Want to hear about upcoming courses in the Tufts Computer Science Department? Like to eat pizza? On Monday, October 29th, come to Halligan 111A from noon to 1:30pm to satisfy both your needs. Professors will talk about the courses they’ll be teaching this spring, including special topics.
The expectations for branding yourself as a developer are at an all time high. Employers are checking out your LinkedIn, GitHub repositories and, of course, your personal web site. Luckily for Tufts CS students, you can utilize your university provided web space in seconds. Simply do the following:
1) SSH into your Tufts CS directory (more info here).
2) Create a directory named public_html if it does not already exist.
3) Enter chmod 755 public_html to change the public_html directory permission code to designate read/write/execute permission for you (7), read/execute permission for system users (5) and read/execute permission for the world (5). More about permission codes here.
4) Create a file name index.html in the public_html directory.
Optional: Edit the your html file to include the following html markup.
<!DOCTYPE html><html><head></head><body>Hello world!</body></html>
5) While in the public_html directory enter chmod 644 index.html to change the index.html permission code to designate read/write permission for you and read permission for system users and the world.
6) View your site at http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~YOURUTLNHERE
Example: http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~amonac01 for Anthony Monaco.
Max Goldstein E’14 eats, sleeps, fixes segfaults, keeps WMFO on air, and writes essays about minds and machines on his personal blog, Dethorning STEM.
It’s a common joke among computer scientists to liken themselves to the machines they work with. While not as prevalent at Tufts as other schools, the language of memory errors or HTTP status codes creeps into our understanding of ourselves and of our social situations. It’s a whimsical combination of metaphor and geekery. ACK?
There are two primary protocols that computers use to communicate with each other across a network. The first is UDP, which is fast and lightweight. UDP is a single packet hurled across the Internet to whatever fate may befall it. TCP is a more sophisticated protocol that makes various guarantees about the message that it is sending.
For one, TCP is reliable, while UDP is not. The term “reliable” has a special meaning in this context: a reliable protocol ensures that the message will get there. TCP is courteous enough to ask for retransmission if it didn’t receive a packet it was expecting. I’d like to apply to term back to human beings talking to each other.
If we put more emphasis on reliable communication, we’d spend less of the conversation talking and more time listening, to make sure we understood everything that was said. If not, it’s as simple as asking “come again?”, and being patient enough to repeat yourself. Ensuring a reliable connection places value on what other people say, which will lead to more friendships and tolerance. Efficiency and courtesy go hand-in-hand.
Secondly, TCP is serialized, which means it tolerates packets coming in out of order. It puts them in the right order before handing them off to the program above it, say, your mail client. UDP is not serialized, so different parts of the same file can arrive out of order.
Relationships used to be serialized. Courtship rituals bare a striking resemblance to network protocols, algorithmic dances of identification, verification, and only then communication. Or something. Serialization has been left on the sticky concrete floor of the frat house basement. If you’ve spent most of your Saturday nights in Halligan, I should remind you that many of our classmates have the inscrutable tradition of making out before so much as exchanging first names. (It’s as insecure as it sounds.) We’ve lost the notion of “not on the first date”.
In fact, we’ve largely lost the notion of dating altogether. Like UDP, hookups are a connectionless protocol, something we do blindly and without preservation of state from one to the next. It would be awfully hard to have a friendship if every time you started talking you had to introduce yourselves. TCP’s solution is the abstraction of a two-way stream of data. This connection must be set up by hand-shaking, maintained while in use, and eventually torn down. Similarly, only by effort and memory can we form lasting relationships and “connections” to other people.
You may remember the final scene of The Social Network, where Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) lazily hits refresh to see if the woman he was dating at the start of the film has accepted his friend request. He has been trapped by his own creation. I think that computer scientists have a unique vantage point in our increasingly technologized world. By understanding the limitations of our machines, we are better equipped to, when necessary, put them aside and have a conversation with other human beings.
Thanks again to everyone who attended our open meeting last Wednesday. It was a great opportunity for us on the Exec Board to find out what kinds of things CS students want to see next year. Please don’t hesitate to hit us up with more ideas. Here are some that we talked about.
Team Eos, made up of Greg Wong, Jason Cheng and Sean Chung and Xihan Zhang, will travel to Seattle to compete for a donation to our school and a trip to the international Imagine Cup competition. Their cloud and mobile product, Medivise, helps tuberculosis patients oversee their treatment in a more effective and convenient way. Congratulations guys!
Read more.
Want to know about upcoming CS related events at and around Tufts? Click the Calendar link in the blog’s main menu to see events collected by Tufts ACM executive board member Trevor Rothaus. He’s included Tufts colloquia, colloquia at nearby schools, Boston startup networking events, programming competitions, and more.
Max Goldstein E’14 eats, sleeps, fixes segfaults, keeps WMFO on air, and writes essays about minds and machines on his personal blog, Dethorning STEM.
I was thrilled when I heard Tufts was hosting a hackathon, I was thrilled. A collaborative all-nighter coding with sponsorship and prizes from big-name companies in my backyard? It would be programming nirvana. Sign me up!
But when git push came to shove, most of the ideas were built on the “social, local, mobile” paradigm. That didn’t strike me as particularly innovative. We already have Facebook and the iPhone. I resisted the notion that everything is better as a mobile app.
I wanted an app that allows me to have more conversations. I brainstormed such an app with a colleague, which would have been called, “Get off your phone!”. It would serve up suggestions like “look up at the unique architecture” or “go talk to that person over there,” but we concluded that even if you put in a rating system it would just be a place for crude jokes and pickup lines. I abandoned the idea, along with hope in a hair-of-the-dog solution. I wound up working on a school project instead.
One of the things I love about computer science is how diverse its applications are. You can mine data for scientific research, or design a clean and functional website, or write utilities that help manage a company’s workflow, or make a video game, or just become more aware of the patterns and relations of the things around us. Not everything we build has to be a time-waster for rich people (and on the global scale, we are all rich people). In fact, to build only these apps is a shameful waste of the privileged position we occupy as educated people.
The future is here. We all carry devices in our pockets that can tell us anything, anywhere. We’re living the always-on dream, but it’s time to wake up. We have crises in real life to attend to, like feeding seven billion people while fighting climate change.
There are some things apps just can’t do, and I don’t mean solve the halting problem. Our devices have caused us to be less connected, not more. Put the toy technologies back in your pocket. Time to go do something else now. Have coffee with a good friend, perhaps. Or at least a Monster with a teammate.
Daneel Reif
Hey all. My name is Daneel and I’m a rising senior. I do a lot of programming. I have a bunch of interests – mountain biking, windsurfing, and cooking, to name a few. I’ve been vegetarian for about 6 months now. In the coming semesters I’m hoping to help the Tufts ACM board implement all their great ideas – and I’m excited to see where it takes us. Send me an email. Let’s get to know each other.
Marcella Hastings
I’m Marcella, a freshman from Minneapolis, MN studying computer science and math through the School of Engineering. I hope to work in the theoretical branches of computer science, particularly theory of computation, and I’m excited about number theory. I’m also interested in hearing about independent projects that Halligan dwellers are working on. My favorite mathematician is Paul Erdös.
Hashem Nasarat
Hi I’m Hashem–a Junior CS major in the engineering school. Terribly excited to stir up things. Interested in: mobile computing; free software; jailbreaking, empowering users; morality; and thoughtful video games. This coming year I want to take advantage of the diverse interests and specialties of our CS classmates and use them to supplement our formal education. Also, it’s time we build the feeling of community in Halligan and have more extra-curricular CS clubs and events. I’m always interested in meeting new people, and this summer I’ll be in Boston (internship at EditShare), so get in touch!
Dylan Portelance
Hey all, I’m Dylan. I’m a Junior computer science and music major interested in product design, musician interfaces and the power of crowds. As a board member I’ll be taking care of the blog, Twitter and other social media in an attempt to give the computer science community more things to read and talk about with each other. While not programming or coming up with software ideas I can be found playing saxophone, swimming and reading about hip-hop. This summer I’ll be at Tufts doing research with the HCI group. Hit me up if you have interest in contributing to the blog!
Trevor Rothaus
My name’s Trevor, I’m a rising Junior, majoring in computer science. I am interested in AI, UI, comp theory, and love learning new programming languages. I hope to get Tufts more involved in the external programming world. There are many exciting programming contests to help practice and improve your programming skills and might even help you get that internship. I also plan on changing up the food on the ACM food table.
Matt Russell
Hi my name is Matt and I’m a Junior, double majoring in computer science and political science. My areas of interest mostly revolve around the study of programming languages and computer security but I find almost any coding challenge exciting. I’m also very interested in fostering cross collaboration among political science / IR majors and computer scientists to better understand how developments in technology are changing traditional power structures and relationships between countries. Within ACM I’m hoping to work towards showcasing more of the research currently going on at Tufts by undergrads, grad students, and faculty. I think this would greatly help other CS majors find their own research areas and help foster collaboration within the department.
The first Tufts Hackathon was a tremendous success thanks to the hard work by organizers Adrienne Dreyfus, Marshall Moutenot, Alden Keefe Sampson and Russell Stern, and the huge turnout and dedication to building quality software all through the night. From 5pm on Friday, April 13th to 5pm on Saturday, April 14th, many programmers from Tufts, and even a few from other schools, were challenged to build a finished product in 24 hours. Competitors were encouraged to use the Evernote API, Windows Phone SDK or anything they pleased. Other sponsors included Microsoft, Thoughtbot, Crashlytics, New England Venture Capital Association, and GitHub.
The night kicked off with talks from Jeff Siebert of Crashlytics, Andrew Lau from Redstar and Chris Traganos from Evernote. Students also received a live Windows Phone development demo, a quick talk from Ming, plenty of food and swag. The first few hours gave participants the opportunity to discuss their ideas with the tech leaders before diving into all night coding sprees. Hacking lasted all night and Traganos even swung by to tweet the action. When it came time to pitch, everyone was impressed with the quality projects and the winners earned some pretty sweet prizes.
Junior grand prize winner Matt Russell said, “The judges gave us some really great feedback on some ways to improve our original design and ways to expand our application into a marketable product.”
Ming also commented, “What we (the judges) were completely blown away by was the work of the youngest participants who has only taken either COMP 11 and/or COMP 15. The future looks very bright.”
One of the judges, Ph.D. candidate Noah Daniels, posted on Facebook soon after, “I had a lot of fun judging and seeing all of the amazing work everyone did.”
Winners:
Evernote Grand Prize – A Trip to Evernote Developer Trunk Conference in Silicon Valley: Evernote Analytics by Baturay Akaslan, Amanda Hay, Andrew McGlathery, and Matt Russell
The grand prize winners built a product to help Evernote users analyze patterns and statistics based on their Evernote notebooks. The team hopes to extend it to use machine learning to better utilize Evernote.
Microsoft Prize – Microsoft swag and new Windows Phone: Tyler Lubeck
Tyler created a ‘habit’ building Windows Phone 7 application a la Jerry Seinfeld. Users create ‘streaks’ by committing to competing the same activities every day and marking them in the application. If you forget to check-in or don’t complete the activity, your ‘streak’ is reset.
Began At Hackathon Prize: Jumbo Smash by Erik Formella, Calvin Hopkins, Andrew Purcell and Sam Purcell
These guys made a product that allows Tufts seniors to find other Tufts seniors during Senior Week to ‘smush.’ It had both web and mobile components and showed you matches in your area. This very blunt dating website aimed to find Jumbo seniors a last hurrah.
Began Before Hackathon Prize: LiveNote by Samuel Daniel and Benjamin Leiken
LiveNote is a notetaking application that inserts timestamps into your notes based on a timer that can be synced with a movie, song, interview, lecture, or other timed media. The team implemented a basic proof-of-concept application which synced the built-in timer with a YouTube video loaded on the page. They plan on continuing to improve the project in the future.
Congratulations to all hackers!
More photos here.
Welcome to the Tufts ACM Blog!
Stay tuned for a clever title, news, witty commentary and opportunities to hack the international space station. This will be just one of the ways Tufts ACM will try to foster community among Halliganites at Tufts. Engineering is not a solitary profession. We’re here for YOU so let us know what YOU want to see on this blog.
What this blog is NOT:
Look forward to more.
<ESC> :wq
Dylan
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