Data Skeptic

Latest Episodes:

Sybil Attacks on Federated Learning Nov 13, 2020

Show notes

Clement Fung, a Societal Computing PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University, discusses his research in security of machine learning systems and a defense against targeted sybil-based poisoning called FoolsGold.

Works Mentioned: The Limitations of Federated Learning in Sybil Settings

Twitter:

@clemfung

Website: https://clementfung.github.io/

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Differential Privacy at the US Census Nov 06, 2020

Show notes

Simson Garfinkel, Senior Computer Scientist for Confidentiality and Data Access at the US Census Bureau, discusses his work modernizing the Census Bureau disclosure avoidance system from private to public disclosure avoidance techniques using differential privacy. Some of the discussion revolves around the topics in the paper Randomness Concerns When Deploying Differential Privacy.

WORKS MENTIONED:

"Calibrating Noise to Sensitivity in Private Data Analysis" by Cynthia Dwork, Frank McSherry, Kobbi Nissim, Adam Smith
"Issues Encountered Deploying Differential Privacy" by Simson L Garfinkel, John M Abowd, and Sarah Powazek
"Randomness Concerns When Deploying Differential Privacy" by Simson L. Garfinkel and Philip Leclerc

Check out: https://simson.net/page/Differential_privacy

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Distributed Consensus Oct 30, 2020

Show notes

Computer Science research fellow of Cambridge University, Heidi Howard discusses Paxos, Raft, and distributed consensus in distributed systems alongside with her work "Paxos vs. Raft: Have we reached consensus on distributed consensus?"

She goes into detail about the leaders in Paxos and Raft and how The Raft Consensus Algorithm actually inspired her to pursue her PhD. Paxos vs Raft paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.05074 Leslie Lamport paper "part-time Parliament" https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/lamport-paxos.pdf Leslie Lamport paper "Paxos Made Simple" https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/paxos-simple.pdf Twitter : @heidiann360

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ACID Compliance Oct 23, 2020

Show notes

Linhda joins Kyle today to talk through A.C.I.D. Compliance (atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability). The presence of these four components can ensure that a database's transaction is completed in a timely manner. Kyle uses examples such as google sheets, bank transactions, and even the game rummy cube. Thanks to this week's sponsors:

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