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Lauren RubensteinMarch 2, 20182min
On Feb. 24, Wesleyan hosted a "hackathon" for social good in collaboration with Random Hacks of Kindness Jr. The free event introduced more than 50 local children in grades 4 through 8 to technology and showed them how it could be used to create solutions that benefit nonprofit organizations. About half the children came from Middletown, while others came from as far away as Greenwich, Griswold and West Hartford to participate. Seven Wesleyan students and two staff members served as volunteer mentors, working with the children to devise computer applications that addressed a range of problems facing local organizations. Five nonprofit social…

Lauren RubensteinFebruary 13, 20181min
Wesleyan, in collaboration with Random Hacks of Kindness Jr., is hosting a “hackathon” for social good for students in grades 4 through 8, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 24. This free event, to be held in Beckham Hall, will show local youth how technology can be used to create solutions that benefit nonprofit organizations. The hackathon is open to the public and requires no prior coding experience. “Participants will be working with Wesleyan student mentors to create technology for social good,” explained Patrice Gans, president and executive director of Random Hacks of Kindness Jr. “By the…

Natalie Robichaud ’14September 16, 20133min
The 2nd Wesleyan Hackathon Challenge took place from noon on Friday, Sept. 6 until noon on Sunday, Sept. 8. Each participating team was provided a 1 GB Linode VPS on which to host their application, which must live and operate without using additional computing resources. While brainstorming and server maintenance were allowed before and after the allotted time slot, all code writing and editing had to take place within 48 hours. A team of Wesleyan Computer Science alumni judged the submissions and named winners based on creativity (Does the app solve a problem in a novel way? Does it do…

Bill FisherMay 26, 20132min
Twelve students participated in the Senior Week Hackathon in Exley Science Center May 18-19. For 36 hours straight, the students worked in teams of four to create different web application products. The winning team was "WesMaps+." Team members included Justin Raymond '14, Tobias Butler '13, Max Dietz '16 and Anastasis Germanidis '13. See their app online at: http://wesmapsplus.com/ Wesleyan computer science alumni Sam DeFabbia-Kane ’11, Carlo Francisco ’11, Micah Wylde ’12, and Ryan Gee ’11 judged the final apps on a scale of 1-11 in creativity, technical difficulty and polish. A video and photos of the Hackathon are below: [youtube width="640" height="420"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24UJulhFo7I[/youtube]   (more…)

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Editorial StaffMay 26, 20212min
From an excitement-filled Arrival Day to the unpredictable final three semesters of campus life that unfolded during the COVID-19 pandemic, "so much has changed in your lives since you were first introduced to Wesleyan," President Michael Roth '78 said in his remarks to the graduating Class of 2021, who sat in front of him on Andrus Field in a socially distanced 189th Commencement. Besides the obvious impacts of the pandemic, Roth was referring to social and political divisiveness in the country, which has increased in recent years, "exacerbated by" irresponsible media platforms. "Attacks on those considered 'outsiders' are a sick…

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Lauren RubensteinOctober 21, 20193min
As the 2020 presidential election season heats up, the Wesleyan Media Project (WMP) is providing important analysis on campaign advertising for researchers and the media alike. Over the summer, Associate Professor of Government Erika Franklin Fowler, co-director of WMP, worked with undergraduate students and others to accelerate the analysis of digital political advertising, which has seen enormous growth this year over previous cycles. In the early summer, WMP hosted a mini-hackathon to begin the process of analyzing political ads on Facebook. They worked with summer students through the Quantitative Analysis Center (QAC), and with Assistant Professor of Computer Science Saray…

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Lauren RubensteinSeptember 11, 20143min
Experienced programmers and tech newbies alike gathered Sept. 5-7 for WesHack 2014, a two-part conference that included a daylong tech crash course for students, alumni and friends, and a 48-hour “Hackathon” app-development competition. WesHack was founded in May 2013 by Julian Applebaum ’13, Evan Carmi ’13 and Anastasios Germanidis ’13, who, shortly before graduation, “decided Senior Week would be even more fun if they stayed awake for 36 hours writing software to solve the pressing problems of Wesleyan students,” according to the WesHack website. In fall 2013, WesHack 2.0—a second Wesleyan-themed Hackathon and day-long intro tech bootcamp for students and…

Kate CarlisleMay 26, 20133min
If you’ve ever spent an evening looking up old flames on Facebook, shopping online and watching questionable YouTube videos, you may have wished there were a way to preserve your anonymity on the World Wide Web. It turns out there is a way; and a Wesleyan senior’s capstone work explored how to make that way faster and better. Julian Applebaum ’13, a computer science major, spent the year working on a simulation of Tor, a global network run by volunteers, that allows internet users to remain anonymous. There is one problem: Tor is painfully slow. His work attempts to simulate…