October 2018 - csc-general

Richard Mann - Prof Talk @ Nov 5, 5:30 PM in MC 4063 && Call for Alt-Tab Speakers!
by Computer Science Club 30 Oct '18

30 Oct '18

Greetings Programs, We will be having our first prof talk of the term with Professor Richard Mann on November 5, 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM, in MC 4063. He will be talking about the BBC micro:bit - an embedded computer that's popular with hobbyists and comes with a variety of peripherals. We are also looking for speakers for Alt-tab! Have something you want talk about? Want to rant about {X technology} to a captive audience? If yes, then email vice-president(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca with an abstract. Alt-Tab is the CSC's lightning talk event (albeit slightly longer), and talks are 10-15 minutes long. Read below for more details! (Details for both of these events follow) ========== Prof. Talk ========== Abstract: BBC micro:bit (microbit.org) was introduced in 2015 and has since become popular with educators and hobbyists. Micro:bit uses an ARM Cortex M0 processor running the "mbed" OS/runtime (mbed.arm.com) It has a built in LED 7x7 array, two buttons, compass, accelerometer, infra red transceivers, and low power wireless communication. Most importantly, it has multiple analog and digital pins to connect to the external world. Web based tools compile gui/blocks, javascript, or python to executable (HEX) files that run on the device. The device appears as a USB drive. It is programmed by copying (dragging) the HEX image to the device. Once programmed, the device runs standalone and communicates with the the host computer via a serial port API. All of this is great fun and a gateway into electronics and real time programming. In this talk I will present a brief introduction to micro:bit, electronics, and electronic signal measurement (voltmeter, function generator, oscilloscope). We will measure the run time performance of the micro:bit, in particular the operation of the analog inputs and outputs and the response time/latency of the device and consider its suitability for user interface, music and audio projects. ========================= Call for Alt-Tab Speakers ========================= CSC will be hosting Alt-Tab, a slightly longer version of lightning talks. It will be a night full of friendly talks during the week of November 26. We need speakers! Contact vice-president(a)edu.uwaterloo.ca, with your tentative talk title and a short abstract if you would like to give a talk. Slides are not required. Please aim for a 10-15 minute talk. I'll send an email with the list of talks closer to the date of the event. Please send titles and abstract by November 19th. Here are some topics that our members have presented before. The titles make them seem more technical than they actually were. - Overview of SAT solvers - Communication complexity - Register allocation in compilers as graph colouring - Web application security - PXE booting - UI and UX - Train signalling and sensing - Typed Racket - Modern GPU architecture - The comment that took Stack Exchange down and the algorithm that could have saved them - Register Allocation With Graphs -- Neil Parikh AVP Computer Science Club

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Gloves 101 - Monday Oct 29th 5:30-6:30pm at QNC 1506
by Computer Science Club 23 Oct '18

23 Oct '18

Greetings fellow programs, Do you have a pair of favorite gloves that you wish you could use with your phone? Do you not have that but have always wondered how touchscreen gloves work? Join us on Monday Oct 29th 5:30-6:30pm at QNC1506 to learn how you can make your own pair of touchscreen gloves! Fatema Boxwala will be teaching a hands-on workshop with all materials provided (but you can also totally bring your own). Come and learn a super easy introduction to wearable electronics and sewing! Thanks! -Uday Veep, CSC

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Unix 101 on Monday October 22, 5:30 PM in MC 3003
by Computer Science Club 15 Oct '18

15 Oct '18

Hi all, The CS Club is hosting an UNIX 101 workshop on October 22, 5:30 PM in MC 3003. Interested in Unix, but don’t know where to start? Then come learn some basic topics with us including interaction with the command line, motivation for using it, some simple commands, and more. This event targets first years with minimal Unix experience. Light refreshments and snacks will be provided. See you there! -- Neil Parikh AVP Computer Science Club

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Code Party 0 on Thursday Oct 18, 6:30 PM, EV3-1408
by Computer Science Club 11 Oct '18

11 Oct '18

Hi all, The CS Club is hosting our first Code Party of the term from 6:30pm until ~9:30pm in EV3-1408, on Thursday October 18. Come code with us, eat some food, do some things. Personal projects you want to work on? Homework projects you need to finish? Or want some time to explore some new technology and chat about it? You can join us at Code Party 0 and do it, with great company and great food. Come any time after 6:30pm. -- Neil Parikh AVP Computer Science Club

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Jane Street Talk & Power Outage
by Computer Science Club 07 Oct '18

07 Oct '18

Hi everyone! Jane Street's Yaron Minsky is coming to Waterloo to give a talk aimed at undergraduate students. The talk titled Data Driven UIs, Incrementally will be held in DC 1302 on Oct. 15th 5:30-6:30pm. Yaron Minsky got his BA in Mathematics from Princeton and his PhD in Computer Science from Cornell, where he studied distributed systems. He joined Jane Street in 2003, where he started out developing quantitative trading strategies, going on to found the firm's quantitative research group. Here's a brief description of the talk: Trading in financial markets is a data-driven affair, and as such, it requires applications that can efficiently filter, transform and present data to users in real time. But there's a difficult problem at the heart of building such applications: finding a way of expressing the necessary transformations of the data in a way that is simultaneously easy to understand and efficient to execute over large streams of data. This talk will show how we've approached this problem using Incremental, an OCaml library for constructing dynamic computations that update efficiently in response to changing data. We'll show how Incremental can be used throughout the application, from the servers providing the data to be visualized, to the JavaScript code that generates DOM nodes in the browser. We'll also discuss how these applications have driven us to develop ways of using efficiently diffable data structures to bridge the worlds of functional and incremental computing. Also, we have been informed of a planned power outage that will affect CSC equipment on Oct. 9 at 11pm until Oct. 10 at 5am. During this time, all CSC systems and services will be unavailable Please ensure that you have saved all work before then and that you have a backup of any important files. We expect that most services will recover automatically once power is restored, however anything requiring manual intervention will be restored later in the day. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Systems Committee by email at syscom(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca. Thanks! Calum exec(a)csclub.uwaterloo.ca

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