Year: 2009
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Intractability of Financial Derivatives
A new result by Princeton computer scientists and economists shows a striking application of computer science theory to the field of financial derivative design. The paper is Computational Complexity and Information Asymmetry in Financial Products by Sanjeev Arora, Boaz Barak, Markus Brunnermeier, and Rong Ge. Although computation has long been used in the financial industry…
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Sidekick Users' Data Lost: Blame the Cloud?
Users of Sidekick mobile phones saw much of their data disappear last week due to engineering problems at a Microsoft data center. Sidekick devices lose the contents of their memory when they don’t have power (e.g. when the battery is being changed), so all data is transmitted to a data center for permanent storage –…
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PrivAds: Behavioral Advertising without Tracking
There’s an interesting new paper out of Stanford and NYU, about a system called “PrivAds” that tries to provide behavioral advertising on web sites, without having a central server gather detailed information about user behavior. If the paper’s approach turns out to work, it could have an important impact on the debate about online advertising…
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Chilling and Warming Effects
For several years, the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse has cataloging the effects of legal threats on online expression and helping people to understand their rights. Amid all the chilling we continue to see, it’s welcome to see rays of sunshine when bloggers stand up to threats, helping to stop the cycle of threat-and-takedown. The BoingBoing team…
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Privacy as a Social Problem, Not a Technology Problem
Bob Blakley had an interesting post Monday, arguing that technologists tend to frame the privacy issue poorly. (I would add that many non-technologists use the same framing.) Here’s a sample: That’s how privacy works; it’s not about secrecy, and it’s not about control: it’s about sociability. Privacy is a social good which we give to…
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Introducing FedThread: Opening the Federal Register
Today we are rolling out FedThread, a new way of interacting with the Federal Register. It’s the latest civic technology project from our team at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy. The Federal Register is “[t]he official daily publication for rules, proposed rules, and notices of Federal agencies and organizations, as well as executive orders…
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Antisocial networking
I just got my invitation to Google Wave. The prototype that’s now public doesn’t have all of the amazing features in the original video demos. At this point, it’s pretty much just a way of collecting IM-style conversations all in one place. But several of my friends are already there, and I’ve had a few…
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Breaking Vanish: A Story of Security Research in Action
Today, seven colleagues and I released a new paper, “Defeating Vanish with Low-Cost Sybil Attacks Against Large DHTs”. The paper’s authors are Scott Wolchok (Michigan), Owen Hofmann (Texas), Nadia Heninger (Princeton), me, Alex Halderman (Michigan), Christopher Rossbach (Texas), Brent Waters (Texas), and Emmett Witchel (Texas). Our paper is the next chapter in an interesting story…
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Android Open Source Model Has a Short Circuit
[Update: Google subsequently worked out a mechanism that allows Cyanogen and others to distribute their mods separate from the Google Apps.] Last year, Google entered the mobile phone market with a Linux-based mobile operating system. The company brought together device manufacturers and carriers in the Open Handset Alliance, explaining that, “Together we have developed Android™,…
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The Markey Net Neutrality Bill: Least Restrictive Network Management?
It’s an exciting time in the net neutrality debate. FCC Chairman Jules Genachowski’s speech on Monday promised a new FCC proceeding that will aim to create a formal rule to replace the Commission’s existing policy statement. Meanwhile, net neutrality advocates in Congress are pondering new legislation for two reasons: First, there is a debate about…