October 2025 – cs4fn
8 posts published by Paul Curzon and Jo Brodie during October 2025| cs4fn
You might be surprised at how many people have something short, simple (and stupid!) like ‘password’ as their password. Some people add a number to make it harder to guess (‘password1’) but unfortunately that doesn’t help. For decades the official advice has been to use a mixture of lower (abc) and upper case (ABC) characters … Continue reading He attacked me with a dictionary!→| cs4fn
Computer hackers are the bad guys, aren’t they? They cause mayhem: shutting down websites, releasing classified information, stealing credit card numbers, spreading viruses. They can cause lots of harm, even when they don’t mean to. Not all hackers are bad though. Some, called white hat hackers, are ethical hackers, paid by companies to test their … Continue reading Ninja White Hat Hacking→| cs4fn
The traditional story of how World War II was won is that of inspiring leaders, brilliant generals and plucky Brits with “Blitz Spirit”. In reality it is usually better technology that wins wars. Once that meant better weapons, but in World War II, mathematicians and computer scientists were instrumental in winning the war by cracking … Continue reading RADAR winning the Battle of Britain→| cs4fn
Flawed cogwheel| cs4fn
You might think that under the sea things are nice and quiet, but something fishy is going on down there. Our oceans are filled with natural noise. This is called ambient noise and comes from lots of different sources: from the sound of winds blowing waves on the surface, rain, distant ships and even underwater … Continue reading Sea sounds sink ships→| cs4fn
How can computer scientists improve computer memory, ensuring saving things is more secure? If Vasileios Klimis of Queen Mary, University of London’s Theory research group has his way, they will be learning from bats. Imagine spending hours building the perfect fortress in Minecraft, complete with lava moats and secret passages; or maybe you’re playing Halo, and you’ve … Continue reading Shouting at Memory: Where Did My Write Go?→| cs4fn
Why should AI tools explain why? Erhan Pisirir and Evangelia Kyrimi, researchers ar Queen Mary University of London explain why. From the moment we start talking, we ask why. A three-year-old may ask fifty “whys” a day. ‘Why should I hold your hand when we cross the road?’ ‘Why do I need to wear my … Continue reading AI owes us an explanation→| cs4fn
A perceptron winter: Winter image by Image by Nicky ❤️🌿🐞🌿❤️ from Pixabay. Perceptron and all other image by CS4FN. Back in the 1960s there was an AI winter…after lots of hype about how Artifi…| cs4fn
Click on the magazine cover to get a pdf copy of the magazine. Computer Science by all, for all The unfortunate, misleading, but self-reinforcing, stereotype that computer science is only for white…| cs4fn
The first computer wizard With father a cryptographer, mother a suffragist, Christopher Strachey was a school teacher when he first started ‘playing’ with computers in the early 1950s. …| cs4fn
by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London Image by Divya Gupta from Pixabay Mary Ann Horton was transitioning to female at the time that she made one of her biggest contributio…| cs4fn
Edie Schlain Windsor was a senior systems programmer at IBM. There is more to life than computing though. She led the landmark US Supreme Court Case that was a milestone for the rights of same-sex …| cs4fn
by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London Image by Markus Christ from Pixabay MIT professor and transgender activist, Lynn Conway along with Carver Mead, completely changed the way we think …| cs4fn
Chip design that changed the world (Updated from the archive) Image by Christian B. from Pixabay Some people’s innovations are so amazing it is hard to know where to start. Sop…| cs4fn
Image by Cristian Ferronato from Pixabay Rock star David Bowie co-wrote a program that generated lyric ideas. It gave him inspiration for some of his most famous songs. It generated …| cs4fn
Image by Thomas G. from Pixabay The idea of an algorithm is core to computer science. So what is an algorithm? If you have ever used the instructions from some Lego set for building a Lego building…| cs4fn
by Greg Michaelson Greg Michaelson is an Emeritus professor of computer science at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. He is also a novelist and a short story writer. From the cs4fn archive. Image…| cs4fn
by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London It it possible to make a working computer out of lego and you do not even have to pay for an expensive robot Mindstorm kit…but only if you are willin…| cs4fn
by Jonathan Black, Paul Curzon and Peter W. McOwan, Queen Mary University of London From the archive Alan Turing was born in London on 23 June 1912. His parents were both from successful, well-to-d…| cs4fn
Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay Sitting down and having a nice chat with a computer because they are your friend probably isn’t something you do every day. You may never h…| cs4fn
Lines of Longitude. Image from wikimedia, Public Domain. Mary Edwards was a computer, a human computer. Even more surprisingly for the time (the 1700s), she was a female computer (and so was her da…| cs4fn
Click on the magazine cover to get a pdf copy of the magazine. Helping with healthcare The trouble with healthcare is that it’s becoming ever more expensive: new drugs, new treatments, more patient…| cs4fn
Image by M W from Pixabay Intending to make a marine robot that will operate under the ocean? Time to start learning, not just engineering and computing, but the physics of marine biology! And, it …| cs4fn
Image from Pixabay Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay Before there were computers, there were people who computed… The original meaning of the word computer was a human who di…| cs4fn
Issue 29: Diversity in Computer Science. Early black computer scientists have been celebrated less than they deserve until recently but have been integral to the development of computing past, pres…| cs4fn
Click on the magazine cover to get a pdf copy of the magazine. Too important to be left to men Women have been at the forefront of computer science and electronic engineering from the outset. Does …| cs4fn
Click the cover to download the magazines Mad for Mars? Obsessed with the Oort cloud? Really quite crazy about quasars? No one could blame you. The lure of unexplored territory is amazingly powerfu…| cs4fn
Buzz Aldrin standing on the moon. Image by Neil Armstrong, NASA via Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain You have no doubt heard of Neil Armstrong, first human on the moon. But have you heard of…| cs4fn
Computing is for all. Anyone can be a Computer Scientist or Electronic Engineer if they love the subject, put their mind to it, and put the work in. Some of the most amazing, the absolute greats, w…| cs4fn
Image by CS4FN based on an illusion by Ouchi When disasters involving technology occur, human error is often given as the reason, but even experts make mistakes using poor technology. Rather than b…| cs4fn
Click on the above to go to the magazine special issue on Alan Turing The grandfather of computing Alan Turing is the most significant computer scientist of the 20th century. In his short life, he …| cs4fn
Image by geraldrose from Pixabay There are many myths and stories about how different animals gained their distinctive patterns. In 1901, Rudyard Kipling wrote a “Just So Story…| cs4fn
Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay In the 2025 RHS Chelsea Flower Show there was one garden that was about technology as well as plants: The Avanade Intelligent Garden exploring how AI might be…| cs4fn
Image from a set of wartime photos of GC&CS at Bletchley Park, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons A group of enthusiasts at Bletchley Park, the top secret wartime codebreaking base, rebuilt a…| cs4fn
Annie Easley. NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Annie Easley was a pioneer both as a computer programmer but also as a champion of women and minorities into computer science. She went from…| cs4fn
Computer Scientists talk about “Syntactic Sugar” when talking about programming languages. But in what way might a program be made sweet? It is all about how necessary a feature of a language is, a…| cs4fn
Celebrating LGBTQ+ Greats Thousands of programming languages have been invented in the many decades since the first. But what makes a good language? A key idea behind language design is that they s…| cs4fn
Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay Superheroes don’t just have physical powers. Often they come out on top because of their mental abilities. Sherlock is a good example, catching vi…| cs4fn
by Paul Curzon, Queen Mary University of London Truth tables are a simple way of reason about logic that were popularised by the 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. They provide a very cl…| cs4fn
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. His interest was in logic and truth, language, meaning and ethics. As an aside …| cs4fn
Primary Puzzles 1 UK Schools order print copies of our Primary Puzzles magazines and booklets here (while stocks last). Logic for life Logic and deduction are core thinking skills but also an impor…| cs4fn
