Tag: puzzles

Dogecoin Has a Top Dog Worth $2.1 Billion

The dogecoin market has a pack leader. From a report: Records show that a person, or entity, owns about 28% of all of the cryptocurrency in circulation — a stake worth about $2.1 billion at current prices [Editor’s note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. The holder’s identity isn’t known, which is common in the opaque world of digital currencies….

How the NSA-led US Cyber Command Wishes You a Happy Valentine’s Day

Slashdot reader DevNull127 writes: The U.S. Cyber Command, headed by the National Security Agency’s director, has been a part of America’s Department of Defense since 2009. Today this unified combatant command wished its followers on Twitter a happy Valentine’s Day, adding “As our gift to you, we present 12 crypto challenges designed by the information security community. “Love is in the…

10 Years After Its Discontinuation, Some Fans Still Love Microsoft’s Zune Mp3 Player

“It was weird to own a Zune in 2005,” remembers a new article in the Verge. “It is even weirder to own a Zune in 2021 — let alone 16 of them. And yet, 27-year-old Conner Woods proudly shows off his lineup on a kitchen table.”
They come in all different colors, shapes, and sizes, and each can be identified by that…

Study Finds Brain Activity of Coders Isn’t Like Language or Math

“When you do computer programming, what sort of mental work are you doing?” asks science/tech journalist Clive Thompson: For a long time, folks have speculated on this. Since coding involves pondering hierarchies of symbols, maybe the mental work is kinda like writing or reading? Others have speculated it’s more similar to the way our brains process math and puzzles. A group…

The ‘Advent of Code 2020’ Event Begins

“Need a vacation from 2020? Why not go on an adventure and learn programming at the same time?” asks developer Eric Wastl on Twitter, announcing this year’s edition of the Advent of Code. From the site: Advent of Code is an Advent calendar of small programming puzzles for a variety of skill sets and skill levels that can be solved in…

Should Computer Programming Classes Focus on Projects Instead of ‘Logic Puzzles’?

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: Writing in the November Communications of the ACM, MIT’s Mitchel Resnick and Natalie Rusk explain that the educational use of coding in schools is at a crossroads. The good news? “School systems and policymakers are embracing the idea that coding can and should be for everyone.” The bad news? “In many places, coding is being introduced…

Is QAnon an 8Chan Game Gone Wrong?

This week London’s prestigious Financial Times published a 15-minute video investigating the question: “Is QAnon a game gone wrong?” In 2017, the Q team, whoever they may be, made use of the modern equivalent of the Playboy’s letters page. It’s a message board called 4Chan… A YouTuber called defango has since claimed the work was his. He says he created Q…

For the First Time Ever, Scientists Caught Time Crystals Interacting

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics: For the first time, scientists have observed an interaction of a rare and baffling form of matter called time crystals. The crystals look at a glance like “regular” crystals, but they have a relationship to time that both intrigues and puzzles scientists because of its unpredictability. Now, experts say they could have…

Strange gamma-ray heartbeat puzzles scientists

Scientists have detected a mysterious gamma-ray heartbeat coming from a cosmic gas cloud. The inconspicuous cloud in the constellation Aquila is beating with the rhythm of a neighboring precessing black hole, indicating a connection between the two objects, as the team led by DESY Humboldt Fellow Jian Li and ICREA Professor Diego F. Torres from the Institute of Space Sciences (IEEC-CSIC)…