[Good article on Douglas Hofstadter, who — who knew? — is still hard at work. -egg]

In the years after the release of GEB, Hofstadter and AI went their separate ways. Today, if you were to pull AI: A Modern Approach off the shelf, you wouldn’t find Hofstadter’s name—not in more than 1,000 pages. Colleagues talk about him in the past tense. New fans of GEB, seeing when it was published, are surprised to find out its author is still alive.

Of course in Hofstadter’s telling, the story goes like this: when everybody else in AI started building products, he and his team, as his friend, the philosopher Daniel Dennett, wrote, “patiently, systematically, brilliantly,” way out of the light of day, chipped away at the real problem. “Very few people are interested in how human intelligence works,” Hofstadter says. “That’s what we’re interested in—what is thinking?—and we don’t lose track of that question.”

“I mean, who knows?” he says. “Who knows what’ll happen. Maybe someday people will say, ‘Hofstadter already did this stuff and said this stuff and we’re just now discovering it.’ ”

Which sounds exactly like the self-soothing of the guy who lost. But Hofstadter has the kind of mind that tempts you to ask: What if the best ideas in artificial intelligence—“genuine artificial intelligence,” as Hofstadter now calls it, with apologies for the oxymoron—are yellowing in a drawer in Bloomington?

via The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think – James Somers – The Atlantic.

[All your Gmail is belong to them. No FISA approval needed. -egg]

The National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world, according to documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials.

By tapping those links, the agency has positioned itself to collect at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts, many of them belonging to Americans. The NSA does not keep everything it collects, but it keeps a lot.

According to a top-secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, the NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google internal networks to data warehouses at the agency’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. In the preceding 30 days, the report said, field collectors had processed and sent back 181,280,466 new records — including “metadata,” which would indicate who sent or received e-mails and when, as well as content such as text, audio and video.

The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency’s British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters . From undisclosed interception points, the NSA and the GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.

via NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say – The Washington Post.

[It’s a good day for cool tech gadget news. -egg]

All of that adds up to a big problem. At a point when humans need to take a sober look at our energy use, we’re poised to use a devastating amount of it keeping our homes and offices at the right temperatures in years to come. A team of students at MIT, however, is busy working on a prototype device that could eliminate much of that demand, and they’re doing it by asking one compelling question: Why not just heat and cool our bodies instead?

Wristify, as they call their device, is a thermoelectric bracelet that regulates the temperature of the person wearing it by subjecting their skin to alternating pulses of hot or cold, depending on what’s needed. The prototype recently won first place at MIT’s Making and Designing Materials Engineering Competition, netting the group a $10,000 prize, which they’ll use to continue its development. It’s a promising start to a clever approach that could help alleviate a serious energy crisis. But as Sam Shames, the MIT senior who helped invent the technology, explains, the team was motivated by a more prosaic problem: keeping everyone happy in a room where no one can agree where to set the thermostat.

via MIT Wristband Could Make AC Obsolete | Wired Design | Wired.com.

[Oh, this is gonna be FUN. Just think of the possibilities for ad hoc shelter, for one thing :). Also, less extreme than this, but I’m also psyched about http://kk.org/cooltools/archives/13136 .  -egg]

Fiber Fix is a repair-tape impregnated with fast-curing, moisture-activated resin; the manufacturer claims it hardens to a strength 100 times that of duct-tape, comparable to steel. Baseline room-humidity is generally enough to activate it once it’s removed from its airtight pouch, but you can also soak it before applying. It cures to usability in 10 minutes, and fully sets in 24 hours. It’s $20 for three rolls in varying widths — though be careful, as it’s reportedly a real pain to get off your hands.

via Fiber Fix: repair tape with embedded super-strong, fast-curing resin – Boing Boing.

[Exceptionally well-written, long, thoughtful piece about the impacts (journalistic and otherwise) of the Snowden leaks, from the editor of The Guardian. -egg]

We have begun to glimpse how it’s all being done. The NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ (Government Communication Headquarters), work closely with Internet service providers and telecom companies to amass enormous quantities of data on us. Some of it is done through the front door—formal legal requests. Some of it is done “upstream” of tech companies and phone companies—i.e., intercepting signals in transit. The agencies have attached probes to transatlantic cables, enabling them to vacuum up data on millions of users on both sides of the Atlantic. By last year GCHQ was handling 600 million “telephone events” each day, had tapped more than two hundred fiber optic cables, and was able to process data from at least forty-six of them at a time.

We have also learned about how the agencies have spent vast sums of money on subverting the integrity of the Internet itself—weakening its overall security in ways that ought to concern every individual, public body, or company that uses it. A trapdoor that lets the NSA into your messages is, most cryptologists agree, quite exploitable by others. If you’re anxious about your bank details or medical records sitting online, you’re probably right to be.

If, say, the Chinese had behaved like this toward the Internet and toward social platforms used around the world, there would be barely contained fury in the West. Little wonder that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was not impressed by President Obama’s repeated assurances that “there is no spying on Americans.” That was, he pointed out, of little comfort to American entrepreneurs trying to build global businesses.

via The Snowden Leaks and the Public by Alan Rusbridger | The New York Review of Books.

[See also “How to Get Ahead at the NSA”, at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n20/daniel-soar/how-to-get-ahead-at-the-nsa . -egg]

[Pretty spot-on. Don’t miss parts two and three. -egg]

Mightygodking dot com » Post Topic » MGK Versus His Adolescent Reading Habits.

Alternatives to the Singularity is a funny, crowdsourced, extended piss-take on the idea of the Singularity, created through futurists’ challenge. A bunch of funny people, futurists, and weirdos created 80+ variations on the theme of Singularity. They go on a bit, but they range between mildly funny to genuine ROFL, and are worth the time.

via Futurists try out less-boring, funnier Singularities – Boing Boing.

I’m really enjoying these new pieces by artist 1010 that seems to peel away layers from mundane urban walls to reveal a depth of colorful layers. The Hamburg-based artist had a number of similar works on canvas at the Stroke Art Fair in Berlin in September.

via Surprising Layers of Color Revealed on Urban Walls | Colossal.

[Epic new Bad Lip Reading trailer. -egg]

Game of Thones recut as trailer for comedy about theme park cast and crew – Boing Boing.

British sculptor Kate MccGwire (previously) creates uncanny organic sculptures from layers of bird feathers. The objects she creates are so precisely assembled that they seem to form hybrid creatures with tentacles or limbs that twist and curve into unexpected forms.

via New Feather Sculptures by Kate MccGwire | Colossal.