Linus Torvalds inspiring department students


Linus Torvalds – alumnus of the department, doctor honoris causa of the University of Helsinki, the best known representative of Finnish computer science internationally – visited the Kumpula campus on 23 October. He answered the questions of students and staff during an informal Q&A session attended by some 300 guests. As the floor was open, and Torvalds emphasized that all questions were welcomed, the queries ranged from extreme to extreme

 -- from the most beautiful code in Linux to the classical conflict between free and open source code.  Torvalds replied: ‘there is very little beautiful code in the core; some of it is downright scary' and ‘the debate is still on-going, but that Torvalds guy won.’

Photo by Millennium Technology Prize / TAF

 

The large auditorium at the department was full and the discussion lively (photo by Tuomas Puikkonen).

Torvalds had nothing but good memories of studying at the Helsinki University Department of Computer Science, where he, according to his own words, was given pretty free reign to work on Linux. He praised the Finnish education system and did not consider the top universities of the world to hold any special advantage over the University of Helsinki. However, he stressed that, if the chance arises, students should visit Stanford or other universities.

Before the session, Linus Torvalds sampled the ambience of the break room (photo by Tuomas Puikkonen).

There is a short (1:06 min) video compilation with subtitles of Linus Torvalds sharing his views on the birth of Linux, programming, and programming languages (video by Sakari Tolppanen, editing by Jaakko Turkka/LUMA centre).

The video of the whole session (83:27 min) is available in the department’s video archive: http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/video/linus-torvalds-qa-session-23rd-oct-2012

Our sincerest thanks for organising the visit go to the awarder of the Millennium Technology Prize, the Technology Academy Finland.
 

 

Created date

21.11.2012 - 15:15

Inter-university research and training centre on information security

The University of Helsinki and Aalto University have set up a joint research centre focusing on information security. The new centre, HAIC (Helsinki-Aalto Centre for Information Security), will coordinate the Master’s-level security education between the university and Aalto, with links to research and doctoral education.

The idea is to build bridges to the industries and gain their support for the education, and e.g. grants for MSc students coming from outside the EU, the head of the Department of Computer Science, Sasu Tarkoma, says.

Computer science undergraduate Petteri Timonen awarded in US science competition

Petteri Timonen, 19, came second in his category of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) in Phoenix, Arizona.

 

On Friday, 15 May, Timonen, who is studying computer science at the University of Helsinki, was awarded a grant worth 1500 USD, some 1330 euros, in the Systems Software category of the Intel ISEF science competition.
 
As his entry, Timonen submitted a software tool he developed for Finland’s Red Cross to make mobile blood runs around the country as cost-effective as possible. Timonen implemented his tool in cooperation with the Blood Service.

The tool has gained international attention, as no tool like it seems to have been developed anywhere else. Timonen has also negotiated with the American Red Cross by email.

Renewed Carat App Gives a Smart Boost to Battery

 
The Carat Project Team at the University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science, has published a new version of the popular mobile energy-awareness application.

After launch in June 2012, Carat has helped over 850,000 users, of which 41 per cent have been Android and 59 per cent iOS users, respectively. The new user interface follows modern application design guidelines and presents battery information in a more intuitive and easy to use manner.

- In addition to the new user interface, we have increased the accuracy of the energy saving recommendations of Carat, says Professor Sasu Tarkoma, the leader of this research done at the university.

The user interface features the number of energy intensive applications (Hogs), energy anomalies (Bugs) and user recommendations (Actions) at a glance on the main screen as well as global energy statistics for the device community.

Cover Song Identification Using Compression-based Distance Measures

M.Sc. Teppo E. Ahonen will defend his doctoral thesis Cover Song Identification Using Compression-based Distance Measures on Friday the 1st of April 2016 at 12 o'clock in the University of Helsinki Exactum Building, Auditorium CK112 (Gustaf Hällströminkatu 2b).  His opponent is Academy Professor Petri Toiviainen (University of Jyväskylä) and custos Professor Esko Ukkonen (University of Helsinki). The defence will be held in Finnish.

Measuring similarity in music data is a problem with various potential applications. In recent years, the task known as cover song identification has gained widespread attention. In cover song identification, the purpose is to determine whether a piece of music is a different rendition of a previous version of the composition. The task is quite trivial for a human listener, but highly challenging for a computer.