Month: December 2021

Super Computer’s
Best First Chess Move

The Sesse Super Computer runs automated analysis on interesting high-level chess events, in real-time, such as the World Championships.

 

Super Computer Hardware

While its computing power varies, on December 29, 2021, during the 2021 World Chess Championship, Sesse was the following:

That’s 336 computing cores!  Each running at 2.0 GHz.

 

Starting Chess Position

Interestingly, during the FIDE World Rapid & Blitz Chess Championship in Warshaw 2021, while waiting for a blitz match between Magnus Carlsen and Klementy Sychev, the computer analyzed the starting position:

Sesse analysis on the starting position

It analyzed this for 1 hour 24 minutes, computing 328,179,236 nodes per second (recall that Deep Blue, with its 256 custom build chess chips, could compute 200,000,000 per second during the middle game), for a total of 1,660,504,563,547 nodes (that’s 1.6 trillion nodes!), to a depth of 70 ply (75 selective):

Principal variation for starting position, along with alternate moves.

Analysis snapshot was taken at Wednesday, ‎December ‎29, ‎2021, ‏‎11:31 AM AST.

 

Principal Variation

Analysis from the 336 x 2.0GHz Intel Ice Lake SP (OpenMPI):

Score: +0.25
PV: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. O-O Nxe4 5. Re1 Nd6 6. Nxe5 Be7 7. Bf1 Nxe5 8. Rxe5 O-O 9 d4 Bf6 10. Re1 Re8 11. Bf4 Rxe1 12. Qxe1 Ne8 13 c3 d5 14. Bd3 g6 15. Nd2 Ng7 16. Qe2 Be6 17. Nf3 Bg4 18. h3 Bxf3 19. Qxf3 Ne6 20. Be3 Bg5 21. Re1 c6 22. g3 Bxe3 23. Rxe3 Qd7 24. Qe2 Re8 25. a4 Qd8 26. Kg2 h5 27. a5 Ng7 28. Rxe8+ Nxe8 29. Qe5 Kf8 30. b4

This position results at the end of the principal variation:

End of principal variation of Sesse analysis on starting position.

 

Alternate First Moves

The following are all 20 potential first chess moves, using Multi-PV analysis, computed using the lower powered 16 x 4.2GHz AMD Zen 3, which reaches depth 49 and 50.

Interestingly, f4 is not the worst move.  However, it is the first of the negative scores, along with b4, h4, Nh3, Na3, f3, g4.  I guess weakening your King, and moving Knights to the board edges really are bad ideas!

Positive:
e4 +0.41 d50 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. O-O Nxe4 5. Re1 Nd6 6. Nxe5 Nxe5 (…)
g3 +0.23 d50 1. g3 c5 2. c4 Nc6 3. Bg2 g6 4. e3 Bg7 5. Nc3 e6 6. Nge2 Nge7 (…)
d4 +0.22 d50 1. d4 Nf6 2. Bf4 d5 3. e3 e6 4. Nf3 Bd6 5. Bxd6 Qxd6 6. c4 c5 (…)
c4 +0.17 d50 1. c4 Nf6 2. d4 e6 3. g3 Bb4+ 4. Bd2 Be7 5. Bg2 d5 6. Nf3 O-O (…)
Nf3 +0.15 d50 1. Nf3 Nf6 2. d4 e6 3. c4 d5 4. g3 Bb4+ 5. Bd2 Be7 6. Qc2 O-O (…)
e3 +0.12 d50 1. e3 Nf6 2. d4 d5 3. Nf3 e6 4. Bd3 Be7 5. b3 O-O 6. Bb2 b6 (…)

Draw:
Nc3 0.00 d49 1. Nc3 d5 2. d4 Nf6 3. Bf4 e6 4. Nb5 Na6 5. e3 Be7 6. Nf3 O-O (…)
a3 0.00 d50 1. a3 c5 2. e4 g6 3. Nf3 Bg7 4. h3 d6 5. Bb5+ Bd7 6. Bxd7+ Qxd7 (…)
a4 0.00 d49 1. a4 Nf6 2. d4 e6 3 Nf3 c5 4 e3 Nc6 5. Bd3 d5 6. O-O Bd6 (…)
b3 0.00 d50 1. b3 e5 2. Bb2 Nc6 3 e3 Nf6 4 Nf3 e4 5. Nd4 h5 6 c4 Rh6 (…)
c3 0.00 d50 1. c3 e5 2. d4 e4 3 c4 c6 4 Nc3 d5 5 a3 Be7 6 cxd5 cxd5 (…)
d3 0.00 d49 1. d3 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. g3 Nc6 4. d4 Bf5 5. Bg2 e6 6. O-O Nb4 (…)
h3 0.00 d50 1. h3 e5 2. e4 Nf6 3. Nc3 Bb4 4. a3 Ba5 5. Nf3 O-O 6. Bet d6 (…)

Negative:
f4 -0.16 d49 1. f4 d5 2. Nf3 c5 3. g3 Nc6 4. Bg2 e6 5. O-O Be7 6. d3 Nf6 (…)
b4 -0.36 d49 1. b4 e5 2. Bb2 Bxb4 3. Bxe5 Nf6 4. c3 Be7 5. d4 d5 6. Bxf6 Bxf6 (…)
h4 -0.40 d49 1. h4 e5 2. c4 Nf6 3. d3 Bc5 4. e3 Bb6 5. Be2 d6 6. b4 c6 (…)
Nh3 -0.49 d49 1. Nh3 d5 2. d4 Nf6 3. Ng5 c5 4. e3 g6 5. dxc5 Qa5+ 6. c3 Qxc5 (…)
Na3 -0.69 d49 1. Na3 e5 2. Nc4 Nc6 3. e4 Nf6 4. d3 d5 5. exd5 Nxd5 6. Nf3 f6 (…)
f3 -0.74 d49 1. f3 e5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3. e3 d5 4. Bb5 Nf6 5. Nge2 Bd7 6. d3 a6 (…)
g4 -1.51 d49 1. g4 d5 2. e3 Nc6 3 d4 e5 4. Nc3 Be6 5. dxe5 Nxe5 6. h3 h5 (…)

 

2019 Kyosho Ultima
Re-Release

Kyosho Ultima

The original 1/0th scale R/C car, Kyosho Ultima, was released in 1986.  It won the 1/0th scale off-road electric World Championships in 1987.  You can watch a video of it.

Kyosho re-released this model in 2019, Kyosho EP 2WD Kit Ultima (part 30625).  It is the 8th model of the “Kyosho Vintage” re-releases, which is a part of their legendary series.

 

Tools to Build Kyosho Ultima

I bought the following items to help build the Ultima Re-Release, with my review of each.

 

Things Needed to Run Kyosho Ultima

The kit does not come with the following.

I have recommendations for each.

 

Media

Kyosho Ultima website:

Kyosho YouTube:

Windows 10 Finds Trojan
Win32 Sabsik

Scary Virus

I had a scare today.  I sent my brother a C# MonoGame build of my own side project.  We were testing various monitor framerates and resolutions (I have a 240 Hz Alienware laptop, and he has dual 120 Hz monitors).

He found something shocking.  He couldn’t download (via Discord) because Windows Security found Trojan:Win32/Sabsik.TE.A!ml:

Threats found.
Trojan:Win32/Sabsik.TE.A!ml

Sabsik is a pretty nasty virus!

Sabsik executes commands from an attacker.

More details:

Microsoft Security Intelligence:
“This threat can perform a number of actions of a malicious hacker’s choice on your PC.“

Searching for more information did not make me feel better:

Reddit:
“Sabsik can be instructed to download and run additional malware, and it’s possible that more malware is present. Also, it both can and does steal data and credentials (password, login info, etc.) and encrypt data on your computer, and asking for a ransom to decrypt it again, aka ransomware. It usually tries to open a backdoor too, giving the attacker remote access to your computer.“

Yikes.

 

False Positive?

Developers are accustomed to virus scanners finding false positives in their private developer builds.  So, I ran a scan on my own machine, but was shocked that there were no results:

No results.

We were both running Windows 10.  But only one of the two computers was reporting this virus from the same executable.

 

Inconsistent Findings

We tried scanning other builds, and the findings were inconsistent between them.  My computer reported no issues.  My brother’s computer reported Sabsik for some and not for others.  Since I am not building an executable with the virus inside of it, I thought maybe it was attaching itself to it after the build from discovering the activity on this recently created file, and ignoring older builds that I had not been messing with.

I was now wondering if the virus had compromised my own machine’s ability to virus scan.

 

Windows Security Update Failure

We thought what could be different from the two computers, so we decided to check the Windows Security versions.  They were different!  Mine had updated within the hour, and my brother’s only updated 6 hours ago.

After updating both machines to the latest version:

Windows Security version 1.355.417.0

The scan results disappeared.

A Windows Security update introduced this false positive, scaring who knows how many people out there, to be fixed hours later.

 

Further Confirmation

I uploaded my build to Virus Total for a meta scan, which uses several dozen virus scanners.  One had a false positive for a different virus, and the rest showed no results found.  None found Sabsik.