All Your Informations Are Belong To Unauthorized Personnels

via the inimitable Cory Doctorow; read the backstory; and during which, prepare to be astonished.

ↀ

Gaussian Processes, Implicit Likelihoods

Ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, submitted for your approval: The singular Murali Haran. Ph.D., of Pennsylvania State University’s Department of Statistics presentation. Whence, the good Doctor discusses his take on the utilization of Gaussian processes in a research modeling duel of sorts, between and betwixt Stochastic and Deterministic models, if you will. Pray, pay particular attention to the potential applicability of the indicated models within information security research, and other computational applied sciences. Thanks, and a Tip of the Noggin to Microsoft Research.

“This talk is based on joint work with K. Sham Bhat (Los Alamos National Labs), Roman Jandarov (Dept. of Statistics, Penn State University [PSU]), Roman Tonkonojenkov (Dept. of Geosciences, PSU), Klaus Keller (Dept. of Geosciences, PSU), Ottar Bjornstad (Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, PSU), and Bryan Grenfell (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University)..” - Murali Haran, PSU

♫ , ♒

World of Tomorrow...

Cunningly envisioned by Corning

Naval Shipboard Information Assurance

Excellent write-up by NextGov’s Bob Brewin, discussing the highly focused efforts committed by United States Department of the Navy’s Space and Naval Warface Systems Command [SPAWAR] personnel targeting  ship-board information assurance systems.

“…Last year, the Navy installed host-based security systems on 348 ships to monitor, detect and deter network cyberattacks. Rear Adm. Jerry Burroughs, program executive officer for command, control, computers, communications and intelligence at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command headquartered here, said SPAWAR remains “crushed” by demands from the fleet to maintain a secure environment for Navy computers, which he considers his top priority…” - via NextGov’s Bob Brewin

Ω

Recordist: Negovan Edison Wax Cylinder

The first recording to an Edison Wax Cylinder since 1924, by Thomas Negovan.

Superb.

♔

Rings of Sound

Absolutely phenomenal - a turntable that plays tree rings… Primeval derivative sounds? Must be heard to be believed.

“…A tree’s year rings are analysed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music. It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently…” via Traubeck

☂

And Your Percentage Is...

via the always erudite FlowingData, comes this interesting bit of economic fluff, originally from the New York Times’ Jeremy White, Ford Fessenden and Rober Gebeloff and their concerted data analysis of University of Minnesota Population Center supplied datum.

$

Nebulosity of North America

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

via the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Spitzer Space Telescope, comes this superb image of the North American Nebula, also known as NGC 7000. Better explained by the erudite boffins of astronomy, at CalTech, below:

“Clusters of young stars (about one million years old) can be found throughout the image. Some areas of this nebula are still very thick with dust and appear dark even in Spitzer’s view.  The Spitzer image contains data from both its infrared array camera and multi-band imaging photometer. Light with a wavelength of 3.6 microns has been color-coded blue; 4.5-micron light is blue-green; 5.8-micron and 8.0-micron light are green; and 24-micron light is red. This image is from February 2011…”

📡

Informations' Past: ClemensTube

Superb.

Advancing the New Machine: Security and Protection

Panelists comprised of Doug Tygar from UC Berkeley, Nathan Freitas of the Guardian Project, Chris Palmer from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Jeff Klingner of Benetech focus on the security threats raised by new technological implementations. Fascinating take on the subject, derivative in some ways, it may be.

All Is Information, and Cake

via FlowingData.com - Mark Johnstone

Ah, yes, let them read cake..

∑

Svalbard Seed Vault

Incidental Soundtracks High & Low: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault from Steve Rowell, via The LongNow Foundation’s Alexander Rose.

Svalbard Global Seed Vault, at Longyearbyen on Vestspitzbergen. Millennial site design, at it’s finest. Your descendants will thank you.

“Ensuring that the genetic diversity of the world’s food crops is preserved for future generations is an important contribution toward the reduction of hunger and poverty in developing countries. This is where the greatest plant diversity originates and where the need for food security and the further development of agriculture is most urgent…”