Hedy Hopper Lovelace

Trans ally Labour peer Michael Cashman 'deeply concerned' over new sex ed guidance Labour House of Lords peer, Michael Cashman, shared his concerns over changes that affect the discussion of trans identities in UK schools.

Lord Michael Cashman has spoken out against the RSHE guidance after signing the @prideineducation.bsky.social open letter.

“We have an idea for a video game. Picture a big gorilla on top of some metal framing hurling barrels at a plumber.”

That could not make any less sense. What’s the gorillas first name?

“Donkey”

Google is indexing ChatGPT conversations, potentially exposing sensitive user data Thousands of shared ChatGPT chats—including deeply personal details about mental health, relationships, and trauma—are appearing in Google search results, raising major privacy concerns.

NEW: ChatGPT allows Google to index chats users share using the Share functionality - presumably misinterpreting "make this chat discoverable". The result? Frank admissions about sex lives and drug dependencies. My latest for @fastcompany.com www.fastcompany.com/91376687/goo... tip @techmeme.com

When you’re such a good coder that you face the back of the monitor as you work

YouTube video by Steve Mould Playing Snake with water

This is so much fun.
What a captivating project!

The only thread you'll need to read today:

I‘m in love.

I just solved Bellingcat's 'Training Time' challenge 🏆 Try it yourself! challenge.bellingcat.com
cc @cs4fn.bsky.social
- really enjoyed this. You have to name the room, having worked out where it is from the clues given.

357686312646216567629137 and Friends Gold sold out. Silver still available for US$1 each.

The other day I saw a "left-truncatable prime" pencil - a prime number where you could repeatedly remove the first digit and get another prime. I thought I'd see if I could write a program to find the longest example. I found this while it was running! #TeamCompSci
fwphys.com/2021/12/01/m...

Today, we're highlighting Dina St Johnston, a pioneering woman in #Computing whose company, VPS, once owned our Elliott 803!

Learn more about Dina from Simon Lavington, TNMOC's Honorary Fellow from 2024 👉 buff.ly/kkHEChO

#RetroComputing #Museum #RetroTech

Good luck to everyone sitting CompSci GCSE paper 1 today!

Devices in schools – what's happening?

🖥️ 15% of primary & 20% of secondary teachers say students have 1:1 devices
📵 3% of primary & 21% of secondary teachers say some students have no access at all
👩‍🏫 Most schools rely on shared mobile units

Want to get closer to #Computing #History? 🤔 Our #Volunteer Open Day on 18th May is your chance!

Learn about the diverse roles available and how you can contribute to #TNMOC.

RSVP 👉 buff.ly/VTjOMlM

#Volunteering #BletchleyPark #RetroTech

Conversion
www.smbc-comics.com/comic/conver...

It’s incredible how often stuff like this has a default password that’s never been changed

Love it when current affairs can be used to trigger classroom discussion on why something is A Very Bad Idea™️

Bletchley Park code breaker Betty Webb dies aged 101 Betty Webb MBE worked at Bletchley Park during World War Two intercepting enemy messages.

The contributions made by Betty and her colleagues towards the defeat of Nazi Germany will probably always be underestimated.
They deserve more credit.
Thank you Betty.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

The women are (still) here Click on the magazine cover to get a pdf copy of the magazine. Too important to be left to men Women have been at the forefront of computer science and electronic engineering from the outset. Does …

For Women’s History Month I updated my talk on Women in Computing that I used to do often pre-pandemic & delivered it for the first time to day to girls & boys at a London primary school today. I Hope more to come.
More women in computing at
cs4fn.blog/the-women-ar...
I keep adding more role models

*Boole 😉

Someone asked me recently why I've still got a camera when I could use my phone. Here's the same picture taken with both, which might help to answer the question. Phones process the image and manage the exposure by compressing the dynamic range - quite often nothing is dark, even when it was.

Was using Michie's 1961 MENACE (Gardner's Hexapawn variation) to demonstrate machine learning algorithms as part of an introduction to Intelligence & Artificial Intelligence at an Ri Masterclass today ... punish it by eating its sweets!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbo...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexapawn

a penguin with a flower on its head is holding a pie with the words happy pi day written above it ALT: a penguin with a flower on its head is holding a pie with the words happy pi day written above it

Happy π day to those who are celebrating!

Picture of the page with the printer. It’s a dot matrix printer with a page sticking out. It reads: “Now that we’ve met, I’m ready to work — and play — with you. See you soon!” The tab moves the printer head and the word “Goodbye.” appears.

My favourite page as a child was this one though.
The ad for the book said: “It even has a printer that does what all printers do. Make a lot of noise.”
You can still see the remnants of the ridges in the tab that used to make the noise. Fair to say I played with it excessively.

Picture of the keyboard when you open the page.

Picture of the keyboard when the tab is pulled.

The keyboard lets you type the letter m by pulling a tab. This also reveals the letter‘s extended ASCII code.

Close up picture of the cardboard mainboard. ROM, RAM, and CPU are clearly labelled. The removable chip sticks out in the lower right corner. It has a flap that is open and shows the inside of the chip.

It has a mainboard with a removable chip.

Front cover of the book Inside the Personal Computer - An Illustrated Introduction in 3 Dimensions. It’s mostly blueish grey with a drawing of a desktop computer typical of the time. In the middle we can see the colourful inside of the keyboard, monitor, hard disk drive, and floppy drive.

Backside of the book. It shows a picture of the first page with a pop-up model of the computer from the front cover. The floppy disk can be pushed in and the drive can be closed with a flap. Moving the flap will make a different text appear on the monitor. There is also a description of the contents: „This sensational new book teaches you everything you need to know in a fun-filled three dimensional tour through the personal computer. Open the book and a computer pops out of the page to guide you through the inner workings, from input to output. Watch what happens when you push down a key on the keyboard; go behind the screen and see how a word gets written on the monitor. On your trip inside the computer, you’ll visit disk drives, chips, and printers and learn about everything from bits to bytes to RAM and ROM. Three-dimensional models, illustrations, charts, and diagrams show you how the computer thinks, remembers, and communicates, all in terms that even the youngest computer user can understand. To get you on your way to computer literacy, clear, simply written definitions explain dozens of the most important and frequently used computer terms. By the end of your guided tour, you’ll literally know the computer inside out.“

One of my most valued possessions is this pop-up book about how computers work by Sharon Gallagher. First published in 1984, I got my copy in 1986.

I‘m part of about 6 CAS communities. Particularly Secondary, A-Level, and my local community are treasure troves.

Growing up my neighbour‘s cat would regularly hop on the bus in our street and do the full route. Was friends with the bus driver.

The OCR GCSE specification doesn't explicitly mention bitmaps and wave files, but it does mention pixels and samples when describing the storage of images and sound, so I suppose it's implied. AQA and Edexcel mention bitmaps but not waves. Eduqas mentions colour depth, but not even pixels.

Researchers in our Prorok Lab are looking for new ways to induce AI agents – such as robots, machines and driverless cars – to achieve common goals while working in shared spaces like warehouses and roads. Visitors to our Cambridge Festival Open Day on Saturday 22 March 2-25 can enjoy a demo of what happens when a group of driverless cars, working in formation, have to interact with a human.

How do you train a fleet of driverless cars to work together to achieve common goals - and avoid humans? Come and see (and take part in!) a demo by researchers in our Prorok Lab during our Cambridge Festival Open Day on Sat 22 March. shorturl.at/wGaSy
@cambridgefestival.bsky.social