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Giant Insect Invades Germany

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the our-thrip-overlords dept.

Noryungi writes, "It seems the alien invasion of the Earth has just started! A 50-meter insect has been spotted roaming the German countryside! Let the 'I, for one, welcome our new giant insectoid overlords' joke contest begin!" A moderator at a Keyhole forum IDs the bug as a thrip, about 1mm long, squished under a glass plate during scanning.

9 of 264 comments (clear)

  1. fun by sporkme · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here are two Escher-licious images from google maps:
    Boston
    Dallas

    ...and an interesting effect that can occur when frames are spliced:
    Sidewalk ends

    Of course, there are tons of these, including the popular ipod.

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  2. Re:Ooops Wrong Link by Derek+Pomery · · Score: 2, Insightful

    http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/06/kc 135_caught_re.html

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    -- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"' /. ate my old sig. Bastards.
  3. during "scanning"?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    who the hell would "scan" satellite pictures? this should be digital, morons. hello, it's 2006.

  4. Re:U.S. Action soon to take place by EraserMouseMan · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wait!!! The UN should threaten sanctions agains the insect first. We must also be sensitive and careful not to hurt the insect's feelings. Or our actions may provoke more insect insurgency. Surely the insect will respond to diplomacy. We should try talking to the insect before we fight. The insect probably doesn't understand that we respect it and mean it no harm.

  5. The Yukon/Alaska Black Box by Clueless+Moron · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you tell us what this is hiding, will they have to kill you?

    1. Re:The Yukon/Alaska Black Box by idonthack · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Examine the edges and surrounding areas. It looks like it's just a hole where four sections came together.

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      Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
  6. Re:No... by malsdavis · · Score: 2, Insightful

    But you missed several steps out, mainly the difficult part which involves generating and delivering energy to the batteries (which btw are an extra unnecessary step). Start off with a naturally available source of chemical energy and the efficiency rate will totally plummet.

    To prove the point: try find a car, (non-electric) train, plane or any form of mechanised transport which acheives >70% effiency!

    Lastly, something which is 1,000 times more efficient that a 70% efficient motor isn't 70,000% efficient, it is just extremely close to 100% efficient (which means that those annoying thermodynamic laws are kept in check).

  7. Upping the ante, eh? by OldManAndTheC++ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It is just Google's new crawler.

    Clearly a mere robots.txt is not going to help against this...we're gonna need real robots! Giant ones!!

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    Soylent Green is peoplicious!
  8. "incremental efficiency" vs "absolute efficiency" by TheLink · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If the creature containing the cells serves some other purpose other trhan converting food into raw energy then one should not measure efficiency in such absolute terms.

    Say a human being is only 30% efficient in converting food to energy/"work". Given the human already needs a certain amount of food to stay alive, one should also measure the additional amount of food the human needs to do an additional amount of work.

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