Week 1 Newsletter

Mon 05 Oct 2020 Newsletter

The first newsletter of the year!

Hello Everyone!

This is our first newsletter of the new academic year and I hope you look forward to many more! As with all things with the society, feel free to send us feedback so we can constantly strive for improvement.

Hello we're cool

Yes indeed, you heard that right, we are a cool society who do fun things and have cool people. But if you're reading this, then you're almost certainly already a member, which makes you a cool person too.

"What fun things do we do?" you might ask, and I am sure glad you did. In short, we do:

Here's our exec and what they do

Gaming on Friday

Even in these looks outside dark and troubled times, the beacon of hope that is "Friday Night Gaming" continues to shine. Currently we're running games over Discord, we survey people's interests in games a little ahead of time and then everyone dives into the many available voice channels to play various games together, from casually chaotic TTT and the enigmatic Mysterium, to the inevitable "shoot for the moon, get stuck in a tree" Valorant group.

When the good times return, we'll be returning to CS003 and breaking out all the consoles, playing all the same great games, and many more, including the ever popular Rockband setup (with custom songs) and never-ending stream of Smash on the Switch.

Gaming

Because Friday Night Gaming could never just be enough to sate some of our member's appetites, we run LAN parties (read WAN (Wide Area Network) parties for the time being) and a nice "casual Tuesday" light game session, also on Discord. This one is a little quieter and more relaxed, often with more social games like Jackbox, and board games like Mysterium and Boggle, if you're free on a Tuesday evening, hop onto the Discord and you'll find friends to chat and join in with for sure.

LAN parties are truly a masterwork of the society's many great events. Normally we book LIB2 for the weekend (Just next to library cafe) and setup a gigabit Ethernet connection plus one of the ever-beloved music servers. Then it's 48 hours of non-stop* gaming.

Due to the obvious problems with packing as many of us into a single room for a weekend right now, we came up with the ingenious solution of running the same event remotely, sure we can't run a gigabit ethernet connection to you. But your bed is now likely less than 10m away. So join us for a Week 3 WAN and 48 hours of non-stop* gaming, more details to come soon I promise!

*Please go sleep if you're tired, your health comes first

Talks

We love putting on talks. They're fun, interesting and informative. We run two kinds of talks for the most part; external speakers from one of our wonderful sponsors, sharing their wisdom and experience, and internal speakers, members of the society, members of other societies such as Game Design.

Git Good

We're running a Git Good talk this Wednesday at 3pm, hosted online and presented by our former President Sam Coy. This talk covers the many wonderful uses of git, powerful version control software you'll use throughout your degree and career, and is well worth tuning in on.

If you want to come along, the (shortened) Teams link is: https://bit.ly/3liEhl5 (if you cannot attend at the time, the recording should be available at the same link afterwards!)

Schedule

Other notices

There will be some scheduled downtime of the CompSoc servers for updates on Wednesday 14th. If you have any questions about how this will affect you, please contact tech@uwcs.co.uk

That's all from me for now, but do not fear, I shall return;

Toby

If you would like to keep in touch, join our Discord Server, or information can be found on our Facebook Group, or on our Twitter.

And now, a word from our sponsors

The Phoenix Partnership

TPP is a global digital health company. With over 5,500 organisations using our solutions to care for over 50 million patients, our software is used across all health and social care settings, including GPs, emergency departments, hospitals and mental health services. This means that wherever and whenever a patient needs care, a detailed and up-to-date record is available. No other company has a digital healthcare solution on this scale. Our database is one of the largest in the world. It processes a billion transactions daily - more than the London Stock Exchange and Visa combined.

After 22 years of success in the UK, TPP is now expanding their offering to deliver connected care to new markets in China and the Middle East. We're currently hiring for seven different graduate roles and for our 2020 summer intern programme. We're looking for the brightest minds from the UK's top universities who have a passion for problem solving.

To find out more about the opportunities TPP have to offer, visit www.tpp-uk.com/careers.

G-Research

G-Research is a leading quantitative research and technology company. By using the latest scientific techniques, we produce world-beating predictive research and build advanced technology to analyse the world's data.

Join us and you'll explore complex challenges with some of the world's smartest people in an open and informal environment. We are all working towards achieving our long-term goal: human ingenuity limited only by the speed of thought.

To find out more about the opportunities G-Research have to offer, visit gresearch.co.uk

Jane Street

Jane Street is a quantitative trading firm and global liquidity provider. Our trading is based on mathematical modeling and strategies and we use innovative technology, a scientific approach, and a deep understanding of markets to stay successful. With offices in some of the world's most dynamic cities: New York, London, Amsterdam and Hong Kong, we operate around the clock and around the globe.

We offer internships in four different groups: trading, technology, research and business development. All of our offices follow a slightly different internship schedule, though our typical summer internship lasts 10-12 weeks. You work alongside full timers, and we get to know you and see how you think about and solve the kinds of problems we deal with every day. All interns also spend time in a foreign office with travel and accommodation arranged by Jane Street.

To learn more about the opportunities that Jane Street offer, visit https://www.janestreet.com/join-jane-street/apply.

London Stock Exchange Group

Grow your career at market speed

London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) has a long, prestigious heritage that few organisations around the world can rival, dating back to 1698. Since then, we have grown to become one of the world’s foremost financial market infrastructure and capital markets groups, and a global leader in new financial technology (FinTech). Headquartered in London, our geographic footprint extends to more than 25 cities worldwide, and more than 60 nationalities are represented by our 5000-strong workforce.

We understand that this is a challenging and unprecedented time for everyone, but our graduate and internship programmes – and the development of new talent – remains critical to our future business success. As we continue to expand and diversify, we are looking for the next generation of talented, ambitious graduates to help us shape the future of LSEG. You will get direct exposure to the exciting innovations happening within finance and technology, putting your ideas and problem-solving skills to use and helping to drive our growth.

Applications close on 6 December 2020

https://www.lseg.com

Optiver

Optiver is a leading trading firm driven by technology with over 1000 employees world-wide. Our systems play an essential role in everything we do in trading.

That is why our Technology and Trading teams work closely together to explore ideas and set the new directions. We build and maintain an outstanding suite of high performing, high reliability and low-latency systems and algorithms that are constantly evolving.

With 12 datacenters and thousands of servers, we run ten thousand trading components executing hundreds of thousands of trades every day, responding to changes in microseconds.

If you are interested in joining our technology team in Amsterdam of over 150 people from 40 countries, check-out our career opportunities page, at https://www.optiver.com/eu/en/job-opportunities.