HackSoc x Brussels x FOSDEM 2018
TL;DR children and teenagers are forced by their teachers to give up their privacy if they do not want to become isolated; property graphs — a useful concept to represent data in big data and machine learning applications; Monero — Bitcoin except without its problems.
Below are some interesting topics we heard at the conference, summarised by School of Computer Science students.
Problems with Children & Instant Messaging (IM) applications
Instant Messaging is one of the widespread means of communication among children and teenagers. IM apps are becoming popular also in the education field, where children use these services to complete group projects and to stay in sync with what is happening in theschool in case of absence.
Most of the IM applications (WhatsApp, Messenger, etc.) are used by both the students and the teachers to create chat rooms for their classes on non-free and privacy-unaware services. Students have to accept the policies to use the applications and most of the time they don’t read the terms. […] Teckids e.V. is trying to tackle this issue in Germany. They are working with teachers, students, parents, and developers to build more transparent terms of use.
A research, conducted by students themselves, showed that ¾ of the children care about their data, They do not know how their data is being stored or used because of the difficult language used in the Terms of Service agreements, which they are forced to accept in order to not stay isolated from their friends and classmates. — Hassan Ishtiaq (CSY2)
Property Graphs — a Better Way to Represent Data?
A property graph is an alternative to the relational database model we are used to. In a property graph, each data object is represented as a node with its own attributes. Nodes can then be linked together in order to form relations between the data. This is game-changing for certain applications where it is more natural to model the data this way rather than trying to force it into relational tables. […] This concept could be very useful for machine learning in a big data scenario. In this case, one could much more simply visualise how individual data objects connect and relate to each other, making the design of such an application much more intuitive.
Cypher has a very interesting design for its structure and syntax. It is constructed as a mixture of the usual SQL and propositional logic, using ASCII art to make the programming process more intuitive. This made me realise how a programming language’s syntax could and perhaps should try to become as intuitive as possible by moving away from the usual syntax paradigms and using more visually appealing symbols and structures in its writing.
MATCH (d:Database)-[:USES]->(Cypher)-[:QUERIES]->(:Model:Graph)
WHERE d.name IN ['SAP HANA Graph','Redis','AgensGraph', 'Neo4j',...]
RETURN Cypher.featuresThe practicality of property graphs and the ease of use of Cypher could cause a shift in the current database paradigm, where relational databases are dominating, towards a more intuitive approach to storing and retrieving data. — Carlos Gomes (CSY2)
Monero — Bitcoin 2.0?
Bitcoin (BTC) was created nine years ago, it might have been hard (if not impossible) to predict what challenges it will face 9 years later. BTC has a number of limitations: block size sets a limit to the number of transactions; whenever you send money to someone they will know exactly how much BTC you have in your wallet, in addition, they can see all your previous (and future) transactions — a significant amount of the cryptocurrency community members did not like that and they founded Monero (XMR) three years ago in 2014.
In short, Bitcoin
- is not permissionless (coins and transactions have been censored, and users have been banned);
- is not decentralised (the majority of control is in the hands of a few mining organisations); and
- does not behave like cash (spending it reveals to the buyer and seller exactly how much money each other possesses).
Unlike Bitcoin, Monero is permissionless, decentralised, and it does behave like cash. There are no hard-coded parameters (such as block size), which can set constraints to operations; there is no final coin — instead, the emission gradually declines to a stable, minimal amount. An In-depth introduction to Monero can be found here. — Hendrik Mölder (CSBMY2)
Our trip was sponsored by School of Computer Science’s Student Activities Fund.
