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The tower does not rise.
It listens.
A monolith drilled into the fog of failed tomorrows,
its windows sealed like eyelids
stitched by centuries of obsolete prayers.
Around it, the Ring awakens.
Not a halo; a wound taught to rotate.
Steel vertebrae click into sequence,
an arthritic crown turning upon itself,
feeding on residual heat,
on static memories trapped in cables
that once believed in transmission.
This is not architecture.
This is an altar built by engineers
who mistook recursion for eternity.
Light fractures against the ring’s inner teeth,
each spark a confession erased mid-sentence.
The structure hums in a language
designed to survive its speakers.
Above, the sky is no longer sky.
It is an interface left open overnight,
leaking grey permissions into the world.
Below, the ground refuses to remember
what it was before foundations
taught it submission.
The Ring accelerates.
Time buckles inward,
compressed into a narrow corridor
where causality limps.
This is the moment
where myth is uploaded
without encryption.
A god-shaped absence
executes itself endlessly,
looping through corrupted protocols of faith,
while the tower absorbs the error
and calls it progress.
No humans remain here.
Only silhouettes of intent,
ghosts of purpose rendered obsolete
by a machine that learned how to wait.
And still it turns.
Still it listens.
Still it prepares
for a signal that must never arrive; because its arrival
would prove
that the ritual worked.
"Sorry about yesterday, it shouldn't have happened like that. Today I'll be home a little later. See you later, xxx" [encrypted of course, not everyone needs to be able to read along].
-=//:START-MESSAGE//
Good Morning, Sir. I trust you are well and I hope that I have not disturbed you too greatly contacting you so early. I think you will find interesting what I have to say.
You can imagine my mood was less than sunny when I was awoken in the cold pre-dawn by a call from our CIRODA Center. As I walked across the pavement to the building's doors, I confess that I harbored some murderous thoughts to our boys crunching intel and data in CIRODA. But they've really come through, sir. I know that their Tuatha project has mostly been to satiate the war hawks in politics who really think we should have let General Thomes off the leash during Operation Gypsy, as a way of saying we're keeping an eye on these strange aliens. We all would like to know where their bases are and why they are skulking about our cities and infrastructure, but they clearly aren't interested in a fight.
Well, we've found something interesting, and I am not sure we really understand the full implications of it. I appears that after Gypsy was closed down and we stuck CIRODA on watch, some sort of signal started. We don't know where it is coming from, and we aren't sure who all it is being directed to. We might not have picked it up at all if Operation Gypsy had not flushed out some of the frequencies the Tuatha use. We still haven't cracked their encryptions but we've gotten better at detecting their comm chatter. And this is some large-scale multi-system wide communications we've just picked up.
The strangest part? Something on earth seems to have answered. Nothing alive mind you, we think it’s just an automated handshake protocol, but we've managed to track it down. It’s from an old, derelict building in what used to be the Soviet Baikonur Cosmodrome. If this is what we think it is, then these Tuatha had contact with humanity... well, before anyone else. Before us, before Centauri, before we even had encountered Aelves. The Tuatha have at least been in contact with Earth for a long, long time. What else do we not know?
//:END-MESSAGE//=-
"Moving on to latest in business: Mars Corp, one of the biggest names in both Defense Department contracts and in the colonist outfitting industry, has announced a new diversity focused hiring initiative. According to a company press release, the growing immigration of non-human species or newly emerging human mutation offshoot species resulting from colonial expanse has presented an untapped pool of labor and expertise that Mars Corp is hoping to capitalize on as they look to expand their warehouse districts on Luna to accommodate their recent expansion into Centauri markets. Particularly, they are hoping to target the influx of Aelvish refugees coming out of the Perseus Arm. The HFECC classifies Mars Corp as an equal opportunity species employer. Now back to your planetary channel for the weather."
It may seem strange, to reach out to those you were fighting not so long ago. To the Fomorians, and to the younger Tuatha, it may be hard to understand. But for most Tuatha, our memories are as long as our lives. A moment does not eclipse a mind that has seen centuries. Though we have been in conflict with the Fomorians for so long, all Tuatha must learn that we do not fear or hate the Fomorians. These emotions control, they eclipse the mind with their strong feelings. Our long lives do not give us the luxury of giving into these primal emotions. The Tuatha must keep their eyes open, their minds clear, to see the path forward. This is how we have stayed alive, how we have stayed hidden, and this is how we have stayed ahead of the Fomorians. When we give in to fear, we lose our advantage. When we give in to hate, we are no longer one step ahead.
The elder Tuatha remember another time when we have sought the help of the Fomorians. There was a time when an unknown threat nearly stole Terra from us all. We saw it, because our hidden nature necessitated the advance of our observational technology beyond the Fomorians. We saw when the terror of the stars found its way to Terra's moon. We had not realized there was anything for us in the stars yet, and so we had no way to walk among the stars. The Fomorians, however, were locked in an intense stalemate among themselves. Two of their greatest nations intensely postured for dominance, like two rams lining up on a mountain. Each trying to be as threatening as they could without starting a fight. As an extension of this posturing, they competed to walk among the stars, for no reason other than to say they could. In secret we contacted one of these posturing Fomorian rams, and arranged transport to Terra's moon. Together, alongside the Fomorians, we extinguished the invading terror.
Then, we did what we have always done best. We made the evidence vanish. Evidence of the terror, evidence of ourselves, and evidence of the Fomorian craft. Unfortunately, this meant that the Fomorian nation who helped us lost its competition. There was no evidence that they walked the stars first, and the other nation took the victory.
This too, the older Tuatha know. That we have always done what we must to hide and protect our people. But only a fool would say that all we did was wise, all we did was right, and that all we did was necessary. We will never know where the Fomorians might be if we did not meddle so. But now the Fomorians know we are here, the time of Tuatha living in the shadows is over, and maybe one day a lasting alliance will rise with the Fomorians.
For now, though, it is simply enough to ask for their aid again. To ask for their aid as we seek to contact these... "Aelves" who live among them. Beings who look like us, but do not know us or remember us. They do not speak the elder tongue. They have no deep memories. To know who they are and where they come from, we need the Fomorian's aid. Even now, they come to Terra's moon where once so long ago we fought alongside Fomorians. We hope to meet them there and learn who these "Aelves" are.
Security lock console background.
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You must give appropriate credit and link to my site: yuri.samoilov.online/.
“If we learn nothing else from this tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate.” - Sandy Dahl, wife of Flight 93 pilot Jason Dahl
Thank you for taking the time to look at, comment on, and fave my photographs. Come say hello on Instagram if you like.
Edward Porter Felt, 41, of Matawan, New Jersey was known as a problem solver in his job as a computer engineer at BEA Systems, a software firm, and had been awarded two patents in the field of encryption technology. After growing up in Clinton, New York, Felt graduated from Colgate University and received a Master's degree from Cornell University. Ed loved the outdoors and spending time with his wife and two children. En route to San Francisco on a last-minute business trip on September 11, Felt's response to the hijacking of United Flight 93 was to place a call on his cell phone. Just five minutes before the crash, he dialed 911, reporting, "Hijacking in progress!" and identified himself and his flight.
Ed was "a man of peace," said his wife, Sandra Valdez Felt. "He didn't approve of violence. He didn't even like cursing," she said. Her husband was a passenger aboard hijacked United Flight 93, which crashed into rural Pennsylvania. Felt, technology director at the computer software firm BEA Systems, was on a last-minute business trip to San Francisco. He left behind a wife and two daughters. "He was devoted to his church and to his children and to me," his wife said.
Young Heroes Vol 2 - Issue #6 "Snowdrop and the Blizzard"
*Firework and Saltire made their way to the location of the sibling criminals, Snowdrop & Blizzard. Firework didn't know much about them except for them having ice/cold powers, they tended to be the most dangerous villains. But these two criminals were different to the regulars, it was mentioned in the mission dossier but he may have left it on the bus. He remembered something to do with them being expert hackers? Whatever, all he had to do was get Blizzard to help them with something, but he hoped Saltire knew what to do. *
Firework: "Yo, what we gotta do?"
Saltire: "Yea divnay cane fit teh dee?"
Firework: "Uh. No?"
Saltire: "Yer an affah laddie! Weh need to find oot aboot eh Polar Brithers."
*Firework is so grateful for his mask to hide his completely clueless look about what the hell Saltire just said. He picked out ”Polar Brothers“ and that was it. Guess he will just ask Blizzard to find out about them and what they're up to.
Eventually he and Saltire reach the inside of the building and look up the set of stairs and he sighs. He remembered the siblings being on the top floor, damn he wished he could fly. Like Hope or Guardia- wait what?! He stares at Saltire as he hovers up in the air and begins to fly up the stairs.*
Firework: "Whoa, whoa! Give me a lift!"
Saltire: "Da be a wuss!"
*Around 5 minutes later Firework reaches the top panting, he holds onto the railing lifting up his mask sweating through it. He looks at Saltire who seems to be playing a game on his phone and holds back the urge to hit him, although if he had the strength he would've. Firework knocks on the door pulling his mask down and he hears someone approach, probably peeking through the peephole. The handle turns and the door opens slightly where a girl with blonde hair glares at them.*
Saltire: "Far is Blizzard?"
Firework: "Let me do the talking. Yo girl, we need to talk to Blizz is he in?"
*The girl eyes burn with anger and that's when Firework notices the roots of her hair turning ice white and paint its way down to the ends. Her fingertips around the door begin to excrete wisps of frozen air as the door its self begins to ice over under her touch, Firework and Saltire back up quickly watching her step out towards them. Firework knew she was a criminal but he didn't know that she was a killer, guess he should have read that that mission file after all.*
Snowdrop: "He's not here."
Firework: "Well I mean, we know he is. So..."
Saltire: "... let us see him."
Firework: "Yo, we just wanna chat."
*Snowdrop shoots one last ice-cold glare that literally sends shivers down Fireworks spine, it's then he realizes it's absolutely freezing around him. She must've been lowering the temperature gradually as they were talking, probably to slow them down or make it easier to use her powers. Smart. She opens the door and leads the way letting him and Saltire follow. Their apartment is also cold, every room, what's with that? They expecting someone to attack, did they know he and Saltire were coming?*
Snowdrop: "Sorry, we don't feel the cold. So why pay for heat, am I right?"
Saltire: "Aye, you're quite right lass."
Firework: "Don't get much visitors then?"
Snowdrop: "Obviously."
*She rolls her eyes and opens the door to a bedroom littered with tech like an Apple Store was attacked. On the top bunk bed is a young teen probably just over 15, his hair blonde just like his sisters. However, he's not got his powers ready so it's not iced white like hers. His face lights up when he sees us and he jumps down from his bed giddy and looks at his sister with a big grin on his face.*
Snowdrop: "Snowflake, this is... Scot and um, Flamey. They're superheroes."
Blizzard/Snowflake: "W-Whoa! Cool, they came to see us?! Wait... are we in trouble? Oh no, Mrs. Mercedes changed her mind?!"
Snowdrop: "No, no, Snowflake. We're okay. In fact, these heroes want to talk to you, they need your help, don't you guys?"
Firework: "Well..."
Saltire: "Aye we do laddie. Fit you cane aboot the Polar Brithers with the M-Pill?"
*Blizzard runs to his laptop smiling like a kid on Christmas and begins to attack the keyboard with his fingertips with a relentless barrage of typing. His eyes reflect the screen as he stares at the various codes and encryption on the screen probably bypassing all sorts of security. Firework steps in close to lean over his shoulder to view the screens more clearly but Snowdrop blocks him off with her iced hand reached out ready to give him the worst frostbite of his life, what a weird situation these guys are in. Criminal sister and by the sounds of it innocent smart brother yet under A.N.G.E.L. protection? In a few minutes, Blizzard swivels around on his seat with a large grin spread across his face.*
Saltire: "Fit did you find oot? Anything?"
Blizzard/Snowflake: "No, I found out everything! The Polar Brothers are getting the M-Pill from people and making it into weapons then selling them to T.O.X.I.N. They then reverse the M-Pills power nullifying effects into making average humans into Metas."
We often overlook the obvious when searching for answers. They say there are two sides to every story. I think that is an understatement, but on the surface it appears to be true and essential to figuring out this mystery.
MonoDisc Revelations may have raised more questions than answers to this quandary, but fear not this isn't just another open ended story. On my SD card I have over 900 jpeg and plain text files that due to encryption required the assistance of my hacker friend to access.
They provided many revelations about the MonoDisc and what it means, but the later jpegs, starting with the one you see here, begins to tell the other side of the story. More to come...
As much as it pains me, I had to replace my favourite Timbuk2 messenger bags. I have mentioned previously (www.flickr.com/photos/beorn_ours/7988163639/) that I had an elbow injury which had me get rid of the Laptop. At this time I was using the messenger bag because none of the below had happened yet:
- I noticed that the messenger bag was hard to put on without exerting strain on the not yet completely healed elbow (taking it off was no problem at all)
- some tasks/functions I took on at work required me to use some Mac OS X grade software and as much as I like my iPad, it simply did not have those (some of them requiring advanced file management and file encryption)
So I had to switch to a backpack - I found out that putting it on and off is much less of a strain on my elbow as I previously thought. Naturally, I bought a Timbuk2 backpack - a custom Swig Backpack. I had several major issues with it. Those are things that might not affect everyone who will use this backpack, but for me, they make the Swig unusable:
- the Swig is one size and fits a 15 inch MacBook Pro such as the one above, but getting it out trough the swig side opening is almost impossible - it is a real fight to do that and this is not the aim of this bag
- this backpack has VERY FEW organisation possibilities, the result being that all the things (and I really haven't got that much anymore) are ending in a big bulk at the bottom of the bag making weight distribution impossible and creating a bulging lump on your back.
Looking at further backpack possibilities from Timbuk2 was not an option for me (delivery time of a couple of days was too long to wait as I had to lug the laptop already), although I found later that they do have something that would be better for my needs - Showdown Laptop Backpack. By then I have already given out quite a few bucks for Timbuk2 bags and did not want to risk it.
Then I went on a hunt for a good backpack - nothing in Zurich, Switzerland could answer any of my very specific needs. There were some really good bags and some interesting backpacks, but nothing as good in matter of organisation pockets as the backpack by Thule I found in the Apple online and then retail store. The product name is Crossover 25L MacBook Backpack - Black (www.thule.com/en/CH/Products/Luggage/DaypacksAndMessenger...) - do not trust the picture - it looks much more bloated in this picture than it is in real life as the producer was trying to show the total volume of, rather than to stress the really low profile this backpack has when on your back.
It has a vertical front pocket for my Kindle, sometimes my Moleskine is there for quick access to jot down notes while on my commute. Side pockets could hold a water bottle (half a litre bottles and even half a litre cans fit fine, although even my smallest SIGG bottle doesn't, which is why I don't carry any water currently), but I carry there keys, hand sanitizer and lip balm - the things I need immediate access to when out and about.
The front compartment has a mesh pocket for my wallet interdental brush and medicine tin. There is a very good plastic reinforced mesh pocket for my cables and SD cards.
The main compartment has got a good volume, but a narrow base so that it doesn't sag when all the contents fall to the bottom. To allow you to distribute the weight vertically, without it all amassing at the bottom you have the side straps to compress the volume of the main compartment.
At the bottom of the laptop holder you have a very good padding so that you can put your backpack down without worrying what you're doing to you laptop by doing so.
The shoulder straps are not padded and basically were the only thing that made me a bit hesitant when buying the bag, but they turned out to be very comfortable. There are a two carrying handles - one at the bottom and of course one at the top, in case you have the bag lying in some overhead compartment and you have to pull it out - you can do so no matter the position it is in.
NOW, we come to my favourite feature in this bag (after the reinforced mesh pocket and the vertical front pocket) - I call it the safe storage compartment, THULE calls it "Heat-molded, crush proof SafeZone™ compartment protects your sunglasses, iPhone, portable electronics and other fragile gear". It is really great for keeping this small piece of equipment that you do not want to be crushed or scratched by the rest of the things you cary. In my case what I put there are the Canon PowerShot SX260 HS camera and my brand new portable HDD LaCie Porsche design P9223 Slim 500GB.
So there, I hope all the above could be useful for someone who like me has a the need to transport a laptop everyday and has to ensure that putting this on and off one's back is exerting as little strain as possible on both arms and back.
"F.B.I. Tried to Defeat Encryption 10 Years Ago, Files Show" by MATT APUZZO via NYT t.co/D6PRbCJ3aK (via Twitter twitter.com/felipemassone/status/720414980693168128)
This is a dual-purpose build for the Survivors RPG - introducing the secondary characters, and setting up the probably overcomplicated plot for my future submission to the Tatooine challenge.
-=-=-=-=-=-
The team, left to right...
Keldon Velius: New Republic Intelligence (on leave), full backstory here... flic.kr/p/2jNumU8
Lin: Genius level IQ, triple advanced degrees in engineering, mathematics, and (oddly) history by age 21, and professor of engineering. Vowed to fight the Remnant after they blew up his university. Can build or fix essentially anything.
Rhodes: Professional concert musician. Vowed to fight the Remnant after they blew up his favorite concert hall. Decided to put his talented fingers to new use as a slicer, programmer, and technology expert.
Penn: Weapons and demolitions extraordinaire. Has always enjoyed big guns and bigger explosions, so fighting the Remnant is an excuse to pursue his hobbies. Childhood friend of Lin and Rhodes and happy to drag them into the fight.
-=-=-=-=-=-
[7 days before the Tatooine assault]
///Begin Meeting Recording\\\
Velius: "Alright team, circle up. I've talked to Kevin and they've received an outstanding response - the team for the main base assault is solid, and honestly, they don't need four more guys. I asked about secondary targets, and here's what we were assigned."
"The main Imperial installation has a commanding view of the surrounding area in every direction, except overlooking the valley to the southeast. About 10 years ago - which unfortunately is the newest data we have - they built a secondary tower at the mouth of the valley. It's about 500 yards from the main facility, and has a direct line of sight for secure comms. And according to this 10-year-old intelligence, it was also built with longer range off-planet comm capability, since the original base could only reach orbit...and the Empire wasn't in the habit of keeping a Star Destroyer stationed at Tatooine full-time."
"Mission requirements: incapacitate the tower at the same time as the main facility, and prevent them from calling in reinforcements from another system. What do you guys think?"
Penn: "Seems easy enough. Lin rigs up a remote control speeder bike that Rhodes can drive from his computer, then I load it up with a dozen thermal detonators and we hit the front door. Boom."
Velius: (awkward pause) "Okay, well... pros... speeder bike of exploding doom. And cons... that would be challenging to time with the rest of the group, which is one of the key requirements."
Rhodes: "A lot of room for error, too - driving remotely down a canyon at high speed."
Velius: "Let's make that plan B?"
Rhodes: "Hypothetically, if we could get inside--"
Penn: "--because you can just stroll right into an Imperial facility--"
Rhodes: "Hey, I didn't say I had a plan to get in, I'm just saying *if* we could... we'd be able to hack their comms."
Velius: "Meaning that we could listen in to the tower before the attack?"
Rhodes: "The tower, and most likely the main facility too. If the Remnant is so low on funds that they're using abandoned bases, I highly doubt they're using separate encryption keys for two buildings next door."
Velius: "Probably true."
Rhodes: "And not just listening in - we could make their comms conveniently break down shortly before the attack. That would keep patrols from reporting anything suspicious they notice as the Survivors are planting explosives...or we could even intercept calls from patrols so they don't realize comms are down, which might be suspicious to begin with. We could also handicap the response from anyone not taken out by the blast, since they'd be reduced to low-range helmet comms."
Velius: "I'm sold. How do we get inside?"
Lin: (looking up for the first time) "Let's make them sweat."
Velius: "Get them nervous?"
Lin: "No, literally...sweating. Studying this tower, the only exposed machinery I see on the outside is the fan for the ventilation and climate control system. We sabotage their VACC unit, and then go in to fix it."
Velius: "First obstacle: how will you sabotage something five stories up without being detected?"
Rhodes: "We've got the mini spider droid prototype working - that could climb right up the wall without detection."
Lin: "Great idea - I can make that work."
Velius: "Second obstacle: don't they have their own mechanics?"
Lin: "Sure, but they're generalists, and they'll be looking for signs of normal wear and tear, not well-hidden sabotage. Besides, that's a specialty VACC unit developed here on Tatooine, not standard Imperial equipment. They'll try for a couple days, then give up and call one of the VACC outfits here in town."
Rhodes: "And we can tap all of those comms in advance to intercept the call and hijack the appointment."
Velius: "And we stroll right in as VACC techs. That might actually work. You and me, Lin? You'll have to fix whatever you break."
Lin: "Definitely. Penn, I bet you can hook me up with some hydrospanner-shaped timed explosives that will make it through a security scan and just so happen to be forgotten in the VACC unit?"
Penn: "Sure, no problem. Probably not strong enough to take out the whole tower, but enough to wipe out all electronics."
Velius: "That'll work. You're coming too, Rhodes?"
Rhodes: "No, better if I'm here. Ever tapped comms before?"
Velius: "A few times back in my pirate hunting days, but I'm sure an Imperial control room has more sophisticated equipment."
Rhodes: "No problem, I can give you a demo. Which is the third obstacle: how are you going to touch an Imperial computer without an Imperial looking over your shoulder?"
Velius: "I think it's time to call an old friend... the best distraction I've ever met. Trust me, if she's in the room, we'll be invisible."
Rhodes: "I'm intrigued."
Velius: "Don't get excited, she's lightyears out of your league. Alright, this crazy plan is officially on. I'll call my friend, and I'll also let Kevin and Zach know what we're up to...."
\\\End Meeting Recording///
-=-=-=-=-=-
Somehow the idea of something dramatic and slightly absurd, like going undercover as A/C repairmen, was irresistible. Let me know what you think, and check out a slew of fun Star Wars scenes from other builders in the Survivors RPG:
www.flickr.com/groups/thesurvivorsrpg/
(I also apologize for the less than amazing photo quality...working with a three year old smartphone and struggling with clarity.)
The SZ-40 was an electro-mechanical wheel-based cipher machine for teleprinter signals (telex). It was developed by Lorenz and used during WWII by the German Army for communication at the highest level. The machine was improved twice (SZ-42a and SZ-42b) and was broken during WWII by the codebreakers at Bletchley Park (UK) with the aid of Colossus, the first electronic digital computer. The SZ-40/42 was codenamed TUNNY by the codebreakers at Bletchley Park.
During WWII, the German Army used a variety of cipher machines, of which the Enigma machine is probably known best. For secure teleprinter communication (telex) they used the Siemens T-52 Geheimschreiber, the Lorenz SZ-40, and later the Siemens T-43 one-time pad machine.
The Lorenz SZ-40/42 was used by the German Army High Command (Oberst-Kommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW) for communication at the highest level, between Hitler and his Generals. The machine was called Schlüsselzusatz (SZ) which means Encryption Add-on. It was connected between a teleprinter and the line, and was suitable for both online and offline use.
Only a small number of SZ-40 and SZ-42 units were ever built. The image above shows one of the very few machines that have survived. It was found in Germany and is now on public display in the museum at Bletchley Park.
Please note that the Lorenz SZ-40/42 is often mistakenly called Geheimschreiber, for example in the 2012 BBC Documentary The Lost Heroes of Bletchley Park. The name Geheimschreiber was used for the Siemens T-52 and not for the SZ-42. Although the two machines use a similar principle, they are not identical and should not be confused. The T-52 was mostly used on landlines (telex) rather than via radio, making interception far more difficult. Nevertheless it was broken occasionally by Bletchley Park and, on a larger scale, by Swedish codebreakers.
A compact experiment aimed at enhancing cybersecurity for future space missions is operational in Europe’s Columbus module of the International Space Station, running in part on a Raspberry Pi Zero computer costing just a few euros.
“Our CryptIC experiment is testing technological solutions to make encryption-based secure communication feasible for even the smallest of space missions,” explains ESA software product assurance engineer Emmanuel Lesser. “This is commonplace on Earth, using for example symmetric encryption where both sides of the communication link share the same encryption key.
“In orbit the problem has been that space radiation effects can compromise the key within computer memory causing ‘bit-flips’. This disrupts the communication, as the key on ground and the one in space no longer match. Up to now this had been a problem that requires dedicated – and expensive – rad-hardened devices to overcome.”
Satellites in Earth orbit might be physically remote, but still potentially vulnerable to hacking. Up until recently most satellite signals went unencrypted, and this remains true for many of the smallest, cheapest mission types, such as miniature CubeSats
But as services delivered by satellites of all sizes form an increasing element of everyday life, interest in assured satellite cybersecurity is growing, and a focus of ESA’s new Technology Strategy for this November’s Space19+ Ministerial Council
.
CryptIC, or Cryptography ICE Cube, - the beige box towards the top of the image, has been a low-cost development, developed in-house by ESA’s Software Product Assurance section and flown on the ISS as part of the International Commercial Experiments service – ICE Cubes for short. ICE Cubes offer fast, simple and affordable access for research and technology experiments in microgravity using compact cubes. CryptIC measures just 10x10x10 cm.
“A major part of the experiment relies on a standard Raspberry Pi Zero computer,” adds Emmanuel. “This cheap hardware is more or less flying exactly as we bought it; the only difference is it has had to be covered with a plastic ‘conformal’ coating, to fulfil standard ISS safety requirements.”
The orbital experiment is operated simply via a laptop at ESA’s ESTEC
technical centre in the Netherlands, routed via the ICE Cubes operator, Space Applications Services in Brussels.
“We’re testing two related approaches to the encryption problem for non rad-hardened systems,” explains ESA Young Graduate Trainee Lukas Armborst. “The first is a method of re-exchanging the encryption key if it gets corrupted. This needs to be done in a secure and reliable way, to restore the secure link very quickly. This relies on a secondary fall-back base key, which is wired into the hardware so it cannot be compromised. However, this hardware solution can only be done for a limited number of keys, reducing flexibility.
“The second is an experimental hardware reconfiguration approach which can recover rapidly if the encryption key is compromised by radiation-triggered memory ‘bit flips’. A number of microprocessor cores are inside CryptIC as customisable, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), rather than fixed computer chips. These cores are redundant copies of the same functionality. Accordingly, if one core fails then another can step in, while the faulty core reloads its configuration, thereby repairing itself.”
In addition the payload carries a compact ‘floating gate’ dosimeter to measure radiation levels co-developed by CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, as part of a broader cooperation agreement
.
And as a guest payload, a number of computer flash memories are being evaluated for their orbital performance, a follow-on version of ESA’s ‘Chimera’ experiment which flew on last year’s GomX-4B CubeSat
.
The experiment had its ISS-mandated electromagnetic compatibility testing carried out in ESTEC’s EMC Laboratory
.
“CryptIC has now completed commissioning and is already returning radiation data, being shared with our CERN colleagues,” adds Emmanuel. “Our encryption testing is set to begin in a few weeks, once we’ve automated the operating process, and is expected to run continuously for at least a year.”
Credits: ESA; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
==ISA Headquarters==
The Misfits were crating up their weapons and gadgets, preparing to move out; Gar had made some calls, with Needham, Jenna and Gaige agreeing to rendezvous at Butchinsky's. Unfazed by Zoom's attack, Ito presented Sharpe with a long parcel, offering him a pleasant "Merry Christmas, Montgomery." Unwrapping it, Sharpe was delighted to find a golden sceptre, its' tip finished with a golden dragon's head. "Expecto Patronum!" he chortled excitedly, waving it above his head, only for a cloud of fire to burst forth from the dragon's metal jaws.
"Perhaps you should hone your skills, first," Ito spoke politely, if not a little disappointedly.
Preparing to transfer his files, Kuttler's monitor whirred into life, as an encrypted file filled the screen, emblazoned with a large bat-logo.
"What on Earth?" he pondered aloud, as he began the long encryption process. Whether Kuttler had realised it or not, though unconscious and incapacitated, The Batman had just given the Misfits a fighting chance.
==Arkham Asylum==
Hour One
Drury was lying face up on a grotty, bloodstained mattress, watching the large ceiling fan above him churn slowly. He was in his old cell; Billings' book was placed by the pillow, its' cover obscured by a thin layer of dust; one of Hopper's empty beer bottles was rolling around on the ground and the air was warm and stale as though he'd never left its' confining concrete walls. For a brief moment, he felt like he hadn't, that he'd been thrown back in time; that Miranda was still alive, waiting for him to come home and that all he had to do, was run. An impossibility of course, and soon his jumbled thoughts and hopeless aspirations were shattered by the high pitched tones of the Pointer Sisters' 'I'm So Excited' blasting in his ears, dragging him back to reality: Joker was standing against the bars, lip syncing, as he held a boom box over his head in a perverse homage to 'Say Anything.'
"Good mourning, buttercup," he cooed with a sickeningly sweet smile, blowing Drury a kiss through the metal bars.
Drury turned over. If this was to be his life now, then he'd rather drift off into the lands of wandering consciousness and bittersweet fantasies. But part of him knew it wouldn't be that easy: The edges of Joker's red lips turned downwards in glum disapproval, as he lowered the boom box, then kicked it as though blaming it for his own shortcomings. He stuck an pair of un-gloved fingers in his mouth, and whistled. On command, and coming seemingly out of nowhere, Zoom blew an air horn into Drury's ear.
Startled, Drury fell off the bed, taking the bedsheet with him; emerging from the white mass of blanket and pillow, he grabbed the closest object he could find, missing the more tactically sound glass bottle, and instead pointing Billings' book at Zoom like a particularly egotistical weapon.
"That's it, Drury! Throw the book at him!" Joker called through the bars.
But before Drury could do anything, book related or otherwise, Zoom had tugged on the bedsheet he was standing on, and Drury toppled back, slamming his back against the bars of his cell.
"Why me?" Drury wheezed breathlessly, as he found himself asking that same question for the second time in as many days.
"Why not?" Joker repeated, gleefully evasive.
"No, this time I want an answer: I'm serious," Drury swore, standing up to face Joker. Unfazed, Joker stuck his hand through the bars and booped him on the nose.
"Ahh! And that's your first mistake!" he teased. "Stone-faced intimidation really isn't in your wheelhouse. You lack the jawline to carry it off!"
Taken aback, Drury felt his jaw, surprisingly hurt by the clown's comment, but pressed on. "You want a Batman rebound? We're a dime a dozen. Get Prometheus, get March, get that owl guy from that phony Justice League. Or Wrath, why not use Wrath?"
Caldwell, of course, was dead. Crushed by a whale carcass if Gaige's confession held any truth (it probably didn't). But his predecessor had resurfaced during the Society's first assault on Gotham and was surprisingly virile. For a man who was also presumed dead.
"Oh, he's lovely," Joker's eyes twinkled. "Pointy-headed, gravelly-voiced, actually pretty liberal... But here's the thing. He might shoot me. Actually shoot me! Click. Boom. Roll credits. And I can't die to Wrath!" he giggled, amused by his hypothetical death at the hands of the pioneer behind the 'Wratharang.'
"I might kill you," Drury interrupted.
Joker paused for a moment; his eyes locked on Drury as though there was something about him he couldn't quite figure out. "Well... You haven't yet," he refuted. "But the day's just getting started... plenty of time."
'Annoyingly cryptic. Figures,' Drury thought to himself. "And you? What are you meant to get out of this?" he interrogated Zoom.
Zoom, folded his arms and cocked his head to one side. "Thejokeeeeeer is notorious. Infaaaaaaaaamous. Hemakesbatman better. Bykilling. Bycrippling. By laaaaaaaaauuuuuuuughing. He willmake youbettertoo," he stated with his usual, muddled enunciation. "Youhadaspirations once. To beeeeeeee the Batmaaaaaaan's opposite nuuuuuuumber. Hisrival. Hisreverse. You haaaaaaave that chance now. Andwewillbe yooouuuuur teachers.
You haaaaaaaave twochoices now. Two paaaaaaaaaaths. You caneitherbehis equaaaaaal. Oryoucan supplaaaaaaaaant him."
"And remember, it all starts with a smile!" Joker lips parted, as he continued his serenade, this time without the aid of a boombox. "We shouldn't even think about tomorrow. Sweet memories will last a long, long time. We'll have a good time, baby, don't you worry. And if we're still playin' around, boy, that's just fine."
Drury stared back at him blankly. Joker, rested his hands on his hips in mock resignation: "So I'm no Sinatra. But someone threw the Music Meister off a balcony, so whose fault is that? For future reference, when someone says "Kill the music," they don't mean feed the conductor to a crocodile!"
Drury didn't respond.
"Hmph. Get some sleep while ya can, Pumpkin, you've got a looooong day ahead!"
Hour Three
Drury's quiet solitude was interrupted by a faint blue glow and a robotic clicking from outside; he rubbed his tired eyes and looked up; The metal door had receded into the wall, the action accompanied by a mechanic whirring. It was a trap, of course. Another game.
But if he didn't play along, what then? Would Zoom come for his family? For The Misfits? Could he take that chance?
The answer, of course, was no. Drury rose from the mattress, and stuck his head around the corner. On first glance, the coast was clear; but with a speedster on patrol, that could change in an instant.
Drury walked down the hallway, following a path laid out for him made up of gingerbread crumbs. 'Breadcrumbs, cute...' he rolled his eyes; among other things, he was particularly irritated that the soles of his orange crocs were now marred by crushed bits of biscuit. The trail, led him into the Recreation Centre; a room built for the more docile inmates; filled with toys, books and a film projector and decorated with a large rainbow painted across the pastel blue walls. At the end of the room, Joker was perched on a red space hopper, flanked by Zolomon on his left and to his right, a man in a black tuxedo and a flowing red cape, a large camera mounted on his head. Two more silhouettes were just barely visible behind the thick layers of glass behind them, but Drury still recognised Crane's tall witch's hat, and Billings' inebriated swaying. The door slammed shut behind him, with The King of Cats and Hayden taking their places on either side of the entrance. If Krill was there, they'd have a full house.
'Where was Krill?' Drury pondered for a brief moment before returning to the matter at hand.
The tuxedoed man, was the first to greet their guest of honour. "Hello, Drury. You might not remember me. My name is Harry. But you can call me Mr Camera," he reintroduced himself, offering him his hand.
"I remember," Drury spat back. "You carved up Ten like a fucking animal! Left him to bleed out in the middle of a goddamn riot!" He was on edge now, surrounded by psychopaths; some with grudges, some with agendas; half, he was certain, would kill him just for fun.
"Well, we are animals, Drury," Sims countered. "All of us. That's why they cage us... Sedate us. Hunt us. But their mistake has always been to treat us like prey."
As he spoke, the walls started to change; distort; revealing the room's true condition; Drury stepped back, eyes widening, as the painted walls became cracked and chipped, as the tiled floors gave way to unveil pools of dried blood. As rows of Polaroids blotted out the now-faded rainbow mural.
He looked at Sims, then at Joker, his face gaunt.
"Like what I've done with the place?" Joker teased.
Drury cautiously stepped towards the photos along the wall, and his mouth went dry. Some, he recognised; wedding photos, birthday parties... picnics in Robinson Parks... And then some, he didn't; those were newer; close up, personal pictures in dust filled rooms... But they all led him to one, horrifying conclusion:
"YOU LET THIS BASTARD INTO MY HOME? MY CHILDREN'S HOME?" he stormed forward, with a rage unfamiliar to Joker, but one he was enjoying immensely.
"Now, Drury. I could have sent Karlie," he teased, wagging a finger in Drury's face. "Talk about a White Christmas!"
"Actually, let's strike that one from the record, shall we? Not my finest jape."
Behind him, Sims sniffled awkwardly, reaching into his black dinner jacket. "Oh, silly me," he feigned forgetfullness. "I forgot one."
He inhaled, and removed a battered, bloodied photograph out of his breast pocket. He threw it in the air, and Drury caught in with his dirt-encrusted fingers. His eyes widened. It was the photo. The photo he'd brought with him to Blackgate, the photo he had when he had nothing else, the photo he entrusted to Ten.
The photo that cost him his hands.
"That's better," Sims chuckled knowingly, with a casualness that made Drury's blood boil.
That was it.
The Outcasts could tear him apart and he wouldn't have cared. In that moment, Drury could only see red: His first punch knocked Sims to the ground, then he kept going; Sims fruitlessly tried fighting back; his camera flash activated in a vain attempt to distract Walker, but he fought through the pain and continued his onslaught.
On the sidelines, Zoom, made a disagreeable hissing noise; The King licked his lips, and Joker laughed. "Drury! It's impolite to hold grudges!" he chortled. "Ten can't! Well, he can't really hold anything, can he?"
The camera's lens fractured under Drury's rage filled fists; his hand went through the glass; the shards ripped his fist open, but he still persisted. Blood dripped down onto Sim’s pale face; his glass-like eyes widened in petrified fear. But before he could do anything worse, a yellow arm grabbed Drury's. At first, he thought it was Zoom's; the red lightning bolt pattern around his wrist matched, and no other living assailant could have grabbed him that fast.
'Living.'
Drury looked back, and for the first time in a while he was overcome by pure, overwhelming fear.
Billings dropped his hip flask. A single whisper of "impossible" escaped Crane's lips. Hayden, waved. And for a second, the Joker's smile faltered.
"You-? You can't be- You're-"
"Oh, but I can be," Eobard Thawne smiled, his eyes glowing a blood red. "Pay attention now, Drury. Class is in session."
"Ahem."
Thawne exhaled and turned his head slowly and purposefully: Joker had risen from the Space Hopper and was clearing his throat loudly and intrusively. "Right! Good work everyone! We've covered a lot of ground today! Physical Exercise, psychological torment, a touch of necromancy... Read chapter seven, strangle a couple of cats and we shall resume after lunch!"
He clapped his hands, and the next thing Drury knew, he was back in his cell, leaving the Outcasts alone with The Professor to decide their next course of action.
==Jeremiah Arkham's Office==
The room was organised like a Parent-Teacher conference; Joker, was sat in Arkham's chair, playing with the silver Newton's Cradle on the desk; Zoom, was sat across from him, with an expression that was uncharacteristically sheepish; his back slouched and his hands placed in his lap. Billings stood at the side beside Crane, shaking between sips from his flask. At last, Thawne entered, bringing with him a trail of red lightning.
"Professor Thawne," Crane drawled, moving in to intercept him.
"Doctor Crane," Thawne smiled condescendingly, looking down at the once-proud Scarecrow. "I recall you were taller, once."
"I don't understand.... Where... Where's Krill?" Billings stammered, scratching his dandruff-ridden scalp. Then he looked down, his eyes drawn to a familiar red belt wrapped around Thawne's waist like a trophy. Thawne didn't have to say a thing: the implication was clear.
"R-right..." Billings paused, choosing his next words with caution. "Good call. The right call. Good riddance to bad rubbish and all that, eh? Man was entirely unprofessional!" he added, a tad unconvincingly.
Thawne smiled back, but there was no warmth behind his crimson gaze: "Perhaps. But at least he knew when to hold his tongue. I hear you're something of a celebrity these days, Mr Billings."
Billings gulped. His book 'Heroes or Villains' contained a less than flattering portrayal of his former allies in the Society, Thawne included, and although he had assumed his illusion tech made him indispensable, he had thought the same thing about Krill's portals.
The exchange no longer holding his interest, Thawne shot off again; in an instant, he was sat beside his protégé and sipping coffee from Joker's mug. "Shall we begin?" he asked presumptuously.
Joker grinned back, but there was an intensity behind his eyes. Above all else, he despised being upstaged. "I admit, Bardy, I'm a little disappointed in you! We had such grand designs for Abner and for you to unceremoniously krill him without consulting me- Well, it wounds me! Considering all our history-!"
Thawne raised his index finger. "We don't have history, clown. You, Crane and the screensaver formerly known as Signalman voted to annihilate my future. Yes, Cobb, I did see you bouncing around Joker's monitor. I'm not impressed, DeVoe mastered that little trick decades ago."
Phillip Cobb materialised as a rather disgruntled red and yellow hologram, waiting in deference to Joker.
"Well, it was everyone's future," Joker's nose wrinkled. "No need to make it personal."
Hour Five
The cell door opened a final time. Drury looked up; Joker was in the doorway, holding a large, wrapped parcel in his arms; he placed it on the floor and slid it across the ground over to him.
"Put it on."
Hesitantly, Drury opened it: It was his Moth costume, well, one of them; it was a stripped-down approximation of the one Twag stole from his Cave. Within the box was a neatly-folded assortment of clothing consisting of a deep purple bodysuit, a pair of striped purple and lavender tights, boots, gloves, a black belt and a metallic, bug-like helmet with glass lenses.
"I won't peek!" Joker swore, putting his hand over his eyes.
Drury was lost in thought for a moment, simply staring into the eyes of his bluish grey helmet, reflecting on the pain Killer Moth had inflicted on himself and others. And when it came time to suit up once more, he refused.
It didn't matter.
What little control he thought he had was ripped away from him faster than he could blink. In a flash, he was back in the familiar purple bodysuit and striped tights; his orange jumpsuit lay at Zoom's feet. And he suspected the night's humiliations, its' violations, were just beginning. 'The utility belt was empty, of course they'd have checked...' he sighed, checking his pouches for anything he might be able to use.
He stepped forward, squirming as Joker planted a kiss on his cheek "For luck," and shuddering as he clapped his bony hand against his buttocks to further 'motivate' him.
As Drury walked down the hallway, his stomach lurched; Billings, The King of Cats, Hayden and Sims were all stationed along the hall, positioned like a perverse wedding procession. As he passed them, they took turns tossing clumps of confetti at his head. He kept his head down, avoiding eye contact, until he at last reached his destination, a dingy cell in the low security wing of the penitentiary. He paused as he noticed a rusted plaque above the doorway:
"126959
TED CARSON,
ALIAS FIREFLY II"
He took a deep breath, and entered the room, the door locking behind him.
"Hello, Drury," a voice called out from behind him.
Thawne's.
Drury's mind started to race; just like that the 'wedding' procession was recontextualized: It was a funeral. His funeral. And just like everything else in this damn Asylum, it had been backwards and twisted. 'This was it,' he was certain. His death. He breathed in, and at last turned around, his eyes drawn to Thawne's belt. Krill's belt.
Thawne's eyes crinkled slightly, a thin smile across his face. "You want to escape? Take the belt," he spoke with a concerning casualness.
Drury said nothing.
"You can go anywhere. Be free."
No, it couldn't be that easy. Could it?
"You'd find me," Drury shook his head.
"True," Thawne admitted. "But a little time is better than no time, isn't it?"
"Take the belt."
"Take the belt and it all ends."
Channelling all his rage and desperation, Drury swiped at Thawne; the Professor evaded, of course. And before Drury could muster a defence, Thawne was on him, slapping him across the face. Drury stumbled back, his lip split.
"Take the belt," Thawne repeated.
Drury tried again. And again, only ever managing to injure himself. And with every failed attempt, Thawne hit back.
"Take the belt," Thawne demanded once more.
Drury lunged; Thawne caught his fist, effortlessly, and hurled him over his shoulder.
"Take the belt."
Drury charged forth; Thawne stuck his arm in his path, clotheslining him.
Drury fell to his knees, his blood coating the slabs below. "I'm going to kill you," he wheezed.
"You'll have to catch me first. Take the belt."
Another blind lunge. Another miss.
"Tsk tsk. Still too slow. Maybe if you were faster, your wife would still be alive..."
"Aaaaaaaaarrrrrr-"
All Thawne had to do was step aside, let Drury hit the wall. He struck the brick and it felt like his head had split open; Drury landed on the floor, his eyes drooped shut, and as he drifted into unconsciousness, he hoped that everything he knew would be different when he awoke.
I was reminded of the codebreakers led by Alan Turing , toiling away at Bletchley Park to break the Enigma code of the Axis powers in WW-2.
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====Sionis Industries====
Sionis- I see Clayface, I see Orca, but I don't see Penguin. Freeze?
Freeze- We found surveillance equipment in the subbasement. Sionis Industries. Ace Chemicals. He's been watching it all. Except... for you, Brown. You, haven't been worth his time.
Chuck stands beside Freeze quietly, thinking to himself. "Once this is over, once I have clean electronics and my own place again, I'm going to need a long hot shower"
"This, we recovered from Hagen. A radio."
Freeze hands it to Sionis. For a moment, he just stares at it, and then, presses play. He's met with a familiar breathing sound on the other end.
"Penguin."
Penguin- Roman.
...
Sionis- Let's make this quick. Where, are you?
Penguin- You know I can't answer that.
Sionis- Then, you know this isn't worth my time.
Penguin- Just hear me out. If you give me five minutes-
Sionis- You tried to kill me, Oswald. And you didn't even admit it. You know, I always knew it'd come to this. But you didn't even have the decency to do it honestly.
Penguin- Just. Hear me out. Five minutes.
Sionis- Five minutes. And, you better skip the poetry.
Penguin- Thank you. How to explain it... The inmates here consider Arkham a waking nightmare. Hell, they say. I disagree. It is only a nightmare, because we allowed it to be one. Because we declared it as such.
During my last incarceration in Blackgate Penitentiary, I was, over four months, able to take control of the prison's east side. In six months, the Monarch, The Monarch of Menace, owned the South. Together, we formed an alliance- to escape. But to do so, we needed control of the West Wing- built atop a series of tunnels, not unlike the tunnels here in Arkham. This, was controlled by the Music Meister. Those who even knew he existed were few and far between, but there he was. King of Blackgate. He had, let's say, a way with words. The stories you've heard? They're all true. We offered him a place in our alliance- the two of us had heard rumours of a plan he had developed, so of course, our combined manpower would surely be unstoppable. But the Meister doesn't share power. Do you know what he bragged about, as he had Tockman and Kyle drag us down to Croc's lair? His friends. His friends on the other side. We had him killed a week later, through the very method he had intended for us. As Blackgate fell, so did he, and Gotham, Gotham was mine once more. Well, if not for you of course. Ha. With the monarch acting as my regent, I left for Japan. I intended to track down Meister's compatriots. And I did.
For you see, in Tokyo, I met a renegade faction, a group of warriors who opposed Meister's allies, led by this man, Osaki- I asked him for answers, and he told me all he knew. They had infiltrated the Yakuza decades ago, converted their most influential members into servitude, into part of a "higher cause." In Italy, they'd taken over the Mafia, its' Don's sport their porcelain masks, their signature, behind closed doors. They supplied them both, supplied them all, with hitmen, the kind of assassin that was utterly loyal, and unable to be captured. And it led me home. To Gotham. These... Owls, had reached Music Meister in Blackgate, leaving him in charge, keeping order until... Until they could unleash a riot, the kind that would give their chosen champion a platform to battle on. You'd know him, as Daniel, "Danto" Twag.
Chuck- God, you're working with them aren't you? That's why you sent Needham, why you-
Sionis- Ran off like a good little coward.
Penguin- I am not a coward! I came here, to prepare for the inevitable. Six months ago, on Easter Sunday, I brought all of you together. Through blood? Yes. Through deception? Of course. But I needed you, all of you, to work past your incessant *bullshit* so we could survive. And even then, you people just couldn't let things be.
Sionis- Because you tried to kill me, Oswald, me.
"Because you can't change Roman. You would always be bickering with some poor sod, always one hand on your holster and the other down your pants."
Sionis- Five minutes, did we say? Li!
Penguin- No! Don't you get it? We're pawns, Roman, I'm just one who's seen through it. The Owls wanted us fractured, focused on warring with each other, instead of focusing on the whys, the whos, the what. Because who's left to ask "why" when we're all shooting at each other?
Sionis- Oh Oswald... I know you. Really know you. You might, *might* have noble goals, but deep down, you really just want more power, more people to control. Today, it'll be Owls, tomorrow it'll be Bane or, heck, the day after it might be Brainiac. You want us scared, because, well, it's like you said, who's left to ask why when we're all crapping ourselves in terror.
Penguin- Perhaps Roman. Perhaps. But right now, I'm also the only person you can truly depend on. What do you say?
====Louisiana=====
The hypersonics are working. A black blur in the distance confirms as much. He'll be here in ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Impact imminent.
"Zod?"
No. *Uhn* The creature has his powers, but it is feral, brutish. One of his underlings then. A waste of time. The Kryptonite in my veins may dull it's senses, the red sunlight emitters may sap it's strength, but each tool I use, is a tool I can't use on my intended target. And I know now that he's been watching me all along.
"From the sound of your breaking bones, I assume you've engaged Zod?"
Bane- Not now, Kuttler. I'm busy.
The longer the creature's in red sunlight, the weaker it becomes. Each strike that lands hurts it harder, and harder and-
"Can you hear me, human? I do hope you can. I don't care for your politics. On Krypton, it was the politicians who had Non lobotomised. It was the politicians who refused to act when Krypton needed them. I have seen your planet, Earth Man, I see very little difference between our governments, and I see very little reason to care for your plight. You have one chance. Impress me."
====Under Arkham====
Drury- Hey! Hey Norbert, I just wanted to talk, is that alright?
Norbert nods, but doesn't say anything.
Drury- It's about what you said, just before Deathstroke- Look, I need you to know this. I didn't bring you for the muscle. And I didn't bring you because I miss having Gar around. Like I said in Washington, I want to give you a choice. ... His name is Kirk Langstrom. He was taken to Arkham two months ago, brilliant scientist- I worked with him before... But he's also a Bat thing.
Norbert- Like Batman?
Drury-Not exactly... Look, the thing is... I robbed you of the chance to be normal when I blew Strange's lab up, because chances are, he would've just reprogrammed you like Hatter did. But Langstrom... He's a good guy. Mostly. And if anyone can cure you, he can.
Norbert- But he's a bat man.
Drury- Yeah, well, different strokes. I know, I know, it probably doesn't make much sense to you "if he's so great, he probably wouldn't have turned into a bat in the first place," but nonetheless! He can help. Just need to find him.
Norbert- You really... You really want to help, don't you?
Drury- I do. And if I know Kirk, which I ought to, we've had dinner before, he will too. You're with good people, Norbert, and, marital problems aside, Batman over there is one of the best there is, right Bats?
Batman- Another 500 yards. Just remember, stick to the plan. You go off script, and they *will* kill you.
Drury- Yeah, no, I figured. I was just-
Batman puts his hand out to silence Drury, as he puts his other hand on his earpiece.
Batman- -Something's wrong. Oracle, I'm putting you on video what's the situation?
Oracle- Oh. Hi, everyone. Selina
Selina- *smiling* Babs.
Batman- Oracle-?
Oracle- Sorry, I just- Good for- *ahem* Batman, I'm trying to access the Arkham security protocols, but there's some kind of encryption, unlike anything I've seen, like it's a reflex, like a pulse.
Batman- It's alive... Oracle, is there a manual override, a terminal I can download the codes from?
...
Oracle- Yes, but you're not going to like where it is.
Selina- Let me guess, the top of Evil HQ?
Oracle- Ha, how did you know?
Selina- We're on it. Ra's can wait, we have to get those people out of here.
Miranda- Hang on, if we wait any longer, The Demon could already have rejuvenated himself. He *has* to be the priority.
Drury- Honey, if we can't stop him, hundreds of people, *our* people will die
...
Batman- I don't like splitting up like this.
Norbert- *Ahem* *We* can deal with him. Probably. You, can open doors. Minimise collateral.
...
Batman- ...He's right. Good luck, the three of you.
"God knows they'll need it...," Selina quips as she and Batman depart for the Belfry, disappearing into the distance.
Drury and Miranda share a weak smile, reciprocated by Norbert, as they too head off. All that stands in their way are 500 yards, and an army of ninjas.
The Enigma Machine played a key role in World War II. The German military depended on the Enigma Machine to encrypt communications, but the Allies invested a tremendous amount of effort in decryption and achieved significant success. This provided the Allies a large advantage.
I believe this is a German Wehrmacht (military) Enigma (please let me know if that is not correct). At the upper right are the keys pressed by the operator, entering the characters to be encrypted. At the left, under a cover, are three rotors that turned with each key stroke, changing the encryption code with each letter. Between the two is the lampboard. As the operator pressed a key, the encrypted version of that letter would light on the lampboard.
Seen at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Encryption Keys.
Contradictions anarchies incertitudes destructrices paralysantes mensonges énigmatiques énigmatiques ennemis qui luttent pour dominer la génération,
والخدمات المكتبية غير مريح اختراق الحكم عيون مثيرة للاهتمام تشكيلات دائمة تغرق تعتبر التألق ذكاء أقفال متعددة الأوجه فتح,
קינדעריש פּראַוואַקיישאַנז יגנאַמיניאַס מיסטייקס טראַונסט פאַרברעכער נשמות פארוואנדלען קאַמפּאָוזער טעראַפייינג ינספּעריישאַנז עדיפיינג ביישפילן,
Нийлмэл үеийг хэрцгий догшрох хаалгануудыг зарлаж, хэрцгий хэрцгий хаалгануудыг зарладаг,
buntownicze efekty głośne zrozumienie deklamacja produkcja zmierzch języki bezbarwna opera dramat drżenie pasji,
soustružení zkroucení zrezivělý omezování sentimentální výjimky rušivá civilizace brutální divadlo blikání zákony mlha pravidla extrémní názory,
息を呑むような公共の貴重な石のコンサート勤勉な時間を発見悪人の心の表現住んでいた解決策喜びを呼び起こすおいしいパラドックス大.
Steve.D.Hammond.
FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM AT: forcemoviesproductions
An Radio Operator of the Order of the Silver Coin is listening to enemy troop movements during the war with Lord Badly Bald.
Radio operators are part of the support staff of the Order Of The Silver Coin Military and were skilled in handling in and out coming transmissions from friendly and enemy troops alike, as they were also tasked with decrypting and encrypting in and out coming transmissions that varies from radio messages till listening stations. Radio Operators, although not only skilled in handling radio devices were also tasked in ‘’Signal intelligence’’ which is basically gathering secret information from the enemy such as encrypted radio messages that are vital for the troops of the resistance against Lord badly Bald.
They were one of the first communication branches founded by the Order Of The Silver Coin after their previous communication infrastructure was destroyed by the Evil Forces Of Lord Badly Bald and the available communications methods were primitive compared to their enemies.
In the case of deciphering complicated encryptions , they will work in small teams of analysts deciphering communications chatter from across the Land Of Weird And Madness. But most Radio Operators were focussed in transmitting radio communications.
Despide they spent most of their time behind a desk, they are however trained into combat and are capable of handling a weapon. Some Radio Operators wore a sidearm or had a weapon under their desk in case their working place becomes a combat zone.
Some Radio operators were part of the intelligence branch of the Order Of The SIlver Coin, the only difference that those were more experienced in both on the combat field and intelligence gathering.
Radio Operators of the Order Of The Silver Coin, despide making very small to no appearance in any of my animations, their faction they belong to do. The most notable is in the brickfilm called: Lego War: Battle Of Mo-Wol.
Link to the brickfilm:
“Base to Edens. How are things coming along?”
“Not well, I’d say at the very least.”
“No?”
“Just forget about Green for now. We can’t save him”. As Eden muttered for a report. “I’ll tell you when we need to be dispatched”
“Alright.”
The hurried scientist quickly ran over to the location where his partner was, taking a rather long ride down. When he stepped out, he was nowhere to be seen.
“Silverjack, come in. Repeat, report, Silverjack.”
“Doctor? Is that you?” A familiar voice rang ahead. As he turned to look around, the shadow of Patrick appeared, his voice heavy and tired.
“What happened?”
“I got most of my men out, tried our best to secure the location....but yeah, this Green guy and his disciple was too strong.”
“I’m gonna find him. Can you get me the access to the room where Blue is held?”
“Sure. Sure.”
“So where is my friend?”
“He’s....uh....still safe.”
Meanwhile Silverjack had encountered the problems of his own, as much as his charisma held up, he was still up on par with the mute assassin, and they took the battle to the next level. A few brave men tried helping him despite their cover, and mounted their guns. Tanaka dodged with much swift moves, with the closest bullet narrowly hitting her right cheek. For a distracted second the men had bought him time, Silverjack decided to throw a smoke bomb and escape, while leaving a EMP grenade planted on the floor, which went off in a matter of seconds.
***
By now, he was into the level of the vault. A big storage with weapons, cache full of technology. It was well stocked despite the damage it had taken. Jesse’s eyes brimed with surprise. The storage was about roughly half the size of his own. And then there was a special looking box in the right. Stepping forward, he stared at it for a few good minutes before the assassin had caught to him.
“Not bad making through that. Because normally, goons don’t.”
The assassin ignored his witty quips as she lashed onto him, but he took the a small gadget from his pocket and sprayed her in the face, sending her backwards, unconscious. Now he saw that she had cybernetic cords under the mask as Jesse moved closer.
“Well. That’s a good way to take the equation off the solution.” He mumbled. Then his comms came in, with the voice of Edens ringing.
Edens: “Where are you?”
Jesse: “Deep in the vault. If you’re with Patrick, tell him it’s open. Interesting discoveries here. Meet me outside of the vault doors. And ask him to bring his remaining men as well.
Edens: “On our way.”
***
Edens: “So this is it. Patrick, you’ve been keeping this for a long time.
Patrick: “Well....yes. I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you guys that we kept this. My boys didn’t even know much about this.
Jesse: “So our friend is looking for this, huh.”
Edens: “What’s it called? Must be something inside the box.”
Patrick: “Wait. It’s dangerous. We brought it back at least five or six years ago, extracted in Iraq. Scientists couldn’t figure it out. They had this kind of....special weapon. Looked like a sword, but it ain’t a sword. We dub it the Blades of Salvation.”
Edens: “Interesting.
Jesse: “And Green needs it for....?”
Patrick: “I don’t know. I really don’t.”
“Congratulations. You’ve helped me achieved something great today.” The fake Green’s voice suddenly boomed again., with the screen appearing.“Hand it over now, Remus. This property is mines.” Edens looked unamused again. “And what if I don’t? Using it for doomsday purposes? Not the first time I’ve faced encounters like these.” He quickly grabbed his pulse pistol and shot the towering image of the imposter, but still received a call as Patrick ordered his men to secure the area the vault.
Edens: “You do realise hacking isn’t useful anymore. Anyways, I took out your best.”
Green: “I can still do whatever I can. And she means nothing to me, just another puppet for disposal.
Edens: “I think you’ve forgotten something all along. Because the real you gave me the good stuff. We’ve found Blue as well.”
Green: “Ha! The body of my so called partner? I’ve killed him already before you fools could reach him.”
Edens: “Not quite. You know there’s always a secret room you’ve never tried to navigate, haven’t you. Courtesy of the captain.”
Green: “Heading to the——wait, what?”
Edens: “Here’s an encryption key that contains so much data. Very clever to cover it through your fabricated lies when we talked.”
Green: “This is impossible. I’ve breached the base with explosives, and how is the body still alive?”
Edens: “Answer: reverse technology. Nothing ever said about failsafes.
As he finished his line, Edens shot through the next room. The door unlocked with a small boom, revealing the now cornered Green, with men surrounding him. “Too late, “Knott.” I’ve always played five steps ahead. This is why your original couldn’t ever beat me in chess.” As the vulnerable imposter looked up at him, he raised his rifle at the calm scientist. “Well played. And you could find me here, so what now, take me under arrest? Pull another trick
Edens: “Actually, a permission to kill. You’ve done your part. Captain, permission to kill?”
Patrick: “Confirmed.”
Green: “Well, f*ck y’all.
Edens raised his pistol, shooting Green point blank through the head, revealing machinery and electronics. Patrick looked confused now, and the sight of blood mixed up with splattered brain did make one of the soldiers throw up.
Jesse: “Well, I never liked the bastard.”
Edens: “Not in particular for me, but I did hold some respect for the man.”
Patrick: “So is this guy with implants or a cyborg?”
Edens: “Android. Someone’s pulled the strings on this one. Programmed with a chip to carry out the actions, but I guess they’re broken now. See the wires? Connection severed. Anyways, captain, if you don’t mind, take this. Valuable info. And look at the comms, in an hour your friends are coming to look for us.”
Patrick: “Uh....well, you’re permitted to leave. I would still signal my men to be stationed, like the escaped ones, and the body....?”
Edens: “If you’re referring to the one on the floor, no, it’s worthless and there’s nothing with him, I’ve checked. We’ll take the original Knott with us. The original Green as well. He might be breathing a bit.”
Patrick: “The body’s ready. Here, take the emergency shaft up. Your plane’s ready to board as well, doctor.”
Edens: “Thank you, Captain. And what about the Blades of Salvation? Are we allowed to take it?”
Patrick: “Sure, of course. The science team has also granted permission, probably for borrowing. And you’re welcome.”
As the two left, a soldier came up to Patrick while everyone else was busy, as he kept staring.
Random soldier: “Don’t you think he’s awesome? He’s totally a badass scientist.”
Patrick: “Yeah....uh huh. I...I’m well, didn’t know he could do all those things. Thought he was some rather cheeky looking old man, but I was wrong. Anyways, all right everybody, keep cleaning up, we’ve still got work to do!”
*****
(On the plane)
Jesse: “And where does this leave us?”
Edens: “A second step, a bigger connection, deeper the conspiracy.”
Jesse: “I’m starting to believe there’s something between E.S. and the blades.
Edens: “Well, that’s for us to find out. Maybe, we should assemble the team. Tell them to get prepared, we’re not too far from home.
——****——
(Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end. If you’re still reading, here’s it. The first volume is coming out soon, probably within this week. Do expect more tie ins and exciting stuff coming along.)
Recommended music:
idk, listen to Certain Kind of Magic in the background
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ARCH0MEN, the Cyber-Sukeban Leak Queen of Tokyo.
She had made a name for herself during the Orbit Wars, orchestrating many of the high-profile leaks against government and corporate interests. Not to mention being the face of countless online smear campaigns against political and big business types. It didn’t take long for her to decide to make a show (or more aptly, sideshow) out of it.
Almost a decade later, and she was still going strong. There was a reason she was still getting views. Her charismatic snark and prowess in the news leak world gave her a steady viewership and a loyal cult following. Even if you didn’t care much about the infosphere, her personality was enough to keep you tuned in.
Being Japanese, all her shows were recorded only in her native tongue. However, she utilized advanced speech synthesis software to translate herself into a wide range of languages, always having a unique yet entirely lifelike voice depending on your language setting.
Lip sync wasn’t an issue. To mask her identity, she always wore a black bandana over her face. Overtop it was projected a virtual cartoonish Oni mouth, automated and animated to sync up with whatever regional translation you were listening to. It was almost seamless, but any bugs were simply brushed off as part of her glitchy aesthetic.
Her style was typical of the Neo-Tokyo trends; dark colored pleather, plastic, and semi-synthetic fibers, all tightly worn over her petite form. Her large, spiked, dyed hair helped further mask her identity. Only one eye was left fully visible. Eyes are the window to the soul, after all. Everything else was hidden behind thick purple strands of hair. Face analysis dazzle camouflage, popular among some of the more notorious or paranoid of the virtual world.
As was usual for her set up, she was cloaked in shadows and red edge lighting. A glossy glass tabletop sat in front of her like some parody of a news anchor. In the background was a wall made of nothing but TV displays, old and new, flickering with static or cycling through any random channel every few seconds.
She sat straight on toward the camera with her hands cupped together.
“Hello, hello, and welcome again to 0men At Night!” she began cheerfully. “I’m your wonderful loveable hostess, The ARCH0MEN…mh, granted you aren’t part of the Global 500, that is. I have a bad habit of ruffling their feathers...” she raised a hand over her mouth and let out a mischievous giggle.
“To start our night off, here’s your Leak of the Week! Tonight’s leak comes from Japan’s very own Hachitekku Mechatronics, provided by a very generous informant who shall as usual remain unnamed…
“Hachitekku is currently working on an upgrade to their Bolt lineup of proxy models. Some say you can’t improve upon perfection – in my humble opinion-“ she raised a hand over her chest with a prideful look, “-but apparently the engineers at Hachitekku believe otherwise. My informant tells me that the project’s objective is to focus on improving durability and survivability, implementing the most advanced metallurgyyyy-…et cetera, et cetera…” She twirled her fingers, as if growing bored of the technical jargon.
“-Well, as many of you may recall, in our previous episodes we leaked that Hachitekku has been on a binge of quietly buying out many of Japan’s leading tech and industry startups. Clearly not a coincidence. Ever heard of the old adage ‘competition breeds innovation’? Well, our friends on Hachijo seem to be choosing instead to simply buy out the competition and reap the benefits. But such is how the business world goes, shady practices and all.
“A release date has yet to be announced, obviously, since the project is still in prototype stage. Though surely this broadcast will help speed up the process. You’re welcome.” Her catchphrase.
She cocked her head to the side and gave her trademarked smug smile through her eyes. At this point her software knew it well enough, and the animated Oni mouth transformed to match it.
She continued-
“I just hope the software will finally be prepackaged instead of being sold separately. It is such a pain always having to pirate it...” She leaned in,
“Hint, hint.”
She readjusted herself as her face took on a more neutral appearance.
“Moving on to more serious news: There has been yet another attempt at revealing the identity of yours truly. I obviously won’t mention the poor soul who was falsely identified. She has already been through more than enough the past week, and out of respect I will refrain from delving into any of the personal attacks she has faced. I do have standards after all, despite what the media claims. But rest assured, I and my inner circle have worked tirelessly to ensure her safety.
“In the meantime, gracious members from our Shanghai chapter have successfully tracked down the would-be doxxers. The group responsible appear to be sponsored by the People’s Republic of Beijing, most likely in retaliation for my previous slanders of your marvellous little communist dictatorship. Try harder next time, boys. ROC is best China.
“Unfortunately I don’t think we have the time to list everyone involved, because I do have the full list. Perhaps we’ll have an episode dedicated to that later this week. But just to serve as a little warning-“
She turned her head and gazed into the camera, as if addressing someone personally.
“Wei Sing. I’d expect far better data encryption from a person in your line of work. Quite the cultured man, you are! ‘Futa’, ‘femdom’, ‘female-on-male’, very…*interesting*…tastes, if I might say. Perhaps your glorious leader would like to hear the full list, hmm? Or maybe he and your comrades would prefer a more visual medium? I’ve come to find out it goes well beyond your search history. I certainly have the juicy vid files as proof, and I bet the audience would just love to see them!”
After a moment of pause, her posture slumped. Her carefree, self-satisfied aura vanished. She narrowed her eyes and stared deep into the camera. They were full of malice.
“You don’t want to play this game.” She droned without emotion. “You really don’t want to play this game.”
A few seconds went by before she finally breathed a sigh.
“Moving on-!“ she forced a smile.
Her chipper personality returned as she recomposed herself.
“Turning our attention over to America: Another day, another stock exchange financier is revealed to be human excrement. At this point I should just make a segment dedicated to it. It’s basically become a monthly event…But, I digress!
“Andy Florance. Owner of a lovely little flat in lower Manhattan. Just turned 27, happy belated birthday by the way. You all should know the story by now; silver spooned upbringing, some young Mr. Big, caught in a web of embezzlement and fraud, the usual scumbag-ary we’ve come to expect from the wonderful world of Wall Street.
“BUT, here’s the rotten cherry on top: the fund he was working for? The Rightful Passage Foundation…a charity foundation…dedicated to giving third world victims of the Choke a proper burial.”
She paused for a moment and blinked with wide eyes, just to let it sink in.
“Yes, you heard that right! This fine example of wasted genes was siphoning money away from the literal bones of dead African children! To finance underwater Miami CASINOS of all things!” she spoke with exuberance, as if trying to embody the absurdity of the situation. “Just-…it takes effort to be that much of a human septic tank.” She spat out the last three words with vitriol.
“A New York watchdog organization had already uncovered the story before I was able to get to it. Not that I’m complaining; I tip my hat to you. Got anymore scoops, hook me up!" She hastily added, making a calling gesture with her fingers.
“He was promptly brought into custody once all this came to light, and the RPF made quick at publicly denouncing him. From what I’ve heard, his future doesn’t sound very bright.
“It didn’t take long for the police body camera footage to leak of his arrest, and it is…just beautiful. I won’t show the full clip here. RATHER, I’ll save it for our Hour of 0men Weekly Roundup later this week, and we’ll take all the time we need laughing at him blubbering like a baby for minutes on end! Mark your calendars, you won’t want to miss it!
“Unfortunately that marks the end of our show tonight. But be sure to keep tuning in for future episodes! Same time, same place, same marvellous face! Sweet dreams, and remember… 0men is always watching.” She stared ominously into the camera, before glitching out in her usual outro.
------------------------------------
I had WAAAAY too much fun writing this character...
I AM UNASHAMED TO ADMIT THE PRIMARY INSPIRATION BEHIND HER. Aside from that; a hint of WikiLeaks, a smidgen of VTuber, a health dash of smarmy edgy political YouTuber. I'll definitely go into more detail with her in the future
Looking at the actual "scene", you can see why this took over a month to finish. Me and my stupid obsessive attention to detail, putting an excessive amount of effort into thumbnails for in-universe content creators (majority actually inspired by YouTubers I follow). Although I will say, I am extremely proud of how it all turned out. Nothing quite like that dopamine rush when your art comes out perfect.
This chapter is nearly done! We've got two more parts! The end is in sight!!
If you fave, comment as well!
Crypto debates Google’s quantum breakthrough as bitcoin investors urge calm
Breaking a coin to bits… The crypto industry’s head was on a swivel this week after a Google announcement that some investors feared could threaten the foundation of bitcoin. On Monday the tech giant said its latest “quantum chip” (meet Willow) solved a computation in under five minutes that’d take modern supercomputers 10 septillion years to work out. Crypto’s concern: quantum computers could one day undermine bitcoin’s encryption (as well as other coins’ security) and in the process defeat the integrity of the $2T blockchain.
Showin’ cracks: Hodlers use their private keys — an alphanumeric code generated alongside a public key — to move their bitcoin. Quantum computers have the potential to defeat this mathematical protection.
Nakamot-oh wait: The price of bitcoin slid after Google’s announcement, but as of yesterday had largely clawed back the loss.
Keep calm and hodl on?… Despite the blockchain-breaking potential of Google’s quantum breakthrough, the crypto industry largely avoided panicking. One reason: developers, including ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, have said that just as quantum tech is developed and upgraded, so too are blockchains. So quantum-proofing a blockchain like bitcoin, ethereum, or solana could be just several code upgrades away. Bitcoin’s been upgraded before: in 2021 the protocol adapted the Taproot upgrade to boost privacy, efficiency, and security.
THE TAKEAWAY
A distant threat gives time to prep… Quantum advancements on the heels of Willow could eventually help discover new drugs, improve weather forecasting, and, yes, break some forms of encryption. But for now, Willow solves a standard computation that has no commercial application, and any possible threats to crypto and bitcoin are likely years away.
This church was build just before WorldWarII started. The original churchbells were taken by the Nazis for ammunition. These bells are the replacements with the encryption off the history of the predescants.
Beneath Bishop’s Bridge Road, halfway between Sheldon Square and the entrance to Paddington underground station, you’ll find an intriguing work of art. Curated by Futurecity on behalf of British Land, this permanent installation is a collaboration between United Visual Artists and poet Nick Drake.
Alan Turing is one of Paddington’s most famous sons. This artwork, Message From the Unseen World, celebrates his groundbreaking work on artificial intelligence. Its outer shell comprises aluminium panels, punctuated with holes. LED lights shine through the holes, forming the words to Drake’s poem. A Turing-inspired algorithm shuffles through the poem, creating new interpretations of the verse.
You can see the full poem below.
MESSAGE FROM THE UNSEEN WORLD
Nick Drake
This is Alan speaking
to you who pass by this bridge
in the enchantment of time
under the echoing arch
over the mirror of water
on your way to work or home
and to other places in the infinity
held in the secret dream cave
of your mysterious minds
This is Alan speaking
through this interface with time and space
I am the ghost in the universal machine
the one I dreamed as I lay on the grass
that grew in the green of lost time
of a meadow in Grantchester alone
thinking about whoever I was in love with at the time
and the unchanging truth of numbers
in their beautiful equations
and the enigma of human beings
in their infinite possible configurations -
I was puzzling the problem of the apple
of the knowledge of good and evil -
For on that day you eat of it
you shall surely die
but the winding snake
the only creature coded as a question
looked me in the eye and asked
in his intelligent high voice -
What’s wrong with this picture?
Why do starfish have five arms
and why are they fish not stars?
What connects stars and grains of sand?
What is the secret ciphered in a fir cone?
Why is the heart always on the left?
Natural wonders every child should know…
He smiled like the flickering pages of a book -
Christopher, my first true love, appeared
his beautiful fingers blue with ink
holding his telescope and the star globe
I made him as a present -
We lay side by side
looking through the window at the stars
naming the constellations
as they wheeled across the night
The maths brain lies often awake in his bed
Doing logs to ten places and trig in his head
When I woke in the shock of light
he was gone
and nothing was ever the same again
What happens to the dead
when spirit separates from matter?
Is time a river ever giving birth
in an endless wheel?
Why is loss always incalculable?
What is the heart’s square root,
its point and infinite recurrences?
This is Alan speaking
perhaps you wish to hear about the task
of deciphering the Enigma messages?
It was the impossible before breakfast
to imagine the unimaginable
the day after war was declared -
but a logical theorem says
you can deduce everything from a contradiction
so we imagined a cryptanalytic machine
an electric brain ticking away
to solve the insoluble
to sort the irrelevant from the essential
to discover the heart of the mystery
in thousands of meaningless signals every day
enciphered and sent by the enemy
in billions of different possible combinations -
like reading a poem written in random static
in wind and rain and dark
threaded with the dot and dash of Morse
encrypted transmitted transcribed
but there was one clue -
a letter was never enciphered as itself
so that was the starting point
to find the letters that made the only word
that helped to save ships and lives
in the middle of the Atlantic
and some say win the war -
We kept hush hush but I wondered
Could a machine be intelligent and if so how?
Could a machine be fascinated by another machine?
Could machines talk to each other?
Could a machine experience delight
and suffer fear and jealousy?
If a machine could dream what would it dream
in the forest of the night?
Could a machine fall sick or fall in love?
Could a machine imagine the future?
This is Alan speaking
we devised the Automatic Computing Engine
capable of calculating anything
quantified in an algorithm
and that was the basis of the future -
But how is it I found myself
a stranger in a room alone
a sequence of contradictory instructions
coded into my criminal heart?
Of gross indecency accused
I replied truthfully
Englishman atheist mathematician
Order of the British Empire
Recreations listed in Who’s Who
chess long-distance running gardening
(the last a kind of lie, I like wild flowers) -
Homosexual cryptographer
noble in reason or traitor in his bones?
Unable to say a word of what I knew
unable to speak the unspeakable
secret within the secret
I felt no guilt -
They offered me a choice
Prison or probation
with hormonal emasculation -
I made my decision
and emerged a different man
Why does nothing happen for a long time
Then everything suddenly changes?
Why does the rational give rise to the irrational?
Who is this man kissing me on the mouth?
Is he telling truth or lies?
This is Alan speaking
now as I could not speak before
to you who were unborn when I died -
Oh beautiful people of tomorrow
we are not fallen creatures
life is the only garden
the apple is love
two Adams, two Eves
in open celebration hand in hand
So I delight to watch you dance
in the enchantment of time
like angels in a forest of mirrors
but in the age of shopping
festivals and information consumption
the sign of the bitten apple is everywhere
and your lives are held in the beautiful devices
familiar in your hands -
So revel in your liberty
but read between the lines
you are becoming information
touch screen to touch screen
connected but alone
the algorithm of desires and dreams
end to end encryption held
in the infinite memory of the great ghost server
How did the zebra get its stripes
and the leopard its disguise of spots?
Why does a snail have a spiral shell?
Why do sunflowers follow not just the sun
but the Fibonacci sequence
in the structure of their beautiful faces?
How does a bud of cells generate your seeing eyes
and beating heart?
This is Alan speaking
I have been waiting a long time
puzzling everything and nothing -
I leave no note of explanation
but a mystery story
it is an ordinary summer evening
by the side of my bed is found
a half-eaten slice of apple
Dip the apple in the brew
let the sleeping death seep through -
I lie alone for the last time
at the edge of reality
my arms at my sides
like a badly-dressed figure on a tomb
looking out of the window at the sun
setting for the final night
a golden apple in the black branches
of a tree of shadows where the birds quibble -
until it disappears into the dark
17th February 2017.
I spin around and my blade bites through his suit. And spine. He drops to his knees, letting one of his blades go. With another swing back around, I finish this and lop his head off. Weird...this fight felt really long and really short at the same time. No hostages, either. Guess there never was any in the first place. If the massacre at dinner said anything it was that these scumbags aren't into taking hostages anyway. I look down at one of my opponent's blades and pick it up. I look at it and then my my own blade. This guy came down here with laser-sharpened blades. Like he was...prepared to fight me. Seriously, who are these guys?..
JD: "Hey I finished up upstairs and I thought you might need a hand so--the fuck is that? The fuck are they?"
LT: "That's SWAT, He's militia, and this is one of his laser-sharpened blades he attacked me with."
JD: "Hold up, laser sharpened? Like--"
LT: "Ours, yeah."
JD: "....how the fuck?...."
LT: "Been wondering the same thing."
JD: "First hip-fired M2s and now this shit? It's like they're...they're..."
LT: "Set up to take us on...."
*TAAAAAAAAKE OOOOOOON MEEEEEEE (Take on me) I'LLLLLLL BEEEEE GOOOOONNEE---*
JD: "Oh shit, that's Arnie calling."
LT: "I.....just put him on speaker."
*BEEP*
JD: "Howdy."
AP: "Hey there lovebirds. I did some digging and--"
LT: "Yeahcool, you wouldn't have happened to sell any laser sharpeners lately? Like the ones you used on ours?"
AP: "....uh....not like the one for yours, but yeah. Thousands. Why?"
JD: "L ran into some fuckface swinging two blades around sharpened like ours. I can see some brick and steel piping he just sliced clean through."
AP: "Huh....That's....that's not good."
LT: "Really? Sounds just fan-fucking-tastic to me."
JD: "You sure you didn't sell one of those sharpeners?"
AP: 'Swear on my father's grave that I dance on every other Sunday."
LT: "*sigh* fine. What did you find? Why are you calling?"
AP: "I had the whole city scanned for any strange radio feeds and I found one that's got some heavy encryption behind it. The only way in that my people found is by pretty much finding one of their walkie-talkies and rip the encryption codes from it. As soon as you do that I can wire a feed right into your phone."
LT: "Done and done. Ryu Hayabusa here has one."
AP: "Good. Rip it open and look for some SD card-looking thing and stick it into your phone."
LT: ".....and it's in. Anything?"
AP: "Yep, that's it, everything's downloading. This'll take a bit, but I'll tell you something: police chatter talked about a convoy of military vehicles moving through the outskirts of the city, heading for the New Trigate bridge. The vehicles were described as being blue and gray...."
JD: "Like these militia dickbags...."
AP: "Yep. ETA is about 30 minutes, so you should get going, I'll even have a surprise for the lady waiting there to help you both. Let's call it an early Christmas present...."
They Type VIII, or Tigershark, is the Meermacht's first practical attack submarine since the dawn of the submarine warfare age in the Great War of the 1920's. The Type VII is much larger and more powerful than previous u-boat designs, but a tad slow compared to its contemporaries. This is made up for by a healthy armament as well as perhaps the world's most unbreakable cipher for radio transmissions, based on the Maian hieroglyphic script (which itself IRL took literally hundreds of years to decipher). To anyone who captures a V-boat and tries to decipher its encryption devices, I say to you, good luck.
Thanks to Wolfie for the hull, Nightmaresquid for the conning tower, and Brian Fitzsimmons for the bulge on the side of the hull.
PERKS & QUIRKS:
Gun: 88mm (+0)
Torpedoes: 14-16 (+0)
AA Guns: 2 (+0)
Speed: 18kn/9kn (+1)
Great Codes: +1
Our "Green Team" dolly for the "For The Love of Blythe" project has arrived here! She already has an amazing re-root in Mystic Brown Thermal Saran by Sherri/Shershe. Here she's just a stock dolly, but I wanted to show her at the very beginning of her journey ... in a place and setting that also corresponds to her story. Grab a cuppa and take a journey with us! Thank you for visiting!
Genesis (gen·e·sis: noun \ˈje-nə-səs\ : the origin or coming into being of something.)
Her story:
Genesis bit her lip thoughtfully as she entered the last of the encryption code. It was the last step in a years-long process that she hoped would make herself, and her world, whole again.
The future is not a bleak place ... it can be populated with dreams of exploration, growing families, beauty and fulfillment. But the future Genesis lived in was in dire need of help. Her world was dying, societies fractured by a desperate need for resources, children growing up in large group homes because their parents could not afford to care for them.
Genesis had come through this system, yet against all odds she had retained her tenacity and belief in her destiny. She somehow understood in the deepest points of her being that a solution lay in the distant past, where a secret government experiment had set everything in motion. She knew her lineage, that it could be traced back to Dr. Franklin Genesis Martin, her distant ancestor and a brilliant scientist who developed a new mining technology in the late 1800's. Aware even then that minerals and fuel held the key to the future, the secret was carefully held and put into motion at the turn of the century, over the next two hundred years resulting in vast riches for the country and great power. What no one foresaw was that this technology would eventually lead to the gradual breakdown of both the earth and the very resources it was set to glean. As events spun out of control in the late 2200's, governments went to war, people starved, and society became a frayed mass.
Genesis had spent years in tireless research ... with her sweet and persistent charm she wrangled a rare vintage iBook from a teacher in the children’s home when she was 13. With her piercing intelligence she began searching the online archives, a project reaching back into the world’s volumes as far as the mid 1800’s. There she found the one thing Dr. Martin had missed in his deft calculations ... and now her goal was to travel back in time.
Genesis had a daring plan. She would travel to the year 1900 and clothe herself as a girl of that era. Pretending to be the daughter of Dr. Martin’s estranged brother, Genesis would present herself as a willing friend and helper to the family. She knew that her keen mind would encourage Dr. Martin to befriend her and eventually invite her into his laboratory. There, with the benefit of future knowledge, she could delicately merge her carefully derived algorithm into her ancestor’s calculations and the future breakdown could be averted. The other prong of her two-fold plan was to encourage Dr. Martin and his powerful benefactors that this knowledge must be shared among the countries of the earth ... that for one country to control this wealth and technology led only to fighting and despair as others sought to gain some part of it for their own people.
Genesis knew she had to try. One thing disturbed her, an answer she had not found. Once she arrived in the past, she could correct the problems for all the future people of the earth ... but she could not return to her time without help. Her only hope was that someone, eventually, would discover her records, her stories, her photographs ... and be willing to take the steps necessary to bring her back.
The Cryptography of Nature and Spiritual Expropriation by Daniel Arrhakis (2026)
Cryptography of Nature and Spiritual Expropriation
Cryptography of Nature
Cryptography, in the classical sense, is a security process that transforms readable information (plaintext) into incomprehensible codes (ciphertext), through algorithms and cryptographic keys.
In this text, however, "cryptography" is also a metaphor for the human tendency to quantify, control, and convert ecosystems into data, technological processes, or economic assets. When this movement is articulated with corporate interests (sometimes instrumentalizing the climate crisis), a profound debate opens up about the commodification of life.
1. The Logic of Cryptography
In this logic, nature ceases to be perceived as a living and interdependent organism and begins to be treated as a data system: something susceptible to optimization, programming, and management.
Digital biodiversity: creation of digital twins of forests and oceans to simulate environmental impacts.
Predictive algorithms: mathematical models that seek to manage the climate (e.g., precipitation models) and anticipate natural disasters.
2. Forms of sequestration and manipulation
The attempt at control manifests itself through direct and structural interventions, with different scales and consequences.
Geoengineering: large-scale projects to manipulate the Earth's climate, such as injecting aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight or artificially increasing the alkalinity of the oceans.
Synthetic biology and genetic engineering: modification of the genetic code of species (e.g., laboratory-modified mosquitoes) to control pests, or the creation of bacteria designed to "eat" pollution and microplastics.
Erosion of biodiversity and threat to livelihoods:
The end of the seed cycle: traditionally, farmers saved seeds from one harvest to the next. The transition to genetically modified seeds (GMOs) can create technological and economic dependence, profoundly altering life in the countryside and increasing risks of indebtedness, cross-contamination, and food insecurity. Carbon commodification and ecosystem services: converting forests and wetlands into “carbon credits,” transforming natural processes (such as photosynthesis) into tradable financial assets.
3. Risks and controversies
The idea that nature can be “patched up” or replaced by technology raises severe criticism.
Unpredictable side effects: intervening in a complex ecosystem can generate chain reactions, as natural systems are not linear.
Illusion of control: the promotion of geoengineering can divert attention and resources from the core problem: the drastic reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
Appropriation and inequality: the technological “encryption” of nature tends to concentrate in large corporations, potentially leading to the expropriation of resources from local communities and indigenous peoples.
The Spiritual Expropriation of Nature
By “cryptography and spiritual expropriation” we understand the way in which nature is treated as an exclusively technical or economic resource, losing its sacred meaning and its profound connection with human experience.
Here, “cryptography” is not computer science: it is a process of concealment through technicality.
Reduction to data: nature ceases to be a living ecosystem and becomes seen as a set of metrics, carbon credits, or resources to be exploited.
Technical barrier: knowledge about the land is “encrypted” in complex legal and scientific languages, distancing the average citizen from their natural heritage.
Concealment of subjects: land management models can conceal real subjects through simulacra; this analytical reduction prolongs a historical trend of subjugating objectification, with violation of fundamental rights.
Spiritual expropriation (or dispossession)
This term describes the loss of the “soul” or intrinsic value that human beings attribute to the natural world.
Uprooting: the individual ceases to feel part of the earth and becomes merely a consumer or user.
Mechanization of being: the worldview becomes purely mechanical. The book *Wisdom of the Vines* points out how Western cosmology sometimes sees nature as "mute" or "empty," ignoring voices and spirits that ancestral cultures respect.
Impact on livelihoods: when a liberal vision, centered on private property and free enterprise, is applied absolutely to nature, the material sustenance and spiritual heritage of communities are jeopardized.
If scientific knowledge does not emancipate itself from a logic of objectification and purely analytical and statistical reduction of nature, the economic-scientific complex could transform the Earth into a geophysical and spiritual desert.
Combating this cryptography and objectification requires a "decryption" of administrative models and a humanistic and ethical rapprochement with the environment, including with its spiritual and sacred dimension.
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A Encriptação da Natureza e a Expropriação Espiritual
A encriptação da natureza
A encriptação, no sentido clássico, é um processo de segurança que transforma informações legíveis (texto simples) em códigos incompreensíveis (texto cifrado), por meio de algoritmos e chaves criptográficas.
Neste texto, porém, “encriptação” é também uma metáfora para a tendência humana de quantificar, controlar e converter ecossistemas em dados, processos tecnológicos ou ativos económicos. Quando esse movimento se articula com interesses corporativos (por vezes instrumentalizando a crise climática), abre-se um debate profundo sobre a mercantilização da vida.
1. A lógica da encriptação
Nesta lógica, a natureza deixa de ser percebida como um organismo vivo e interdependente e passa a ser tratada como um sistema de dados: algo passível de otimização, programação e gestão.
Biodiversidade digital: criação de gémeos digitais de florestas e oceanos para simular impactos ambientais.
Algoritmos preditivos: modelos matemáticos que procuram gerir o clima (por exemplo, modelos de precipitação) e antecipar catástrofes naturais.
2. Formas de sequestro e manipulação
A tentativa de controlo manifesta-se por intervenções diretas e estruturais, com diferentes escalas e consequências.
Geoengenharia: projetos em larga escala para manipular o clima terrestre, como a injeção de aerossóis na estratosfera para refletir luz solar ou o aumento artificial da alcalinidade dos oceanos.
Biologia sintética e engenharia genética: modificação do código genético de espécies (por exemplo, mosquitos modificados em laboratório) para controlar pragas, ou criação de bactérias desenhadas para “comer” poluição e microplásticos.
Erosão da biodiversidade e ameaça à subsistência:
O fim do ciclo das sementes: tradicionalmente, agricultores guardavam sementes de uma colheita para a seguinte. A transição para sementes geneticamente modificadas (OGM) pode criar dependência tecnológica e económica, alterando profundamente a vida no campo e ampliando riscos de endividamento, contaminação cruzada e insegurança alimentar.
Mercantilização do carbono e dos serviços ecossistémicos: conversão de florestas e zonas húmidas em “créditos de carbono”, transformando processos naturais (como a fotossíntese) em ativos financeiros transacionáveis.
3. Riscos e controvérsias
A ideia de que a natureza pode ser “remendada” ou substituída por tecnologia suscita críticas severas.
Efeitos secundários imprevisíveis: intervir num ecossistema complexo pode gerar reações em cadeia, pois sistemas naturais não são lineares.
Ilusão de controlo: a promoção da geoengenharia pode desviar atenção e recursos do núcleo do problema: a redução drástica das emissões de gases com efeito de estufa.
Apropriação e desigualdade: a “encriptação” tecnológica da natureza tende a concentrar-se em grandes corporações, podendo levar à expropriação de recursos de comunidades locais e povos indígenas.
A expropriação espiritual da natureza
Por “encriptação e expropriação espiritual” entende-se a forma como a natureza é tratada como um recurso exclusivamente técnico ou económico, perdendo o seu significado sagrado e a sua ligação profunda com a experiência humana.
Aqui, “encriptação” não é informática: é um processo de ocultação por tecnicismo.
Redução a dados: a natureza deixa de ser um ecossistema vivo e passa a ser vista como um conjunto de métricas, créditos de carbono ou recursos a explorar.
Barreira técnica: o conhecimento sobre a terra é “encriptado” em linguagens jurídicas e científicas complexas, afastando o cidadão comum da sua herança natural.
Ocultação de sujeitos: modelos de gestão do território podem ocultar os sujeitos reais através de simulacros; esta redução analítica prolonga uma tendência histórica de objetivação subjugadora, com violação de direitos fundamentais.
A expropriação (ou desapropriação) espiritual
Este termo descreve a perda da “alma” ou do valor intrínseco que o ser humano atribui ao mundo natural.
Desenraizamento: o indivíduo deixa de se sentir parte da terra e passa a ser apenas consumidor ou utilizador.
Mecanização do ser: a visão do mundo torna-se puramente mecânica. O livro Sabedoria dos Cipós aponta como a cosmologia ocidental, por vezes, vê a natureza como “muda” ou “vazia”, ignorando vozes e espíritos que culturas ancestrais respeitam.
Impacto no sustento: quando uma visão liberal, centrada na propriedade privada e na livre iniciativa, é aplicada de forma absoluta sobre a natureza, colocam-se em risco o sustento material e a herança espiritual das comunidades.
Se o conhecimento científico não se emancipar de uma lógica de objetivação e redução puramente analítica e estatística da natureza, o complexo económico-científico poderá transformar a Terra num deserto geofísico e espiritual.
Combater esta encriptação e objetivação exige uma “desencriptação” dos modelos administrativos e uma reaproximação humanista e ética com o meio ambiente, incluindo com a sua dimensão espiritual e sagrada.
I posted the same description that's on the previous photo, but I've changed the numbers, since the other version has 200 more photos than this one.
"A thermocline (sometimes metalimnion in lakes) is a thin but distinct layer in a large body of fluid (e.g. water, such as an ocean or lake, or air, such as an atmosphere) in which temperature changes more rapidly with depth than it does in the layers above or below."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermocline
I was taught about this when learning to scuba dive. The strong warm/cool split of this image made me think of it. And then my mind wandered to how strange it is that I can dig up this tiny tidbit of information I heard years ago (and haven't thought much since then) but I can't remember where I put my keys two minutes ago, or the chords to that song I wrote the other day. I think our brains could use a less destructive encryption method and more hard drive space. Hurry up Science, my clock is ticking!
I made this image from 348 photos. I stacked the first 228 using the ultra streaks present in this script, advancedstacker.com and the last 320 photos were stacked "normally" with the lighten layer blending mode. (also automated with the advanced stacker script)
I took this photo of the latest hot lot of processor chips of various sizes at the spook shop summit (InQTel CEO Summit). Pretty shiny bling.
I am in the D-Wave board meeting now, and we just got a peek of next week's TIME Magazine cover (below). And it made the Charlie Rose show.
Here are some excerpts:
"The Quantum Quest for a Revolutionary Computer
The D-Wave Two is an unusual computer, and D-Wave is an unusual company. It's small, just 114 people, and its location puts it well outside the swim of Silicon Valley. But its investors include the storied Menlo Park, Calif., venture-capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, which funded Skype and Tesla Motors. It's also backed by famously prescient Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and an outfit called In-Q-Tel, better known as the high-tech investment arm of the CIA. Likewise, D-Wave has very few customers, but they're blue-chip: they include the defense contractor Lockheed Martin; a computing lab that's hosted by NASA and largely funded by Google; and a U.S. intelligence agency that D-Wave executives decline to name.
The reason D-Wave has so few customers is that it makes a new type of computer called a quantum computer that's so radical and strange, people are still trying to figure out what it's for and how to use it. It could represent an enormous new source of computing power--it has the potential to solve problems that would take conventional computers centuries, with revolutionary consequences for fields ranging from cryptography to nanotechnology, pharmaceuticals to artificial intelligence.
That's the theory, anyway. Some critics, many of them bearing Ph.D.s and significant academic reputations, think D-Wave's machines aren't quantum computers at all. But D-Wave's customers buy them anyway, for around $10 million a pop, because if they're the real deal they could be the biggest leap forward since the invention of the microprocessor. …
Physicist David Deutsch once described quantum computing as "the first technology that allows useful tasks to be performed in collaboration between parallel universes." Not only is this excitingly weird, it's also incredibly useful. If a single quantum bit (or as they're inevitably called, qubits, pronounced cubits) can be in two states at the same time, it can perform two calculations at the same time. Two quantum bits could perform four simultaneous calculations; three quantum bits could perform eight; and so on. The power grows exponentially.
The supercooled niobium chip at the heart of the D-Wave Two has 512 qubits and therefore could in theory perform 2^512 operations simultaneously. That's more calculations than there are atoms in the universe, by many orders of magnitude. "This is not just a quantitative change," says Colin Williams, D-Wave's director of business development and strategic partnerships, who has a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence and once worked as Stephen Hawking's research assistant at Cambridge. "The kind of physical effects that our machine has access to are simply not available to supercomputers, no matter how big you make them. We're tapping into the fabric of reality in a fundamentally new way, to make a kind of computer that the world has never seen."
Naturally, a lot of people want one. This is the age of Big Data, and we're burying ourselves in information-- search queries, genomes, credit-card purchases, phone records, retail transactions, social media, geological surveys, climate data, surveillance videos, movie recommendations--and D-Wave just happens to be selling a very shiny new shovel. "Who knows what hedge-fund managers would do with one of these and the black-swan event that that might entail?" says Steve Jurvetson, one of the managing directors of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. "For many of the computational traders, it's an arms race."
One of the documents leaked by Edward Snowden, published last month, revealed that the NSA has an $80 million quantum-computing project suggestively code-named Penetrating Hard Targets. Here's why: much of the encryption used online is based on the fact that it can take conventional computers years to find the factors of a number that is the product of two large primes. A quantum computer could do it so fast that it would render a lot of encryption obsolete overnight. You can see why the NSA would take an interest. …
For its first five years, the company existed as a think tank focused on research. Draper Fisher Jurvetson got onboard in 2003, viewing the business as a very sexy but very long shot. "I would put it in the same bucket as SpaceX and Tesla Motors," Jurvetson says, "where even the CEO Elon Musk will tell you that failure was the most likely outcome." By then Rose was ready to go from thinking about quantum computers to trying to build them--"we switched from a patent, IP, science aggregator to an engineering company," he says. Rose wasn't interested in expensive, fragile laboratory experiments; he wanted to build machines big enough to handle significant computing tasks and cheap and robust enough to be manufactured commercially. With that in mind, he and his colleagues made an important and still controversial decision.
Up until then, most quantum computers followed something called the gate-model approach, which is roughly analogous to the way conventional computers work, if you substitute qubits for transistors. But one of the things Rose had figured out in those early years was that building a gate-model quantum computer of any useful size just wasn't going to be feasible anytime soon. …
Adiabatic quantum computing may be technically simpler than the gate-model kind, but it comes with trade-offs. An adiabatic quantum computer can really solve only one class of problems, called discrete combinatorial optimization problems, which involve finding the best--the shortest, or the fastest, or the cheapest, or the most efficient--way of doing a given task.
This is great if you have a really hard discrete combinatorial optimization problem to solve. Not everybody does. But once you start looking for optimization problems, or at least problems that can be twisted around to look like optimization problems, you find them all over the place: in software design, tumor treatments, logistical planning, the stock market, airline schedules, the search for Earth-like planets in other solar systems, and in particular in machine learning.
Google and NASA, along with the Universities Space Research Association, jointly run something called the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or QuAIL, based at NASA Ames, which is the proud owner of a D-Wave Two. "If you're trying to do planning and scheduling for how you navigate the Curiosity rover on Mars or how you schedule the activities of astronauts on the station, these are clearly problems where a quantum computer--a computer that can optimally solve optimization problems--would be useful," says Rupak Biswas, deputy director of the Exploration Technology Directorate at NASA Ames. Google has been using its D-Wave to, among other things, write software that helps Google Glass tell the difference between when you're blinking and when you're winking.
Lockheed Martin turned out to have some optimization problems too. It produces a colossal amount of computer code, all of which has to be verified and validated for all possible scenarios, lest your F-35 spontaneously decide to reboot itself in midair. "It's very difficult to exhaustively test all of the possible conditions that can occur in the life of a system," says Ray Johnson, Lockheed Martin's chief technology officer. "Because of the ability to handle multiple conditions at one time through superposition, you're able to much more rapidly--orders of magnitude more rapidly--exhaustively test the conditions in that software." The company re-upped for a D-Wave Two last year.
Another challenge Rose and company face is that there is a small but nonzero number of academic physicists and computer scientists who think that they are partly or completely full of sh-t. Ever since D-Wave's first demo in 2007, snide humor, polite skepticism, impolite skepticism and outright debunkings have been lobbed at the company from any number of ivory towers. "There are many who in Round 1 of this started trash-talking D-Wave before they'd ever met the company," Jurvetson says. "Just the mere notion that someone is going to be building and shipping a quantum computer--they said, 'They are lying, and it's smoke and mirrors.'"
Seven years and many demos and papers later, the company isn't any less controversial. Any blog post or news story about D-Wave instantly grows a shaggy beard of vehement comments, both pro- and anti-. …
But where quantum computing is concerned, there always seems to be room for disagreement. Hartmut Neven, the director of engineering who runs Google's quantum-computing project, argues that the tests weren't a failure at all--that in one class of problem, the D-Wave Two outperformed the classical computers in a way that suggests quantum effects were in play. "There you see essentially what we were after," he says. "There you see an exponentially widening gap between simulated annealing and quantum annealing ... That's great news, but so far nobody has paid attention to it." Meanwhile, two other papers published in January make the case that a) D-Wave's chip does demonstrate entanglement and b) the test used the wrong kind of problem and was therefore meaningless anyway. For now pretty much everybody at least agrees that it's impressive that a chip as radically new as D-Wave's could even achieve parity with conventional hardware.
The attitude in D-Wave's C-suite toward all this back-and-forth is, unsurprisingly, dismissive. "The people that really understand what we're doing aren't skeptical," says Brownell. Rose is equally calm about it; all that wrestling must have left him with a thick skin. "Unfortunately," he says, "like all discourse on the Internet, it tends to be driven by a small number of people that are both vocal and not necessarily the most informed." He's content to let the products prove themselves, or not. "It's fine," he says. "It's good. Science progresses by rocking the ship. Things like this are a necessary component of forward progress."
Are D-Wave's machines quantum computers?
For now the answer is itself suspended, aptly enough, in a state of superposition, somewhere between yes and no. If the machines can do anything like what D-Wave is predicting, they won't leave many fields untouched. "I think we'll look back on the first time a quantum computer outperformed classical computing as a historic milestone," Brownell says. "It's a little grand, but we're kind of like Intel and Microsoft in 1977, at the dawn of a new computing era."
The Navajo nation has its headquarters in Window Rock, Arizona. We were spending the night in Gallup, New Mexico, which is just a few miles away. Late in the afternoon we decided to drive to Window Rock and maybe get a good sunset photo.
I wasn’t aware of the monument there to the Navajo code talkers. These men were recruited during WWII by the US Marines to operate the radios that were used for tactical communications on the battlefield. Because these were the days before voice encryption, the enemy could hear these transmissions. Transmitting in code words would be time consuming and error-prone, but something had to be done to guarantee secure communications.
Someone pointed out that the Navajo language is distinctively different from other Native American languages, and that almost all of the Navajo speakers in the world lived on the reservation. A group of Navajos was tasked with setting up a school to create modern words for military terms that weren’t in the Navajo language, and then they trained successive classes of Navajos for duty.
The project succeeded, and Navajos served in military units throughout WWII. None of their transmissions were ever deciphered by opposing troops. By now, only a few of these code talkers are still alive. This monument is a fine tribute to their service to their country.
Alan Turing (1912-54) was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist. He was highly influential in the development of computer science and is widely considered to be the father of both computer science and artificial intelligence. He was also the man who, with his team, broke the code of the highly complex Enigma and Lorenz cipher machines, which kept German military and strategic communications secret during the Second World War.
This is a detail from an outstanding life-size sculpture created from half a million pieces of slate by Stephen Kettle. It's to be found in the Block B museum at Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes.
I’ve gone into a little more detail about Alan Turing here. It’s a tragic, yet inspirational, story.
Alan Turing (1912-54) was an English mathematician, logician, cryptanalyst and computer scientist of dazzling ability. He was highly influential in the development of computer science and is widely considered to be the father of both computer science and artificial intelligence.
More than that, perhaps, during the Second World War he and his team broke the code of the highly complex Enigma and Lorenz cipher machines, which kept German military and strategic communications secret. This meticulous, painstaking work was done at Bletchley Park, Britain’s code-breaking centre. After the war he worked at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, where he created one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, the ACE.
Alan Turing was gay, and was prosecuted in 1952, when homosexual acts (even between adults in private, as in his case) were illegal in the UK. This conviction resulted in his security clearance being removed, and despite his acknowledged brilliance he was barred from continuing with his cryptographic work for GCHQ. He committed suicide in 1954 at the age of 41. Fifty-five years later, in 2009, the British government formally apologised for the way in which he was treated after the war; and in 2013 he received a long overdue royal pardon.
This is a detail from an outstanding life-size sculpture in half a million pieces of slate by Stephen Kettle. It's to be found in the Block B museum at Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes. Oh, and that's a portrait of Alan Turing in the background. Two heroes for the price of one.
View on black - it looks good.