The 2021 Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology, a major award administered by a Japanese foundation, goes to Andrew Chi-Chih Yao, a Chinese computer scientist who earned PhDs from Harvard and the University of Illinois before being a professor at MIT, Stanford, and Princeton and then becoming Dean of an important theoretical computer science education program […]

In theory, quantum computers could be much more efficient at some kinds of tasks, which could be potentially disruptive in applications areas such as cryptography. But you know: in theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, they are not. So it’s interesting to find applications where quantum computing might possibly be useful […]

Last week I summarized 4 lawsuits filed in 2020 over internet voting, in VA, NJ, NY, NH. Then I learned there was another in North Carolina. In 2020 the North Carolina Council of the Blind sued the State Board of Elections, demanding that the Board offer “alternative format absentee ballots allowing private and independent method […]

Citizens with disabilities (and voters living abroad) must have the substantive right to vote—that’s the law.  Sometimes that turns into a demand for internet voting.  But as I wrote earlier this year, internet voting is dangerously insecure, it’s not what most voters with disabilities want, and there are much better ways of accommodating voters with disabilities, […]

It has been understood for decades that it’s practically impossible to secure your computer (or computer-based device such as a voting machine) from attackers who have physical access. The basic principle is that someone with physical access doesn’t have to log in using the password, they can just unscrew your hard drive (or SSD, or […]