Guest speaker: Francesco Buscemi
by William Schober
Cari amici,
This is a re-broadcast for our next visiting speaker, next Thursday. Francesco Buscemi from Nagoya University will tell us about the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Francesco Buscemi, Thursday 21.12.2023, D0.02, 11:00 - 12:00
Title and abstract below. Join us in person or online at https://meet.jit.si/CQISeminarTalks
(this time I will not forget it!)
Stay warm,
Will Schober
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SPEAKER: Francesco Buscemi
TITLE: Notes on the margin to the second law of thermodynamics
ABSTRACT: In the past few years I have had the opportunity to look at the second law of thermodynamics from various angles (feedback control protocols, fluctuation relations, mathematical statistics, information theory, expected utility theory -- all with a variable amount of quantum theory), but the main puzzle I am most interested in is: why is the second law "special" among the laws of physics? In this talk I will recall some ideas about this problem and offer a possible answer.
4 months, 2 weeks
Guest speaker: Yvo Desmedt
by William Schober
Cari amici,
This is a quick re-announcement for a guest speaker we're hosting tomorrow (it was announced officially by the INF decanato, but some people -- me included! -- don't always read those):
Yvo Desmedt, Thursday 14.12.2023 (tomorrow!), D1.14, 15:30 - 16:30
Title and abstract below. Join us in person or online at https://meet.jit.si/CQISeminarTalks
Stay warm,
Will Schober
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SPEAKER: Yvo Desmedt
TITLE: Are Clouds making our Research Irrelevant and Who is at Fault?
ABSTRACT: Until recently, the user of a computer system was able to (at least to some
degree) help decide security policies, such as which access and information
flow control to use, which cryptographic algorithms to choose, how to secure
databases in use, etc. Due to these choices, researchers were able to have an
impact on what was deployed.
In today's world, the Chief Information Officer (CIO) outsources online
communication (replacing landlines), databases, e-mail, storage, voting, WWW,
etc., to clouds. These do not use open source and do not disclose their
design. So, the security is left to the designer and the user is completely left
in the dark. Since most programmers never took a course in information
security, we should assume the worst.
In this presentation we justify several positions: (i) we make the claim that
clouds have lowered our information security; (ii) we wonder whether CIOs
compare competing clouds on their security properties and ask independent
experts for their advice; (iii) one finds that self-acclaimed experts often
lack basic knowledge; (iv) that research is becoming irrelevant. We also
wonder who is at fault for these problems and how we can address them.
4 months, 2 weeks