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  • Jasika Bawa 6:53 pm on January 16, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

    Bitcoins, Post- “Bitcoin Bubble” 

    In case anyone needed a quick refresher on Bitcoins, here’s the video I showed in class–it’s a great introduction to what Bitcoin is and the problems it is aiming to solve: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um63OQz3bjo.

    If the Bitcoin network’s history of security issues didn’t deter you, you can download the Bitcoin client over at http://bitcoin.org/ and experiment with Bitcoin mining and your very own digital wallet. Some sites even offer free Bitcoins just to get you started (for instance, see https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/). You can track the current value of a Bitcoin in USD on the Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange, and you can see this plotted in real-time at http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgMzm1g10zm2g25.

    Remember, Bitcoins can even buy you Alpaca socks if you’re interested! :D

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    • Rehab Department Review And Optimization 4:24 am on December 25, 2012 Permalink | Reply

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    • neukundengewinnung 10:01 pm on January 7, 2013 Permalink | Reply

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    • Bitcoinblogging 1:15 pm on May 8, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      Bitcoin is no longer in a bubble….

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  • Jasika Bawa 9:19 pm on January 15, 2012 Permalink | Reply  

    Visualizing The U.S. Electric Grid 

    This post is a little old, but the various different visualizations of the US electric grid on here are really interesting–especially since the electric grid is the physical “network” that is the backbone for most other networks we have talked about in this class!

    https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=110997398

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    • network20q 3:11 am on January 16, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Cool stuff. We didn’t get time to talk about smart grid in the course.

      Mung

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    • Skilled Irish Immigration To Australia 8:13 pm on October 19, 2012 Permalink | Reply

      Hello! Fantastic post! Please when I could see a follow up!

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  • Jasika Bawa 9:57 pm on December 5, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Xbox   

    The Evolution of TV and Entertainment 

    In preparation for tomorrow’s official Xbox 360 dashboard update, Microsoft has taken a look at the rapid growth of TV content all the way up to today in this infographic (click for the Web-ready version to enlarge):

    Along with the growth of content, we can also look at how the way we search for content has changed over the years–for instance, the infographic shows that the first remote control released to consumers in 1960 was called “Lazy Bones” and operated through a wire connected to the television. This is in stark contrast to controls we see today, including the voice recognition capabilities that will come with this update.

    The way we access growing amounts of video content is as interesting a problem as the growth of the content itself, especially from a hardware capability perspective–perhaps the day that 93% of people in the U.S. (mentioned in the infographic) will be able to access their favorite feature film with just the push of a button isn’t that far off after all.

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  • Jasika Bawa 8:54 pm on December 4, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: crowdsourcing, DARPA   

    Experts beat crowdsourcing in DARPA challenge 

    DARPA recently announced the DARPA shredder challenge, the latest in their series of contests to harness the collective intelligence of civilians to help spur innovation. This time around, as the challenge states:

    The goal was to identify and assess potential capabilities that could be used by our warfighters operating in war zones, but might also create vulnerabilities to sensitive information that is protected through our own shredding practices throughout the U.S. national security community.

    Puzzle enthusiasts and computer scientists alike competed for up to $50,000 by piecing together a series of shredded documents. This past Friday DARPA announced that the team named “All Your Shreds Are Belong To U.S.” won the prize, requiring a total of 33 days and 600 man hours to reassemble the five shredded documents that had been provided and provide the answers to the puzzles embedded in the content of the reconstructed documents.

    Wired reported that the winning team, led by programmer Otavio Good, designed custom-made software as opposed to using a crowdsourced approach the way a lot of other competing teams did. The software used visual recognition technology to help find and place the 10,000 pieces of paper that needed sorting. Thus, unlike DARPA’s 2009 red balloon challenge that was solved by the MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team using input from 5000 participants in under 9 hours, this challenge was solved by three experts.

    You can check out the shredder challenge puzzle solutions here (spoilers, of course, if you were planning to try and solve it yourself) or you could try your hand at their practice puzzle here.

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  • Jasika Bawa 11:13 pm on November 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,   

    Facebook: 6 degrees? Try 4.74 

    In a recent blog post by the Facebook Data Team, we can see how a joint study has shown that any single person is only 4.74 steps away from being introduced to any other person, instead of the commonly believed upon 6 steps. Some of the data brought forward by the study is pretty crazy, for example:

    While 99.6% of all pairs of users are connected by paths with 5 degrees (6 hops), 92% are connected by only four degrees (5 hops). And as Facebook has grown over the years, representing an ever larger fraction of the global population, it has become steadily more connected. The average distance in 2008 was 5.28 hops, while now it is 4.74.

    Thus, when considering even the most distant Facebook user in the Siberian tundra or the Peruvian rainforest, a friend of your friend probably knows a friend of their friend.

    The study also found that people are much more closely connected to individuals in their own country.

    Although this new “law” of separation applies only to Facebook itself, the number of Facebook’s active users is reportedly around 10% of the total human population today–do you think that is enough for the new law to be extrapolated to apply to all people in the world? Or do you think that the data just goes to show that “X knows Y” now means less than it did before?

    How many friends?

    The study also showed that Facebook's cumulative degree distribution is not nearly as skewed as earlier studies of social networks have suggested

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    • Mung Chiang 11:44 pm on November 22, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      This is interesting:

      Small world: whether it’s 6 or 5 degrees of separation, the real test is local information based discovery of the path, not just the existence of short paths. This is a common misunderstanding. So Facebook needs to run experiment of message passing, not just analyze topology.

      Scale free: strictly speaking it’s only about power law at the tail of the distribution, not the entire distribution. So it may still hold. The more relevant question is Dunbar’s number that truncates the tail of power law distribution: how can someone have 1000 or 5000 friends? That must be a redefinition of ‘friend’. A better definition of friend might be: if you call this person and say I am XXX, will she pause a while before realizing who you are?

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  • Jasika Bawa 2:53 am on November 15, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: ,   

    Visualization of the world on Twitter on 11/11/11 

    Since we’ve talked a bit about the visualization of networks in earlier classes, here is a really pretty visualization of tweets throughout the world mentioning 11:11 on 11-11-11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv1GMoNOoys. YouTube commenters seem to have picked up on the fact that the US seemed to be the only country tweeting about 11:11pm (considered to be 23:11 by countries using the 24-hour clock format.)

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    • random commissions detector bonus 1:51 am on March 11, 2013 Permalink | Reply

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  • Jasika Bawa 8:45 pm on November 4, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    Groupon’s first day of trading! 

    Yesterday’s reports that claimed Groupon had priced its IPO at $20 a share (giving the company a $12.7 valuation) were confirmed today as the Chicago-based company’s shares opened at $20 on the Nasdaq, quickly rising to $29.24 by midday. The most recent report I found said that the daily deals company closed at $26.10 per share, up 31%.

    It has been an exciting day for the company, with CEO Andrew Mason in New York himself to ring the Nasdaq opening bell. Today also marks the end of the long journey of ups and downs Groupon has faced with regards to the valuation of the company, something we talked about in class. Although the $12.7 valuation falls below what was speculated earlier on, the company has come a long way from Google’s offer of $6 billion back in 2010.

    Now all that remains to be seen is whether or not investors are in it for the long haul. And, in a market that is capable of both touting the Web to be moving away from “global” and towards “local,” as well as of denouncing companies like Groupon to be symbolic of a new tech bubble to come, this is indeed the question of the hour. With Mason’s statement that this “…IPO is a small milestone on our journey,” it remains clear that Groupon plans to stick around and continue changing the game. Do you think the risk of short sellers is a real one? What do you think of the future of the daily deals company–is local just a passing fad, or one that is here to stay?

    Reuters: Groupon's IPO biggest by U.S. Web company since Google

    Reuters: Groupon's IPO biggest by U.S. Web company since Google

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    • network20q 10:27 pm on November 4, 2011 Permalink | Reply

      This is not the venue to make stock market prediction so that we can verify my stupidity later, but let me try: I’d suggest selling Groupon stock in the next trading session (if you bought some today). Very likely you can buy them back at a lower price in the next few month.

      Local deal companies are here to stay, so will Groupon. But profit margin will drop, Amazon and Google will make successful marches into the arena, and better bargain of Groupon shares will arrive.

      With 30% chance my last prediction above will be wrong.

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  • Jasika Bawa 4:25 am on October 13, 2011 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 4G, CTIA   

    What kind of 4G performance are subscribers actually getting? 

    Earlier today, three Democratic senators introduced a new bill that requires wireless providers to give consumers more complete and accurate information regarding the 4G wireless data performance they are being provided with. A similar bill proposed by California representative Eshoo was introduced in June. The need for a bill such as this comes from the fact that most indications of speed used in sales and marketing campaigns are more a string of buzzwords pulled together than an indication of a network’s actual speed.

    The bill intends to enforce disclosure of minimum 4G data speeds, pricing, coverage area maps, network reliability and conditions in addition to details about the hardware employed in the network. It also intends to require that the FCC evaluate the 4G speeds and prices of the top ten wireless providers in the U.S. so as to give consumers the chance to see a comprehensive comparison in their own service areas.

    Unfortunately, there already seems to be opposition to the bill, with the CTIA not keen on adding an extra layer of regulation to an up and coming set of services, especially since “wireless is an inherently complex and dynamic environment in which network speeds can vary depending on a wide variety of factors, such as weather, terrain and foliage.” In their statement, they also called upon the need for Congress to ensure the sufficiency of spectrum for providers to deploy 4G services, instead of imposing new regulations.

    I think that the introduction of this bill has come at a very interesting time, and it should tie in well with our discussion on Question 19. I do believe there is merit to what the bill proposes, especially from a consumer interest point of view. Do you think wireless providers will ever be on board with such a proposition though?

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