Read This: A Content Analysis Framework for Book Recommendation Applications

Book recommendation applications combine word-of-mouth recommendations with algorithms that can suggest books based on a user’s account activity, creating a robust system for finding new books to read. Current research on recommendation systems is purely quantitative, focusing on the efficacy of the system, and content analyses are only just beginning to be performed on mobile applications. I use previous content analyses on applications as a basis for creating a content analysis framework for book recommendation applications. This framework can be used to analyze what users find important in book recommendation apps and inform app creators about their users’ wants and needs

Construction of a Chicken Coop for Use by an Early Education Facility

There is a demand in the early education field for methods of exposing early learners to where our food comes from and how it’s produced. An excellent source of this exposure is commonly utilized in an onsite chicken-coop. These coops are in essence working farms, producing eggs and in some cases meat. While coops are not prohibitively expensive they often fall outside the scope of normal operating or educational budgets and can be difficult to fund. The purpose of this project was to identify a school that could use and benefit from a coop at no cost to the school. The coop was built of douglas fir structural lumber, reclaimed redwood fence panels, and tin roofing panels. In addition an estimate was developed to project cost to complete the project using materials commonly available at local lumber stores

InternalBlue - Bluetooth Binary Patching and Experimentation Framework

Bluetooth is one of the most established technologies for short range digital wireless data transmission. With the advent of wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT), Bluetooth has again gained importance, which makes security research and protocol optimizations imperative. Surprisingly, there is a lack of openly available tools and experimental platforms to scrutinize Bluetooth. In particular, system aspects and close to hardware protocol layers are mostly uncovered. We reverse engineer multiple Broadcom Bluetooth chipsets that are widespread in off-the-shelf devices. Thus, we offer deep insights into the internal architecture of a popular commercial family of Bluetooth controllers used in smartphones, wearables, and IoT platforms. Reverse engineered functions can then be altered with our InternalBlue Python framework---outperforming evaluation kits, which are limited to documented and vendor-defined functions. The modified Bluetooth stack remains fully functional and high-performance. Hence, it provides a portable low-cost research platform. InternalBlue is a versatile framework and we demonstrate its abilities by implementing tests and demos for known Bluetooth vulnerabilities. Moreover, we discover a novel critical security issue affecting a large selection of Broadcom chipsets that allows executing code within the attacked Bluetooth firmware. We further show how to use our framework to fix bugs in chipsets out of vendor support and how to add new security features to Bluetooth firmware

Adiós a Emilio Carballido (1925-2008)

Adiós a Emilio Carballido (1925-2008

Fantastic Realities: Solid and Virtual Resonance in MMORPGs

This dissertation is a qualitative study that examines how game worlds and positive game experiences are neither equally accessible nor equally enjoyable to many who wish to participate in them. Newer research on games argues that those who master them are fulfilled socially, are highly productive, are motivated, and are invigorated by participation in grand narratives. Using a mixed methods approach, I drew on seventy in-depth interviews with gamers coupled with observational data from my membership role in several virtual worlds. Through these data I examined the social barriers deployed to fracture game world communities and arguably disperse the positive benefits of play. Specifically, my participants and my observational data indicate that rigid social categories of gender, sexuality, and race, as well as the assumptions bound to their maintenance and reinforcement, disrupted the possibility for a more inclusive collective identity. I use an interactionist theoretical framework to understand how the rigidity of social categories and identity politics are recreated and enforced through virtual conversation and relationships. This dissertation explains how the labeling and exclusion of various \u22others\u22 in game worlds, including women, gender-bending men, non-hardcore geeks, fluid sexuality players, and cyberworkers, entrenches the stereotypes of who gamers are and who they can be. The consequences of these practices erode the possibilities for how the solid world and reality itself might benefit from becoming similar to a game