TechXploration Meetup

TechXploration is continuing their speaker series tomorrow (October 9th) with the topic "Why Computers Will [Not] Take Over the World." While many people believe that computers with artificial intelligence will one day outperform people with real-world problems, the speaker in this event is taking the opposite stance. To boot there will be craft beer tasting and from now on TechXploration is going to support a local San Jose restaurant with each event. To sign up and for location information, just click here.

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Come Xplore the fundamental insight powering "Silicon Valley's Next Billion-Dollar Company" (TechCrunch) and "The War on Terror's Secret Weapon" (BusinessWeek): 

Computers Will [Not] Take Over the World: but will help us save it.

According to Palantir senior engineer & big data expert, Ari Gesher, the most powerful systems will be those that augment human intelligence, not attempt to recreate it.

Join us for a talk about:

1. How humans and computers working in collaboration can outperform any computer in existence
2. How artificial intelligence wrongfully hijacked the technology world for almost 15 years
3. A number of complex real-world problems where the only solution is human-computer symbiosis, because automation fails
4. How Peter Thiel-backed Palantir Technologies built a Java-based human-computer collaboration system that is being used by government agencies, large financial institutions and police departments around the globe

RSVP now to reserve your spot.

Craft beer by the cup + beer tasting + local cuisine* starting @ 7:08 PM

Presentation + Q&A @ 7:39 PM

About Palantir:

Palantir builds software that helps save lives, solve crimes, protect civil liberties, prevent disease and curb fraud by allowing organizations to make sense of massive amounts of disparate data.

* Now featuring Free local cuisine: supporting San Jose local restaurants!

At every TechXploration, we will support a San Jose-based restaurant (recommended by you!) for delicious event eats. What is your favorite local restaurant? Post it to the wall!

About Ari Gesher:

• Senior Engineer, responsible for developing Palantir's platform/operating system
• Currently working on: Palantir's developer APIs for backend services and the systems engineering that goes into Palantir's servers

TechXploration: Unlearn How Things Work

TechEploration is a meetup group that plugs you into the latest conversations about emerging tech, trends, and issues with the industry's top thought leaders. They also offer food, music, and networking opportunities along with their events. For more info on their latest event, just continue reading or head over to their webpage over here.

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Jay Silver will join us to launch the "invention kit for everyone": MaKey MaKey!

RSVP now to reserve your spot!

Food and Craft Beer @ 6:47 PM

Presentation, Demos and Q&A @ 7:19 PM

PayPal Town Hall

2161 North 1st Street, San Jose, CA (map)

What is MaKey MaKey?

Brought to life by an over 2,000% funded Kickstarter campaign, MaKey MaKey is "an invention kit for the 21st century. Turn everyday objects into touchpads and combine them with the internet. It's a simple Invention Kit for Beginners and Experts doing art, engineering, and everything in between."

Wait, I'm a TechXplorer so I need more technical info than that...* (see below)

Ever played Mario on Play-Doh or Piano on Bananas? Alligator clip the Internet to your world and start inventing the future.

About Jay Silver:

• Creator of Drawdio, Singing Fingers, Scratch and MaKey MaKey!
• Maker Research Scientist, Intel
• PhD student, MIT Media Lab

Come Xplore:

• How the Maker Movement is transforming the prototyping of interactive systems
• What Intel and others are doing to support and learn from the Maker Movement
• Why you shouldn't (but could!) use your cat as a game controller =)

RSVP now to reserve your spot!

*MaKey MaKey is...

MaKey MaKey is a printed circuit board with an ATMega32u4 microcontroller running Arduino Leonardo firmware. It uses the Human Interface Device (HID) protocol to communicate with your computer, and it can send keypresses, mouse clicks, and mouse movements. For sensing closed switches on the digital input pins, we use high resistance switching to make it so you can close a switch even through materials like your skin, leaves, and play-doh. We use a pull-up resistor of 10-50 mega ohms. This technique attracts noise on the input, so we use a moving window averager to lowpass the noise in software, saving money on hardware filtering. There are six inputs on the front of the board, which can be attached to via alligator clipping, soldering to the pads, or any other method you can think of. There are another 12 inputs on the back, 6 for keyboard keys, and 6 for mouse motion, which you can access with jumpers via the female headers. If you wish to use a different set of keys, or otherwise change the behavior of your MaKey MaKey, you can simply reprogram it using the Arduino environment. By cutting a trace on the back of the board, you can disconnect the large pull-up resistors if you want to, which would be necessary in a small minority of Arduino projects. more info here.

New Interactive Directory Premiers at Santana Row

This year is Santana Row's 10 Year Anniversary. In honor of the occasion, they are planning a few "upgrades."

Santana Row is the very first Northern California location to launch a next-gen outdoor touchscreen directory. In fact, this may be the best outdoor touchscreen available anywhere. Think of this as a giant 46" HD iPad with an interactive map, way-finding (navigation), and constantly updated SR events. It's also fan-less, weather-sealed, and designed for use in direct sunlight.

The technology and programming powering the massive touchscreen was actually developed in San Jose by Array Interactive. To check it out for yourself, just head over to Santana Row between Sino and Left Bank. 

Wednesday Wishlist: Free WiFi for the City of San Jose

Wherever people go, more and more they are expecting access to all of their data whether it is work or play. Speaking of work, most of the innovation happening today in Silicon Valley is focused around the internet, whether it is software as a service, mobile apps, or underlying infrastructure. It just makes sense to make the internet ubiquitous here. Mountain View already has city-wide WiFi courtesy of Google, and Santa Clara will be next (via Silicon Valley Power). To stay on the cutting edge, we really need to make this standard infrastructure as accessible as possible.

A huge step in the right direction is the $100k upgrade of our free WiFi system Downtown. The current system was built in 2004, is slow, and drops frequently in many areas. The new system being provided by Ruckus Wireless will be substantially faster and have far better coverage. The next step will be expanding it beyond Downtown!