Hello all,

This week we have our penultimate tech talk of the term from Metaswitch and the Jane Street etc hackathon. Metaswitch will be "putting the science back in computer science" as they discuss testing. Tomorrow one of our sponsors, Ensoft, will be doing a talk on internet security at the department. Please note that the Jane Street hackathon is close to capacity, so if you are keen on participating please register soon!

We will not be running a Geek Night this week as it would clash with Jane Street etc.

Next week, for the final talk of the term, Microsoft will be joining us for an introductory talk on machine learning.

If you're interested in joining the society, please remember to bring five pounds to any of our upcoming events, and we can provide you with a membership form.

Have a great week,

Thomas and the rest of the committee

Events

Metaswitch: Putting the Science in Computer Science https://www.facebook.com/events/329354574096043/

*Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science - 7:00pm Wednesday (6th week)*

Edmund Pringle from Metaswitch will be joining us to discuss testing. The talk will be followed by free pizza and drinks.

I'm perennially amazed as to how bad otherwise bright people are at testing (including me!). And that's not surprising – we don't really talk about it or get taught it as part of our undergraduate degree and just about everything we've encountered called "testing" in our lives up to and including our degree isn't actually testing. This talk (in among the ranting, chocolate and invisible spoons) is intended to cover what testing is (and isn't), what's interesting about it and to offer a very basic skeleton that will hopefully let you learn more, enjoy more, and be a vastly better computer scientist.

Microsoft: Machine Learning Demystified https://www.facebook.com/events/240022973081334/

*Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science - 7:00pm Wednesday (7th week)*

Bianca Furtuna from Microsoft will be joining us for a talk on machine learning, which will be followed by free pizza and drinks.

Machine Learning can solve all your problems, it can tell you what to do better and how to improve your business processes, increase revenue, reduce waste etc.

Well, not really. Machine Learning is not magic. You don't just apply machine learning in your organisation and intelligent, innovative solutions come out of nowhere. Machine Learning has its limitations and its beauty, but it all comes down to data and questions. You need good data and the right questions and then you are good to go.

In this session, we are going to look at a typical machine learning process and how to apply it to some real world data. We are going to use Azure Machine Learning to transform data and ideas into models that are production ready in minutes, all of this while keeping the real world in mind.

Sponsor notices

Ensoft: How to Break the Internet http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/seminars/1684.html

*Lecture Theatre A, Department of Computer Science - 1pm Tuesday (6th week)*

The Internet itself is under constant attack from hating hackers, authoritarian agencies, boring bugs and annoying accidents. Core routers stand alone in the hurricane, far beyond the capacity of any protective firewall, left to defend themselves. How can they do this? And how safe is the Internet really? This talk will reveal all.

The presenter is Director & CTO of Ensoft, whose experience includes helping to bring into existence the Guinness Book of Records' "World's Highest Capacity Internet Router". Free food and drink will also be provided.

Please note that this is a department event rather than a CompSoc event.

Jane Street etc hackathon https://www.facebook.com/events/1633180670308427/

*10am - 10pm 19/11/16 (Saturday 6th)*

A day-long programming contest. Form teams and have your software compete against others and the markets.

A significant cash prize is on the line for the winning team. There'll be lots of (free) food and drinks available.

Absolutely no knowledge of finance, nor OCaml is required. You don't have to be a CS student or a full on programmer to participate but you'd need some knowledge of coding. You can use any language, but we'll provide some helper libraries in a few common ones. The contest is entirely technical in nature and you won't need any visual design skills.

Check out our events https://events.janestreet.com/home/etc/ website for more info and register on this link https://docs.google.com/a/janestreet.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScPVl1z3y6rpao69PNw0wcP7wBV9FhB2X3FakLKqawysKhMxA/viewform?c=0&w=1 if you're interested in participating! Please bear in mind spaces are limited.

We look forward to seeing you then!

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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, Twitter https://twitter.com/oxcompsoc, or visit our website https://ox.compsoc.net for more information about the society.