Algorithmic glass ceiling in social networks: the effects of social recommendations on network diversity

Algorithmic glass ceiling in social networks: the effects of social recommendations on network diversity Stoica et al., WWW’18

(If you don’t have ACM Digital Library access, the paper can be accessed either by following the link above directly from The Morning Paper blog site, or from the WWW 2018 proceedings page).

Social networks were meant to connect us and bring us together. This paper shows that while they might be quite successful at doing this in the small, on a macro scale they’re actually doing the opposite. Not only do they reinforce and sustain disparities among groups, but they actually reinforce the rate at which disparity grows. I.e., they’re driving us apart. This happens due to the rich-get-richer phenomenon resulting from friend/follow recommendation algorithms.

… we find that prominent social recommendation algorithms can exacerbate the under-representation of certain demographic groups at the top of the social hierarchy… Our mathematical analysis demonstrates the existence of an algorithmic glass ceiling that exhibits all the properties of the metaphorical social barrier that hinders groups like women or people of colour from attaining equal representation.

Organic growth vs algorithmic growth

“In the social networks now governing the knowledge, Continue reading

Quick Post: Parsing AWS Instance Data with JQ

I recently had a need to get a specific subset of information about some AWS instances. Naturally, I turned to the CLI and some CLI tools to help. In this post, I’ll share the command I used to parse the AWS instance data down using the ever-so-handy jq tool.

What I needed, specifically, was the public IP address and the private IP address for each instance. That information is readily accessible using the aws ec2 describe-instances command, but that command provides a ton more information than I needed. So, I decided to try to use jq to parse the JSON output from the AWS CLI. If you’re not familiar with jq, I recommend you take a look at this brief introductory post I wrote back in 2015.

After some trial and error, here’s the final command I used:

aws ec2 describe-instances | jq '.Reservations[] | .Instances[] | \
{Id: .InstanceId, PublicAddress: .PublicIpAddress, \
PrivateAddress: .PrivateIpAddress}'

I’ll refer you to the jq manual for details on breaking down how this filter works. I’ll also point out that there’s nothing terribly groundbreaking or revolutionary about this command; I wanted to share it here just in case it may save someone Continue reading

The devil wears Pravda

Classic Bond villain, Elon Musk, has a new plan to create a website dedicated to measuring the credibility and adherence to "core truth" of journalists. He is, without any sense of irony, going to call this "Pravda". This is not simply wrong but evil.


Musk has a point. Journalists do suck, and many suck consistently. I see this in my own industry, cybersecurity, and I frequently criticize them for their suckage.

But what he's doing here is not correcting them when they make mistakes (or what Musk sees as mistakes), but questioning their legitimacy. This legitimacy isn't measured by whether they follow established journalism ethics, but whether their "core truths" agree with Musk's "core truths".

An example of the problem is how the press fixates on Tesla car crashes due to its "autopilot" feature. Pretty much every autopilot crash makes national headlines, while the press ignores the other 40,000 car crashes that happen in the United States each year. Musk spies on Tesla drivers (hello, classic Bond villain everyone) so he can see the dip in autopilot usage every time such a news story breaks. He's got good reason to be concerned about this.

He argues that autopilot is safer Continue reading

Regular Expression for Network Engineer Part-2

This post is continuation of the  Regular Expression for Network Engineer Part-1 , here  we  have a look for the different methods to find out the pattern in string.

Findall() – returns  list of all the  matches the pattern in a string  without overlapping

  • EXAMPLE

[code language = “Python”]

re.findall(pattern, string[, flags])

In [118]: ip
Out[118]: ‘10.10.1.10,29.10.1.10,10.10.1.20,192.168.1.0,172.16.10.1,10.10.10.121’

In [119]: out= re.findall(r'(10.10.10.\d+)’ ,ip)
In [120]: out
Out[120]: [‘10,10.10.1’, ‘10.10.10.121’]

#Above example help us to find out all the IP’s of subnet 10.10.10.0/24 from group of ip’s.

[/code]

Match()-return a match object when pattern is found at the beginning of string, if no pattern is found ,result in None.

  • EXAMPLE

[code language = “Python”]

In [189]: text
Out[189]: ‘Cisco IOS Software, 7200 Software (C7200-SPSERVICESK9-M), Version 12.2(33)SRE, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)’

In [190]: out = re.match(r”Cisco”,text)
In [191]: out
Out[191]: <_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(0, 5), match=’Cisco’>
In [192]: out = re.match(r” Software”,text)
In [193]: out
In [194]: out = re.search(r” Software”,text)
In [195]: out
Out[195]: <_sre.SRE_Match object; span=(9, 18), Continue reading

Regular Expression for Network Engineer Part-2

This post is continuation of the  Regular Expression for Network Engineer Part-1 , here  we  have a look for the different methods to find out the pattern in string. Findall() – returns  list of all the  matches the pattern in a string  without overlapping EXAMPLE   Match()-return a match object when pattern is found at the […]

Automating Cumulus Linux with Ansible

Automating your network can seem like a daunting task. But the truth is that automating Cumulus Linux with Ansible can be easier than many of the things you’re probably already automating.

In this post, I’ll show you how to get started on your network automation journey using a simple, four-step process:

  1. Pick one small network task to automate
  2. Configure it manually on a small scale
  3. Mimic the manual configuration in Ansible
  4. Expand the automation to additional network devices

To illustrate, I’ll be using the following simple, bare-bones topology based on the Cumulus Reference topology. You can follow along by spinning up your own virtual data center for free using Cumulus in the Cloud.

Pick one network task to automate

The first step is to pick one thing to automate. Just one! The only caveat is that it needs to be something you understand and are comfortable with. Trying to automate a feature you’ve never used is sure to scare you away from automation forever, unless of course you have someone guiding you through the process.

Preferably, pick something that’s quick and simple when done manually. Configuring the OSPF routing protocol between two switches falls into this category. When done manually, Continue reading

C is to low level

I'm in danger of contradicting myself, after previously pointing out that x86 machine code is a high-level language, but this article claiming C is a not a low level language is bunk. C certainly has some problems, but it's still the closest language to assembly. This is obvious by the fact it's still the fastest compiled language. What we see is a typical academic out of touch with the real world.

The author makes the (wrong) observation that we've been stuck emulating the PDP-11 for the past 40 years. C was written for the PDP-11, and since then CPUs have been designed to make C run faster. The author imagines a different world, such as where CPU designers instead target something like LISP as their preferred language, or Erlang. This misunderstands the state of the market. CPUs do indeed supports lots of different abstractions, and C has evolved to accommodate this.


The author criticizes things like "out-of-order" execution which has lead to the Spectre sidechannel vulnerabilities. Out-of-order execution is necessary to make C run faster. The author claims instead that those resources should be spent on having more slower CPUs, with more threads. This sacrifices single-threaded performance in exchange Continue reading

Dustin’s Internet Community Roadtrip: In the Bay Area, The People Who Make the Internet Ecosystem Thrive

Dustin Phillips, Co-Executive Director of ICANNWiki, is traveling across the United States in his red Toyota Corolla, making connections with the people who are making their communities – and the Internet – a better place. He visited the Bay Area, first making a stop at the Redwood National and State Parks, where he learned about redwood communities and how their survival is dependent on interconnection, a metaphor for the Internet itself.

What is the Internet Ecosystem?

The Internet affects nearly every aspect of society, creating an extremely wide range of stakeholders. There is still a community of stakeholders engaged directly with the Internet’s policymaking processes, but increasingly there are Internet-related discussions occurring at what would traditionally be considered unlikely venues.

CITRIS and the Banatao Institute

Meeting with Dr. Brandie Nonnecke at the University of California, Berkley’s Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute was a fitting way to kick off my time in the Bay Area. We had a great discussion on the important role of civic participation and collaborative processes for informed decision-making in key issue areas.

Like the incredibly diverse plant life that grows in the understory Continue reading

Configuring SSL for gRPC on Junos

This is a short article on creating a self-signed root certificate which can be used to self-sign certificates for the purposes of treating our telemetry and instrumentation exploration with the security love it deserves. I also cover configuration of mutual SSL for gRPC on Junos. An article of dual purposes!

One of the things I see far too often is clear-text transport being used in demonstrations, labs and even production. This isn’t acceptable. We live in a world where security has to be woven in from the ground up. How do you really know your system works if you leave out all of the security controls?

I hear your teeth grinding. Why do you want to do this? First of all, even though we can bypass security on gRPC with Junos by going for insecure connectivity with clear-text, we shouldn’t. The world we live in is all about the data and the smallest amount of it can give the ‘bad guys’ a lead.

Now we’re done with the why, we need to deal with the how. There are three approaches to PKI that are common:

  1. Run around with your hair on fire rambling nonsense
  2. Create your own Certificate Authority (CA) Continue reading

Introducing Play With Kubernetes

Every month for the last year, thousands of people have used Play with Docker and the accompanying hands-on Play with Docker Classroom training site. These sites allow you to use and learn Docker entirely within your own browser, without installing anything. Last summer, we quietly launched the companion site Play with Kubernetes, to give people a full command line while learning Kubernetes. And today we’re launching a new Kubernetes training site, the Play with Kubernetes Classroom.

The Play with Kubernetes Classroom is a workshop environment just like the Play with Docker Classroom. We currently have an extensive Kubernetes workshop originally based on Jérôme Petazzoni’s Container Training Kubernetes workshop. But instead of doing it all locally or setting up VMs in the cloud, you can now run through the workshop entirely in the browser.

Like the Play with Docker Classroom, we’ll be curating contributions of additional labs from the community. So give Kubernetes in your browser a try, and then come on over to the Play with Kubernetes repository to share your own tutorials with the community.

Check out the Play with Kubernetes Classroom
Try Kubernetes in Docker Enterprise Edition

Try Kubernetes in the browser with https://training.play-with-kubernetes.com
Click To Continue reading

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