(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!

(Photo: Global Nerdy)

If you work at a startup and have ever seen two engineers cozied up next to each other on a beanbag chair intently gazing into the same computer screen, you've probably got some pair programmers on your hands. Soon, like a couple who has soured on each other's affection, they will quibble over the tiniest infractions and eat dinner sullenly, with nothing more to say to each other.

The concept of pair programming--two engineers sharing a computer and working on the same code together--is nothing new, but The Wall Street Journal has discovered the phenomenon and seems simultaneously shocked and awed by how it works.

If the ideal for pairing is soulmate-level bonding, the reality can be more like an endless bad blind date. Annoyances that plague partners everywhere can quickly pile up: from poor personal hygiene and table manners, to feet on shared desks and loud chewing.

At the core of pair programming is a commitment for teamwork, and there's no "bad breath" in "team."

Still, pair programmers can experience a sort of symbiotic bond. "The communication becomes so deep that you don't even use words anymore," one Facebook programmer told the Journal. "You just grunt and point."

Hmm, sounds more like a pair of old marrieds to us.

data via the Wall Street Journal

There has been a lot of drama around the new engineering campus that Cornell and Technion will be be building on Roosevelt Island. But in the meantime New York's exisiting universities have been seeing strong growth in the number of students interested in studying computer science.

Columbia, NYU, Queens College and the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken all reported increases in enrolment for CS classes between 30-50 percent, and a increase in computer sciences majors of 10 and 12 percent at NYU and Columbia. The best part is that students, at least the one quoted in this article, are already beginning to gravitate to New York as a place to study because they see it as a springboard to a startup hub.

"When I was thinking about schools, I wanted to go somewhere that had a start-up ecosystem—in and around cities—but I wanted a place that wasn't unilaterally focused on technology as an engineering problem," Arvind Srinivasan, a Columbia sophomore from Fremont, California studying computer science. "New York is really the up-and-coming place because people who don't have traditional technology backgrounds are starting companies in completely different sectors and utilizing technology."

Another catalyst is the antipathy to the financial sector which has bubbled over as the Occupy Wall Street movement. Brainy quants who would once have aimed for a job at a big bank may be driven by politics to try something else.

But while the supply of CS students is growing, some in New York tech believe that's a red herring. "The problem is that NYC startups are basically unknown to students at MIT, CMU, Penn, and even (shockingly) to engineering students at NYU and Columbia (big props to HackNY for trying to fix this)," Mr. Dixon wrote on his blog. "I say this having been at dozens of events with East Coast students over the last year or so talking about startups. I’m constantly amazed that most of the students simply don’t realize startups are a viable option. What we have is primarily a marketing, not a supply, problem."

Fashion shows, pin up calendars and reality TV aren't enough marketing? We're kind of at a loss for how the local tech scene could be more self-promotional.

This is a guest post from Tarikh Korula, founder of Uncommon Projects, and originally appeared at his blog, unprojects.

I’m often asked what the difference is between NYU's ITP and MIT's Media Lab. Sometimes from prospective students, but mostly from high-powered executives or important writers who have heard of the program or The Show. I had one friend once who left Media Lab disappointed, so I’m super-qualified to speak about it.

MIT kids are smart. Really smart. They probably have been studying violin since they were, like, two. Then they wrote software algorithms when they were 10 to approximate a symphony that could play along with them in real time while they played Bach concertos. If these kids were a rock band, they’d be Emerson, Lake and Palmer with a laser show and a 360 major label deal.

ITP kids are... resourceful. We didn’t invent hacking or email or lasers and shit. We invented QTVR, PComp, Gurl, Arduino and Foursquare. Instead of beautiful John Meada visualizations, we’ve got a lot of wooden tiles that move in concert to show you a picture of yourself and we think that’s art. It’s not really, but we never studied art so we don’t really know any better. If we were a rock band, we’d be the Ramones with their shitty recording contract and Laurie Anderson playing midi controlled tambourine.

And that’s the difference between Media Lab and ITP. I created this Google spreadsheet MIT:MSG :: ITP:CBGB for further study.

I hope this helps clear things up and finally puts the question "What’s the difference between ITP and Media Lab?" to rest.