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Submission + - SPAM: The Aguadilla Incident: The Story Of A Silent Intruder And The Hunt For Answers

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: On April 25, 2013 at around 9:20 PM something odd was spotted by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Dash-8 turboprop on a routine mission over Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. The pilots had seen a 'pinkish to reddish light' out over the Atlantic ocean, along with personnel from the local airport control tower. As the lights came closer to the coastline they blinked out, at which point the aircraft crew then switched on their thermal imaging system to get a fix on the object, which is around when the footage starts.

The squirrely object is then shown to pass between trees at high velocity, pass over the local airport's runway causing a jet takeoff delay, dip beneath the surface of the ocean while managing to maintain its speed underwater, resurface a short time later and then ultimately separate into two discreet objects while still flying before the objects blink out of view.

What makes this worth paying attention to is that the video has cooberating radar data obtained via a FOIA request, was independently observed by staff in the airport control tower and was studied by a group of analysts from the government and private sectors. They concluded that "this video is the best documentation of an unknown aerial and submerged nautical object exhibiting advanced technology that the authors of this report have seen."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: The Aguadilla Incident: The Story Of A Silent Intruder And The Hunt For Answers

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: On April 25, 2013 at around 9:20 PM something odd was spotted by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Dash-8 turboprop on a routine mission over Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. The pilots had seen a 'pinkish to reddish light' out over the Atlantic ocean, along with personnel from the local airport control tower. As the lights came closer to the coastline they blinked out, at which point the aircraft crew then switched on their thermal imaging system to get a fix on the object, which is around when the footage starts.

The squirrely object is then shown to pass between trees at high velocity, pass over the local airport's runway causing a jet takeoff delay, dip beneath the surface of the ocean while managing to maintain its speed underwater, resurface a short time later and then ultimately separate into two discreet objects while still flying before the objects blink out of view.

What makes this worth paying attention to is that the video has cooberating radar data obtained via a FOIA request, was independently observed by staff in the airport control tower and was studied by a group of analysts from the government and private sectors. They concluded that "this video is the best documentation of an unknown aerial and submerged nautical object exhibiting advanced technology that the authors of this report have seen."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: The Aguadilla Incident: The Story Of A Silent Intruder And The Hunt For Answers

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: On April 25, 2013 at around 9:20 PM something odd was spotted by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Dash-8 turboprop on a routine mission over Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. The pilots had seen a 'pinkish to reddish light' out over the Atlantic ocean, along with personnel from the local airport control tower. As the lights came closer to the coastline they blinked out, at which point the aircraft crew then switched on their thermal imaging system to get a fix on the object, which is around when the footage starts.

The squirrely object is then shown to pass between trees at high velocity, cross over the local airport's runway causing a jet takeoff delay, dip beneath the surface of the ocean while managing to maintain its speed underwater, resurface a short time later and then finally separate into two discreet objects while still flying before the objects blink out of view.

What makes this worth paying attention to is that the video has cooberating radar data obtained via a FOIA request, was independently observed by staff in the airport control tower and was studied by a group of analysts from the government and private sectors. They concluded that "this video is the best documentation of an unknown aerial and submerged nautical object exhibiting advanced technology that the authors of this report have seen."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: The Aguadilla Incident: The Story Of A Silent Intruder And The Hunt For Answers

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: On April 25, 2013 at around 9:20 PM something odd was spotted by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Dash-8 turboprop on a routine mission over Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. The pilots had seen a 'pinkish to reddish light' out over the Atlantic ocean, along with personnel from the local airport control tower. As the lights came closer to the coastline they blinked out, at which point the aircraft crew then switched on their thermal imaging system to get a fix on the object, which is around when the footage starts.

The squirrely object is then shown to pass between trees at high velocity, pass over the local airport's runway causing a jet takeoff delay, dip beneath the surface of the ocean while managing to maintain its speed underwater, resurface a short time later and then ultimately separate into two discreet objects while still flying before the objects blink out of view.

What makes this worth paying attention to is that the video has cooberating radar data obtained via a FOIA request, was independently observed by staff in the airport control tower and was studied by a group of analysts from the government and private sectors. They concluded that "this video is the best documentation of an unknown aerial and submerged nautical object exhibiting advanced technology that the authors of this report have seen."
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: The Most Well Documented UFO Case You Probably Never Heard Of 2

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: While the 'Tic-Tac' UFO phenomenon has dominated headlines over the course of the last few years, an equally well-documented UFO case occurred almost a decade ago but never managed to make the mainstream news cycle.

On April 25, 2013 at around 9:20 PM something odd was spotted by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Dash-8 turboprop on a routine mission over Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. The pilots had seen a 'pinkish to reddish light' out over the Atlantic ocean, along with personnel from the local airport control tower. As the lights approached the shore the lights went out and the aircraft crew then switched on their thermal imaging system to get a fix on the object — which is when the video begins. Referred to in the report as the 'unknown', it then proceeds to put on quite a show for its observers including darting between trees just above residential streets at an estimated 80-100 MPH, passing over the local airport's runway causing a takeoff delay, submerging beneath the surface of the ocean while managing to maintain its speed underwater, resurfacing a short time later and then ultimately separating into two discreet objects while still flying before the objects disappear from view. What makes this interesting is that the video has corroberating radar data obtained via a FOIA request and was independently observed by staff in the airport control tower and closely examined by a group of analysts from the government and private sectors working with the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies. They concluded that "this video is the best documentation of an unknown aerial and submerged nautical object exhibiting advanced technology that the authors of this report have seen."

It bears mentioning that in an eerily similar case, a floating object caught the attention of a DHS surveillance flight over the rough desert terrain near Tucson, Arizona in 2019. The object in question, filmed for at least 40 minutes by a FLIR camera (again at night), travels through the air on a seemingly fixed path. The object, which at times takes on a 'rubber duck' like shape, sometimes appears to separate into two distinct pieces that follow the same course and speed. Although it has been suggested that this is nothing more than a collection of wayward balloons or possibly some type of drone, it is clear the plane's occupants had a keen interest in whatever it was.
Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Commercial Airline Crew Spot 'Foo Fighter' Type Lights During Flight

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: On August 22, 2022 a seemingly routine airline flight from the island of St. Thomas to Washington Dulles airport turned into quite the spectacle. While over Wilmington, North Carolina, the pilot noticed two odd, strobing lights far off in the inky darkness of the night that appeared to repeatedly move from left to right relative to the pilot's viewpoint. The lights seemed to track with the aircraft for roughly 35 minutes, or for roughly 250 nautical miles. They lost sight of the lights as they approached Richmond, Virginia:

"At roughly 0055 ET I began seeing slow pulses of light in the sky directly in front of us (to our north). The pulses would last usually 8-10 seconds each and had gaps of darkness lasting anywhere from 10 seconds to over a minute. They were slowly moving from left to right. The pulses would be gradual (start very dim and grow into a bright light about the brightness of Venus, and then fade away).”

The pilot speculates that while the light appears to be moving in a horizontal line, the lights may actually been on a 'racetrack' path, coming into view as they approached the jet, turning, and then travelling away from the observers at a rapid speed, only to repeat the process over and over. The pilot who recorded the video, a former military combat veteran, speculates that the object was either in the upper atmosphere or higher:

As an airline pilot, I am positive I was not seeing other airliners. Very few civilian aircraft can fly above 41,000 feet, and the objects were about 10 degrees above the horizon from our perspective. I was not able to tell the distance of the object from our aircraft, but in the 35+ minutes we watched, they never seemed to get any closer even though we covered about 250 nautical miles in that time. For this reason I believe they were in either the upper atmosphere or in space.

You can view the video here and judge for yourselves. What are these lights?


Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: Airline Pilot Captures Bizarre Lights On Video During Recent Flight

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: On August 22, 2022 a seemingly routine airline flight from the island of St. Thomas to Washington Dulles airport turned into quite the spectacle for two pilots. While over Wilmington, North Carolina, the pilot noticed two odd, strobing lights far off in the inky darkness of the night that appeared to repeatedly move from left to right relative to the pilot's viewpoint. The lights seemed to track with the aircraft for roughly 35 minutes, or for roughly 250 nautical miles. They lost sight of the lights as they approached Richmond, Virginia:

"At roughly 0055 ET I began seeing slow pulses of light in the sky directly in front of us (to our north). The pulses would last usually 8-10 seconds each and had gaps of darkness lasting anywhere from 10 seconds to over a minute. They were slowly moving from left to right. The pulses would be gradual (start very dim and grow into a bright light about the brightness of Venus, and then fade away).”

The pilot speculates that while the light appears to be moving in a horizontal line, the lights may actually been on a 'racetrack' path, coming into view as they approached the jet, turning, and then travelling away from the observers at a rapid speed, only to repeat the process over and over. The pilot who recorded the video, a former military combat veteran, speculates that the object was either in the upper atmosphere or higher:

" As an airline pilot, I am positive I was not seeing other airliners. Very few civilian aircraft can fly above 41,000 feet, and the objects were about 10 degrees above the horizon from our perspective. I was not able to tell the distance of the object from our aircraft, but in the 35+ minutes we watched, they never seemed to get any closer even though we covered about 250 nautical miles in that time. For this reason I believe they were in either the upper atmosphere or in space.

You can view the video here and judge for yourselves. What are these things?


Link to Original Source

Submission + - SPAM: The Aftermath of the Coruscant Celebration Scene

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: You may remember it — at the end of 'Return of the Jedi: Special Edition', a rare glimpse of Coruscant — the seat of the galactic empire — is shown in a celebratory state as news of the empire's defeat at Endor reverberated throughout the patchwork of worlds that make up the Star Wars universe. One might imagine that most viewers at that time might have thought — "Oh, cool, so that's what Coruscant looks like" — then went on with their lives rarely to think about that scene ever again. In a recent ScreenRant article ,they take a deeper dive into what happened on Coruscant as explored in the various book series that expanded on that moment:

Although Palpatine died during the Battle of Endor, Coruscant remained the capital of his Empire. This meant that the citizens who set off fireworks, toppled statues of The Empire, and attacked Stormtroopers were met with violent retaliation from Imperial forces, resulting in numerous extrajudicial killings and executions of civilians. Coruscant continued to serve as an Imperial stronghold until its liberation by the New Republic, which happened a year later in canon and two years later in Legends.

Depending on which book source you use, the Empire's grasp on Coruscant lasted two years in the Legends books and only one year in the canon Aftermath trilogy. With all of the new Star Wars spinoffs being created lately, perhaps this transitory period for Coruscant would be a subplot worth exploring as its own mini-series.


Link to Original Source

Submission + - US science advisors desperately want to probe Uranus Again (msn.com) 2

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: Is it time we gave Uranus a closer look again?:

"The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have released their newest decadal survey. Apparently, at the top of the list of priorities is a goal to probe Uranus. The report, which was published this year, calls for a spacecraft to orbit Uranus. That spacecraft would then map its gravitational and magnetic fields. It would circle the planet for multiple years. During that time, it could deliver an atmospheric probe to the planet to study it."

Scientists would also like to learn more about the various moons and the ring system surrounding the planet. Mark Hofstadter, a planetary scientist with NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab wrote a white paper outlining their goals. Another target would include Enceladus, Saturn's icy moon that could be a candidate for being the host of microbial life.

Time is of the essence for inserting the Probe into Uranus's orbit, however, as a mission would need to be launched by 2031 to take advantage of a gravity assist from Jupiter.

Submission + - U.S. Government Apparently Investigated UFO Related Abductions and Pregnancies (msn.com) 1

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: In what seems like a development straight out of the 'X-Files', a newly released trove of 1574 pages was obtained via a FOIA request related to the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP):

"The bombshell Freedom of Information haul includes reports on the DIA's research into the biological effects of UFO sightings on humans. And this includes burns, heart problems, sleep disturbances — and even bizarre occurrences such as "apparent abduction" and "unaccounted for pregnancy"."

Also revealed is an as-yet unknown classification system used by the U.S. government for categorizing the various types of paranormal encounters one may experience:

"One fascinating document included in an Acquisition Threat Support report, sets out how to categorise "anomalous behaviour" — with encounters with "ghosts, yetis, spirits, elves and other mythical/ legendary entities" classed as "AN3". Seeing a UFO with aliens on board would be "CE3"."

Submission + - Charlie Red Star - The Time a UFO Terrorized a Canadian Family (www.cbc.ca)

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: In one of the most prolific yet still relatively unknown Canadian UFO cases, a bright red UFO nicknamed 'Charlie Red Star' swooped in on the Pembina region of Manitoba, Canada to delight its spectators — or terrify. In one of the first reported sightings:

"a young girl was woken in the middle of the night by a piercing screaming noise outside that sounded sort of like a siren. As she sat there in her bed, she claimed that the whole house began to shudder as if an earthquake was happening and she rushed to the window to look outside. As she did, she claimed that she had seen a blazing red ball of light pass her window, flooding the room with light and emanating so much heat that she at first thought that it had set her home ablaze. As it rose up it passed over the house and then flew back in front of her, hovering there in the night and so bright that she would describe it as “looking like the Sun was coming up” before finally whizzing off into the distance, illuminating the ground along the way."

The sightings would only grow from here throughout 1975 into 1976:

"The following month, on April 10, 1975, a couple by the names of Bob and Elaine Diemert were out at a private airfield on their rural farmland property when they were startled to see a large red slow-moving light hovering over the tree line not far away. When they approached, they could see through the light that it was a disk shaped object with a dome attached. The object hovered there for about 5 minutes, immersed in a “red, pulsing light,” before flying straight at them and then suddenly veering off to fly off over the tree tops. After this, the mysterious object began to visit their farm on a nearly nightly basis, to the point that droves of curiosity seekers began showing up every evening to see the light show for themselves, with most witnesses describing it as playful and mischievous. Hovering over them, shooting back and forth, approaching observers, and repeatedly flying over their heads in a breathtaking display of aerial acrobatics, it was quite the sight to behold. It was at around this time that people began referring to the object as “Charlie Red Star,” delighting whole crowds of people. A Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Constable by the name of Ian Nicholson also came to the Diemert farm to see the object for himself, describing it as “as an oval red light, surrounded with an X-shaped white halo.Charlie Red Star would eventually be filmed — albeit briefly — by a Canadian news crew. Sightings of Charlie Red Star would diminish and eventually fade away in 1976 but this remains one of the most well documented — and witnessed — UFO events in Canadian history.

Submission + - The Exotic Legend of the Dark Knight Alien Satellite Meets Mundane Reality (space.com)

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: In what has become a stubborn sibling to the 'Face on Mars' phenomenon, the legend of the Dark Knight alien satellite has persisted for years and is the fascinating story of a seemingly mundane NASA photo tied together with reports of seemingly mysterious radio waves captured in the early days of radio, all combining to make the ultimate space conspiracy theory.

It goes something like this — an ancient alien space probe, dubbed the 'Dark Knight, has been long orbiting Earth and covertly monitoring its blissfully unaware inhabitants for mysterious purposes for roughly 10,000 years. Flash forward to the 1899, where technological pioneer Nikola Tesla, while experimenting with radio technology in his Colorado laboratory supposedly captured mysterious emanations from an unearthly object. Later in the 1920's, Norwegian engineer Jørgen Hals found that radio signals he transmitted were being echoed back to him a few seconds later, something called 'long delayed echoes' — still unexplained to this day. It has been proposed that these echoes were signals being relayed back to earth by something called a 'Bracewell Probe', a hypothetical automated spacecraft sent out with the goal of making contact with other intelligent species.

Flash forward to 1998, an unassuming photo from the STS-88 mission in 1998 to attach the U.S. module to the Russian portion of the ISS captured a tantalizing glimpse of an unnaturally geometric shape menacingly loitering toward the bottom of the frame. To true believers, this was evidence of an ancient probe keeping tabs on the earthly locals. Combined, these disparate events swirl together to create the stuff of dreams for the ardent conspiracy theorist and even the causal sci-fi buff. Ultimately, the object in the STS photo was most likely a thermal cover. The radio waves Tesla heard? Likely natural radio emisions of a natural or terestial source.

Space.com took a deep dive into this myth and explored how it — and the - dark knight myth has taken a hold on the imaginations of those who find themselves peering out into the inky blackness of the night and wonder to themselves "are we being watched from above"?

Submission + - 3DFX Interactive Arises from the Grave to Launch New Voodoo Card (techradar.com) 1

Submitted by alaskana98
alaskana98 writes: Yes, you read that right. 3DFX Interactive, once a king of the late 90's 3D processor add-on card market, could be coming back from the dead. Their initial launch product will be the 'Voodoo 6' card and will be competing directly with NVidia's GeForce RTX 3090 and AMD's latest Vega graphics card line.

The Voodoo 6 card will follow on the heels of its predecessor, the ancient Voodoo 5 card from the year 2000, that used raw brawn (think multiple GPU chips per card) to compete with the Geforce 2 and ATI Radeon chipsets, its main competitors at the time. 3DFX will be using an updated version of its 'Voodoo Scalable Architecture (VSI) technology to hit numbers rivaling Nvidia and ATI's best. To hit these numbers 3DFX looks to stuff up to 10 GPU chips on a single card. Early reports are that massive heat sinks and fans will be needed to cool these cards, and a single Voodoo 6 is reported to draw up to 600W(!) of power. Needless to say a beefy power supply will be needed to accomodate these beasts.

In related news, (and what can only be a continuation of the late 90's/early 00's tech comeback), Intel will be releasing the Pentium V this fall in a surprising rebuke of its core architecture. Taking pages from the Pentium IV playbook, the Pentium V will look to dominate CPU charts through raw speed with early units clocking in at 6-7 GHz with a proprietary mineral oil cooling solution. This is achieved through massive pipelining, said to be updwards of 500 stages.

This exclusive information was gleaned through a secretive tech reporter who goes by the name A. P. Rilfools, who writes regularly for Wired magazine. They could not be reached for comment.
Earth

How the Fossil Fuel Industry is Pushing Plastics on the World (cnbc.com) 113

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
We're in the midst of an energy transition. Renewable power and electric vehicles are getting cheaper, the grid is getting greener, and oil and gas companies are getting nervous. That's why the fossil fuel giants are looking towards petrochemicals, and plastics in particular, as their next major growth market. From a report: "Plastics is the Plan B for the fossil fuel industry," said Judith Enck, Founder and President of the nonprofit advocacy group Beyond Plastics. Plastics, which are made from fossil fuels, are set to drive nearly half of oil demand growth by midcentury, according to the International Energy Agency. That outpaces even hard-to-decarbonize sectors like aviation and shipping.

"Every company who is currently engaged in producing plastic, if you look at their capital budgets for the next two to three years, they're all talking about expansion plans," said Ramesh Ramachandran, CEO of No Plastic Waste, an initiative from the Mindaroo Foundation that's working to create a market-based approach to a circular plastics economy. Yet much of the developed world is already awash in plastics. So fossil fuel and petrochemical companies are relying on emerging economies in Asia and Africa to drive growth. Alan Gelder of Wood Mackenzie forecasts that every year through 2050, there will be 10 million metric tons of growth in the market for petrochemicals, which are used to make plastics and other products. He says much of that will be shipped overseas.

Comment Re:No worse than 98se (Score 1) 269

by alaskana98 (#62073177) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Do You Remember About Windows ME?

I ran Windows ME since it was in beta and never had any issues. It was basically Windows 98se with some minor changes. I don't think it was really any worse than Windows 98se. During this era I dual-booted with Windows 2000 as there were still apps and games that ran better on 9x. Was ME really "bad" compared to 98, or was it just that the NT-based operating systems that came afterward (XP, etc) were so much better?

Yeah, Windows ME was basically Windows 98 TE (third edition), or Windows 95 fourth edition. It is a good point that people look back on Windows ME with so much disgust because of the NT codebase variants that came out later (granted Windows 2000 did come out many months before ME).

But if memory serves, people really did think ME was a steaming pile of dog doo at the time, just comparing it to (most likely) Windows 98 SE. I think part of the problem is Microsoft actually charged people money for it. It should have been a free upgrade to those who bought 98 SE IMO.

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