Category: Uncategorized

Turing Test Milestone

In 1950, legendary British computer scientist (and cryptologist!) Alan Turing devised a test. To pass, a computer program would have to hold a five minute text/keyboard conversation with humans and be so convincing that more than 30% of the interrogators would regard it as human.

A program simulating a 13 year old named “Eugene Goostman” just became the first computer program to pass the Turing test by convincing 33% of its human interrogators.

That is truly a milestone and a very significant achievement. Everybody who has ever thought about this will appreciate that conducting a broad conversation for a number of minutes is actually not that easy.

Did you know… in geek circles the Turing test is also commonly used in jokes, with someone wondering whether a particular fellow human (politician?) would actually pass…

Of course, we have to recognise that the sole purpose of Eugene Goostman was to pass the Turing test. Speaking as a programmer, building a system for a highly specific task with clearly defined rules and boundaries is, in the grand scheme of things, peanuts – compared to a human having to deal with all the variables in the real world. Still, it’s real progress. Well done to all the awesome programmers and other scientists involved in this project!

Patience, Self-Regulation and IQ

Most of us appreciate that IQ is a fairly limited and somewhat stuffed measure, but finding effective alternatives is tricky.

So here is one: self-regulation is a better predictor for success than IQ. Self-regulation is of course tightly linked to patience, and that’s an important life skill.

Unfortunately, life in 2014 doesn’t teach patience. We have gadgets around us that pretty much all focus on instant gratification in various forms. Everybody reacts differently to this, but it’s something to keep in mind: those who teach, mentor and parent now grew up in quite a different environment to the one kids reside in today.

STEM projects generally require patience: experiments take time to grow or mature, and building something isn’t done in a few minutes. This also means that doing STEM projects is an excellent way to practice patience.

Want to read more on this topic? See the article Patience! by Ainissa Ramirez at the awesome Edutopia (George Lucas Educational Foundation).

Good things come to those who wait are patient.

Kids React to Old Computers

Kids encounter an old Apple II computer with floppy drive. It’s very insightful. They’re part appalled, part intrigued.

Yes, technology has progressed. But back then we did know what components made up a computer, we had an inkling (or more) of how it worked. And most kids now don’t know, and I reckon that’s a bad thing in this otherwise awesome evolution.

In the era of the Apple II, growing up in The Netherlands and able to watch BBC 1 on TV, I wrangled my parents into acquiring an Acorn BBC Micro, model B.

I learnt about programming, did some hardware hacking, actually added new components to my machine and built interfaces to other equipment. Over the years computers have been harder to play with in terms of hardware interfacing. Now though, there are awesome new products such as the Raspberry Pi, which once again make it much easier to, for instance, attach extra bits of electronics and learn more.

Raspberry Pi boardWhat I find particularly interesting is that the Raspberry Pi uses an ARM processor. Do you know what ARM stands for? Acorn Risk Machine. That’s right, it’s a direct descendant of the ground-breaking work done by Acorn Computer in the 1980s in the UK.

Most mobiles (including Android and iPhone) also use ARM processors. They’re literally everywhere. Interesting, isn’t it!

Discrete Maths by Tim Berglund

This presentation was by Tim Berglund at OSCON 2013 (Portland, Oregon USA). Tim explores the branch of mathematics that deals with separate, countable things. Most of the math we learn in school deals with real-valued quantities like mass, length, and time. However, much of the work of the software developer deals with counting, combinations, numbers, graphs, and logical statements: the purview of discrete mathematics. Watch this brief exploration of an often-overlooked but eminently practical area of mathematics.

Australian ArduSat involvement by Jonathan Oxer

Jon presented an overview of the latest developments to the ArduSat project as part of his keynote presentation during linux.conf.au 2014 in Perth, Western Australia.

Jon has been hacking on both hardware and software since he was a little tacker. Most recently he’s been focusing more on the Open Hardware side, co-founding Freetronics as a direct result of organising the first Arduino Miniconf at LCA2010. His books include “Ubuntu Hacks” and “Practical Arduino“.

Jon has been variously referred to as Australia’s geekiest man and as a cyborg-in-progress. As part of his “SuperHouse” home automation series, Jon has taken keyless entry to an all new level by embedding an RFID tag into his arm using a vet’s chipping tool.

Recently he has been working on ArduSat, an Arduino based implementation of the CubeSat (10x10x10cm) satellite concept that aims to give hobbyists, students and space enthusiasts an opportunity to design and run their own experiments in space. By choosing a standardised platform based on the hugely popular Arduino hardware design, ArduSat allows anyone to develop and prototype experiments at home and in schools using readily accessible parts and all based on a simple open source software and hardware platform.

Video recording by the awesome video team @ linux.conf.au 2014