Qapla! Klingons Swipe Superconductors from Mindful Geeks

Glass as 3D printing medium, can speaking Klingon get you a job, Android lock patterns are not a unique snowflake, a discussion about diversity in tech and what you white guys can do to help, and more Geek News of the Week.

3D printing glass at MIT

This show unveils a first of its kind optically transparent glass printing process called G3DP. G3DP is an

Predictability of Android lock patterns

The Tic-Tac-Toe-style patterns, it turns out, frequently adhere to their own sets of predictable rules and often possess only a fraction of the complexity they’re capable of. The research is in its infancy since Android lock Patterns (ALPs) are so new and the number of collected real-world-patterns is comparatively miniscule. Still, the predictability suggests the patterns could one day be subject to the same sorts of intensive attacks that regularly visit passwords.

Web Extra: Sorting Algorithm Animations

We covered another sorting algorithm site on the November 26, 2011 show: Tracking Loans, License Plates, and Heat

Women in tech - not a pipeline problem

When researcher Kieran Snyder interviewed 716 women who left tech after an average tenure of 7 years, almost all of them said they liked the work itself, but cited discriminatory environments as their main reason for leaving. In NSF-funded research, Nadya Fouad surveyed 5,300 women who had earned engineering degrees (of all types) over the last 50 years, and only 38% of them are still working as engineers. Fouad summarized her findings on why they leave with

New record temperature for a superconductor

Now, taking advantage of the fact that we do understand what’s going on in superconducting metals, a German research team has

Swimming in a Sea of Internet Fraud - GeekSpeak for 2009-04-11

Sergeant Dean Ackemann joined us about fighting internet fraud and he mentioned off-handily that the police vehicles in San Jose auto Indexing locations of cars using their license plates.

San Jose looks at using garbage haulers to catch car thieves

Mayor Sam Liccardo and Councilmen Johnny Khamis and Raul Peralez proposed that the city consider strapping license plate readers to the front of garbage trucks, allowing them to record the plates of every car along their routes. The data would be fed directly to the Police Department from the privately operated trash trucks, prompting an officer to respond to stolen vehicles or cars involved with serious crime.


Audio Fixed:

The first release of this episode’s audio, during an engaging discussion of women in tech went silent. (my editing mistake). I have fixed and uploaded the file, and, if you want to go back and hear all of what we said you can grab the updated mp3 and move to about 35min in and listen from there. Sorry about that – Lyle