Want to go to mars? Okay, but you can’t come back.

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Screen Shot 2013-03-18 at 9.02.01 PMA while ago we talked about Mars One here on the site and I was pretty excited about it, now I am very excited again. Very recently the person running the private venture that is making traveling to mars possible, Bas Lansdorp,  said in an interview with CBC that they’re actually looking for the people they’ll be sending to mars right now. These people should be people the type of people that are “at their best when things are at their worst” and they’ll be training for eight years.

There is a catch though, these people won’t be able to come back to earth. In the interview Lansdorp said that the technology to get humans to mars exists, but the technology needed to come back does not. Essentially, Mars One is looking for the first Human Martians, as I like to call them, since they will finish their life on that planet with very few other human beings.

If you want to know more about Mars One you can check out their site.

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Yes, Programming is for Everybody.

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A few weeks ago a video called “What most schools don’t teach” was published on Code.org. About a week after that a post with the title “Programming is Not for Everybody” by Robert Smith from symbo1ics.com showed up in the Hacker News front-page.

The video by Code.org featured famous people like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey, and an early Facebook Engineer encouraging everyone to learn how to code in order to get a petition signed to allow “every student in every school” to have the opportunity to learn programming. And it created controversy throughout the developers community because in the video these people were saying things like: “addition, subtraction, that’s about it,” referring to the only things a person needs to know to be able to program. This, of course, made many hard-working programmers like Robert Smith somewhat angry because I am sure they felt under-appreciated. I am no professional programmer, but I am aware that most developers who have to live off programming have to work extremely hard for many hours in order to get paid, and they know a lot more than just addition and subtraction.

So although I agree in that the video did misjudge programming at a professional level, I do not agree with Robert Smith’s last and most important point: “Quite simply, programming is not for everyone. It is not an absolutely fun and delightful task as it’s portrayed to be in videos like the aforementioned or movies like “The Social Network”. It is rarely an invigorating social activity.” Programming can be fun, delightful, and even a social activity, you’ve just got to make an effort to make it so. Maybe at a professional level that’s not the case, but for simple students that would just learn the basics of this skill, it definitely can. I know some HTML, CSS, and very few of Python, and although I currently cannot create anything great and amazing, I feel the small knowledge I have has given me and the few of my friends that can program many benefits.

I think the main reason that Robert Smith greatly disagrees with the video is that it talks about the amount of software-engineers that are needed and non-existent. It encourages everyone to become an engineer. And that is a fair reason to dislike the video since to me it is also clear that not everyone can be a programmer at a professional level and if everyone was then a lot of crappy software would start circulating the world, but I do think coding is a skill everyone should learn, possibly in school.

I believe everyone should know the basics of programming. Our society is heading in a direction where everything we do revolves around technology, so if everyone could develop for it then I am sure we’d advance in a much more rapid way as a society. I am 16-years-old, and I would just love to live on a future where sharing code is something common to do; a future where pretty much everyone can grab a computer and create something unique.

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Geek’s Thoughts: PS4

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Almost a week ago Sony announced what will be their new gaming console, the Play Station 4. The funny thing about the conference is that it was all about the PS4 and they never actually showed the physical console. They showed screenshots, software demonstrations, and other things, but they never let the attendees and viewers know what the console would look like. My guess is that it is  simply not ready, but they do have most of the software done and they wanted to show it. Don’t worry about the specs though, because although I won’t get into details in this post, what Sony did unveil about them sounded really amazing. And although Sony didn’t reveal everything we wanted to know about the still-in-the-works machine, they did let us know enough to at least get us a bit excited.

They talked about making the console more social, and although that might sound a bit lame for some people, what they showed was actually pretty impressive. Sony said that the console will be able to live-stream gameplays through Ustream and allow you to share the videos online instantly. They said that it would change the way gamers share, and I really believe it has the potential to do so. They also talked about allowing your friends to see you play, give you tips on what to do as you play, and even take control and play for you a hard part that you can’t get through.

Although Sony didn’t show the physical console at the event, they did show and talk a bit about the new Dualshock 4 controllers. The controllers will include a headphone jack, which is just amazing because no one wants to have to buy gaming headsets in order to have better sound of their gameplay. Dualshock 4 will also include a touchscreen (replacing the Start and Select buttons) which no one is sure of what it’s for. And finally, the controllers will come with a share button allowing players to instantly start streaming as they play.

Another interesting thing that happened in the conference was the announcement of Diablo 3 for the PS4 and PS3. This is awesome because Blizzard (the creators of Diablo 3) is an amazing company which hadn’t been working for consoles in a while. Other exiting games not yet released coming to the new console include: Watch Dogs, Killzone Shadow Fall, Driveclub, Destiny, and more.

Overall I am extremely exited about the PS4. It was announced to come out on this year’s holidays and now I am only waiting for Microsoft to announce the new Xbox to make a final decision on which console to buy.

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Why You Should NOT Buy YouTube Views

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If you didn’t know, video views, just as pretty much anything else, can be bought. However, I stand strongly against buying or using any services that may claim to bring your video’s views, subscribers, or even YouTube “Likes” up. And although there are some upsides to doing this like a possible higher ranking on Google, there is one huge downside to it: user interaction will not increase because of these services.

All YouTubers out there know how hard it can be to get your viewers to interact with you, specially when you’re just getting started. And I am sure that anyone who has struggled with this for a long time will probably want to change it, but I can assure you that paying some random website to send random viewers to your videos will not solve your problem. The reason for this is simply that those viewers sent to you by a website that is most likely scamming you, will not (excuse my language) give a shit about your videos.

Think about it this way, if you were being paid a few cents (which is my guess at how these websites pay people to give their customers views) for every video that you watch, wouldn’t you watch as many videos as possible in as little time as possible? I know I would.

These people will most likely not comment, like, nor subscribe to your YouTube channel. They will click on the link they are given, let the video load for a few seconds, and leave. And although I said getting more views on your videos could higher your Google ranking, this process could actually also lower it. This is because if the service you buy works the way I am speculating or similarly (which it most likely does) then, as mentioned before, the people watching your videos will leave very fast, and that will make your video’s “Audience Retention” (as YouTube calls it) lower.

These were pretty much all of my current thoughts about the issue with paying services to increase your views, subscribers, etc. If there’s absolutely anything else you’d like to add or simply mention make sure to comment below.

Apple and Google’s Duopoly Will Soon be Over, Period.

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At first it might seem unreasonable to say that “competition in the smartphones market hasn’t even begun,” but if one thinks about it, it’s a fair statement. Since the launch of the iPhone and the appearance of the Android OS it seemed only Apple and Google would have some major control over the mobile market, and just now we’re beginning to see real signs that say otherwise.

Blackberry was a thing for a long time before the iPhone, and then it rapidly became part of the past. However, a few weeks ago RIM (now known only as Blackberry) launched two new devices, the Z10 and the Q10, and showed that a fresh re-start is possible. I am confident that Blackberry will be coming back to the hands of a big part of consumers, but I don’t think they’ll be the only company to make a new appearance. During the past few months we’ve seen companies announcing new amazing smartphones and mobile operating systems, and I believe these will also hit consumers’s hands.

Ubuntu, the major linux distribution, announced not too long ago that they’ll be entering the mobile market soon. Windows Phone 8 is also great and available in some very nice devices like Nokia’s Lumia 920. And Firefox, the web browser, has also announced that they’re working on their own mobile operating system. There are also some Chinese and Japanese companies working on their own software.

All this can’t be ignored. iOS and Android might have been the paths to follow until recently, but only because they were the only safe paths. Over the next couple of years I believe many new paths will open, and some might be even better than the currently best ones. There will be a division on the spartphones market. Some people will claim iOS to be the best. Some people will claim Firefox to be the best. And some people will claim a chinese mobile operating system to be the best, but there definitely won’t be just one or two “best” mobile operating systems.