Creativity is everything!
http://www.archdaily.com/51664/handmade-school-anna-heringer-eike-roswag/
Thursday, January 2, 2014
2 Cyber-security Reports
http://www.nist.gov/itl/upload/preliminary-cybersecurity-framework.pdf
IT Industry’s Cyber-security Principles for Industry and Government:
http://www.itic.org/dotAsset/191e377f-b458-4e3d-aced-e856a9b3aebe.pdf
Friday, December 20, 2013
Robotic Police
US company launches robot security guard
The night watchman of the future is 5 feet tall, weighs 300 pounds and looks a lot like R2-D2 - without the whimsy. And will work for US$6.25 an hour.
A company in California has developed a mobile robot, known as the K5 Autonomous Data Machine, as a safety and security tool for corporations, as well as for schools and neighborhoods.
"We founded Knightscope after what happened at Sandy Hook," said William Santana Li, a co-founder of that technology company, now based in Sunnyvale, Calif. "You are never going to have an armed officer in every school." [Unfortunately, or fortunately, as the case may be.]
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
News of 3-D Priniting
Free Active Directory eBook
Free Active Directory Group Management eBook (requires registration) @ http://imanami.com/free-ebook/
Cyber-Physical Systems
Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are integrations of computation, networking, and physical processes. Learn more about them @ http://cyberphysicalsystems.org/
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Monday, October 7, 2013
3-D Printing News
1.
eBay Unveils 3D Printing App:
2.
Applications
for Gradient Metal Alloys Fabricated Using Additive Manufacturing
Swarms and Micro-robots
I-Swarm:
Institute for Process Control and Robotics
Harvard Microrobotics Lab
Maryland Microrobotics Laboratory
Berkeley Biomimetic Millisystems Lab
Friday, August 23, 2013
Two JavaScript Books
In addition to the now quite famous "JavaScript: The Good Parts" by Douglas Crockford check out the following books that discuss JavaScript from a Functional Programming view point:
- "Functional JavaScript" by MichaelFogus. You will need to understand the Underscore JavaScript Library (http://underscorejs.org/) since the book heavily uses that.
- "JavaScript Allongé" by Reginald Braithwaite.
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Smartphones for smart ….
From the BBC
I was going to buy one – it sounds so cool !!!
–
but I think I have changed my mind.
“Internet of
Things” has started giving me the willies!
A luxury toilet controlled by a smartphone app is vulnerable to
attack, according to security experts.
Retailing for up to $5,686 (£3,821), the Satis toilet includes
automatic flushing, bidet spray, music and fragrance release.
The toilet, manufactured by Japanese firm Lixil, is controlled via
an Android app called My Satis.
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
CSIS Reports on Cyber-security
The Economic Impact of Cybercrime and Cyber Espionage @ http://csis.org/files/publication/60396rpt_cybercrime-cost_0713_ph4_0.pdf
and
Significant Cyber Events @ http://csis.org/files/publication/130711_Significant_Cyber_Incidents_Since_2006.pdf
and
Significant Cyber Events @ http://csis.org/files/publication/130711_Significant_Cyber_Incidents_Since_2006.pdf
Monday, July 15, 2013
Sunday, July 14, 2013
Monday, June 24, 2013
Using Metadata to Find Paul Revere
"I have been asked by my superiors to give a brief demonstration of the surprising effectiveness of even the simplest techniques of the new-fangled Social Networke Analysis in the pursuit of those who would seek to undermine the liberty enjoyed by His Majesty’s subjects.
This is in connection with the discussion of the role of “metadata” in certain recent events and the assurances of various respectable parties that the government was merely “sifting through this so-called metadata” and that the “information acquired does not include the content of any communications”.
I will show how we can use this “metadata” to find key persons involved in terrorist groups operating within the Colonies at the present time. I shall also endeavour to show how these methods work in what might be called a relational manner."
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
Unique in the Crowd
In the paper "Unique in the Crowd: The Privacy Bounds of Human Mobility," published in Nature's Scientific Reports last year, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, César A. Hidalgo, Michel Verleysen, and Vincent D. Blondel of MIT and the Universite Catholique de Louvain, examined a dataset of 15 months of anonymous cell-phone data from 1.5 million people in Belgium (most likely).
There were no names, addresses, or phone numbers in the data, yet they argue that "if individual's patterns are unique enough, outside information can be used to link the data back to an individual." In fact, just four points of observation -- time of the call and the nearest cell-phone tower -- were enough to identify 95 percent of individuals in the data et.
That is, if one makes four calls from four different places over the course of a 15-month period, one's pattern of movement could be identified out of a population two and a half times the size of Washington, D.C.
If someone is able to cross-reference that with the Twitter feed, say, he could be able to build a pretty good picture of who be that person .
The pattern still worked when the researchers "coarsened" their sample by using less specific time observations and by lumping multiple cell-phone towers into one.
Evidently, the way people move through the world and share and communicate information is quite distinctive.
de Montjoye has stated that: "We use the analogy of the fingerprint, in the 1930s, Edmond Locard, one of the first forensic science pioneers, showed that each fingerprint is unique, and you need 12 points to identify it. So here what we did is we took a large-scale database of mobility traces and basically computed the number of points so that 95 percent of people would be unique in the dataset."
Since phone companies need to keep this kind of data for billing and customer service purposes, it seems inevitable that it would sooner or later be put to questionable use by the security agencies of various governments.
The authors have an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor arguing that consumers should be granted more control over and more information about how much of their data is being stored and for what purpose.
Their study "shows that when it comes to rich metadata datasets, there are no clear cut between anonymous and not anonymous data. Achieving anonymity is really hard and might even be algorithmically impossible."
The paper may be found here:
http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130325/srep01376/pdf/srep01376.pdf
There were no names, addresses, or phone numbers in the data, yet they argue that "if individual's patterns are unique enough, outside information can be used to link the data back to an individual." In fact, just four points of observation -- time of the call and the nearest cell-phone tower -- were enough to identify 95 percent of individuals in the data et.
If someone is able to cross-reference that with the Twitter feed, say, he could be able to build a pretty good picture of who be that person .
The pattern still worked when the researchers "coarsened" their sample by using less specific time observations and by lumping multiple cell-phone towers into one.
Evidently, the way people move through the world and share and communicate information is quite distinctive.
de Montjoye has stated that: "We use the analogy of the fingerprint, in the 1930s, Edmond Locard, one of the first forensic science pioneers, showed that each fingerprint is unique, and you need 12 points to identify it. So here what we did is we took a large-scale database of mobility traces and basically computed the number of points so that 95 percent of people would be unique in the dataset."
Since phone companies need to keep this kind of data for billing and customer service purposes, it seems inevitable that it would sooner or later be put to questionable use by the security agencies of various governments.
The authors have an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor arguing that consumers should be granted more control over and more information about how much of their data is being stored and for what purpose.
Their study "shows that when it comes to rich metadata datasets, there are no clear cut between anonymous and not anonymous data. Achieving anonymity is really hard and might even be algorithmically impossible."
The paper may be found here:
http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130325/srep01376/pdf/srep01376.pdf
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About Me
- Babak Makkinejad
- I had been a senior software developer working for HP and GM. I am interested in intelligent and scientific computing. I am passionate about computers as enablers for human imagination. The contents of this site are not in any way, shape, or form endorsed, approved, or otherwise authorized by HP, its subsidiaries, or its officers and shareholders.