Account compromise: notes from the trenches
Juan Lang
Tech Lead / Manager
Google
10/20/2021
Find out what tricks attackers use to compromise Google accounts, and what you can do to keep yourself safe online. That, and some stories from the field.
Tales from the Trenches: Deriving Production Requirements for Secure Computing Machines
Alric Althoff
Senior Hardware Security Engineer
Tortuga Logic
10/27/2021
Today we find ourselves on the cusp of a revolution in computer hardware security. Semiconductor companies are creating chips as fast as possible to meet increasing global demand using development approaches that effectively address functionality but leave security out in the cold.
We will present this problem, and solutions, through stories and history. These stories incorporate humor, adventure, and survival in the midst of the war-torn wilderness known as: The Semiconductor Production Pipeline. Few have returned to tell the tale.
This talk, rescued, smuggled out from behind enemy lines, and authenticated by titans of industry, presents hardware security from a perspective rarely discussed in academic circles: deriving engineering requirements from customer security needs.
Bias in Algorithms and the Misuse of Big Data Sets
Henry M. Walker
Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Mathematics
Grinnell College
11/03/2021
The news abounds with stories about the uses of algorithms and Big Data. In this reporting, successes are widely publicized. However, discussion of bias and challenges is spotty at best. In many settings, it seems that policies and practices may assume that computing algorithms will be unbiased and objective, and results are not challenged.
And yet, on March 23, the subtitle of a 2019 story in the Wall Street Journal proclaimed, "Data scientists and civil rights groups are raising the alarm about bias in algorithms that determine everything from who goes to jail to how much your insurance will cost". Also, the subtitle of Cathy O'Neil's book, "Weapons of Math Destruction", highlights, "How Big Data increases inequality and threatens democracy."
This talk will review a range of issues and challenges in deployed computing systems and encourage all to consider the appropriate role of technology in the setting of both policies and practices.
Careful what you wish for - an irreverent look at the evolution of graphics APIs
Dave Shreiner
Low-level graphics team lead
Unity Technologies
11/10/2021
Technologists always search for better solutions to problems, and interfacing with GPUs is no exception. In the almost four decades of commercially-available, hardware-accelerated computer graphics, there have been numerous APIs designed for the task. This talk takes a look a how some of those interfaces have changed over time, and the impacts that their design has had in application performance, educational aspects, and engineer productivity.
Fall 2021 Short Presentations Of Student Research
11/17/2021
Short presentations of research carried out by Sonoma State Computer Science Students.
- Yasmine Sanchez, "Sliders"
- Ali McCormick, "Machine Learning-Driven Emotion Tracking App"
- Alex Dewey, "Machine Learning for Generalized and Anomaly Forecasting of Network Traffic Demand"
- Jacques Sarraffe, "User Behaviour Prediction using Smartphone Sensor Data and Machine Learning"