December 2015 News Wire
Image by NASA/JPL
Interesting stories about computer science, software programming, and technology found online since the last issue of the magazine.
Tinkercad 3D Printing Tutorial: How to Create Your First 3D Print
https://i.materialise.com/blog/tinkercad-3d-printing-tutorial
Recreate a 140-Year-Old Brushless Motor on a 3D Printer
http://makezine.com/projects/recreate-a-140-year-old-brushless-motor-on-a-3d-printer/
Hackers can hijack Wi-Fi Hello Barbie to spy on your children
Inside the VTech hack that jeopardized data of more than 200,000 kids
Data stolen includes children’s names, gender, and birthdates as well as parent’s home addresses and access information.
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/11/28/inside-the-vtech-hack-that-jeopardized-data-of-more-than-200000-kids/
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/one-of-the-largest-hacks-yet-exposes-data-on-hundreds-of-thousands-of-kids
http://www.troyhunt.com/2015/11/when-children-are-breached-inside.html
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hacker-obtained-childrens-headshots-and-chatlogs-from-toymaker-vtech
Refugees in Berlin create online map of essential resources for new arrivals
This 11-year-old is selling cryptographically secure passwords for $2 each
YouTube’s Grand Plan to Make Virtual Reality (VR) Accessible to Everybody
http://www.wired.com/2015/11/youtube-360-virtual-reality-video/
NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory Education Site Relaunched
New website makes it easy for teachers (and students and parents) to learn about engineering and space sciences.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/
Are You Wasting Your Money at Coding Boot Camp?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-10/are-you-wasting-your-money-at-coding-boot-camp-
Open source projects rely on donated time—what motivates participants?
Visual Studio now supports debugging Linux apps; Code editor now open source
Why is wireless charging taking so long to arrive?
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/has-wireless-charging-finally-gone-mainstream/
Goodbye apps, hello smart agents: Are you ready for the post-app world?
Analyzing 1.1 Billion NYC Taxi and Uber Trips, with a Vengeance
http://toddwschneider.com/posts/analyzing-1-1-billion-nyc-taxi-and-uber-trips-with-a-vengeance/
Graph-theory breakthrough tantalizes mathematicians
http://www.nature.com/news/graph-theory-breakthrough-tantalizes-mathematicians-1.18801
The Great Robot Showdown- Ollie vs. Sphero vs. Dash
http://colleengraves.org/2015/11/19/the-great-robot-showdown-ollie-vs-sphero-vs-dash/
The Unsettling Future of Facial Recognition
http://petapixel.com/2015/11/12/the-unsettling-future-of-facial-recognition/
How Machine Learning Works (according to Google)
http://marketingland.com/how-machine-learning-works-150366
http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/
http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/search/label/Machine%20Learning
http://research.google.com/pubs/ArtificialIntelligenceandMachineLearning.html
https://youtu.be/l95h4alXfAA
Author
Also In The December 2015 Issue
The history of an egg shaped outdoor sculpture made of electronic parts in Palo Alto, California.
Use a software app to invent neat things by mixing SAM wireless blocks. No wires and no code needed.
How to Build a Computer
Building your own computer is a great way to not only save money, and get more processing power, but also to learn about the less obvious parts of software programming.
We might think robots are a modern invention. But al-Jazari created amazing automatons in the thirteenth century. Today we would call him a maker.
The Google Cardboard project is a fun way to experience virtual reality with your phone and software apps.
Sumobots smash into each other and can be a fun project to create. Free plans are online. Upload your plan to services which send you the parts.
How our all girls high school robotics team designed then built a robot to compete in FIRST competitions next year.
This key part of electronics projects turns out to be easy to understand. Learn about breadboards by building a simple LED project with a 9V battery.
Learn more than a language. Learn skills you need to use the language. Options to suit the way you learn best.
Use dice from a board game or toy store to create difficult to crack passwords and phrases that you can remember.
Learning how to make, track, and complete goals also helps with school projects and personal projects.
An essay from the 1990s explores how software can be built like a cathedral or in groups like a bazaar.
The Clojure programming language provides the simplicity of a Lisp programming language with the ability to run in the Java Virtual Machine (JVM).
Beyond Microsoft Windows and Mac OSX there are many Linux operating systems used by programmers daily and built as open source.
Interesting stories about computer science, software programming, and technology found online since the last issue of the magazine.
Links from the bottom of all the December 2015 articles, collected in one place for you to print, share, or bookmark.
