Laura Hernández

This article offers an analysis on the importance of staff and students coming together to transform British neoliberal universities through assemblages of hope among scyborgs (multiple organisms which are part of universities). I have developed the term scyborg assemblages of hope to understand how individuals and groups challenge oppressive systems within UK universities. Scyborg assemblages of hope is a praxis and pedagogical approach aiming to imagine alternative joyful futures. It is co-created between students, staff and community collectives outside the university to promote communication, listening and reflection. The connections made through this praxis are multiscalar and often contradictory. Yet, they help to facilitate a decolonising university with an explicit commitment to radical systemic change. Scyborg work is contradictory because it happens within the UK neoliberal university but still leaves room to create new assemblages which (momentarily) disrupt the functioning of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This paper draws on creative methodologies (alphabet attack, Lego Serious Play, poster creation and body mapping) used in two workshops, one focus group and two community activities with underrepresented undergraduate students at a Russell Group university. Such co-production of knowledge explores how the neoliberal university can and is continuously transformed into (momentarily) decolonial realities.

Initially developed for tasks related to computer graphics, graphics processing units are increasingly being used for general purpose processing, including scientific and engineering applications. In this contribution, we have compared the performance of two graphics cards that belong to the parallel computing Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) platform with two C++ and Java multi-threading implementations, using as an example of computation a brute-force attack on Hitag2, a well-known remote keyless entry application. The results allow us to provide valuable information regarding the compared capabilities of the tested platforms and to confirm that such a weak encryption system could be broken in less than a day with medium cost equipment.

The distinctive security features of the Spanish electronic national identity card, known as Documento Nacional de Identidad electrónico, allow us to propose the usage of this cryptographic smart card in an authentication framework that can be used during the registration and login phases of internet services where the validation of the user’s age and real identity are key elements, as it is the case for example of the so-called social networks. Using this mechanism with NFC-capable devices, the identity and age of the potential user can be determined, allowing or denying the access to the service based on that information.