Author Archives: admin
The true video watching time on Facebook
In the fable "The frog and the ox" by Aesop, a frog tries to appear bigger than it actually is by inflating itself more and more...till it bursts. Well, that's not the end of the story, but the frog's behaviour resembles … Continue reading
What the HHI can tell us about a recent telco merger
Quite recently, the European Commission has approved, under the EU Merger Regulation, a proposed telecommunications joint venture between Hutchison and VimpelCom in Italy (you can read the press release here), namely among their Italian subsidiaries H3G (better known through the … Continue reading
Surge pricing (at Uber)
When prices vary in a programmed way on the basis of time, demand, or resource scarcity, this is typically done in the form of a rebate or discount factor: the high price is taken as a reference, and the price … Continue reading
E-mail spam: the fun side of it
All of you experience the daily strain of having to remove tons of e-mail spam messages, talking of vacant successions, ousted rulers, remote relatives you didn't know of, etc. The one advise is NOT to answer any of these messages, … Continue reading
An average too much
A colleague of mine, Luigi Laura, reports a recent example of statistical ignorance. In the flurry of newspaper articles about the VW scandal, one of those, published on an Italian newspaper (and a very important one, poor us...), reported the statistics … Continue reading
Dresden...Inference and privacy
Though my report is a bit late, I take the chance to highlight and praise the initiative taken by two colleagues, Ulf Brefeld (TU Darmstadt) and Thorsten Strufe (TU Dresden), who have organised the Workshop on Privacy and Inference (PRINF), held in Dresden in … Continue reading
Down with compulsive code writers
In my classes I often refer to people who are faster at writing code than thinking as compulsive code writers. Therefore, I strongly agree with the opinions expressed in this article by Jeff Atwood appeared on the New York Daily News. Getting … Continue reading
Data breaches matter...in the short term
In the past, a few studies addressed the problem of understanding the impact of a data breach suffered by a company on the company's value (see, e.g. the paper "The effect of internet security breach announcements on market value" by Cavusoglu … Continue reading
Two days in Rennes (at Télécom Bretagne)
Some days ago, I was in Rennes for two days, serving on a PhD committee at Télécom Bretagne. As you may know, Télécom Bretagne is the name of the engineering school that was formerly known as the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des … Continue reading
Some old data on data breaches
Data breaches are always a concern, so that data on their diffusion and ensuing damages are always welcome. I've just read a recently published paper on the subject: "Towards a Model for Data Breaches: An Universal Problem for the Public". … Continue reading
