Kottke, Laws of Scaling, Speed of Animals
Absolutely fascinating post over at Jason Kottke's Kottke.org site, illustrating the laws of scaling (in this case body size) and the speed of animals; clearly there are correllations to computational activity.
Limits of Computation →
John Pavlus, writing at Quanta Magazine regales us with the story of a 'Solution That Doesn't Exist'.
Yet in a paper presented at the ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, two researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology put forth a mathematical proof that the current best algorithm was “optimal” — in other words, that finding a more efficient way to compute edit distance was mathematically impossible. The Boston Globe celebrated the hometown researchers’ achievement with a headline that read “For 40 Years, Computer Scientists Looked for a Solution That Doesn’t Exist.”
Underwhelming Overengineering →
Writing at the IEEE's Spectrum Magazine, Robert N. Charette and Joshua J. Romero have detailed the Overcomplexifying and Underdelivering model prevalent in massive-fail software implementations and deployments. Todays Death March Must Read.
As hard as it is to build IT systems in the first place, it’s arguably even more difficult to maintain them properly over time. In many government agencies, decades of neglect have resulted in a tangled mess of poorly understood and poorly implemented systems that limit operational effectiveness and efficiency. In the past decade, we’ve seen numerous attempts to combine the functionality of such legacy systems into a single modern replacement system. - Via Robert N. Charette and Joshua J. Romero writing at the **IEEE Spectrum Magazine.
Sun Shooting →
Andrea Peterson, writing at The Washington Post, reports on the increased education and utility of celestial navigation (as opposed to Computational and GPS navigation). Fascinating.
Steering a ship by the stars fell out of favor with the rise of radio wave and GPS navigation. In fact, the U.S. Naval Academy stopped teaching the skill nearly 20 years ago. But now this ancient navigation is making a comeback at the Annapolis school, thanks to cybersecurity fears, according to the Capital Gazette.
"We went away from celestial navigation because computers are great," Lt. Cmdr. Ryan Rogers, the deputy chairman of the academy's Department of Seamanship and Navigation, told the Gazette. "The problem is, there's no backup." - via Andrea Peterson reporting at The Washington Post
Prevent HSTS Tracking →
The eponymous Martin Brinkmann, writing at his gHacks site, details the method used to disable the HTTP Strict Transport Security tracking 'feature' in browsers (specifically, in this case, within Mozilla's Firefox browser. Outstanding.
LE Seeking DNA
Kashmir Hill, writing for Fusion, reports on law enforcement efforts to garner DNA records from private sector commercial entities (read - Ancestry and 23andMe). Outstanding reportage kudos to Ms. Hill, and Hat Tip to T. Blalock.
No Mandatory Decrypt... For Now →
Interesting source this time, coming from Roger Fingas, writing for Apple Insider, detailing the current Lame-Duck Administrations' decision to avoid forcing corporate entities to decrypt communications for Law Enforcement Agencies.
The 500k →
Codebreaker Granddaughter →
Litany of the quiet heroism of William Gordon Welchman at Bletchley Park, his modern day connections (in this case his granddaughter's well-placed esteem). Today's Must Read.
Apple Boots In-App Ad-Blockers →
via the eponymous Graham Cluley, writing via his blog, details the removal of in-app ad-blockers from the Apple Inc. (NasdaqGS: AAPL) app store.