Americans express broad concerns over the fairness and effectiveness of computer algorithms making important decisions in people’s lives. “Algorithms are all around us, utilizing massive stores of data and complex analytics to make decisions with often significant impacts on humans.…
UC Berkeley creates a Data Science major
UC Berkeley’s fastest-growing class is data science 101. The new major merges aspects of computer science and statistics to mine the massive amount of available data. Internet-connected devices generate 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every day. The ability to process…
Nintendo introduces Labo kits to STEAM classrooms
Nintendo’s Labo Kits are fun cardboard building kits used in a STEAM curriculum. Nintendo and the Institute of Play will be handing out the Nintendo Labo Teacher Guide to schools in the New York area. The kits feature sample lesson…
Win a free Hacktoberfest t-shirt
Win a Hacktoberfest tshirt by making five pull requests (PRs) between October 1–31. PRs can be to any public repo on GitHub. The PR must contain commits you made yourself (not to your own repo). PRs reported by maintainers as…
Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Paul Allen dies at 65
Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft died yesterday at age 65. According to The Seattle Times, he contributed more than $2 billion to philanthropies, and took the Giving Pledge – a commitment to give away the majority of his wealth. Read…
Crowdsourced data messes up online maps
Most of us rely on digital maps such as Google Maps to help us navigate the world. Unfortunately, crowdsourced data submitted by ordinary people is making some of today’s digital maps more like Wikipedia than Rand McNally. Read the entire…
Your neighborhood may determine your future earnings
According to The Opportunity Atlas, the neighborhood you grow up in may determine how far you move up the economic ladder. The interactive map is quite unique in that it uses U.S. Census Bureau data along with data from the…
Ne-Yo wants to diversity Silicon Valley
“Little black kids growing up don’t say things like ‘I want to be a coder when I grow up,’ because it’s not real to them, they don’t see people that look like me doing it,” Ne-Yo said. “But tech is…
Closing the gap between men and women in STEM
“There’s a myth that if you’re bad at math, you can’t enter a STEM field. Having a natural competence in math can be helpful, but skill and intelligence grow with consistent practice and effort. Getting involved in projects is the…
OpenCat created with more than nine lives
Rongzhong Li started working on OpenCat as a hobby in 2016 while teaching computer science and robotics at Wake Forest University. He noticed his robot cat attracted students to STEM who might not otherwise care about robots. As a result,…