Interesting
Reads – 2018-10-01
Contents
Articles
- Future of Work: Report of the ‘Workshop on the IT/ITeS Sector and the Future of Work in India’
- Why do we have allergies?
- A Visual History of the Future
- 20 web design relics of the old internet
- In 1968, computers got personal: How the ‘mother of all demos’ changed the world
- A decade of commercial space travel – what’s next
- No Cash Needed At This Cafe. Students Pay The Tab With Their Personal Data
- Meet the 10 Year Old Coding Genius Re-inventing the Way AI is Taught
- Netiquette: Definition and 10 Basic Rules To Dramatically Improve your Safety
- How social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump
Events /
Announcements
- ACM India Chennai Professional Chapter Turing Series Talk 13 on "Contributions of Cerf and Kahn"
- SETS - Training Programme on Linux Network Programming in 'C' Language
- SPIN Chennai: Watts Humphrey Awards 2018
- LTC2019 - Library Technology Conclave
- AICTE setting up 4 teacher training academies
========================================================
Articles
Future
of Work: Report of the ‘Workshop on the IT/ITeS Sector and the Future of Work
in India’
This
report provides an overview of the proceedings and outcomes of the Workshop on
the IT/ITeS Sector and the Future of Work in India organised at Omidyar
Networks’ office in Bangalore, on June 29, 2018. The discussion focused on the
reciprocal impact on socio-political dimensions, the structure of employment,
and forms of work within workspaces.
Why do
we have allergies?
Allergies
such as peanut allergy and hay fever make millions of us miserable, but
scientists aren’t even sure why they exist. The author of the post Carl Zimmer
talks to a master immunologist with a controversial answer.
A Visual History of the Future
Skies full of personal flying vehicles, robotic
servants, and mail carriers with jetpacks. Decades ago, artists’ imaginings
formed high expectations about the world to come. Were these just fantasies — or was it the work of pioneers whose visions of the
future actually helped to shape it?
“A Visual History of the Future” will explore how
imagery in advertising, magazines, and other media has been used to inspire,
sell, and build our ideas of the future. We’ll look at everything from the home
to infrastructure to the cities we live in — at ideas that ranged from the insightful to the absurd. And we’ll be
looking at the times in which these images were created: what was happening in
the world that formed “the future” of that time?
When we celebrate progress, we often talk about
scientists, engineers, and designers who developed theories or built tangible
things. Artists are often overlooked, and their contributions — the production, visualization and distribution of
ideas — are less tangible. This
series in five episodes followed by two posts afterword and Future Fragments will
shine a light on these creators and how they reached the audiences of the day.
20 web design relics of the old internet
Eighteen years ago, at the turn of the Millennium,
more people than ever before were buying their first computer with the
expressed goal of getting online, and the internet was beginning to wedge
itself into the flow of everyday life. When I first ventured online during this
great migration, simple activities such as collecting pictures of my favourite
things at the time felt like amazing game changers.
In web design, many of the best practices which
developers now take for granted, such as clean layouts, performant code and a
consideration for the user experience, had yet to reach the mainstream. Most
were figuring it out as they went along, and through trial and error, led the
way towards the internet we know today.
With the dial on our nostalgia goggles set to 11,
let’s look back at some design patterns, functionality, and phenomena of the
day, to see what users of websites and the developers who made them had to
contend with.
You may be surprised how far we’ve come, because
whilst some relics evolved into a modern-day equivalent, others are probably
better left in the past.
In 1968, computers got personal: How the ‘mother of all demos’
changed the world
On a crisp California afternoon in early December
1968, a square-jawed, mild-mannered Stanford researcher named Douglas Engelbart
took the stage at San Francisco’s Civic Auditorium and proceeded to blow
everyone’s mind about what computers could do. Sitting down at a keyboard, this
computer-age Clark Kent calmly showed a rapt audience of computer engineers how
the devices they built could be utterly different kinds of machines – ones that
were “alive for you all day,” as he put it, immediately responsive to your
input, and which didn’t require users to know programming languages in order to
operate.
Engelbart typed simple commands. He edited a grocery
list. As he worked, he skipped the computer cursor across the screen using a
strange wooden box that fit snugly under his palm. With small wheels underneath
and a cord dangling from its rear, Engelbart dubbed it a “mouse.”
The 90-minute presentation went down in Silicon
Valley history as the “mother of all demos,” for it previewed a world of
personal and online computing utterly different from 1968’s status quo. It
wasn’t just the technology that was revelatory; it was the notion that a
computer could be something a non-specialist individual user could control from
their own desk.
A
decade of commercial space travel – what’s next
In
many industries, a decade is barely enough time to cause dramatic change unless
something disruptive comes along – a new technology, business model or service
design. The space industry has recently been enjoying all three.
But
10 years ago, none of those innovations were guaranteed. In fact, on Sept. 28,
2008, an entire company watched and hoped as their flagship product attempted a
final launch after three failures. With cash running low, this was the last
shot. Over 21,000 kilograms of kerosene and liquid oxygen ignited and powered
two booster stages off the launchpad.
No
Cash Needed At This Cafe. Students Pay The Tab With Their Personal Data
Shiru Cafe looks like a regular coffee shop. Inside, machines whir, baristas dispense caffeine and customers hammer away on laptops. But all of the customers are students, and there's a reason for that. At Shiru Cafe, no college ID means no caffeine.
"We definitely have some people that walk in
off the street that are a little confused and a little taken aback when we
can't sell them any coffee," said Sarah Ferris, assistant manager at the
Shiru Cafe branch in Providence, R.I., located near Brown University.
Ferris will turn away customers if they're not
college students or faculty members. The cafe allows professors to pay, but
students have something else the shop wants: their personal information.
Meet
the 10 Year Old Coding Genius Re-inventing the Way AI is Taught
Artificial
intelligence has off late become the talk of the town. Knowledge regarding AI
has become essential to thrive in the current market, but is something even
several engineers lack. However, a 10 year old coding genius and CEO, Samaira
M, has taken it upon her to teach the concept to anyone interested. What is fascinating
is that she aims to do it through an interactive board game because, as she
puts it, “Learning is easy when it’s fun, and what better way to have fun than
playing a board game?”
Netiquette:
Definition and 10 Basic Rules To Dramatically Improve your Safety
Given
the rise of cybercriminal activity in recent years, the need to stay safe on
the Internet has never been more pronounced. Most people believe all they need
to be secure online is to have an antivirus program and do frequent back-ups,
but the truth is, cybercriminals know lot of ways around these. What really
keeps you safe is the ability to recognize online threats and how to avoid
them, and this is why netiquette is so important.
You
can find tools to keep you secure, but ultimately, the best weapons are the
ones you don’t use. Netiquette is important, so here are the 10 best internet
safety tips you need to be aware of when online.
How
social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump
To understand how digital technologies went from instruments for spreading democracy to weapons for attacking it, you have to look beyond the technologies themselves.
Events
/ Announcements
ACM India
Chennai Professional Chapter Turing Series Talk 13 on "Contributions of
Cerf and Kahn"
ACM
India Chennai Professional Chapter Turing Series Talk 13 on "Contributions
of Cerf and Kahn (2004 TA Winners)" by Prof. Krishna Sivalingam, Department of CSE, IIT Madras at 5.30
p.m. at Aryabhatta Hall, Department of
CSE, IIT Madras IITM on 5th October 2018
SETS - Training
Programme on Linux Network Programming in 'C' Language
Society for Electronic Transactions and
Security (SETS) is organising a Training Programme on Linux Network Programming
in 'C' Language on 23rd & 24th October 2018.
Brochure at http://www.setsindia.in/PdfDocs/Linux.pdf
Contact: Dr. P. Nageswara Rao, Mobile: 9884143131. Email: workshop@setsindia.net
SPIN Chennai: Watts
Humphrey Awards 2018
Get ready to showcase your practices to the world! The most prestigious Watts Humphrey Awards is here, to identify the best teams on Agile & Automation practices. The winning teams will receive grand prizes from Dr. Bill Curtis - Co-creator, CMM, PCMM, SEI-CMU, USA.
Nominate
before October 5th and share the presentation deck before October 19th!
Check
out more details - http://spinchennai.org/events/event/watts-humphrey-awards-2018/
LTC2019 - Library Technology Conclave
LTC2019
- Library Technology Conclave on the theme “ebooks to eLearning: Libraries as
Learning Hubs” is being organised by
Informatics India Ltd in collaboration with CUSAT - Cochin University of
Science and Technology, Cochin during 23-25 Jan 2019 at CUSAT, Cochin.
For
more details please visit: http://ltc2019.com
AICTE setting up
4 teacher training academies
The
AICTE is setting up four teacher training academies in the country which will
equip candidates with the latest changes in technical education. The academies,
coming up at Thiruvananthapuram, Guwahati, Baroda and Jaipur, will have eight
modules that are semester-based. The academies will produce "motivated
teachers, who will be conversant with fast changing technology in the technical
education sector and the teachers' training course curriculum was being chalked
out accordingly
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