In Memoriam: Richard E. Stearns (1936-2026) Stearns was one of the fathers of computational complexity theory. cacm.acm.org/news/in-memo...
In Memoriam: Richard E. Stearns (1936-2026) – Communications of the ACM
cacm.acm.org
Simson Garfinkel
@simson.net
Dr. Simson Garfinkel researches and writes at the intersection of AI, privacy, and digital forensics. He is a fellow of the AAAS, the ACM and the IEEE. He earned his PhD in Computer Science at MIT and a Master of Science in Journalism at Columbia.
The U.S. Census Bureau plans to eliminate questions about race and ethnicity on the 2030 Census, according to a leaked draft rule that has received little attention. www.citylandnyc.org/ny-elections...
NY Elections, Census and Redistricting Update 08/17/26 - CityLand
This week: Trump Administration Considers Sweeping Census & Redistricting Data Changes; NYC Speaker Menin Appoints 2030 Census Task Force; Will Onondaga County Considers Compromise on Term Limits?; ME...
citylandnyc.org
AI can write a patch in seconds. A human maintainer still has to decide whether to accept it. That gap is the open source story of the next five years. New ACM TechBrief 🧵 dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10....
@acmpolicy.bsky.social has published a new TechBrief on Open Source Software and the impact of AI. AI makes submitting code cheap, while reviewing it remains human and slow, and the same models that patch vulnerabilities can also find them for attackers. dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10....
ACM TechBrief: Artificial Intelligence’s Effects on Open Source TechBrief
dl.acm.org
Samuel Tunick faces a felony charge for deleting his phone’s data during an airport customs search last year. He called the government’s peering into people’s private lives “creepy,” in an interview with The New York Times about the incident.
U.S. Citizen Who Deleted Phone’s Data Says His Prosecution Puts Privacy at Risk
Samuel Tunick, who faces a felony charge for deleting his phone’s data during an airport customs search, called the government’s peering into people’s private lives “creepy.”
nyti.ms
bulk_extractor 2.2.0 is out! This release fixes CVE-2026-24857 and adds a standalone 64-bit Windows executable, Windows raw-device input, runtime scanner plug-ins, improved Wi-Fi PCAP preservation, and extensive reliability improvements. github.com/simsong/bulk... #DFIR #DigitalForensics #OpenSource
Release BE v2.2.0 · simsong/bulk_extractor
What's Changed Update continuous-integration-pip.yml by @simsong in #479 Update identify_filenames.py by @h-ssh in #482 Update LICENSE.md by @simsong in #478 add missing include by @rick-gnous in ...
github.com
Developed with Codex. I saw exceptions from bulk_extractor’s winpe scanner and asked Codex to reproduce them, trace execution, find the cause, and prepare a tested fix. It did: github.com/simsong/bulk... A thread 🧵
#bulk_extractor beta 2.2.0 has been published on github. This version closes more than 100 open issues and improves reliability and performance. Thanks to Codex and Copilot for all of their help. Please give this release a try! #DFIR github.com/simsong/bulk...
Release BE v2.2.0beta1 · simsong/bulk_extractor
What's Changed Update continuous-integration-pip.yml by @simsong in #479 Update identify_filenames.py by @h-ssh in #482 Update LICENSE.md by @simsong in #478 add missing include by @rick-gnous in ...
github.com
Great article in @technologyreview.com about what is happening to the @schmidtsciences.bsky.social #AI2050 program and the impact of big tech and government cuts on academic AI researchers. www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/10/1...
AI professors are negotiating the new realities of academic research
At a convening for the Schmidt Sciences AI2050 program, I saw how academic researchers are facing up to the challenges of the AI era.
technologyreview.com
All the scammers want to migrate to Signal to send me a private message. So annoying.
I am looking for help to test bulk_extractor release 2.2.0. The new release closes over 83 open issues and resolves CVE-2026-24857. Most of the work was done by AI with my guidance. The progress has been phenomenal. #DFIR Here's what's been fixed: github.com/simsong/bulk...
simsong/bulk_extractor
This is the development tree. Production downloads are at: - simsong/bulk_extractor
github.com
Is anyone in my network an expert on exhibit design for science museums?
In other news news.cornell.edu/stories/2026... with @johnabowd.bsky.social and a bunch of other folks incl. @simson.net #privacy
Abowd, Vilhuber win 2026 PET award | Cornell Chronicle
John Abowd, professor emeritus of economics, statistics, and data science at Cornell and Lars Vilhuber, research professor and executive director of ILR’s Labor Dynamics Institute, have received the 2...
news.cornell.edu
I reviewed The Shockwave Rider, a classic sci-fi novel from the early 1970s that could have been written yesterday open.substack.com/pub/database...
The Shockwave Rider (Review)
The classic sci-fi novel from the early 1970s that could have been written yesterday...
open.substack.com
Poor Xanna. Or is this actually biographical Sara? saraabramsstrathmore.substack.com/p/life-as-a-...
Life as a leftover horny losergirl.
One of my few pleasures is KNHC 89.5, the all-dance, trance, electro, and house-music-all-the-time radio station... but I only dance in private now.
saraabramsstrathmore.substack.com
Dictionaries in #Python remember their insertion order, but equality ignores the ordering: d1 = {'a':10, 'b':20, 'c':30} d2 = {'b':20, 'c':30, 'a':10} d1 == d2 # True!
There's a fun article in today's Data Colada blog that discusses the many places metadata is stored on MacOS and Microsoft Excel, and why this is all relevant in the Francesca v. Harvard lawsuit on data falsification. datacolada.org/136 Also some side comments on @benedelman.org
What a great way to start the morning with an email from Sara. Or Xanna. Or whomever… Summer in #Seattle open.substack.com/pub/saraabra...
I can't believe that "Xanna" is posting this stuff in her "novel." These people are actually identifiable. But it's kind of fun. saraabramsstrathmore.substack.com/p/youre-real...
“You’re really lucky: Our largest bedroom is open right now, and we’re only charging $200/month for it, plus work shift. Let me show you upstairs.”
Candace wears black leather mini-shorts and above-the-knee black leather boots in this weather.
saraabramsstrathmore.substack.com
I can't believe that "Xanna" is posting this stuff in her "novel." These people are actually identifiable. But it's kind of fun. saraabramsstrathmore.substack.com/p/youre-real...
“You’re really lucky: Our largest bedroom is open right now, and we’re only charging $200/month for it, plus work shift. Let me show you upstairs.”
Candace wears black leather mini-shorts and above-the-knee black leather boots in this weather.
saraabramsstrathmore.substack.com
Our intern Sunny Bell just put out her first article on the Sabinok Substack! It's about AI in PropTech - Property Technology. Check it out! sabinok.substack.com/p/five-start...
Five Startups Pushing AI into Proptech
Proptech has been slow to adopt AI, but that’s changing: A growing number of startups are developing AI-based systems targeted for the proptech industry.
sabinok.substack.com
New book about an old program — ELIZA! (Which you can run on your macbook today!) www.science.org/eprint/VIKBJ...
Reanimating ELIZA, the world’s first chatbot
A simple program created in the 1960s laid the groundwork for future conversational computers
science.org
Great article in Foreign Policy Journal about the potential impact of the U.S. Department of Commerce's decision to prohibit noise infusion as a privacy protection method. www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2026/06/14/t...
Trump Administration Ban On Statistical Noise Threatens To Gut Census Bureau Data Output
The Trump administration has issued a Commerce Department order banning "noise infusion," a key privacy protection technique the Census Bureau has relied on
foreignpolicyjournal.com
My press release came out! www.eurekalert.org/news-release...
ACM Technology Policy Council: Agentic AI is outpacing the laws & safeguards designed to govern it
AI systems are increasingly browsing the web, executing code, managing files, and sending messages without step-by-step human approval, raising new risks in the process, according to a new TechBrief f...
eurekalert.org
The Park Service has created a public comment form regarding President Trump's proposed arch. For those interested, submit your feedback! parkplanning.nps.gov/commentForm....
National Park Service - PEPC - Triumphal Arch - Section 106 Assessment of Effect and Draft Programmatic Agreement -Submit Comments
parkplanning.nps.gov
ACM has published a Tech Brief on Agentic AI dl.acm.org/doi/full/10....
ACM TechBrief: Agentic AI | ACM Other Books
dl.acm.org