Tag: technology

Researchers Claim Long-Lost Technology Used to Build Iconic Pyramid of Djoser

The magnificent step pyramid standing tall in the ancient Egyptian necropolis of Saqqara is truly one of the wonders of the ancient world.

Erected some 4,500 years ago, the tomb of the pharaoh Djoser is the earliest known example of Egypt’s colossal stone structures; a monument not just to the king but to the engineering ingenuity of the people who inhabited the land thousands of years ago.

How this architectural marvel was constructed – especially given its sharp departure from any building that came before – has been of intense interest to archaeologists and historians.

Now a team led by Egyptologist Xavier Landreau of Paleotechnic in France may have uncovered a significant clue.

A previously unexplained structure in Saqqara, they argue, is in fact a check dam, supporting the hypothesis a water-powered lift helped move materials used in the pyramid’s construction.

This is bolstered by the discovery of several other features, including what the researchers interpret as the remains of a novel kind of hydraulic lift: a central shaft through which water channeled from below might flow like lava in a volcano, raising a floating platform which would be capable of transporting large rocks to the pyramid’s summit.

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AI Industry Growing Human Brains in a Lab: Wetware

Recently, there’s been a great deal of hoopla about brains, specifically presidential and presidential-candidate brains. Perhaps because of this, my own brain has been thinking about the broader issue of brains. 

And I happened to run across something about that and wanted to share it with you. I recently learned of a Swiss startup that is creating human brains — and planning to link them together into superbrains. 

Why do this?  

Because you can apparently get artificial intelligence more effectively, more cheaply, and with less environmental consequence — by using actual brain cells. 

Not yours, and not mine. No, they’re growing brains to order in the lab. 

I know there was a time when this sounded like science fiction. But this… is real. 

Once they whip up some mini human brains, they interconnect a bunch of them, and voila!  A pretty effective network for AI. (Brain cells communicate with each other and the rest of the body through electrical signals — which makes them compatible with silicon chips.)

Only it’s not called AI. It’s called “:ware” — as opposed to “hardware” (and not to be confused with “wetwork”) — defined as thinking human brain cells without any inconvenient bodies attached.  

My first reaction was to wonder where they got the brain cells, and if they’re fussy about the source. Did they prefer the brains of brainy professors — dead ones, of course.  

Answer: From stem cells — derived from human skin. But they don’t say whose stem cells. Stem cells are fascinating. They can be coaxed into becoming other kinds of tissue, from bone to brain. A paralyzed man can now walk again, thanks to stem cell therapy. 

Maybe someday these magical cells will be sold over the counter in jars at a drugstore near you. 

Well, I scarcely know what to do with this.   

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Pyramid Power: Technology Resembling World’s Most Famous Ancient Structure Leads to Game Changer in Optical Communication

A potentially revolutionary new technology that could greatly advance optical communications, surveillance, and photonic device isolation has something in common with the most captivating construction design of the ancient world: the pyramid.

Researchers at UCLA have produced a revolutionary new design for diffractive deep neural networks, or D2NNs, that they say significantly enhances unidirectional image magnification and demagnification. Dubbed Pyramid D2NNs, the new design architecture lives up to its name by introducing a pyramid-structured network that offers high-fidelity image formation while reducing refractive features, all by aligning its layers in the same direction of image magnification and demagnification.

What Are Diffractive Deep Neural Networks?

D2NNs are constructed from individual transmissive layers that are optimized through deep learning, allowing them to perform computation almost entirely through the use of optics.

In their recent research, the UCLA team, led by Professor Aydogan Ozcan, worked with a pyramid-shaped diffractive optical network, a design that allowed the team to achieve unidirectional imaging with fewer diffractive degrees of freedom.

The result is a design that helps to ensure high-fidelity image formation, but only in one direction. By contrast, significant image inhibition occurs in the opposite direction, conditions that are key for use with applications where imaging in one direction (i.e., unidirectional imaging) is required. Such fields include defense and security technologies, telecommunications applications, and systems used for privacy protection.

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US, UK accelerate quantum computing programs after China breakthrough

Scientists and lawmakers in the United States, United Kingdom and European Union are ramping up efforts to advance quantum computing in the West after scientists in China observed what appears to be the world’s first room-temperature time crystals.

A team of physicists hailing primarily from Tsinghua University in China, with contributions from scientists in Denmark and Austria, published peer-reviewed research on July 2 detailing the creation and observation of room-temperature time crystals.

In the month since the paper was published, quantum research labs in the West have announced numerous initiatives to extend existing efforts in the field of quantum computing and to create new research partnerships.

Room-temperature time crystals

Time crystals are a unique state of matter originally proposed by physicist Frank Wilczek in 2012. They work similarly to other crystals, such as snowflakes or diamonds, which are created when specific molecules form lattice-like bonds that repeat through space.

In time crystals, however, the molecules bond in time. Instead of locking into a crystalline structure that repeats, a time crystal’s molecules flicker back and forth between different configurations like a GIF on a loop. 

Back in 2021, an international team of scientists working with Google’s quantum computing lab simulated time crystals using a quantum computer. This breakthrough demonstrated the potential for quantum computers to explore exotic states of matter and set the stage for the convergence of quantum tech and time crystals.

Now, in July 2024, the Tsinghua team appears to have created time crystals at room temperature. This, theoretically, allows time crystal technology to be employed in non-laboratory equipment and could serve as a massive accelerator for the development of useful quantum computers.

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Given anti-Russia CrowdStrike’s history, it is hard to believe the company when it claims the global chaos caused by them was just a simple ‘update’ glitch

While CrowdStrike is heavily in the news due to their “update” outage debacle, it bears noting they have been in the news before, way back during the chaos that came from the DNC server hack which CrowdStrike was immediately cited to blame Russia for embarrassing emails published by Wikileaks.

(Article by Susan Duclos republished from AllNewsPipeline.com)

Let us take a little trip down memory lane in regards to CrowdStrike, shall we?

Russia was blamed for the hack into the DNC (Democrat National Committee) and Hillary Clinton emails that were published by Wikileaks back during the 2016 campaign cycle. The DNC hack linked above is to the WayBack Machine since the original searchable database at Wikileaks leads to an error page.

There are a few moving parts to this article, so let us begin with the fact that the DNC refused to allow the FBI to inspect their hacked servers and instead went to a private company, CrowdStrike.

The FBI requested direct access to the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) hacked computer servers but was denied, Director James Comey told lawmakers on Tuesday.

The bureau made “multiple requests at different levels,” according to Comey, but ultimately struck an agreement with the DNC that a “highly respected private company” would get access and share what it found with investigators.

“We’d always prefer to have access hands-on ourselves if that’s possible,” Comey said, noting that he didn’t know why the DNC rebuffed the FBI’s request.

“CrowdStrike, the private security firm in question, has published extensive forensic analysis backing up its assessment that the threat groups that infiltrated the DNC were associated with Russian intelligence.”

So it was CrowdStrike alone that determined that the hack to the DNC server was perpetrated by Russia.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller used the CrowdStrike findings for Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election, without any legitimate federal agency double checking their work.

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Ancient Egyptians used a hydraulic lift to build their 1st pyramid, controversial study claims

The ancient Egyptians may have used an elaborate hydraulic system to construct the world’s first pyramid, a controversial new study claims.

Known as the Pyramid of Djoser, the six-tiered, four-sided step pyramid was built around 4,700 years ago on the Saqqara plateau, an archaeological site in northern Egypt, according to research posted to ResearchGate on July 24. The research has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Archaeologists have long wondered how ancient workers accomplished such an architectural feat — the structure contains 11.7 million cubic feet (330,400 cubic meters) of stone and clay — before the advent of large machinery like bulldozers and cranes.

Because the pyramid sits near a long-gone branch of the Nile River, researchers hypothesize that the ancient Egyptians utilized the water source to build the 204-foot-tall (62 m) pyramid by designing a “modern hydraulic system” comprising a dam, a water treatment plant and a hydraulic freight elevator, all of which were powered by the river, according to a translated statement from the CEA Paleotechnic Institute, a research center in France. They posit that the mysterious Gisr el-Mudir enclosure near the pyramid worked as a structure that captured sediment and water.

“This is a watershed discovery,” lead author Xavier Landreau, CEO of Paleotechnic, told Live Science. “Our research could completely change the status quo [of how the pyramid was built]. Before this study, there was no real consensus about what the structures were used for, with one possible explanation being that it was used for funerary purposes. We know that this is already subject to debate.”

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AI Won’t Replace You, But It Will Spy on You

Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, workers have had to contend with the inimical effects of technology on their jobs. From the power loom to the personal computer, each wave of automation has not only increased productivity, but also empowered the owners and managers who dictate how these technologies reshape the workplace. Today, workers worldwide are haunted by the specter of artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence has been a mainstay in our popular imagination for decades.  Prognostications of an AI-driven future range from apocalyptic robot takeovers to thriving post-work societies where people live off the wealth produced by machines. In spite of these daydreams, robots with full human cognition are still well within the domain of science fiction.

When people speak of AI today, what they’re most often referring to are machines capable of making predictions through the identification of patterns in large datasets. Despite that relatively rote function, many in the space believe that inevitably AI will become autonomous or rival human intelligence. This raises concerns that robots will one day represent an existential threat to humanity or at the very least take over all of our jobs. The reality is that AI is more likely to place workers under greater surveillance than to trigger mass unemployment.

An overwhelming majority of workers are confident that AI will have a direct impact on their jobs, according to a recent survey by ADP,  but they do not agree on how. Some feel that it will help them in the workplace while 42 percent fear that some aspects of their job will soon be automated.

These concerns are not without merit. Grandiose statements of oncoming job losses made by tech executives in public forums fuel worker anxiety. Feelings of job insecurity are compounded by reports that a majority of US firms are planning to incorporate AI in the workplace within the next year. In fact, Goldman Sachs predictsthat generative AI could “substitute up to one-fourth of current work.”

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Digital Dystopia: Lessons from the Global IT Outage on the Perils of Cashless Living

As a global IT outage wreaks havoc on digital payment systems, mainstream media finally sounds the alarm on cashless society risks – but for truth-tellers like Sayer Ji, the warning comes too late.

The Growing Threat of a Cashless Society: Lessons from the Global IT Outage

In a startling shift, major British newspapers have begun highlighting the dangers of a fully cashless society following a widespread IT outage that crippled digital payment systems across the globe. This event has brought to light the inherent fragility of our increasingly digitized financial infrastructure and serves as a stark reminder of the vital role cash still plays in our economy.

The Chaos of Digital Dependency

On July 19, 2024, a content update by cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike caused millions of Microsoft systems worldwide to crash. As reported by Nick Corbishley for Naked Capitalism, this outage had far-reaching consequences:

“When a content update by the cyber-security giant CrowdStrike caused millions of Microsoft systems around the world to crash on Friday morning, bringing the operating systems of banks, payment card firms, airlines, hospitals, NHS clinics, retailers and hospitality businesses to a standstill, businesses were faced with a stark choice: go cash-only, or close until the systems came back online.”

This incident laid bare the vulnerability of our tightly coupled IT-based societies, particularly in the realm of banking and payments. The fallout was especially severe in countries like Australia, where cashless transactions have been actively encouraged by the government.

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The CrowdStrike global outage shows the serious dangers of a centralized, digitized world

The perils of over-reliance on digital systems have been once again highlighted by the crashing of computer systems around the world due to an update to the Falcon antivirus and security product from CrowdStrike affecting its interaction with the Windows operating systems. The update has caused chaos for banking, retail, railways, airports, healthcare and for a wide range of other businesses and infrastructure where the Falcon software runs on Windows systems. Advice for bringing affected computers back into working order has been published, but the exact mechanism by which the update caused “Blue Screen of Death” errors does not appear to have yet been reported.

(Article by Dr. R P republished from DailySceptic.org)

It appears that in many cases, while the update was distributed automatically over the internet to systems, the workaround to fix the problem requires the machines to be rebooted in Windows’ safe mode, which usually requires physical access. The person at the keyboard then needs to know the password for the computer’s administrator account, and use this level of access to delete a file within a subdirectory of Windows’ System32. This process can be more complicated where Microsoft’s BitLocker encryption is in use. In many organisations, the recovery keys for BitLocker have themselves been stored on a computer unable to start properly due to the CrowdStrike update. The quote “Men go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one”, originally from Charles Mackay in 1841, seems applicable now to computers too. They crash en masse, then require individual attention before they will work again.

It should be noted that while the perils of centralisation with a physical single point of failure are obvious to all but technocratic politicians and civil servants, this massive outage shows another way in which a “single point” of failure can occur. The single point in this case is not a particular server in one building somewhere on the planet; but rather a change within a single piece of software with that change then being rolled out to many individual systems around the globe. These systems then entered a state euphemistically described as Total Inability To Support Usual Performance (acronym intentional) among the tech community. There was a reason that NASA put a fifth backup flight computer in the space shuttle, running software written entirely independently of the software on its primary four computers. A single point of failure where software is concerned doesn’t have to happen at only a single point in space.

There is a very clear lesson to be learned here. Systems which can collapse at scale, even when they are not centralised in the physical sense, eventually will collapse in such a fashion. Advocates of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and Digital ID systems should consider these lessons. This update ‘only’ knocked out an estimated 8.5 million computers, belonging to over 24,000 organisations that subscribed to CrowdStrike’s Falcon software. A country reliant on a CBDC instead of cash would see an end to all transactions as a consequence of a similar failure affecting a component within whatever software stack was being used to operate CBDC infrastructure. That could mean a fault within the software on physically centralised or partly centralised servers logging transactions and holding records; or a fault within the software running on masses of devices operating as payment terminals in a wide variety of locations. In that dystopian CBDC-dependent nation, one would be looking at electric vehicles (already a bad idea simply on account of the abysmal energy density of batteries compared to chemical fuels) stranded at charging stations, unable to make payments to initiate the charging procedure. Consider that the World Economic Forum once advertised with slogans on the theme of “what if extreme weather froze your bank account”, right at the time when Justin Trudeau was freezing bank accounts on account of his extreme intolerance for peaceful protest. The reality is that in the centralised totalitarian model of society the WEF hungers for, this scenario becomes more probable, not less. That is to say, that as well as increasing the opportunities for censorship-obsessed elites to deliberately interfere in people’s lives, centralisation also increases the vulnerability of a society to accidental errors. Where Governments dream of requiring digital ID or age verification for internet access, or client-side scanning to look for objectionable opinions and only allow messages to be sent when approved as sufficiently “double plus good”, one can even imagine a situation where direct messages and online posts attempting to report a fault in the software stack running the verification or approval algorithms would be blocked from being sent. This wouldn’t need to be a matter of a deliberate attempt to cover up the fault, but instead the inability to report the fault would be a natural consequence of the fault itself. A censorship apparatus built on a principle of scanning everything before it can be shared ends up censoring absolutely everything if it is unable to perform scans.

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Hunt for Element 120 Underway as Team Confirms First Creation of Element 116 Using Titanium Beam

In a physics first, scientists at Berkeley Lab have succeeded at creating element 116 using a titanium beam, a development that could set the pace for the creation of heavier elements, including the long-theorized element 120.

The achievement brings scientists closer than ever to creating the heaviest atom ever created by physicists, believed to represent an “island of stability” amid superheavy elements.

With the discovery of 16 of the 118 elements currently known already under its belt, Berkeley Lab’s breakthrough marks a significant step toward bringing such hypothetical elements into existence.

The Hunt for Element 120

Formally known as unbinilium or Ubn, its temporary systematic IUPAC name and symbol, the theorized element 120 (also known by the nickname eka-radium), if officially discovered, would claim its place on the 8th row of the periodic table. For now, the theorized superheavy element is believed to represent an alkaline earth metal or s-block element.

Superheavy elements generally have short lifespans since they have large and very unstable nuclei capable of ripping themselves apart within just seconds of their creation. The instability arises from their size, which results in protons with positive charges within the nuclei repelling each other.

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