Random Bits

Congratulations to Nicki Washington on receiving the 2025 ACM Frances E. Allen Award for Outstanding Mentoring! She is recognized for exceptional commitment to diversifying the computing community at all education levels. Learn more: buff.ly/kWVvu2W

🎟️ Get your early bird ticket for the #MITAppInventor Global Education Summit 2026 before May 12! Join us July 6–8, 2026 at the Stata Center on @MIT's campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts! 🔗 Register here: mit.networkforgood.com/events/99722-m…

Happy Birthday to Claude Shannon, known by many as the “father of Information Theory.” Shannon was an American mathematician and electrical engineer. In 1948, he published A Mathematical Theory of Communication, which effectively created the field.

Congratulations to Akshitha Sriraman of @carnegiemellon on receiving the 2026 CRA Anita Borg Early Career Award! Sriraman's research has been awarded multiple dissertation honors, including distinctions from ACM SIGARCH/TCCA and ACM SIGOPS. Learn more: buff.ly/SfWJAwS

We’re excited to share the App Inventor Foundation’s 2025 Annual Impact Report! 🔗 Read the full report here: drive.google.com/file/d/1NBzC0i…

📣 Call for papers and posters for the #MITAppInventorGlobalEducationSummit2026! 📄 Share your work on computing, AI, and data science education! ⏰ Deadline: May 4, 2026 at 11:59 PM EDT 🔗 Learn more: summit.appinventor.mit.edu

What does it take to turn a good idea into a real, working app? 🚀 We interviewed three past Appathon winners and asked what they learned to bring their projects to life, and more. 🔗 Read the full story: aif.to/winners-spotli… 📱 Join today: globalappathon.org

Have you ever wondered where great project ideas come from? 💡 We interviewed three past Appathon winners and asked what sparked their ideas and more. 🔗 Read the full story: aif.to/winners-spotli… 📱 Join the Global Appathon today: globalappathon.org

One. Day. Away. 🏆 Join us tomorrow as we announce the recipient of the 2025 ACM A.M. Turing Award and celebrate a lifetime of extraordinary technical achievement. #ACMTuringAward #Computing

Join Tianyi Huang from the #AppInventorFoundation for a #GlobalAppathon UI/UX workshop with #MITAppInventor, hosted in collaboration with @AppinClub. 📅 March 21, 2026 | 4:00–5:00 PM EST 🔗 Register: aif.to/uiux-workshop-…

🎉 A major moment for the computing community. As of January 1, 2026, all ACM journals, magazines & conference proceedings are fully #OpenAccess. Thanks to 3,000+ institutions worldwide for making this possible. Learn more: bit.ly/4rTnOGB

📢 Submissions are OPEN for the #GlobalAppathon! The Global Appathon is a free, virtual hackathon hosted by the #AppInventorFoundation and #MITAppInventor that encourages people around the world to build mobile apps for a cause. 📱🌎 🔗 aif.to/ga-2026-reg-sub

Happy birthday to Grady Booch, who helped develop the Unified Modeling Language (UML). He has also advanced the fields of software engineering & object-oriented design.

You can log into 28 vintage computer systems in your browser for free, thanks to the Interim Computer Museum — Experience legendary OSes, architectures, programming languages, and games tomshardware.com/video-games/re…

Imagine being only the second African-American woman to earn a PhD in mathematics and then taking your expertise from academia to NASA and IBM. For #BHM’2026, ACM shares the story of Evelyn Boyd Granville and her impact on computing.

Introducing anymap-ts: a new Python package that makes geospatial visualization easy! Built on MapLibre + TypeScript, anymap-ts brings the same rich mapping experience to both the web and Jupyter Notebook. It supports many popular geospatial formats, including GeoJSON, GeoParquet, FlatGeobuf, PMTiles, COG, Zarr, COPC LiDAR, and Gaussian Splat. It also includes powerful built-in UI components such as a minimap, bookmarks, print tool, view state manager, STAC search, street view, and geometry editor. Try it out: Web demo: opengeos.org/maplibre-gl-co… Jupyter demo: notebook.link/github/opengeo… GitHub: github.com/opengeos/anyma… Documentation: ts.anymap.dev Video tutorial: youtu.be/Xr_UfBI46bc #mapping #maplibre #typescript #jupyter #python

Going to SIGCSE TS next week? Consider attending our tutorial session: A Hands-on and Interactive Introduction to the Fundamentals of Artificial Intelligence using Snap!, and our BOF: A Community of Snap! Educators – New Features and Tools for Teaching AI sigcse2026.sigcse.org/details/sigcse…

@godofprompt Claude

I should charge $99 for this. But I'm giving away our Claude Mastery Guide for free. We just updated it with a full Claude Skills section, the feature most people still don't know exists. Inside: → 30 prompt engineering principles → 10+ mega-prompts ready to copy → Mini-course from beginner to advanced → How to build Skills that make Claude remember your workflows forever → Glossary + strategic use cases This turns Claude from a chatbot into your actual work system. Comment "Claude" and I'll DM it to you. (Must be following me to receive it)

@Jacobsklug @openclaw @Lovable OS

I'm giving away my entire @openclaw architecture. Behind my $250k/month agency. After weeks of building, I've dialled in the exact system that runs my business 24/7. What's included: • Memory folder structure (how to organize agent context) • Cron job templates (daily briefs, meeting syncs, content automation) • How to build a custom dashboard in @lovable • API reference doc (so your agent never forgets its tools) • Voice training method (85 posts to teach it your style) • Supabase schema for dashboard connection Comment "OS" and follow. I'll DM it to you. P.S. This will probably blow up so give me some time to reply.

In an era of GenAI and LLMs, it feels like the "AGI rabbit" is finally being pulled out of the hat. Melanie Mitchell cuts through the cognitive dissonance between tech hype and reality to ask the most important question of our time. If you're ready to look past the headlines and understand what "intelligence" actually means, this is the read for you. Register now: buff.ly/o67BNT0 #ACMBookClub