Can you train people to innovate? Financial analyst Barry Ritholtz has shared a helpful slide set titled “Innovation can be trained” that’s worth reading. Printing and then tacking individual slides to your cube walls can be used as a daily reminder that organizations can create cultures of innovation. It’s based on the work The Innovator’s DNA by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton Christensen.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Being conservative, doing the same thing that worked for your ancestors, is generally a good way to survive. Thus evolution would select for people who tend to be conservative and stick with the tried and true.
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
Source: http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/12/09/0433251/study-people-are-biased-against-creative-thinking
Tomi Engdahl says:
CPS to make computer science a core subject
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/24270552-418/cps-to-make-computer-science-a-core-subject.html
Touted as a trailblazing move, computer science is to be elevated from elective to core curriculum in all public high schools and be offered at elementaries — the latter unprecedented elsewhere — the Chicago Public Schools announced Monday.
In the next three years, every high school will offer a foundational computer science course, and within five years, CPS plans to be the first urban district offering kindergarten through eighth-grade computer courses, officials said.
“Among all S.T.E.M. careers, computer science represents one of the most dynamic and fast-growing fields, and according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2020, the U.S. will have one million more jobs in computing than they have trained professionals to fill them,” Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said.
“The new bilingual is knowing computer code writing, and what we’re setting up today, while it’s a good foundation, the fact is that in the UK and in China, computer science and computer coding is now fundamental to elementary school education, and we’re playing catch-up to that effort,” the mayor added.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Obama Says Everyone Should Learn How to Hack
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/12/obama-code/
President Barack Obama kicked off Computer Science Education Week on Monday with a simple message: “Don’t just play on your phone. Program it.”
“Learning these skills isn’t just important for your future, it’s important for our country’s future,” Obama said in a YouTube video. “If we want America to stay on the cutting edge, we need young Americans like you to master the tools and technology that will change the way we do just about everything.”
The Computer Science Education Week is organized by Code.org, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding computer science education, along with Computing in the Core, a coalition of organizations that advocate computer science education. This year’s Computer Science Education Week is timed to coincide with the birthday of Grace Hopper, the United States Navy rear admiral who pioneered the field of computer science during and after World War II.
This year, Computer Science Education Week is pushing everyone to participate in a one-hour introduction to programming this week referred to as an “Hour of Code.” Any computer science teacher can create an Hour of Code tutorial, and the event organizers have provided a collection of tutorials aimed at different age groups and experience levels.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Women crap at parking: Official
But thrash blokes at multitasking and empathy
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/04/brain_study_shocker/
A team of University of Pennsylvania boffins appears to have confirmed the commonly held notions that while women are absolutely useless at parking cars, they thrash blokes when it comes to multitasking and empathy.
The scientists scanned the brains of 949 peoples aged 8-22 – 428 male and 521 female – and discovered “unique sex differences in brain connectivity during the course of development”.
The abstract, published in Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, explains: “The results establish that male brains are optimised for intrahemispheric and female brains for interhemispheric communication. The developmental trajectories of males and females separate at a young age, demonstrating wide differences during adolescence and adulthood.
“The observations suggest that male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes.”
The findings “confirm our intuition that men are predisposed for rapid action, and women are predisposed to think about how things feel”
“It tells us why, almost always, when men and women are in a car together, the man drives.”
“women have superior memory and social cognition skills, making them more equipped for multitasking and creating solutions that work for a group”.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nobel winner declares boycott of top science journals
Randy Schekman says his lab will no longer send papers to Nature, Cell and Science as they distort scientific process
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/09/nobel-winner-boycott-science-journals
Tomi Engdahl says:
How journals like Nature, Cell and Science are damaging science
The incentives offered by top journals distort science, just as big bonuses distort banking
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/09/how-journals-nature-science-cell-damage-science
We all know what distorting incentives have done to finance and banking. The incentives my colleagues face are not huge bonuses, but the professional rewards that accompany publication in prestigious journals – chiefly Nature, Cell and Science.
These luxury journals are supposed to be the epitome of quality, publishing only the best research. Because funding and appointment panels often use place of publication as a proxy for quality of science, appearing in these titles often leads to grants and professorships. But the big journals’ reputations are only partly warranted. While they publish many outstanding papers, they do not publish only outstanding papers. Neither are they the only publishers of outstanding research.
These journals aggressively curate their brands, in ways more conducive to selling subscriptions than to stimulating the most important research.
Like fashion designers who create limited-edition handbags or suits, they know scarcity stokes demand, so they artificially restrict the number of papers they accept. The exclusive brands are then marketed with a gimmick called “impact factor” – a score for each journal, measuring the number of times its papers are cited by subsequent research. Better papers, the theory goes, are cited more often, so better journals boast higher scores. Yet it is a deeply flawed measure, pursuing which has become an end in itself – and is as damaging to science as the bonus culture is to banking.
It is common, and encouraged by many journals, for research to be judged by the impact factor of the journal that publishes it. But as a journal’s score is an average, it says little about the quality of any individual piece of research. What is more, citation is sometimes, but not always, linked to quality. A paper can become highly cited because it is good science – or because it is eye-catching, provocative or wrong. Luxury-journal editors know this, so they accept papers that will make waves because they explore sexy subjects or make challenging claims. This influences the science that scientists do. It builds bubbles in fashionable fields where researchers can make the bold claims these journals want, while discouraging other important work, such as replication studies.
In extreme cases, the lure of the luxury journal can encourage the cutting of corners, and contribute to the escalating number of papers that are retracted as flawed or fraudulent.
There is a better way, through the new breed of open-access journals that are free for anybody to read, and have no expensive subscriptions to promote. Born on the web, they can accept all papers that meet quality standards, with no artificial caps. Many are edited by working scientists, who can assess the worth of papers without regard for citations.
Funders and universities, too, have a role to play. They must tell the committees that decide on grants and positions not to judge papers by where they are published. It is the quality of the science, not the journal’s brand, that matters.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Can You Teach Programming With Plywood?
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/12/primo-teaches-programming-with-plywood/
In a world where everyone is expected to learn to code, why wait until kids can read and type to start teaching computer science? It’s an important question a startup called Primo is asking, and if their Kickstarter campaign is successful your child will have her first exposure to algorithms right after nap time and just before recess.
Their first product is a $262 kit that consists of two Arduino powered components, a plywood board that acts like a compiler and a wooden robot called “Cubetto” that works like a three dimensional cursor. Colorful wooden blocks are encoded with instructions for the robot and when placed in sequence on the compiler board they become a kind of low-fi software.
“The coolest thing we have seen a child do is master the infinite loop.”
This analog approach fills a niche in the burgeoning “teach everyone to code” market. “All the noteworthy programs and products require literacy and screens,” says Primo managing director Filippo Yacob. “Before we can teach children programming we need to teach them the logic behind it, so they can find the topic easy as they progress to further learning.” Primo might not be able to say “Hello World,” but it makes object oriented programming tangible and helps kids write their first program while still wearing footie pajamas.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wacky idea is tomorrow’s gold egg
You know this one Finnish smartphone manufacturer? I mean the one who put all their eggs in one basket. And even elected body that is not collected years of age, despite the critical mass of consumers or the application ecosystem.
It is a domestic smartphone manufacturer, which does not make a profit on smart phones, even if the public praise sateleekin.
Jolla.
But a new kind of operating system – it was the Dream catch.
Android 1.0 was the green fruit. HTC and Google’s aim was not to challenge the iPhone right away, but to invest in the future. Particular, with the number one goal is to create a Sailfish ecosystem.
Five years after the birth of the Android operating system is the world’s by far the most common.
Android’s success is not a gold mine for telephone companies – not only to Samsung.
Samsung sells more smart phones than the next four largest markets, namely Apple, Huawei, LG and Lenovo in total. The strong sales volumes and a wide range of events from the beginning of Samsung’s devices have not been the most innovative: the smart phone is a smart phone, a laptop is a laptop. Samsung has tried its own Linux-based operating system, Bada and Windows Phone.
Apple was an innovative iPhone and iPad releases, at the time, but the latest generations of the device have been simply a repetition of: little bit out of the rumen, more megahertz, a new color to the surface, the screen size again. Nothing really new.
Leading laziness may change the market share and the result will bring a good feeling too. Competitors hit.
Source: http://www.tietoviikko.fi/uutisia/kahjo+idea+on+huomisen+kultamuna/a953096
Tomi Engdahl says:
Boss, do not bomb the email – you destroy the idea of worker’s brain
When my work phone is beeping continuously incoming messages, it can be difficult to keep thoughts away from work. According to the expert over-reading work e-mails can even be destructive for brain worker.
Modern technology of the employees are reachable round the clock. Germany has already awakened employees only business that requires an employer to leave the subject alone free. Director Toby He joined a trade union Pro and researcher Markus Neuvonen tell bothering too overzealous bosses Finnish workers.
Modern technology of the employees are reachable round the clock. Workplace and supervisors, depending on the email or text messages can come to your mobile on holiday.
A trade union Pro, a member of the study have revealed that on average, every working man makes a half hours a day of unpaid work in their free time.
Even more alarming Pro Director Toby Orpana view is that the survey found that up to a third of the members makes the Pro unpaid overtime for two and a half hours a week, and the tenth of the members up to 5-7 hours per week.
- This is a real problem. Working community that is intended to turn an individual problem, but it is not an individual problem, He joined stresses.
Gray’s work is often just for business calls and answering e-mail, access to data sets, as well as preparation for the meetings.
- We have a very large disproportion between what an individual is expected and what resources are given, Orpana says.
Working hours and leisure time limit is so many people become blurred, can hit dreams.
- People suffering from the fact that they will never be out of work and work-related thoughts, says consultancy.
Neuvonen points out that there is no obligation to respond to business email free time. Especially just before bedtime read työsähköposti may destroy valuable rest.
- Expert work where the person works with their brains, it is devastating to stretch themselves and their own thinking to the extreme.
The chief’s message or email can be difficult to answer. Many people think that if a manager once used their free time to deal with business matters, requires it to also-cutting.
- Now, when there is a shortage of jobs and the competition is fierce, so one imagines that it is effective to conduct business in the neutral position. Really it’s the competition between individuals in the workplace reduces productivity, says the head of the Trade Union Pro He joined Toby.
He would like to see the use of time to get back to 8/8/8-malliin of the day we work eight hours, sleep eight hours and is used for eight hours in one of the pleasure-producing making.
- In this case, we would be much more productive, He joined believes.
Advancing technology has changed the nature of work over the last few decades. On this day, we are bombarded with information, but we have not adapted to the amount of information.
Job change in times of industrial society is a researcher Markus Neuvonen that is so important that we should now think about the whole nature of the work again.
- Instead of talking about the old-style three-division, in fact, should go to the fact that people are excited about their work. Leave the work to be garnished to play and rest, the Center says.
Source: http://yle.fi/uutiset/pomo_ala_pommita_sahkopostilla_-_tuhoat_ajatustyolaisen_aivot/6978893
Tomi Engdahl says:
Reinventing the classroom for the internet generation
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131015-the-classroom-in-the-clouds
How do you teach a generation of children who have never known life without the internet? Traditional models and traditional ways of thinking may not be the right way, says Sugata Mitra.
The school Mitra wants to make, the school in the clouds, will not have teachers in the classroom. Teachers will be beamed in through Skype, the advantage being that a good quality teacher can be sent to any school on the planet, whether it is deep in the jungle or high on a mountain.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The more inept you are the smarter you think you are
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20131125-why-the-stupid-say-theyre-smart
Psychologists have shown humans are poor judges of their own abilities, from sense of humour to grammar. Those worst at it are the worst judges of all.
You’re pretty smart right? Clever, and funny too. Of course you are, just like me. But wouldn’t it be terrible if we were mistaken? Psychologists have shown that we are more likely to be blind to our own failings than perhaps we realise. This could explain why some incompetent people are so annoying, and also inject a healthy dose of humility into our own sense of self-regard.
As you might expect, most people thought their ability to tell what was funny was above average.
The researchers repeated the experiment, only this time with tests of logical reasoning and grammar. These disciplines have defined answers, and in each case they found the same pattern: those people who performed the worst were also the worst in estimating their own aptitude. In all three studies, those whose performance put them in the lowest quarter massively overestimated their own abilities by rating themselves as above average.
It didn’t even help the poor performers to be given a benchmark. In a later study, the most incompetent participants still failed to realise they were bottom of the pack even when given feedback on the performance of others.
Kruger and Dunning’s interpretation is that accurately assessing skill level relies on some of the same core abilities as actually performing that skill, so the least competent suffer a double deficit. Not only are they incompetent, but they lack the mental tools to judge their own incompetence.
In a key final test, Kruger and Dunning trained a group of poor performers in logical reasoning tasks. This improved participants’ self-assessments, suggesting that ability levels really did influence self-awareness.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Illusory superiority
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_wobegon_effect
Illusory superiority is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities and to underestimate their negative qualities, relative to others. This is evident in a variety of areas including intelligence, performance on tasks or tests, and the possession of desirable characteristics or personality traits. It is one of many positive illusions relating to the self, and is a phenomenon studied in social psychology.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Immediate Future for Adtech Startups
http://reactionwheel.net/2013/11/immediate-future-adtech-startups.html
I mean for this to be a wake-up call. Starting more companies like the ones that were acquired in the near past is a fool’s game. If you want to win, you can’t just go out and do the same thing but better. You need to do something different.
Tomi Engdahl says:
What Goes Around Comes Around
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=270366&
Cloud-based software seems to work well. It reminds me of pre-Internet times when I rented time on corporate mainframes at night and loaded data over the telephone. Funny how things stay the same even though they change.
This statement was made by a user of an entirely browser-based simulation platform who obviously has seen at least 40 years of progress in technological development. It reflects a positive attitude towards new technologies and, in particular, cloud computing, based on experience with it and on the perception of a reassuring continuity.
This continuity or reappearance of certain practices lies in the common use of hardware and the “on-demand” payment structure for computing time, and also in shared computing resources. However, whereas this was once a necessity, due to its scarce availability, nowadays it’s a commodity.
A designer who previously worked his models out on his drawing table and then sent them to his client, now creates a CAD model, uploads it on a platform to show it to colleagues or so he can modify and improve it, then sends it to the customer. And this comes at a low or no cost, with the communicative and interactive possibility to share and work on it.
What hasn’t changed almost 50 years later is the need for products and services to become faster, cheaper, and better (higher quality, more efficient, and more powerful). And the new model makes them commonly available, shareable, and sustainable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
After Setbacks, Online Courses Are Rethought
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/us/after-setbacks-online-courses-are-rethought.html?pagewanted=all
Two years after a Stanford professor drew 160,000 students from around the globe to a free online course on artificial intelligence, starting what was widely viewed as a revolution in higher education, early results for such large-scale courses are disappointing, forcing a rethinking of how college instruction can best use the Internet.
A study of a million users of massive open online courses, known as MOOCs, released this month by the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education found that, on average, only about half of those who registered for a course ever viewed a lecture, and only about 4 percent completed the courses.
Much of the hope — and hype — surrounding MOOCs has focused on the promise of courses for students in poor countries with little access to higher education.
Some MOOC pioneers are working with a different model, so-called connectivist MOOCs, which are more about the connections and communication among students than about the content delivered by a professor.
“It’s like, ‘The MOOC is dead, long live the MOOC,’
The intense publicity about MOOCs has nudged almost every university toward developing an Internet strategy.
Mr. Siemens said what was happening was part of a natural process. “We’re moving from the hype to the implementation,” he said.
“Now that we have the technology to teach 100,000 students online,” he said, “the next challenge will be scaling creativity, and finding a way that even in a class of 100,000, adaptive learning can give each student a personal experience.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Hour of Code reaches 10 million students
http://codeorg.tumblr.com/post/69791914096/10million
In its first three days, more students used the Hour of Code than Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram combined in their first three months. And it’s not a photo-sharing app or a game, it’s learning to code!
Halfway through “Computer Science Education Week,” we can hardly believe the power of the this movement. So far, 10 million students in 170 countries have been exposed to programming through an Hour of Code, together writing well over a quarter of a billion lines of code.
f you can’t participate in the tutorials this week, don’t worry, they will still be available – we won’t remove them.
Tomi says:
Tech Billionaires Spend Millions on ‘Science Oscars’
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-13/tech-billionaires-spend-millions-on-science-oscars
The big-name backers of these prizes tried on Thursday night to bring some added attention to their largesse. They held a star-studded awards ceremony event at the NASA facility in Mountain View, Calif. It was in many ways an odd choice, since the place suffers from drastic budget cuts and has had to fight, fight, and then fight some more to pursue its cutting-edge science. Nonetheless, folks such as Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey showed up in their tuxedos, as did Rupert Murdoch, Conan O’Brien, and the evening’s host, Kevin Spacey. Brin kept it real by sporting a sweatshirt and a backpack.
The big news of the evening was the introduction of a Breakthrough Prize in mathematics. Starting next year, it will join a similar prize in physics and six prizes in life sciences. And, of course, there were this year’s winners.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Laziness is good for humans
A person is unable to complete laziness , but as close as possible it is worth trying .
People have dreams. Such as: I wish I need not unintentionally do some work or, generally, no .
When the laziness of death has been declared as one of the sins , it does not like to be called laziness. It’s called preference , relaxing in idleness or downshiftaamiseksi . Or most preferably of contemplation , charge or creative process.
No later than the ancient Romans ruined the reputation of laziness . Or ruined , and ruined . After all, they focused on the machinations and seduction .
Current Finns living in a digital world. Or the living and the living
Wrong. We are unable to complete laziness , and the rest of the brain networks rests.
“The brain never stops , except when a person dies ,” says Aalto University neuroscientist , Academician Riitta Hari.
” Rest Networks are the interlinked brain area networks. They are linked to each other even when we do not do anything. Might think that the brain activity is at rest random, but did not. Hibernation both operations are at all times in good order. Duties and external stimuli change surprisingly little brain space . ”
” The brain network activity is related to just kick back and thinking, which is not triggered by any external stimulus. Normally, we always have in mind something : we thought to ourselves and other people, are designed and grieves for . Default network activity is most pronounced when the idea starts to wander , and attention levels drop . ”
The brain figures it would show : intelligent wondered where the creative hub !
Error . We are not quite as unique as we think.
“A similar network has been found in many animals , even in anesthetized rats and monkeys ,” Hari said.
Source: http://www.hs.fi/kuukausiliite/Laiskuus+on+ihmiselle+hyv%C3%A4ksi+/a1385954022310
Tomi Engdahl says:
Should Journalism Schools Require Reporters to ‘Learn Code’? No
The faulty logic behind a popular theory
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/should-journalism-schools-require-reporters-to-learn-code-no/280711/
Then, toward the end of my first year, I had an idea I thought could turn my prospects around: I would learn to code, that thing everyone was always telling journalists to do, and thus ensure that I would be essential to any newsroom in America. I would sail in ahead of the hundreds of other applicants, I thought. The hiring editor would rush to the HR office clutching my buzzword-laden resume.
My grad program already encouraged us to learn CSS, HTML, basic Flash, and a variety of other web tools. On top of that, the school offered free seminars, access to fully loaded Macs, and had expert staff available to help and troubleshoot.
It was a wonderful resource. I should have never taken them up on it.
This weekend was the Online News Association’s annual conference, an otherwise fun, great gathering where nonetheless one really bad theory tends to rear its head: That all journalists should “learn code” so that they can better secure their places in the newsrooms of the future.
Aside from a small percentage of journalism students who actually want to be newsroom developers, most j-school enrollees, in my experience, want to be reporters, writers, and editors (or their broadcast equivalents). Meanwhile, reporting and writing jobs are growing increasingly competitive, and as media outlets become savvier on the web, they are building teams dedicated solely to web programming and design work.
What I took from my experience was this: If you want to be a reporter, learning code will not help. It will only waste time that you should have been using to write freelance articles or do internships—the real factors that lead to these increasingly scarce positions.
Tomi Engdahl says:
As Software Eats The World, Non-Tech Corporations Are Eating Startups
http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/14/as-software-eats-the-world-non-tech-corporations-are-eating-startups/
Netscape founder and VC titan Marc Andreessen famously wrote back in 2011 that software is steadily eating the world, disrupting industries like music, retail and more. Now large corporations in these industries are starting to eat startups.
Over the past year or two, non-tech corporations have begun to actually open their wallets to arm themselves with talent and technology that can help them enter the digital and data-focused world we now live and work in. It’s no longer Google, Facebook and Yahoo that are competing to acquire the best and the brightest startups in Silicon Valley. There are plenty of corporations in retail, health, agriculture, financial services and other industries that are sending their corp-dev talent to scout out possible acquisitions in the Bay Area and beyond.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Code.org Stats: 507MM LOC, 6.8MM Kids, 2K YouTube Views
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/12/15/1410256/codeorg-stats-507mm-loc-68mm-kids-2k-youtube-views
“On the final day of Computer Science Education Week, the Hour of Code bravado continues. Around 12:30 a.m. Sunday (ET), Code.org was boasting that in just 6 days, students of its tutorials have “written” more than 10x the number of lines of code in Microsoft Windows. “Students of the Code.org tutorials have written 507,152,775 lines of code. Is this a lot? By comparison, the Microsoft Windows operating system has roughly 50 million lines of code.” Code.org adds, “In total, 15,481,846 students have participated in the Hour of Code. “
Tomi Engdahl says:
Comcast Will Spend Millions Developing And Promoting Khan Academy To Encourage Low-Income Broadband Adoption
http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/16/khancast/
Comcast has committed to pumping millions of dollars into a joint partnership with Khan Academy that will pay for product development of its free, online education and promote it alongside Comcast’s cheap broadband access tier Internet Essentials for low-income families. Comcast’s executive VP David Cohen believes that backing Khan Academy will boost digital literacy and get more people paying for broadband because ”its content is the ultimate proof point of the value of the Internet.”
Khan Academy co-founder Sal Khan and Cohen announced the new partnership today on-stage at The Atlantic’s Silicon Valley Summit at Mountain View’s Computer History Museum.
30% of Americans currently don’t have broadband Internet access. The program is designed to convince families that the Internet is critical to their economic success, with Khan Academy as the poster child for how the web can improve lives. The financial support of Comcast for online education certainly has a philanthropic aspect, but also stands to attract it new $9.95 a month Internet Essentials broadband customers.
Cohen explained on stage that “The number one barrier to broadband adoption is digital literacy skills. And Khan academy is the number one solution. We’re going to put the largest allocation of our resources behind Khan Academy and promoting Khan Academy nationally, driving additional hits to that website. And we believe in doing that we’re not only going to give kids and families access to this content… but drive larger broadband adoption in America.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Building diversity in the engineering profession
http://www.controleng.com/single-article/building-diversity-in-the-engineering-profession/ecf6d2b2382e36d9acb3594f50a8650f.html
The next generation of engineers, and the one after that, may be much different. Video: Visiting where kids are learning what engineering is about and loving every minute.
So far, in the ChiS&E program, the oldest kids are fifth-graders. They’re the ones that were in the first class of kindergarteners and the program has added a new grade level each year. Eventually the program will be a comprehensive K-12 curriculum turning out students from African-American and Latino communities well positioned to succeed in any university engineering program.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Australia puts Digital Technologies curriculum in limbo pending review
First coding-for-kids plan was due to be signed off in December
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/18/australias_school_technologies_curriculum_delayed/
The Australian Standing Council for School Education and Early Childhood, a body comprising the nation’s education ministers, has shelved the nation’s first Digital Technologies curriculum just weeks before it was due to be signed off.
The Reg has tracked development of the new curriculum because it for the first time included a Digital Technologies stream that includes computational thinking and programming in the national curriculum covering Kindergarten to Year 10.
The curriculum has also attracted broad industry support: the likes of Google committed to creating resources to help teachers get up to speed with the new computational thinking material it included.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yes, you ARE a member of a global technology elite
Analyst estimates just one in 318 humans is an IT pro
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/12/18/idc_worldwide_software_developer_and_ict_skilled_worker_estimates/
Analyst firm IDC has released a study titled the “2014 Worldwide Software Developer and ICT-Skilled Worker Estimates” that offers a guess at how many people are what it calls “ICT-skilled workers”.
The definition is a bit floppy, with IDC suggesting it covers “professional and hobbyist software developers and information and communications technology (ICT)–skilled workers”.
The numbers are interesting: 29 million people fit the description above, with 11 million working as software developers and a further 7.5 million “hobbyist” developers. That leaves about 11.5 million in other technology gigs on top of the 11 million professional developers for a global IT pro total of 22.5 million.
The United Nations suggests Earth is home to 7.162 billion people.
USA emerges as the home to 22 per cent of ICT-skilled workers, followed by India with 10.4 per cent and China with 7.6 per cent.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Want to be a better CIO? Get a twenty-something to show you the ropes
Headhunter prescibes mentor theraphy for aging tech bosses
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2013/12/18/20_somethings_show_cios_the_ropes/
CIOs need to start getting down with the kids and being mentored by their under-30 employees if they want to hold onto their jobs, a partner at a top recruitment firm has warned.
Be a coach… you’re not making clones
Tomi Engdahl says:
Slideshow: Toyota Moves Closer to Fuel Cell Production Car
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1366&doc_id=270380&cid=nl.dn14
The auto industry’s fuel cell mini-trend gained a bit more momentum recently, as Toyota Motor Corp. unveiled a close approximation of the hydrogen-powered car it plans to market in 2015.
Known as the Toyota FCV Concept, the car uses a smaller, more powerful fuel cell stack than its predecessors. It is also specifically styled with large air intakes and a sweeping profile to optimize the fuel cell theme. ”From this stage to production, there might be a few additional tweaks,” Toyota spokeswoman Katy Soto told Design News. “But we are revealing it now as a close representation of the production vehicle.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Eraser or Sledge Hammer? You Decide
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=270476&cid=nl.dn14
I’m not a big gambler, but I think I understand the basic strategy of certain games. Take blackjack. The strategy is to keep track of the cards that have gone out. As the game progresses, you can better calculate your level of risk with each hand played. Once you have that understanding, you start betting more often and in higher amounts, based on your card observations.
It’s the same in product development. Conducting design research up front reduces your risk of problems occurring downstream. As you move through the R&D process, you can invest more money more confidently. The betting here is your monetary investment in development, engineering, and prototyping. As your risk goes down, you can spend more money.
People sometimes have an inverse approach. They believe they have a great idea, and they throw a lot of time, money, and resources at it. Some even leap right into a concept, a prototype, and a working model. They’ve already spent a ton of money, but then feedback starts coming in, and changes need to be made — some of them drastic. It takes time to make changes. At this point, the risk is really high, because of money already invested, and now there is a lot to lose.
It’s a Catch-22. The point of design research is to provide the right information up front, so you can develop the best ideas early on. But nobody wants to spend the money to do it. In the words of Frank Lloyd Wright: “You can use an eraser on the drafting table or a sledge hammer on the construction site.” The sledge hammer is a bit more expensive.
Design research minimizes your risk if you approach it correctly. What you’re ultimately trying to do with research is understand what a user needs to do to be successful with the device. You might spend a small or moderate amount up front to get this done, but it will take you more time and more money to change it later.
You should walk away from this type of research thinking: “I have a checklist of everything this user group needs to do to be successful using this device to perform the job.” Now your task is set before you, and that task is to design something that can check off every item on that list.
It’s important to mention what design research is not: “Here’s Option A and Option B. Which one do you like better?” This is just a simple focus-group comparison. Unfortunately, much development research is done this way
Finally, some people claim that doing design research puts too much restraint on their creativity. Ironically, a robust design research process actually gives you a lot of design freedom.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It Works! A Tiny Speaker Printed on a Single Sheet of Paper
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/12/a-tiny-speaker-made-out-of-paper/
If you’re the tinkering type, you’ve probably deconstructed a fair number of electronics. It doesn’t take a genius to tear apart a radio, but once you get past the bulk of plastic packaging and down to the guts, you begin to realize that reading the mess of circuits, chips and components is like trying to navigate your way through a foreign country with a map from the 18th century.
But it doesn’t have to be so complicated, says Coralie Gourguechon. “Nowadays, we own devices that are too complicated considering the way we really use them,” she says. Gourguechon, maker of the Craft Camera, believes that in order to understand our electronics, they need to be vastly simpler and more transparent than they currently are.
Gourguechon has created a series of paper electronics—an amplifier, speaker and radio—stripped down to their most basic components and fitted onto a single sheet of paper. “The idea was that the sheet of paper become the object, with no complicated assembly needed,” she says
All of the components are linked together through a series of lines that are printed with conductive ink, which allows the paper electronics to actually function. To turn the speaker on, for example, you pop out the sound cone in order to amplify your input. To close the circuit and turn it off, you simply lay the cone flat.
Though this is just a prototype, Gourguechon says that she can envision a day where paper electronics could be part of a massive database of pattern modules that users could simply print out and assemble.
Ambalaje Plastic says:
Is that the same one with http://www.ambalaje-plastic.ro or ambalaje plastic ? Thanks
Tomi Engdahl says:
Citizen Science and Exploration: Who Makes the Rules?
http://makezine.com/2013/12/26/citizen-science-and-exploration-who-makes-the-rules/
someone casually questioned what kind of permits we had to obtain. I mean, certainly we had obtained the relevant permissions to take biological samples in Mexico.
For a group of citizen explorers, without an affiliation to a scientific institution, this is a daunting endeavor. One that gets more complicated and convoluted the more you dig into it.
The page goes on to lay out some pretty exhaustive requirements. All seemingly reasonable for a scientific professional, I’m sure, but for our group? Forget it. I had heard from scientist friends that grant writing takes up most of their time. I thought by drastically lowering costs, and not needing to go through a lengthy grant writing process, that we could move faster. This throws a wrench in that theory.
Regulatory Jostling
The UAV community – nestled confusingly in between the RC plane hobbyists and commercial airline traffic – is still waiting for rules from the FAA. Affordable UAVs have opened a whole new can of worms. The considerations are complex: safety, economic, privacy, technological capability.
Unlikely Rulemakers
The Glowing Plant project stirred up a debate on Kickstarter, with both pro-biotech and anti-GMO activists voicing their opinion on what should or shouldn’t be allowed on the site.
Ethics Issues
The citizen microbiology project uBiome stirred up an ethics controversy by including human subjects in their research without getting approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB).
Tomi Engdahl says:
Citizen Exploration: An Amateur Revolution
http://makezine.com/magazine/citizen-exploration-an-amateur-revolution/
The amateur has a bit of an identity crisis. Not any specific amateur, more the idea. Just look at the Merriam-Webster definition:
am·a·teur noun ˈa-mə-(ˌ)tər, -ˌtu̇r, -ˌtyu̇r, -ˌchu̇r, -chər
: a person who does something (such as a sport or hobby) for pleasure and not as a job : a person who does something poorly : a person who is not skillful at a job or other activity
If the two meanings were any more divergent, they’d completely contradict themselves.
My personal interpretation of the word has evolved over the years, too, and has been equally confusing.
And has since evolved into an even broader understanding, one that spans the blunders of a beginner to the genius of Darwin:
An amateur is someone who works outside of the established institutions and formal guidelines. They work on their terms. Not necessarily without compensation, but always in pursuit of a bigger idea: beauty, truth, pleasure, etc.
It’s always been these rule benders and breakers who push the boundaries of possibility. And the current surge of amateurism is particularly exciting. It’s moving from an amateur tradition to a full-on amateur revolution.
The “Zero to Maker” Amateurs
With an admitted confirmation bias, the “Zero to Maker” Amateur is the quintessential amateur – the closest comparison to the “ordinary Americans” that the White House described in its call for citizen scientists. Driven by curiosity and an ever-increasing access to new tools and resources (makerspaces, Zooniverses, MOOCs, etc), this growing category of amateur is fattening the long tail of discovery. Just because they can, really.
The Cross-Disciplinarians
This type of amateur is tough to describe, but once you’ve seen them, they’re impossible to mistake for anything else. They’re Vonnegut’s “authentic genius.”
The Opportunists
The third category of amateur, or the “highly intelligent citizen in good standing in his or her community”, is much more exciting than Vonnegut would let on.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Makers: the New Explorers of the Universe
http://makezine.com/2013/11/02/makers-as-explorers-of-the-universe/
“[In] the last century, discovery was basically finding things. And in this century, discovery is basically making things.”
So explained Stewart Brand at the TED conference this past February. He was referring to the National Geographic Society’s rationale for hosting the first-ever meeting on de-extinction — a gathering of scientists and engineers who are using biotechnology to bring back extinct species.
True discovery — the kind that pushes the species forward — doesn’t get mentioned much in popular culture, or even maker conversations, for that matter. It’s a feature on the Twitter search bar, a television network that hosts Shark Week, or something relegated to research universities and National Geographic. Not something that regular folks like us stop to consider, unless we’re reading an article about some new finding or breakthrough. But maybe it’s time we start.
The idea that curiosity is confined to the realm of a few professionals is relatively recent. We come from a long line of curious explorers. And it’s makers carrying the torch into a new era of citizen exploration.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Survey: Development Boards Reduce Need for Custom PCB Design
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=270478&
Tomi Engdahl says:
Eraser or Sledge Hammer? You Decide
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=270476&
I’m not a big gambler, but I think I understand the basic strategy of certain games. Take blackjack. The strategy is to keep track of the cards that have gone out. As the game progresses, you can better calculate your level of risk with each hand played. Once you have that understanding, you start betting more often and in higher amounts, based on your card observations.
It’s the same in product development. Conducting design research up front reduces your risk of problems occurring downstream. As you move through the R&D process, you can invest more money more confidently. The betting here is your monetary investment in development, engineering, and prototyping. As your risk goes down, you can spend more money.
People sometimes have an inverse approach. They believe they have a great idea, and they throw a lot of time, money, and resources at it. Some even leap right into a concept, a prototype, and a working model. They’ve already spent a ton of money, but then feedback starts coming in, and changes need to be made — some of them drastic. It takes time to make changes. At this point, the risk is really high, because of money already invested, and now there is a lot to lose.
Tomi Engdahl says:
FAIL! Why You Should Experiment Like Amazon And Starbucks Do
http://www.forbes.com/sites/netapp/2013/12/05/fail-experiment-amazon-starbucks/
Amazon and Starbucks are two well-known companies that have turned a spirit of focused experimentation into business success. But don’t confuse experimentation with innovation or invention…
Invention is when you create an entirely new way to do something.
Innovation might be a new way to do things by refining or combining existing methods.
Experimentation, on the other hand, simply means trying things to see if they work. And not just trying things, but doing something akin to true science: Come up with a hypothesis about the benefits of a new idea, then test for results.
Serious invention—and even innovation—might be beyond the resources of some companies. But any company can experiment. And most companies should experiment more than they already do.
Here’s how Amazon and Starbucks do it.
Ignorance Is Good
Experimentation isn’t about gaining knowledge. It’s about embracing ignorance and not being paralyzed by it.
Will trying some new way of doing things help your company achieve its goals? You won’t know until you try it.
You may not be able to build drones, but just about any mom-and-pop store can try out a couple of wireless charging stations or a new coffee machine.
Some company is going to be the next Amazon or Starbucks—experimenting their way to business-expanding innovation. It might as well be yours.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Home Depot Copied Apple to Build an Ingenious New Bucket
http://www.wired.com/design/2013/12/home-depot-reinvents-buckets/
Home Depot’s new Big Gripper all-purpose bucket is a handy improvement on the old school, five-gallon contractor pail. An ergonomic handle and patent pending “pocket grip” on the underside sets the product apart on the shelf, but more importantly, the design is a showpiece for a new approach to big box merchandising. Brick-and-mortar retailers have learned a lesson from Apple and are following their vertically integrated approach by developing high-quality, and exclusive, products to remain competitive in the age of Amazon. And they’re learning from another Apple trademark: revisiting product categories filled with bad offerings, and completely rethinking them.
The clever container was developed in textbook fashion by Herbst Produkt, an award-winning firm with a client list that includes Clorox and Facebook.
With this insight in hand, Herbst rearranged the elements of the bucket to create an asymmetrical, yet better balanced product. “The best part about these little innovations is they didn’t add any cost to the product,” he says. “They’re cost-neutral features that are achieved without adding material or complex tooling.” You can’t argue with free, but the importance of this design rests less in its features and more why it was developed in the first place.
“If the game is played solely on a price-cutting platform, you will inevitably run out of margin to support new innovation,” says Herbst. “What the consumer doesn’t appreciate is that innovation costs money—R&D, prototyping, design, engineering, IP—all of these activities require an investment.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
China tops Europe in R&D intensity
http://www.nature.com/news/china-tops-europe-in-rd-intensity-1.14476
Reforms to commercial and academic research systems still needed despite reaching spending milestone, say scientists.
By pouring cash into science and technology faster than its economy has expanded, China has for the first time overtaken Europe on a key measure of innovation: the share of its economy devoted to research and development (R&D).
In 2012, China invested 1.98% of its gross domestic product (GDP) into R&D — just edging out the 28 member states of the European Union (EU), which together managed 1.96%, according to the latest estimates of research intensity, to be released this month by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The figures show that China’s research intensity has tripled since 1998, whereas Europe’s has barely increased
The reorientation of China’s economy displays its soaring ambition. However, money does not buy innovation. Despite success in some areas, notably high-speed rail, solar energy, supercomputing and space exploration, leaders in China are concerned that innovation is lacking, say science-policy analysts. “Chinese leaders would like something equivalent to a Nobel prize, or a world-class product similar to an iPhone,” says Denis Simon, an expert on Chinese science and innovation at Arizona State University in Tempe. “But there is a lot of risk aversion within the Chinese R&D system that doesn’t allow for entrepreneurial behaviour.”
China’s leaders recognize the issues
In contrast to China’s rapid rise, Europe’s R&D spending has remained stagnant. The continent has made little headway in the past decade on a long-term target to reach 3% of GDP by 2020. “The European Commission has long warned that China is catching up in terms of R&D intensity,” says Michael Jennings, a spokesman for research at the commission. “The EU needs a real push now to increase R&D spending in the public sector, but especially in the private sector.”
OECD figures show the stark contrast between nations such as Germany, at 2.92% of GDP, and newer EU members such as Croatia, at 0.75%.
In China, meanwhile, “a great stodgy mass” of state-owned enterprises dominates commercial R&D spending — and they might actually suppress innovation, says Wilsdon.
China’s emphasis on applied and product-development research means that funding for basic science remains low: only 5% of the country’s total R&D is devoted to this, compared with 15–20% in other major OECD nations. That money has to support a larger number of researchers who are already poorly paid, says Xue. Many academics, he says, complement their salaries by taking on short-term projects for industry — work that can distract their focus from fundamental science problems.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Comment at http://developers.slashdot.org/story/14/01/08/0119237/debugjs-a-javascript-vm-and-in-browser-debugger-in-pure-js-generators
by VortexCortex (1117377)
Yep! I taught my 10 year old niece x86 assembly first. Once she got the hang of some loops, character I.O., and some basic math I started her on FORTH. Immediately after grasping the power of higher level code over machine instructions she was hounding me about “But how does the code turn into the machine code?!” I helped her build a simple toy calculator language / interpretor / and compiler at age 11 then, and by 12 she had her very own FORTH implementation. Thankfully the knowledge took root before she noticed boys and geeking out with her uncle became uncool; Now she’s 14 and knows enough to teach herself anything — She uses JS/HTML5 and C to impress her friends with little games and such.
I’ve also successfully used Java VM bytecode as a good intro to computing, but its stack centric design doesn’t do justice to the underlying hardware. Android’s Davlik’s register architecture is similar to my own VM designs, and I find it a joy to manually op-code for
Most people wrongly think ill of ASM coding as a teaching tool. However, starting out in any higher level language doesn’t even begin to dispel the mystical black box of computing like assembly code does. I self learned on BASIC and suffered from that brain damage far longer than I should have. I wouldn’t start someone on JavaScript for the same reason.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Essential Skills for Electrical Engineers
http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1365&doc_id=270847&cid=nl.dn14&dfpPParams=ind_184,industry_consumer,aid_270847&dfpLayout=blog
Electrical engineering deals with the study of electromagnetism, electricity, and electronics. It’s quite an exciting field — electrical engineering has been on the forefront of technology for more than a century. It covers wide range of subfields such as, RF engineering, telecommunications, digital computers, signal processing, and electronics.
Traditional electrical engineering requires the following skills: numeracy, critical thinking, complex troubleshooting, operation management, listening, analysis, knowledge of the English language, quality control analysis, and reliability.
Electrical engineering requires analysis of the information and making use of logic to address issues related to the core problems and issues.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How should I conceptualize circuits?
http://www.eeweb.com/electronics-forum/how-should-i-conceptualize-circuits
Tomi Engdahl says:
Female Founders
http://paulgraham.com/ff.html
I was accused recently of believing things I don’t believe about women as programmers and startup founders.
if you support a young founder who otherwise would not have been able to find funding and they go on to succeed, you get not just one more young founder but also the additional ones they inspire by their example.
We’re doing the same thing for female founders.
If these founders go on to succeed, they’ll become what we know from experience will be the most powerful force for encouraging other female founders: examples of people like them who’ve done it.
But it would be naive to assume we could get the percentage of female startup founders to 50% so long as the percentage of female programmers is so much lower than 50%. Though this is less the case than it used to be, many startups still have a big technical component, and if you want to start that sort of startup your chances of succeeding are higher if you’re a programmer.
So how would you cause there to be more female programmers? The meta-answer is: not just one thing. People’s abilities and interests by the time they’re old enough to start a startup are the product of their whole lives—indeed, of their ancestors’ lives as well. Even if we limit ourselves to one lifetime we find a long list of factors that could influence the ratio of female programmers to male, from the first day of a girl’s life when her parents treat her differently, right up to the point where a woman who has become a programmer leaves the field because it seems unwelcoming.
How would you get more girls interested in programming?
First of all, kids need to be able to program, in both senses of the word: they have to know how to write a program, and they need access to a computer they can write programs on, which nowadays probably includes Internet connectivity.
But to turn kids into avid programmers—to get them to work on projects of their own in their spare time—you may need to do more than just expose them to programming. In my experience the best way to get people to work on ambitious projects is examples of other people who have.
So if we want to get more girls to become programmers, we should give them more examples. Ideally in person, though examples also work through the media.
I can say though that at our end of the funnel the trend for female founders is encouraging. Not just because 24% of the companies in the current YC batch have female founders.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Unemployed in Europe Stymied by Lack of Technology Skills
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/04/business/international/unemployed-in-europe-hobbled-by-lack-of-technology-skills.html?ref=business&_r=1
Week after week, newspapers issue a stream of hopeful headlines: Microsoft, PayPal, Fujitsu and scores of other companies are expanding their investments in Ireland, creating thousands of jobs as unemployment hovers near record highs.
There is just one hitch: Not enough people are qualified to fill all the jobs.
After a five-year economic crisis, the mismatch represents one of the thorniest problems facing Ireland and many other European countries. Hundreds of thousands of people who lost work, and many young people entering the work force, are finding that their skills are ill suited to a huge crop of innovation-based jobs springing up across the Continent.
“In all countries, there is an expectation that many of the new jobs created will be in the knowledge-intensive economy,” said Glenda Quintini, a senior labor economist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. “But we are seeing a worrisome skills mismatch that means a large number of unemployed people are not well prepared for the pool of jobs opening up.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Digital Agenda Scoreboard
2013
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/sites/digital-agenda/files/DAE%20SCOREBOARD%202013%20-%20SWD%202013%20217%20FINAL.pdf
Tomi Engdahl says:
GLOBAL EMPLOYMENT TRENDS 2013
http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—dcomm/—publ/documents/publication/wcms_202326.pdf
The report estimates the quantitative and qualitative indicators of global and regional labour markets and discusses the macroeconomic factors affecting the labour markets in order to explore possible policy response
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kids Can’t Compute — And That’s A Problem
http://www.forbes.com/sites/netapp/2013/11/14/kids-cant-compute-problem/
Kids are “digital natives.” They grew up using computers, and therefore are more “tech savvy” than older people. Right? No!
Well, the first part’s right, but the second part is increasingly wrong. Ironically, with each passing year, young people entering the workforce know less and less about computers and the Internet.
What Kids Can’t Do — And Why
What’s changed is that we’ve entered the post-PC world. Yes, kids are using computers more. But today’s computers—even Windows PCs and Macs—don’t force users to confront what’s going on “under the hood.”
Using a computer no longer requires knowledge, awareness or skill. What’s worse: post-PC devices don’t even inspire curiosity about such things.
It’s not that young people are dumb. It’s just that their whole orientation and experience is detached from the nuts and bolts of computing.
Why This Is A Problem
Psychologist Abraham Maslow talked about the Law of the Instrument, most commonly expressed as: When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Likewise, when you grew up using Post-PC devices, every problem is solved with an app or Internet-based service.
The overwhelming quantity and user-friendliness of today’s apps and web-based services isn’t stretching users. It’s not confronting people with the need to understand computing, or to be creative in building solutions.
Hiring managers should watch out for knowledge, skill and perception gaps.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tales from an expert witness: Prior art and patent trolls
Where ideas, inventions and opportunists collide
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/15/tales_from_an_expert_witness_prior_art_and_patent_trolls/
A patent is a form of contract between society and the inventor that benefits both. In return for making the details of his invention public, the inventor is given protection for a specific time period in which he can exploit his invention. After that period has elapsed, the rest of society can do with it as it wishes.
This being so, the inventor’s life should be a piece of cake. You invent something and patent it, and the world beats a path to your door in order to benefit from your invention. You become rich. And pigs can fly.
The real world is, unfortunately, a hostile place for an inventor. The mistake inventors make is to seek to cause change – and that goes down badly in a world that runs on dogma, conservatism and tradition
It is not possible for science, discovery or invention to take place in a society that already has the answers and enforces them with fear.
Although it grew from invention, today’s industry is no longer inventive. It is a highly conservative money making machine which has all the answers and enforces them with advertising and marketing. Inventions are a threat to business as usual, and represent a risk. The same can be said for organisations such as the armed forces, where orders are orders and nothing is to be questioned.
It should therefore be no surprise that the odds are stacked against the inventor. The evidence is all around.
Industry adopts several approaches to patents. One is to wait until the patent expires and then market product based on it. Another is to develop something that offers some of the benefits of the patent but which is sufficiently different in detail that it doesn’t infringe. Another approach, if the inventor has limited funding, is to simply steal the intellectual property on the basis that the inventor won’t be able to afford to litigate.
So it is the way the real world operates that results in intellectual property litigation.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Are Ethical Hackers the Alchemists of Our Time… The Masters of the Binary Evolution?
http://www.wired.com/insights/2014/01/ethical-hackers-alchemists-time-masters-binary-evolution/
Far too many people still envision hackers as evil. The name hacker itself to most conjures up images of some basement-dwelling, pimply geek who gets off on trying to hack the Pentagon or MI5… or even worse, messes with ordinary peoples’ computers making misery of our lives as we battle spam, malware, Trojans and other forms of time-wasting and spending money hand over fist getting things back to normal.
But actually, as the English lexicon evolves the idea of hacking and hackers is changing.
Ethical Hackers are now kind of becoming the alchemists of the 21st century — speaking the language of code — that drives so much of our lives this millennium.
According to the Daily Mail in the U.K., the average person checks their mobile phone about 110 times a day (and up to every six seconds in the evening.)
Mobile Apps, developed largely by “hackers” are influencing lives in a huge way.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Top 10 Essential DIY Skills That Aren’t as Hard as You Think
http://lifehacker.com/5896102/top-10-essential-diy-skills-that-arent-as-hard-as-you-think
Thankfully, there are quite a few DIY skills out there that are much easier to learn than you think. Here are our 10 favorites.
10. Coding
9. Working with Electronics
8. Sewing
7. Auto Maintenance
6. Home Repair
5. Cooking
4. Photo Editing
3. Building a Computer from Scratch
2. Jailbreaking/Rooting Your Phone
1. Emergency Preparedness
Tomi Engdahl says:
Inspirational messages are hollow statements for lazy blowhards.
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=inspirational_blowhards
There are people who practice public speaking and communication for years to become effective enough to “inspire” others. How would you even know what inspiration looked like to another person? Are there any metrics you could measure to determine the rate of success or failure? Would you even know when it occurred? And how are you controlling for variables that could factor into someone’s inspiration, such as the possibility that books, objects, animals, world events, or other people inspired them instead of—or in addition to—you?
Inspiration happens every day—unintentionally. It’s like having an epiphany: if you could simply have one every time you wanted a new idea or some clarity, why wouldn’t you have them all the time, dumbass?