15 ms·

John Titor

206 points by dhruvkar 7y ago

notlukesky 7y ago
A Netflix show beckons....
- qubyte 7y ago
  If you count Steins;Gate (anime available on Netflix in the UK, in which Titor is important), there already is one.
  - stordoff 7y ago
    > A Hollywood live-action adaption of the game Steins;Gate is in the works. > Anime News Network reports the big reveal came during the live concert celebrating the 10th anniversary of the series. During the Science ADV Live S;G 1010th Anniversary, a teaser video was played revealing a live-action recreation of the game is being made by Hollywood for television. https://uk.ign.com/articles/steinsgate-live-action-show-adaptation-announced https://uk.ign.com/articles/steinsgate-live-action-show-adap...
echohack5 7y ago
Steins;Gate, a Japanese light novel and anime, includes John Titor in the story in an awesome way. It also includes some bit of hacker culture that I think is more real than the typical American movie "hacker". I recommend it! Edit: As pointed out in the comments, this was originally a visual novel! There are many ways to enjoy this story.
- dilippkumar 7y ago
  Strong agree. Stiens;Gate is the only time traveller story that I know that establishes rules for time travel early on and actually sticks to these rules till the end.
  - jbay808 7y ago
    Was it the end, or... just the beginning?!
  - time0ut 7y ago
    You might enjoy the movie Primer [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_HHnXeMWT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_HHnXeMWT0
    - gamegoblin 7y ago
      Also, the German netflix show 'Dark' does time travel in a much more satisfying way than the vast majority. Watch it in German with subtitles, the dub is weird.
      - tetris11 7y ago
        Dark suffers from the same ambiguity as Lost though, where you given the writers the benefit of the doubt that there's an overarching rational sequence of events, but it's also equally likely that the writers are just making it up as they go along.
        solstice 7y ago
        Strongly agree, especially when watching season 2
        mindcrime 7y ago
        True, and yet I'm still sitting here champing at the bit for Season 3.
    - as1mov 7y ago
      Just a heads up, the video is blocked everywhere except USA/Canada. Here's a link to the trailer if anyone is interested[0]. It's a fantastic movie by the way, a definite watch if you're interested in hard sci-fi. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vD-yj9o664& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vD-yj9o664&
- minimaxir 7y ago
  The full anime (all episodes subbed, a few dubbed) is available for free on YouTube by Funimation: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=EL3n57TtnN3tY https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=EL3n57TtnN3tY
  - haunter 7y ago
    Only in Canada, UK, Ireland, and US https://polsy.org.uk/stuff/ytrestrict.cgi?ytid=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dtz-L_sgaLUY https://polsy.org.uk/stuff/ytrestrict.cgi?ytid=https%3A%2F%2...
  - jamesgeck0 7y ago
    Two things I usually note when recommending Steins;Gate. Either the sub or the dub is well worth watching, but the dub is one of my favorites. In particular, it shines with Okarin's mile-a-minute pseudo-scientific conspiracy rants. If you like the premise and the characters, but are frustrated at the slow pace, hang in there. The plot does eventually kick into gear, and it doesn't waste any of the character development or world building.
  - lihaciudaniel 7y ago
    Video unavailable This video is not available.
  - Seirdy 7y ago
    The anime is good, but the original visual novel is much more detailed and offers several endings. 11/10 would recommend; it's the only time I can say a video game brought me close to tears. The Steins;Gate visual novel was the perfect gateway drug into otaku culture for me the first time I played it, especially since it included a glossary of terms related to anime/manga that grew as the story continued.
- ukyrgf 7y ago
  Isn't it... a game? What came first?
  - minimaxir 7y ago
    It was a visual novel (the game on the PS3 [EDIT: +Xbox 360]), then it was an anime, and very recently, there is now a game, Steins;Gate Elite (PS4/Xbox One/Switch) based on the anime.
    - haunter 7y ago
      Actually it was on Xbox 360, one of the few in Japan in 2009. PS3 and Vita was years later (2012)
      - minimaxir 7y ago
        Thanks, wasn't 100% sure off the top of my head. Fixed.
  - ThaRemo 7y ago
    Yes, it branched out into many different forms of media. I made a website a few years back listing all types of spin-off material: https://allaboutsteinsgate.info/ https://allaboutsteinsgate.info/
    - stordoff 7y ago
      As someone who has frequently used this site, thank you. It's a great resource.
- q3 7y ago
  Actually it was originally a visual novel, not a light novel.
- Hamuko 7y ago
  >There are many ways to enjoy this story. I'd suggest going with the visual novel anyways, since it has a bit more meat (like multiple endings) even if the anime is a pretty faithful telling. It's also on so many different platforms (including iOS), so it's pretty accessible. I'd avoid Steins;Gate Elite like a plague though.
  - andredz 7y ago
    What's wrong with Steins;Gate Elite?
    - stordoff 7y ago
      It makes the art _far_ more generic and a fair number of the internal monologue lines that make the main character more interesting have been cut. There are some explanatory lines (for things that originally aren't visually portrayed) cut that I don't think come across as well in the animation. It's not _bad_, but I don't see any reason to go with it over the original.
- geoelectric 7y ago
  I hadn't actually realized Titor was a "real" person, and I'm playing/reading through Steins;Gate Elite now. This was a little surreal to see pop up.
- Bombthecat 7y ago
  It's amazing! My wife doesn't like anime. But for some reason she really liked steins gate.
- 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
  The VN is darker. When stuck in a time loop, the protagonist contemplates raping a female friend over and over again because it will just reset.
swalsh 7y ago
How is this so high on the news feed? This is old, and not relevant.
- pimlottc 7y ago
  https://www.xkcd.com/1053/ https://www.xkcd.com/1053/
  - Darkphibre 7y ago
    I reference this comic all the time. Such a good one. :)
- Vesuvium 7y ago
  It's still funny!
  - jvagner 7y ago
    I was unfamiliar.. but this made me laugh: "Subsequent closer examination of Titor's assertions provoked widespread skepticism." Ahh, it was the closer examination that lead to the skepticism.
    - 6510 7y ago
      “My “time” machine is a stationary mass, temporal displacement unit manufactured by General Electric. The unit is powered by two, top-spin, dual-positive singularities that produce a standard, off-set Tipler sinusoid.” Stuff of legends
- Forge36 7y ago
  Recent updates with information about who was behind the hoax?
- FriendlyNormie 7y ago
  Some people want to increase the unhinged fearmongering over the virus by any means necessary. They’re running out of plausible rumors to do it with so now they’re upvoting end times prophecies instead. Of course that’s the only reason this is being upvoted right now. My question is why aren’t they being shadowbanned for inflaming the hysteria. The astonishing thing is that 99% of these people spent the past ten years aggressively trashing anyone who showed genuine interest in alarming events pointed out by Alex Jones etc, bullying them and rendering them pariahs in their social groups. Now that it’s their turn to be treated this way, their behavior is instead being allowed and encouraged for some reason, and they somehow don’t see the hypocrisy in their pointless cultivating of this panicked conspiracy theorist mindset.
starpilot 7y ago
Patent application, since abandoned, of his time machine: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20060073976A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20060073976A1/en > A method for employing sinusoidal oscillations of electrical bombardment on the surface of one Kerr type singularity in close proximity to a second Kerr type singularity in such a method to take advantage of the Lense-Thirring effect, to simulate the effect of two point masses on nearly radial orbits in a 2+1 dimensional anti-de Sitter space resulting in creation of circular timelike geodesics conforming to the van Stockum under the Van Den Broeck modification of the Alcubierre geometry (Van Den Broeck 1999) permitting topology change from one spacelike boundary to the other in accordance with Geroch's theorem (Geroch 1967) which results in a method for the formation of G{umlaut over ( )}odel-type geodesically complete spacetime envelopes complete with closed timelike curves.
- haolez 7y ago
  I'm not a physicist and this looks legit to me. High quality mumbo jumbo!
  - jerf 7y ago
    As I recall, he did fairly well overall. But there were still some errors in the presentation. He provided several pictures, in 1990s-grade postage-stamp quality, which could cover over a lot of issues. One of them was of him shooting a "laser pointer" in his time machine powered by a black hole, and the beam being visibly quite bent. The low resolution covered over the fact this was kinda obviously one of those strings of little lights wrapped in a tube with enough plausibility to believe if you want to. But if the laser pointer's light is getting "bent" like that, all of the light ought to be getting bent, not just the laser pointer, and you ought to be getting immense visual artifacts due to the fact that your picture is itself being taken with light that is bending like crazy (see stuff like [1]). Not to mention the implied gravity field at such bending rates is beyond anything atomic matter can take. But even if we handwave that away, there really isn't a way to handwave away the fact that if the light from your laser pointer is getting bent, all the light ought to be getting bent, to massive effect on the resulting picture. Still. Valiant effort. Better than most I've seen. Most of them are basically "Hi, I'm from $INTEGER years in the future and it turns out that you all are exactly right about everything and all the fashionable social concerns of your day/culture/sub-culture are in fact exactly correct! In the future, everybody who didn't (eat vegan / believe in BitCoin / get concerned about the landfill crisis / accept pholostigon theory) is dead because (they where all executed by super ethical governments for the crime of eating animals / died in pauper's prisons / literally buried in garbage / of the great Pholostigon War of 1773)! Ask me anything about how right your current social fashions are!" Not that Titor didn't more than dabble in that himself, though. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LHYUt9hGQc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LHYUt9hGQc
motohagiography 7y ago
My favorite article from a "traveller," https://www.ft.com/content/760546b6-c903-11e6-9043-7e34c07b46ef https://www.ft.com/content/760546b6-c903-11e6-9043-7e34c07b4... (submitted link as post as well, since it's really that interesting)
- ColanR 7y ago
  Paywalled.
  - motohagiography 7y ago
    Odd, I am not signed in or subscribed to it.
    - andai 7y ago
      Also paywalled for me (maybe because I'm in the EU?)
      - motohagiography 7y ago
        Regret the distraction. Not sure how it's strategic for the FT to embarrass people who support them like this.
      - SL61 7y ago
        It's paywalled for me too, in the US. If you paste the URL into Google and follow the link from there, the article will come up.
        andai 7y ago
        So that's how that works :) Thank you.
    - jotm 7y ago
      They have a free limit maybe
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
I think about JT from time to time (no pun intended). It looks like things are starting to go the way he described, but about a 10 year time shift difference. Thankfully no CJD outbreaks but with its latency who knows.
- ColanR 7y ago
  I've often wondered if the mass shootings count as the violence he predicted in the US.
  - 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
    Waco like events that get worse, according to him. He said the “civil war” starts in 2005, which would be 2015. The occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was Jan 2nd 2016 (starting slightly earlier in 2015). If there’s an event that might closely mark a start of a civil war that ramps up, that’s high on my list. We’ll see.
- gremlinsinc 7y ago
  Actually, prion diseases are still a worry. Deer up around here are infected, and it's a big hunting area (Utah/Colorado), eating a deer w/ prions, I think can cause CJD.... but IIRC there's a long incubation period (years), and no cure. So you're just fucked. God help us if that's secretly gonna start killing a lot of people. I cringe everytime my wife's family offers venison for dinner....
haunter 7y ago
People should play the game first. Significantly better than the anime.
- smichel17 7y ago
  I enjoyed the anime more, but I also watched it first, and I think that tarnished my experience. If I were going back I'd definitely do it in the reverse order.
tzs 7y ago
What time travel might look like from the other side [1]. I remember a great short story I read about the first time traveler. They decided the first visit would be the Shakespeare. Shakespeare has no problems accepting that he's being visited by a time traveler, and asks what gifts the traveler brings. The traveler is a bit confused, so Shakespeare explains that the early ones all bring gifts. The traveler has brought some gives, including a nicely bound volume of Shakespeare's plays. Shakespeare looks at it, comments on the nice binding, says something about maybe he can sell it, then decides probably not, and tosses it on a pile of other such volumes brought by other time travelers. The first time traveler is now getting pretty confused, and says something like "but I'm the first time traveler!", to which Shakespeare answer "but not the first to arrive". This is something often overlooked in time travel stories--just because you are the first to leave for a given destination doesn't mean you are the first to arrive. Shakespeare mentions that he's frequently bothered by time travelers, but at least doesn't have it as bad as Jesus--that guy can barely do anything without a time traveler showing up. Shakespeare explains he knows because a time traveler thought it would be interesting to take Shakespeare to meet Jesus once. All the great figures of history are frequently visited. Somewhere in there Shakespeare provides some drink and tries to calm down the inexperienced time traveler, who is freaking out over all this. Shakespeare is an old hand at dealing with newbie time traveler freak outs. Then a bunch of other time travelers arrive, but not to see Shakespeare. They are reporters from the first time traveler's future, there to interview him about his historic visit to Shakespeare. [1] https://www.tor.com/2011/08/31/wikihistory/ https://www.tor.com/2011/08/31/wikihistory/
- prostheticvamp 7y ago
  Any chance you recall the name of the short story? Your link was a fun read, but disappointingly not the story you described!
  - simcop2387 7y ago
    Looks like it's The Muse by Anthony Burgess (1968). Sorry for the long URL but it's the best confirmation of this I could find. [1] [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=mh9zrji5zfAC&pg=PA185&lpg=PA185&dq=the+muse+short+story+anthony&source=bl&ots=gf8mCQOzPw&sig=ACfU3U1DmZXm_51pJz_Q7DLyWgW-megbLw&hl=en&ppis=_e&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwip_o69xZXoAhWIsJ4KHZXHCbgQ6AEwA3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=the%20muse%20short%20story%20anthony&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=mh9zrji5zfAC&pg=PA185&lpg=...
peter_d_sherman 7y ago
Related: IBM 5110 PALM (Put All Logic in Microcode) CPU from 1978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14483823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14483823 (The HN discussion in this article is great, in my opinion...)
- neonate 7y ago
  Sorry if I'm missing the obvious but how is that related?
  - codezero 7y ago
    John Titor claimed to come back in time looking for a part for this type of computer system (If I am remembering correctly)
rossdavidh 7y ago
So, in the late 90's I went to a goth convention in New Orleans, where my wife met a time traveller named "Butterfly". I saw her talking to a weird looking guy, and swung by to see if she needed help, but she had that "oh this is going to be a great story" look on her face and kind of shooed me away. Later, she told me he had claimed to be from the future. He made some predictions: - there would be a war in Iraq, but it was not actually as big as the one that happened later - after the Big War, there was a disease that forced everyone to live belowground - he had a computer chip in his hand - he had a son in the future named Gandalf This all seemed pretty wacky, if harmless. My wife enjoyed relating it all in our Yahoo Groups email group. Then, in the next few years: - the implanting of computer chips in pets became commonplace - we started hearing about new viruses every few years - we went to war in Iraq - Lord of the Rings movies came out, which made it more likely someone would name their son "Gandalf" So, I asked my wife, "what else did that guy say would happen?" She said, "I don't remember it all now, but I put a really detailed list in my email to the Yahoo Group." So, we look in the Yahoo Groups history, and...that month was missing from the history. Oh, well. If he had said anything more significant than a global pandemic and WW3, I assume I would have remembered it.
- sova 7y ago
  Gratitude for conveying this message, what an intriguing character, and an intriguing lack of logged data. May all have peace and stillness in heart and mind
- Frondo 7y ago
  What group and month? in case someone out there might have their own copy...
  - rossdavidh 7y ago
    Well it was an Austin goth group, and somewhere around the year 2000, but more detail than that I cannot recall. Wait, does that mean _my_ memory has been wiped as well?! Oh, wait, no, I just have a poor memory. Sorry...
jeffadotio 7y ago
Anyone who ignores an invitation to have a drink with Stephen Hawking[1] has nothing to say that is worth hearing. 1. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/stephen-hawking-time-travelers-party https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/stephen-hawking-time-t...
- JorgeGT 7y ago
  Time travel will be highly controlled by the authorities, probably that party was surrounded by future cops looking out for rogue amateurs.
  - Bombthecat 7y ago
    More like that you need tons of resources, skills and knowledge to do it. Nothing a private person could do.
    - benibela 7y ago
      But if the time machine itself travels through time, an unbounded number of people could use the same machine at the same time
  - jotm 7y ago
    I guess same way no one has used a nuke or even a dirty bomb yet, even though the latter would be technically feasible for even a small group.
- withinboredom 7y ago
  But how do we know no one showed up? Someone could have showed up, stuck him in a time machine and took him to the real party then zapped him back to his time not a second later. :conspiracy:
daruton 7y ago
Steins;Gate
Razengan 7y ago
Time travel is like UFOs: If there are aliens out there, why haven’t we met some by now? If there are time travellers, why isn’t anybody making accurate predictions? If rich people exist, why hasn’t one given me a million dollars?
- rafaelvasco 7y ago
  Several people say the have met some. But it's like, it isn't true until it happens to you personally.
  - deepstream 7y ago
    but they can only predict from their own timeline, which isn't the same timeline they meet you on. I think rather than predictions, the coolest things time travelers could bring world be technology, or artefacts.
mmhsieh 7y ago
I always wondered why Doraemon didn't just bring Nobita some lotto numbers.
Pigo 7y ago
I wouldn't just normally post to a youtube video, but this seems rather relevant https://youtu.be/YJYFlI4ytbU https://youtu.be/YJYFlI4ytbU
airesearcher 7y ago
Can someone explain why this is trending on Hacker News today?
- Bombthecat 7y ago
  People need hope and distraction. Dark times are ahead.
  - baytrailcat 7y ago
    Sign of the times. Upon reading the title, I figured the discussion would all be about closed time-like curves and causality violation and what not. But, here I am surprised to see HN commenters as open as a UFO subreddit. No complaints here though.
- kleer001 7y ago
  The same reason any group acts as one. Emotion.
- Seirdy 7y ago
  It's the choice of Steins Gate. The spread of the truth is a necessary measure to bring the actions of The Organization and SERN to light. El Psy Kongroo.
  - Seirdy 7y ago
    In case you didn't get it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22558727 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22558727
Angeo34 7y ago
I really enjoyed Steins;gate zero just saying
- dilippkumar 7y ago
  +1
Mtinie 7y ago
In April of 2004 I attended a multimedia performance at George Mason University called "Time Traveler Zero Zero - A Story of John Titor." It was directed by Kirby Malone and is still one of the more interesting theatrical productions I've ever seen. Was anyone else here at the same showing? Here's a review of the performance if anyone is curious -- http://www.timetravelreviews.com/theatre/traveler00.html http://www.timetravelreviews.com/theatre/traveler00.html
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
29athrowaway 7y ago
John Titor made poor predictions. He also said that his timeline could have been different than this one, as a way to justify prediction failures. He said an organizarion pays him a paycheck then said he lives in a society based on bartering. There are contradictions in his posts. The Mad Cow disease epidemic never happened, neither did the civil war he predicted, or any if the other stuff. He also talked about using ancient IBM computers to fix some software bug from the future. Why on earth would you use that rather than a more power efficient/powerful computer?
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
  The bug was y2036, which he said we knew was a problem even then. It is definitely still a problem.
  - n0rbwah 7y ago
    How that problem can be solved by an IBM 5100, a computer that has never ran any flavor of unix is a mystery though. I guess we'll find out when we have to send someone into the past to retrieve one so we can fix the bug.
    - 29athrowaway 7y ago
      You may not be able to open the files to be fixed in such ancient computer.
      - iNate2000 7y ago
        Bringing an artifact forward in time would skip over the times where degradation occurred. Wouldn't it?
      - Nextgrid 7y ago
        My understanding is the opposite. To me it seems that in the future they for some reason need to access files that can only be opened on that computer. If time travel is indeed possible and relatively common, it might be a better business decision to just send someone back in time to fetch a working version of that computer than try to recreate one from archived documentation (if any of it survived).
benibela 7y ago
4chan has investigated that and discovered that John Titor is actually Donald Trump who choose the alias after his uncle John Trump - an MIT professor - who obtained the blueprints of the time machine from Nikola Tesla: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/214/676/8aa.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/214/676/8aa...
hyfgfh 7y ago
El psy congroo!
chrsw 7y ago
How does time travel work with the Earth spinning, the Earth orbiting the Sun and Solar System orbiting around the center of the Milky Way? By the time you finish reading this comment you've moved thousands of miles with respect to the galactic center. Or am I missing something?
- themodelplumber 7y ago
  I like this question. It broke my mental model of time travel because I like to think of time as tied to space, maybe. If you want to rewind a thread of time, you can't really stay in the same place and poof, like Christopher Reeve laying in bed. Because the old hotel isn't in that place anymore, at some physical-historical-galactic-geography level. Maybe it's not meant to work that way though; maybe you can uncouple time and meditate, and your other-conscious travels but in some other way than normal physical travel with forward time, or something like that.
  - dorkwood 7y ago
    I think that's a cool idea for a story. It also addresses the question of "if time travel were possible, wouldn't we have seen some time travellers by now?" Perhaps somewhere out there in space is a graveyard of time travellers who ended up landing in the empty void that the Earth once occupied in the time they were travelling to.
- stordoff 7y ago
  If you can move in time, it seems plausible you could also move in space. According to John Titor: > [T]his problem is actually the most difficult part of time travel. [...] Inside the displacement unit are a series of very sensitive clocks and gravity sensors. This system is called the VGL (variable gravity lock). [...B]efore the unit "leaves" a worldline, it takes a base reading of the local gravity and adjusts the Tipler sinusoid to 'lock' into that position. Although the temporal physics of this statement are wrong, in effect, it holds you to the 'Earth'. During travel, it periodically checks to see that the field has not varied. If it does, it stops and reverses course or drops out at that point. https://www.strangerdimensions.com/2013/02/04/john-titor-the-man-with-the-machine/ https://www.strangerdimensions.com/2013/02/04/john-titor-the...
bArray 7y ago
I think the US government missed a trick by not making the logo for the United States Space Force [1] the logo of John Titor's military insignia [2]. (Although I do appreciate the Star Trek looking seal nevertheless.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor
euske 7y ago
To believe that time travel is possible is to believe that the universe keeps all the snapshots of every moment in some backup storage. From the economic viewpoint, it is very unwise. I don't think the universe is that dumb.
- mekster 7y ago
  What do you know about the universe's economic viewpoint?
mekster 7y ago
The way he didn't mention crypto currency that must have effected their future economy already sounds sketchy. See they still using paper bills everywhere?

John Titor

206 points by dhruvkar 7y ago

notlukesky 7y ago

A Netflix show beckons....

qubyte 7y ago
If you count Steins;Gate (anime available on Netflix in the UK, in which Titor is important), there already is one.
- stordoff 7y ago
  > A Hollywood live-action adaption of the game Steins;Gate is in the works. > Anime News Network reports the big reveal came during the live concert celebrating the 10th anniversary of the series. During the Science ADV Live S;G 1010th Anniversary, a teaser video was played revealing a live-action recreation of the game is being made by Hollywood for television. https://uk.ign.com/articles/steinsgate-live-action-show-adaptation-announced https://uk.ign.com/articles/steinsgate-live-action-show-adap...

echohack5 7y ago

Steins;Gate, a Japanese light novel and anime, includes John Titor in the story in an awesome way. It also includes some bit of hacker culture that I think is more real than the typical American movie "hacker". I recommend it! Edit: As pointed out in the comments, this was originally a visual novel! There are many ways to enjoy this story.

dilippkumar 7y ago
Strong agree. Stiens;Gate is the only time traveller story that I know that establishes rules for time travel early on and actually sticks to these rules till the end.
- jbay808 7y ago
  Was it the end, or... just the beginning?!
- time0ut 7y ago
  You might enjoy the movie Primer [0]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_HHnXeMWT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_HHnXeMWT0
  - gamegoblin 7y ago
    Also, the German netflix show 'Dark' does time travel in a much more satisfying way than the vast majority. Watch it in German with subtitles, the dub is weird.
    - tetris11 7y ago
      Dark suffers from the same ambiguity as Lost though, where you given the writers the benefit of the doubt that there's an overarching rational sequence of events, but it's also equally likely that the writers are just making it up as they go along.
      - solstice 7y ago
        Strongly agree, especially when watching season 2
        mindcrime 7y ago
        True, and yet I'm still sitting here champing at the bit for Season 3.
  - as1mov 7y ago
    Just a heads up, the video is blocked everywhere except USA/Canada. Here's a link to the trailer if anyone is interested[0]. It's a fantastic movie by the way, a definite watch if you're interested in hard sci-fi. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vD-yj9o664& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vD-yj9o664&
minimaxir 7y ago
The full anime (all episodes subbed, a few dubbed) is available for free on YouTube by Funimation: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=EL3n57TtnN3tY https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=EL3n57TtnN3tY
- haunter 7y ago
  Only in Canada, UK, Ireland, and US https://polsy.org.uk/stuff/ytrestrict.cgi?ytid=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dtz-L_sgaLUY https://polsy.org.uk/stuff/ytrestrict.cgi?ytid=https%3A%2F%2...
- jamesgeck0 7y ago
  Two things I usually note when recommending Steins;Gate. Either the sub or the dub is well worth watching, but the dub is one of my favorites. In particular, it shines with Okarin's mile-a-minute pseudo-scientific conspiracy rants. If you like the premise and the characters, but are frustrated at the slow pace, hang in there. The plot does eventually kick into gear, and it doesn't waste any of the character development or world building.
- lihaciudaniel 7y ago
  Video unavailable This video is not available.
- Seirdy 7y ago
  The anime is good, but the original visual novel is much more detailed and offers several endings. 11/10 would recommend; it's the only time I can say a video game brought me close to tears. The Steins;Gate visual novel was the perfect gateway drug into otaku culture for me the first time I played it, especially since it included a glossary of terms related to anime/manga that grew as the story continued.
ukyrgf 7y ago
Isn't it... a game? What came first?
- minimaxir 7y ago
  It was a visual novel (the game on the PS3 [EDIT: +Xbox 360]), then it was an anime, and very recently, there is now a game, Steins;Gate Elite (PS4/Xbox One/Switch) based on the anime.
  - haunter 7y ago
    Actually it was on Xbox 360, one of the few in Japan in 2009. PS3 and Vita was years later (2012)
    - minimaxir 7y ago
      Thanks, wasn't 100% sure off the top of my head. Fixed.
- ThaRemo 7y ago
  Yes, it branched out into many different forms of media. I made a website a few years back listing all types of spin-off material: https://allaboutsteinsgate.info/ https://allaboutsteinsgate.info/
  - stordoff 7y ago
    As someone who has frequently used this site, thank you. It's a great resource.
q3 7y ago
Actually it was originally a visual novel, not a light novel.
Hamuko 7y ago
>There are many ways to enjoy this story. I'd suggest going with the visual novel anyways, since it has a bit more meat (like multiple endings) even if the anime is a pretty faithful telling. It's also on so many different platforms (including iOS), so it's pretty accessible. I'd avoid Steins;Gate Elite like a plague though.
- andredz 7y ago
  What's wrong with Steins;Gate Elite?
  - stordoff 7y ago
    It makes the art _far_ more generic and a fair number of the internal monologue lines that make the main character more interesting have been cut. There are some explanatory lines (for things that originally aren't visually portrayed) cut that I don't think come across as well in the animation. It's not _bad_, but I don't see any reason to go with it over the original.
geoelectric 7y ago
I hadn't actually realized Titor was a "real" person, and I'm playing/reading through Steins;Gate Elite now. This was a little surreal to see pop up.
Bombthecat 7y ago
It's amazing! My wife doesn't like anime. But for some reason she really liked steins gate.
0x8BADF00D 7y ago
The VN is darker. When stuck in a time loop, the protagonist contemplates raping a female friend over and over again because it will just reset.

swalsh 7y ago

How is this so high on the news feed? This is old, and not relevant.

pimlottc 7y ago
https://www.xkcd.com/1053/ https://www.xkcd.com/1053/
- Darkphibre 7y ago
  I reference this comic all the time. Such a good one. :)
Vesuvium 7y ago
It's still funny!
- jvagner 7y ago
  I was unfamiliar.. but this made me laugh: "Subsequent closer examination of Titor's assertions provoked widespread skepticism." Ahh, it was the closer examination that lead to the skepticism.
  - 6510 7y ago
    “My “time” machine is a stationary mass, temporal displacement unit manufactured by General Electric. The unit is powered by two, top-spin, dual-positive singularities that produce a standard, off-set Tipler sinusoid.” Stuff of legends
Forge36 7y ago
Recent updates with information about who was behind the hoax?
FriendlyNormie 7y ago
Some people want to increase the unhinged fearmongering over the virus by any means necessary. They’re running out of plausible rumors to do it with so now they’re upvoting end times prophecies instead. Of course that’s the only reason this is being upvoted right now. My question is why aren’t they being shadowbanned for inflaming the hysteria. The astonishing thing is that 99% of these people spent the past ten years aggressively trashing anyone who showed genuine interest in alarming events pointed out by Alex Jones etc, bullying them and rendering them pariahs in their social groups. Now that it’s their turn to be treated this way, their behavior is instead being allowed and encouraged for some reason, and they somehow don’t see the hypocrisy in their pointless cultivating of this panicked conspiracy theorist mindset.

starpilot 7y ago

Patent application, since abandoned, of his time machine: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20060073976A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US20060073976A1/en > A method for employing sinusoidal oscillations of electrical bombardment on the surface of one Kerr type singularity in close proximity to a second Kerr type singularity in such a method to take advantage of the Lense-Thirring effect, to simulate the effect of two point masses on nearly radial orbits in a 2+1 dimensional anti-de Sitter space resulting in creation of circular timelike geodesics conforming to the van Stockum under the Van Den Broeck modification of the Alcubierre geometry (Van Den Broeck 1999) permitting topology change from one spacelike boundary to the other in accordance with Geroch's theorem (Geroch 1967) which results in a method for the formation of G{umlaut over ( )}odel-type geodesically complete spacetime envelopes complete with closed timelike curves.

haolez 7y ago
I'm not a physicist and this looks legit to me. High quality mumbo jumbo!
- jerf 7y ago
  As I recall, he did fairly well overall. But there were still some errors in the presentation. He provided several pictures, in 1990s-grade postage-stamp quality, which could cover over a lot of issues. One of them was of him shooting a "laser pointer" in his time machine powered by a black hole, and the beam being visibly quite bent. The low resolution covered over the fact this was kinda obviously one of those strings of little lights wrapped in a tube with enough plausibility to believe if you want to. But if the laser pointer's light is getting "bent" like that, all of the light ought to be getting bent, not just the laser pointer, and you ought to be getting immense visual artifacts due to the fact that your picture is itself being taken with light that is bending like crazy (see stuff like [1]). Not to mention the implied gravity field at such bending rates is beyond anything atomic matter can take. But even if we handwave that away, there really isn't a way to handwave away the fact that if the light from your laser pointer is getting bent, all the light ought to be getting bent, to massive effect on the resulting picture. Still. Valiant effort. Better than most I've seen. Most of them are basically "Hi, I'm from $INTEGER years in the future and it turns out that you all are exactly right about everything and all the fashionable social concerns of your day/culture/sub-culture are in fact exactly correct! In the future, everybody who didn't (eat vegan / believe in BitCoin / get concerned about the landfill crisis / accept pholostigon theory) is dead because (they where all executed by super ethical governments for the crime of eating animals / died in pauper's prisons / literally buried in garbage / of the great Pholostigon War of 1773)! Ask me anything about how right your current social fashions are!" Not that Titor didn't more than dabble in that himself, though. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LHYUt9hGQc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LHYUt9hGQc

motohagiography 7y ago

My favorite article from a "traveller," https://www.ft.com/content/760546b6-c903-11e6-9043-7e34c07b46ef https://www.ft.com/content/760546b6-c903-11e6-9043-7e34c07b4... (submitted link as post as well, since it's really that interesting)

ColanR 7y ago
Paywalled.
- motohagiography 7y ago
  Odd, I am not signed in or subscribed to it.
  - andai 7y ago
    Also paywalled for me (maybe because I'm in the EU?)
    - motohagiography 7y ago
      Regret the distraction. Not sure how it's strategic for the FT to embarrass people who support them like this.
    - SL61 7y ago
      It's paywalled for me too, in the US. If you paste the URL into Google and follow the link from there, the article will come up.
      - andai 7y ago
        So that's how that works :) Thank you.
  - jotm 7y ago
    They have a free limit maybe

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago

I think about JT from time to time (no pun intended). It looks like things are starting to go the way he described, but about a 10 year time shift difference. Thankfully no CJD outbreaks but with its latency who knows.

ColanR 7y ago
I've often wondered if the mass shootings count as the violence he predicted in the US.
- 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
  Waco like events that get worse, according to him. He said the “civil war” starts in 2005, which would be 2015. The occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge was Jan 2nd 2016 (starting slightly earlier in 2015). If there’s an event that might closely mark a start of a civil war that ramps up, that’s high on my list. We’ll see.
gremlinsinc 7y ago
Actually, prion diseases are still a worry. Deer up around here are infected, and it's a big hunting area (Utah/Colorado), eating a deer w/ prions, I think can cause CJD.... but IIRC there's a long incubation period (years), and no cure. So you're just fucked. God help us if that's secretly gonna start killing a lot of people. I cringe everytime my wife's family offers venison for dinner....

haunter 7y ago

People should play the game first. Significantly better than the anime.

smichel17 7y ago
I enjoyed the anime more, but I also watched it first, and I think that tarnished my experience. If I were going back I'd definitely do it in the reverse order.

tzs 7y ago

What time travel might look like from the other side [1]. I remember a great short story I read about the first time traveler. They decided the first visit would be the Shakespeare. Shakespeare has no problems accepting that he's being visited by a time traveler, and asks what gifts the traveler brings. The traveler is a bit confused, so Shakespeare explains that the early ones all bring gifts. The traveler has brought some gives, including a nicely bound volume of Shakespeare's plays. Shakespeare looks at it, comments on the nice binding, says something about maybe he can sell it, then decides probably not, and tosses it on a pile of other such volumes brought by other time travelers. The first time traveler is now getting pretty confused, and says something like "but I'm the first time traveler!", to which Shakespeare answer "but not the first to arrive". This is something often overlooked in time travel stories--just because you are the first to leave for a given destination doesn't mean you are the first to arrive. Shakespeare mentions that he's frequently bothered by time travelers, but at least doesn't have it as bad as Jesus--that guy can barely do anything without a time traveler showing up. Shakespeare explains he knows because a time traveler thought it would be interesting to take Shakespeare to meet Jesus once. All the great figures of history are frequently visited. Somewhere in there Shakespeare provides some drink and tries to calm down the inexperienced time traveler, who is freaking out over all this. Shakespeare is an old hand at dealing with newbie time traveler freak outs. Then a bunch of other time travelers arrive, but not to see Shakespeare. They are reporters from the first time traveler's future, there to interview him about his historic visit to Shakespeare. [1] https://www.tor.com/2011/08/31/wikihistory/ https://www.tor.com/2011/08/31/wikihistory/

prostheticvamp 7y ago
Any chance you recall the name of the short story? Your link was a fun read, but disappointingly not the story you described!
- simcop2387 7y ago
  Looks like it's The Muse by Anthony Burgess (1968). Sorry for the long URL but it's the best confirmation of this I could find. [1] [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=mh9zrji5zfAC&pg=PA185&lpg=PA185&dq=the+muse+short+story+anthony&source=bl&ots=gf8mCQOzPw&sig=ACfU3U1DmZXm_51pJz_Q7DLyWgW-megbLw&hl=en&ppis=_e&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwip_o69xZXoAhWIsJ4KHZXHCbgQ6AEwA3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=the%20muse%20short%20story%20anthony&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=mh9zrji5zfAC&pg=PA185&lpg=...

peter_d_sherman 7y ago

Related: IBM 5110 PALM (Put All Logic in Microcode) CPU from 1978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14483823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14483823 (The HN discussion in this article is great, in my opinion...)

neonate 7y ago
Sorry if I'm missing the obvious but how is that related?
- codezero 7y ago
  John Titor claimed to come back in time looking for a part for this type of computer system (If I am remembering correctly)

rossdavidh 7y ago

So, in the late 90's I went to a goth convention in New Orleans, where my wife met a time traveller named "Butterfly". I saw her talking to a weird looking guy, and swung by to see if she needed help, but she had that "oh this is going to be a great story" look on her face and kind of shooed me away. Later, she told me he had claimed to be from the future. He made some predictions: - there would be a war in Iraq, but it was not actually as big as the one that happened later - after the Big War, there was a disease that forced everyone to live belowground - he had a computer chip in his hand - he had a son in the future named Gandalf This all seemed pretty wacky, if harmless. My wife enjoyed relating it all in our Yahoo Groups email group. Then, in the next few years: - the implanting of computer chips in pets became commonplace - we started hearing about new viruses every few years - we went to war in Iraq - Lord of the Rings movies came out, which made it more likely someone would name their son "Gandalf" So, I asked my wife, "what else did that guy say would happen?" She said, "I don't remember it all now, but I put a really detailed list in my email to the Yahoo Group." So, we look in the Yahoo Groups history, and...that month was missing from the history. Oh, well. If he had said anything more significant than a global pandemic and WW3, I assume I would have remembered it.

sova 7y ago
Gratitude for conveying this message, what an intriguing character, and an intriguing lack of logged data. May all have peace and stillness in heart and mind
Frondo 7y ago
What group and month? in case someone out there might have their own copy...
- rossdavidh 7y ago
  Well it was an Austin goth group, and somewhere around the year 2000, but more detail than that I cannot recall. Wait, does that mean _my_ memory has been wiped as well?! Oh, wait, no, I just have a poor memory. Sorry...

jeffadotio 7y ago

Anyone who ignores an invitation to have a drink with Stephen Hawking[1] has nothing to say that is worth hearing. 1. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/stephen-hawking-time-travelers-party https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/stephen-hawking-time-t...

JorgeGT 7y ago
Time travel will be highly controlled by the authorities, probably that party was surrounded by future cops looking out for rogue amateurs.
- Bombthecat 7y ago
  More like that you need tons of resources, skills and knowledge to do it. Nothing a private person could do.
  - benibela 7y ago
    But if the time machine itself travels through time, an unbounded number of people could use the same machine at the same time
- jotm 7y ago
  I guess same way no one has used a nuke or even a dirty bomb yet, even though the latter would be technically feasible for even a small group.
withinboredom 7y ago
But how do we know no one showed up? Someone could have showed up, stuck him in a time machine and took him to the real party then zapped him back to his time not a second later. :conspiracy:

daruton 7y ago

Steins;Gate

Razengan 7y ago

Time travel is like UFOs: If there are aliens out there, why haven’t we met some by now? If there are time travellers, why isn’t anybody making accurate predictions? If rich people exist, why hasn’t one given me a million dollars?

rafaelvasco 7y ago
Several people say the have met some. But it's like, it isn't true until it happens to you personally.
- deepstream 7y ago
  but they can only predict from their own timeline, which isn't the same timeline they meet you on. I think rather than predictions, the coolest things time travelers could bring world be technology, or artefacts.

mmhsieh 7y ago

I always wondered why Doraemon didn't just bring Nobita some lotto numbers.

Pigo 7y ago

I wouldn't just normally post to a youtube video, but this seems rather relevant https://youtu.be/YJYFlI4ytbU https://youtu.be/YJYFlI4ytbU

airesearcher 7y ago

Can someone explain why this is trending on Hacker News today?

Bombthecat 7y ago
People need hope and distraction. Dark times are ahead.
- baytrailcat 7y ago
  Sign of the times. Upon reading the title, I figured the discussion would all be about closed time-like curves and causality violation and what not. But, here I am surprised to see HN commenters as open as a UFO subreddit. No complaints here though.
kleer001 7y ago
The same reason any group acts as one. Emotion.
Seirdy 7y ago
It's the choice of Steins Gate. The spread of the truth is a necessary measure to bring the actions of The Organization and SERN to light. El Psy Kongroo.
- Seirdy 7y ago
  In case you didn't get it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22558727 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22558727

Angeo34 7y ago

I really enjoyed Steins;gate zero just saying

dilippkumar 7y ago
+1

Mtinie 7y ago

In April of 2004 I attended a multimedia performance at George Mason University called "Time Traveler Zero Zero - A Story of John Titor." It was directed by Kirby Malone and is still one of the more interesting theatrical productions I've ever seen. Was anyone else here at the same showing? Here's a review of the performance if anyone is curious -- http://www.timetravelreviews.com/theatre/traveler00.html http://www.timetravelreviews.com/theatre/traveler00.html

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

29athrowaway 7y ago

John Titor made poor predictions. He also said that his timeline could have been different than this one, as a way to justify prediction failures. He said an organizarion pays him a paycheck then said he lives in a society based on bartering. There are contradictions in his posts. The Mad Cow disease epidemic never happened, neither did the civil war he predicted, or any if the other stuff. He also talked about using ancient IBM computers to fix some software bug from the future. Why on earth would you use that rather than a more power efficient/powerful computer?

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
The bug was y2036, which he said we knew was a problem even then. It is definitely still a problem.
- n0rbwah 7y ago
  How that problem can be solved by an IBM 5100, a computer that has never ran any flavor of unix is a mystery though. I guess we'll find out when we have to send someone into the past to retrieve one so we can fix the bug.
  - 29athrowaway 7y ago
    You may not be able to open the files to be fixed in such ancient computer.
    - iNate2000 7y ago
      Bringing an artifact forward in time would skip over the times where degradation occurred. Wouldn't it?
    - Nextgrid 7y ago
      My understanding is the opposite. To me it seems that in the future they for some reason need to access files that can only be opened on that computer. If time travel is indeed possible and relatively common, it might be a better business decision to just send someone back in time to fetch a working version of that computer than try to recreate one from archived documentation (if any of it survived).

benibela 7y ago

4chan has investigated that and discovered that John Titor is actually Donald Trump who choose the alias after his uncle John Trump - an MIT professor - who obtained the blueprints of the time machine from Nikola Tesla: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/214/676/8aa.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/214/676/8aa...

hyfgfh 7y ago

El psy congroo!

chrsw 7y ago

How does time travel work with the Earth spinning, the Earth orbiting the Sun and Solar System orbiting around the center of the Milky Way? By the time you finish reading this comment you've moved thousands of miles with respect to the galactic center. Or am I missing something?

themodelplumber 7y ago
I like this question. It broke my mental model of time travel because I like to think of time as tied to space, maybe. If you want to rewind a thread of time, you can't really stay in the same place and poof, like Christopher Reeve laying in bed. Because the old hotel isn't in that place anymore, at some physical-historical-galactic-geography level. Maybe it's not meant to work that way though; maybe you can uncouple time and meditate, and your other-conscious travels but in some other way than normal physical travel with forward time, or something like that.
- dorkwood 7y ago
  I think that's a cool idea for a story. It also addresses the question of "if time travel were possible, wouldn't we have seen some time travellers by now?" Perhaps somewhere out there in space is a graveyard of time travellers who ended up landing in the empty void that the Earth once occupied in the time they were travelling to.
stordoff 7y ago
If you can move in time, it seems plausible you could also move in space. According to John Titor: > [T]his problem is actually the most difficult part of time travel. [...] Inside the displacement unit are a series of very sensitive clocks and gravity sensors. This system is called the VGL (variable gravity lock). [...B]efore the unit "leaves" a worldline, it takes a base reading of the local gravity and adjusts the Tipler sinusoid to 'lock' into that position. Although the temporal physics of this statement are wrong, in effect, it holds you to the 'Earth'. During travel, it periodically checks to see that the field has not varied. If it does, it stops and reverses course or drops out at that point. https://www.strangerdimensions.com/2013/02/04/john-titor-the-man-with-the-machine/ https://www.strangerdimensions.com/2013/02/04/john-titor-the...

bArray 7y ago

I think the US government missed a trick by not making the logo for the United States Space Force [1] the logo of John Titor's military insignia [2]. (Although I do appreciate the Star Trek looking seal nevertheless.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor

euske 7y ago

To believe that time travel is possible is to believe that the universe keeps all the snapshots of every moment in some backup storage. From the economic viewpoint, it is very unwise. I don't think the universe is that dumb.

mekster 7y ago
What do you know about the universe's economic viewpoint?

mekster 7y ago

The way he didn't mention crypto currency that must have effected their future economy already sounds sketchy. See they still using paper bills everywhere?