Bletchley Park Turns on Worlds Oldest Working Computer 60 Years Later
The computer, originally called Harwell but now called the Wolverhampton Instrument for Teaching Computing from Harwell (WITCH), was originally powered up in 1951 (pictured above). Between 1952 and 1957 the computer was used for early atomic research, and then it was given to Wolverhampton University, where it remained in operation until 1973. Between 1973 and 1997 it was on display at a museum in Birmingham, and then it disappeared into storage, only to be discovered by chance in 2009.
Over the last three years, WITCH has been lovingly restored to its original glory — and now it’s on display at Bletchley, powered up and working its way through some original 1950s computer programs.
(via World’s oldest original digital computer is turned back on after 61 years | ExtremeTech)
“Steal This Singularity”: R.U. Sirius Asks “Why So Serious?”
…the transhuman future should not be dominated by big capital and/or authoritarian government; and — contrary to the reassurances of many glib futurists — this requires some intentionality, both in terms of programming and activism. The technology doesn’t insure this by its very nature. And the current general trend in this regard is not positive, but extremely ambiguous at best.
…the clever, logical, programming/engineering monkey-mind should not be allowed to instantiate its limited idea of humanity, the universe and everything, on humanity, the universe and everything.
The tricksters, the freaks, the surrealists, the hedonists, the outsiders — and all the uncodable strangeness that emerges from the biological codes’ diversification into cultural complexity and then into something as perverse and rationally pointless as a multilayered prank in a cinematic celebrity culture — must hijack the engineer’s Singularity and recode it or uncode it so as to allow for liminal spaces outside its totalizing grasp.
We live in a time in which seemingly smart humans love to present us with absolute dualistic options… and the notion that there could be terrain outside those frames becomes, not exactly unthinkable but somehow too trivial to consider as anything but a sideshow.
…Singularitarianism and — more broadly — transhumanism — has produced a veritable glut of abstract theorizing, so whatever novel perceptions or objections or concerns one may think one is bringing to the party, some smarty pants has probably swatted it away or incorporated it into its logical totality.
if there was a role for artists in Singularity Summit 2012, I didn’t notice it. Sex — a primary desire for most humans — seemed to be almost unmentionable, if not entirely archaic. Heightened subjective states of consciousness — ecstasy, agape, rapture — seem to be well off the map.
Of course, it’s part of the culture of science that legitimacy requires the maintenance of a bordering-on-Calvinist front…
Algorithm Analyzing Artistic Style Identifies Same Patterns as Art Historians
Computer scientists Computer scientists… have developed a program that analyzes paintings in a manner similar to how expert art historians perform their analysis, and conducted an experiment that showed that machines can outperform untrained humans in the analysis of fine art.
In the experiment, the researchers used approximately 1, 000 paintings of 34 well-known artists, and let the computer algorithm analyze the similarity between them based solely on the visual content of the paintings, and without any human guidance.
Surprisingly, the computer provided a network of similarities between painters that is largely in agreement with the perception of art historians.
I take this research with a grain of salt: the algorithm seems to have detected the patterns it was designed to detect. I would have been more excited if it drew a new connection that human art experts found interesting.
Major Quantum Computing Milestone: Physicists Build Single-Atom Quantum Bit in Silicon
Some of the popular approaches to building quantum computers include confining atoms in cryogenic gases to create quantum bits (or qubits) and using superconducting circuits.
In 1998, Bruce Kane, a physicist at the University of Maryland, in College Park, suggested an approach based on solid-state silicon semiconductors that are doped with phosphorus. He proposed using the quantum characteristic of spin in the nucleus of the phosphorus donor atom as the qubit.
Many scientists were enamored with this idea, because it showed the potential to integrate quantum computers with conventional silicon processing.
Morello and Dzurak were among the physicists impressed by Kane’s proposal, but they chose to investigate electron spins instead, because electron spins in silicon have very long coherence times—that is, it takes a relatively long time for such a qubit to lose its information.
In 2010, they demonstrated the ability to read the state of an electron’s spin. Basically, they managed to get the spin state of the electron to control the flow of electrons in a nearby circuit and produce a digital readout.
Now, Morello and Dzurak have discovered how to write the spin state. This completes the two-stage process required to operate a quantum bit. They managed to do this by using a microwave field to gain unprecedented control over an electron bound to a single phosphorous atom, which was implanted next to a specially designed silicon transistor.
(via Physicists Build First Single-Atom Quantum Bit in Silicon - IEEE Spectrum)
State-Sponsored Malware Serving as Template For New Civilian Attacks
“They are copying the design philosophy,” says Schouwenberg, adding that one now-popular technique found in conventional “criminal malware” was inspired by the discovery of Stuxnet.
For example, Stuxnet installed fake device drivers using digital security certificates stolen from two Taiwanese computer component companies, allowing them to sneak past any security software. Other malware now uses fake certificates in a similar way to hide malicious software from antivirus programs.
“Stuxnet was the first really serious malware with a stolen certificate, and it’s become more and more common ever since,” says Schouwenberg. “Nowadays you can see use of fake certificates in very common malware.”
Aviv Raff, chief technology officer and cofounder of Israeli computer security firm Seculert, agrees. “Design features of Stuxnet, Duqu, and Flame are appearing in opportunistic criminal malware,” he says.
(via Stuxnet Tricks Copied by Computer Criminals - Technology Review)
India to Invest Nearly $1 Billion to Build Worlds Fastest Computer by 2017
Jumping to the exaflop scale in just five years would truly be a leap forward for India. It’s current highest-ranking machine on the global TOP500 is in the 58th position, but when it comes to computing India has historically proven scrappy and ready to innovate on its own.
The Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), the agency behind the proposal, was established in the late 1980s after it was stonewalled by the West in its attempt to purchase advanced supercomputing systems.
While India’s homegrown supercomputing industry hasn’t dominated the field the way the U.S., China, Japan, and Europe have, it has certainly kept India in the running even without the technology transfers it sometimes desired. If adopted, the plan could set a course for India to climb further up the TOP500 rankings if not all the way to the top…
(via India Aims To Take The “World’s Fastest Supercomputer” Crown By 2017 | Popular Science)
Malaysian Computer Detects Emotions, Reads Lips
Scientists in Malaysia are teaching a computer to interpret human emotions based on lip patterns.
The system could improve the way we interact with computers and perhaps allow disabled people to use computer-based communications devices, such as voice synthesizers, more effectively and more efficiently, says Karthigayan Muthukaruppan of Manipal International University.
The system uses a genetic algorithm that gets better and better with each iteration to match irregular ellipse-fitting equations to the shape of a human mouth displaying different emotions.
They have used photos of individuals from Southeast Asia and Japan to train a computer to recognize the six commonly accepted human emotions — happiness, sadness, fear, angry, disgust, surprise — and a neutral expression. The upper and lower lip is each analyzed as two separate ellipses by the algorithm.
The team’s algorithm can successfully classify the seven emotions and a neutral expression described, the scientists say.
(via Computer learning to read lips to detect emotions | KurzweilAI)
Robo Grading: Another Reason to Send Your Kids to Private School
Since 2009, Utah has used computers to grade essays on a state student-assessment test. And testing companies use essay-evaluating software as one of two graders on graduate-school admissions exams such as the GRE.
But how well, really, can a computer grade an essay? To find out, Mark Shermis, an education researcher at the University of Akron, ran 22,029 standardized middle- and high-school essays through software from eight companies (plus one open-source algorithm).
The programs, which generally track content, organization and style, generated results indistinguishable from those of humans—just much faster. With that kind of efficiency, robot graders could mean more homework for students everywhere.
If AI grades papers similarly to human teachers, it’s hard to imagine that cash-strapped public schools won’t adopt robo-grading en masse.
What’s missing in these kinds of studies is the reality that a human teacher reads and grades an essay and then returns to the classroom and works with the student to improve, based on what she saw in the paper she graded.
Unfortunately, the public school of the future is likely to be rows and rows of students sitting in front of monitors, working on “customized” lesson plans, generated and evaluated by computers, with one or more adult proctors maintaining discipline.
This means, in wealthy communities there will be more, and better trained human teachers in smaller classrooms using newer technology. Conversely in poorer communities there will be fewer teachers - glorified corrections officers - working in huge rooms full of old, poorly maintained computers with out-of-date software.
Only kids whose parents can afford to send them to private school will get real teaching and real human interaction during the school day.
(via Robo-Grading Programs Judge Student Essays Better Than Humans Do | Popular Science)
Air Force Issues Formal RFP for Cyber Weapons
Cyber Warfare becomes official US policy
In a recent broad agency announcement—a public document issued by any agency usually requesting something from the private sector or notifying the world at large that there are contracts up for grabs—the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC) called on contractors to submit proposals for specific “cyberspace warfare operations” (CWO) capabilities, including “cyberspace warfare attack.” It doesn’t get much more explicit than that.
More specifically, the BAA outlines “cyberspace warfare attack” as those capabilities that would allow the Air Force to “destroy, deny, degrade, disrupt, deceive, corrupt, or usurp the adversaries ability to use the cyberspace domain for his advantage,” Threatpost reports.
It also requests “cyberspace warfare support” capabilities, which are basically the means to intercept enemy cyber attacks, open doors to their networks, and otherwise locate both sources of access and sensitive areas within enemy networks that are ripe for attack.
Israel will probably continue to act as a semi-official US proxy in this regard, but I imagine the Pentagon is keen to beef up its own capabilities.
(via The U.S. Air Force is Officially Seeking Cyber Weapons | Popular Science)
Nanotechnology will let us build computers that are incredibly powerful. We’ll have more power in the volume of a sugar cube than exists in the entire world today.
