New portable sensor tests for gluten in minutes

Martha Benco, an Oakland native, knows what it’s like to rely on the truthfulness of labels and servers when it comes to checking whether there’s gluten in her food. “I have celiac disease,” says Benco, 35, who also has a way to test her food now. Benco says she’s been lucky so far—though she does…

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At North Oakland hackerspace, enthusiasts tinker with microcontrollers

Ace Monster Toys, a North Oakland-based hackerspace, hosted its first-ever Arduino Night on Wednesday, as a handful of attendees had a chance to tinker with microcontrollers. Microcontrollers, which are small low power computers that don’t require a keyboard, mice or monitor to work, can be found in gadgets that control something as simple as a button that turns on a light or moves a toy robot.

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Black Girls Code teaches girls digital technology skills

Black Girls Code runs after-school programs where they teach programming and game design. At the event held on Saturday at DeVry University in downtown Oakland, 100 girls between the ages of 7 and 17, their parents, and 50 volunteers listened carefully as Kimberly Bryant, the founder of Black Girls Code, addressed the crowd.

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Teens turn tech skills learned from nonprofit into a first job

Kemish Rosales spent the summer of 2012, the one between his junior and senior year of high school, learning how to remove hard drives and disk drives safely, rebooting computers, installing software, cleaning mice and speakers, and attending a computer lab every Thursday. Angel Yañez also spent that summer fixing and refurbishing computers, setting them…

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CityCamp Oakland bridges the divide between tech and local government

Participants at CityCamp Oakland packed the City Council chambers for an all-day "unconference" connecting technology and local government.

Saturday’s “unconference” at Oakland City Hall featured more than a dozen workshops ranging from the city budget, to neighborhood crime issues, to the digital divide, and open data. Over a hundred technology professionals, city staff, local citizens, and business leaders came together to discuss the often-rocky relationship between technology and local government.

The second annual CityCamp Oakland comes out of a surging tech community in Oakland and a city government looking to become a leader in civic technology. The conference was organized by OpenOakland, a civic hacking group born out of Code for America, the national non-profit that pairs young programmers with local governments.

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