Carnegie Mellon Voice Verification Technology Prevents Impersonators From Obtaining Voiceprints →
The system would enable people to register or check in on a voice authentication system, without their actual voice ever leaving their smartphone. This reduces the risk that a fraudster will obtain the person's voice biometric data, which could subsequently be used to access bank, health care or other personal accounts.
Preventing the transmission of voice data from client to server doesn't seem to be the major problem with voiceprint authentication to me, since in every spy movie they just record the person while they're talking...
BYU Algorithm Detects Fraud with High Accuracy →
Researchers from Brigham Young University have helped create the most robust and accurate fraud detection system to date using information from publicly available financial statements.
Very little detail on the method itself, but there's no reason to assume that with the amount of financial data that's now publicly available, they couldn't do what they're purporting to do. Unless the MetaFraud team is defrauding people, which would be meta-MetaFraud?
How Companies Learn Your Secrets →
Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: "If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn't want us to know, can you do that? "
A look at how Target and other retailers tap psychology, statistics, and big data to determine when to offer rewards or coupons and how to make shopping habitual, including knowing when you're pregnant.
"Unavoidable" "Bacon" "Shortage" →
The thing British people call "bacon" isn't the same as what Americans call "bacon." Their bacon is from the back cut of the pig and corresponds to what we call "Canadian bacon." Our beloved bacon, made from pork belly, is known in the United Kingdom as "streaky bacon." In Canada, interestingly, "bacon" means the exact same thing as in the United States, and they use the term "back bacon" to refer to what we call "Canadian bacon" and English people just call "bacon."
While no one can seem to agree what to call it, high corn prices this year due to drought in the Midwest will result in more expensive bacon, which we should all know is not called a shortage unless you're a pork trade group in Britain issuing a press release to scare the Internet.
Where is the Science in Computer Science? →
In the physical world, science is largely about models, measurement, predictions, and validation. Our ability to predict likely outcomes based on models is fundamental to the most central notions of the scientific method. The term "computer science" raises expectations, at least to my mind, of an ability to define models and to make predictions about the behavior of computers and computing systems. I think we have a fairly good capability to measure and predict the physical performance of our computing devices. ... We are much less able to make models and predictions about the behavior and performance of the artifact we label "software."
Vint Cerf on the lack of science in computer science.
How Better Typography Could Reduce Car Crashes →
In simulated driving studies, 82 participants aged 35 to 75 were asked to interact with menus [using two different typefaces] on a 7-inch LCD touchscreen, while an eye-tracking camera monitored them.
Saving lives with typography. Awesome.
Mapping America's Fast Food Regions →
What does this tapestry show us? Burger King has a decently uniform presence across the country, as does Micky D's, still the dark overlord of fast food across the country. Sonic shines bright in Texas and some of the adjacent states--it's the only large swath of land where one of the insurgent chains has an overwhelming influence. And Dairy Queen makes a surprisingly strong showing in Minnesota and the Dakotas.
No In-N-Out on the list, but it seems unlikely the chain would much of a blip.
Correctness vs Quality →
When software testing began, it was essentially for scientific endeavors. It should be of no surprise to find that [the discipline] grew from debugging as a mechanism to "prove" correctness of a program (i.e., prove it works). This then grew to finding bugs. However, I believe as commercialized software began to dominate, making it "user friendly" became a differentiator for most businesses. Suddenly "correctness" meant quality and we hired hoards of testers to pound and find bugs.
Correctness can be ascertained via unit tests, data analysis, proofs, and white box testing, and probably a few other techniques thrown in there. What we focus on in automation is continued determination of a program's correctness. But this is indeed separate from quality, which can only be proven negatively, not positively. The number of bugs found in an area is a useless metric; the number of bugs users experience is the most important.
Solar flare (via NASA)
You're Less Likely to Lie If You Sign Your Name Before Filling Out Forms →
On the simplest level, a signature is simply a way to make someone legally responsible for the content of the form. But in addition to the legal aspect, the signature is an appeal to personal integrity, forcing people to consider whether they're comfortable attaching their identity to something that may not be completely true.
Turns out that we're more likely to report the complete truth if we contemplate our integrity before filling out the document instead of after. It's a wonder no one has thought of this before now.