A nice perk of starting my full-time position in January is that I have 3 uniterrupted months “off.” I say “off” instead of off because I am not truly without academic responsibility. For example, I participated in a CCC workshop on finding “grand challenges” in Sociotechnical Cybersecurity and am shepherding the writing of one of the four […]
You Are Not Prepared: Some Advice I’ve Received on How to Be a Professor
Hey, were you just hired as a tenure-track Assistant Professor? In the words of Illidan Stormrage, “You are not prepared”. I’m not a professor. But, I will be in about four months. A thing that happens when you are an almost-professor is that many already-professors will give you advice on how to to do well at […]
A Non-Technical Introduction to Cybersecurity
You probably know a thing or two about how computers work: for example, that they are cheap, powerful and fast. And through this combination of cost, power, and speed, they can be used to do things that would otherwise be impossible: for example, communicating in real-time with people on the other side of the world. […]
Beginnings: Old and New
“I want to be a C. scientist” That’s what I told my brother, with an impish grin. He was visiting Bombay from New York, circa 1997, during a break from his studies at the Stevens Institute of Technology. He was pursuing a degree in Computer Science. He asked me what I wanted to be when […]
Grand Challenges in Sociotechnical Cybersecurity: A Recap
Take a step back, and ask yourself: What are the largest societal problems that relate to cybersecurity, today? Depending on your background, you may come with very different answers. Computer security researchers may come up with technical answers relating to formally verifiable code or homomorphic encryption or the structure of the internet. Tech-savvy policy makers […]
The Art of Rebutting
This is a post on how to rebut reviews. Specifically, CHI reviews. The ideas presented here probably apply to rebuttals more broadly, but much of what I’m going to speak about in this post is specific to CHI. Okay, so the long, long — so long — wait is over and you have your CHI […]
How to Use Habit Helixes: A Tutorial
I’m going to teach you how to use habit helixes. If you don’t know what those are, read my previous post. In short, habit helixes intertwine multiple success spirals into a domino chain and embed them into a tigger-routine-reward habit loop. They should be useful for people who already know how to use success spirals […]
Habit Helixes: The case against small change
I’ve had some conversations with people about success spirals. Expectedly, some are skeptics. A common counter-argument is that success spirals are unexciting and slow [1]. Start with writing 1 minute a day? After a month, maybe do 10 minutes a day? How long will it take to write a novel with that level of commitment? […]
Success Spirals: Getting Out of A Rut
Success spirals are powerful, but have downsides. As outlined in the book, The Motivation Hacker, you can only fail at success spirals so many times before your expectancy is permanently damaged [1]. While I have not personally experienced this, it is a possibility that can inhibit my using success spirals when I am only half-committed […]
Lesson Learned From Proposing My Thesis: Presenting
You’ve got your committee and you’ve scheduled a date. You’ve got your document written. Now, you need to present and defend your thesis proposal. In many ways, the presentation is the most frightening part of the process. Your committee will ask tough questions now so that they don’t have to at your defense. Those tough […]