People can't get their heads round very large (or small) numbers. This results in us being unable to reason about rare events or things that happen over long periods of time. When I was a child, my parents wanted me to walk to school through woodland rather than along the busy road. Makes sense---roads are statistically quite dangerous. However, in today's society, the advice to children is to … [Read more...]
Problems with biometric security
Security flaws in Apple's Face ID are already being reported---masks being used to unlock phones and the inability to distinguish between close blood relatives. I don't think this has surprised anyone involved in IT security. Last week a wife discovered her husband had been cheating on her after she unlocked his phone using his fingerprint as he slept. Biometric authentication is … [Read more...]
The realities of project planning
Scott Adams being depressingly insightful on project planning. … [Read more...]
Data organization in spreadsheets
Karl Broman and Kara Woo offer some good advice on organizing data in spreadsheets. They advocate confining the use of spreadsheets to data entry and storage---moving calculations and visualizations to other tools. This certainly avoids some of the biggest problems with using spreadsheets. However, spreadsheets don't enforce any discipline. It's up to the user to be vigilant and do the right … [Read more...]
National Cyber Security Awareness Month
As part of National Cyber Security Awareness Month Learning Tree have re-purposed two of my security-related articles---one as an info-article and the other as an infographic. The info-article is on the problems with biometric security and the infographic is a summary of ten Internet of Things (IoT) vulnerabilities. The original biometric security and IoT vulnerabilities articles are available … [Read more...]