Hacker News with Generative AI: Mystery

The Hunt for Darcula (nrk.no)
You might have received a text message from a somewhat strange phone number saying a package is on its way to you.

Mystery, Scams, Text Messages

8 points by rolph 5 days ago | 0 comments

Window cleaner in quest to confirm priceless Shakespeare portrait (bbc.com)
Window cleaner Steven Wadlow has spent more than a decade trying to prove he is in possession of a priceless, authentic Shakespeare portrait.

Art, History, Mystery, Shakespeare

16 points by rmason 44 days ago | 17 comments

An "Impossible" Disease Outbreak in the Alps (theatlantic.com)
In one tiny town, more than a dozen people were diagnosed with the rare neurodegenerative disease ALS. Why?

Science, Health, Disease, Mystery

12 points by tptacek 47 days ago | 1 comments

Art the Whale (ejournals.sierracollege.edu)
A body floats up on the beach. It is discovered, identified, and found to have eight aliases. The body is dismembered, crudely jammed into dirty barrels, roughly tossed into the back of a truck, and buried in the dead of night by the light of automobile headlamps. Neighbors hear strange noises, and smell even stranger odors. Vats of unidentified liquid boil ominously at the site. Multinational corporations and government officials are involved. Eleven months pass. The body is exhumed and reassembled.

Crime, Mystery, Thriller, Environmental Issues

14 points by OptionOfT 52 days ago | 3 comments

The Oldest "Map of America" Is Mysteriously Accurate (thetravel.com)

History, Cartography, United States, Mystery

18 points by bryanrasmussen 67 days ago | 9 comments

How do playing cards work? No one knows (polygon.com)
Some of humanity’s oldest toys are our most complex

Playing Cards, History, Mystery, Games

18 points by ColinWright 111 days ago | 8 comments

The Riddle of Luigi Mangione (gurwinder.blog)
After the suspected killer of UnitedHeathcare CEO Brian Thompson was revealed to be Luigi Mangione, a bright young man from a well-to-do family, thousands of pundits rushed to tell us why he did it. I, however, held back, because unlike them I’d actually met Luigi, and I knew all was not what it seemed.

Crime, Suspense, Mystery, Analysis

54 points by nth_degree 138 days ago | 111 comments

Russian UVB-76 radio station broadcasts burst of mysterious messages (meduza.io)
Russia’s mysterious UVB-76 radio station, known for its constant buzzing and occasional cryptic messages, sent out a near record number of transmissions on December 11.

Russia, Radio, Mystery, Cold War, International Relations

18 points by mudil 142 days ago | 2 comments

What we know about the mysterious drones flying over New Jersey (bbc.com)
Mystery continues to swirl over nearly a month of drone sightings over New Jersey, sparking fear among residents and furious debate about what the flying objects are - and if they are drones at all.

New Jersey, Drones, Mystery, News

13 points by jorgesborges 146 days ago | 20 comments

Unidentified Drones Light Up New Jersey's Skies, Baffling Residents (nytimes.com)
Brightly lit against a dark night sky, the low-flying object wasn’t a star, and it wasn’t moving like a plane or a helicopter.

New Jersey, News, Technology, Mystery

23 points by paulpauper 149 days ago | 4 comments

OK, I can partly explain the LLM chess weirdness now (dynomight.net)
We recently talked about a mystery: All large language models (LLMs) are terrible at chess. All, that is, except for gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct, which for some reason can play at an advanced amateur level. This is despite the fact that this model is more than a year old and much smaller than recent models. What’s going on?

Artificial Intelligence, Chess, Programming, Mystery

524 points by dmazin 169 days ago | 460 comments

Chemist Identifies Mystery 'Blobs' Washing Up in Newfoundland (nytimes.com)
A chemist in Canada says he has identified “with a high degree of confidence” the strange blobs that started washing up on Newfoundland’s shores months ago, although the Canadian authorities said they were still looking into it.

Chemistry, Biology, Canada, Mystery, Environment

73 points by mykowebhn 175 days ago | 28 comments

Somebody moved UK's oldest satellite, and no-one knows who or why (bbc.com)
Someone moved the UK's oldest satellite and there appears to be no record of exactly who, when or why.

Space, Satellites, UK, Mystery, Government

4 points by alamortsubite 178 days ago | 0 comments

Somebody moved the UK's oldest satellite in the mid 1970s, but no one knows who (bbc.co.uk)
Someone moved the UK's oldest satellite and there appears to be no record of exactly who, when or why.

Space Exploration, History, Mystery, United Kingdom

181 points by mindracer 181 days ago | 98 comments

The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet has been identified (reddit.com)
About two weeks ago I came across an old newspaper article in the Nordwest Zeitung archive, while researching Hörfest bands. The article was about a band called FEX from Kiel, who won a talent contest in Bremen in Sep 1984 and their music was described as Rock with Wave and Pop influences. It also mentioned their members and one of them I recognised from a Hörfest 83 band called Phret.

Music, Internet, Mystery, Germany

23 points by notamy 186 days ago | 5 comments

Hunt for Bitcoin's elusive creator Satoshi Nakamoto hits another dead-end (bbc.com)
Stephen Mollah is the latest person to claim to be the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin

Bitcoin, Cryptography, Technology, Mystery

5 points by peutetre 187 days ago | 0 comments

Who died and left the US $7B? (sherwood.news)
It was the biggest estate-tax payment in modern history, but no one knew who made it. Then an anonymous phone call pointed to one man.

Taxes, Inheritance, Wealth, Mystery, US News

456 points by jsnell 213 days ago | 551 comments

Researchers Find Cannibalized Victim of 19th-Century Arctic Voyage (nytimes.com)
A new study offers clues to a 179-year-old mystery that killed more than 100 explorers on the Franklin expedition in the Canadian Arctic.

History, Arctic, Exploration, Mystery, Science

46 points by Thevet 213 days ago | 15 comments

Nobody knows what happened within the MMC Association in 1998 (sdomi.pl)
Nobody knows what happened within the MMC Association in 1998.

History, Mystery, Organizations

71 points by LorenDB 224 days ago | 10 comments

Mysterious Nazca Glyphs Have Just Been Revealed (sciencealert.com)
In the desert of southern Peru, a mystery has been unfolding over decades.

Archaeology, History, Peru, Mystery, Nazca Lines

7 points by cainxinth 227 days ago | 2 comments

They All Got Mysterious Brain Diseases. They're Fighting to Learn Why (nytimes.com)

Health, Medicine, Mystery, Disease, Investigation

37 points by ctoth 268 days ago | 14 comments

Cicada 3301 (wikipedia.org)