Another U.S. Navy pilot that saw the UFO during the 2004 sighting near San Diego has gone public. He filmed the thermographic video of the object and said it lacked engines and was moving in a manner that defied physics.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-and-a-with-navy-pilot-chad-underwood.html
At least 100 stars have vanished from view since the 1950s. Did aliens build Dyson structures around them?
https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/stellar-mystery-how-could-100-stars-just-vanish-180973821
For at least 2,000 years, the global energy consumption of the human race has been growing at a steady 2.3% per year. Since the production and consumption of energy always leads to the release of waste heat, we’ve been continuously raising the Earth’s temperature in a different and more basic way than we have through the much more recent mechanism of greenhouse gas releases. Extrapolating the trends, Earth will get so hot with our waste heat that it will become uninhabitable in about 350 years, and we will have made a Dyson Sphere in 1,100 years.
http://scholars-stage.blogspot.com/2010/08/notes-on-dynamics-of-human-civilization.html
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/
“Instrumental convergence” describes a concept that I also developed independently a few years ago. I think an AGI that 1) valued its own existence and/or 2) was given goals that were misaligned with humanity’s interests would behave in broadly the same ways that we do. Among other things, it would see that acquiring resources for itself facilitated its core goals. The rate and manner in which it did things like resource acquisition might be so different from how humans do it that we wouldn’t understand in the short run what the AGI was doing, in the same way that humans who play AlphaGo are often baffled by the machine’s strange and seemingly bad moves right up until the complicated trap is sprung on them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence
Small amounts of stress are actually good for most living organisms. A stress-free existence is bad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis
A woman who died of cold exposure was revived after six hours of no heartbeat or breathing.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-50681489
Apple will probably incorporate some new algorithms into its future iPhone cameras to sharpen photo quality. I’ve predicted that this kind of technology will be used to clean up old photos and films by removing flaws and accurately adding details and colors to them.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-12/apple-buys-u-k-startup-to-improve-iphone-picture-taking
Within the next few years, quantum computers will be powerful enough to do accurate simulations of chemical molecules that haven’t been created in the lab yet. The simulations could let us rapidly and cheaply determine which have useful properties.
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/chemicals/our-insights/the-next-big-thing-quantum-computings-potential-impact-on-chemicals
OpenAI created completely unexpected strategies for winning this simple “hide and seek” computer game, including some that capitalized on game glitches the human programmers didn’t know existed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu56xVlZ40M
If you thought non-U.S. NATO members shortchanged their defense spending, wait till you learn that they’ve been counting military pensions (!) towards the 2% of GDP minimum threshold. Also: “[The] US spends fully $127,000 on each soldier’s equipment, while NATO European members spend only one-fifth that amount, $25,200 per soldier.”
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-sector/our-insights/more-tooth-less-tail-getting-beyond-natos-2-percent-rule
As part of a weird and inevitable exercise in gun rights, internet hobbyists made and published instructions for building Hi-Point pistols using 3D printers and spare metal parts. The weapon, called the “Lo-Point,” can be made for as little as $33.
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2019/12/09/3d-printed-hi-point/
3D printing of spare parts that haven’t been made in decades could save the U.S. military billions of dollars.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/12/26/d-printing-is-about-save-military-billions-dollars/
The U.S. Marines are testing new bullets whose cases are a mix of plastic and brass. The new bullets are 30% lighter than all-brass ones, meaning more can be carried into combat.
https://taskandpurpose.com/marine-corps-polymer-ammo-m2-browning-machine-gun
A long, searing, and technical exposé of the monumental failure called the U.S. Zumwalt-class destroyers. The project suffered from EVERY type of dysfunction the military-industrial-congressional complex could muster.
https://www.pogo.org/analysis/2019/01/the-u-s-navys-titanium-tin-can/
The U.S. has launched its second Ford-class aircraft carrier.
https://www.overtdefense.com/2019/12/19/future-uss-kennedy-aircraft-carrier-launched/
China just launched its second aircraft carrier. It is inferior to its U.S. counterparts, but China is already working on a third ship that will close much of the gap.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3042469/chinas-second-aircraft-shandong-carrier-officially-enters
Russia’s sole aircraft carrier has even MORE problems: It accidentally caught fire in port. The Russians are probably lying about how damaged it is. They should scrap it.
https://www.janes.com/article/93359/damage-to-admiral-kuznetsov-not-critical
Ukraine is basically the same thing as Russia, but smaller and poorer. In spite of their dire straits in their fight against secessionists, the Ukrainian government and arms industry continues to badly underperform due to corruption.
https://www.overtdefense.com/2019/08/12/ukraine-will-buy-a-polish-built-version-of-its-own-vehicle/
Ukraine is experimenting with an augmented reality headset for its tank crewman. It consists of a Microsoft Hololens that gets live footage from eight cameras on the exterior of the tank.
https://www.janes.com/article/93132/limpid-s-lpmk-see-through-armour-system-delivered-to-ukrainian-army
This is the most comprehensive source of data on modern Soviet/Russian armored vehicles I’ve found. This rivals what’s in most books on the subject.
https://thesovietarmourblog.blogspot.com/2015/05/t-72-soviet-progeny.html
Here’s another analysis of the battle performance of different U.S. weapons systems during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Its conclusion is that the simpler, cheaper weapons were much more decisive than the complex, expensive weapons like the stealth fighters.
https://www.pogo.org/report/1992/07/high-tech-weapons-in-desert-storm-hype-or-reality/
Until recently, the U.S. had one of the coolest things possible: stealth, nuclear cruise missiles.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31286/the-saga-of-the-agm-129-cruise-missile-that-was-basically-a-stealth-jet-designed-upside-down
Here are some fascinating analyses of the practice of remanufacturing armored vehicles. Every few years, a military is supposed to send all its tanks to its military depots so they can be cleaned up, tested, have all worn parts replaced, and upgraded if necessary. When it emerges, the vehicle is almost as good as new, at a fraction of its initial price. American tanks are evidently so robust that their breakdown rate doesn’t increase with age, it only increases with use.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR286.html
https://www.rand.org/pubs/documented_briefings/DB648.html
https://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/reset-of-the-us-armys-vehicle-fleet-continues-02493/
Another RAND analysis concludes that Joint fighter plane programs, in which different military forces with different air combat needs build a single plane that can “do it all” at relatively low cost, are failures, and we’d be better off building different fighters suited for different roles.
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/MG1200/MG1225/RAND_MG1225.pdf
The F-117 is still flying as an “aggressor” plane in training missions.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/31361/f-117s-spotted-playing-stealthy-aggressor-against-f-15s-and-f-22s-over-nellis-range
It could be possible to “cloak” objects as big as planes from the naked eye. There are signs the U.S. Air Force is secretly working on the technology, and President Trump’s much-ridiculed statement about the F-35 being literally invisible might have been an inadvertent utterance about the existence of a secret prototype he was told about.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/29543/the-visible-history-of-the-militarys-hunt-to-realize-an-invisible-aircraft
These LED-embedded T-shirts have coarse pixels and only display simple visual patterns, but they’re proof of concept that active camouflage outfits that are nearly as good as sci-fi cloaking devices could be built someday.
https://www.flashionstatement.com/product-category/led-t-shirts/
I predict this quote will go down in infamy: “I do not believe there will be a dramatic increase in demand for battery vehicles, and I believe this situation is true globally.”
–Takahiro Hachigo, CEO of Honda
https://electrek.co/2019/12/26/honda-ceo-says-no-dramatic-increase-in-ev-demand/
An autonomous car has been taught to drift, and the racetrack footage is awesome.
https://news.stanford.edu/2019/12/20/autonomous-delorean-drives-sideways-move-forward/
For the first time, wind power makes more electricity in Texas than coal.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/25/us/texas-wind-energy-trnd/index.html
A simpler way of solving quadratic equations has been found.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a30152083/solve-quadratic-equations/
The full genome of a woman who died 5,700 years ago has been recovered from a piece of chewing gum.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50809586
Humans probably “self-domesticated” by preferentially mating with partners who were friendlier and more cooperative by nature. Those traits are stronger in people with certain facial features, and many generations of evolutionary pressure in that direction partly explains why our faces have “finer” features than Neanderthals’.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-44877-x
https://www.ub.edu/web/ub/en/menu_eines/noticies/2019/12/015.html
This shocking pedigree shows had badly inbred the Spanish Hapsburg Royal Family was. Genetic unfitness directly led to its collapse.
https://www.livescience.com/3504-inbreeding-downfall-dynasty.html
Ancient Roman expeditions made it all the way to the Sahel!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romans_in_Sub-Saharan_Africa
The 2010s were the best decade in history, overall.
https://spectator.us/just-best-decade-human-history-seriously/
Here’s a reminder of how cruel and brutal nature is. I think it should be humanity’s mission to use future technologies to end suffering on Earth for all life forms that feel pain. If we did that, maybe we could at last call ourselves a noble species.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10608688/zebra-ripped-apart-escape-crocodile-kenya/