Daily Archives: July 18, 2021

The Greek mathematician Euclid may very well have proved, circa 300 BCE, that there are infinitely many prime numbers. But it was the British mathematician Christian Lawson-Perfect who, more recently, devised the computer game Is this prime?

Launched five years ago, the game surpassed three million tries on July 16or, more to the point, it hit run 2,999,999after a Hacker News post generated a surge of about 100,000 attempts.

The aim of the game is to sort as many numbers as possible into prime or not prime in 60 seconds (as Lawson-Perfect originally described it on The Aperiodical, a mathematics blog of which hes a founder and editor).

A prime number is a whole number with precisely two divisors, 1 and itself.

Its very simple, but infuriatingly difficult, says Lawson-Perfect, who works in the e-learning unit in Newcastle Universitys School of Mathematics and Statistics. He created the game in his spare time, but its proved useful on the job: Lawson-Perfect writes e-assessment software (systems that evaluate learning). The system I make is designed to randomly generate a maths question, and take an answer from the student, which it automatically marks and gives feedback on, he says. You could view the primes game as a kind of assessmenthes used it when doing outreach sessions in schools.

He made the game slightly easier with keyboard shortcutsthe y and n keys click the corresponding yes-no buttons on the screenin order to save mouse-moving time.

Give it a whirl:

Prime numbers have practical utility in computingsuch as with error-correcting codes and encryption. But while prime factorization is hard (hence its value in encryption), primality checking is easier, if tricky. The Fields Medalwinning German mathematician Alexander Grothendieck infamously mistook 57 for prime (the Grothendieck prime). When Lawson-Perfect analyzed data from the game, he found that various numbers exhibited a certain Grothendieckyness. The number most often mistaken for a prime was 51, followed by 57, 87, 91, 119, and 133Lawson-Perfects nemesis (he also devised a handy primality-checking service: https://isthisprime.com/2).

The most minimalistic algorithm for checking a numbers primeness is trial divisiondivide the number by every number up to its square root (the product of two numbers greater than the square root would be greater than the number in question).

However, this nave method is not very efficient, and neither are some other techniques devised over the centuriesas the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss observed in 1801, they require intolerable labor even for the most indefatigable calculator.

The algorithm Lawson-Perfect coded up for the game is called the Miller-Rabin primality test (which builds on a very efficient but not ironclad 17th-century method, Fermats little theorem). The Miller-Rabin test works surprisingly well. As far as Lawson-Perfect is concerned, its basically magicI dont really understand how it works, but Im confident I could if I spent the time to look at it more deeply, he says.

Since the test uses randomness, it produces a probabilistic result. Which means that sometimes the test lies. There is a chance of uncovering an imposter, a composite number that is trying to pass as prime, says Carl Pomerance,a mathematician at Dartmouth College and coauthor of the book Prime Numbers: A Computational Perspective. The chances of an imposter slipping through the algorithms clever checking mechanism are maybe one in a trillion, though, so the test is pretty safe.

But as far as clever primality checking algorithms go, the Miller-Rabin test is the tip of the iceberg, says Pomerance. Notably, 19 years ago, three computer scientistsManindra Agrawal, Neeraj Kayal, and Nitin Saxena, all at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpurannounced the AKS primality test (again building upon Fermats method), which finally provided a test for unequivocally proving that a number is prime, with no randomization and (theoretically, at least) with impressive speed. Alas, fast in theory doesnt always translate to fast in real life, so the AKS test isnt useful for practical purposes.

But practicality isnt always the point. Occasionally Lawson-Perfect receives email from people keen to share their high scores in the game. Recently a player reported 60 primes in 60 seconds, but the record is more likely 127. (Lawson-Perfect doesnt track high scores; he knows there are some cheaters, with computer-aided attempts that produce spikes in the data.)

The 127 score was achieved by Ravi Fernando, a mathematics graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, who posted the result in July 2020. Its still his personal best and, he reckons, the unofficial world record.

Since last summer, Fernando hasnt played the game much with the default settings, but he has tried with customized settings, selecting for larger numbers and allowing longer time limitshe scored 240 with a five-minute limit. Which took a lot of guesswork, because the numbers got into the high four-digit range and Ive only ever memorized primes up to the low 3,000s, he says. I suppose some would argue even that is excessive.

Fernandos research is in algebraic geometry, which involves primes to some extent. But, he says, my research has more to do with why I stopped playing the gamethan why I started (he started his PhD in 2014). Plus, he figures 127 would be very hard to beat. And, he says, it just feels right to stop at a prime-number record.

Excerpt from:

Is 57 a prime number? Theres a game for that. - MIT Technology Review

A fence surrounds the U.S. Department of Commerce in Washington October 5, 2013 REUTERS/Mike Theiler

WASHINGTON, July 16 (Reuters) - The United States on Friday took a new stab at Russia's cybersecurity industry, restricting trade with four information technology firms and two other entities over "aggressive and harmful" activities - including digital espionage - that Washington blames on the Russian government.

A Commerce Department posting said the six entities were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in April, which targeted companies in the technology sector that support Russian intelligence services.

Their addition to the Commerce Department's blacklist means U.S. companies cannot sell to them without licenses, which are seldom granted.

The announcement follows April's sanctions, which were aimed at punishing Moscow for hacking, interfering in last year's U.S. election, poisoning Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and other alleged malign actions - allegations the Kremlin denies.

They come as the United States is responding to a drumbeat of digital intrusions blamed on Russian government-backed spies and a spate of increasingly disruptive ransomware outbreaks blamed on Russian cybercriminals.

The entities added to the blacklist are Aktsionernoe Obshchaestvo AST; Aktsionernoe Obshchestvo Pasit; Aktsionernoe Obshchestvo Pozitiv Teknolodzhiz, also known as JSC Positive Technologies; Federal State Autonomous Institution Military Innovative Technopolis Era; Federal State Autonomous Scientific Establishment Scientific Research Institute Specialized Security Computing Devices and Automation (SVA); and Obshchestvo S Ogranichennoi Otvetstvennostyu Neobit.

Era is a research center and technology park operated by the Russian Ministry of Defense; Pasit is an IT company that did research and development in support of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service's malicious cyber operations; SVA is a Russian state-owned institution that also supported malicious cyber operations; and Russia-based IT security firms Neobit, AST and Positive Technologies have clients that include the Russian government, according to the United States.

Positive Technologies said the Commerce Department's announcement had no new information and that the company engaged in the "ethical exchange of information with the professional information security community" and had never been involved with an attack on U.S. infrastructure.

The other entities either did not immediately respond to requests for comment or could not be reached.

The restrictions against the Russian technology industry have been in the works for months. The same day that the Treasury sanctions were announced, then-Assistant Attorney General John Demers told reporters that officials were in the process of evaluating dozens of Russian companies for possible referral to the Commerce Department.

Demers said investigators would be looking at "a known connection between a particular company and the Russian intelligence services" as they evaluated whether a company was a risk. Non-Russian companies that had back office operations in Russia would also be examined, he said.

The United States adds entities to the Commerce Department's trade blacklist that it says pose a risk to U.S. national security or foreign policy interests.

Reporting by Karen Freifeld; additional reporting by Raphael Satter in Washington and Anton Zverev in Moscow; editing by Howard Goller and Dan Grebler

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Biden battles Russian hacking groups with restrictions on IT firms - Reuters

NEW YORK, NY - FEBRUARY 19: Boxes of Eggo Waffles sit for sale at the Metropolitan Citymarket on February 19, 2014 in the East Village neighborhood of New York City. Kellogg, maker of Eggo waffles, has announced that it will only buy palm oil - a minor ingredient in Eggo Waffles - from companies that don't destroy rainforests where palm trees are grown. Palm oil is used in many processed foods. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Love emojis? Enjoy waffles? Then you are going to love this latest innovation from Eggo, as they introduce their new Eggoji Waffles!

Its a classic waffle taken to the next level the way only Eggo knows how to do. And what that means is that we get a waffle that is one side syrup and butter catching squares and one side emoji magic.

These Eggoji waffles give us any number of faces to chow down on including some of our favorite classics. In the box that we devoured our favorites were the winky face emoji, the heart eyes, and even the star eyes emoji.

And while it kind of reminded me of a waffle and a pancake having a baby, these Eggoji Waffles really are like enjoying a classic Eggo Waffle with the added fun of an emoji printed on one side. They are still just as crispy as we want, with a fluffy, homestyle center. And yes, they are still the perfect vehicle for syrup and butter!

Each of these boxes comes with 10 waffles and will cost us $2.89 depending on your grocery store. And yes, these are a nationwide release, so you should be able to find them in a retailer near you.

As Chew Boom shared, the added bonus of snagging boxes of both Eggoji Waffles and classic Eggo Waffles is the fact that in honor of this launch, the brand will be celebrating this tasty innovation by donating up to half a million breakfasts to No Kid Hungry.

It really seems like a win-win situation. Not only do we get tasty waffles that channel our love of emojis, but doing so will help support a good cause at the same time.

What do you think Guilty Eaters? Are you going to be grabbing a box of Eggoji Waffles? Let us know in the comments.

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Eggo gets inspired by technology as they introduce their new Eggoji Waffles - Guilty Eats

This could soon become a broader problem as well.

California is a little sneak peek of what is in store for the rest of the world as we dramatically scale up solar, says Zeke Hausfather, director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute, and author of the report.

Thats because while solar accounts for about 19% of the electricity California generates, other regions are rapidly installing photovoltaic panels as well. In Nevada and Hawaii, for instance, the share of solar generation stood at around 13% in 2019, the study found. The levels in Italy, Greece and Germany were at 8.6%, 7.9% and 7.8%, respectively.

So far, heavy solar subsidies and the rapidly declining cost of solar power has offset the falling value of solar in California. So long as it gets ever cheaper to build and operate solar power plants, value deflation is less of a problem.

But its likely to get harder and harder to pull off that trick, as the states share of solar generation continues to climb. If the cost declines for building and installing solar panels tapers off, Californias solar deflation could pull ahead in the race against falling costs as soon as 2022 and climb upward from there, the report finds. At that point, wholesale pricing would be below the subsidized costs of solar in California, undermining the pure economic rationale for building more plants, Hausfather notes.

The states SB 100 law, passed in 2018, requires all of Californias electricity to come from renewable and zero-carbon resources by 2045. By that point, some 60% of the states electricity could come from solar, based on a California Energy Commission model.

The Breakthrough study estimates that the value of solaror the wholesale average price relative to other sourceswill fall by 85% at that point, decimating the economics of solar farms, at least as Californias grid exists today.

There are a variety of ways to ease this effect, though no single one is likely a panacea.

The solar sector can continue trying to find ways to push down solar costs, but some researchers have argued it may require shifting to new materials and technologies to get to the dirt-cheap levels required to outpace value deflation.

Grid operators and solar plant developers can add more energy storageand increasingly they are.

Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory highlighted similarly declining solar values in California in a broader study published in Joule last month. But they also noted that numerous modeling studies showed that the addition of low cost storage options, including so called hybrid plants coupled with lithium-ion batteries, eases value deflation and enables larger shares of renewables to operate economically on the grid.

There are likely limits to this, however, as study after study finds that storage and system costs rise sharply once renewables provide the vast majority of electricity on the grid.

States or nations could also boost subsidies for solar power; add more long-distance transmission lines to allow regions to swap clean electricity as needed; or incentivize customers to move energy use to times of day that better match with periods of high generation.

The good news is that each of these will help to ease the transition to clean electricity sources in other ways as well, but theyll also all take considerable time and money to get underway.

The California solar market offers a reminder that the climate clock is ticking.

This story was updated to add details from the Joule study.

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The lurking threat to solar powers growth - MIT Technology Review

Last week marked a watershed for technology start-ups in India, as a record bout of fundraising shifted attention to the worlds second-most populous market, just as investors were becoming spooked by a crackdown on Internet companies in China.

Food delivery app Zomato Ltd became the nations first unicorn to make its stock market debut, raising US$1.3 billion with backing from Morgan Stanley, Tiger Global and Fidelity Investments. The parent of digital payments start-up Paytm filed a draft prospectus for what could be Indias largest IPO at US$2.2 billion, while retailer Flipkart Online Services Pvt raised US$3.6 billion at a US$38 billion valuation, a record funding round for an Indian start-up.

Indian entrepreneurs have been quietly building start-ups for a decade now, the countrys Internet infrastructure has vastly improved in that time and theres a very good appetite for tech stocks globally, said Hans Tung (), the Silicon Valley-based managing partner of GGV Capital, which manages US$9.2 billion in assets. Investors are beginning to see the huge upside, and they expect India to be a China.

Unlike China, where online usage is much more developed, many of Indias 625 million Internet users are just dipping their toes into the world of video streaming, social networking and e-commerce. Opportunities in online shopping are particularly attractive, as e-commerce accounts for less than 3 percent of retail transactions.

Indias population is expected to overtake Chinas this decade, and the mood among investors could not be more different in the neighboring nations. China is reining in its tech companies, wiping over US$800 billion off market valuations from a February peak and shaving billions off the net worth of its most famous entrepreneurs. The clampdown is expected to continue, as regulators curb the power of Internet companies and wrest back control of user data.

Indian tech companies can attract global investors whove burnt their hands in Chinese tech companies, said Nilesh Shah, group president and managing director at Kotak Mahindra Asset Management Co in Mumbai.

The successful listing of a few loss-making start-ups could lead to re-rating of many existing companies and send the market higher, he said.

India had a record US$6.3 billion of funding and deals for technology start-ups in the second quarter, while funding to China-based companies dropped 18 percent from a peak of US$27.7 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, according to data from research firm CB Insights.

Optimism about India is tempered, as one of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks in the world threatens to erode decades of economic gains, with more than 31 million infections and 413,000 deaths in the country. At least 200 million Indians have regressed to earning less than the US$2.30 minimum daily wage, Azim Premji University estimates, while the middle class shrank by 32 million last year, according to the Pew Research Institute.

Nor are investors in India free of political risks. Technology start-ups also face a tightening regulatory regime with government clamping down on foreign retailers, social media giants and streaming companies. A new bill on data ownership and storage is expected to be presented in an upcoming parliament session. If passed, it would restrict the ways they can handle user information.

Some analysts are also concerned that stock markets are in a bubble waiting to burst, and that many company valuations are far above their fundamentals. They caution that retail investors in new-age companies that have yet to generate profits should look beyond traditional value measures such as EPS and P/E, and must be able to assess factors such as investment in building a loyal customer base as the start-ups scale up.

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Flush with unicorns, India's technology moment arrives, but not without concerns - Taipei Times

In 1922, the prolific American inventor Thomas Alva Edison predicted that the "movie screen willsupplant the blackboard and the motion picture film will take the place of textbooks" in schools within 20 years. Education did not unfold the way Edison had imagined.

One century later, the internet and digital technology are expected to revolutionise education, with the pandemic providing a context and urgency to it. Placed at the interface of humans and machines, the path for technology in education - ed-tech - is far from seamless. In contrast to the hype surrounding ed-tech, the experiences of teachers and students since March 2020 call for restrained enthusiasm.

A lot has been written about students lacking tech devices and struggling with erratic internet connections. According to some internal surveys within IITs and IISERs, 10-20 per cent of students lack access to devices.

This is just one among a plethora of issues. The unplanned shift to online classes began last year in all the higher educational institutions. As we complete a third semester in online mode, screen fatigue has definitely set in among most teachers and students.

Both miss the interactions, feedback and peer learning environment. Faculty spend far more time than usual on class preparations, effectively constraining research time. Fair student assessments remain an outstanding issue.

The attendance for live online classes across institutions that used to be 60-80 per cent of class strength a year ago has consistently dropped and now stands at about 10-20 per cent. If this appears anecdotal, the global experience with massive open and online courses (MOOC) reinforces similar trends for reasons ranging from a lack of peer environment to commitment and screen fatigue.

Massive Open Online Courses were thought to be a game changer for higher education that The New York Times designated 2012 as the year of MOOCs. But they suffer from poor completion rates, even for courses offered by top universities such as Harvard and MIT.

On average, less than 20per cent of learners complete a course with certification and less than 10 per cent watch all the recorded video content. In India, the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), funded by the Ministry of Education, is relatively successful in attracting more than 20 lakh students every semester to its online courses.

However, the completion rates with certification remain low at less than 10 per cent. To attract more students, NPTEL has allowed the credits to be transferred to their degree programmes along with internships for toppers. In contrast, many commercial MOOC start-ups in the US also offer online degrees jointly with an established university.

These attracted enthusiastic initial investor funding but have not lived up to that hype. Coursera, a major MOOC provider founded by two Stanford university faculty in 2012, is valued at USD 2.5 billion but is yet to rake in profits.

Against this backdrop, India's ed-tech platforms are indeed witnessing rapid growth towards the predicted $30 billion market by the next decade. Nothing showcases this growth better than the ed-tech company that has risen to become the official sponsor of India's cricket team.

This growth rides on the back of coaching for fiercely competitive entrance exams such as the IIT-JEE and NEET, rather than as an alternative model for conventional classes. The dichotomy is apparent as many ed-tech companies focus on the coaching classes and online STEM degrees, while the basic school and college classes, often with poor physical infrastructure, await government interventions to infuse technology.

Before the government invests its scarce resources into technology upgradation, the collective experience of online classes must inform policymaking. Many expensive gadgets bought last year did not live up to expectations and were discarded. Ironically, teaching with technology tools is seen as cumbersome, requiring more preparation time without value addition and not always effective for students.

These experiences, a wealth of pedagogy experiments and outcomes, must be assimilated into the evolving ed-tech landscape. The government must push the ed-tech entities to heed these voices and avoid mindless adoption of technology and practices unworkable in the Indian context.

The online engagements since 2020 reveal that technology alone is no panacea for the problems of education. It can be an excellent support system in the hands of competent teachers in a peer learning environment.

Their absence cannot be compensated by prolonged exposure to electronic devices. Thirty years after Edison's prophecy, the American science fiction author Isaac Asimov wrote a futuristic story set in 2157 when school is a video screen with mechanical teachers.

The little girl in the story discovers that old-style physical school must have been a fun place to learn. Judicious use of technology can preserve the fun in learning. It is imperative to strike a right balance.

(The writer is Professor of physics at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune and can be reached at santh@iiserpune.ac.in)

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How effective is technology in education? - The New Indian Express