Author: Nicholas Diakopoulos

More than 500 teens and their parents packed into one of the largest lecture halls at UC Davis on Wednesday to hear Dr. David Perry, a U.S. Department of Defense cryptologist, decipher the world of encryption and break down the story of the notorious Enigma machine. Perry’s lecture was the…

Rob Allshouse of Sacramento multitasks on Mechanical Turk with his kids Jonathan, 11, center, and Jordan Hart, 8. “Turkers” make small change doing small tasks for a “requester,” such as identifying photos; Amazon gets a small cut.With the economy reeling and California’s unemployment rate moving toward 12 percent, many people…

Brooke Haynes of El Dorado Hills, in middle, and Miranda Dodd of Shingle Springs, both 10, test on Thursday a robot they built during the weeklong session of the Internal Drive Tech Camp offered by UC Davis this summer. About 30 to 50 youths attend each camp.”Code six,” yelled a…

Do Eskimos have more words for “snow” than we do? You’re probably not alone if you thought the answer was yes. Truth is, this is one of those pesky urban myths – like the untrue predictions of a moon-sized Mars in August – that just won’t fade from the popular…