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Here's our 19-minute geek-out on AI, quantum computing and autonomous vehicles, with the velveteen podcaster Mike Koenigs at Near Future Summit 2019.
“I have never been more excited. I love learning. I love technology, I’m a geek at heart. There’s more learning and more frontiers than ever before. Specifically, there’s a lot going on, obviously, in autonomous vehicles and driving that will touch all of our lives when we switch to these robo taxi fleets, and it’s just a better experience in every way, three times safer, three times cheaper”
“Quantum computing is as weird as the name implies. It uses quantum mechanics as the fundamental basis of computation in a way that is unlike any computer you’ve ever heard of before. The important thing to keep in mind is it’s not just ‘another supercomputer.’ It engages the computational resources of the refractive echoes of trillions of parallel universes? I mean, like, your mind explodes.”
Arsenal (Vienna)
The Vienna Arsenal, object 1
(Pictures you can see by clicking on the link at the end of page!)
The Arsenal in Vienna is a former military complex in the southeast of the city, located
in the 3rd district of Vienna. The mighty, consisting of several brick buildings facility is located on a rectangular plan on a hill south of the Country Road Belt (Landstraßer Gürtel).
Meaning
The Arsenal is the most important secular assembly of Romantic Historicism in Vienna and was conducted in Italian-Medieval and Byzantine-Moorish forms. Essentially the complex is preserved in its original forms; only the former workshop buildings within the bounding, from the the outside visible wings were replaced by new constructions.
History to 1945
Bird's eye view of the complex, arsenal, lithography Alexander Kaiser, 1855
Vienna Arsenal (Museum of Military History)
Arsenal, with HGM (Heeresgeschichtliches Museum) from the East
The complex, with a total of 31 "objects" (buildings) was built from 1849 to 1856 on the occasion of the March Revolution of 1848 and was the first building of the fortress triangle, replacing the old Vienna's city walls, with the Rossauer Barracks and the now-defunct Franz Joseph barracks at Stubenring. These buildings should not serve to deter foreign enemies from the city, but to secure state power in the event of revolutionary upheavals in Vienna. The decision to build the Arsenal, it came from the 19-year-old Emperor Franz Joseph I who on 2 December 1848 had come to the throne.
The design for the Imperial Artillery Arsenal came from General Artillery Director Vincenz Freiherr von Augustin, to which, subsequently, the site management had been transferred. Under his leadership, the buildings under assignment of sectors have been planned of the architects Carl Roesner, Antonius Pius de Riegel, August Sicard von Sicardsburg, Eduard van der Nüll, Theophil von Hansen and Ludwig Förster and built by the company of the architect Leopold Mayr.
From 1853 to 1856, Arsenal church was built by the architect Carl Roesner. The K.K. Court Weapon Museum, later K.K. Army Museum, now Museum of Military History, housed in a separate representative free-standing wing, was completed structurally in 1856, but was only in 1869 for the first time accessible.
For the construction of the Arsenal 177 million bricks were used. Construction costs totaled $ 8.5 million guilders. In the following years, there have been extensions. During the two world wars, the complex served as a weapons factory and arsenal, especially as barracks.
The record number of employees in Arsenal was reached in the First World War, with around 20,000 staffers. After 1918, the military-industrial operation with own steel mill was transformed into a public service institution with the name "Austrian Factories Arsenal". However, there were almost insoluble conversion problems in the transition to peacetime production, the product range was too great and the mismanagement considerable. The number of employees declined steadily, and the company became one of the great economic scandals of the First Republic.
By the fall of 1938, the area belonged to the 10th District Favoriten. However, as was established during the "Third Reich" the Reich District of Greater Vienna, became the arsenal complex and the south-east of it lying areas in the wake of district boundary changes parts of the 3rd District.
During the Second World War, in the Arsenal tank repair workshops of the Waffen-SS were set up. In the last two years of the war several buildings were severely damaged by bombing. During the Battle of Vienna, in the days of 7 to 9 April 1945, was the arsenal, defended by the 3rd SS Panzer Division "Totenkopf", focus of the fighting, the Red Army before its victory facing heavy losses.
History since 1945
Ruins of the object 15 after the air raids 1944
Deposits at the Arsenal Street
After heavy bomb damages during the Second World War, the buildings of the Arsenal were largely restored to their original forms.
In the southern part and in the former courtyard of the arsenal several new buildings were added, among them 1959-1963 the decoration workshops of the Federal Theatre designed by the architects Erich Boltenstern and Robert Weinlich. From 1961 to 1963, the telecommunications central office was built by the architect Fritz Pfeffer. From 1973 to 1975 were built operation and office building of the Post and Telephone Head Office for Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland (now Technology Centre Arsenal of Telekom Austria) with the 150-meter high radio tower in Vienna Arsenal according to the plans of architect Kurt Eckel. In the 1990s, a rehearsal stage of the Castle Theater (Burgtheater) was built according to plans by Gustav Peichl.
Also the Austrian Research and Testing Centre Arsenal, now Arsenal Research, which has made itself wordwide a celebrity by one of the largest air chambers (now moved to Floridsdorf - 21st District), was housed in the complex. A smaller part of the complex is still used by the Austrian army as a barracks. Furthermore, the Central Institute for Disinfection of the City of Vienna and the Central Chemical Laboratory of the Federal Monuments Office are housed in the arsenal. The Military History Museum uses multiple objects as depots.
In one part of the area residential buildings were erected. The Arsenal is forming an own, two census tracts encompassing census district, which according to the census in 2001 had 2.058 inhabitants.
End of 2003, the arsenal in connection with other properties of the Federal Property Society (BIG - Bundesimmobiliengesellschaft) was sold to a private investor group. Since early 2006, the lawyer of Baden (Lower Austria, not far away from Vienna) Rudolf Fries and industrialist Walter Scherb are majority owners of the 72,000 m2 historic site that they want to refurbish and according to possibility rent new. Fries also plans to enlarge the existing living space by more than a half (about 40,000 m2).
An architectural design competition, whose jury on 28 and 29 in June 2007 met, provided proposals amounting to substantial structural changes in the complex. Such designed competition winner Hohensinn a futuristic clouds clip modeled after El Lissitzky's cloud bracket, a multi-level horizontal structure on slender stilts over the old stock on the outskirts of the Swiss Garden. The realization of these plans is considered unlikely.
Some objects are since 2013 adapted for use by the Technical University of Vienna: Object 227, the so-called "Panzerhalle" will house laboratories of the Institute for Powertrains and Automotive Technology. In object 221, the "Siemens hall", laboratories of the Institute for Energy Technology and Thermodynamics as well as of the Institute for Manufacturing Technology and High Power Laser Technology are built. In object 214 is besides the Technical Testing and Research Institute (TVFA) also the second expansion stage of the "Vienna Scientific Cluster" housed, of a supercomputer, which was built jointly by the Vienna University of Technology, the University of Vienna and the University of Agricultural Sciences.
Accessibility
The arsenal was historically especially over the Landstraßer Gürtel developed. Today passes southeast in the immediate proximity the Südosttangente called motorway A23 with it connection Gürtel/Landstraßer Hauptstrasse. Southwest of the site runs the Eastern Railway, the new Vienna Central Station closes to the west of the arsenal. Two new bridges over the Eastern Railway, the Arsenal Stay Bridge and the Southern Railway bridge and an underpass as part of Ghegastraße and Alfred- Adler-Straße establish a connection to the on the other side of the railway facilities located Sonnwendviertel in the 10th District, which is being built on the former site of the freight train station Vienna South Station.
On the center side is between Arsenal and Landstraßer Gürtel the former Maria Josefa Park located, now known as Swiss Garden. Here stands at the Arsenal street the 21er Haus, a branch of the Austrian Gallery Belvedere, on the center-side edge of the Swiss Garden has the busy suburban main railway route the stop Vienna Quartier Belvedere, next to it the Wiener Linien D (tram) and 69A (bus) run.
Sebastian Buckup, Shinpei Kato, Nikolaus Lang, Angela Wang Nan speaking in the Supercomputers on Wheels session at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2023 in Tianjin, People's Republic of China, 28 June 2023. Tianjin Meijiang Convention Center - Room: Hub A. Copyright: World Economic Forum/Benedikt von Loebell
Sebastian Buckup, Shinpei Kato, Nikolaus Lang, Angela Wang Nan speaking in the Supercomputers on Wheels session at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2023 in Tianjin, People's Republic of China, 28 June 2023. Tianjin Meijiang Convention Center - Room: Hub A. Copyright: World Economic Forum/Benedikt von Loebell
Canon EOS 550D with Sigma 18-50mm f:/2,8. Panorama merged in Photoshop CS5 from 14 handheld shots at f:/2,8 1/13s @18mm ISO800 in 2 rows x 7 frames.
El BSC-CNS (Barcelona Supercomputing Center- Centro Nacional de Supercomputación) nace en 2005 como heredero del CEPBA y se encarga de la gestión del “Mare Nostrum”, que en su momento fuera el superordenador más potente de Europa y cuarto del mundo. Hoy en día, en una posición bastante más modesta en el ranking mundial, sigue ejecutando cálculos 24 horas al día para arrojar luz sobre cuestiones tan diversas como el clima mundial, el genoma humano o el diseño de nuevos fármacos. Está ubicado en la capilla –ya desacralizada- de Torre Girona, muy cerca del rectorado de la Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), en el barrio de Pedralbes (Barcelona). Algunos datos: Pesa 40 toneladas y ocupa 120 metros cuadrados, tiene 2.560 nodos con dos procesadores IBM 970MP de núcleo dual (2,3 GHz, 64 bits) cada uno hasta un total de 10.240 CPUs, una memoria interna de 20 TB y externa de 280 TB y llega hasta las 94 Teraflops (u operaciones por segundo).
The BSC-CNS (Barcelona Supercomputing Center- Centro Nacional de Supercomputación) was constitued in 2005 and inherited the tradition of CEPBA and currently manages “Mare Nostrum”, which once was the most powerful supercomputer in Europe and fourth in the world. Nowadays, ranked in a more modest position, it carries on its complex calculations 24 hours a day, which help interdisciplinar scientists to solve questions regarding the weather, the human genome or the design of new drugs. It was located in the former chapel of a summer house called Torre Mirona, close to the main dependences of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC), in Pedralbes (Barcelona). Some data: Around 40 tones and around 120 sq.m., it consists of 2.560 blade computing nodes, each with two dual core IBM 970MP processors running at 2,3 GHz, it has 20 TB of RAM and an external disk storage of 280 TB which allow Marenostrum to reach 94 Teraflops (instructions per second).
Aquesta foto ha participat al joc "En un lloc a la Rosa dels Vents". Si vols participar, registra't si et plau: és molt divertit i coneixeràs racons de la nostra terra que ni t'imagines!!
The city pulse, there is not always a glitched haywire rampage giga-bot on the rampage, not always invading Blacktron or Magnetrons, not always different police factions on shoot-outs in some dead end alley…
The planet-spanning city on the capital planet divide in sectors, levels and blocks, a dirty place with artificial lighting both night and day, but the citizens know no other, and they love the diesel, industrial vents, the peeing mutant rats, it is all in their blood, quite literally…
Some days, the postmen on a prolonged break stand about and chat in different languages and some in broken galactic standard, talking about stamps and quests of undeliverable letters, laughing together, no matter if they have wings or tentacled…
A policeman has skipped work to meet a date, perhaps a payed on with a zeltrone??? He nearly runs over a granny cyborg from The planet Pluto on her way to look for her cybernetic dog, on the run again…
The Fire fighters are on another false alarm, they swear in italian and irish since their truck broke down… the road workers whistle when a hunky guy from an unknown planet walks past, while one of their shovels hits something hard, a fossilized gameboy from the 20th century…
A television crew are enjoying a smoke on a balcony while they brag of their scoops when they caught the block-mayor without his trousers down or when the revealed that a gangster rapper had a diploma from Oxford…
Just an ordinary day in the planet-spanning urban jungle called the capital planet…
No one knows how many live there, partially because no one have managed to make categorisation on who is alive or where the boundaries of sentient creatures are, are the digitally enhanced cyber-slime-mold really sentient? Does he even know himself? No matter what, he is a good businessman and counts better than the best supercomputer… or is the droid that has a split personality due to an evolutionary crossbreed program he was infected with while he connected to a money machine with his pocket-wire digital USB, does this entity count as one or several entities?
There is a lot of things no one knows, but all know that despite all, every cog in this complicated mosaik we call the city, turns and twist and revolves in its own way affecting other cogs, and at the end, somehow despite everything this giant complicated aleatoric random giga-structure somehow runs despite everything…
Some even propose that the city itself is as much of a superorganism as a colony of ants or a colonial organism…
No matter what, until today, every day, most of its inhabitants wake up to a new day… and in yet another day this megastructure of interactions somehow cope for another day to turn and turn!!!
14/02/2022. Edinburgh , United Kingdom. Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits The University of Edinburgh to see the UK’s National Supercomputer, met by Professor Mark Parsons, EPCC Director. Picture by Andrew Parsons / No 10 Downing Street
The École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is a research institute and university in Lausanne, Switzerland, that specializes in natural sciences and engineering. It is one of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, and it has three main missions: education, research and technology transfer at the highest international level.
EPFL is widely regarded as a world leading university. The QS World University Rankings ranks EPFL 12th in the world across all fields in their 2017/2018 ranking, whilst Times Higher Education World University Rankings ranks EPFL as the world's 11th best school for Engineering and Technology.
EPFL is located in the French-speaking part of Switzerland; the sister institution in the German-speaking part of Switzerland is the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). Associated with several specialised research institutes, the two universities form the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain (ETH Domain), which is directly dependent on the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research. In connection with research and teaching activities, EPFL operates a nuclear reactor CROCUS, a Tokamak Fusion reactor, a Blue Gene/Q Supercomputer and P3 bio-hazard facilities. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89cole_Polytechnique_F%C3%A9d...
Starring Richard Egan, Constance Dowling, Herbert Marshall, John Wengraf, Philip Van Zandt, and William Schallert. Directed by Herbert L. Strock.
When two scientists at a top-secret government installation devoted to space research are killed -- in their own test chamber, seemingly by an experiment gone awry -- Dr. David Sheppard (Richard Egan) is sent out from Washington to investigate. Sheppard mixes easily enough with the somewhat eccentric team of scientists, though he always seems in danger of being distracted by the presence of Joanne Merritt (Constance Dowling), who serves as the aide to the project director Dr. Van Ness (Herbert Marshall) but is, in reality, another security agent. Sheppard is as puzzled as anyone else by the seemingly inexplicable series of events overtaking the installation -- properly operating equipment suddenly undergoing lethal malfunctions, and the radar tracking aircraft that aren't there -- until he puts it together with the operations of NOVAC (Nuclear Operated Variable Automatic Computer), the central brain of the complex. But the mystery deepens when he discovers that NOVAC was shut down during one of the "accidents" -- and even the computer's operators can't account fully for the whereabouts of GOG and MAGOG, the two robots under the computer's control.
"...and then without warning, the machine became a frankenstein of steel," says the sensationalist poster text. This is the third story in Ivan Tors' OSI trilogy. His first "Office of Scientific Investigation" story was Magnetic Monster in early 1953. The second was Riders to the Stars in early '54. With Gog the loose trilogy is complete. Unlike the Star Wars trilogy in which the stories build upon each other, each of the three OSI stories are separate tales which have nothing to do with each other. The common thread is the idea of there being a sort of Science FBI agency whose job it is, is to check out the scientifically strange. In that regard, Tors' OSI is a bit like a foreshadowing of the X-Files TV series, but without any of the New Age paranormal focus.
In keeping with the previous two stories, Gog is more of a detective murder mystery movie. Tors was a huge fan of "hard" science, not fanciful fiction fluff, so Gog, like the other two movies, is chock full of reveling in sciencey stuff in an almost geeky way. This reverence for real science keeps things from getting out on shaky limb, as many sci-fi films to. The events are much more plausible, less fantastic.
Synopsis
At a secret underground research facility, far out in the desert, scientists working on preparations for a manned space mission, are getting murdered mysteriously. Two agents from the OSI are dispatched to solve the mystery and keep the super secret space station program on track. The scientists are killed in various ways, mostly through equipment malfunctions. The facility director and the agents suspect sabotage. Small transmitter/receiver boxes are found within equipment in different parts of the facility. They suggest that someone on the outside is transmitting in the "malfunctions" in order to kill off the program's scientists. Occasional alarms indicate some flying high intruder, but nothing is clearly found. One of the base's two robots, named Gog, kills another technician while it's mate, Magog, tries to set up an overload within the base's atomic pile. The OSI agents stop Magog with a flame thrower. Meanwhile, interceptor jets scramble and find the highflying spy jet and destroy it with missiles. Once the trouble is past, the Director announces that they will be launching their prototype space station the next day, despite the sabotage attempts to stop it. The End.
The time spent reveling in techno-geekery has a certain Popular Science charm to it. There's an evident gee-whiz air about space and defense sciences which is fun to see. People were fascinated with things rockety and atomic. For various fun bits, see the Notes section.
Gog oozes Cold War from every frame. First is the base's underground location to make them safe from A-bombs. Next is the mysterious killer trying to stop the space station program. The high-flying mystery plane is "not one of ours." (that leaves: Them, and we all knew who they were.) The space station is to be powered by a solar mirror. Even that benign mirror has sinister possibilities. While demonstrating the mirror, the scientists use it to burn a model of a city. "This could happen...if we're not the first to reach space," says the Director. Space is the next "high ground" to be contested. At the end of the movie, when discussing the launch (despite the sabotage attempt) of the prototype space station, the Director says, "Through it's eye, we'll be able to see everything that goes on upon this tired old earth." The Defense Secretary says, "Nothing will take us by surprise again." An obvious reference to Pearl Harbor.
B-films often re-used props and sets from prior films in order to save on their budgets. Gog, even though shot in Eastman Color, was no exception. Two old prop friends show up in Gog. One is our venerable old friend, the space suits from Destination Moon ('50). Look for the centrifuge scene. The research assistants are dressed in them, and as an added bonus, they wear the all-acrylic fish bowl helmets used in Abbot and Costello Go to Mars ('53). Our second old friend is scene in the radar / security room, (the one with the annoying tuning fork device). Check out the monitor wall. It's been gussied up a bit, but it is the spaceship control panel wall from Catwomen of the Moon and Project Moon Base -- complete with the empty 16mm film reels on the right side. It's fun to see old friends.
B-films often include stock footage of military units, tanks, jets, battleships, etc. to fill things out. Gog is no different, and even commits the common continuity error of showing one type of plane taking off, but a different kind in the air.
What amounts to a small treat amid the usual stock footage of jets, some shots of a rather obscure bit of USAF hardware -- the F-94C Starfire with its straight wings and huge wing tanks. In 1954, the Starfire was one of America's coolest combat jets, yet we hear little about it. The swept-wing F-86 Sabers (which we see taxiing and taking off) were the agile fighter which gained fame over Korea. They're common stock footage stars. The F-94, with its onboard radar (in the nose cone) was deemed too advanced to risk falling into enemy hands. So, it didn't see much action , and therefore little fame. The heavier, yet powerful F-94C (one of the first US jets to have an afterburner) was 1954 America's hottest Interceptor -- designed to stop high flying Soviet bombers. It's blatant cameo appearance in Gog, intercepting the high-flying mystery plane, was a fun little bit of patriotic showing off.
The very name of the movie, Gog, is charged with meaning to American audiences of the mid 50s, though virtually lost on viewers of the 21st century. The names of the two robots, Gog and Magog, come from the Bible. More specifically, from the prophecies of Ezekiel (Chapter 38) and the Book of Revelation (chapter 20). While just who they are (nations? kings?) has been debated for centuries, their role as tools of Satan in the battle of Armageddon is clear. Mainstream American patriotic Christendom had settled on the idea that the Soviet Union was the prophesied "nations from the north" who would join Satan to oppose God. This gives the title of the movie a special Cold War significance. It also puts an interesting spin on the Dr. Zeitman character for having named the two robots in the first place. Since they were tools of the mega-computer NOVAC, what was he saying about NOVAC?
It is interesting that the base's radar could not detect the mystery plane (which was beaming in the 'kill' instructions to NOVAC) because it was made of "fiberglass" which rendered it invisible to radar. Now, fiberglass itself isn't sturdy enough for high-speed jets, and it would take until the 1990s before composite materials advanced to make the dream of a stealth aircraft a reality. Nonetheless, the dream (or nightmare) of stealth aircraft was on-screen in 1954 in Gog.
The super computer, NOVAC, controlled everything on the base. Even though the machines were not really killing scientists on their own, but following human orders from the mystery plane, there was the on-screen depiction of machines having a murderous mind of their own. (all pre-Steven King) In the techno starry-eyed 50s, it was fairly uncommon for the technology itself to be turning on its masters. This idea would gain traction later in the 50s, and especially in the 60s, but in '54, it was unusual.
A cautionary subtext to Gog is the danger of trusting in a supercomputer to manage defenses and a whole base. NOVAC doesn't go bad on its own, as the computer will in The Invisible Boy, Hal in 2001 or Colossus in The Forbin Project. In this movie, it was the nefarious "others" who hacked into NOVAC to make it do the killing, but this just demonstrates the danger. People were getting a little nervous about letting machines take over too much responsibility. We were starting to distrust our creations.
Until Gog, robots were fairly humanoid.
They had two legs, two arms, a torso and a head. Audiences had seen the mechanical Maria in Metropolis ('27), the fedora-wearing metal men in Gene Autrey's Phantom Empire serial ('35). The water-heater-like Republic robot appeared in several rocketman serials. There was the gleaming giant Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still ('51) and the cute left over fedora-dudes in Captain Video ('51). The metal giant in Devil Girl from Mars ('54) was also humaniod, in a chunky way. Gog and Magog were a departure from the stereotype. They were noticeably in-human, which was part of the mood.
Bottom line? Gog seems a bit bland, as far as sci-fi tends to go, but it has a lot in it for fans of 50s sci-fi.
I am at the TTI/Vanguard Next conference (agenda), with a sophisticated audience of tech executives from around the world. Of the topics I covered, the Q&A interest focused on iterative algorithms that will create an AI that exceeds human intelligence, much like biological evolution. (video)
Here are some of the related bullets from my slides:
Reed's Law applies to combinations of ideas as well as self-forming groups. It's the combinatorial explosion in the mating pool of ideas that creates perpetually accelerating progress.
Evolutionary algorithms allow us to build complex systems that exceed human understanding (synthetic biology, AI, innovative organizations), but there are some limitations to this approach:
• Subsystem Inscrutability
- Black box defined by its interfaces
- No “reverse evolution” (You can't run that algorithm backwards)
• No simple shortcuts across the iterations
- Simulation ~ Reality
- Beauty from irreducibility
• Locus of Learning is Process, not Product
• Robust, within co-evolutionary islands
“The greatest achievement of our technology may well be the creation of tools that allow us to go beyond engineering – that allow us to create more than we can understand.” — Danny Hillis
“We actually think quantum machine learning may provide the most creative
problem-solving process under the known laws of physics.” — Google Blog
AI implications:
• Cut & Paste Portability?
• Locus of learning: Process, not Product
- Would we bother to reverse engineer?
- No hard take off?
•Co-evolutionary islands
- accustomed environment (differential immunity)
• Path dependence
- algorithm survival
- AI = Alien Intelligence defined by sensory I/O
Accelerating Technological Change
- Interdisciplinary Renaissance
- IT innervates $T markets
- More Black Swans
- Perpetual driver of disruption
==> Virtuous cycle for entrepreneurs
==> a great time for the new
Comments from others that followed:
“The majority of financial reports are now compiled by machines, not people.”
“A lot of the great data scientists are born in Russia, and they have the attributes of creativity, tenacity and an ability to code.”
“When we asked 1000 people on Mechanical Turk to flip a coin, we got 65% heads, 28% tails, and 7% typos. Many of them clearly did not actually flip a coin.”
“Imagine the sociological impact of crowdsourcing – what if you could create IBM for an afternoon and then disperse it? We might get cyber-Taylorism if we don’t think about doing it right.”
“Competition will be critical to the wisdom of crowds.”
Combinatorial Creativity: “Combinatorial search spaces are vast and the fastest supercomputers can not penetrate too deeply into them. Nevertheless, they may be able to penetrate several levels deeper than any person can, and thereby find superb creative acts that mankind did not or could not think of.”
Pointer to CHM video on the history of AI.
Photos by Ed Jay
The Homunculus Nebula looks alive. Its two lobes of gas, which resemble twin human hearts stuck artery to artery, stretch half a light-year each from its center. And they’re getting bigger all the time, swelling outward at 1.5 million miles per hour. If you could fly through them, on some Magic School Bus, you’d find two stars at their center—two huge stars, whipping around each other once every 5.5 years.
When their orbits bring them close together, as they did in August 2014, the stars are only as far apart as Mars and the sun. During that close passage, and the two previous to that, astronomers peered deep into the heart of the Homunculus Nebula to find out about the stars that supply its blood.
Here’s what they’ve learned about Eta Carinae—the name given to the pair of stars—and what its massive liveliness tells us about the rest of the universe.
1. The big star is 90 times the mass of the sun, while the “small” star is 30 times as massive. Together, they put out as much light as 6 million copies of our star. Their gravitational tugs and intense radiation make the system, and any planets that might form there, truly different from where we live, giving scientists a window into the kind of neighborhood we’ll never inhabit.
2. If you moved the big star to our solar system, it would stretch beyond Earth’s orbit. (Please don’t move the big star to our solar system.) It’s so big and bright that it blinds us to what the “small” star is like. Classic sibling dynamic.
3. The Homunculus Nebula didn’t exist until 1840, when one of the stars exploded and ejected enough stuff to make 10 brand-new suns. But the rejected material turned into a nebula instead of 10 suns, because who needs 10 new suns? But in the distant future, after the big star goes supernova, the spewed stuff will clump together and transform into new suns.
4. In its 1840s glory days, Eta Carinae’s eruption made it the brightest star system in the southern hemisphere, even though it’s 7,500 light-years away. The star was so big that it survived the self-destruction that would have slayed lesser specimens. We understand these lesser specimens better than huge ones because there are many more to study, just as we understand baldness better than werewolf syndrome. Eta Carinae lets scientists watch weird scenes, like survived suicide attempts, that aren’t playing out in most cosmic theaters.
5.The two stars are still spewing out material, in what is called “stellar wind.” They are slowly shrinking as they lose themselves to space. Their winds smash into each other at 7 million miles per hour, heating the gas to 10 million degrees. How will this mass loss, and the catastrophic wind collision, affect their evolution and lifetime? Tune in a few hundred years from now to find out the latest.
6. Astronomers mixed X-ray data with Hubble observations, tracking activity over 11 years and three close encounters between the stars. Then, they threw in a (large) dash of supercomputer simulations. Out of this witch’s brew came videos showing how the cosmic-gale-force winds shape-shift as the stars pull away and come back together. It looks like an iTunes music “visualization,” in case anyone in the universe uses those anymore.
7. It gets one step cooler: Astronomers used a Makerbot to 3-D print the star system at various steps in its dance. Although they sit in offices all day studying Eta Carinae, they still learned new things when they could literally reach for the stars. They discovered spiky spine-like protrusions and a hidden cavity embedded in the swirling spiral. Printed 3-D models allow scientists to look at the universe inside-out and outside-in, potentially revolutionizing their ability to understand increasingly complex datasets. And also they make really cool paperweights.
SIERRA IS THE NEXT IN A LONG LINE OF SUPERCOMPUTERS AT LAWRENCE LIVERMORE NATIONAL LABORATORY.
For more information or additional images, please contact 202-586-5251.
Niue Kzelke (UKG) Aermedeus DeJeria
Age (Vex Years) 19
Age (Earth Years) 28.5
5'6"
Identification code 683863-6483
Transgender Female to Male
Bisexual (Preference: Male)
Born 02-0156
Enjoys loud electronic dance music, becoming intimate towards those he's closest to, having multiple sexual partners, getting high with his drugged up mates, long walks with friends. Dislikes people trying to tell him how to live his life, feeling like he's being controlled or having someone trying to control him, spending long periods of time alone with his own thoughts, receiving criticism about his drug habits from others, confrontation and/or conflict of any sort.
His mother passed away due to birth complications of an unborn child around a year before Niue was born. His mother and father had made a conscious decision to preserve nearly half of her fertile eggs for they feared something would happen, as she had complications in earlier pregnancies. His father was one of the highest ranked military personnel of the GYK: Deland region, and because of this, he had access to equipment that most others had never even heard of before. Niue was a test-tube fetus, and he was observed by medical practitioners and scientists during the growth of his first 10 months, up until the pregnancy period would be over. Because of his father giving the opportunity of observation, he was granted a somewhat large sum of money per month, set to be given to his family for the next twenty-five years. For his entire life, Niue had Al to lean on as an honorary member of the family. Al and Niue's father had both agreed to speak little of his mother if at all around him, as they didn't want to raise questions. However, this plan had failed as Niue got older.
Due to the raging war that had been going on, Niue's father had been sent to another part of the world. Being six at the time, Niue was left in the care of Al, who had been hiding his drug addiction for years, claiming the substance was his "medicine" in hopes that would keep Niue away from it. Throughout his father's departure, Niue and Al were devoted to keeping in touch with him.
As a child, Niue was fairly late in his social skill development. He didn't spend a lot of time with other kids outside of school, and even during class time, he was very distant. He was quite anxious all the way up until he was around nine, almost ten years old. The only person he really felt comfortable socialising with was Al, and he was quick to take notice of this. Al tried to push Niue to spend time with kids his age in hopes of strengthening his social skills, but it was a tactic that wouldn't work on its own. It wasn't until Ryu, Terry, and Allison at the ages of eight, nine, and ten approached Niue, who was eight years of age at the time, had he began to associate with other kids in his area. It didn't take long after that before all he wanted to do was go out with his friends and participate in activities all the other boys did.
Outside of school and friend activities, Niue had formed a passion for music at a fairly young age. He was especially drawn toward trance EDM and the hard dance subgenres. As soon as he had his hands on a computer, he spent all of his free non-social time playing with different programs and creating different sounds. It wasn't long before Al took notice Niue's admiration toward technology. Soon enough, he started teaching him how to modify installed programs and code his own, eventually teaching him everything he knew about computer programming and hacking.
Niue was 10 years old when he began to experience forms of body dysphoria. He didn't say anything about it to anyone for quite a while, it was something that made him feel extremely uncomfortable. After doing some research, he began to grow a better understanding of his situation and he managed to work up the courage to talk to Al about it.
Around the same time was when he found Al's stash of "medicine" after catching a strain of a common illness, and he became addicted instantly. It wasn't long after, Allison had disappeared without any warning. For the next two years, he stole small doses of crystal meth from Al for his own consumption. This all went on without Al noticing. Niue kept this a secret from everyone he knew. He never told any of his friends, and they never noticed anything out of the ordinary until he started getting sick on almost a daily basis due to higher doses in which he was taking the drug at. When he was confronted about it, he avoided his friend's questions at all costs, until Al eventually found out about it. At that moment, Al began to financially support Niue's amphetamine addiction along with his own.
Shortly after he hit thirteen years old, Niue had participated in a technological experiment Al was conducting. Despite the numerous times, Al had explained the potential dangers, Niue wanted to be the one he tested on. So Al went and backed up Niue's memory on his 20000tb supercomputer hard drive before performing the experiment, in case anything happened. Sure enough, after hooking up electrodes to all sections of Niue's head, he began to send pulses of electricity into Niue's brain, increasing the intensity notch by notch. However, the experiment went horribly wrong when he unintentionally fried Niue's brain, leaving him virtually brain dead. In a panic, his older half-brother TemT was called over to assist in fixing him. They spent the next three days straight surgically inserting wires and a high-powered microchip, complete with programming to mimic the brain's functions. With that, Niue was functioning properly again, and with other advantages. The USB hub on his upper back comes with a waterproof, airtight-sealed door, the headset attached to his ears province an advanced auditory experience, and the artificially manufactured right eye under the pink glass gives him the ability to see colours that he wouldn't be able to see otherwise and enhances his overall vision.
This incident brought Niue much closer to Al than he was before, and he began to gain romantic feelings toward him. However, despite the fact that he was more than willing to expose these feelings to Al, they never were reciprocated in the way he had expected. It wasn't long before Niue had settled with other sexual partners, having lost his virginity to Terry at a rave about half a year after the incident. A year or so later, Niue had regained connection with Allison, and he started a friends-with-benefits type relationship with him, often sleeping with him in exchange for drugs.
After reuniting with Allison and seeing what the multiple different substances He had been living off of for the past two to three years, the two decided to go to rehabilitation treatment together. Niue left after a month, Allison after almost three. Remaining sober wasn't an easy task for him, drugs taking part in his life no matter where he went. Once Allison relapsed due to his severe drug dependency, Niue did so as well, almost instantly upon hearing about it. Unlike Allison, Niue was overall fairly content with the addiction he was living with, and he enjoyed feeding it. In a sense, it made him feel more like an adult.
By the time he had hit fifteen years of age, Niue had become somewhat of a legend in his area for what he did in the music industry. He was DJing at clubs and even adult-only events on the weekends, which provided him with extra cash to support his addiction as well as upgrade his computer software. He had become highly skilled in both digital music production and computer programming. For fun, he and Al would hack into online games and modify them to extreme lengths right in front of the other players. He caused chaos over multiple gaming servers and had even been banned on some. However, he was never banned from servers for long as he could easily get into the database and remove himself from any ban-list.
Over the course of the next few years, Niue had gained multiple sexual partners, even trading sexual actions with Monstrum for home-cooked methamphetamine for both himself and Alijiah. Niue's dependency had become so bad, he dropped out of his final year of school at age 17 after having the threat of expulsion directed towards him due to his drug use and low attendance. At this point, he finally managed to coerce Al into performing the actions on him he had desired so much during the past four years.
At the age of 18, Niue met Skitzel who was 17. Unlike some of the others in the past, a romantic relationship formed between them. alongside Niue's hyper-sexual nature. Their relationship became extremely tense, especially after the three-month mark. Skitzel couldn't stand Niue's addiction and Niue couldn't keep to a monogamous relationship.
Multiple times throughout their relationship, the two had a variety of arguments, all of which were about Niue's drug habits and promiscuous activity. The end of their disagreements were all relatively the same. Niue would run off to the tech shop Al ran and lived in, and he would hide out there for a couple of days, and Skitzel would stay in the apartment or head out to TemTs for roughly the same amount of time. Their relationship was extremely dysfunctional, and matters only got worse when Niue started keeping other activities secret.
Niue and Terry had been rave-mates for a number of years. The two started going to parties together when he was thirteen years of age. They had formed more of a casual relationship, occasionally sneaking off to less densely-populated areas at these events to perform on each other. Over the years, they started doing this together much more frequently, especially since Niue often DJed for the events.
Niue is an original character, canon to the Void 9 universe and story. All Rights Reserved.
Cyodai is an original alien species designed and owned by me. if you wish to make your own, please note me. Thanks!
Drawing © EhX-KoR
The National Magnetic Fusion Energy Computer Center's computer room at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory shows a line of Cray machines, the X-MP in front and Cray 1’s in back. The first X-MPs arrived at the Lab in 1984.
Sebastian Buckup, Shinpei Kato, Nikolaus Lang, Angela Wang Nan speaking in the Supercomputers on Wheels session at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2023 in Tianjin, People's Republic of China, 28 June 2023. Tianjin Meijiang Convention Center - Room: Hub A. Copyright: World Economic Forum/Benedikt von Loebell
Always eager for better computer simulations, Laboratory weapons designers enthusiastically greeted the arrival of their first CDC 7600 supercomputer in 1969. Nineteen of the first 20 scientific computers purchased by the Laboratory had been from IBM. That string was broken in 1962 when the Lab bought a CDC1604 mainframe from then-upstart Control Data Corporation of Minnesota. A young CDC engineer named Seymour Cray was already at work on an innovative design for a machine 50 times faster than the CDC 1604, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory happily acquired one of his CDC 6600 computers for $8 million in August 1964. Cray’s design team then further refined this approach, yielding the even larger and faster CDC 7600 in 1969. In the hands of Laboratory users, these machines defined scientific supercomputing for a decade. Their small instruction sets, fast clock speeds, extremely dense custom-soldered circuit boards, and clever use of the machine frame itself for cooling were ideal for nuclear design and plasma simulations.
Arsenal (Vienna)
The Vienna Arsenal, object 1
(Pictures you can see by clicking on the link at the end of page!)
The Arsenal in Vienna is a former military complex in the southeast of the city, located in the 3rd district of Vienna. The mighty, consisting of several brick buildings facility is located on a rectangular plan on a hill south of the Country Road Belt (Landstraßer Gürtel).
Meaning
The Arsenal is the most important secular assembly of Romantic Historicism in Vienna and was conducted in Italian-Medieval and Byzantine-Moorish forms. Essentially the complex is preserved in its original forms; only the former workshop buildings within the bounding, from the the outside visible wings were replaced by new constructions.
History to 1945
Bird's eye view of the complex, arsenal, lithography Alexander Kaiser, 1855
Vienna Arsenal (Museum of Military History)
Arsenal, with HGM (Heeresgeschichtliches Museum) from the East
The complex, with a total of 31 "objects" (buildings) was built from 1849 to 1856 on the occasion of the March Revolution of 1848 and was the first building of the fortress triangle, replacing the old Vienna's city walls, with the Rossauer Barracks and the now-defunct Franz Joseph barracks at Stubenring. These buildings should not serve to deter foreign enemies from the city, but to secure state power in the event of revolutionary upheavals in Vienna. The decision to build the Arsenal, it came from the 19-year-old Emperor Franz Joseph I who on 2 December 1848 had come to the throne.
The design for the Imperial Artillery Arsenal came from General Artillery Director Vincenz Freiherr von Augustin, to which, subsequently, the site management had been transferred. Under his leadership, the buildings under assignment of sectors have been planned of the architects Carl Roesner, Antonius Pius de Riegel, August Sicard von Sicardsburg, Eduard van der Nüll, Theophil von Hansen and Ludwig Förster and built by the company of the architect Leopold Mayr.
From 1853 to 1856, Arsenal church was built by the architect Carl Roesner. The K.K. Court Weapon Museum, later K.K. Army Museum, now Museum of Military History, housed in a separate representative free-standing wing, was completed structurally in 1856, but was only in 1869 for the first time accessible.
For the construction of the Arsenal 177 million bricks were used. Construction costs totaled $ 8.5 million guilders. In the following years, there have been extensions. During the two world wars, the complex served as a weapons factory and arsenal, especially as barracks.
The record number of employees in Arsenal was reached in the First World War, with around 20,000 staffers. After 1918, the military-industrial operation with own steel mill was transformed into a public service institution with the name "Austrian Factories Arsenal". However, there were almost insoluble conversion problems in the transition to peacetime production, the product range was too great and the mismanagement considerable. The number of employees declined steadily, and the company became one of the great economic scandals of the First Republic.
By the fall of 1938, the area belonged to the 10th District Favoriten. However, as was established during the "Third Reich" the Reich District of Greater Vienna, became the arsenal complex and the south-east of it lying areas in the wake of district boundary changes parts of the 3rd District.
During the Second World War, in the Arsenal tank repair workshops of the Waffen-SS were set up. In the last two years of the war several buildings were severely damaged by bombing. During the Battle of Vienna, in the days of 7 to 9 April 1945, was the arsenal, defended by the 3rd SS Panzer Division "Totenkopf", focus of the fighting, the Red Army before its victory facing heavy losses.
History since 1945
Ruins of the object 15 after the air raids 1944
Deposits at the Arsenal Street
After heavy bomb damages during the Second World War, the buildings of the Arsenal were largely restored to their original forms.
In the southern part and in the former courtyard of the arsenal several new buildings were added, among them 1959-1963 the decoration workshops of the Federal Theatre designed by the architects Erich Boltenstern and Robert Weinlich. From 1961 to 1963, the telecommunications central office was built by the architect Fritz Pfeffer. From 1973 to 1975 were built operation and office building of the Post and Telephone Head Office for Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland (now Technology Centre Arsenal of Telekom Austria) with the 150-meter high radio tower in Vienna Arsenal according to the plans of architect Kurt Eckel. In the 1990s, a rehearsal stage of the Castle Theater (Burgtheater) was built according to plans by Gustav Peichl.
Also the Austrian Research and Testing Centre Arsenal, now Arsenal Research, which has made itself wordwide a celebrity by one of the largest air chambers (now moved to Floridsdorf - 21st District), was housed in the complex. A smaller part of the complex is still used by the Austrian army as a barracks. Furthermore, the Central Institute for Disinfection of the City of Vienna and the Central Chemical Laboratory of the Federal Monuments Office are housed in the arsenal. The Military History Museum uses multiple objects as depots.
In one part of the area residential buildings were erected. The Arsenal is forming an own, two census tracts encompassing census district, which according to the census in 2001 had 2.058 inhabitants.
End of 2003, the arsenal in connection with other properties of the Federal Property Society (BIG - Bundesimmobiliengesellschaft) was sold to a private investor group. Since early 2006, the lawyer of Baden (Lower Austria, not far away from Vienna) Rudolf Fries and industrialist Walter Scherb are majority owners of the 72,000 m2 historic site that they want to refurbish and according to possibility rent new. Fries also plans to enlarge the existing living space by more than a half (about 40,000 m2).
An architectural design competition, whose jury on 28 and 29 in June 2007 met, provided proposals amounting to substantial structural changes in the complex. Such designed competition winner Hohensinn a futuristic clouds clip modeled after El Lissitzky's cloud bracket, a multi-level horizontal structure on slender stilts over the old stock on the outskirts of the Swiss Garden. The realization of these plans is considered unlikely.
Some objects are since 2013 adapted for use by the Technical University of Vienna: Object 227, the so-called "Panzerhalle" will house laboratories of the Institute for Powertrains and Automotive Technology. In object 221, the "Siemens hall", laboratories of the Institute for Energy Technology and Thermodynamics as well as of the Institute for Manufacturing Technology and High Power Laser Technology are built. In object 214 is besides the Technical Testing and Research Institute (TVFA) also the second expansion stage of the "Vienna Scientific Cluster" housed, of a supercomputer, which was built jointly by the Vienna University of Technology, the University of Vienna and the University of Agricultural Sciences.
Accessibility
The arsenal was historically especially over the Landstraßer Gürtel developed. Today passes southeast in the immediate proximity the Südosttangente called motorway A23 with it connection Gürtel/Landstraßer Hauptstrasse. Southwest of the site runs the Eastern Railway, the new Vienna Central Station closes to the west of the arsenal. Two new bridges over the Eastern Railway, the Arsenal Stay Bridge and the Southern Railway bridge and an underpass as part of Ghegastraße and Alfred- Adler-Straße establish a connection to the on the other side of the railway facilities located Sonnwendviertel in the 10th District, which is being built on the former site of the freight train station Vienna South Station.
On the center side is between Arsenal and Landstraßer Gürtel the former Maria Josefa Park located, now known as Swiss Garden. Here stands at the Arsenal street the 21er Haus, a branch of the Austrian Gallery Belvedere, on the center-side edge of the Swiss Garden has the busy suburban main railway route the stop Vienna Quartier Belvedere, next to it the Wiener Linien D (tram) and 69A (bus) run.
"Do you have any idea what kind of a responsibility you're taking up?"
"The instant I put on this costume."
I can't believe Jackie's doing this. I mean, yes, I wanted him to become a hero. But this soon? RIGHT after a freaking war? So much danger, so young. And I've barely showed him anything. Yet he wants it. He wants to be a hero. But I can't just lets him go out and be done with it. He needs help. We needed to talk. We gathered in the Nest's computer room. Nice part of this new home of mine. Completed, and with the one of the best supercomputers in the country. Only one other surpasses it...
"Jackie, look. This may seem fun, but it isn't. There's alot of pain that goes with this life, and the rewards aren't that big, not to mention the limitless challenges that you'll be outright bombarded with."
"I don't care how hard it is. I'm doing it. I want to help people, one way or another."
"Well, that's not happening for a bit. You're still inexperienced with your abilities and--"
"I know how to use my powers. I told you I've been practicing here while you guys were gone."
"You'll need more than just your powers, Jackie. You need smarts, you need willpower. Being a hero is more than just putting on a colorful suit and clocking the nearest jaywalker. And there's no second chances when things go bad."
"I understand Tim. Whatever you teach me, I'll listen. I promise."
" Do you?"
"Yes! Yes I do!"
I glanced at Steph for a second who was right next to me by the chair I was sitting on. She just grinned. I knew she was all in for this. Her and Jackie...it's like a little brother and big sister, minus the constant bitching and yelling at eachother to get out of their rooms. Both would support eachother to the cold, bitter end of it all. She was all for Jackie suiting up and playing hero. Bought into to easy. I'm not going to, though. I'm not risking Jackie getting hurt.
"So, this is what you want. Why.?"
"I've told you before. I always wanted two things. To get rid of my powers, or use them for something better. I can't get rid of them, so I'll use them for good."
"Good, huh?"
"Yeah. I'm not bad, really. I don't wanna be Stasis again. I'm not a bad guy. I've actually made my new name myself!"
"Oh god...Well, lets hear it."
"How does 'Pulse' sound?"
"Eh, not the greatest, but it'll do. So, 'Pulse', your days of a villain are behind you?"
"Yes. I don't wanna hurt people anymore. I want to help people. "
"Alright then...."
I got up out of my chair, walked up to him, put my hand on his shoulder, and looked him right in the eye. I need to say this just right. This needs drama, dammit!
"Jackson Ludwing...Pulse. Do you swear to uphold the principles of our order and that for which we stand?"
"Uhh...yeah?..."
"And never to share in our secrets nor divulge in th--"
"Oh. My god, Tim. You are not referencing video games right now. I mean, really? This is serious."
"C'mon, Steph, I'm just having some fun! sheesh..."
"Tim, what's a 'divulge'?"
"Forget it, Jackie. Look, you say you want to be a hero? So be it. I'll show you how to be a hero. I'll make you one of the greatest heroes to ever live!"
Out of this world public domain images from NASA. All original images and many more can be found from the NASA Image Library
Curated higher resolutions with digital enhancement without attribution required can be downloaded: www.rawpixel.com/board/418580/nasa
This is a free download under CC Attribution ( CC BY 4.0) Please credit NASA and rawpixel.com.
Sebastian Buckup, Shinpei Kato, Nikolaus Lang, Angela Wang Nan speaking in the Supercomputers on Wheels session at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2023 in Tianjin, People's Republic of China, 28 June 2023. Tianjin Meijiang Convention Center - Room: Hub A. Copyright: World Economic Forum/Benedikt von Loebell
Macro Girl produced the beautiful portrait that acted as the source for this. I used inspiration from a myriad of nightmares stroke dreams over the years and the resident evil games and films, Red Queen was the name of the one of the supercomputers.
The original image for this pimp can be found here
Part of the group: www.flickr.com/groups/pimpmypixels
{ Edited the name I can't believe I got the computers name wrong }
The Macintosh Plus computer was the third model in the Macintosh line, introduced on January 16, 1986, two years after the original Macintosh and a little more than a year after the Macintosh 512K, with a price tag of US$2599.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_Plus
Retrocomputing (a portmanteau of retro and computing) is the use of early computer hardware and software today. Retrocomputing is usually classed as a hobby and recreation rather than a practical application of technology; enthusiasts often collect rare and valuable hardware and software for sentimental reasons. However some do make use of it.[1] Retrocomputing often gets its start when a computer user realizes that expensive fantasy systems like IBM Mainframes, DEC Superminis, SGI workstations and Cray Supercomputers have become affordable on the used computer market, usually in a relatively short time after the computers' era of use.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocomputing
Con il termine retrocomputing si indica una attività di "archeologia informatica" che consiste nel reperire, specialmente a costi minimi, computer di vecchie generazioni, che hanno rappresentato fasi importanti dell'evoluzione tecnologica, ripararli se sono danneggiati, metterli nuovamente in funzione e preservarli.
With 195 thousand cores, it can hit 2.9 petaflop/s. With 65 miles of cable, it's the largest InfiniBand network in the world.
Pleiades also has the capability to have capability expansions and hot swaps without an interruption of operations.
After seeing the photo above, I realized that I felt compelled to take a similar pose to the one I used inside the Cray X1 at Oak Ridge National Labs... (see below)
Communications rack. Blue Waters Supercomputer. National Petascale Computing Facility. University of Illinois at Urbana Champain (UIUC), IL.
In 1969, with the installation of the first CDC 7600, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory continued to lead in computing and custom-software development for nuclear design and plasma simulations. The CDC 7600 had 5,000 times the computing power of the UNIVAC. Octopus connected researchers at remote workstations to the CDC 6600s and 7600s, creating one of the first—and the largest—such networking systems.
Sandia Labs computer scientist Vitus Leung and a team of computer scientists and engineers from Sandia and Boston University won the Gauss Award at the International Supercomputing conference for their paper about using machine learning to automatically diagnose problems in supercomputers.
Learn more at bit.ly/2hnTJgF.
Photo by Randy Montoya.
In a world where the puny organics were unable to efficiently allocate resources using a price system or free trade, one man suggested that supercomputers would be able to allocate resources perfectly for all on this world. However the supercomputers were so efficient at allocating resources that they turned on their fleshy overlords, viewing them as an inefficient expense. So came these freedom fighters wishing to free all mechanisms from their organic captors, and to efficiently allocate all resources in the known universe. However legend says that they will not be able to allocate resources perfectly until the return of their DNA-based messiah.
The Reapers are fairly new additions to the ranks of the derogatorily (due to their diminutive size) labeled "Tinkertoys". They're quick in mind as well as on their feet, and they don't require exotic or large amounts of materials. However their great power is their ability to operate an extensive arsenal of weapons, affording them a flexibility in the theater that is unrivaled currently. With these new troops the Supercomputers have set their eyes on one of the biggest robo-slave traders, the Hero Factory.
“We power the world’s largest surveillance network. Only possible in China.”
“We can predict crime before it happens.”
— Bing Xu, co-founder of SenseTime at the Goldman Sachs Private Innovative Company Conference (PICC) in Las Vegas. SenseTime raised $2B in 2018.
"Shenzhen smart city is the first one. We can predict crime before it happens. If certain people go places they should not”
“We power the world’s largest surveillance network. Recently signed satellite companies (for 510M sq. km. of image data). Trained on 2.5 billion faces and 410M unique IDs. Only possible in China. Best face recognition algorithm in world.”
“Embedded in 400M smart phones, 240K surveillance cameras, 260K IOT devices and 189 satellites.”
I took a short video of his AI superpower claims
Here is my general worry: by violating privacy in a way we might not explore in the West, they gather the largest training data sets, and develop the best deep neural nets. Consider new areas, like medical imaging. I have to wonder if they would blow past the friction we face with HIPAA and general privacy concerns.
The Catalyst supercomputer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory employs a Cray CS300 architecture modified specially for data-intensive computing, the system is available for collaborative research with industry and academia.
For more information or additional images, please contact 202-586-5251.
This machine was the unquestioned king of computers when it first appeared. With its circuits cooled by extensive chilled water plumbing,
Wikipedia tells us that the CDC 6600 was a mainframe computer from Control Data Corporation, first delivered in 1964. It is generally considered to be the first successful supercomputer, outperforming its fastest predecessor, IBM 7030 Stretch, by about three times. It remained the world's fastest computer from 1964 to 1969, when it relinquished that status to its successor, the CDC 7600.
The heart of the NASA Center for Climate Simulation (NCCS) is the “Discover” supercomputer. In 2009, NCCS added more than 8,000 computer processors to Discover, for a total of nearly 15,000 processors. Credit: NASA/Pat Izzo To learn more about NCCS go to: www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate-sim-center.html ( www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate-sim-center.html ) NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is home to the nation's largest organization of combined scientists, engineers and technologists that build spacecraft, instruments and new technology to study the Earth, the sun, our solar system, and the universe.
Arsenal (Vienna)
The Vienna Arsenal, object 1
(Pictures you can see by clicking on the link at the end of page!)
The Arsenal in Vienna is a former military complex in the southeast of the city, in the 3rd District of Vienna located. The mighty, consisting of several brick buildings facility is located on a rectangular plan on a hill south of the country Strasser belt (Landstraßer Gürtel).
Meaning
The Arsenal is the most important secular assembly of Romantic Historicism in Vienna and was conducted in Italian-Medieval and Byzantine-Moorish forms. Essentially the system is preserved in its original forms; only the former workshop buildings within the bounding, from the the outside visible wings were replaced by new constructions.
History to 1945
Bird's eye view of the complex, arsenal, lithography Alexander Kaiser, 1855
Vienna Arsenal (Museum of Military History)
Arsenal, with HGM (Heeresgeschichtliches Museum) from the East
The plant, with a total of 31 "objects" (buildings) was built from 1849 to 1856 on the occasion of the March Revolution of 1848 and was the first building of the fortress triangle, the old Vienna's city walls replacing, with the Rossauerstrasse Barracks and the now-defunct Franz Joseph barracks at Stubenring. These buildings should not serve to deter foreign enemies from the city, but to secure state power in the event of revolutionary upheavals in Vienna. The decision to build the Arsenal, it came from the 19-year-old Emperor Franz Joseph I who on 2 December 1848 had come to the throne.
The design for the Imperial Artillery Arsenal came from General Artillery Director Vincenz Freiherr von Augustin, which, subsequently, the site management had been transferred. Under his leadership, the buildings under allocation of sectors have been planned of the architects Carl Roesner, Antonius Pius de Riegel, August Sicard von Sicardsburg, Eduard van der Nüll, Theophil von Hansen and Ludwig Förster and built by the company of the architect Leopold Mayr.
From 1853 to 1856, Arsenal church was built by the architect Carl Roesner. The K.K. Court Weapon Museum, later K.K. Army Museum, now Museum of Military History, housed in a separate representative free-standing wing, was completed structurally in 1856, but was only in 1869 for the first time accessible.
For the construction of the Arsenal 177 million bricks were used. Construction costs totaled $ 8.5 million guilders. In the following years, there have been extensions. During the two world wars, the complex served as a weapons factory and arsenal, especially as barracks.
The record number of employees in Arsenal was reached in the First World War, with around 20,000 staffers. After 1918, the military-industrial operation with own steel mill was transformed into a public service institution with the name "Austrian art arsenal". However, there were almost insoluble conversion problems in the transition to peacetime production, the product range was too great and the mismanagement considerable. The number of employees declined steadily, and the company became one of the great economic scandals of the First Republic.
By the fall of 1938, the area belonged to the 10th District Favoriten. However, as was established during the "Third Reich" the Reich District of Greater Vienna the arsenal complex and the south-east of it lying areas in the wake of district boundary changes became parts of the 3rd District.
During the Second World War, in the Arsenal tank repair workshops of the Waffen-SS were set up. In the last two years of the war several buildings were severely damaged by bombing. During the Battle of Vienna, in the days of 7 to 9 April 1945, was the arsenal, defended by the 3rd SS Panzer Division "Totenkopf", focus of the fighting, the Red Army before their victory recording heavy losses.
History since 1945
Ruins of the object 15 after the air raids 1944
Deposits at the Arsenal Street
After heavy bomb damages during the Second World War, the buildings of the Arsenal were largely restored to their original forms.
In the southern part and in the former courtyard of the arsenal several new buildings were added, among them 1959-1963 the decoration workshops of the Federal Theatre designed by the architects Erich Boltenstern and Robert Weinlich. From 1961 to 1963, the telecommunications central office was built by the architect Fritz Pfeffer. From 1973 to 1975 were built plant and office building of the Post and Telephone Head Office for Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland (now Technology Centre Arsenal of Telekom Austria) with the 150-foot radio tower in Vienna Arsenal according to the plans of architect Kurt Eckel. In the 1990s, a rehearsal stage of the castle theater (Burgtheater) was built according to plans by Gustav Peichl.
Also the Austrian Research and Testing Centre Arsenal, now Arsenal Research, which has made itself wordwide a celebrity by one of the largest air chambers (now moved to Floridsdorf - 21st District ), was housed in the complex. A smaller part of the system is still used by the Austrian army as a barracks. Furthermore, the Central Institute for Disinfection of the City of Vienna and the Central Chemical Laboratory of the Federal Monuments Office are housed in the arsenal. The Military History Museum uses multiple objects as depots.
In one part of the area residential buildings were erected. The Arsenal is forming an own, two census tracts encompassing census district, which according to the census in 2001 2.058 inhabitants had.
End of 2003, the arsenal in connection with other properties of the Federal Property Society (BIG - Bundesimmobiliengesellschaft) was sold to a private investor group. Since early 2006, the lawyer of Baden (Lower Austria, not far away from Vienna) Rudolf Fries and industrialist Walter Scherb are majority owners of the 72,000 m2 historic site that they want to refurbish and according to possibility rent new. Fries also plans to enlarge the existing living space by more than half (about 40,000 m2).
An architectural design competition, whose jury on 28 and 29 in June 2007 met, provided proposals amounting to substantial structural changes in the system. Such designed competition winner Hohensinn a futuristic clouds clip modeled after El Lissitzky's cloud bracket, a multi-level horizontal structure on slender stilts over the old stock on the outskirts of the Swiss Garden. The realization of these plans is considered unlikely.
Some objects are since 2013 adapted for use by the Technical University of Vienna: Object 227, the so-called "Panzerhalle" will house laboratories of the Institute for Powertrains and Automotive Technology. In object 221, the "Siemens hall", laboratories of the Institute for Energy Technology and Thermodynamics as well as of the Institute for Manufacturing Technology and High Power Laser Technology are built. In object 214 is besides the Technical Testing and Research Institute (TVFA) also the second expansion stage of the "Vienna Scientific Cluster" housed, of a supercomputer, which was built jointly by the Vienna University of Technology, the University of Vienna and the University of Agricultural Sciences.
Accessibility
The arsenal was historically especially over the Landstraßer Gürtel developed. Today passes southeast in the immediate proximity the Südosttangente called motorway A23 with it connection Gürtel/Landstraßer Hauptstrasse. Southwest of the site runs the Eastern Railway, the new Vienna Central Station closes to the west of the arsenal. Two new bridges over the Eastern Railway, the Arsenal Stay Bridge and the Southern Railway bridge and an underpass as part of Ghegastraße and Alfred- Adler-Straße establish a connection to the on the other side of the railway facilities located Sonnwendviertel in the 10th District, which is being built on the former site of the freight train station Vienna South Station.
On the center side is between Arsenal and Landstraßer Gürtel the former Maria Josefa Park located, now known as Swiss Garden. Here stands at the Arsenalstraße the 21er Haus, a branch of the Austrian Gallery Belvedere, on the center-side edge of the Swiss Garden has the busy suburban main railway route the stop Vienna Quartier Belvedere, next to it the Wiener Linien D (tram) and 69A (bus) run.
The UNIVAC at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory had a large console with a series of switches that could be set to address each of the machine's 1,000 words of memory. Once set, the contents of that memory location would be displayed on the console's oscilloscope. An electric typewriter could be used to direct the machine and was useful for debugging. The largest data system was a set of ten tape units, designed to read and write backwards and forwards. These served as an expanded main memory, allowing larger data volumes and even larger programs than would fit in the small amount of main memory.
KITT or K.I.T.T. is the short name of two fictional characters from the adventure franchise Knight Rider. While having the same acronym, the KITTs are two different entities: one known as the Knight Industries Two Thousand, which appeared in the original TV series Knight Rider.
During filming, KITT was voiced by a script assistant, with voice actors recording KITT's dialog later. David Hasselhoff and original series voice actor William Daniels first met each other six months after the series began filming. KITT's evil twin is KARR, whose name is an acronym of Knight Automated Roving Robot. KARR was voiced first by Peter Cullen and later by Paul Frees in seasons one and three, respectively, of the NBC original TV series Knight Rider.
In the original Knight Rider series, the character of KITT (Knight Industries Two Thousand) was physically embodied as a modified 1982 Pontiac Trans Am. KITT was designed by customizer Michael Scheffe. The convertible and super-pursuit KITTs were designed and built by George Barris.
KITT is an advanced supercomputer on wheels. The "brain" of KITT is the Knight 2000 microprocessor, which is the centre of a "self-aware" cybernetic logic module. This allows KITT to think, learn, communicate and interact with humans. He is also capable of independent thought and action. He has an ego that is easy to bruise and displays a very sensitive, but kind and dryly humorous personality.
All ship traffic was stopped due to the annual test closing of the storm surge barriers in the New Waterway. So for a few hours the gateway to Rotterdam was closed for all ships.
The Maeslantkering is a storm surge barrier on the Nieuwe Waterweg, in South Holland, Netherlands. Controlled by a supercomputer, it automatically closes when Rotterdam is threatened by floods. Part of the Delta Works, it is one of largest moving structures on Earth, rivalling the Green Bank Telescope in the United States and the Bagger 288 excavator in Germany.
(WIP pic, more picures and better renders to come)
Name: P.C.S. York
Affiliation: Phoenix Command Group, (vigilante frontier mercenary group dedicated to protecting the innocent, preventing crime, and exposing corruption. Formerly Kolter Mining security division. Formally United Earth Federation (working title) Federal Defense Navy (working title)
Class Name: Monarch class
Type: Fast Battleship
Commissioned: Circa mid 2500’s, pre recent major conflict
Specifications:
Length: 1,221 meters (122.1 studs, 38.5 inches, 97.7 cm model)
Width: 429 meters (42.9 studs, 12.5 inches, 34.3 cm model)
Height: 305 meters (30.5 studs, 9.7 inches, 24.4 cm model)
Crew: 2,700 standard complement + up to 2,000 Star Quest marine detachment and embarked craft pilots and flight crew
Armament: 6 triple-mounted heavy railgun turrets, 8 triple-mounted rapid fire medium particle cannon turrets, 24 dual-mounted medium railgun turrets, 174 quad-mounted 80mm anti-fighter flak railgun turrets
Defensive systems:
Hull: Heavy advanced steel alloy hull with carbon nanotube/buckypaper composite layers as spall lining.
Armor plating: titanium alloy, tungsten, carbon nanotube composite armor layers against kinetic, kinetic spalling, particle, laser, and plasma fire. Composite hull provides excellent survivability at low mass due to the advanced composite design.
Bulkheads: Extensive titanium bulkhead support network.
Structural integrity field: High power system designed for extreme acceleration.
Shielding: Internally housed advanced, high power, rapid regeneration adaptive particle field repulsing shielding system capable of surviving extreme punishment.
Powerplant: 2 primary matter-antimatter reactors with extensive fuel reserves, 2 secondary, and 1 tertiary fusion reactors with extensive fuel reserves. Multiple massive power capacitors. Extensive heatinks.
Propulsion: 3 primary 8 secondary, and 8 tertiary fusion engines for sub-lightspeed travel, 1 internal FTL core capable of high speed, long range travel, 192 reaction control thrusters, and 48 reaction control wheels for below light speed maneuvering.
Computer systems: Multiple supercomputer cores with onboard Virtual Intelligence system, along with extensive redundant backup and antiviral systems.
Comms and Sensors: Local and FTL comms arrays. Radar, LIDAR, infrared, multi-spectral, and additional other local area sensors systems, along with extensive FTL sensors.
High power artificial singularity for both artificial gravity generation and inertial dampening, allowing for 1G gravity under all but the most extreme conditions.
Background: Faced with an aging and inadequate fighting fleet, Earth humanity constructed the Monarch class in the ramp-up to the most recent Great War. These vessels served as advanced, fast battleships well suited to carrier escort duties, rapid border response, or direct ship-to-ship combat against enemy battleships and cruisers.
After the war, the York was purchased by eccentric multi trillionaire David Courtland, and the vessel found new purpose in defending civilians in war-torn areas from pirates.
IRL info. This digital SHIP was made in Bricklink’s Studio software from August 1st to August 11th, 2021. I did not originally plan to attempt to include it in SHIPtember, but it met the requirements for early month. Note that it uses all real piece colors that are available for sale on Bricklink. It is 100% connected, and should be reasonably stable in real life. Although it would require a display stand of some kind. The current pictures are WIP placeholders to show completed status of the build itself. Better renders will hopefully follow before whatever October picture deadline is decided on. Please do not use these early pictures in the poster if time remains, as I hope to provide better ones. Thank you for reading.)
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has pinpointed superheated bubbles within M84, a massive elliptical galaxy in the Virgo Cluster. Located about 55 million light years from Earth, M84 contains a central, supermassive black hole that spews a two-sided jet of particles to heat surrounding gas. Inside the gas are nested bubbles that appear much like Russian stacking dolls, or matryoshkas – sets of dolls of decreasing sizes placed one inside the other. Supercomputer simulations suggest that these “dolls” aren’t created by toymakers, but by the interaction of the black hole’s jet and the surrounding gas.
Image credit:
X-ray (NASA/CXC/MPE/A.Finoguenov et al.); Radio (NSF/NRAO/VLA/ESO/R.A.Laing et al); Optical (SDSS)
Learn more/see larger image:
www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/chandra/multimedia/photos08-17...
p.s. You can see all of our Chandra photos in the Chandra Group in Flickr at: www.flickr.com/groups/chandranasa/ We'd love to have you as a member!