Daniel Zappala

So this is a silly story, but for a year or two in 2013/2014 I went around telling everyone I could find about this little cryptography library called “OpenSSL” and how it was used everywhere, but had almost no developers or security budget.

📣 For folks entering the computing faculty job market cs-pui.github.io is a job board for faculty positions at undergrad institutions that highly value teaching, but also secure time + financial resources to remain engaged with research. It also provides resources & data about the process.

Legal documents released today show federal law enforcement officials extensively surveilled public meetings and activists during the ICE surge, and created dossiers on political enemies. I've been busy, but will post some takeaways on this thread soon: (1) www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

This is the weirdest request for input that I've seen in a while. It's almost like the ACM is sitting at the table with the "change my mind" sign. So, let's do it. Short thread with the input I gave them:

Please weigh in

Can we please stop building surveillance tech?

Gerrymandering can be used as a sophisticated form of discrimination, allowing politicians to hide behind supposedly race neutral partisan restricting. Therefore gerrymandering is unconstitutional and must go.

Well, they've finally struck home. #ICE has detained my former #umich student, Yousif Azizi, a PhD student in public policy at Virginia Tech w/a valid visa. He was arrested while taking his children to school in Maryland. After multiple transfers, he is in a detention center in Arizona.

If you're interested in pursing a teaching-focused academic career in computing, make sure to check out the (online) workshop series that @peck.phd and I will be running in May!

I wrote about what's *actually* gone on in Brazil the past few years. What angers Jordan, Musk et al isn't Brazil's laws, it's a system they can’t control—one that actively defends the democracy it was set up to protect. www.thewayfinder.net/p/brazil-bar...

Maybe you should plan a workshop for SOUPS?

This is really fascinating and a wonderful explanation of research in moral psychology

Disturbing anecdotal reports of "AI psychosis" and negative psychological effects have been emerging in the news. But what actually happens during these lengthy delusional "spirals"? In our preprint, we analyze chat logs from 19 users who experienced severe psychological harm🧵👇

Important lessons for today

Based on reading submissions lately, AI is not your friend for academic writing. Using AI to edit or revise is going to leave you with a mess of jargon and disconnected fragments. At best you need to supervise and direct it, which means already being good at your craft.

When are we going to make location data private and take it off the market as a commodity?

I know everyone has a lot bigger problems on their minds, but four years after I took a government job in my area of expertise, I continue to face astronomical legal bills because people lied about me. If you can help at all, I'd appreciate it. Thanks 💙 www.gofundme.com/f/nina-janko...

SOUPS is a wonderful, welcoming community for human-centered security and privacy work. Please submit and please join us in Hannover, Germany this summer.

This clearly warrants being fired for cause. I have zero tolerance for this.

That doesn’t look like qualitative analysis. Two of those are measurements of time spent using manual annotation. The other two are questionable.

Those in California can now go here to request that data brokers delete their data: privacy.ca.gov/drop/ This is a good thing, however, it’s far from a complete solution. 🧵 1/

The ACM Digital Library, where a LOT of computing-related research is published (I'd say at least 75% of my own publications), is now not only providing (without consent of the authors and without opt-in by readers) AI-generated summaries of papers, but they appear as the *default* over abstracts.

🚀💫 I’m on the job market for academic (tenure-track) and industry research positions! 👋I am a Postdoc Fellow at @hcii.cmu.edu working at the intersection of human-AI interaction, cognitive science, responsible AI, design, and social computing. I earned my PhD from @gtresearch.bsky.social in 2024.

Started a thread in the other place and bringing it over here - I really think we should be more vocal about the opportunities that lay at the intersection of these two options! So I'm starting a live thread of new roles as I become aware of them - feel free to add / extend / share :

Love to see this. I set up a recurring monthly donation to my food bank.

Coded with an LLM (this works for both systems and qualitative researchers)

It will be my second year co-chairing the Privacy and Security subcommittee at #CHI2026, with the awesome Florian Schaub and Emilee Rader. Abstract submission is today, and we are very excited to review the list of papers that you'll send our way...

I have thoughts. Firstly, Bunch is absolutely right about this. I say this as someone who has worked for corporate media and small media. This is spot on:

Thank you to everyone who made it out for my DEF CON 33 presentation, "Shaking Out Shells With SSHamble", you can find the materials online at hdm.io/decks/MOORE%... This deck includes some lightly-censored zero-day (more decks @ hdm.io)

New paper out today, accepted at #FAccT2025, led by Jake Stein and me: "Not Even Nice Work If You Can Get It; A Longitudinal Study of Uber's Algorithmic Pay and Pricing" arxiv.org/abs/2506.15278 Over the last 3 years, we've been working with @workerinfox.bsky.social to audit Uber's algorithms. 1/

Why is it a useful learning activity for a student to correct an AI system? Isn’t this more valuable for those training the AI than for the student? This seems to complicate learning more than to improve it.

I don't have words for how infuriating this is data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-mother...

Look at what happens to male teacher salaries (blue line) v.s. female teacher salaries (red line) after collective bargaining laws expire.

I'm in a phenomenal talk on gender inequality in cybersecurity this morrning and this is such a great cheat sheet for intersectional fair employment.

Wise words from Steven Peck, a rare scholar who bridges disciplinary worlds like few others—a BYU biology professor who also writes award-winning literary fiction.

Are you going to be at the best conference, SOUPS (@soupsconference.bsky.social)? If so, consider signing up to be a mentor or mentee for the mentoring program! It's a great way to meet other folks at the conference :) www.usenix.org/conference/s...

@sauvik.me and I are co-chairing the SOUPS mentoring! If you are attending SOUPS, consider signing up to be a mentor or a mentee. It's a wonderful way to connect with others. www.usenix.org/conference/s...

It should not be this hard for a newspaper to admit its errors. Refusing to accept even the smallest amount of accountability is what we have in the authoritarian regime leading this country. We don’t need it in newspapers too.

This is a really good scam attempt. The only clue is a weird sender, and then the phone number is not the real one for Apple Support. But very convincing!

This is going to be fantastic. Join us in Seattle.

Excited to announce the Enigma Track program is now live for USENIX Security '25! Taking place August 13-14, this track delves into technology's societal impacts & future challenges: www.usenix.org/conference/u... 1/8

Bookmark this. Great resource.

Fantastic thread from Casey. Researchers, you need to think through these issues carefully before starting a project!

Thinking about devastating cuts to NSF: US gov-funded science has been the engine upon which most of the tech wealth was generated. But the oligarchs (currently hoarding much of that $) think it’s their own brilliance & not the accident of standing close to the scientific engine that made them rich.

"computer science is value neutral" is and always has been ridiculous generally, but it's especially and painfully ridiculous (to me) when the topic is cryptography. Philip Rogaway, as just one example, nailed this a decade ago:

This is one of the worst violations of research ethics I've ever seen. Manipulating people in online communities using deception, without consent, is not "low risk" and, as evidenced by the discourse in this Reddit post, resulted in harm. Great thread from Sarah, and I have additional thoughts. 🧵

For the last 3 yrs, I was the director for the Science of Science program at the NSF. We funded projects on science communication - science communication to the public, communication of public priorities to scientists, citizens engagement & participation in science. 🧵