Technology

Free Service Botnets

By AMH

How Hackers Hid a Money-Mining Botnet in the Clouds of Amazon and Others: a couple of security researchers build a botnet out of free accounts, potentially legally they claim, rather than from hijacked computers. They proof of concept tested Litecoin mining, suggesting they could have brought in $1750/week with their constructed botnet if left running. While the article cites Amazon and Google’s services as examples, the following suggests an alternate source for these vulnerable accounts: Choosing among the easy two-thirds, they targeted about 15 services that let them sign up for a free account or a free trial. The researchers … Continue reading Free Service Botnets

Buy your donuts with cash

By AMH

I read this story wanting to understand if the data mining they’re doing is really appropriate for making individualized statements in the way they are claiming when they suggest that hospitals will get risk assessments based on patient shopping data through credit cards, store cards, etc. Will receiving doctors get sufficient training in the ways in which these predictions are like and unlike the predictions that medical tests make about health risks? Additionally, I read through the list of hypothesized triggers for heath risks and they seem to bank on the idea that everything I’m purchasing is for myself. Just … Continue reading Buy your donuts with cash

Summer fun with data

By AMH

With the semester over, I’m looking to what projects I’ll be taking on for the next couple of months, and I know many of my students are as well. Here are a few fun options people may want to consider, particularly focused on opportunities to get involved with data analysis: Try out Mortar, an open source recommendation engine platform, described a bit here Take part in Kaggle’s Acquire Valued Shoppers Challenge, playing around with their 22GB of anonymized sample data of 300,000 shopper’s data; this is a massive dataset, Revolution Analytics offers some pointers to tools to help you manage … Continue reading Summer fun with data

I’m not confused I lost my glasses

By AMH

I am always fascinated and creeped out by these stories about adapting system behavior to user emotion. The system described here is being tested out by analyzing facial expressions to detect engagement with educational materials which are then used to predict test performance. I’d love to see some extracted data of what engaged expressions look like. I’ve had too many conversations with colleagues where I’ve asked “You teach X a lot, is that angry look they get their thinking look?” to expect that engaged expressions must look like entertained or pleased expressions, and I know my students have that conversation … Continue reading I’m not confused I lost my glasses

Sparkleponies for all

By AMH

IEEE’s prediction that 85% of the tasks in our daily life will include game elements by 2020 sounds to me like a prediction that requires thinking about game elements broadly enough, it might already be true. Considering this quote in particular, “by 2020, however many points you have at work will help determine the kind of raise you get or which office you sit in”, if you’ve ever had a performance review rating you on a number scale for different job functions, congratulations, your job is gamified! Does grocery shopping get you gas points? Your errands are gamified! Students, grades … Continue reading Sparkleponies for all

Most fun you’ll have debugging all day

By AMH

Weird Bug starts off for the first, say, 30 seconds looking like your standard puzzle-maze game, until you realize the first maze isn’t beatable, and that the real puzzle is how to go into the source code for the maze and fix it so the maze can be beat. The mazes are implemented in PuzzleScript, and the bulk of the game you’re in an IDE interface, changing the code, rebuilding, and playing your fixed level to get on to the next, broken level. If you’ve ever coded before, you’ll be able to figure out PuzzleScript in just a minute or … Continue reading Most fun you’ll have debugging all day

Don’t leave the panopticon

By AMH

I’m pretty blown away by Nothing To Hide, a currently free, browser-based puzzle game with a great premise and one of the most interesting introductory “scenes” I’ve come across. You play a character who must ensure that they are being surveilled at all times while moving around the world (for reasons the opening will make clear). The web-version is actually a demo being used to raise funds for a full version, but it’s as polished and fleshed out as any number of full online games I’ve played. Even in its handful of levels, you get a taste of the variety … Continue reading Don’t leave the panopticon

Math, Music, Ciphers

By AMH

I hadn’t run into the unsolved Dorabella cipher before (that I remember). If you enjoy such things I highly recommend this account of it, with its many proposed decryptions that make clear why one of the conditions for a verified solution is that it “be self-evident”. It’s an excellent example of why decyphering without context is hard (maybe impossible?). And I enjoy the proposed solution that takes encryptions errors into account as a possibility, considering that it was done by hand, and by someone considered prone to such errors.

How It Works: Bitcoin Edition

By AMH

Nothing like avoiding end-of-the-year physical cleanup with end-of-the-year virtual cleanup! I finally got around to reading this detailed description of how Bitcoin works, recommended by Schneier on his weblog, and I need to hang on to this for next time I’m teaching security. From a teaching perspective, it does a nice job of showing how all of the various types of cryptography come together in an interesting way in this protocol. This is the part that always seems sort of wild to me: The idea is to make it so everyone (collectively) is the bank. In particular, we’ll assume that … Continue reading How It Works: Bitcoin Edition

Stabby Robot Less Stabby

By AMH

First, and most important obviously, this is pretty neat research into training robot motion with online, and non-optimal, feedback. It’s a nice consideration of the type of feedback one is likely to get, or to get easily. And the illustrative video on their page is pretty great (I found the moment when they showed the robot how to point the knife towards itself, not someone else, adorable…) But it’s also worth noting that the TechCrunch story on the research is pretty hysterical: “Cornell Researchers Help Robot Unlearn Stabby Motions With A Human Trainer”.