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Education

Submission + - Novel ways to teach computer science to children 1

Submitted by lazarus42
lazarus42 writes: I have the opportunity to teach a small number of very bright children (around age 10) who are being home tutored computer science and IT. The desire is not to focus on products but on concepts and their practical implementation in an engaging way. One idea is to take the approach in 'Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles' by Nisan and Schocken and devise a set of simpler activities paralleling those in the book (which is targeted at university undergrad level). Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions how to bring computer science to life for kids?
Technology

Submission + - RFID Keeps Track of Briefcase Contents (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by
garthsundem
garthsundem writes: "Dubai researchers recently published the details of their iPurse — an RFID system built on a mobile platform that uses mini tags to keep track of the contents of a bag. Tag your keys, wallet, smartphone, work ID, laptop and headphones and get an alert is one's missing. Science Daily also points out you could uses iPurse to discover if someone boosts your diary or a pack of cigarettes from your bag."
Idle

Submission + - Mathematical parrot reveals his genius with posthumous paper (nature.com)

Submitted by ananyo
ananyo writes: Even in death, the world’s most accomplished parrot continues to amaze. The final experiments involving Alex – a grey parrot trained to count objects – have just been published. They show that Alex could accurately add together Arabic numerals to a sum of eight and three sets of objects, putting his mathematical abilities on par with (and maybe beyond) those of chimpanzees and other non-human primates (abstract http://www.springerlink.com/content/q08n44457x236ln6/).
Privacy

Submission + - Anonymous Cowards, Deanonymized (33bits.org) 1

Submitted by mbstone
mbstone writes: Arvind Narayanan writes: What if authors can be identified based on nothing but a comparison of the content they publish to other web content they have previously authored? Naryanan has a new paper to be presented at the 33rd IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy. Just as individual telegraphers could be identified by other telegraphers from their "fists," Naryanan posits that an author's habitual choices of words, such as, for example, the frequency with which the author uses "since" as opposed to "because," can be processed through an algorithm to identify the author's writing. Fortunately, and for now, manually altering one's writing style is effective as a countermeasure.

Comment Chat with reCaptcha Creator (Score 1) 109

by garthsundem (#39105709) Attached to: Researchers Break Video CAPTCHAs
I got to chat with Luis von Ahn, co-creator of the Captcha and reCaptcha, and it turns out he's a surprisingly idealistic guy. Taking inspiration from people in gyms pedaling and going nowhere, he hoped to actually *do* something with the brainpower needed to solve a reCaptcha (he said something along the lines of, "actually your brain is doing a pretty amazing thing -- translating an image to text.") Maybe digitizing the archives of the New York Times and ancient manuscripts isn't world hunger or world peace, but it's pretty damn cool. And as you probably know, that's what you're helping to do every time you translate a word in a reCaptcha box.
Science

Submission + - Open Source vs. Academic Journal Publishing (www.cbc.ca) 1

Submitted by
garthsundem
garthsundem writes: "Academic publisher Elsevier is the target of a growing boycott over high fees charged to scientific researchers/authors who pay Elsevier and others to print their findings. Does this ensure quality control or does it ball-gag the dissemination of knowledge? Is there a better way? Here's the CBC news headline: About 6,000 medical and science researchers have boycotted one of the world's largest academic publishers over its fees and its alleged push against open access to published research."
Twitter

Submission + - Kenyan chief foils robbery via Twitter (cnn.com)

Submitted by PolygamousRanchKid
PolygamousRanchKid writes: A Kenyan chief in a town far from the bustling capital foiled a predawn robbery recently using Twitter, highlighting the far-reaching effects of social media in areas that don't have access to the Internet. Chief Francis Kariuki said he got a call in the dead of the night that thieves had broken into a neighbor's house. Local residents, who subscribe to his tweets through a free text messaging service, jumped into action. They surrounded the house, sending the thugs fleeing into the night.

In the town 100 miles from Nairobi, a majority of residents don't have access to computers, the Internet or smart phones. The sporadic cyber cafes strewn across the landscape charge for Internet access. However, almost every household has a cell phone and text messages are a major form of communication in the nation.
Encryption

Submission + - John Nash's declassified 1955 letter to the NSA (wordpress.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: In 1955, John Nash sends an amazing letter to the NSA in order to support an encryption design that he suggested. In it he no less than anticipates computational complexity theory as well as modern cryptography.

In the letter he proposes that the security of encryption can be based on computational hardness and makes the distinction between polynomial time and exponential time: "So a logical way to classify enciphering processes is by the way in which the computation length for the computation of the key increases with increasing length of the key. This is at best exponential and at worst probably at most a relatively small power of r, ar^2 or ar^3, as in substitution ciphers.
Science

Submission + - 64-fold growth for scientific research for past 3 decades (googleusercontent.com)

Submitted by Taco Cowboy
Taco Cowboy writes: Thomson Reuters indexes scientific papers from 10,500 journals worldwide, analysed the performance of four emerging markets countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China, over the past 30 years.

China’s growth had put it in second place to the US – and if it continues on its trajectory it will be the largest producer of scientific knowledge by 2020.

The figures show not only the expansion of Chinese science but also a very powerful performance by Brazil, much slower growth in India and relative decline in Russia.

Brazil has also been building up a formidable research effort, particularly in agricultural and life sciences. In 1981 its output of scientific papers was one-seventh that of India; by 2008 it had almost caught up with India.
Science

Submission + - Texting Hurts Ability to Decode New Words (sciencedaily.com)

Submitted by
garthsundem
garthsundem writes: "Does text messaging make texters more accepting of non-traditional language? Actually, the reverse is true. According to this University of Calgary study, texters lose the ability to infer meaning from words they haven't seen before. (Okay, it's a Masters thesis — but it's still pretty compelling.) In contrast, when presented with unfamiliar words, consumers of traditional media applied more sophisticated strategies to "decode" meaning. The study attributes this to more frequently coming across creative, unfamiliar words in traditional media. In contrast, texters stick to their sad little lexicons — and refuse to accept anything else."

Submission + - Buddhafy - Control a Spotify playlist with your brain (youtube.com)

Submitted by
ocelma
ocelma writes: "Control a Spotify playlist with your brain.

It uses a NeuroSky MindWave controller to track Alpha Waves in your brain (roughly corresponding to being in a relaxed/meditative state), and according to these values, it control the next song that plays in Spotify!

If you manage to achieve a highly meditative state, you'll be rewarded with good music: usually a calm, relaxing tune by one of your favorite artists from last.fm. If you lose focus and your meditation level drops, you'll be hit with some of the top-100 worst songs ever recorded!
So keep it chill, dude!

This hack was implemented in 24h. at MusicHackDay, San Francisco, on 2012/02/11-12"

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