Articles

Articles from sources such as magazines, newspapers & blogs.

A List Apart – Illustration by Dougal MacPherson
Articles / Web Resources

From URL to Interactive

When we think about it, our whole industry depends on our faith in a handful of “black boxes” few of us fully understand: browsers. We hand over our HTML, CSS, JavaScript, cross our fingers, and hope they render the experience we have in our heads. But knowing how they work can really get you out of a jam when things go wrong. That’s why we’ve assembled a handful of incredibly knowledgeable authors to take us under the hood in this four-part series. Join us on this trip across the web, into the often foggy valley between code and experience.

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Computing & Technology / Articles

What Went Wrong? Facebook and ‘Sharing’ Data with Cambridge Analytica

Communications of the ACM, June 2018
By Susan Landau

“The road to the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal is strewn with failures. There’s the failure to protect users’ privacy, the failure to protect voters, and the failure to uncover the actions and violations of laws that may well have affected the Brexit referendum and the U.S. presidential election.”

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Adding Custom Code
Articles / Web Resources

Adding Custom Code

One of the things that you can do to customize your website is to add custom code. This resource will provide you with information you need to get started. If you are not comfortable with HTML, CSS and/or JavaScript coding then take a look at a couple of the other resources I’ve listed: Learning Web Design (book) and W3Schools.com which provides a wealth of info on those forms of coding.

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Articles / CyberSecurity

Imperfect Forward Secrecy: How Diffie-Hellman Fails in Practice

Communications of the ACM, January 2019, Vol. 62 No. 1, Pages 106-114
Research Highlights: “Imperfect Forward Secrecy: How Diffie-Hellman Fails in Practice”
By David Adrian, Karthikeyan Bhargavan, et al.

“We investigate the security of Diffie-Hellman key exchange as used in popular Internet protocols and find it to be less secure than widely believed.”

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Computing & Technology / Articles

Hey Google, What’s a Moonshot?: How Silicon Valley Mocks Apollo

Communications of the ACM, January 2019
By Thomas Haigh

“Letting Silicon Valley steal the term “moonshot” for projects with quite different management styles, success criteria, scales, and styles of innovation hurts our collective ability to understand just what NASA achieved 50 years ago and why nothing remotely comparable is actually under way today at Google, or anywhere else.”

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Computing & Technology / Articles

Tony’s Law

Communications of the ACM, February 2019
By Dror G. Feitelson

“Someone did not tighten the lid, and the ants got into the honey again. This can be prevented by placing the honey jar in a saucer of water, but it is a nuisance, occupies more counter space, and one must remember to replenish the water. So we try at least to remember to tighten the lid.

In the context of security, the software industry does not always tighten the lid. In some cases it fails to put the lid on at all, leaving the honey exposed and inviting.”

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The Real Super Tour, Photo: Kennan Harvey
Articles / Weather | Snow | Utah

The Real Super Tour

“A hard climbing philosopher, Josh is also a believer. “There’s nothing more pure and simple,” he states, “than launching into a big climb in the middle of winter. No other people, no mechanical sounds, no artificial colors; just rock and snow and breathing and the immensity of the mountains. A horizontal length of testy and mercurial ridgeline to be navigated before we can have some hot food and some rest. Doesn’t get much better than that.” It occurred to us that when you don’t have any protection, both ends of the rope are sharp, both partners are equal.”

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I AM Dangerous (Danger, dangerous, stupid: Not all the same)
Articles / Weather | Snow | Utah

I AM Dangerous (Danger, dangerous, stupid: Not all the same)

Molly Absolon, writing for the Mountainside column of the Jackson Hole News & Guide, writes about being dangerous. She writes of her reaction to an essay that Drew Hardesty wrote titled “I AM Dangerous.” Drew Hardesty is a forecaster for the Utah Avalanche Center in the winter and a Grand Teton National Park climbing ranger in the summer. Drew had recently sent her an essay he’d written about danger. “The essay went on to explore the notion of danger, and, in the end, Drew embraced the idea that we are dangerous if we spend our lives in the mountains engaging in potentially risky behavior.”

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13 Feet Deep: Lessons Learned from A Remarkable Companion Avalanche Rescue. Photo: Tim Banfield
Articles / Weather | Snow | Utah

13 Feet Deep: Lessons Learned from A Remarkable Companion Avalanche Rescue

“‘Little did I know what was coming,’ writes Tim Banfield in this eye-opening and brutally honest account of he and a partner’s successful rescue of a friend that was buried 13 feet deep in an avalanche. Banfield recounts this tale for one reason: to share what he learned from a truly remarkable avalanche rescue in the hope that this information can help save lives.”

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Magazine Cover: What Is Code?
Articles / Computing & Technology

What Is Code?

“Software has been around since the 1940s. Which means that people have been faking their way through meetings about software, and the code that builds it, for generations. Now that software lives in our pockets, runs our cars and homes, and dominates our waking lives, ignorance is no longer acceptable. The world belongs to people who code. Those who don’t understand will be left behind.”

“This issue comprises a single story devoted to ­demystifying code and the culture of the people who make it. There’s some technical language along with a few pretty basic mathematical concepts. There are also lots of solid jokes and lasting insights. It may take a few hours to read, but that’s a small price to pay for adding decades to your career.”

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Computing & Technology / Articles

What Children Want to Know About Computers

Communications of the ACM, October 19, 2018
By Judy Robertson

“There’s a mismatch between what we teach children about computing at school and what they want to know. More than a decade ago computer science educators coined the phrase computational thinking to refer to the unique cleverness of the way computer scientists approach problem solving. “Our thinking is based on abstraction, decomposition, generalization, and pattern matching”, we said, “and everyone will find it useful to think like this in their everyday lives. So please stop asking us to fix your printer.”

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