In a previous blog post, I discussed about the occurrence of security bugs through software evolution. In this post we will examine their existence in a large software ecosystem. To achieve this, together with four other colleagues (Vasilios Karakoidas, Georgios Gousios, Panos Louridas and Diomidis Spinellis) we used the FindBugs static analysis tool, to analyze all the projects that exist in the Maven central repository (approximately 260GB of interdependent project versions).
Algorithms Fit for Compilation?
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Most researchers differ in their workflow. For researchers in the algorithms world (or at least, those I know), the work is in the design. Our hours are spent at the blueprint stage. Algorithms are designed, improved, reformulated, or reapplied in different problems, mostly on paper. But this is unarguably only the first stage in successfully developing a new algorithm. There are still the matters of proving and testing the algorithm, and submitting the result to the public. When are we done drafting our blueprint? How do we package and ship the blueprint to the engineers and construction team?
Let’s address the more straight-forward question first. What is the best way to present an algorithm? How descriptive and specific should it be? Should it be entirely self-contained or, for instance, could we have a pointer to a “… subroutine of choice”? Is implementability more important than readability?
Talks of Talks of Estimators
This week, TCS+ hosted a talk by Greg Valiant via a Google+ hangout. Valiant gave a talk on his work with brother, Paul, on an efficient estimator for entropy and support size of an unknown probability distribution requiring only O(n/log n) samples, where n is a bound on the support size of the distribution. This work diverges from the existing literature by demonstrating that the estimate can be obtained with a concrete linear program; an algorithm which outputs a distribution very similar to the unknown distribution with respect to certain statistical properties.
Habits: our cognitive shortcut
I like my shopping routine at the grocery store around the corner, where my cart seems to easily navigate itself through the isles. Once in a while I make adventurous purchases (the Halloween-edition beer with pumpkin aroma still awaits in my fridge), but I usually stick to the products that have already made me happy before. Whenever in a new town, I try to shop at the same chain, where I know the products and their location on the shelves.
“Information Wants to be Free”
Many of you may have heard or read about the tragic news that Aaron Swartz, a co-founder of Reddit, political organizer, and internet activist took his own life on January 11th at the age of 26. Numerous obituaries, news articles, tributes, and criticisms have been written describing the last days of Aaron’s life and how his prosecution for felony wiretapping charges may have contributed to his suicide. Aaron’s work unquestionably changed the world in ways that are relevant to readers of XRDS.