Communications of the ACM
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How the “Frontier” Became the Slogan of Uncontrolled AI
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been billed as the next frontier of humanity: the newly available expanse whose exploration …
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Composing from Compression
by Geraint Wiggins, Queen Mary University of London Computers compress files to save space. But it also allows them to create music! Music is special. It’s oneContinue...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Balls, beams and quantum computers – performing calculations with patterns of light
by Jane Waite, Queen Mary University of London Have you played the seaside arcade game where shiny metal balls drops down to ping, ping off little metal pegs and...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Getting off the beach, fast
by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London Paul goes on holiday and sees how a car park can work like a computer. Computers get faster and faster every year...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
[From the archives] “A mob for the Earth” – online communities supporting the real world, and businesses
A mob for the Earth by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London One Saturday afternoon last spring in San Francisco, a queue of people stretched down the pavement...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Happy World Emoji Day –
“Emoji didn’t become so essential because they stand in for words – but because they finally made writing a lot more like talking.” Gretchen McCulloch (see Further...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Negligent nurses? Or dodgy digital? – device design can unintentionally mask errors
Magicians often fool their audience into ‘looking over there’ (literally or metaphorically), getting them to pay attention to the wrong thing so that they’re not...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Free CS4FN magazine issue 29 arriving in schools now, on Diversity in Computing
Schoolteachers, school librarians and home educators who subscribe* to the FREE Computer Science For Fun magazine will be receiving their free print copies this...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Digital lollipop: no calories, just electronics!
by Jane Waite, Queen Mary University of London Can a computer create a taste in your mouth? Imagine scrolling down a list of flavours and then savouring your sweet...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Engineering a Cloak of Invisibility: Manipulating Light with Metamaterials
by Akram Alomainy and Paul Curzon, QMUL You pull a cloak around you and disappear! Reality or science fiction? Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak is surely Hogwarts’...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Solving problems you care about
Programmable design challenge: sixth formers on @QMUL's summer internship came up with creative solutions to solve real world problems.
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Stretching your keyboard – getting more out of QWERTY
How the QWERTY keyboard has been adapted for languages with different alphabets, using Input Method Editors.
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Spot the difference – modelling how humans see the world
Can you spot the difference?
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Inspiring Wendy Hall
by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London This article is inspired by a keynote talk Wendy Hall gave at the ITiCSE conference in Madrid, 2008. What inspires...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Marissa Mayer: Lemons Linking 41 Shades of Blue – A/B Testing
by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London Google, one of the most powerful companies in the world, is famous for being founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
The Life of a Star
by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London The first computers transformed the way research is done. One of the very first computers, EDSAC*, contributed to...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
The Devil is in the Detail: Lessons from Animal Welfare? (Temple Grandin)
What can Computer Scientists learn from Temple Grandin and the improvements she made to animal welfare?
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
100,000 frames – quick draw: how computers help animators create ^JB
Ben Stephenson of the University of Calgary gives us a guide to the basics of animation. Animation isn’t a new field – artists have been creating animations for...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
Understanding matters of the heart – creating accurate computer models of human organs
by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London Ada Lovelace, the ‘first programmer’ thought the possibilities of computer science might cover a far wider breadth...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)
The Dark History of Algorithms
Zin Derfoufi, a Computer Science student at Queen Mary, delves into some of the dark secrets of algorithms past. Algorithms are used throughout modern life forContinue...
From CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun)