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Highly recommend Notes from Underground by Roger Scruton

51BumXwPw3L._SX320_BO1,204,203,200_I am unfortunately nearing the end of Roger Scruton’s Notes from Underground. It is a fantastic novel, set in Prague of the 1980s. I am astounded how well Scruton, who is English, understands the climate of Central Europe, east of the Berlin Wall, in the twilight years of Soviet occupation.

Scruton must know enough of the Czech language to be able to quote it freely; and he is attuned to the Slavic melancholy, and thus able to create believable characters and dialogues.

His descriptions of the city remind me of my hometown Kraków, very near Prague, and very similar in its experiences of oppression and desire for freedom.

Slides from my ISSA August talk at Cal Lutheran

Last Thursday I gave a talk at the August Ventura ISSA (Information Systems Security Association) at Cal Lutheran. There were several good talks, such as the one by Arthur Press on using the Metasploit to mount a DOS attack, and by Richard Randle from MBSG on using a Linux mount disk to break a Windows admin password. My talk was on Crypto applications to https security:

A short history of mathematical pedagogy; what does the future hold?

1. Teaching Maths In 1950s

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

2. Teaching Maths In 1970s

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

3. Teaching Maths In 1980s

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit ? Yes or No

4. Teaching Maths In 1990s

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

5. Teaching Maths In 2000s

A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20. What do you think of this way of making a living?

Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers, feel free to express your feelings e.g, anger, anxiety, inadequacy, helplessness etc.)

Should you require debriefing at conclusion of exam there are counsellors available to assist you to adjust back into the real world.

Position: Assistant Professor of Computer Science, California State University Channel Islands

CI is seeking to fill a tenure-track position in Computer Science at the Assistant Professor rank. The program is poised to grow and we are looking for enthusiastic candidates who will help build a world-class program. All areas of specialization are welcome; candidates with expertise in Software Engineering, Computer Security, Theory, Networks, and Data Mining, are particularly encouraged to apply.

Responsibilities include teaching undergraduate and graduate computer science courses, pursuing funded research and scholarly publications, contributing to general education and interdisciplinary courses, assisting in the development of new academic programs and pursuing appropriate industrial collaboration.

The position is also advertised in ACM: http://bit.ly/1JSDz7Y

Source: Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Computer Science, California State University Channel Islands

Square-free strings over alphabet lists

In a new paper, Square-free strings over alphabet lists, my PhD student Neerja Mhaskar and I, solve an open problem that was posed in A new approach to non repetitive sequences, by Jaroslaw Grytczuk, Jakub Kozik, and Pitor Micek, in arXiv:1103.3809, December 2010.

The problem can be stated as follows: Given an alphabet list $L=L_1,\ldots,L_n$, where $|L_i|=3$ and $0 \leq i \leq n$, can we always find a square-free string, $W=W_1W_2 \ldots W_n$, where $W_i\in L_i$? We show that this is indeed the case. We do so using an “offending suffix” characterization of forced repetitions, and a counting, non-constructive, technique. We discuss future directions related to finding a constructive solution, namely a polytime algorithm for generating square-free words over such lists.

Our paper will be presented and published in the 26th International Workshop on Combinatorial Algorithms (IWOCA), Verona, Italy, October 2015.

Doctoral position in String Algorithms through Helsinki Network at Aalto Univ

String Algorithms at Aalto University Dept of Computer Science

The group develops and analyzes efficient algorithms for information retrieval. Our perspective is algorithm engineering. We consider both exact and approximate string searching as well as indexing methods. Also algorithms for data compression and computational biology are studied.

We are currently seeking to hire a new doctoral student. In case you are interested, please apply via the general HICT call, which is open until Thu August 6. When applying after Aug. 6, contact directly Prof. Tarhio.

My work on finite games cited by researchers at Vienna school of Economics

I wrote a paper about finite games which I presented at Computability in Europe in Athens, 2009. Now it turns out, that the Vienna school of Economics, Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, has been citing it repeatedly in the last few months, in particular Aurélien Fichet de Clairfontaine. It is very satisfying to see research being picked up by other areas!

Google’s Deep Learning Machine Learns to Synthesize Real World Images

Google Street View offers panoramic views of more or less any city street in much of the developed world, as well as views along countless footpaths, inside shopping malls, and around museums and art galleries. It is an extraordinary feat of modern engineering that is changing the way we think about the world around us.

But while Street View can show us what distant places look like, it does not show what the process of traveling or exploring would be like. It’s easy to come up with a fix: simply play a sequence of Street View Images one after the other to create a movie.

But that doesn’t work as well as you might imagine. Running these images at 25 frames per second or thereabouts makes the scenery run ridiculously quickly. That may be acceptable when the scenery does not change, perhaps along freeways and motorways or through unchanging landscapes. But it is entirely unacceptable for busy street views or inside an art gallery.

So Google has come up with a solution: add additional frames between the ones recorded by the Street View cameras. But what should these frames look like?

Today, John Flynn and buddies at Google reveal how they have used the company’s vast machine learning know-how to work out what these missing frames should look like, just be studying the frames on either side. The result is a computational movie machine that can turn more or less any sequence of images into smooth running film by interpolating the missing the frames.

Source: Google’s Deep Learning Machine Learns to Synthesize Real World Images | MIT Technology Review