(Photo: Zap2It)

This should delight the Sherlock fangirls on Tumblr: Benedict Cumberbatch, who's currently shooting The Fifth Estate, in which he plays controversial Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, is reportedly in talks to take on his next awesomely nerdy role. Deadline reports that Mr. Cumberbatch may be gearing up to play Alan Turing in a biopic about the famous British mathematician's life.

Mr. Turing is a storied character in computer science history, having cracked a code during World War II that helped the Allies defeat Germany. He also invented the Turing Test, which helps gauge a computer's ability to behave indistinguishably from a human. In the '50s, Mr. Turing was prosecuted by the British government for being gay, choosing chemical castration over prison time, which eventually lead to his suicide. So: a real feel good movie!

With so many nerd-friendly roles already under his belt (including The Hobbit and Star Trek), we can only hope Mr. Cumberbatch will soon accept a role as Steve "Sweaty" Ballmer in the smash-hit musical comedy Developers!

Levchin. (Loic Le Meur.)

New Yahoo director Max Levchin, blogging about joining the company's board: "Yahoo! showed me that computer geeks can start companies that create that future. I’d love to do my part in helping the company that inspired me." [Max Levchin]

Twelve Seattle neighborhoods are getting faster Internet connections from Gigabit Squared and the University of Washington. Us too, please? [Ars Technica]

General Catalyst is launching Roughdraft.VC to fund student-entrepreneurs at Boston colleges and universities. First Round Capital and NEA have launched similar programs. [TechCrunch]

Stephen Hawking and other British scientists are calling for a posthumous pardon for Alan Turing, the noted codebreaker convicted in 1952 after acknowledging an affair with another man at a time when homosexuality was illegal. [BBC]

British police identified Anonymous members behind Operation Payback by mining IRC logs and piecing together digital identities from Xbox handles. [The Register]

Forget to look skyward on your way home from the holiday party circuit last night? There's still another night to catch the Geminid meteor shower. [Washington Post]