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Between December 1968 and October 1969 – and potentially before and after those dates‚ too – the San Francisco Bay Area was rocked by a series of high-profile murders. It wasn’t the method or number of the killings that set them apart‚ though; all things considered‚ they were pretty boring in their execution‚ and while there are claims that as many as 49 people were killed at the hand of the perpetrator‚ only five victims have ever actually been confirmed.Nevertheless‚ these murders would become infamous‚ spawning books‚ theories‚ copycat killers‚ and even a critically acclaimed movie. Even today‚ popular culture is obsessed with discovering the still-unknown identity of the perpetrator. And why&;#63; Because this killer courted publicity like no other. The Zodiac‚ as he dubbed himself in one of the many messages he sent to various newspapers‚ is as famous today for his ciphers and cryptograms as he is the murders he committed. To this day‚ only two have been cracked.Which Zodiac ciphers have been cracked&;#63;The first message to be broken was a 408-symbol cryptogram‚ now known as Z408. It was sent in three parts to local outlets‚ and immediately set upon by both the FBI and the CIA – only to be cracked after four days by a married middle-aged couple from Salinas. It didn’t even take that much in the way of obscure or high-concept methodology to break: suspecting that the killer was after attention‚ Bettye Harden guessed that the message would likely start with the word “I”‚ and include something like “KILL” or “KILLING.” She was right‚ and that was enough of a wedge to force open the cipher.The second‚ though – well‚ that took a little longer to decrypt. Half a century longer‚ in fact.“On December 5‚ 2020‚ the FBI received the solution to a cipher popularly known as Z340 from a cryptologic researcher and independently verified the decryption‚” confirmed an FBI statement‚ issued after the release to YouTube and Zodiac lore fansites of a proposed solution to a second message from the killer.“This cipher was first submitted to the FBI Laboratory on November 13‚ 1969‚ but not successfully decrypted‚” the statement continued. “Over the past 51 years CRRU [the FBI Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit] has reviewed numerous proposed solutions from the public – none of which had merit.”That was until three hobbyist cryptographers – software developer David Oranchak‚ applied mathematician Sam Blake‚ and warehouse operator Jarl Van Eyke – finally cracked it. Well‚ with a tiny bit of help from the pros: “when I talked to the FBI‚ they only needed to make one change to the solution‚” Oranchak told Zodiac lore authority Michael Butterfield back in 2020. “We couldn’t figure out the part that says‚ ‘soo her‚’” he explained‚ “[but] their cryptanalyst called me and she said she thinks it’s supposed to say‚ ‘sooner’ instead.”The end result&;#63; A chilling declaration of a murderous and misspelled philosophy:I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH METHAT WASNT ME ON THE TV SHOW WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE ISLIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH But while the trio were never shy about their breakthrough‚ it’s only now‚ four years later‚ that we’ve been gifted the most in-depth account of the discovery to date. In a detailed white paper‚ released last month‚ the team describe a process stretching back more than a decade – and involving quite a bit of struggle and failure along the way.How was Z340 deciphered&;#63;Well‚ it wasn’t easy. “The decryption success reported herein was preceded by the authors’ many years of failed experiments‚ dead-end ideas‚ and efforts to summarize what was known about the Zodiac case and ciphers‚” the paper admits. And they weren’t the only ones: among the 61 pages are an extensive history of academic and amateur attempts to break‚ or even just make inroads into‚ Z340.So why did this second message take so much longer to decipher&;#63; It seems that‚ after having his first attempt decrypted so quickly‚ the Zodiac killer upped his game – a lot. “It is clear that the complications introduced by Zodiac led to much delay in its solution‚” the trio write. “If the cipher were simply one of the well-understood classical systems‚ such as homophonic substitution‚ transposition‚ or polyalphabetic substitution […] then traditional cryptanalysis and application of powerful cipher solving tools would have broken it.”Instead‚ what faced hopeful criminal chasers was a slew of confounding tactics: the cipher wasn’t just set out in a rectangular grid‚ for example‚ but it also reads diagonally rather than left-to-right according to a period that changes whether it’s on the horizontal or vertical axis. The message was split into four sections of uneven lengths‚ and a decryption algorithm that was successful for one wouldn’t necessarily work on the next. And on top of that‚ as before‚ there were plenty of spelling mistakes to account for‚ further muddying the decryption process.But despite these setbacks‚ the team also found themselves armed with a few tools that previous attempts to defeat Z340 lacked. Chief among them&;#63; The grand total of international accumulated knowledge on the case and cipher‚ courtesy of the internet.“The online community drew a wide variety of people eager to crack the case and its ciphers‚ which brought many different approaches and viewpoints‚” the trio wrote in their paper.“Analysis of Z340 benefited from collecting factual information about the cipher‚ its context in the Zodiac case‚ statistical analyses of the ciphertext‚ and other cryptanalytic observations‚” they explained. “As users on online forums discovered interesting details about the ciphers‚ Oranchak endeavored to preserve them [online]. This allowed other researchers to use the information as a foundational source of factual details to build upon.”Of course‚ as anyone who has spent time online knows‚ the internet can be a mixed blessing. While on balance‚ the team think it was an advantage‚ they did note that “Z340 ’s notoriety in particular attracted the interest of people from many walks of life and with a wide range of abilities pertaining to codebreaking‚” with some less experienced commentators getting “aggressively convinced their favored Zodiac suspect was the correct one and the ciphers reflected their suspect’s name or other details.”That wasn’t the only benefit of the modern world to help with the breakthrough. Compared to 50 years ago‚ computer automation is both easy and ubiquitous – they’re even out there proving mathematical theorems these days. Using a collection of various decryption programs‚ the team were able to run through tens of thousands of potential transpositions of the cipher – a task that would be nigh-impossible to do by hand.Who was the Zodiac killer&;#63;As helpful as all these modern inventions were‚ though‚ sometimes the old tricks are the best – and according to Oranchak‚ it was the killer’s own pride that provided one major breakthrough. Back in 1969‚ before Z340 was written‚ a hoax caller rang a TV show pretending to be the Zodiac‚ saying that he was scared of getting sent to “the gas chamber” for his crimes – and it seems this was too much of an insult to the real deal’s ego.“When ‘that wasn’t me on the TV show’ popped out during the solve‚ I jumped out of my chair and said‚ ‘Holy ****&;#33;’‚” Oranchak told Butterfield. “That’s when I knew it was on the right track.”“It was only a handful of words to start with. Could have very easily ignored them and moved on‚” he said. “But ‘gas chamber’ really stood out.”It may have taken half a century to solve‚ but we finally know what the most infamous Zodiac message was meant to say – and why. But potentially even more interesting than the content of the cipher is what it tells us about the killer himself.Not that it reveals his identity‚ of course – despite all the hints he dropped‚ that’s never been elucidated. But after Z480 was solved so quickly‚ and by a couple of amateurs at that‚ many people thought the Zodiac‚ well‚ wasn’t that good at cryptography. The sheer complexity of Z340 seems to have put that idea to bed: “either he knew codes‚ or had a good intuition about how to make them‚” Oranchak told Butterfield. “He definitely reacted to the Hardens[’] solution and made it much harder.”So‚ now that Z340 is solved‚ can we finally decrypt the other two messages sent out by the killer all those years ago&;#63; According to the trio… probably not‚ actually. At just 13 and 32 symbols in length‚ the remaining messages are too short for any potential solutions to be properly verifiable – especially when‚ as Z340 has proven‚ there’s no guarantee they were encrypted via the same process as the others. After all‚ if there’s one thing that’s clear from the paper‚ it’s the importance of luck. That’s not to say what the trio achieved isn’t impressive – it surely is – but as they themselves admit‚ “if any of the confounding factors had been more extreme (e.g.‚ additional sections‚ different combinations of transpositions‚ additional encipherment errors‚ more unique symbols‚ etc.)‚ the cipher might still remain unsolved.” The white paper has been posted to preprint server arXiv. [H/T: 404 Media]

Generations of Star Trek fans have wondered what it might be like to make first contact with a new species‚ escape an awkward social interaction with an emergency beam-out‚ or experience warp speed on a starship (just don’t go past warp 10‚ whatever you do&;#33;). While a lot of the incredible tech depicted in the franchise remains in the realms of fiction for now‚ some Trek-inspired innovations have become a reality. Thanks to a team of engineers at the University of Pennsylvania‚ we can now add a holodeck to that list.To be clear‚ and because we were just as disappointed as you‚ we’re not talking about a holographic environment where humans can explore and interact with characters – we’re still a way off that. But the Holodeck system (yep‚ that’s what it’s called)‚ created by a team at Penn Engineering and their collaborators‚ can build pretty much any 3D environment you can think up. You just have to ask.“We can use language to control it‚” explained co-creator Yue Yang in a statement. “You can easily describe whatever environments you want and train the embodied AI [artificial intelligence] agents.”The holodeck system depicted in Star Trek series like The Next Generation and Voyager is an infinitely customizable virtual environment‚ capable of turning quite basic verbal commands into complete‚ simulated worlds. In reality‚ these types of environments – albeit on a smaller scale – have important applications in training robots.Creating a virtual world‚ however‚ is a time-consuming process. “Artists manually create these environments [and] could spend a week building a single environment‚” Yang said. The problem with this is that to train a robot to navigate real life‚ you need to trial it in a variety of different environments. Generative AI‚ which has exploded in recent months‚ seemed the clear solution.“Generative AI systems like ChatGPT are trained on trillions of words‚ and image generators like Midjourney and DALLE are trained on billions of images‚” said Chris Callison-Burch‚ Associate Professor in Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania.Holodeck essentially engages a large language model (LLM) – the system that powers chatbots like ChatGPT – in a conversation that allows it to pick out the parameters of the environment the user wants. The system accesses a digital library of millions of premade objects called Objaverse‚ from which it can select suitable furnishings‚ and a layout design module constrains the spatial configuration so that the objects end up in logical places in the room.How Holodeck builds up an environment piece by piece‚ by essentially having a conversation with an LLM to discern all the necessary parameters.Image credit: Yue Yang (CC BY-NC-ND)In practice‚ that means if you ask it for the apartment of a person who owns a cat‚ Holodeck will ensure the finished room contains all the pieces of furniture you’d expect‚ including a cat tree. The team compared Holodeck to an earlier tool called ProcTHOR‚ generating 120 scenes and asking students to choose their preferences in a blinded test. Holodeck outperformed its competitor in every way. The system also coped well when asked to create more unusual spaces‚ from science labs to wine cellars.But‚ “The ultimate test of Holodeck‚” according to co-creator Assistant Professor Mark Yatskar‚ “is using it to help robots interact with their environment more safely by preparing them to inhabit places they’ve never been before.”Virtual training is often limited to mostly residential spaces‚ but there are lots of strange new worlds out there that a robot may need to navigate. Using Holodeck to produce the environments‚ rather than the predecessor tool‚ had a marked positive effect – for example‚ a robot pre-trained on 100 virtual music rooms created by Holodeck was able to locate a piano 30 percent of the time‚ versus just 6 percent after training with ProcTHOR.You might not be able to use it to run a Dixon Hill holonovel‚ but this Holodeck could soon be making a big impact in the world of robotics.The study will be presented at the 2024 IEEE/CVF Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference. A preprint paper‚ which has not been peer-reviewed‚ is available via arXiv. 

An ex-Navy officer said UFOs that can move from air to sea without a splash or crash debris represent an &;quot;urgent&;quot; national security concern that can have &;quot;world-changing&;quot; consequences‚ according to Fox News Digital.Back in July 2019‚ the USS Omaha reportedly captured video of a UFO that raced past a Navy fleet around San Diego and mysteriously vanished into the ocean without a trace. The video of the strange incident was first released by filmmaker Jeremy Corbell and later confirmed by the Pentagon‚ according to NBC News. Oceanographer and retired Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet said the UFO's capability &;quot;jeopardizes U.S. maritime security‚ which is already weakened by our relative ignorance about the global ocean.&;quot; &;quot;The fact that unidentified objects with unexplainable characteristics are entering U.S. water space and the DOD is not raising a giant red flag is a sign that the government is not sharing all it knows about all-domain anomalous phenomena‚&;quot; Gallaudet wrote in a 2024 report. Gallaudet wrote a 29-page report about the possibility of underwater UFOs that was published by the Sol Foundation — a think tank specifically focused on UFOs and the possible consequences of their existence.The former Navy officer told Fox News Digital that it is &;quot;scientifically valid&;quot; to investigate the mysterious transmedium events that demonstrate capabilities that have never been seen before.&;quot;Pilots‚ credible observers‚ and calibrated military instrumentation have recorded objects accelerating at rates and crossing the air-sea interface in ways not possible for anything made by humans‚&;quot; Gallaudet said in his report. &;quot;To meet the security and scientific challenges‚ transmedium UAP and USOs should be elevated to national ocean research priorities‚&;quot; he continued.When the 2019 UFO video was first released‚ the Defense Department quickly confirmed that it was captured by Navy personnel and noted that it would be reviewed by the Pentagon's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force.NBC News reported at the time that the clip of the UFO was released just a few days before &;quot;60 Minutes&;quot; aired an interview with two former Navy officers who said they had previously been told to investigate &;quot;multiple anomalous aerial vehicles&;quot; that reportedly descended 80‚000 feet in less than a second. The incident in question took place off San Diego in 2004.However‚ the reports have been criticized for producing &;quot;underwhelming&;quot; evidence and directly contradicting former intelligence officer David Grusch's testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee in 2023.Like Blaze News&;#63; Bypass the censors‚ sign up for our newsletters‚ and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here&;#33;

A bearded knifeman savagely attacked a conservative Assyrian Orthodox bishop‚ a priest‚ and several parishioners Monday in a Sydney suburb. The attack took place in the sanctuary of Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley‚ just days after another extremist slaughtered at least six people at a nearby shopping center‚ wounding several more‚ including a baby. Several local protests have reportedly erupted in the area‚ signaling Australians' growing frustration with what appears to be imported radicalism. According to the New South Wales Police Force‚ officers were dispatched around 7:10 p.m. to the Christ the Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley following reports that &;quot;a number of people were stabbed.&;quot; The attack was captured on film during the Good Shepherd Church's livestream. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel can be seen giving a sermon as a man in a black hooded sweatshirt strides up to the altar. It appears the attacker has something in his hand‚ which he strikes into the bishop's face‚ shoulder‚ neck‚ and head‚ while parishioners scream in terror. The attacker continues to stab the bishop after he falls to the ground. Several men and women — including a priest and a nun — can be seen rushing through the sanctuary‚ with some prying the attacker off the Iraq-born Australian of the Assyrian Church of the East before the camera pans to the side and the feed cuts out. JUST IN: Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel‚ who was stabbed in Sydney‚ Australia‚ has survived the stabbing for now. \n \nThe incident happened at Christ the Good Shepherd Church. \n \nAccording to Sky News‚ 4 people in total were stabbed. One man in his 60s and another man in his 20s were\u2026 — (@) Police indicated the attacker is presently in custody and the injuries suffered at his hands are non-life threatening. Chris Minns‚ the state premier of New South Wales‚ stated‚ &;quot;Disturbing scenes tonight in Wakeley tonight.&;quot; &;quot;It's important that the community remain calm and continue to listen and act to the directions of Police and Emergency Services. We are a strong community in NSW and it’s important that we all stick together‚ particularly in the face of adversity‚&;quot; added Minns. In the aftermath of the church stabbing‚ thousands of people poured into the streets‚ offering condemnations of the attack and venting their vexation. Riot Squad officers apparently came out in force to drive parishioners and protesters away from the church. The Telegraph reported that police deployed tear gas in response to alleged riots around the church and chants of &;quot;an eye for an eye.&;quot; Fairfield Mayor Frank Carbone told Sky News Australia‚ &;quot;Bishops and priests[‚] they're very very important in our community‚ they only preach love and peace‚ and to have this happen to one of them is horrific.&;quot; &;quot;However‚ I understand a lot of members in our community are really distraught but what is important is I believe that the bishop has been taken to hospital and should be okay‚&;quot; said Carbone. &;quot;We live in difficult times right now … so I can understand frustration and the anger from the communities but I ask them as the mayor just to please be calm.&;quot; Christ the Good Shepherd Church issued a statement saying‚ &;quot;Our beloved Bishop‚ His Grace Mar Mari Emmanuel‚ and Father Isaac have been admitted to hospital. They are in a stable condition. We ask for your prayers at this time.&;quot; &;quot;It is the Bishop's and Father's wishes that you also pray for the perpetrator‚&;quot; continued the statement. &;quot;We also kindly ask anyone at the Church premises to leave in peace‚ as our Lord and Savior‚ Jesus Christ‚ teaches us.&;quot; Like Blaze News&;#63; Bypass the censors‚ sign up for our newsletters‚ and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here&;#33;

It won't be long now until the Core Ultra 200 series‚ otherwise known as Intel Arrow Lake‚ makes its debut in the desktop space. However‚ according to recent specs leaks‚ the thread count of these CPUs will be decidedly different from previous generations. Continue reading Arrow Lake Intel CPU specs leak further confirms surprising change MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Core i5 14600K review‚ Best gaming CPU‚ Core i9 14900K review