Why is machine vision a hard problem? As humans, we look at a dog and we see the dog. That’s all there is to it. Surely making machines that do the same isn’t that hard, right?
It actually turns out to be one of the toughest problems around, because that ‘simple’ seeing we do is in fact managed by our brains more than our eyes – and the brain is, well, the most complex object in the universe.
England’s Bletchley Park, famous for its World War II codebreaking success, is about to put on display some of the actual Nazi messages it decrypted. Bletchley’s National Museum of Computing houses a working replica of the five-tonne ‘Colussus’ decryption engine, of which 10 were in use at the peak of the wartime codebreaking effort. The ‘original and freshly discovered’ messages will be available for visitors to marvel at.
The first ever bug bounty program was launched in 1983. The prize for finding a bug in the software? A Volkswagen Beetle (a bug – geddit?). Such is the pressure on software firms to produce vulnerability-free code that they will offer cash rewards to white hat security researchers who can find and report flaws. Bug-hunting has become an industry, and anyone with the right smarts can try for a slice of the bug bounty pie.
Smart cities aim to provide their residents with improved public services and better quality of life by investing in digital technologies. They also emphasize community involvement in the running of the city. With the key stakeholders (citizens) participating more directly in matters of infrastructure, mobility, environment, sustainability and economy, their city functions better and serves their needs and desires more efficiently. Digital technology aids citizens by providing real-time monitoring of services and utilities, and the ability to respond to changing needs in real time.
Last year courseindex.com featured a story about a new centre for cyber security at Bletchley Park in the UK, a ‘Hogwarts for hackers’ designed to recruit the best young minds in I.T. in the fight against cyberterrorism and other computer-based threats to national security.
Cuddly Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is the figurehead of a new educational enterprise aimed at training the next generation of tech wizards and fast-tracking the most promising ones.
Synthesizers have come a long way since the Moog and the Fairlight in the 1960s and 1970s. It’s no longer new to hear samples of raindrops falling into water in music tracks, as it was when Jean-Michel Jarre gave us his groundbreaking soundscapes on the pioneering albums Oxygène and Équinoxe. Synth sounds are so commonplace now that to create new sounds, you need to know a few things about how they work, and learn a bunch of software, to see how you can push the envelope.
Maybe there’s a slight pang of guilt at the clickbaity title, but it got your attention and there are excellent reasons to read on. We’re talking about the links between exercise and feeling good in yourself, otherwise known as mental health. Here’s a course that delves into the exact mechanisms that link exercising to that inner glow.
The Basque country between France and Spain has a proud culinary tradition that has led to the creation in 2011 of the Basque Culinary Center, a university dedicated entirely to food. The Faculty of Gastronomic Sciences at Mondragon University joined with a group of prominent chefs to found the first official university-level training courses in Spain (the Degree in Gastronomy and Culinary Arts), combined with a Research and Innovation Center in the field of food and gastronomy.
There’s a course on Udemy that might be worth looking into if you’re tired of the 9 to 5 routine and want to see more of the world. It describes how to get paid to travel. They don’t give away the exact details of their method because that would be stupid – they are selling an ‘information product’ in the style of get rich quick schemes, and the only way to get at their secret sauce is to pay for it.
TV game shows love progress bars, don’t they? The contestants and audience hold their breath as blocks light up to create a path towards a prize, or a big thermometer-like thing rises until a desired goal is reached. We seem to be hard-wired to respond to these visualisations of progress, and get a sense of achievement and reward when the goal is reached.
