Computer Security Is A Ux Problem
Cooper Quintin, Electronic Frontier Foundation
09/04/2014
It is apparent now that cryptography and security software are essential to maintain privacy. However, as developers we often ignore the user interface of our creations. What good is a privacy or security tool if no one can use it? This talk will discuss the good, the bad, and the ugly of UI design--and why good security and good UI go hand in hand.
Empowering The Underserved, One App At A Time
Silvia Figueira, Santa Clara University
09/11/2014
Cellular phones are bringing computing to underserved communities. As people in these communities across the globe lack access to information, but do own cellular phones, apps are filling the gap by delivering meaningful information to improve lives. The Mobile Lab at Santa Clara University has been collaborating with local and international partners to enable cellular phones to help different communities. In this talk, we will present several mobile projects through which engineering students have been solving specific problems and helping underserved communities in the United States and abroad. We will also describe our first hackathon, Hack for the Homeless, which was organized by our ACM and ACM-W chapters and provided a venue for students to create important solutions for homeless individuals.
Continuous Integration Of Code: Develop, Test, Debug, Release, Repeat
Jose Pagan, Enphase Energy
09/18/2014
A day in the life of an Embedded Software Build Engineer at Enphase within an Agile Team. This talk is about my year at Enphase. I work in their Embedded Software Team and was previously on the QA Team as a Build Engineer. My first goal was to package the developed and regression-tested code into a tar ball, and share it with the System Verification Testing departments in the company. Now, my goal is to find bugs and fix them, so the changes made can be tested and verified. I work with a small group of dedicated Embedded Engineers who meet huge demands from the solar energy industry, daily. I will talk about the process I follow to build a software release, the tools I use to do it and my role within an Agile Team. (PIZZA AFTER TALK IN DARWIN 28)
Design For Nerds: A Crash Course
Cheryl MacDonald, Vertigo
09/25/2014
Designers and developers work together every day to create beautiful software, but how do those two integral parts of a team work together In the real world? And how do developers learn just enough about interaction patterns, typography, and color to talk to designers? This talk is a crash course in design you can use on your own software, an introduction to the workflow you can expect between designers and developers on an engineering team, and how both halves of the equation can work together in harmony.
Chinese Threat To U.S. Economic Security
William A. Blunden, San Francisco State University
10/02/2014
In an annual report on China published in 2013, the Pentagon stated that the Chinese government 'appeared' to be siphoning off Intellectual property from the United States and that the acquired intelligence could potentially benefit China's hi-tech industry and threaten the U.S. economy. Former White House Advisor Richard Clarke took this narrative a step further by explicitly claiming that Chinese spying is costing American jobs. Mike Rogers, the Republican congressman from Michigan who currently chairs the House Intelligence Committee, pulled out all the stops and went flat-out full bore. During a video segment released on CNBC he brazenly stated that cyber-attacks from China are the number one threat to U.S. economic security. Could Congressman Rogers be correct? Let's pause for a moment and reflect on this notion. Does Chinese cyber espionage actually represent this sort of existential threat?