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The NSA's (useless) bulk phone metadata collection program is now over. #fywscrypto https://t.co/H7SL3S1QSQ - Derek Bruff (@derekbruff) December 1, 2015

Here's just some more information about Ada Lovelace because she's pretty cool.

I thought this article was interesting because it mentioned Ada's childhood imagination and inventions. It's interesting to consider what she could've done if she had grown up in a different place or at a different time. Also, the article mentioned that there was a computer program named "Ada" after her and I thought it was pretty cool that she's beginning to be recognized more and more. (Sorry, I don't know why this comment wasn't here earlier. It's in my original Diigo bookmark.)

Bernoulli numbers are a sequence of numbers important to the field of number theory, trigonometric expansions, and analysis. Ada Lovelace wrote a theoretical program to calculate these that would work on Charles Babbage's unfinished Analytical Engine. It's pretty interesting how Lovelace was a "leading figure" in the now massively male-dominated computer programming field, but didn't receive recognition for her work until fairly recently.

See also Riley's bookmark and my comments on it.

This resource is interesting in light of our discussing Babbage and Lovelace, as well as Ada Lovelace Day. This article is particularly interesting to me as it deals with women's contributions to significant advancements in history, many of which are often ignored or excused.

Riley, I mentioned in class that October 14th is Ada Lovelace Day, an international day for recognizing the contributions of women in science. Details: http://findingada.com/. I've wanted to organize an Ada Lovelace Day event here at Vanderbilt for a few years now, but never found the time. Let me know if you'd like to cook something up (an event? a blog series? a Wikipedia editing party?) for the 14th.

I found it really interesting that people took the fact that Lovelace made a few mistakes as an excuse to try to remove her contribution to computer programming. Male scientists and programmers also make mistakes, but we rarely see those used in an attempt to discredit them. Also, she literally designed a computer program before the computer even existed. I think we can excuse a few past mathematical errors.

To any future college students: Be careful of what you type on the internet or reveal about yourself in an online forum. Despite the shocking revelations of the size and scope of the government's surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden, the majority of Americans don't understand the kind of information the government has on them, have taken few steps to protect their online data, and believe that such programs don't go far enough in tackling terrorism. Ironically, these same Americans also overwhelmingly believe that consumers have lost protection of their data to companies who have used their clients' privacy as a commodity. I would advise you to be careful of what you post online, and follow a few steps, such as passwords, encryption, and clearing your cookies, to help protect at least some of your data online and allow you to remain private. These programs continue to this day, and it's important that you protect what little privacy remains.

What are the mechanisms behind surveillance? How precisely are people surveilled in the US?

Has the government been reading your email, Facebook posts, tweets, etc.? Yes, yes they have.

This website details how the Spartan scytale was used in 500 B.C. Also features a program that encodes your own message according to the spartan scytale.

This post is about cracking the vigenere cipher. It also uses computer programming to solve it which I found interesting.

What specific legal frameworks are relevant to a discussion of mass surveillance?