Yo!
Today’s Geek Night is sure to be a fun one! I’ve been down to the farmers’
market in Cowley and grabbed us some delicious cheeses - the perfect fuel
for ’golfing! If you’d like to come prepared, I’d highly recommend checking
GolfScript out - though feel free to use any language(s) of your choice.
We’ve got a talk with Gold sponsor Palantir coming up next week. It’s on
Machine learning and ethics in data science - a highly relevant topic in
this age!
Metaswitch’s Insight Night event is still upcoming, feel free to check that
out. HSBC also has an event running on the 30th October.
*====ALMOST COMPLETELY OUT OF SPACES!!====* for our all-day Bletchley Park
trip, *kindly sponsored by Silver sponsor Ensoft!* Bletchley Park, once the
top-secret home of the World War Two Codebreakers is now a vibrant heritage
attraction. Explore, experience and enjoy the once top-secret world of
iconic Codebreaking Huts and Blocks set within an atmospheric Victorian
estate. We’re also visiting the National Museum of Computing on that
trip. *Free for
members*, and *£10 for non-members* - so you’ve got a pretty good deal
regardless! *NOTICE: If you aren’t in the first 50 then you will be placed
onto a waiting list, with members taking priority spots.*
Push your interest onto this stack here.
<https://goo.gl/forms/IaoSgoD51W7iHO212>
Here’s the link to our Discord, just in case you’re not there already for
some reason. <https://discord.gg/xA9PFvy> Please let me know who you are
when you join (like, your name and surname).
Come along!
*The CompSoc Committee - Joe G, Edward H, Ben S*
Events
*Geek Night 3: CodeGolf*
<https://www.facebook.com/events/1076012762567772/?event_time_id=10760127892…>
-
7:00 pm 27th October, Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer
Science
CodeGolf, like normal golf, is all about getting the lowest score.
This is where the similarities end.
By “score”, we do of course mean bytes (characters)! For example, consider
a typical “Hello, World!” PHP (yes the dreaded!) program:
<?php
print "Hello, World!";
?>
Ugh, a whole 29 bytes! But we can do better:
Hello, World!
There. A nice 13 bytes! (Yes, this works.)
By now you probably get the gist: in order to reduce code as much as
possible, you may take advantage of any of the esoteric properties or
features a language may have.
Try GolfScript <http://www.golfscript.com/golfscript/> (uses Ruby) if you’d
like an easy introduction to programming with very few bytes.
Bring your laptops, we’ll provide the pizza - and some *very* nice cheese!!
*Tech talk with Palantir: Ethics and Machine Learning*
<https://www.facebook.com/events/344484319461053/> - 7:00 pm 31st October,
Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science
Machine Learning (ML) is a ubiquitous tool enabling better decision making
for Businesses and Governments but carries many hidden costs – technical,
societal, ethical and legal. Palantir’s approach to ML is strongly
influenced by the early days of the company regarding the merits of
augmented intelligence in sensitive data environments and has tended to be
cautious, even reserved - with amplifying Human agency as a primary
objective. In this event Courtney Bowman (Lead of Palantir’s Privacy and
Civil Liberties Team) invites you to join him in a discussion examining the
pitfalls of naïve ML approaches, the practical and ethical virtues of
augmented intelligence, and principles of good data science that we believe
should be infused across machine learning work writ large.
Food and drinks provided.
Join us!
*CS Essentials Session 3* <https://www.facebook.com/events/735287826805251/> -
7:00 pm 1st November, Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science
*This week’s CS Essentials session is the first of a two-part series on
Bash.*
CS Essentials is a brand new course that CompSoc organises for beginners.
If you are into either exploring the Linux command line or learning how to
create a beautiful document using LaTeX, this is just the course for you!
You do not need any prior experience, just come along and have some fun!
All you need is a laptop to get through the exercises. What we will be
teaching is:
- basic and more advanced Linux commands;
- Bash scripting;
- Vim text editor;
- LaTeX.
If you need directions to the department, send us a message and we’ll be
more than happy to help!
The course is open to all members of the University of Oxford.
P.S. If you have any experience in any of the topics and a little spare
time, you can volunteer to help during the events.
*Geek Night 4: Esoteric Languages*
<https://www.facebook.com/events/1076012762567772/?event_time_id=10760128025…>
-
7:00 pm 3rd November, Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer
Science
Tired of things making sense? Want to try a language that breaks *all* the
conventions and destroys the very foundations of what you think it means to
write a program?
How about a language that’s Turing complete (can do anything computable)
with only eight symbols? <https://esolangs.org/wiki/brainfuck> What about
six? <https://esolangs.org/wiki/JSFuck> (I mean, it’s just JavaScript.)
What about one?? <https://esolangs.org/wiki/Unary> Tired of writing your
code line-to-line? How about it be flowing about in two dimensions?
<https://esolangs.org/wiki/Befunge>
What about the source file being a MIDI score?
<https://esolangs.org/wiki/Velato> Or a recipe?
<https://esolangs.org/wiki/Chef> Or a Shakespeare play?
<http://shakespearelang.sourceforge.net/> The possibilities do not end!
<https://esolangs.org/wiki/MarioLANG>
Use any skills you learned from the CodeGolf geek night to your advantage,
you might find they prove useful!
Bring your laptops, we’ll provide the pizza.
*Tech talk with EF: Title pending*
<https://www.facebook.com/events/344484319461053/> - 7:00 pm 7th November,
Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science
We have a talk from Silver sponsor Entrepreneur First. A self-description
from their site:
*Entrepreneur First is where outliers come together.*
Ambitious individuals leave places like Google, Goldman Sachs and Stanford
to join EF. Why? Because starting a startup is the highest impact thing you
can do with your life.
EF is the best place to find a co-founder, build a company and access the
world’s best investors. We’ve helped build over 140 technology companies,
collectively worth over $1bn.
EF is backed by Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) and Greylock Partners,
Mosaic Ventures, Founders Fund, Lakestar and some of the world’s best
entrepreneurs.
------------------------------
Sponsor Notices
*Metaswitch - Oxford Insight Night Event*
Thursday 1st November 2018 - 7:30pm-9pm Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke
Street, Oxford OX1 1BP
*YOU ARE EXCLUSIVELY INVITED TO OUR OXFORD INSIGHT NIGHT!*
The event will give you a great introduction to careers in Software
Engineering, and a taste of graduate and intern life at Metaswitch.
Come and meet a diverse selection of our current employees to hear about
their inspirational career stories and any recommendations they have about
working in the industry. Free food and drinks and a chance to win some
great prizes on the day!
To attend, please sign up via our website
<https://www.metaswitch.com/careers-events>.
Please feel free to encourage your friends to sign up to – the more the
merrier.
------------------------------
Other NoticesHSBC: Join the Dealing Room of Tomorrow
Date: Tuesday 30th October
Time: 18:00 – 20:30
Venue: Examination Schools, Oxford
You are invited to join a discussion hosted by HSBC around the Dealing Room
of Tomorrow. This will be a discussion led by senior Sales, Traders,
Structurers and Quants from the Global Markets floor at HSBC.
If you are interested in exploring what a role in Sales, Trading,
Structuring, Quantitative Analytics or Data Science could look like for
you, then you should sign up to this event.
There will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions and to find out about
the challenges and opportunities for Global Markets and how this may affect
your career. It will also give you an opportunity to find out which part of
the business might suit your character and skills best.
In the last hour you will have the opportunity to network with a number of
people at all levels across the Global Markets business.
To attend this event you need to apply by clicking the link. Places will be
allocated on a first come first served basis, and are only open to
University of Oxford students. Please arrive from 18:00 for registration
and a 18:30 start.
We look forward to meeting you!
------------------------------
The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise meetings
and events for our members to use and further their computing interests.
See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page
<https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc/> or visit our Website
<https://ox.compsoc.net> for more information about the society.
Want to unsubscribe or manage your subscription preferences? Go to
http://lists.ox.compsoc.net/mailman/listinfo/.
Generic greeting
In a land of myth, and a time of computers, the destiny of a great society
rests…
…zzz…
Tonight, gold sponsor *Semmle* is doing their *QL Coding Challenge!* Come
down to the UGSA as usual and come and *win prizes for finding bugs!* Upcoming
is gold sponsor *JP Morgan*’s tech talk on their trading technology that’s
impacting the global markets, with an *interactive trading simulation.*
Also, find attached the slides from Bloomberg’s Hashing talk. Bloomberg
also has a plethora of *software engineering opportunities* for aspiring
interns or people looking for placements, along with *on-campus interviews*.
TPP is also hosting an evening with renowned comedian *Alan Davies* on
Tuesday - so act fast!
Metaswitch are also advertising their Oxford Insight Night event taking
place on 1st November.
*We still have many spaces* for our all-day Bletchley Park trip, *kindly
sponsored by Gold sponsor Ensoft!* Bletchley Park, once the top-secret home
of the World War Two Codebreakers is now a vibrant heritage attraction.
Explore, experience and enjoy the once top-secret world of iconic
Codebreaking Huts and Blocks set within an atmospheric Victorian estate.
We’re also visiting the National Museum of Computing on that trip. *Free for
members*, and *£10 for non-members* - so you’ve got a pretty good deal
regardless! *Places are going fast!!!*
Push your interest onto this stack here.
<https://goo.gl/forms/IaoSgoD51W7iHO212>
As usual, here’s the link to our Discord. <https://discord.gg/xA9PFvy> Please
let me know who you are when you join so I can verify your membership and
grant access to the rest of the server!
Generic sign off
*The CompSoc Committee - Joe G, Edward H, Ben S*
Events
*Geek Night 2: Semmle Coding Challenge*
<https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1076012799234435&ref=br_rs> - 7:00
pm 20th October, Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science
Join Semmle on the evening of Saturday 20 October for a hackathon using QL,
Semmle’s query language for semantic code analysis. QL treats code as data,
allowing security response teams and individual developers to quickly and
accurately explore their code through simple, powerful queries that find
all variants of zero-days, as well as other severe security problems and
coding mistakes.
In this event, Semmle engineers will teach you how to use QL to find
correctness bugs and security vulnerabilities in open-source software,
using freely-available tools that we provide the open-source community
(bring a laptop!). Work together in teams to analyse the chosen software,
with *prizes awarded for finding the most bugs!*
*Tech talk with JP Morgan: Trading Technologies*
<https://www.facebook.com/events/329102674564406/> - 7:00 pm 24th October,
Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science
Take a deeper dive into how technology impacts the global markets. You’ll
meet current employees, learn about our programs and discover if a career
in Technology is right for you. Register your interest in attending our
upcoming trading simulation and informal networking event where you will
have the opportunity to:
- Take part in an interactive trading simulation to learn more about JP
Morgan’s trading technologies.
- Meet and network with employees from across the firm in an informal,
intimate setting.
- Find out what it’s like to work with us.
- Ask questions you really want answered.
We’ll be hosting a range of exciting events and programs around the globe
throughout the year. We encourage you to look for communications about our
upcoming events and programs and to check our careers website regularly for
updates.
Register via this link.
<https://jpmc.recsolu.com/external/events/edOF7kI3Pz3MQzwvmsZ97g/sign_up>
*CS Essentials Session 2*
<https://www.facebook.com/events/735287826805251/?event_time_id=735287840138…>
-
7:00 pm 25th October, Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science
*This week’s CS Essentials session is on Vim.*
CS Essentials is a brand new course that CompSoc organises for beginners.
If you are into either exploring the Linux command line or learning how to
create a beautiful document using LaTeX, this is just the course for you!
You do not need any prior experience, just come along and have some fun!
All you need is a laptop to get through the exercises. What we will be
teaching is:
- basic and more advanced Linux commands;
- Bash scripting;
- Vim text editor;
- LaTeX.
Please arrive a bit earlier just so we can register everyone before the
lectures begin. (This is mandatory for fire regulations.) If you need
directions to the department, send us a message and we’ll be more than
happy to help!
The course is open to all members of the University of Oxford.
P.S. If you have any experience in any of the topics and a little spare
time, you can volunteer to help during the events.
*Geek Night 3: CodeGolf*
<https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1076012799234435&ref=br_rs> - 7:00
pm 27th October, Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science
CodeGolf, like normal golf, is all about getting the lowest score.
This is where the similarities end.
By “score”, we do of course mean bytes (characters)! For example, consider
a typical “Hello, World!” PHP (yes the dreaded!) program:
<?php
print "Hello, World!";
?>
Ugh, a whole 29 bytes! But we can do better:
Hello, World!
There. A nice 13 bytes! (Yes, this works.)
By now you probably get the gist: in order to reduce code as much as
possible, you may take advantage of any of the esoteric properties or
features a language may have.
Try GolfScript <http://www.golfscript.com/golfscript/> (uses Ruby) if you’d
like an easy introduction to programming with very few bytes.
*Tech talk with Palantir: Ethics and Machine Learning*
<https://www.facebook.com/events/344484319461053/> - 7:00 pm 31st October,
Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science
Machine Learning (ML) is a ubiquitous tool enabling better decision making
for Businesses and Governments but carries many hidden costs – technical,
societal, ethical and legal. Palantir’s approach to ML is strongly
influenced by the early days of the company regarding the merits of
augmented intelligence in sensitive data environments and has tended to be
cautious, even reserved - with amplifying Human agency as a primary
objective. In this event Courtney Bowman (Lead of Palantir’s Privacy and
Civil Liberties Team) invites you to join him in a discussion examining the
pitfalls of naïve ML approaches, the practical and ethical virtues of
augmented intelligence, and principles of good data science that we believe
should be infused across machine learning work writ large.
Food and drinks provided.
Join us!
------------------------------
Sponsor Notices
*The following notice is from Bloomberg.*
2019 Bloomberg Software Engineering Opportunities
Bloomberg’s Software Opportunities for 2019 are now open for application.
Click on the links below to find out more about our graduate, internship
and placement programmes.
2019 Software Engineer - Graduate Programme.
https://careers.bloomberg.com/job/detail/70145
2019 Software Engineer - Internship Programme.
https://careers.bloomberg.com/job/detail/70146
2019 Software Engineer - Industrial Placement Programme.
https://careers.bloomberg.com/job/detail/70148
On-Campus Interviews:
Bloomberg will also be holding on-campus interviews in the Careers Service
on the following dates below. Please apply to our opportunities to allow us
time to schedule you in.
Dates of Interview:
- Friday 26th October 2018
- Thursday 1st November 2018
- Tuesday 20th November 2018
- Wednesday 28th November 2018
*The following notice is from TPP.*
*TPP’s ‘An Evening with Alan Davies’*
*Renowned comedian, television personality and QI panellist Alan Davies
will be performing at the Exam Schools North on 23rd October! Join TPP for
an evening of comedy, free drinks and food!*
*Click here
<https://www.eventbrite.com/e/tpps-an-evening-with-alan-davies-tickets-50599…>
to
book.*
*The following notice is from Metaswitch.*
*Metaswitch - Oxford Insight Night Event*
Thursday 1st November 2018 - 7:30pm-9pm Modern Art Oxford, 30 Pembroke
Street, Oxford OX1 1BP
*YOU ARE EXCLUSIVELY INVITED TO OUR OXFORD INSIGHT NIGHT!*
The event will give you a great introduction to careers in Software
Engineering, and a taste of graduate and intern life at Metaswitch.
Come and meet a diverse selection of our current employees to hear about
their inspirational career stories and any recommendations they have about
working in the industry. Free food and drinks and a chance to win some
great prizes on the day!
To attend, please sign up via our website
<www.metaswitch.com/careers-events>.
Please feel free to encourage your friends to sign up to – the more the
merrier.
------------------------------
The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise meetings
and events for our members to use and further their computing interests.
See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page
<https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc/> or visit our Website
<https://ox.compsoc.net> for more information about the society.
Want to unsubscribe or manage your subscription preferences? Go to
http://lists.ox.compsoc.net/mailman/listinfo/.
G’day, me ol’ CompSoc!
The academic year has begun! To all those who’ve just signed up - welcome!
We *still* have a Discord! Please feel free to join us
<https://discord.gg/xA9PFvy>! *If you are an official member of CompSoc*,
ping @Secretary and I’ll give you the Member role so that you can take part
in conversation outside the #welcome channel. Non-members can still feel
free to use #welcome as they like, however. Membership is £5 and will last
you a lifetime!
Would you like to go to Bletchley Park?
*We have 50 spaces* for our all-day Bletchley Park trip on *Saturday of
Week 7*. Bletchley Park, once the top-secret home of the World War Two
Codebreakers is now a vibrant heritage attraction. Explore, experience and
enjoy the once top-secret world of iconic Codebreaking Huts and Blocks set
within an atmospheric Victorian estate. We’re also visiting the National
Museum of Computing on that trip. *Free for members*, and *£10 for
non-members* - so you’ve got a pretty good deal regardless!
Push your interest onto this stack here.
<https://goo.gl/forms/IaoSgoD51W7iHO212>
These next couple of weeks feature a *Geek Night co-run with CodeSoc*, a
talk from Semmle on QL and LGTM with a related *hackathon* the following
Saturday, *CS essentials is starting up* - starting with an introductory
session on command line, and we’ll be having a talk in week 3 from JP
Morgan.
Cheers,
*The CompSoc Committee - Joe G, Edward H, Ben S*
Events
*Week 1 Geek Night: Wikipedia Game*
<https://www.facebook.com/events/1076012762567772/?event_time_id=10760127759…>
-
13th October, Undergraduate Social Area
It is a well known fact of *most* Wikipedia pages that if you click on the
first link in a page’s body, and continue to do so for the next page and so
on, you will eventually land on Philosophy. Using this, you could form a
crude strategy for finding a *path* from one source page A to target page B:
- Find manually a path from Philosophy to B.
- Click the first link from A until you reach Philosophy.
- Append the path from Philosophy to B to the path so far.
This will of course not necessarily find the shortest path from A to B,
however. The Wikipedia Game is to write a program that will find a path as
short as possible!
This Geek Night is in collaboration with CodeSoc. Bring your laptops and
pizza will be provided ;)
By the by, should you find yourself locked out and need to enter and are a
CS student (or joint schools CS student), swiping your bod card and
entering this code
<https://www.youtube.com/embed/OR4N5OhcY9s?start=13&end=19> followed by #
may help you… (note: this may require several attempts)
*Semmle Tech Talk: QL* <https://www.facebook.com/events/307662036696271/> -
17th October, Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science
Semmle will be giving a tech talk on LGTM and QL.
LGTM is the software engineering analytics platform that combines deep
semantic code search and data science insights from a community of hundreds
of thousands of developers to help everyone involved in software
development better understand their code, engineering processes and people.
The LGTM software engineering analytics platform combines deep semantic
code search and data science insights from a community of hundreds of
thousands of developers to help everyone involved in software development
better understand their code, engineering processes and people.
QL treats code as data, allowing security response teams and individual
developers to quickly and accurately explore their code through simple,
powerful queries that find all variants of zero-days, as well as other
severe security problems and coding mistakes. The same kinds of logical
coding mistakes are made over and over again, sometimes repeatedly within a
single project, and sometimes across the whole software ecosystem. These
mistakes are the source of many of today’s critical software
vulnerabilities.
Using QL, you can codify such mistakes as queries, find logical variants of
the same mistake elsewhere in the code, and prevent similar mistakes from
being introduced in the future by automatically catching them before code
gets merged. QL’s deep semantic code search allows you to find security
vulnerabilities, and much more. The key: QL treats code as data. By writing
queries customised to your needs, you can drive major architecture
transformations and refactorings, enforce coding standards, and explore
your code.
QL ships with extensive libraries and abstraction features that enable you
to write advanced queries without having to worry about low-level language
concepts and compiler specifics; instead you can focus on investigating and
interrogating your own codebases. Use QL in the most effective way for you.
Our QL plugins for your favourite IDE allow you to write queries and
execute them locally. The results appear directly in your development
environment. Or use LGTM’s Query Console to write QL directly in your web
browser, and query your entire portfolio for security vulnerabilities.
You can also make use of your custom QL queries with LGTM’s automatic code
review for pull requests in GitHub and BitBucket: find those critical
issues early and prevent them from ever getting merged or deployed. Every
development organisation struggles with finding enough security experts and
with finding more effective ways of sharing their security expertise.
*CS Essentials Session 1*
<https://www.facebook.com/events/735287826805251/?event_time_id=735287850138…>
-
7:00 pm 18th October, Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science
CS Essentials is a brand new course that CompSoc organises for beginners.
If you are into either exploring the Linux command line or learning how to
create a beautiful document using LaTeX, this is just the course for you!
You do not need any prior experience, just come along and have some fun!
All you need is a laptop to get through the exercises. What we will be
teaching is:
- basic and more advanced Linux commands;
- Bash scripting;
- Vim text editor;
- LaTeX.
Please arrive a bit earlier just so we can register everyone before the
lectures begin. (This is mandatory for fire regulations.) If you need
directions to the department, send us a message and we’ll be more than
happy to help!
The course is open to all members of the University of Oxford.
P.S. If you have any experience in any of the topics and a little spare
time, you can volunteer to help during the events.
*Geek Night 2: Semmle Coding Challenge*
<https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1076012799234435&ref=br_rs> - 7:00
pm 20th October, Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science
The workshop will be given by Oxford Comp Sci graduates *Julian
Tibble* and *Aditya
Sharad*. We’ll start with an *introduction to lgtm.com <http://lgtm.com>
and QL*, and tell you about some of the technological challenges we faced
when developing the query language and engine. After that, there’ll be a
workshop on how to write queries to *find your own security vulnerabilities*.
Various prizes will be awarded, and of course there’ll be drinks and pizzas.
See you all there!
*Tech talk with JP Morgan*
<https://www.facebook.com/events/329102674564406/> - 7:00 pm 24th October,
Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science
Abstract from JP Morgan:
Ever wonder how you can carve out a successful career in financial services
with a technology background? Are you curious to find out how we can match
your interests to our opportunities?
In partnership with the Oxford University Computer Society, join us for a
Tech Talk where you can meet our technologists and see how technology at JP
Morgan inspires change and makes a difference in our communities.
Join us for food, drink and interesting conversations!
We encourage you to look for communications about our upcoming events and
programs and to check our careers website regularly for dates and deadlines.
SIGN UP HERE
<https://jpmc.recsolu.com/external/events/edOF7kI3Pz3MQzwvmsZ97g/sign_up>
------------------------------
Other Notices
2018 Milner Award Lecture
<https://royalsociety.org/science-events-and-lectures/2018/11/milner-lecture/>
-
18:30 pm 20th November, The Royal Society, London
How can we ensure system correctness in the presence of uncertainty?
Computing devices support us in almost all everyday tasks, from mobile
phones and online banking to wearable and implantable medical devices. We
are now experimenting with self–driving cars and robots.
Since embedded software at the heart of these devices must behave correctly
in presence of uncertainty, probabilistic verification techniques have been
developed to guarantee their safety, reliability and resource efficiency.
Using illustrative examples, this lecture will give an overview of the role
that probabilistic modelling and verification can play in a variety of
applications, including security, medical devices, self-driving cars and
DNA computing. It will also describe recent developments towards model
synthesis, which aims to build these systems so that they are correct by
construction. Finally, it will explore the problems of ensuring that
systems that rely on learning will behave correctly, both in situations
that they have seen in training, and in situations that they haven’t.
The prize lecture will be webcast live and the video recording of the event
will be available shortly after the event.
Attending this event
- Free to attend
- No registration required
- Doors open from 18:00, and seats are allocated on a first-come,
first-served basis
- This event may be popular, and entry cannot be guaranteed
- Live subtitles will be available
- British Sign Language interpretation will be available on request.
Please let the Scientific Programmes Team <Events(a)royalsociety.org> know
if you plan to attend at least two weeks prior to the event.
- Travel and accessibility information
<https://royalsociety.org/about-us/contact-us/carlton-house-terrace-london>
------------------------------
The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise meetings
and events for our members to use and further their computing interests.
See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page
<https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc/> or visit our Website
<https://ox.compsoc.net> for more information about the society.
Want to unsubscribe or manage your subscription preferences? Go to
http://lists.ox.compsoc.net/mailman/listinfo/.
Hello CompSoc!
The academic year has begun! To all those who’ve just signed up - welcome!
We have a Discord! Please feel free to join us <https://discord.gg/xA9PFvy>
! *If you are an official member of CompSoc*, ping @Secretary and I’ll give
you the Member role so that you can take part in conversation outside the
#welcome channel. Non-members can still feel free to use #welcome as they
like, however. Membership is £5 and will last you a lifetime!
Gold sponsor JP Morgan is hosting a wide variety of events in Oxford -
check out their *The Oxford Tech Showcase*, *Step into JP Morgan Pop Up
Experience* and their *Asset & Wealth Management Dinner*. Also take a look
at some events that they’re running in London and Bournemouth (though, the
event they’re running in Bournemouth is the same as one of the London
events, and some people here may find London slightly easier to reach).
Interested working with our Bronze sponsor Jane Street? They’re hosting
three information events in Oxford in Week 2.
Cheers,
*The CompSoc Committee - Joe G, Edward H, Ben S*
Events
*Bloomberg Tech Talk: Hashing*
<https://www.facebook.com/events/248597569189343/> - 10th October, Lecture
Theatre A
Hashing values is an important technique for efficient associative
containers. It has multiple independent dimensions of considerations.
None of these considerations are generally well understood. This
presentation scratches the surface of the following areas:
- Using hash functions for associative containers.
- Hashing byte sequences into hash values and assessing the quality of
hash functions.
- Extracting byte sequences from values and hashing the resulting byte
sequences.
- Things to consider for a default hashing function.
The creation of containers and hashing functions is typically done by
specialists. The primary intention of discussing them is to give an idea
why applications should stay away from custom implementations. On the other
hand provision of hash values for user-defined types is rather common-place
to support their use as keys of associative containers. Thus, this
presentation will have an emphasis on the important aspects for providing
hash values for user-defined types:
- The relation between equality and hash values.
- Taking care of sequences to avoid collisions for empty sequences.
- Interaction of hash values between different types (“transparency”).
The code examples use C++. However, the various considerations are language
independent and their understanding will be useful when using other
programming languages, too.
*Week 1 Geek Night: Wikipedia Game*
<https://www.facebook.com/events/1076012762567772/?event_time_id=10760127759…>
-
13th October, Undergraduate Social Area
It is a well known fact of *most* Wikipedia pages that if you click on the
first link in a page’s body, and continue to do so for the next page and so
on, you will eventually land on Philosophy. Using this, you could form a
crude strategy for finding a *path* from one source page A to target page B:
- Find manually a path from Philosophy to B.
- Click the first link from A until you reach Philosophy.
- Append the path from Philosophy to B to the path so far.
This will of course not necessarily find the shortest path from A to B,
however. The Wikipedia Game is to write a program that will find a path as
short as possible!
This Geek Night is in collaboration with CodeSoc. Bring your laptops and
pizza will be provided ;)
*Semmle Tech Talk: QL* <https://www.facebook.com/events/307662036696271/> -
17th October, LTA
Semmle will be giving a tech talk on LGTM and QL.
LGTM is the software engineering analytics platform that combines deep
semantic code search and data science insights from a community of hundreds
of thousands of developers to help everyone involved in software
development better understand their code, engineering processes and people.
The LGTM software engineering analytics platform combines deep semantic
code search and data science insights from a community of hundreds of
thousands of developers to help everyone involved in software development
better understand their code, engineering processes and people.
QL treats code as data, allowing security response teams and individual
developers to quickly and accurately explore their code through simple,
powerful queries that find all variants of zero-days, as well as other
severe security problems and coding mistakes. The same kinds of logical
coding mistakes are made over and over again, sometimes repeatedly within a
single project, and sometimes across the whole software ecosystem. These
mistakes are the source of many of today’s critical software
vulnerabilities.
Using QL, you can codify such mistakes as queries, find logical variants of
the same mistake elsewhere in the code, and prevent similar mistakes from
being introduced in the future by automatically catching them before code
gets merged. QL’s deep semantic code search allows you to find security
vulnerabilities, and much more. The key: QL treats code as data. By writing
queries customised to your needs, you can drive major architecture
transformations and refactorings, enforce coding standards, and explore
your code.
QL ships with extensive libraries and abstraction features that enable you
to write advanced queries without having to worry about low-level language
concepts and compiler specifics; instead you can focus on investigating and
interrogating your own codebases. Use QL in the most effective way for you.
Our QL plugins for your favourite IDE allow you to write queries and
execute them locally. The results appear directly in your development
environment. Or use LGTM’s Query Console to write QL directly in your web
browser, and query your entire portfolio for security vulnerabilities.
You can also make use of your custom QL queries with LGTM’s automatic code
review for pull requests in GitHub and BitBucket: find those critical
issues early and prevent them from ever getting merged or deployed. Every
development organisation struggles with finding enough security experts and
with finding more effective ways of sharing their security expertise.
------------------------------
Sponsor Notices
*The following notices are from JP Morgan.*
*Interested in joining one of the world’s biggest tech shops? Start your
software engineering career with us.*
We’re open for applications for our 2019 programs. We offer Spring Week,
Internship and Full Time opportunities across various locations. For more
details on all of our opportunities please visit our careers website
<https://careers.jpmorgan.com/careers/US/en/home>.
We have several on-campus and virtual events lined up that’ll give you the
chance to meet our recruiters and business reps. You’ll be able to learn
about the many different ways you can be a part of our collaborative and
diverse team. Here’s what you can look forward to:
*UPCOMING EVENTS:*
*Introduction to Big Data Analytics using Spark and Python - Bournemouth*
- Date Saturday 20th October
- Time: 09:00 – 18:00
- Location: 1 Chaseside, Bournemouth, BH7 7DA
- Register: Here
<https://jpmc.recsolu.com/external/events/_D3U7FhiKr6h-UepS2kMqA>
*Introduction to Big Data Analytics using Spark and Python - London*
- Date: Saturday 27th October
- Time: 09:00 – 18:00
- Location: 25 Bank Street, Canary Wharf, London, E18 1LS
- Register: Here
<https://jpmc.recsolu.com/external/events/fFneRPnB-YrFUyMOwk4-Gw>
*Code for Good*
Build practical, real-life solutions for charities and non-profit
organisations by attending our 24-hour hackathon, onsite at our London
office in Canary Wharf. Enter individually or as a team of 5 or 6, get
mentorship during the event from 1 of our 40,000 technologists, make
connections and eat as much food as you need to keep you going throughout
the night. Travel & expenses provided.
- Date: 9th & 10th November
- Time: 12.00(Fri) – 17.00(Sat)
- Location: 25 Bank Street, Canary Wharf, London, E18 1LS
- Dress Code: Just be You!
- Apply here
<https://jpmc.recsolu.com/external/events/k9BJVAlnnCRCBKvSggH-pA> by
28th October.
*OXFORD UNIVERSITY EVENTS:*
*The Oxford Tech Showcase*
The JPM global tech concept. Discover how technology is becoming the centre
of gravity within banking and how you will drive the future of an evolving
Fintech industry.
Topics include:
- Leveraging Technology for Social Good
- Innovating with Cloud
- Applying Machine Learning in Business
- Decoding Blockchain
- Harnessing Technology to Innovate Banking
- Recruiter Drop In
You will also get the opportunity to meet recent grads from our software
engineering programme over some food and drinks who can give you the inside
scoop on being a graduate at JPM
- Date: Monday 15th October
- Time: 16.00 – 19.00
- Location: Mathematical Institute, Andrew Wiles Building, Oxford
University
- Register your interest: Here
<https://jpmc.recsolu.com/external/events/fgOld-Ma-w2fmzJcT88Ecg>
*Step into JP Morgan Pop Up Experience*
Our biggest event on campus! Meet reps from all our business functions, get
a free smoothie, find out what roles suit you through our interactive
tables, watch videos about what life at JPM is like.
- Date: Monday 22nd October 2018
- Time: 10.00 – 16.00
- Location: Oxford Union
- Register your interest: Here
<https://jpmc.recsolu.com/external/events/Bsrwwjg60t5o5HdGwbVdNw>
University of Oxford Joint Women in STEM Social Your opportunity to meet JP
Morgan’s female technologists, in collaboration with OxWOCS and OxFEST.
- Date: Thursday 25th October
- Time: 18.00 – 20.00
- Location: Oxford Town Hall
- Register your interest: Here
<https://jpmc.recsolu.com/external/events/k9BJVAlnnCRCBKvSggH-pA>
*Asset & Wealth Management Dinner*
Interested in learning more about Asset & Wealth Management in an informal
setting? Register your interest in attending our upcoming event in Oxford
where you will have the opportunity to:
- Meet employees from across the firm in an informal, intimate setting
- Find out what it’s like to work with us
- Ask questions you really want answered
Register by 26th October for your chance to attend:
Thursday 1st November, 2018 – Oxford Campus Dinner
<http://tinyurl.com/y9zont5v>
We look forward to meeting you. The J.P. Morgan Campus Recruitment Team
*Application deadlines:*
- EMEA Applications Deadline – 25 November
Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to see how you can have a great
career here. To get started, visit http://jpmorgan.com/careers to learn
more about our programs as well as upcoming on-campus and virtual events.
- *Make Tomorrow Together*
http://jpmorgan.com/techcareers
------------------------------
*The following notice is from Jane Street.*
*INFO SESSION*
Jane Street <https://www.janestreet.com/> is a quantitative trading firm
with a unique focus on technology and collaborative problem solving. With
offices in four of the world’s most dynamic cities: London, New York, Hong
Kong, and Amsterdam, we operate around the clock and around the globe. Our
culture is casual, our careers are intensely rewarding and we are always
looking for great new people to join our talented team.
This fall we’re hosting digital info sessions about Jane Street. We’ll
provide a closer look into the roles we offer at Jane Street and answer
questions from participants. Our info sessions are hosted by real people
and they are interactive and informative. Sessions run about 1 hour
depending on Q&A.
We hope you can join us. Please select a date below to register.
Tuesday 16th October, 10:30
<https://www.janestreet.com/info-session-eu?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=in…>
Wednesday 17th October, 14:30
<https://www.janestreet.com/info-session-eu?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=in…>
Thursday 18th October, 13:00
<https://www.janestreet.com/info-session-eu?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=in…>
------------------------------
Other Notices
*The following notice is from Oxford Foundry.*
*Foundry Freshers’ Festival*
*The Oxford Foundry*
*11th October, 1:00pm - 7:00pm*
*Convention*
*It’s all going on at the Foundry!*
*New to Oxford University this year? Then you should definitely join us at
Foundry Freshers Fest to kick off your Oxford experience!*
Highlights of the day include:
- Free food and drink from our awesome partner companies
- Great music, including a live band and DJ set
- Games and activities
- Freebies from the Oxford Foundry and our amazing partners
- a marketplace for students to meet with student societies and local
providers
PLUS you’ll be able to connect with other new students across Oxford, from
every college, level and discipline.
*Undergraduates - Masters students - DPhil candidates - ALL NEW STUDENTS
ARE WELCOME!*
Register to attend
<https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/foundry-freshers-festival-tickets-49168956673>
------------------------------
*The following notice is for the Romanes Lecture: Vint Cerf.*
On 6 November we will welcome VP and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google,
Dr Vint Cerf, to deliver his lecture: The Pacification of Cyberspace. He
will discuss how to pacify the relatively lawless environment of the
internet, while preserving the utility of its openness to creative
innovation and technological revolution.
For further information and to register, visit: http://www.ox.ac.uk/romanes
------------------------------
The Oxford University Computer Society (CompSoc) aims to organise meetings
and events for our members to use and further their computing interests.
See all of our upcoming events on our Facebook Page
<https://facebook.com/oxcompsoc/> or visit our Website
<https://ox.compsoc.net> for more information about the society.
Want to unsubscribe or manage your subscription preferences? Go to
http://lists.ox.compsoc.net/mailman/listinfo/.