beanz Magazine April 2021

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April 2021

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The Daemons Around Us Raindrops, Paintball, and Physics?

Old Dogs and New Tricks

beanz magazine April 2021: Volume 8 Issue 5 Issue 53 (online) & 36 (print) ISSN: 2573-3966 (online) ISSN: 2573-3958 (print) beanz Magazine© is published bi-monthly, six times a year, online at http://beanzmag.com and in print.

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Periodicals postage paid at Woodmere, NY and other mailing offices Copyright Owl Hill Media, LLC with all rights reserved except as noted. Images are copyrighted by their creators, as noted with each story both online and in print.

Publisher/Editor: Tim Slavin Staff Writers: Erin Winnick, Amy S. Hansen, Bonnie Roskes, Simon Batt, Patricia Foster, Clarissa Littler, Jennifer Newell, Tim McGuigan, Bianca Rivera, Jo Hinchcliffe, Tim Slavin Contributors: David Dodge, Jay Silver, Jeremy Kubica, Colleen Graves, Daniel Fenjves, Ali Hagen, Emeline Swanson, Jean-Francois Nguyen, Paul Seal, Madeleine Slavin Back Office Magic: Wendy Garrison Copy Editor: Eileen Seiler Art Director: Kelley Lanuto Webmistress: Patricia Foster COVER IMAGE: JEREMY BISHOP, UNSPLASH

Publisher’s Note Welcome to this issue!

For several years, I’ve wanted to publish an article about quantum computing. This issue we (finally) have two writers with articles about quantum computing and how it works. As you’ll see, it’s a little complicated. You will begin to understand the reasons quantum computing is in a research phase. We’re used to binary computing with ones and zeros. Quantum computing uses atoms, and predictions about how they perform, to organize and store knowledge.

We also have a lot of interesting articles and projects, for example, a soldering tutorial to get ready for future electronics projects we are publishing and coding projects with emoticons, another with pixel art, and a third with BBC Basic. When you’re done coding, we have a SketchUp software project to help you create a tour of the art museum you built in the last issue.

There are also articles about Limor Fried who founded Adafruit, an online store with tons of neat electronics projects and tools, as well as articles about a small internet community, identifying birds, and a thought piece about teaching how to identify bad information online.

It’s a lot to read. And probably this is one of our most diverse issues in terms of projects and topics that demonstrate how we use technology in our daily lives. I hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed creating this issue!

Tim Slavin, Publisher beanz Magazine

Our Mission beanz magazine is a bi-monthly online and print magazine about learning to code, computer science, and how we use technology in our daily lives. The magazine includes hard-to-find information, for example, a list of 40+ programming languages for education, coding schools, summer tech camps, and more.

While the magazine is written to help kids ages 8 and older learn about programming and computer science, many readers and subscribers are parents, teachers, and librarians who use the articles to learn alongside their young kids, students, or library patrons. The magazine strives to provide easy to understand how-to information, with a bit of quirky fun. Subscribers support the magazine. There is no advertising to distract readers.

The magazine explores these topics: Basics of programming and where to learn more, Problem solving and collaboration, Mathematical foundations of computing and computer science, Computational thinking, Recognizing and selecting computer devices, and the Community, global, and ethical impacts of technology.

April 2021

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Notebook Birds of a Feather

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Projects The Art of the Pixel

History Don't Stand So Close to Me People Limor Fried Turned Pastimes Into Profits Projects Be a Part of the Emoji Generation Concepts Cover Story The Wave(s) of the Future Concepts Cover Story Raindrops, Paintball, and Quantum Physics In the Middle How Did We Get Here?

tidbitz

Answer to an Age-Old 24 The Question 24 Do Some Good!

24 Or, Use a Shoebox...

25 Totally Secure 25 Lending a Hand, Truly Much 25 Too Information?

16 18 20 23 26 28

Electronics Hot Tips for Safe Soldering Languages Cover Story Who Says You Can't Teach an Old Dog New Tricks?

SketchUp Art Museum Tour Concepts Cover Story The Daemons Are All Around Us People The Value of Making Small Spaces Parents and Teachers The Imposters Among Us

Me and My beanz!

John Mennell, founder of MagLiteracy.org, is a big beanz fan! Recently on LinkedIn he called us the "amazing beanz coding magazine for kids" and he "wanted to point out that beanz is the first publisher ever to commit to send us copies from every issue of their publication."

MagLiteracy.org's mission is "to build an enormous literacy pipeline and to challenge the citizens of the world to fill it with new and recycled magazines for at-risk readers." Check them out!

Thanks for the shout-out, Mr. Mennell.

How much do you love beanz? We'd love to see! Send us a photo of you and your beanz to us at hello@beanzmag.com. We may print it right here and make you famous. Bragging rights!

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2 Notebook

BY AMY S. HANSEN

Birds of a Feather

The next time you are out for a walk and spot a bright red cardinal, eBird wants to know all about it.

Just open the free eBird app on your phone, set the place where you are walking, and type in the name of the bird and how many you see.

Cardinals are easy to identify since the males are bright red and have very distinctive head shapes.

But what happens if you see a type of bird that you don’t recognize? eBird offers a link to a program called Merlin that takes you through a series of questions so you can identify the sparrow, goose, hawk, or whatever it is.

With your observation recorded, you join the legions of birders with lifelong lists of birds catalogued. eBird, created by the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, is more than just a note-taking system. Because you share your observations, other people can go to the same spot and maybe see the cardinal you saw. You can plan your walks by what birds other people saw. And, last but certainly not least, you can help conservation efforts simply by recording what you saw.

Your sightings, and the sightings of 1.5 million other people from all over the world, go to Cornell’s computers. That’s a lot of birds!

Flying Forecasters eBird started in 1999, according to John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. The project currently has a huge data mine of bird sightings, which allows for an understanding of how these creatures are doing in our world, JONATHAN KRITZ, FLICKR

TIMOTHY DYKES, UNSPLASH

said Fitzpatrick, who spoke at the December 2020 virtual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

“We ask if the population of a bird is declining, increasing, or changing habitat.” he explained.

“And we can now direct local conservation groups to go in and measure what is different in the places where the population is declining and increasing. And how we can modify [human] behavior effectively.”

For example, the eBird website shows the sightings of Sprague’s Pipits, a grassland bird. Over time, their numbers have gone down.

Conservationists studied the data and realized there are now more roads in the bird’s territory than there used to be. “Armed with this knowledge, researchers can investigate,” the website says. They will look at the types of grasses that grow next to the roads along with other issues.

Weather and Feather Reports eBird and individual sightings only go so far. People don’t usually count birds at night. And often they don’t count birds high in the air. So how could Cornell Ornithology Lab look at migrating birds?

The answer was in the weather.

In 1995, the lab realized that the Doppler radar system, set up to predict and measure weather, could have other uses.

“We asked the radar to count all things that are not precipitation,” Fitzpatrick says.” That means the radar picks up birds.

Now, Fitzpatrick says, the group works with turbine operators.

The wind power collected by the

huge turbines is good for the environment, but can be bad for migrating birds. However, because of eBird and Doppler data, Fitzpatrick and his colleagues can warn turbine operators when bird migrations are arriving. The operators can then turn off the turbines for a night or two. “We can save 90 percent of the birds that way,” he said.

The data from eBird and the Doppler radar system makes Fitzpatrick feel positive about the way humans and the natural world can get along. “[Co-existing] is not going to happen by accident,” he said. “We need real-time measurements of environmental health. And birds are a great indicator of that health.” Given the data, he said he is hopeful that humans “will be able to figure out how we can fit in with all the grandeur of the natural world.”

Check out eBird at eBird.org b

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Huh?

PHONE SCREEN IMAGES PROVIDED BY eBIRD (www.ebird.org)

Projects

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BY JENNIFER NEWELL

The Art of the Pixel

Have you ever played the original Super Mario Brothers? How about the original Zelda? If so, you may recognize scenes such as the ones shown below. A, B Most, if not all, of the art in these images can be created using pixel art.

More recent games such as Terraria and Stardew Valley also make use of Pixel art. So what exactly is this blockish art form, and how can you get started using it in your own coding project?

To begin, consider the word pixel. It is a contraction of the words picture (pix) and element.

This is an apt name, as a pixel is the smallest physical point on a digital screen. When computer games first started to appear in the 1970s, each pixel was still relatively large, making the creation of digital art for the games challenging.

Outlines were blocky and colors were limited. Nonetheless, artists came up with creative ways to make recognizable characters and backgrounds.

Programmers wrote code that controlled the placement and movement of the artwork, and computer games were a hit!

Today we have much more advanced

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software and video game graphics are far more life-like than what can be drawn with two dimensional pixel art. However, it is still an excellent way to quickly create artwork for a coding project. And with enough practice, pixel art can actually lead to incredible backgrounds and sprites.

Those interested in giving pixel art a try may enjoy a site called Piskel (https://www.piskelapp. com/). For no charge, anyone can create a Piskel account, start making images and gifs, save them to their gallery, or download them for use elsewhere.

When you sign in to Piskel, you will notice there are quite a few tools and features. C If you are new to pixel art, you can try out a

few of the most commonly used by following these two examples.

First, we will test out the symmetry tool, color selector tool, pen tool, and paint bucket tool (and maybe the eraser tool if anything goes wrong), to make a simple pixel art tree.

Pixel art often looks nicer when we use 2-3 hues of the same color within a drawing.

For the tree, choose three shades of green, and two shades of brown.

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5 We will use two hues of brown for the tree trunk, and three hues of green. D Select the vertical mirror tool and use the pen tool to draw the outline of the tree. As you draw one side of the tree, the other side will automatically be generated as a reflection over an invisible line of symmetry. Use the vertical mirror pen to create left/right symmetry. E Here's an outline of a simple tree. F Divide the tree into a top, middle, and bottom section using the darkest hue of green that you selected. Use the paint bucket tool to quickly fill in each section of the tree. Try using the lightest/brightest shade on the top section, and the darkest shade on the bottom section. G Here's our tree, after it has been divided into sections and colored in. H Add a bit of a different hue of green to each section of the tree,

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and lighten up the trunk with a bit of the lighter hue of brown. The tree is complete! I Tip: If you have trouble relocating a color that you used before in the color picker window, use the color picker tool. After you select this tool, click on the color you want in your drawing. The color picker tool will “record” this, and apply it to the pen tool. J Once you are satisfied with your drawing, save it to your gallery and download it to your computer. A simple way to incorporate your Piskel drawing into a coding project is to upload it into Scratch as a sprite (or create an entire background for Scratch!).

We uploaded our Piskel tree into Scratch and duplicated it many times to create the beginning of a pixelated forest. K Even though it is fun to make our own creations in Piskel, sometimes we might not K have the time or knowhow to draw what we want for a coding project. One way around this is to take a

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look at The Noun Project (https:// thenounproject.com/). There you can find a wide variety of icons representing a range of topics/ objects. By downloading the icon of your choice (as a PNG file), and uploading it into Piskel, you can customize it with your own colors and modifications. We searched for a puppy on The Noun Project, and selected this icon. L Next we downloaded the puppy icon and imported it into a new Piskel drawing. M Finally, we added color to the puppy using the paint bucket and pen tools. N Whether you create your own pixel drawings, or modify the drawings of others, Piskel is a fun way to get started with pixel art. If you enjoy drawing and coding, try creating pixel art of your own and animating it with some code! b

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6 History Languages

BY EILEEN SEILER

Don't Stand So Close to Me Before pixels were even a “twinkle in the eye” of digital artists, the concept of manipulating individual points or dots to create a visual representation of something or someone was causing a splash in the art world that is still rippling to this day.

In the mid-1800s, artist Georges Seurat devised a technique known as Pointillism in which, for A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat, left, instance, he would compose a and at right, a close-up view of the upper left of the painting field of tiny green, yellow, blue and red dots that, in the viewer’s tricked, but rather clever brain, became a green tree. Not only that, but the juxtaposition of the colored points made the tree appear to shimmer and even change color depending on how you looked at it. One of his most famous works, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, took him two This is a color halftone image.

A section of the iconic Whaam!, years to paint. (That’s like a million

by Roy Lichtenstein, 1963.

Notice the dots in the close-up years in the digital age.)

Collection of the the Tate, London view. Before digital photography At about the same time Seurat and printing, photographs would was “pointing” his way to fame, have to have a halftone screen like Chemist Henry Fox Talbot was this applied to them in order to inventing the halftone process. print the image on paper.

This involved breaking up a solid artwork, which often contains image, like a photo, into tons of onomatopoeia (words that sound dots in different sizes, shapes and like actions) such as Varoom, Pow spacing. That clever brain comes or Wham. into play again to create the illusion Today, there is a famous artist of various tones of gray or color. by the name of Chuck Close who Fast forward to the 1960s Lucas, by Chuck Close, 1986-87. creates similar types of images. (still the olden days). Artist Roy Collection of the Metropolitan He is known as a photo-realist.

Museum of Art, New York. On the Lichtenstein used this halftone Close composes his work using right is a close up of the eye. technique to create some of the material like fingerprint marks, most iconic images in pop culture. technology. paper pulp, paints, inks and even Although he did admit he was If you have a chance to visit a an old photographic process influenced by some of the great museum and see the works of these called daguerreotype. The result artists, like Monet and Picasso, he artists, remember, if you stand too is a lot of little bits making up a revealed that his true inspiration complete picture. His early airbrush close, you may get the point, but was comic books. This is pretty you won’t get the whole picture… techniques helped inspire the obvious when you look at his until you back up, of course. b development of ink-jet printing

When you’re coding away or tinkering with electronics all by yourself, it may not feel as if you’re doing anything particularly huge or important. Did you know, however, that a lot of the big names in technology started off with similar humble beginnings?

It’s easy to imagine that companies like Google or Microsoft just appeared one day as huge businesses, but the opposite is true.

These companies started off as one or a few people working away in a room or garage, then slowly grew to become what they are today.

This is how Limor Fried became the owner of Adafruit. It all began in Fried’s MIT dorm room. She would tinker around with little projects and then sell them online to anyone who was interested. At the time, she said the little venture was nothing more than a way to kill time until she secured a “real job.”

However, it turns out that what she was doing

was soon to become her real job.

People were interested in her gadgets and flocked to her online store to buy some for themselves.

In fact, she received so many orders, she decided to set up her own business just to keep track of everything.

That was the beginning of Adafruit Industries. Now, it’s a multi-million dollar company with employees and a huge presence online. Limor Fried went on to become the first female engineer to appear on WIRED’s cover, was named to the top 50 women in tech in 2018 by Forbes, and was one of the White House’s Champions of Change in 2015... and it all started in her room at University.

She attributes her success to designing quality products. She says that, if she produced products that broke easily or were faulty in some way, she’d have to handle people sending back their gadgets for repair. By producing topquality products, she

could spend more time building and selling new products and less time fixing old ones.

Of course, Limor Fried is a rare case in the technology world. It’s very rare that someone goes from a bedroom tinkerer to a multimillion business owner. However, it does show the power that experimentation and hobbies have, no matter how small they may seem at first.

When Limor Fried started making her gadgets, she didn’t think it’d become her career later on. It was something she did until she got a “real job”. However, it eventually led her to what she’s doing today; running a business.

Whenever you’re coding or creating something, it’s important not to think of it as a “waste of time” or something that won’t really amount to anything. Your hobbies and interests may lead you to a future career which you really enjoy. Just have fun with the process and see where your hobbies take you. b

Above: Limor Fried, MIT News, May 2013, Image courtesy of Adafruit.

Left: Cover of Wired magazine, April 2011

7 People

Limor Fried Turned Pastimes Into Profits

BY SIMON BATT

8 Projects

BY BIANCA RIVERA

Be a Part of the See what we did there?

You can create programs that allow your users to get different results based on decisions they make, using JavaScript’s conditional statements. In this tutorial, we will create two versions of the same Emoji Generator, using two different types of conditional statements (if–else if–else and switch conditional statements).

The Emoji Generator is created using the 3 languages that are the foundation of any website: HTML (for format and layout), CSS (for the “look and feel”) and JavaScript (for functionality and interactivity). Both versions of the Emoji Generator will allow users to select how they are feeling from a drop-down form and, after clicking a button, a matching emoji and short statement will be displayed.

To display emojis on a webpage, your browser must know what character set (encoding) to use.

For HTML5 (the current HTML standard), the recommendation is to use the UTF-8 character set. To display emojis in HTML, you must specify the hexadecimal code of the symbol (which UTF-8 will know how to interpret).

Both versions of the program have nearly identical index.html files. Both use a simple form that provides users 5 feelings to choose from (Happy, Silly, Shocked, Tired and Grumpy). After a selection is made and the user clicks the form button, the selectFeeling() function is run in the script.js file.

The 5 feelings are connected to option values that are used in the JavaScript files (for example, option value "h” is for Happy). Both programs use the document. getElementById() method to return the emoji and short phrase

Emoji Generation that has the corresponding option value. For example, if the user selects “Happy”, which is connected to option value “h”, the output displayed would be a smiling emoji and the words, “Happy Camper!”.

Where the differences occur are in the two programs’ JavaScript files. In the “Emoji_Conditionals” program, after the function selectFeeling() is called, a series of if–else if–else statements are run that will specify blocks of code to be executed when the player makes a decision. The Happy feeling is the first option, starting the if statement. If that option is not selected, the else if statements will run. If none of those options are selected, the else statement will run and the last feeling option, Grumpy, will be displayed.

In the “Emoji_SwitchStatements” program, after the function selectFeeling() is called, two variables are declared (created), output and feelings. In our example, there are 5 possible cases (blocks of code) that can be executed in the switch statement, feelings. Once the switch statement is evaluated and the matching feeling value is found, the feeling “case” will execute.

Based on whatever was selected, that output will be displayed (the .innerHTML property will return, or display, the HTML content).

Just like if–else if–else statements, we can use switch statements to give users different results based on decisions they make. However, using switch statements is more efficient and error-proof, especially when you are providing users several options to choose from. b

Emoji Generator Code: Conditionals: https://repl.it/@brivera/ EmojiConditionals Switch Statements: https://repl.it/@brivera/ EmojiSwitchStatements

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Concepts

BY CLARISSA LITTLER

JEREMY BISHOP, UNSPLASH

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For the past few decades, scientists have been slowly working on a new kind of computer, one not built on the simple zeros and ones in the binary computers we use today. They’re working on something very different, something stranger: a computer that operates on chance, not certainty. They’re called quantum computers.

Quantum computers are the source of a lot of excitement and misunderstanding, so in this article I want to introduce what they are, what they are not, and what they might be able to do.

Binary computers perform operations on data with simple definite values. If we have the number five, for example, it is always equal to five. If we have five cats the number of cats never changes. If I add three cats to my five cats, there will always be eight cats. And a binary computer uses combinations of 0 and 1, called bits, to identify and store data like five, three, cats, and so on.

Quantum computers, on the other hand, are built on something a lot weirder than a bit: the quantum bit, or qbit for short. Data stored in the qbit determines the chance you will get a 0 or 1 when you ask for it out of the qbit.

To explain qbits further, I’m going to need to take an aside into quantum mechanics—the science of how objects move and behave at very, very tiny scales. While in our everyday lives we’re used to things moving in straight lines from here to there, and moving through every point in between, things start acting differently at the scale of atoms or smaller.

Quantum mechanics tells us that the tiny building blocks of atoms

are particles, very tiny objects, but their movement and behavior is described by waves. When I say waves I mean something like sound waves or even ripples of water: shapes that exist in space and time.

Because these waves have shapes, these waves can be used to calculate the probability of where a particle will be, how fast it will be moving, things like that. And this probability, this chance, is real: if you were to test multiple particles that all had the same wave shape, you’d get different answers similar to someone rolling dice in the background. Quantum computing uses these wave probabilities, stored in a qbit, to determine the chance a qbit is a 1 or a 0.

The comparison to sound waves is actually rather useful. Let's think about noise-canceling headphones for a moment. Noise-canceling headphones work by generating one set of sound waves to interfere with other sound waves. Similarly, quantum probability waves can interfere with other quantum probability waves. The most famous example of this is the double slit experiment which you can read about in a companion piece in this issue.

So back to quantum computers: we’ve described that qbits contain probability waves that describe the chance you get a 0 or 1 as a result.

Because qbits contain much more complicated, richer data than just a simple binary bit, a quantum computer can perform arithmetic and logical operations on these probability waves as easily as a normal computer acts on binary numbers.

This allows for some pretty cool things. Operations on qbits

can get a lot more calculations done in a single step by ruling out wrong answers at the same time as working on possible right answers. This goes back to the wave interference thing. Good quantum algorithms include their own noise canceling headphones: they cancel out wrong answers and amplify right ones.

What are good quantum algorithms? What kinds of things can quantum computers do? The short answer is that we’re not sure because we haven’t studied them long enough.

The long answer is that we know quantum algorithms can do certain things faster, like break the publickey encryption that practically every site on the internet uses. That’s scary enough to make people want to study them more.

We do know that, in theory, quantum computers can’t do anything magical that an ordinary binary computer can’t perform.

However, they potentially can do things much faster than our current computers. Something that would take years for a binary computer could take only minutes for a quantum computer.

The main obstacle right now is actually building a quantum computer that’s useful. We can construct some small computers with a few dozen qbits but they are unstable and only usable for short periods at a time.

Even with the many puzzling mysteries that surround them, quantum computers are exciting.

It’s this huge unknown world of new techniques, new kinds of hardware, and new ways to write software programs in the next few decades.

Maybe you’ll be part of it! b

12 Concepts

BY SIMON BATT

, l l a b t n i a P , s p o r d n i Ra

In the previous story in this issue, we talked about quantum computing and how weird it can get. But did you know that quantum physics can get even weirder than that?

There’s an experiment that scientists do to show just how weird quantum physics can be. It’s called the “double slit experiment,” and, as you might guess from the name, it involves shoving stuff through two slits.

We’re not just putting any old thing through the slits; just things we can’t see with the naked eye. This is because the double-slit experiment can tell us if something is a particle or a wave without having to squint through a microscope.

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The premise is simple; if you pass particles through two nearby slits, they’ll continue travelling forward until the wall in front of them. The particles will only hit the spots on the wall that are parallel to the slits. You can imagine the particles like paintballs; only the spots on the wall adjacent to the slits will get hit.

Wandering waves A wave, however, works a little differently. When demonstrating how a wave interacts with the double-slit experiment, scientists shine light through the two slits, because we know it’s a wave and you can see the results with the naked eye. However, you can use any wave, as long as the two slits are a wavelength apart.

When you send light waves toward these two slits, they won’t just travel through the slits and go straight to the wall. This is because, when the wave goes through the slits, it creates a ‘mini wave’ at each slit. These mini waves then bump into each other and mess things up a bit.

This is like if you drop two stones into a pond at the same time. The ripples from each stone will meet up with one another.

Some will cancel each other out, and some will merge into one big mega-ripple.

As such, when you observe a light wave hitting the wall on the other side, you won’t see two columns of light parallel to each slit. Instead, you’ll

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s c i s y h P m u t n a u Q d an see multiple blips of light where the waves merged together, and darkness where the waves cancelled each other out. The really smart term for this is “diffraction pattern.”

So, if something is a particle, it travels straight through the slit and arrives on the other side. If it’s a wave, it’ll create a diffraction pattern due to the mini-waves interacting with one another. Easy!

Quantum confusion So, is quantum stuff a particle or a wave? Well, scientists decided to check by sending electrons through the two slits. When they did, they saw it made a diffraction pattern. Easy peasy—this means electrons move like a wave…right?

However, things

got weird when they sent electrons through only one of the two slits. When they did, the diffraction pattern still appeared, even though there was no second wave interfering with the first. It was almost as if the first wave was interacting with itself to make the pattern.

Utterly confused, the scientists decided to double-check what the electrons were doing. As soon as they set up the equipment to watch, the electrons straightened themselves out and only hit the wall parallel to the slits; just like particles do.

So what on Earth do we do with this data? Well, we can say that electrons have both

the capabilities of a wave and a particle, much like how a quantum PC can be in a state that’s both a 0 and a 1. It’s how you handle it that dictates what it is at a given time, and it’s that weird and mystical power that we hope to one day harness for the power of computing.

Want to try the double-slit experiment at home? While you can’t use the power of quantum physics using stuff around the house, you can see a diffraction pattern for yourself by using a laser and a homemade double-slit tool. It takes a bit of work, but it’s possible.

Or, you could go play paintball on a rainy day! b

In the Middle: A Deeper Dive Into Everyday Stuff

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e W d i D w o H ? e r e H t Ge eline of ory

BY TIM SLAVIN

Bonjour. I'm Blaise Pascal and I'm famous.

Why? Read this and find out!

A Tim ting Hist u p m o C

A computer is an amazing device, whether it's a smartphone, a VR headset, a laptop, or a guidance system in an airplane.

Computers solve some problems more quickly and easily than humans can. An airplane guidance system, for example, collects location, airspeed, and other data in real time, then performs calculations used to guide the plane from takeoff to landing.

The only big difference between computers today and computers from the past are the tools and ideas available to create them.

PREHISTORY

Fingers and Stones Counting systems from a zillion years ago were not terribly useful.

Humans likely first counted, with their fingers and objects like stones. This wasn't ideal. What if you lost a finger taking down a mastodon? You might have only four fingers (or three!) while your neighbors have five. Using fingers and objects to count also required human memory; there was no way to store your results, except in your head.

Some early number systems also limited the ability of humans to create technology that can make complicated calculations. Roman numerals, for example, are difficult

3000 BCE

Abacus First appearing over 5000 years ago in Babylon, today Abacus from the called Iraq, this Daoguang Reign in China, 1820-1850. Palace device with Museum, Taipei, Taiwan beads that slide up or down a set of poles or wires set into a wood frame is considered the first computing device. It’s still in use today in some cultures. The position of a bead determines its value.

ALL IMAGES FROM WIKIMEDIA COMMONS EXCEPT BACKGROUND IMAGE, BY JASON BLACKEYE, UNSPLASH

to use in calculations. Arabic numerals, used in India then carried to the Mediterranean area by Arab traders, made it much easier to perform calculations. (We still use Arabic numerals today.) Still, the counting results, or data, could not be stored. What to do?

Well, as the old saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention.

The need to store data inspired these inventions. They are computers, of sorts...they store data, at least temporarily, which makes it easier to use them to solve problems quickly and efficiently.

1600-ish Napier's Bones A Scottish mathematician, John Napier (1550-1617), created logarithm tables to make calculations easier. His device, called Napier’s Bones, used ten rods, often made of Napier's Bones white ivory which looked like bones. Logarithms are a math operation to determine how many times a number is multiplied by itself to reach another number.

For example, 10 multiplied by itself two times (10x10) is 100. It’s a shorthand way to make calculations faster.

A 1981 replica of the original Pascaline Calculator from 1642

The Pascaline Calculator In 1642, Blaise Pascal (1623 to 1662) created a geared calculator to help his father collect taxes. 19 year old Pascal built a mechanical calculator that could add and subtract.

Cranking a handle moved a set of tooth gears to engage other gears and indicate amounts. A one-tooth gear, for example, revolved ten times to move the ten-tooth gear once.

Computers With an E ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was the first US electronic computer that also could be programmed to perform tasks. It also was Turingcomplete, a standard that measures whether or not a computer can recognize or decide other data manipulation rules and make changes.

The ENIAC used about 18000 vacuum tubes which burned out frequently.

Logic Piano This device built in 1869 by William Jevons demonstrated that logic problems could be computed with algebraic equations. It’s a series of boards with combinations of true and false terms arranged on a rack. Today’s programming languages in electronic computers use the insights of Jevons and others to follow logic rules to make calculations.

An ENIAC computer

Logic Piano The Altair 8800

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1700's

Mid-1800's

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Computors With an O

Slide Rulers

Altair 8800

Starting in the 1700s and 1800s, the first modern computers were people and were called computors with an O. Mostly women who were very good at solving math problems, they did calculations used for ship navigation and later to fire cannons and other military equipment. For example, if a cannonball of a certain weight is fired at a set of specific angles, how far will the cannonball fly before it lands?

A French artillery officer Amedee Mannheim (1831-1906) created a slide rule, a single long ruler set between two other long pieces.

Calculations were made by sliding the long middle ruler then using cursors on the outside pieces.

Logarithmic calculations could be made without the need for the ten rods in Napier’s machine. Slide rules were in use until the 1980s.

Intel produced the first microprocessor, used in a $397 computer called the Altair 8800.

You programmed it by flipping the switches on the front. Bill Gates and Paul Allen, two of the original founders of Microsoft, adapted the BASIC (Beginner’s All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) programming language to work with the Altair, making it even more useful.

The Apple II, TRS-80, and other computers were created based on the success of Altair and BASIC. b

Slide Rule

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16

r o f s p i T g n i Hot r e d l o S e f a S

Electronics

BY JO HINCHCLIFFE

Soldering is a great skill that can help you learn about electronics, fix things, or even create the next greatest invention.

It’s easy to learn, too. You start with a soldering iron that you plug in to heat up the tip of the iron. You then apply the tip to a strand of soft metal and let this metal melt onto components that you want to stick together with a strong connection.

Soldering irons come in a variety of sizes and prices with a range of features. A To get started, you only need a small inexpensive model without a lot of bells and whistles, that just gets the job done. There are some budget USB-powered ones, which are very affordable and are great for new learners.

Other tools that come in handy include a stand into which you can place the soldering iron when it is hot to stop it from burning surfaces and to keep it safe. Many stands have a small sponge built in, which you can wet and then use to clean the tip and remove any excess solder. Other stands have steel wire pads to do the same job. Both work well. You’ll also need some soldering wire. Solder comes in a range of thicknesses and, for beginners, it’s recommended to use between 0.6mm and 1mm.

Fumes and Flux

Solder is a mixture of different metals; some is lead-free and some solder has lead in it. Any general solder is fine for beginners and many start off with solder that contains lead, because it is slightly easier to work with. Whatever solder you use, you need to wash your hands very well after handling it and also make THIS IS ENGINEERING_RAENG, UNSPLASH

sure you work in a well ventilated area and avoid breathing in any fumes. If you really get into soldering regularly it’s a good idea to invest in a fume extractor, which will move the fumes away from you and filter them. To begin with, using a fan to move the fumes away towards a window or vent can work well Many types of solder contain flux, which is a chemical that cleans the metal areas the solder is going to stick to. It can be useful to have some extra liquid flux to brush onto potential solder points. Finally it’s a good idea to work on a board or surface that you don’t mind if it gets damaged. You also might want to find a third-hand tool, as pictured, to help you hold onto items.

Solder is hotter. Hey that rhymes!

So before we start, a quick mention of safety. Lots of people think soldering is dangerous; but if we are sensible it’s a very safe hobby.

The tip of the iron is extremely hot, often above 380C, and, yes, it will quite quickly give you a blistered burn if you hold the hot end. In practice though, you are very unlikely to hold onto it for long! Human reflexes tend to pull our hand away very quickly if we accidentally touch it. It’s worth wearing some safety glasses as this will stop smoke and fumes from irritating your eyes and protect your eyes if the hot solder splashes, which is again unlikely. If you do burn your fingers or hand, hold your hand under cold water for as long as you can manage.

Start simple

A great place to start a soldering adventure is with a small electronics kit. B Some electronic components are mounted with their wire connections passing through a hole on the circuit board. This type of construction is called “through hole” or “through hole mount” and these are the best kits for beginners. Other

Soldering is pronounced SODDER-ing. The "L" is silent.

electronics components are much smaller and sit on top of the circuit board and are called Surface Mount Devices or “SMD” and they are more advanced to work with at first!

There are thousands of kits online and in electronics shops to choose from. Pick something simple and fun and follow the instructions, paying close attention to where parts go.

Soldering a through hole part is simple. Make sure the part is the right one and bend the leads to fit the part in the right place on the circuit.

Leave the excess leads on until the component is soldered in. You can even bend one of the leads to help hold the component in position. C Power up the soldering iron. You can see when it is hot enough by touching a length of solder wire to the tip. If it melts easily and forms a small blob on the iron’s tip, then it is ready. Clean the tip one last time and then let’s solder our component.

Place the tip of the soldering iron so that it touches and heats both the component lead and the metal pad on the circuit board at the same time and let it heat for a few seconds. Then push a small amount of solder into the end of the tip. The solder should melt and flow all around the pad and the lead. Remove the iron and wait a few more seconds for the joint to cool down. D You have soldered your first joint. Check the joint and make sure the solder looks quite shiny. E If it looks very grey and dull, that can be a sign that your joint isn’t quite right and you will need to reheat and resolder it. Once you are satisfied it is done correctly, you need to trim the component leads back to get rid of the excess; this is actually the most dangerous bit of soldering as when you clip the lead, the sharp pin like lead can fly off in any random direction. Always hold the lead so you catch the removed bit and don’t forget to wear eye protection. b

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18 Languages

BY CLARISSA LITTLER

Who Says You Can't Teach

PHILLIP BUMP, FLICKER

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an Old Dog New Tricks?

We’ve talked about old languages. We’ve talked about new languages. I don’t think we’ve ever talked about an old language experiencing a revival because of a social media bot. But that’s exactly what we’re going to cover as this issue’s featured language: BBC Basic.

BBC Basic is the original programming language of a now 40-year-old computer called the BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro for short. That is, actually, the same BBC that runs the British television stations and radio.

Micro trivia As another aside, if you’re wondering why old desktop computers were often called microcomputers, the answer is pretty simple. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, as adults will remember, a computer was at least the size of a big library bookcase and often the size of an entire room. By comparison, something that could fit on a desk certainly felt like it was a million times smaller—the literal meaning of “micro”. Even though no one has called them “microcomputers” in a couple of decades, there’s one place where this old name lives on: a tiny company named for making MICROcomputer SOFTware. You probably haven’t heard of them.

Forget I said anything.

Now, BBC Basic was closer to modern languages than a lot of the other languages used to program home computers at the time: almost all are variants of the original BASIC from the 1960s. It had proper for- and while-loops, rather than faking loops with go-to

(a rather infamous programming construct known for being “considered harmful” by a famous computer scientist.) It also had functions, declared variables with let-statements like in JavaScript, and had a robust library for drawing and making music.

Back to BBC Basic The reason why it’s worth talking about here in the year 2021 is that there’s a blossoming scene of people making neat art in BBC Basic thanks to the Twitter account

Above: a screenshot from the replies of the bbc microbot so you can see the kinds of animations it generates @bbcmicrobot. If you tweet a program at this account, a bot will run the program and then create an animated gif of the output and send it back to you. In this way, people are using small programs to create thousands and thousands of neat little pixel art animations.

All you need to do to get started is to navigate to the Owlet editor at https://bbcmic.ro and try entering your code. Here’s a very, very simple first program to get started with.

MODE 2 FOR Dogs%=0 TO 300 GCOL 0,RND(15) PLOT 69, RND(1280),RND(1024) NEXT Dogs% Briefly, we start by setting mode 2, which tells it to use a particular graphics mode that has a whopping 16 colors, half of which blink. Then we create a for-loop and run it 300 times. The loop variable in the loop, Dogs%, ends with a % sign to tell BBC Basic we only want it to hold whole numbers.

The loop itself only needs two commands. The first chooses a color to draw with, randomly picking a number between one and 15. The second plots a single pixel at a random x and y position. If we gave PLOT a different value than 69 it would draw different shapes instead.

Once you’ve written some code, you can either run it in the browser or use the share button to ask the BBC Micro Bot to run the code for you and make a gif. The cool thing about the bot is that it can run in a special sped-up mode and generate a gif by simulating the computer running the program for up to three hours.

This was just the barest overview, but I hope it’s enough to get you started making fun art with an old programming language. There are so many amazing examples made in just the past year and I can’t wait to see what else you all can do. b

20 SketchUp

BY BONNIE ROSKES

Art Museum Tour In Part 1 of this project (February 2021 issue), we created an art museum complete with framed paintings and labels on the walls.

In this second part of the project, we’ll create a “guided tour” of the museum, by saving views as scenes.

All you need for this project is SketchUp in your internet browser.

SketchUp is a free and fun webbased program for 3D modeling.

You can use SketchUp to design just about anything, from furniture to a dream bedroom to an entire city. Go to https://app.sketchup.com/app.

If you modeled your own art museum, you can use that model for this project. If not, you can download the museum model that I made. Click the 3D Warehouse icon from the toolbar along the right

A

side. In the window that appears, enter “beanz” in the search field, and be sure to search for Models. A Find the Beanz Art Museum model by Bonnie R, and click the Download icon. B If you see a message about importing a large model, click Import anyway. For most decent computers, this model should work just fine.

The model should now be attached to your cursor, and you can click to “drop” it anywhere. It’s generally best to stick close to the model origin—the point where the three axes meet.

Once the model is imported, it’s brought in as a component. C Because we’re not doing anything to the actual model, it’s

C

fine to leave it as a component. But if you wanted to make changes, you would want to right-click on the model and choose Explode.

To unselect the model, rightclick anywhere in blank space.

The first thing we’ll do is add a ceiling to the museum. This is because we’ll be saving views of a “camera” looking at each painting, and these views will look strange with open sky above the walls.

To trace around the ceiling, press L for the Line tool. Start by clicking two corner points along the outer edge of one wall. Be sure to look for the green “Endpoint” dot each time you click. D Keep clicking corner points until the whole ceiling face is filled in. E To give the roof some thickness,

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press P for the Push/Pull tool, and pull up the ceiling just a bit. F The ceiling should be a single object. To select the entire ceiling, press the Spacebar for the Select tool, and triple-click (three times fast) on any part of the ceiling.

Because the rest of the model is a component, only the ceiling should be selected.

Then right-click on any selected face of the ceiling, and choose Make Group. G Now that the ceiling is one object, it’s easier to show and hide.

And to do that, we’ll be using a tag.

Click the Tags icon along the right, which opens the Tags window. Then click the Add Tag icon. H Name the tag “Ceiling,” and click its Eye icon to hide the tag. I To assign this new tag to the ceiling, right-click on the ceiling group and choose Entity Info. This window has a field for the selected object’s tag–the ceiling is currently untagged. J

J

Click the “Untagged” tag and switch the tag to the ceiling tag.

Because this tag is hidden, the ceiling disappears. K When creating the scenes we’re about to set up for each painting, it’s best to have the ceiling hidden, so that we can “get inside” to place the camera. So navigate around to a view like this, where you can see most of the floor. L Open the Scenes window and click the Add Scene icon. M This saves the current view as a scene that you can go back to anytime. The scene is created with a default name, which you can click to change it to something like “Inside.” N Now we can start playing with the Camera tools. You can find them on the left side of the screen, in a flyout from the second-to-last tool on the toolbar. The one we’ll start with is Position Camera. O This tool uses a click-and-drag.

Start on the floor in front of the first painting you want in the first scene.

Keep the mouse pressed, and drag the mouse into the painting itself. P The view changes so that you’re facing the painting from the floor. Q The reason you’re looking up at the painting is that the default height from the floor is zero. In other words, the default view is what a bug on the floor would see.

If you look at the Eye Height field in the lower right corner, it should have a zero. R To raise the camera view, just type something like 6’ - remember the ‘ symbol if you’re working in feet and inches. Don’t click in the Eye Height field, just type and the numbers will appear there. When you press Enter, the camera is raised, and you’re probably looking up at the sky. But the active tool is now Look Around—you should see an Eye icon. Just drag the mouse straight down, like moving your eyes down. S If you’re too close to the painting, you’ll want to “walk” backwards. You can do this with the

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Walk tool. T Start anywhere, and slowly click and drag straight down, to simulate walking backwards. SketchUp won’t let you walk through walls, so you’ll be able to walk just until you hit the back wall.If you do go too far back, just drag forward a bit. U Once you have a view you like, looking at the painting and its label, turn the ceiling tag back on. V Now add a new scene, which you can name after the painting. W Those are the scene-creation steps, which you can now repeat for all of the other paintings. So, for the second painting, start by returning

S

to the “Inside” scene by clicking the scene thumbnail. With the ceiling hidden again, you can use Position Camera to face the second painting. X Change the eye height, look around to face the painting, and walk back if needed. Y Turn the ceiling back on, and save this scene. Z Keep going with these steps, until each painting has its own scene.

What

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a mas

Now you can present the animated tour of your museum, by clicking each scene one by one, in order. Unfortunately, the SketchUp web app doesn’t have a way to play the animation automatically, or to export an animation (the desktop version of SketchUp does have these features). But there are many free screen-recording apps you can use to create an animation file. You can even add background music. b

terpie

ce!

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AA

Did you know that every time you startup a Mac computer, daemons lurk in the background and watch your every move? Before you call in an exorcist, it’s worth knowing that daemons are a natural part of the computer; in fact, they’re very helpful.

A daemon is the name of a program that starts up when your computer boots up, and hides itself away in the background. You typically don’t see a daemon start up, neither do you see it doing its job. However, despite their name, it helps you out by keeping things running in the background.

For example, one daemon may keep its eyes on the clock and lets specific scheduled processes know when it’s time to act. Another may keep the file system in check in the computer’s memory, and yet another may keep an eye out for incoming network connections.

You’ll find a daemon in computers that use the Unix branch of operating systems. This includes Linux as well as macOS. Windows isn’t a part of this club; it calls daemons a much more boring name: “services.”

So daemons are really useful for computers; but if that’s true, why are they called “daemons” in the first place? It’s even pronounced the same way as “demons,” those horned red evil guys.

As it turns out, the word “demon” is a newer version of the word “daemon”, which the ancient Greeks once used. However, back then, a daemon wasn’t a bad guy; it was a spirit that followed you around and helped you out in life.

You can see an explanation about daemons in the Unix System Administration Handbook:

THE HERMITAGE MUSEUM, ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

Delphin was a dolphin-shaped sea daemon in the service of the god Poseidon.

“...daemons have no particular bias towards good or evil, but rather serve to help define a person's character or personality. The ancient Greeks' concept of a “personal daemon” was similar to the modern concept of a “guardian angel”—“eudaemonia” is the state of being helped or protected by a kindly spirit.”

So that’s why the daemons have their name. Much like the daemons of ancient Greece, they’re invisible, watch over you silently, and help you with what you’re trying to do. It’s a good thing they’re not the modern-day demons, else our computers will be infested by mischief-making processes that even an antivirus can’t fix. b

MYTHOLOGY.WIKI.ORG

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

This image shows Socrates and his daemon.

WIKIPEDIA

23 Concepts

The Daemons Are All Around Us

BY SIMON BATT

WIKIPEDIA

A depiction of a Eudaemon on an ancient Corinthian plate.

In ancient Rome, daemons were known as “geniuses."

Other cultures also have concepts similar to the Greek Daemons, such as the Arabic Jinni (Genie) and the Christian guardian angel. This image shows a Roman winged genius.

24

tidbitz The Answer to an Age-Old Question

Do Some Good

LUCA BRAVO, UNSPLASH

Yes, we really do make a sound when we fall.

If you’ve walked into any forest, anywhere, and stood still for a few moments, you’ve heard the sounds of birds, tree leaves and branches shifting in the wind, maybe the bubbling sound of a stream. It’s very different from sitting at a computer in a classroom or at home doing homework. Sounds of the Forest is a project that let everyday people collect one minute of forest sounds from around the world. The sounds they captured are available online through a radio station called Tree.fm. It’s a soothing way to bring the forest to your classroom or home through speakers or headphones. b https://timberfestival.org.uk/soundsoftheforest-soundmap/ https://tree.fm

Or, Use a Shoebox...

CDC, UNSPLASH

Home movies of your pottytraining days

Your brother's 7th grade term paper An Ishtar VHS

If you’re old enough to have a floppy drive or CD-ROM around your house, you know how data storage can become obsolete. It’s difficult to figure out how to transfer data from these old storage devices to new ones. Scientists have come up with a more permanent storage device—the DNA of living bacteria. While not common today, this approach may make it possible to store data for generations without having to worry about obsolescence. No news, however, about how bacteria feel about being used this way. b https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/ scientists-program-living-bacteria-store-data

JOHN CAMERON, UNSPLASH

Over years, electronic computers and gadgets wear out and add up: headphones, laptops, phones, batteries, and other gear. What do you do with them? Don’t throw them out. If they contain a hard drive, back them up first. Save any chargers or cabling needed to operate the device. Phones and batteries can be recycled through Call2Recycle.org. Earth911.com has a list of recyclers based on your devices. Batteries also can be handled through drop off bins at Whole Foods, Home Depot, Lowes, and Staples stores. This article also has a lot of ideas and tips for recycling your old electronics. b https://www.cnet.com/how-to/recyclingelectronics-what-to-do-with-your-oldlaptops-phones-cameras-and-batteries/

25

Totally Secure

We’ve all seen the basic requirements for a strong password: at least 8 or 10 or 12 characters, capital letters, numbers, and special characters. However, research at Carnegie Mellon University shows this isn’t enough. They’ve created a software tool websites can use to analyze your password as you type and suggest ways to make it more secure, for example, breaking up common words with slashes or random letters. Their tool is based on problems researchers have seen people make when they set up a password, not a one size fits all checklist like many password strength meters. b https://engineering.cmu.edu/news-events/news/2017/05/11-password-meter.html https://cups.cs.cmu.edu/meter/ https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/research/demos.html https://www.cnet.com/news/strong-passwords-arent-as-easy-as-adding-123-hereswhat-researchers-say-helps/

RO, UNSPLASH

Lending a Hand, Truly The Sequoyah High School Robotics Team in Canton, Georgia takes on projects to help disabled people regain use of their limbs, by 3D printing custom prosthesis. The results are sent for free to people around the world. Everything is done virtually. Their project started with one student doing an Eagle Scout project. Daniel McCrobie wanted a project to make a difference in the world and pursue his interest in biomechanical engineering. The teacher overseeing the robotics team connected McCrobie and other students with e-NABLE, a global volunteer organization that uses 3D printers to make prosthesis, at no cost to clients. b A CLIENT TRIES ON A DEVICE. PHOTO FROM CNN.COM

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/25/us/high-school-robotics-customprosthesis-trnd/

Too Much Information?

Babies born in the past few years, and in the future, are the first generations to be tracked from their mom’s pregnancy to school and beyond. This has huge privacy implications as most or all of this personal data is captured and stored by private corporations who face little or no regulation about how the data is used. For example, babies have their weight, heart rate, cultural background, parent’s thoughts, family ties, family medical history, photos, and other data collected. While these apps are not new, what is new is the collection of data from many sources into one source and how data that appears unconnected can be connected. If enough data is collected, for example, babies can be profiled as they grow up. b https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/ tech-company-data-from-birth

BY CLARISSA LITTLER

People

26

The Value of Making Last issue, I interviewed solderpunk, the creator of the Gemini protocol—an alternative to the web that’s focused on privacy.

We talked about the importance of privacy and the ability to do what you want on the internet. We also talked a little bit about the concept of the small internet, people building online communities apart from the crowded and corporate social media. In this issue, I talked to cmccabe, the founder of a small internet community called rawtext. club.

As a member of the rawtext club myself, I wanted to give a little context for what it’s like and how it works. rawtext is an example of a pubnix, short for public Unix, basically a server running Unix or Linux software that people can use over the internet, almost like having your own computer. One of the most famous and earliest pubnixes was SDF, founded in 1987 before anyone could easily have a computer that ran Unix at home.

While it’s easier to have your own computer today than it was

back in the 80s or 90s, pubnixes are still important community spaces.

They’re places to work and learn together. They’re an alternative to the noise of social media feeds and the public internet. That’s what the rawtext pubnix is for me.

To connect to one of these pubnixes you need a secure shell software (SSH) client like PuTTY to connect to the pubnix’s server.

Once connected, you can use the computer remotely from the command line, the shell, like in this screenshot below:

So with this as a preface, I asked cmccabe a few questions about himself and how he started rawtext. club. Responses have been edited for brevity.

How did you get involved in the small internet and pubnix worlds? What was your first pubnix experience? cmccabe: I stumbled into it purely by accident. When I was an undergrad in college, I somehow talked my way into running an online election for an academic society and I needed a place to host my election software. Quite a bit of web browsing led me to SDF.org and their pubnix server where I could use a database and run scripts. For a few years, I used the SDF pubnix server as an email account and a place to host scripts.

Eventually I noticed the pubnix also had

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This space is WAY too crowded.

Time for me to check out the small internet!

Small Spaces a bulletin board and other social features. I found these fascinating.

I consider the SDF pubnix as sort of my alma mater in the pubnix world.

If you were talking to a young programmer, what do you think is cool or interesting about command line programming that would make it worth learning? cmccabe: That's a good question. I'm not a real programmer.

I've pretty much always avoided programming software, so take my answer with a grain of salt.

Command line programming has a higher learning curve than using a graphical user interface (GUI), but it gives you more tools and ways to interact with the computer. And because the command line interface doesn't provide you with visual indicators or dashboards about your code, you are forced to build a better awareness of your code. Plus, command line programming isn't that hard. Learning the command line is definitely worth the effort.

What made you want to start rawtext.club? Did you have a

particular goal for what you wanted it to become? cmccabe: rawtext.club came about from the crossover of ideas I had from other pubnix servers. For one, while I really like all the local software found throughout the SDF file system, I wanted to create something easier for normal users, not just system administrators. I wanted to make software available on the system for others.

Another reason for rawtext. club was to create something different from the internet relay chat (IRC) approach common in other pubnixes. I'm a big believer the way people communicate can shape the type of interaction users have. This goes back to scholarship

by Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, for example. I feel that a slower communication that doesn’t always happen at the same time is a good way to cultivate a special type of interaction among users.

Third, there is a deeply political and philosophical theme underlying rawtext.club, different from the

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manipulative effects of corporate owned mass media. Pursuing this theme is a big interest and ongoing effort of mine.

What do you think people get out of alternative spaces on the internet? Why not just everyone hang out on twitter and instagram? cmccabe: These out-of-theway places on the internet avoid the superficial attention seeking that goes on with Twitter etc.

I know there are good people and communities within Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit. However, the platforms are designed in a way that doesn’t benefit users.

Alternative spaces on the internet also give people an opportunity to explore ideas outside the mainstream. This can be a doubleedged sword, of course, but I think it's a critically important part of a democratic society to hear different voices and ideas. b

Parents and Teachers

28

BY TIM MCGUIGAN

The Imposters Among Us In the new online multiplayer game, Among Us, teams of astronauts, called Crewmates, are tasked with unmasking a lethal impostor aboard their spaceship.

The way that game works is that the impostor looks and acts very much like the other Crewmates and can be difficult to ferret out.

To evade detection, the impostor has to be discreet about how they take out each of their fellow players, one by one.

Among Us is at heart a cooperative game. Players communicate through a chat window, and any Crewmate can call an emergency meeting at any point. If the players know the signs of an impostor, they can usually triangulate which of their fellow players is the bad actor.

However, players new to the game might find that identifying an accomplished impostor can be a difficult task.

My 8th grade students are currently smitten with this game, and I can see why. Similar to the age-old Mafia or Werewolf party games, it is fun to role-play as the impostor as well as hunt one down.

When one of my 8th grade sections pleaded with me to create a lesson based on Among Us, I was initially a bit stumped. I realized they just wanted an excuse to play the game in school, but didn’t have a solid lesson in mind. Then it occurred to me that the impostor in Among Us is an apt analogy for something rather important: the current state of internet disinformation.

Before the internet transitioned from a place for academics, hobbyists, and computer scientists to an open digital town square,

valid information on the internet was easier to spot and identify.

Large government-funded science organizations like NASA and the NSF had a large presence on the burgeoning platform. Newspapers and magazines that had been in print for decades openly and frequently posted content that had been researched and fact-checked.

The landscape now is quite different. Today the multitude of information sources and social media posts makes verifying the quality of information quite difficult for a trained adult, let alone for a teenager.

Being more impressionable, teenagers accept the veracity of online data more easily and practice less skepticism online.

The analogy I use with my students is that it is like identifying junk food in the supermarket.

Because corporations hide unhealthy ingredients in the small print and make bold health claims on the packaging in large print, making smart choices in the supermarket is hard for young people to do. Having the guidance of an adult helps, but online many teenagers are left to fend for themselves in an overwhelming marketplace of political ideas, claims, and propaganda.

So like playing Among Us, the goal when online is to identify those around us that are participating in good faith versus the impostors who seek to propagate misleading information. After playing Among Us, I introduced the concept of Astroturfing to my students. Astroturfing is when an organization uses social media bots or intermediaries to push an

agenda while also hiding the true source of the campaign. Since we have just had an election, the students had many examples of getting bombarded with information from dubious sources.

One student admitted that she felt overwhelmed by social media and had no idea where to even begin.

One organization that is helping to watchdog the impostors is the Project on Computational Propaganda at the Oxford Internet Institute. Since 2012, they have investigated how bots, algorithms, and automation have influenced political discourse online. They have five criteria for identifying “Junk News”: Professionalism, Style, Credibility, Bias, and Counterfeit. Any news source that meets even three of the criteria should be treated much like junk food at the supermarket–good at promoting short-term feelings but lacking in any meaningful nutrition.

It is a natural process for teenagers to develop an identity and try to make sense of their world. In an era where social media has as many “influencers” as it does credible sources, it is extremely important for young people to have a strong set of critical thinking skills to find the impostors. I encouraged my students to use the Junk News criteria and to continue to communicate with each other about the claims they read about on the internet. Just as in the game, students are stronger together than they are isolated.

When it comes to information in the 21st century, we (or I should say most of us) are all in this together. b

29

JAVARDH, UNSPLASH

“Engineering is the closest thing to magic that exists in the world."

—Elon Musk

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Raindrops, Paintball, and Quantum Physics https://beanzmag.com/ quantum-double-slit

tidbitz https://beanzmag.com/ april-2021-news-wire The Value of Making Small Spaces https://beanzmag.com/ interview-cmccabe

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