France was "online" before the Internet, for more than a decade
Good Surfer: Ukraine's strange Presidential elections and Cryptography
Cool things I found on the Internet this week:
France was “online” more than one decade before the Internet went mainstream - using the Minitel
People could make train reservations, check stock prices, search the telephone directory, have a mail box, and chat.. in the 1980s! The French citizens were “on the Minitel”, not unlike how we are “on the Internet” today. This computer network was open to anyone with a telephone in France. France was once, for a brief period of time, ahead of the world in the Internet race - more than A DECADE AHEAD!
How I came across it:
I was reading the book “Computer Networking- A Top-Down Approach” (which, IMO, is the best book on the subject) to teach computer networking basics to my girlfriend when I came across a small paragraph mentioning it. So, I Googled.Ukraine just elect their President based on a TV show
Comedian Volodymyr Zelensky plays a schoolteacher turned presidential candidate, in the second season of the Ukrainian hit TV show “Servant of the People,” who shoots to the top of the polls amid voter disgust with the political establishment. He ran for President in real life and won with a landslide victory!
How I came across it:
Amjad Masad’s tweets:Khan Academy’s course on Cryptography
The concept of public key/private key cryptography was classified immediately after its publication but then it was independently rediscovered and now it is the most copied piece of software in history. It is an integral part of Internet security.
I found the Khan Academy’s explanations of such an important discovery extremely comprehensible and even quite simple.
How I came across it:
I tried the course because Cryptography is one of my college subjects but I would insist everyone to watch this course from Khan Academy. It is quite simple, very interesting and an extremely motivated concept.