>Pentagon Confirms Leaked Photos, Video Of Unidentified Flying Objects
...and we are back to floating plastic bags and light reflections on glass panes (the last one being painfully obvious from the thumbnail and video).
Also if you think about it, isn't "UFO evidence" an oxymoron?
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Oh yea I've seen this video on British TV. It was one of the clips shown on an ep of Ancient Aliens ("Oh you can bet your ass: The answer is a resounding yes!"). IIRC one of the pilots even starts giggling cos it reminded him of XCOM, one of his favourite games.
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Okay, so I clicked this sub-forum because I was curious if anyone had posted about the recent attention the UFO phenomena had gotten. I'm surprised to see people saying the footage plastered all over is a bird, jet, or plastic bag. I actually wrote an extremely long winded post to debug all that and then promptly hit ctrl+a and del.
Everyone will believe what they want. The question I'd be more interested in having answered is why the US government wants to focus on such an old and fridge issue if it's bull? AND Why US military pilots and navy personnel can't tell the difference between a bird, a plane, or probe-weary aliens? I expect the answer to the former covers the latter.
Here's another question. How advanced would a species need to be (compared to us) to cross the incredible distances of space, find a single habitable world in a vast nothing of barren rocks, and regularly visit? Now, if they're THAT advanced, why would they care to?
Or how about this? If it's not advance military or commercial technology, not a natural phenomena, and not extraterrestrials, what is it?
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The question I'd be more interested in having answered is why the US government wants to focus on such an old and fridge issue if it's bull? AND Why US military pilots and navy personnel can't tell the difference between a bird, a plane, or probe-weary aliens? I expect the answer to the former covers the latter.
problem reaction solution
Look! UFOs!
We'll save you ...
???
profit
/lul
If it's not advance military or commercial technology, not a natural phenomena, and not extraterrestrials, what is it?
I have no idea. But until one lands in my backyard who really cares,
(yeah i've become jaded by more than a few things since the Internet )
that said, knock yerself out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB8zcAttP1E
ps. could be supernatural phenomena ...
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problem reaction solution
Look! UFOs!
We'll save you ...
???
profit
/lul
Hole in one! It's all hoax or at best a deliberate misrepresentation of truth to encourage public interest and motivation to push the government into a response. That response will need funding though... No need to look behind the curtain folks! We're spending these billions on UFO research and new tech to capture the alien aggressors. We may need a budget hike though so we can launch our new space agency (that's overflowing with advanced tech positioned to militarize the final frontier). Cause, you know, ALIENS! It's not about gaining a military advantage against other Earth bound governments, that's just ridiculous....
ps. could be supernatural phenomena ...
Could very well be. It is more plausible. I'd be less surprised if it were fairies rather than extraterrestrials. The more science discovers about our universe, the more unlikely interstellar travel becomes. The hurdles and literal distance is just too immense to overcome. The capabilities of physical living biological organisms is dwarfed to the point of ruination when pitted against the universe. There's plenty of established research on all this. The Drake Equation, the Fermi Paradox, etc.
The paranormal however, is by definition not scientifically explainable. There's enough history of the related phenomena that the word exists so...
Besides, it being paranormal doesn't mean the US government couldn't or wouldn't use it to their advantage. They may even be more likely to choose phenomenon from the truly paranormal since it would elude explanation and increase the time frame they could use it to their advantage.
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yep, could be
i mean, until one runs into my car it's not a big deal /shrug
or maybe -- just maybe -- all my problems are caused by THEM aaaaaarhgyrtuehnid
/jk
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Everyone will believe what they want. The question I'd be more interested in having answered is why the US government wants to focus on such an old and fridge issue if it's bull?
They aren't focusing on it. They declassified it, that's the reason we get to know about it.
AND Why US military pilots and navy personnel can't tell the difference between a bird, a plane, or probe-weary aliens? I expect the answer to the former covers the latter.
They can tell the difference, most of the time. But they get too used to seeing the same old birds and strange lights, and eventually some slip through the cracks. It just takes a fresh pair of eyes to figure out what it is, and the military doesn't disagree with that, nor do they really care as long as it isn't a threat. And everything they have declassified was deemed uninteresting enough to not be worth their time.
All of those pilots who insist it is alien spacecraft are not military intelligence analysts by trade; they are pilots.