Month: June 2016

Can machines think? This is the question posed by Alan Turing's 1950 paper, Computer Machinery and Intelligence. Turing believed that by the year 2000, our understanding of computers would have evolved to the point where machines could think, work out problems, and be able to imitate a human. As of today, Turing's predictions might not have all come true, but humans are sometimes duped in small ways every day, not least through the many online chat and help bots that make you think you're talking to a human.

What does it mean to be human in a world in which machines can imitate humans? Where does the human component begin and end? What does the human component even consist of? Bulkhead Interactive's The Turing Test explores these questions.

At its core, The Turing Test is a first-person puzzle game in which you explore a research base on Europa, a moon of Jupiter. The puzzles are supposedly designed in such a way so as to make them impossible for a computer to solve. Only a human mind can unlock the puzzles, thus setting up a potential answer for the riddle of what it means to be human.

(credit: Mark Walton)

In the wee hours of Friday morning, the people of the UK voted to leave the European Union with a majority of 52 percent—and according to Google, they don't really know why. Two hours after the referendum polls closed, roughly midnight UK time, the Google Trends Twitter account reported a 250 percent increase in people searching "what happens if we leave the EU." "Are we in or out of the EU?" spiked by 2,450 percent.

Other search terms that peaked following the result include "what happens to foreigners if we leave the EU," "what happens if we stay in the EU," and—perhaps most worryingly considering the gravity of the decision—"what is Brexit?"

Earlier in the evening, the top search in Sunderland (one of the first cities to declare its results) was "How do I vote in the EU referendum?"

Andrus Nõmm is the only Megaupload criminal copyright defendant to have gone to prison. (credit: Toivo Tänavsuu )

Soon after the domain was registered in Hong Kong, the now-defunct Megaupload.com grew into one of the world's most popular file-sharing sites. At its peak, the site engaged nearly 50 million users a day and took up around four percent of the world's Internet traffic. Users uploaded nearly 12 billion files overall.

But the infamy of the site's rise is only matched by the infamy of its fall. In January 2012, US authorities closed down Megaupload.com and the network related to it. The feds arrested seven people and froze $50 million in assets. The FBI claims that the site not only failed to take down illegal material, Megaupload also helped to spread it. Perhaps it was simply a case of brazen arrogance. When the authorities finally raided founder Kim Dotcom's large villa in New Zealand, they found a number of luxury cars (Lamborghini, Maserati, Rolls Royce) with the license plates "God," "Mafia," "Hacker," "Evil," and "Police."

In total, seven men associated with the site were arrested and indicted on 13 charges (including copyright infringement and money laundering). Dotcom remains notably free and has been continually fighting in New Zealand against his extradition to the USA. Others were not as lucky.

(credit: Rosyna Keller)

Grey Group has continued to defend its widely-criticized smartphone app, "I Sea," after it was pulled from the Apple App Store earlier this week when two security researchers exposed it as a fraud.

The app purported to be a crowdsourced way for people to help migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea by spotting satellite images in "real-time." It won third place prize at a major global advertising industry competition held in Cannes, France.

On Thursday, a Grey Group spokesman, Owen Dougherty, insisted to Ars that "the app is real…the attack on us by [an] unnamed ‘tech blogger’ is the fraud in all of this. [It's] not worthy of comment let alone coverage."