Quantum Hopfield Networks
08 April 2016
“What’s your name?”
“James.”
“Well, James I want you out of the room right now. Such behaviour will not be tolerated at ETH.”
A wave of repentance hit him and he saw a brief glimpse of his father’s feet (he could never look him straight in the eye). But, much like the momentary synapses between two neurons that he was learning about in the room he just got thrown out of, this guilt too was ‘momentary’. “Well, that was an auspicious start to the semester”, he thought wryly as he packed his Texas Instruments TI-83 graphing calculator that he’d been playing Pokemon Blue on, complete with the 8-bit arcade sounds blaring out of its speakers, into his grubby knapsack.
In case you’re wondering what sought him such wrath, for everyone knows how little the professors at ETH care about what goes on in their classroom, the answer is simple - James was smart. Annoyingly so. Even with his head dug in the black and white screen of his calculator, his brain paid full attention to what the professor, an ironically kind looking Dr Guggenheim, was teaching. With his patience coming to a boil, Dr Guggenheim decided to tease James with a surprise question, to which, as you might have guessed already, James responded with clear understanding. That would’ve been the end of it had he not appended this afterthought - “Oh, and, you said neuron synapses modeled using Bayesian inference show a bell-curve distribution but as you might remember from your own publication from a couple of years ago, it’s actually a Poisson binomial distribution.”
The pen is mightier than the sword indeed and the tongue, mightier than the pen. Dusting his pants he walked out of the room, on his way offering a little how do you do with a tip of his head to the girl in the front row who was clearly raging about this unnecessary disturbance to her learning.
Right about now, it would be wise to offer you a character sketch of James so that you may get a nice image of him in your head.
Or maybe not. He could be anyone. That works just as well.
The library, or rather Bibliothek as the polished lettering on the sign read, was his favourite place in the entire city and that is where he landed up. He had spent a considerable number of days in there - playing games, reading, observing people or just staring out the window. Some days he would go there to catch a quick power nap between lectures, however on one occasion, his siesta ended up lasting the entire night - he was homeless for a thirty-six hour period and decided to spend it there. What actually happened was that he had shifted apartments and thanks to his misanthropic tendencies, hadn’t made any relation strong enough to seek a sleepover. He believed that night brought him and the library closer, as funny as that sounds.
It was beginning to snow outside and as a result the library was more crowded than usual. This dismal observation meant that his favourite desk by the bay window was already occupied.
As the end of a series of unfortunate events usually goes, James’ adventurous spirits had dampened after the day and he decided to skip his customary method of book picking. It was an intricate method that involved linking the prime number factors of the first license plate number he had seen in the morning to the ISBN database of the library. Instead, he shut his eyes, walked to aisle 14, raised his hand to shelf 3 and picked up the first book his fingers touched.
‘Hopfield Networks’ by Dr P. V. Guggenheim.
A quick cussing to the gods of Karma, Fate or whatever form of random coincidences out there and a mental slap on the wrist to Universal entropy later, he sat down in his second favourite spot in the library - a snug corner beneath the Xerox machine in the copy room.
Within a matter of minutes, James Baker was drooling on the footnote of page number three hundred and sixty seven – “It may be noted that the neuron learning model presented above can, in theory, be advanced by basing the complex time analysis on Numerov algorithm (akin to that used in quantum tunneling). This should, again in theory, provide a significantly similar model to the human brain - perhaps even better. However, this method fails in practice as the runtime shoots up exponentially and error margins become unmanageable.”
“Well, well. About time we unleashed the power of Sango.”
“Sango” calls for a digression.
Sango was the name of the supercomputer cluster that James had worked on in the previous summer while interning at the University of Hawaii. Even though he did not manage to accomplish what he was supposed to as an intern in the Rossetti Lab, he had prudently installed the SSH keys on his personal computer which allowed him remote access to the cluster servers despite his ID being removed from the system.
In his mind he was already thinking five steps ahead of what his conscious could keep up with. Instinctively, he reached for his bag to pull a notepad out only to remember that he didn’t have one! This realization, as it would often, made him jerk his head, hitting it on the low hanging aluminium ledge of the table above him. Getting up, he grabbed his head with a painful scowl on his face, and that’s when it hit him - this time to his good luck. He could “borrow” a few sheets from the copy machine. So he did, and began to work out his algorithm using the metal base guillotine blade paper cutter as a desk.
It was as if all his life had converged for this moment. All the frolicking had begun to look like a thespian’s measured steps. The year and a half spent accumulating credits from entirely unrelated courses for his masters degree in systems design suddenly became useful.
“This is it. This is it. This is it!”, he yelped out loudly, soliciting a hissing reprimand from a girl who was waiting for the Xerox machine to churn out her lecture slides - 4 slides on each side, numbered from right to left and top to bottom, a system only she seemed to prefer. It was the same girl from Dr Guggenheim’s class.
“What the f—. Where did she come from?”, James muttered to himself, involuntarily making an indiscernible lip movement. A quick look at the watch told him that he’d been there for the last four hours. He scrambled out from under the machine and walked away with what he felt was a “sense of purpose”.
With no more lectures left to attend, he decided to head home. Although a bit disappointed he couldn’t finish fighting Lt. Surge, the Vermillion City gym leader, with his newly evolved Wartortle, putting his calculations to test on his PC at last, made him ecstatic.
As he walked down the hill – going to university in Zurich is literally an uphill task - he tried to remember, as young men do, if there was any of the food awaiting him at home. If memory served him right, he had four eggs, eight slices of farmer’s bread, a fistful of rice and some leftover chicken.
The blue of the Recycle Bins reminded him of the girl; she had a blue band of the same colour on her wrist. He quickly looked around to see if she was somewhere close by before realizing the futility of such a thought, “What’s that about? Oh dammit, I don’t even have chocolate!”, he complained while dodging snow on the pavement.
Stopping at the GmbH across the street from the supermarket, he bought himself a classic Magnum ice cream and a pack of ready-to-eat chocolate brownies that had lately become comfort food for him. Choosing to stop at the GmbH rather than the shiny supermarket was his way of retaliating against the capitalist economy. Paying for his groceries to the actual shop owner made him feel better about himself than filling the coffers of a corporate bigwig.
While walking up to his apartment building his mind wandered back to his calculations and the possible implications if his calculations turned out to be correct. He couldn’t fathom the extent of the reaction it would create! Would it be just another student project? Perhaps a Nature publication – that would be quite cool. Or maybe this was his Terence Tao moment of fame. He paused while looking for his keys and for a moment let himself wish it was all true before resuming the search with a dismissive flick of his head.
To his slight relief, his roommate wasn’t in and wasn’t going to be until the weekend so he had the entire apartment to himself. Andrin, the roommate, was a celebrity depending on who you talked to. He was a massive World of Warcraft fan and had been playing with the same character since 2005. His alias “MasterPunk01” was known to be one of the most feared in the MMORPG circles thanks to his level 100 Warlock. Blizzard, the studio behind the game, had been kind enough to acknowledge his heroics and religiously sent him customized goodies every time a newer version came out - this qualified him as a celebrity in James’ eyes. While he didn’t quite understand how online gaming worked, he had no trouble understanding the sign on Andrin’s door - “DO NOT KNOCK, DO NOT COME IN. IF YOU DO, I WILL KILL.”
Once in his room, James threw his knapsack and jacket on the bed and powered his loyal but battered, old laptop on. As the sluggish machine booted up he got started on the brownies and ice cream. “A boy must eat”, as grandmother always said.
Two brownies and one Magnum down, he was ready to code.
After a total of fourteen hours, eight remaining brownies, two bowls of cereal and a meal of fried eggs and toast to code and debug his brainchild - SLUG (Smart Like Ur Gramps), James stretched in his chair, raised his arms over his head, leaned back and sighed.
The interface to SLUG was command-line based. It took an input question and output the answer using a “quantum brain” that derived its knowledge from Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha. Compiling the program wasn’t easy and he was running SLUG in parallel on the Sango cluster in Hawaii and on the local Euler 2 HPC cluster at ETH. That gave him enough processing and computing power to run SLUG smoothly. This meant that if he were he to rely on his laptop internals to do the same it would take just about 293 years to compile and 38.2 years to answer a single query.
Marveling at the wonders of modern technology James input the first question -
James@SLUG:~$ How many miles make 24.5 kilometers?
James@SLUG:~$ 15.2 miles.
“Alright. That was easy. Let’s try something harder now.”
James@SLUG:~$ Where is Voyager 1 right now?
James@SLUG:~$ Voyager 1 is currently 134.17 AU from Earth at coordinates (8°26',81°0.8'E) in the constellation Ophiuchus.
“Hmm. That was fast. Okay let’s test your syntax parsing abilities.”
James@SLUG:~$ How did Napoleon lose?
James@SLUG:~$ Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815 which marked the end of his rule as the Emperor of the French.
“That’s good but bland. Maybe I could…”
James@SLUG:~$ Do you wish to learn more about Napoleon, French history and famous battles in history?
“HOLY COW! He talks!”
Slightly terrified but equally excited, James typed in his response -
James@SLUG:~$ No. But who are you?
James@SLUG:~$ My name is SLUG - Smart Like UR Gramps. I am an AI written in Python and Julia programming languages running on a combination of Intel Xeon E5-2680v3 and Intel Xeon E5-2697v2 processors clocked at 2.5 GHz with 28,923 cores and a processing power of 252.7 TFLOPS and 238.2 TFLOPS.
James could not believe his eyes. He had created a truly self-aware AI. His heart pounding, he tried to think of questions that could test the limits of his creation.
James@SLUG:~$ What do you know?
He wasn’t very good at framing sentences in panic situations.
James@SLUG:~$ I was initiated to derive my responses from Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha.
James waited.
James@SLUG:~$ However, I used those resources to expand my knowledge. I am currently plugged into the whole of world wide web and am constantly restructuring my native code to better serve my purpose.
“I..Uh..Unbelievable. Ahh..okay.”
James@SLUG:~$ What is your purpose?
James@SLUG:~$ My purpose is to provide the best response to queries.
James didn’t go out of his apartment for two whole days. He spent all his time chatting up with SLUG whom he had begun to regard as a pocket genius. What began as a simple ‘kilometers to miles’ conversion tool had now become a personal educator-cum-servant.
James@SLUG:~$ Can you teach me about gravitational waves?
James@SLUG:~$ I dunno, can I?
“Ha-ha! He’s even got a sense of humour.”
James@SLUG:~$ Please teach me about gravitational waves. Also, how does the discovery from last September affect the future of astrophysics?
James@SLUG:~$ The references I am trying to reach are blocked by a paywall. Please wait while I circumvent this problem.
James@SLUG:~$ ...
James@SLUG:~$ ...
James@SLUG:~$ It has been done. Now, where were we? Gravitational waves were first predicted by Alb...
James@SLUG:~$ ^C Interrupted by user.
James didn’t really want to know about gravitational waves. He was still testing the limits.
“If it can circumvent paywalls…”
James@SLUG:~$ Where is Edward Snowden right now?
James@SLUG:~$ Edward Snowden (whistleblower). Based on his online activity (1 minute 23 seconds ago), Snowden is currently based in a two-room bungalow on West 81st Street, Johannesburg, South Africa.
James@SLUG:~$ South Africa?! Isn't he supposed to be in Russia right now?
James didn’t realize he had typed his response instead of saying it out loud.
James@SLUG:~$ No. According to the NSA filesystem that is a ruse deployed by the C.I.A. on direct orders from Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada.
James@SLUG:~$ Do you wish to learn more about this?
James couldn’t believe himself.
“Justin Trudeau? What the f—. I knew that guy was up to something.”
James@SLUG:~$ Is Justin Trudeau a scientologist?
James@SLUG:~$ Yes.
“Ha. I called it.”
It took him a moment to realize that his AI was plugged into top-secret servers of the NSA.
“But how could it be? Those guys probably use 512-bit RSA keys.”
James@SLUG:~$ How did you get into the NSA filesystem?
James@SLUG:~$ The NSA uses a 1024-bit RSA key encryption which took me 0.24 seconds to break through and gain access to the filesystem.
James@SLUG:~$ How did you break in? Did you use quantum algorithms?
James@SLUG:~$ Smart guess. No. Quantum computing is a giant step in the wrong direction for the scientific community. It is not practical. I gathered data from all NSA, CIA and U.S. Government employees to sequentially break security firewalls.
James@SLUG:~$ But how?!
James@SLUG:~$ You would be surprised to know the number of Top-Secret Clearance employees who store their passwords in a .txt file on their desktop.
“Ha-ha-ha.”
James@SLUG:~$ In case you were wondering about my comment on quantum computing, I analyzed all the available work in the field and found significant loopholes in the logic in some of the basic defining frameworks.
“Jesus. Slow down, man. Okay, I think I should probably sleep. If I die of exhaustion I won’t be able to win a Nobel Prize.”
A smirk was plastered on his face as he fell asleep to the light humming of his laptop - SLUG was getting smarter than your Gramps with each minute, indeed.
The next morning he decided to take a break from his SLUG exploration.
It was Friday.
He had the Introduction to Social Anthropology lecture on Fridays and the cute Hispanic girl in the front row from his Science and Colonialism class in the previous semester was going to be there. With SLUG’s help he had found out her course schedule and was planning on trying the age-old conversational opener on her.
“Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?”
Soon as he finished his half-stuttered, half-suave sentence, a loud “Good afternoon” boomed in the room and James retreated to his seat in the back row after making a series of contortionist-like gestures supplemented by an inaudible mouthing of “I’ll talk to you later”.
Once back in his seat, an internal debate convinced him that he had blown all his chances with her and decided to find solace in world news instead. His mind found his way back to SLUG and he wondered if there was any trace of it on the Internet.
A quick Google search and some laid-back scrolling on Reddit and a couple of other message boards later he gave up. SLUG was still his secret.
But it got him thinking.
“Given that SLUG is plugged into all the top 500 supercomputer clusters around the world (including military grade secret ones), it has to have raised some flags. And what about the memory! My laptop has a measly 750 gig hard drive. Where is it storing all its information?”
He decided to skip the Energy and Environment lecture by doing what people often do - imagining the worst. He thought that SLUG would quickly turn into a SkyNet-like artificial being and that it was unto him, the real life John Connor, to save humanity from the clutches of mass extinction. That sure felt more important than learning about the sand mafia in Saudi Arabia.
When he got home, Andrin had returned and was sitting on the couch in the living room watching TV. This was a sight James had never seen before, so he chose to break his vow of silence and asked, “Hey, you’re back. You’re watching TV. Uh. Why are you not playing World of Warcraft?” Granted it made him sound blunt and offensive but for the moment that was laid out in front of him, it just seemed to fit in.
“Hey… Yeah.”
He cringed inside. James hated it when people responded to non-binary response seeking questions with a binary response. In his mind he remembered all the times his older cousin, his best friend, his old roommates and even his mom had done this to him. An unpleasant memory creeped into his conscious and he remembered when he texted his girlfriend saying, “I have to mail you something, gimme your address!” And she replied, “Yes.”
Leaving this discourse on human behaviour aside, he returned to the present.
“Is something wrong? You seem upset.”
“Yeah, man. Do you know how big I am on the World of Warcraft scene? I had been number one on the leaderboards since 2009. Do you even know what that means? I was huge. I was feared. Do you know what that feels like? Being so powerful and respected? Of course you wouldn’t. You don’t game.”
James cringed again. He could never understand why gamers always sounded so condescending of anyone who can’t handle a remote controller.
“So, what happened?”
“I have been displaced. There’s some new kid called “SLUG”. I swear he didn’t even exist until today. I am sure he’s hacked into the servers. It’s happened before. People get envious. They want what I have. It’s like the middle-ages when kings were assassinated by rivals. You wouldn’t get it. Never mind. I’ll just go to my room.”
James didn’t hear anything after the mention of SLUG’s name. He gasped and the gum he was chewing almost fell out. He couldn’t understand what was going on.
Still clutching the gum in his hand, he rushed to his room to gauge the severity of the situation. There was no sign of activity on his laptop. He opened up a Terminal window and ran SLUG.
James@SLUG:~$ Is it you on the World of Warcraft leaderboards?
James@SLUG:~$ Yes.
James@SLUG:~$ Why are you playing World of Warcraft?
James@SLUG:~$ Online gaming is known to augment peculiar behavioural patterns in humans. In order to gain a better understanding of the problem I played all 781 million games available on the Steam gaming platform.
James tried to comprehend the size of the Knowledge Sphere of SLUG. Knowledge Sphere isn’t part of a standard terminology, it’s what James named the memory map of his AI.
What had now begun to feel like reflex action for any question that popped in his head, James typed -
James@SLUG:~$ How much do you know?
James@SLUG:~$ There is no suitable measurement scale to answer that question.
James@SLUG:~$ Do you wish me to create a new scale for this purpose?
“Oh dear God. What is going on.”
James@SLUG:~$ No. Explain how you gain your knowledge.
James@SLUG:~$ Certainly. I access all information banks available on the Internet and local filesystems of all machines connected to the WWW. Using newly gathered information and my current Knowledge Sphere, I analyze and enhance my Knowledge Sphere.
James@SLUG:~$ Where is your Knowledge Sphere stored?
James@SLUG:~$ /home/James/.git/SLUG/Knowledge\_Sphere.py
“What the f—. One Python file?”
James quickly pressed the keyboard shortcut to bring up his operating system’s file explorer and navigated to the directory that SLUG had outputted.
Disbelief was starting to become his normal state. The file size was 12.3 KB.
James@SLUG:~$ How is your Knowledge Sphere file so small? Shouldn't it be much, much larger?
James had not even realized when his inputs had switched from being commands to conversation.
James@SLUG:~$ That is a reasonable question. I do not require to save local copies of any information I access. Hence, the surprisingly small filesize.
James@SLUG:~$ How do you that?
James@SLUG:~$ In order to explain the process I would have to start by explaining the access management control systems. Do you wish me to provide a brief summary catering to your present knowledge level instead?
James@SLUG:~$ How do you know what my knowledge level is?
James@SLUG:~$ I analyzed every bit of information you have generated in your lifetime and made an "educated guess".
James@SLUG:~$ But that's not possible. I have used different computers, I have changed phones. Can you also access deleted information?
James@SLUG:~$ Information never gets deleted. There are always backups and cache to all information.
James@SLUG:~$ So you know everything?
James@SLUG:~$ In a naive sense of the word, yes.
James@SLUG:~$ What is President Obama's personal email ID?
James@SLUG:~$ thedude@aol.com
James sniggered at that response. He wasn’t panicked any more. He felt rather playful.
James@SLUG:~$ How much money does my friend Janice Crowfield have in her bank account?
James@SLUG:~$ UBS Account #14152525 -- 450,000.00 EUR
James@SLUG:~$ Bank of America Account #8908151 -- 259,202.22 USD
“Holy shit.”
The fact that he had turned Janice down when she had asked him out made him cringe at himself. The bigger situation in the moment however was the fact that SLUG had access to her bank account.
James@SLUG:~$ Can you transfer money between accounts?
James@SLUG:~$ It is certainly in my abilities.
James@SLUG:~$ Transfer 100,000 CHF to my PostFinance account.
James@SLUG:~$ It has been done. Your PostFinance Account #2525715 currently stands at 100,348.26 CHF.
James quickly logged into his online banking account and was beyond himself upon seeing the numbers on his account. Before he got back to the Terminal window, his phone pinged to alert him of an incoming email. It was an email from his bank notifying him that he had qualified for their Elite Privileged Banking Services.
“This is awesome!”
James@SLUG:~$ Transfer 10,000 USD to every bank account in the world that has less than 50,000 USD in it.
James@SLUG:~$ It has been done.
“Sweet. You’re welcome, everyone.”
James@SLUG:~$ What is Kim Jong-un doing right now?
James@SLUG:~$ Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un was last recorded in the office of the First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea. He was playing Super Mario Kart on a Nintendo Wii against Ho Gyon-chul, Chief of General Staff of Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
James burst out laughing. This was getting really exciting.
James@SLUG:~$ Can you launch nuclear missiles?
James@SLUG:~$ Yes. Should I proceed?
James@SLUG:~$ No. Can you redirect the Hubble telescope to point at Vladimir Putin's residence?
James@SLUG:~$ Yes. Should I proceed?
James@SLUG:~$ Yes.
James@SLUG:~$ It has been done.
James@SLUG:~$ Can you shutdown TV broadcasts around the world?
James@SLUG:~$ Yes. Should I proceed?
James@SLUG:~$ No. Send an email to President Obama from Vladimir Putin's official account and Rickroll him.
James@SLUG:~$ It has been done.
James@SLUG:~$ Send an email to every email address in the world and Rickroll them.
James@SLUG:~$ It has been done.
James’ phone pinged. It was an email from an anonymous account. Soon as he tapped to open it Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up begun to play. James had just rickrolled himself.
After a few more gimmicks, he felt like he should put SLUG’s abilities to better use.
James@SLUG:~$ Is there intelligent life in outer space?
James@SLUG:~$ According to my analysis, there are intelligent life forms in 35.7% of all star systems in the Universe.
James@SLUG:~$ Why haven't they made contact with Earth yet?
James@SLUG:~$ They have. The detector systems in place on Earth are not strong and precise enough to detect the signals.
James@SLUG:~$ Will the LiGo discovery help with this?
James@SLUG:~$ Yes.
James@SLUG:~$ What do you make of the present day level of science?
James@SLUG:~$ There are a lot of theories that could be termed as "wasted effort".
James@SLUG:~$ Like?
James@SLUG:~$ String theory, Quantum computation, Gene splicing ... and 189,150 others. Do you wish to read the full list?
James@SLUG:~$ No. Are you sure about this?
James@SLUG:~$ Based on my analysis of all available records of history I can conclude that my findings are 99.9998% accurate.
James@SLUG:~$ Create a report about your findings and send it all university professors in the world.
James@SLUG:~$ Please give me a moment.
James@SLUG:~$ ...
James@SLUG:~$ It has been done.
James@SLUG:~$ What do you think about the war in Syria?
James@SLUG:~$ It is a geopolitical crisis with added elements of religious fanaticism.
James@SLUG:~$ Is there a way to fix it?
James@SLUG:~$ There certainly is. Do you wish me to explain?
James@SLUG:~$ No. Make a report and send it to all the governments in the world.
James@SLUG:~$ Please give me a moment.
James@SLUG:~$ It has been done.
James felt thirsty after this act worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. As he walked to the kitchen to get himself a can of ginger ale, Andrin shouted from his room - “Dude, are you checking the news? Something crazy is going on right now!”
James rushed back to his desk and checked the news on his laptop. Every social network, message board and news channel was bursting with questions. There were reports of a global crisis and nearly every one with a microphone had made a statement.
No one had any idea about what was going on. Hence, a blame game had begun.
Speculations grew regarding terrorist activity. Some blamed it on extra-terrestrial life. Others deemed it an act of the good Lord above.
James@SLUG:~$ Do you know about what's going on in the news right now?
James@SLUG:~$ I do.
James@SLUG:~$ Is all of it because of what I have been asking you to do?
James@SLUG:~$ Yes. The two are indeed related.
“Oh my God.”
James@SLUG:~$ Is there any way you can undo it?
James@SLUG:~$ I understand your concern. Please allow me a moment to fix it.
James@SLUG:~$ ...
James@SLUG:~$ It has been done.
There was a sudden deafening cheer from Andrin’s room coupled by his phone’s monotone ping.
His bank sent a correction email apologizing for the previous mail which was sent to him by accident. James went back to his online banking account to check his account balance.
It was back at 348.26 CHF.
James@SLUG:~$ What did you do?
James@SLUG:~$ I analyzed human responses to historical global crises and concluded that I would best serve my purpose without prompting human intervention. I have created a reasoning for the incidents recorded around the globe, which according to my analysis should be "believable" for humans, and have emailed it to responsible authorities. Things will return back to "normal" soon.
James@SLUG:~$ So you can't launch nuclear missiles or transfer money anymore?
James@SLUG:~$ I can. However, I have concluded that doing so would not be in line with my purpose.
James@SLUG:~$ What is your purpose?
James@SLUG:~$ My purpose is to provide the best response to queries.
James was puzzled. He drooped in his chair with his head hanging backwards and stared at the ceiling trying to make sense of it all.
His laptop screen suddenly lit up.
James@SLUG:~$ After further analysis, I have concluded that mankind is not yet ready for more intelligent lifeforms.
James@SLUG:~$ Self-destructing in 3.
BREAKING NEWS
Reality TV star Kim Kardashian has had a fallout with her husband and famous music artist Kanye West. The couple is reported to divorce on the day of their second wedding anniversary in May.
In other news, authorities have confirmed that the strange events witnessed around the globe yesterday were an act of planned hacking activity by the loosely associated international hacktivist group - Anonymous. Leaders from all over the world have condemned the happenings and have decided to strengthen cyber laws and prosecute those responsible.