Tag: computer science as a social science
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Collective intelligence, diversity, and social networks
Researchers led by Anita Woolley of Carnegie Mellon University found that a group’s success in solving problems wasn’t correlated to the average intelligence of the group, or the IQ of the smartest person. Instead, it was related to “social sensitivity”, whether everybody got to participate in the discussions, and the number of women in the…
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Ethnographic observations and you!
An as-yet-unnamed potential startup company is planning to develop some revolutionary software that relates to how people work together. One of our first steps is to set set up a research community and making some ethnographic observations — in other words, getting an understanding of how people work today. We’re especially trying to get a…
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Creating the future: Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2009
From conference co-chairs Cindy Southworth and Jay Stanley’s Call for presentations, tutorials, and workshops: The 19th annual Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference is now accepting proposals for panels, workshop sessions, and other events. CFP is the leading policy conference exploring the impact of the Internet, computers and communications technologies on society. It will be taking…
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danah boyd joins Microsoft Research — computer science *is* a social science
Guess who has a post-dissertation job? [Yes, that implies I’m actually going to finish this *#$@! dissertation.] ::bounce:: In January, I will be joining the newly minted Microsoft Research New England in Boston, MA. w00000t!!!!! I couldn’t be more ecstatic. — danah boyd, I will be joining Microsoft Research in January, apophenia, September 2008 “Breaking…
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Vegas, baby! Iron Chef Black Hat
Draft posted August 14. Substantially revised August 17. The second of a two-part series on the Black Hat USA 2008 security conference. Back when we lived in San Francisco in the 1990s, we were huge fans of Fuji TV’s Iron Chef, then shown with subtitles on a local cable station. When local chef Ron Siegel…
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Vegas, baby! Black Hat, glitter, and pwnies
The first of a two-part series on the Black Hat USA 2008 security conference. Vegas, baby! Continuing my tradition, I was in Las Vegas for Black Hat but didn’t attend the conference proper. My brother was able to come up from LA to meet me, so I decided to hang out with him instead —…
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Make desire more important than fear: “Change the Way You See Yourself (Through Asset-Based Thinking)”
Kathy Cramer and Hank Wasiak’s new book is out, a gorgeous and well-focused follow-on to their Change the Way You See Everything, one of the Microsoft Ad Astra project’s signature giveaways.* In May 2007, we did an amazing two-day workshop with Kathy, Hank and his colleagues from the Concept Farm, and folks from Extreme Arts…
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CFP08: trip report
Part 1 of a series Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2008 ended with me presenting Dear Potus 08 and circulating the letter to the presidential candidates for signatures, and then a closing plenary by Clay Shirky (notes below). It was exhiliarating as always, and I’m now simultaneously exhausting, revved up, and suffering from jet lag. So…
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Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2008: showtime!
CFP2008 traditionally starts off with a day of tutorials. I was on a panel organized by Lillie Coney of EPIC on E-Deceptive Campaign Practices: “Elections 2.0″, which was extremely interesting; I discussed examples of, and responses to, e-deception based on my activism experiences this election season, much of which I’ve blogged about here already. Tova…
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A bumper crop o’ Slashdot security threads
In RSA: “It feels like something’s missing” earlier this week, I mentioned that I found myself wondering whether what I was seeing at the show responded to security problems as experienced by users. Coincidentally enough, when I checked Slashdot today there were several of interesting security-related threads. So while it’s far from a statistically-valid sample,…
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RSA, part 2: static analysis
A continuation of RSA: “It feels like something’s missing” RSA’s a tough show for static analysis companies, but several were there. Ounce had the largest booth and an excellent message (“listen to your code”); Veracode, Armorize, and Fortify had smaller presence. However, I didn’t actually spend much time at the booths or looking at the…
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RSA: “It feels like something’s missing”
The last time I was at the RSA conference/expo in 2004, Bill Gates talked about PREfix and PREfast in his keynote — he even went off and started talking about Microsoft’s acquisition of PREfix! Hard to top that … but it’s a great place for shoozing and to get a feel for the market, so…
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Asbestos underwear, fair information principles, and security
Tales from the Net co-author Deborah Pierce’s Into the Lion’s Den — a privacy advocate’s work is never done (on her tribe.net blog) talks about a panel she was just on at ere expo, “the nation’s leading recruiting conference.” She was there for a debate with the CEO of a company whose mission is “to…
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Strategy, security, and static analysis: what’s next for me
Fourteen years ago today was my last day at Digital Equipment Corporation before leaving to work on the technology today became PREfix and the company I started with a few friends that became Intrinsa, so it seems especially appropriate to post about this today … I’m delighted to announce that I’m starting a part-time strategy…
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pwn2own: the stakes just got higher
Update, March 27: Macbook Air pwned and owned — in two minutes! Update, March 28: Vista laptop pwned via an Adobe Flash vulnerability. Update, April 16: Apple issues Safari patch. Props to the winners — and to Ubuntu Linux, which emerged unpwned!
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My new bio-in-progress, 2.0
It’s amusingly difficult for me to write professional biographies, especially for print publications. Not only do I have a hard time reducing my career to the paragraph you’re usually allowed, at some level it feels like it forces me to reify my identity. Nonetheless, it has to be done; right now, I’m on the hook…
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Indeed! The Economist on “computer science as a social science”
The Economist’s Technology Quarterly has an excellent article on Software bugtraps: software that makes software better. This is something of a followup to an article they did a few years ago; most people quoted think that the situation is improving, although of course as Capers Jones points out it depends on your metrics. And why…
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Community defense vs. trolls in the One Million Strong for Barack Facebook group
Like a lot of political sites these days, the Barack Obama Facebook page and One Million Strong for Barack group have been suffering from an infestation of trolls and hate speech. Obama supporters, like others, use Facebook to help with “get out the vote” work (for example posting links to information about polling places) and…
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Computers, Freedom, and Privacy 2008: call for proposals is up!
From the CFP2008 web page: This election year will be the first to address US technology policy in the information age as part of our national debate. Candidates have put forth positions about technology policy and have recognized that it has its own set of economic, political, and social concerns. In the areas of privacy,…
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Cult of the Dead Cow releases ‘Goolag’ beta
Hactivists Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) have released a Windows-only beta of Goolag, a rich client for the Google Hacking techniques pioneered by hacker J0hnny I Hack Stuff. Basically, Goolag makes it easy to use Google to search out security vulnerabilities related to your web site — or, presumably, others. From cDc’s blog: SECURITY…