Turing Drawing Machines
Toll: Maxime Chevalier-Boisvert hat ein Spielzeug gecoded, das zufällige Turing Maschinen erzeugt, die generative Kunst ausgeben und denen man beim „Zeichnen“ zusehen kann. Ich klick da jetzt seit rund einer halben Stunde auf random, hier ein paar der hübschesten zeichnenden Turing-Maschinen, die dabei rausgekommen sind:
http://wry.me/hacking/Turing-Drawings/#4,3,2,1,1,1,2,2,0,1,0,1,2,2,2,1,1,3,1,1,1,2,1,3,2,1,3,1,1,3,1,2,2,1,2,1,1,0
http://wry.me/hacking/Turing-Drawings/#4,3,0,2,3,1,1,2,0,1,0,1,1,2,1,2,2,0,1,2,2,2,0,2,1,3,3,1,1,3,2,2,0,1,3,2,2,3
http://wry.me/hacking/Turing-Drawings/#4,3,0,1,3,3,2,0,1,2,3,2,1,2,0,2,0,0,1,0,3,2,3,2,2,2,3,1,2,0,2,3,3,2,0,1,1,2
http://wry.me/hacking/Turing-Drawings/#4,3,1,1,0,2,1,2,0,1,1,1,2,3,3,2,2,2,1,0,2,2,3,2,1,3,0,1,2,1,1,2,1,2,3,1,1,1
http://wry.me/hacking/Turing-Drawings/#4,3,0,1,2,0,2,1,0,1,2,3,1,3,3,2,1,1,1,1,0,1,0,2,2,1,2,1,1,1,1,2,3,2,1,2,1,3
http://wry.me/hacking/Turing-Drawings/#4,3,2,1,1,2,2,3,3,2,3,0,1,0,2,1,1,1,2,1,1,2,0,3,1,3,3,1,0,0,2,0,2,2,0,0,2,2
Aus ihrem Blogposting:
After watching a documentary about Alan Turing, I started thinking about Turing machines again. They’re a very useful tool for computer science proofs and an elegantly simple computational model. Beyond this, however, Turing machines seem relatively useless in terms of “real-world” applications. […]
One possible application for Turing machines is to use them as programs to generate data procedurally. Their simplicity makes it possible, for example, to create working programs randomly. Generating a random stream of x86 instructions that doesn’t crash could be tricky, but with a Turing machine, it’s quite easy. I decided to try something like this to produce so-called generative art. The program I wrote generates random Turing machines that operate on a two-dimensional grid instead of a one-dimensional tape. The symbols written on the grid can be interpreted as colors, and voilà: we have procedural drawings.
Turing Drawings, auf Hacker News gibt’s noch mehr Links zur tollen Patterns…
Project Steampunk-Dickhead: Neural Network grown from Foreskin-Cells
Guy Ben-Ary und Dr. Kirsten Hudson haben für ihr In-Potentia-Projekt aus Zellen einer Vorhaut zunächst Stammzellen generiert und die per Bio-Engineering in Gehirnzellen verwandelt. Die haben dann ein „lebendes“ neuronales Netzwerk gebildet: Ein Gehirn aus einem Penis. Ein Pimmelkopf, sozusagen. Und der lebt in einem Steampunk-Dingsbums. Ich halte das Ding hier für ein bisschen bullshitty und das Steampunk-Teil für ein sinnloses Gimmick, so ein wahlloses „Wir schmeißen mal das hippe Steampunk und das hippe Bio-Engineering zusammen und packen noch Pimmel mit rein, höhö“. Aber egal, einen Pimmelkopf muss ich mir dann doch hier reinkleben, und sei es nur zur Dokumentation egalerer Science-Art.
In potēntia by Guy Ben-Ary and Kirsten Hudson, is a liminal, boundary creature of animate and inanimate matter that visually problematises the shifting cultural, ethical and political forces that govern and determine understandings of life, death and personhood.
Informed by the aesthetics of steam punk, retro-futurism and eighteenth century scientific paraphernalia, in potēntia is a speculative techno-scientific experiment that uses a stem cell reprogramming technique called induced pluripotent stem cell technology (iPS) to reverse engineer foreskin cells purchased from an online catalogue into embryonic (like) stem cells, which Ben-Ary and Hudson then transform into neurons. What results is a real functioning neural network or “biological brain” encased within a purpose built sculptural incubator, containing a DIY bio-reactor (or life-support system) as well as a custom-made electrophysiological recording setup that converts neural activity into an unsettling soundscape.
In-Potentia (via AnimalNY)
Interview auf WMMNA: In-Potentia, from foreskin cells to ‘biological brain’
Character Encoding Poetry
Ich hasse Type-Encoding! Spätestens, seit ich wegen Datenbank-Blödsinns vor ein paar Jahren fast sämtliche Sonderzeichen „verloren“ habe und mit viel Gefrickel wieder herstellen musste. Jedenfalls: Ich hätte dem Thema damals auch ein Gedicht widmen können, wäre aber wahrscheinlich nicht so grandios geworden, wie diese Ode an einen Adressaufkleber. Fantastisch! Und den etwas holprigen Rythmus lassen einfach mal unter Latin1 fallen. GO LÓPEZ!
ODE TO A SHIPPING LABEL
Once there was a little o,
with an accent on top like só.It started out as UTF8,
(universal since ’98),
but the program only knew latin1,
and changed little ó to “ó” for fun.A second program saw the “ó”
and said “I know HTML entity!”
So “ó” was smartened to “ó”
and passed on through happily.Another program saw the tangle
(more precisely, ampersands to mangle)
and thus the humble “ó”
became “ó”
Capitalism is evil, now proven by Science (and mice!)
In einem Experiment haben Wissenschaftler Belege dafür gefunden, dass wirtschaftliche Entscheidungen am Markt die Wertschätzung anderer Lebewesen beeinträchtigt. Konkret ging es darum, Überschüsse an Labormäusen aufzukaufen, die andernfalls getötet werden würden. Die Probanden haben durchaus bezahlt, die wirtschaftlichen Verhandlungen aber haben die Preise gedrückt. Daraus folgt, dass wirtschaftliches Handeln den moralischen Kompass verändert und das Leben der Mäuse an Wert verliert: Capitalism is evil.
The possibility that market interaction may erode moral values is a long-standing, but controversial, hypothesis in the social sciences, ethics, and philosophy. To date, empirical evidence on decay of moral values through market interaction has been scarce. We present controlled experimental evidence on how market interaction changes how human subjects value harm and damage done to third parties.
In the experiment, subjects decide between either saving the life of a mouse or receiving money. We compare individual decisions to those made in a bilateral and a multilateral market. In both markets, the willingness to kill the mouse is substantially higher than in individual decisions. Furthermore, in the multilateral market, prices for life deteriorate tremendously.
Commander Hadfield sings Space Oddity in Space
Commander Chris Hadfield fliegt heute von der ISS aus die Erde zurück, nachdem er ein paar Monate lang die Erde per Twitter und Reddit mit News aus dem All beschallt hat. Zum Abschied hat er jetzt mal flugs das erste Musikvideo in Space gedreht, natürlich ein Cover von David Bowies Space Oddity.
Das Teil ist keine wirklich spontane Nummer und tatsächlich war Emm Gryner daran beteiligt, die eine Weile in Bowies Liveband gespielt hat, in seinem Facebookdings erzählt sie ein bisschen was dazu:
The task was in front of me. I came up with a piano part. i then enlisted my friend, producer and fellow Canadian Joe Corcoran to take my piano idea and Chris’ vocal and blow it up into a fully produced song. Drums! mellotrons! fuzz bass! We also incorporated into the track ambient space station noises which Chris had put on his Soundcloud. I was mostly blown away by how pure and earnest Chris’ singing is on this track. Like weightlessness and his voice agreed to agree.
And voila! And astronaut sings Space Oddity in space! I was so honoured to be asked to be a part of this. You wouldn’t get too many chances to make a recording like this and not only that, to make music with someone who – through his vibrant communications with kids in schools to his breathtaking photos to his always patient and good-humoured demeanour – has done more for science and space than anyone else this generation. Planet earth IS blue, and there’s nothing left for Chris Hadfield to do. Right. Safe travels home Commander!
Chris Hadfield: Space Oddity, in diesem Video hier reflektiert er nochmal ein bisschen über das allgemeine Astronautendasein und seinen Aufenthalt in Space…
Michael Dickinson @ TED: How a fly flies
Superinteressanter Vortrag von Neurowissenschaftler Michael Dickinson über den Flugmechanismus von Fliegen. Der Mann ist… sehr entusiastisch in seinem Vortrag und spätestens beim Vergleich von Donald Trump mit einem Fliegenhirn war ich überzeugt. Und dann wird das Ding hintenraus immer interessanter und Dickinson erzählt über Engineering-Ansätze in Neuroscience und sowas. Toll!
An insect’s ability to fly is perhaps one of the greatest feats of evolution. Michael Dickinson looks at how a fruit fly takes flight with such delicate wings, thanks to a clever flapping motion and flight muscles that are both powerful and nimble. But the secret ingredient: the incredible fly brain.
Ultraconserved Words from the Ice Age
Superfaszinierend: Wissenschaftler haben eine Liste von „ultrakonservierten“ Wörtern veröffentlicht, die man am Ende der letzten Eiszeit verwendet hat und die heute noch in rund 700 Sprachen enthalten sind.
A team of researchers has come up with a list of two dozen “ultraconserved words” that have survived 150 centuries. It includes some predictable entries: “mother,” “not,” “what,” “to hear” and “man.” It also contains surprises: “to flow,” “ashes” and “worm.”
The existence of the long-lived words suggests there was a “proto-Eurasiatic” language that was the common ancestor to about 700 contemporary languages that are the native tongues of more than half the world’s people.
3D-Printed Gun per P2P
Ging ja dann doch sehr schnell mit der ersten (fast) komplett 3D-gedruckten Waffe, das File wurde jetzt ein paar hunderttausendmal runtergeladen und natürlich ist die Knarre prompt in der Bucht gelandet, was den „Liberator“ wohl zur ersten P2P-Waffe der Welt macht.
It took Defense Distributed eight months to produce the firearm, which was assembled from separate components produced on an $8,000 (£5,000) 3D printer bought from auction site eBay. […]
One of the biggest headaches for law enforcers is the fact the gun is made from plastic – with only the firing pin made from metal. New York congressmen Steve Israel and Chuck Schumer have sponsored legislation aimed at adding a 3D-printing provision to the US Undetectable Firearms Act, which requires all guns to be detectable.
Downloads for 3D-printed Liberator gun reach 100,000 (Danke Tom!)
Google Building hacked
Zwei Wissenschaftler haben sich in die Systeme von Googles Hauptquartier in Australien gehackt. Ein bisschen schade, dass sie nichts damit angestellt haben…
Two security researchers recently found that they could easily hack the building management system for the corporate giant’s Wharf 7 headquarters overlooking the water in the Pyrmont section of Sydney, Australia. […]
The panels showed buttons marked “active overrides,” “active alarms,” “alarm console,” “LAN Diagram,” “schedule,” and a button marked “BMS key” for Building Management System key.
There was also a button marked “AfterHours Button” with a hammer on it.
Researchers Hack Building Control System at Google’s Australian HQ
Icebreaker Timelapse
Youtube Direktbreaker, via io9
Cassandra Brooks von der Uni Stanford bloggt für National Geographic über ihre Erlebnisse in der Antarktis und auf dem Eisbrecher Nathaniel B. Palmer, ihr letzter Beitrag ist ein fünfminütiges Timelapse-Video mit zwei Monaten Eisbrecherei. Nice!
Time-lapse of our icebreaker, the Nathaniel B. Palmer, traveling through the Ross Sea, Antarctica. Two months of sequences, condensed into less than five minutes, with a surprise at the end.
Two Months Breaking Ice in Antarctica’s Ross Sea (Timelapse in Under Five Minutes)
Ming Mekka: An Analog Synthesizer Videogame Console
Youtube Direktming, via Kotaku
Großartig: Ming Mekka ist sowas wie ein Analog Synthesizer als Videogame Konsole, die Games schraubt man sich mit Knöpfen zusammen. Das Video oben ist „nur“ ein netter, auf 80s getrimmter Werbespot, im Video unten zeigen sie das Ding in Aktion: „a voltage controlled videogame console for Eurorack modular synthesizers“. WANT!
With the heart of a video synthesizer and the brain of a videogame console, Ming Mecca is the first of its kind: an ontological toy, a videogame easel, and a love letter to all things retrofuture. Designed for use in Eurorack format synthesizers but built to meet the demands of even the most seasoned micro-galactic interlopers, Ming Mecca modules will take your rig where no rig has gone before.
The world is a patch, and you are its patcher. Ming Mecca brings voltage control to a comprehensive set of classic videogame design parameters, from details like object location and animation, to big-picture elements like game rules and level geography.
Turn off gravity at the flick of a switch, or scroll through seasons at the turn of a knob. Populate your world with exotic creatures, then modulate their identities with random voltage. Set objects in motion and use their collision to trigger cosmological events elsewhere in your modular. Experiment with quantum position, step sequence destructible terrain, and patch wormholes into parallel dimensions. With Ming Mecca, your modular transforms into a reality synthesizer.
Apple-1 signed by The Woz for sale
Youtube Direktwoz, via The Verge
Demnächst zu versteigern im Auktionshaus Breker in Köln: Ein funktionierender, von Steve Wozniak signierter Apple-1. Die haben noch ganz viele andere tolle Sachen zu versteigern, klickt mal ein bisschen auf der Seite rum, tonnenweise vintage Gold.
A German auctioneer will put a working Apple-1 computer on the block later this month, and expects the handmade computer to fetch between $261,000 and $392,000 at Thursday’s exchange rate. The record price for an Apple-1 was $640,000, paid last year in an auction also run by Breker, of Cologne, Germany.
On May 25, Breker will try to sell a different Apple-1, one of only six in working condition, the auctioneer said. The Apple-1, a circuit board hand-built by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, was made in 1976, and sold at the time for $666.66. About 200 units were produced, but by an estimate last year by British auction house Sotheby’s, only 50 survive.
Rare working Apple-1 computer to hit auction block this month
OpenWorm:
„Building the first digital life form. Open source.“: An Open Source Artificial Life Project Called OpenWorm
Unreal Engine in your Browser, now online:
Mozilla haben die Demo zu ihrer Unreal-JavaScript-Engine online gestellt: Unreal Engine in JavaScript/HTML5 – Citadel demo. Läuft wohl am besten mit Firefox Nightly, Chrome stürzt definitiv ab, am besten vorher die FAQs durchlesen, die Comments auf Hackernews klingen schonmal ziemlich begeistert.
DIY Virtual Reality on a Smartphone
Stefan Welker aus Bonn hat eine VR-Brille mit Android-Handy und 3D-gedrucktem Gehäuse entwickelt und drauf zockt er Quake.
This video demonstrates my approach to 3D Virtual Reality Gaming with a Smartphone. The open source Quake 2 engine has been used to enable Head Tracking and Side by Side 3D. The game is playable on an Android Smartphone. Right now Nexus 4, Galaxy Nexus, Samsung Galaxy S3, Google Nexus 7 are supported, S3 might work. No root required. The device was 3D-printed on my Ultimaker 3D printer.
3D Virtual Reality Gaming on a Smartphone
heise: Dive: Die Virtual-Reality-Brille mit dem Smartphone
