There's a lot to look forward to this term, with exciting talks, Learn to Code and a 40th Anniversary dinner!
Learn to Code is our annual introductory Python programming course. If you've never programmed before, then this is going to be a fantastic opportunity to get started. The course starts on Thursday Week 2 and will continue until seventh week, by which point we'll have introduced core programming concepts.
As this mailing list goes out to CompSoc members, I'm sure that many of you have experience programming in Python. If you would like to share some of your time and enthusiasm please get in contact with us or join the CompSoc helper Facebook group, as we'd love to see as many volunteers as possible.
Next week, we'll be hosting a workshop by Semmle, a code analysis firm based in Oxford, where we'll be using their QL query language to find security vulnerabilities. Those who do best will get prizes.
Other upcoming events in Oxford include a drinks event on Big Data at Somerville College and a Capture the Flag event with BAE Systems and OUEngSoc in Week 2.
Also, our sponsor Microsoft is opening registrations for the Imagine Cup.
See you soon,
Edward and the rest of the committee
19:00 Saturday 0th Week – Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science
Celebrate surviving your Hilary collections by joining us for a well-earnt, relaxing evening of chatting, programming and pizza.
19:00 Wednesday 1st Week – Undergraduate Social Area, Department of Computer Science
On Wednesday of 1st week (17 January), engineers from Oxford University spin-off Semmle will visit CompSoc to give a workshop (with competition!) about code security analysis using the QL query language. Using QL, it is possible to write accurate and intricate queries that find security vulnerabilities and various other problems in code. We started as a research group at the Department of Computer Science, and have grown to an international company with offices in Oxford, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Copenhagen, and Valencia. The QL language and analyses are now used on a daily basis by security teams at both Google and Microsoft (among many others) to find security vulnerabilities in their code.
We recently made our analysis technology freely available for open source projects; find your own favourite projects on https://lgtm.com! As of today, lgtm has analysed over 10 million commits by more than 300,000 developers to over 55,000 open source projects. Our security researchers are constantly working with the community to find and disclose new vulnerabilities; have a look on https://lgtm.com/blog for some examples. Our queries are open source and available on GitHub: https://github.com/lgtmhq.
The workshop will be given by recent Oxford Comp Sci graduates Sam Lanning and Aditya Sharad. We'll start with an introduction to 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 at on 17 January at 19:00 in the Social Area!
19:00 Thursdays from 2nd Week – Lecture Theatres A & B, Department of Computer Science
Learn to Code is back! If you've ever wanted to learn the basics of programming, refresh your Python knowledge, or get an idea of what computer scientists actually do all day then this is going to be a great course for you ☺️.
We aren't going to assume any prior programming experience, although to get the best out of the sessions we highly recommend that you bring a laptop so that you can follow along with some of the examples. It doesn't matter whether you use Windows, Mac, or Linux, and in the first session we'll explain how to get started on any of these platforms.
In this course we are going to be using the programming language Python, which is one of the easiest languages to pick up if you've never programmed before and it is widely used in the technology industry – YouTube, NASA, and Wikipedia are just three examples. If you need to learn R at some point during your degree you may find that an introduction to Python will help you pick up basic computational thinking ideas faster.
We do expect demand to be very high for this course, so please try to arrive before the advertised start time as we need to register everyone (for fire regulations). You'll need to enter via the back door on Parks Road; there are CompSoc signs up at the department.
Drinks reception from 19:00, Wednesday 8th Week – Foyer B, St Anne's College
CompSoc turns 40 next year and we're celebrating in style! A sumptuous three-course dinner at St Anne's (Domino's was booked up), joined by CompSoc members spanning the society's 40-year history. All for just £20. Reserve your place here (don't worry about the donation bit –that's just for old members who are in full-time employment). There are a limited number of places, so act quickly!
15:30–19:00, Friday 1st Week – Flora Anderson Hall, Somerville College
‘Big Data’ as a term is hot property but what does it actually mean... to you? To business? To society?
Join Met Office and Alibaba Cloud as we cut through the ambiguity of Big Data and demonstrate the real-life value of analytics, algorithms and balloons(!) at Somerville College on Friday, 19th January.
Speakers include Alberto Arribas, Head of UK Informatics Lab at Met Office, Dr Wang Ning, Senior Research Fellow at Oxford University and Data Scientists from Alibaba Cloud.
Includes drinks and canapés.
Agenda
09:30–16:30, Saturday 2nd Week – location TBC
OUEngSoc have kindly shared this event with us:
This is a team-based challenge for teams of 2 to 6 players, but individual entries are also fine and teams will be assigned later. The challenges will involve breaking into vulnerable websites, cracking ciphers, forensic searches, reverse engineering and much more. No previous experience of these kinds of challenge is necessary; they are designed for students who like taking things apart and seeing how they work.
Lunch will be provided and there will be prizes for the winners!
For more information or to sign up, email ctf@baesystems.com.
The Imagine Cup is back for its 16th year and you can be part of it! Want to be in with the chance of winning the latest Xbox One X console and cash prizes at the UK National Finals? Or do you think you can bag up to $100,000 at the Worldwide Finals in Seattle? Enter Microsoft’s annual student developer competition to find out…
How to enter:
Previous years have seen games, charitable applications, education services and many more enter the competition. It is a great opportunity for you as a student developer to showcase your idea, whether that be a great hackathon submission, a University project, or even a start-up idea. Form your team and enter... What have you got to lose! See what the 2017 Worldwide Finals were like.
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 or visit our Website for more information about the society.
Edward HartSecretary - Oxford University Computer Society