Power-Law Distributions in a Two-sided Market and Net Neutrality

"Net neutrality" often refers to the policy dictating that an Internet service provider (ISP) cannot charge content providers (CPs) for delivering their content to consumers. Many past quantitative models designed to determine whether net neutrality is a good idea have been rather equivocal in their conclusions. Here we propose a very simple two-sided market model, in which the types of the consumers and the CPs are {\em power-law distributed} --- a kind of distribution known to often arise precisely in connection with Internet-related phenomena. We derive mostly analytical, closed-form results for several regimes: (a) Net neutrality, (b) social optimum, (c) maximum revenue by the ISP, or (d) maximum ISP revenue under quality differentiation. One unexpected conclusion is that (a) and (b) will differ significantly, unless average CP productivity is very high

Prochlo: Strong Privacy for Analytics in the Crowd

The large-scale monitoring of computer users' software activities has become commonplace, e.g., for application telemetry, error reporting, or demographic profiling. This paper describes a principled systems architecture---Encode, Shuffle, Analyze (ESA)---for performing such monitoring with high utility while also protecting user privacy. The ESA design, and its Prochlo implementation, are informed by our practical experiences with an existing, large deployment of privacy-preserving software monitoring. (cont.; see the paper

Comparing P and S wave heterogeneity in the mantle

From the reprocessed data set of Engdahl and co-workers we have carefully selected matching P and S data for tomographic imaging. We assess data and model error and conclude that our S model uncertainty is twice that of the P model. We account for this in our comparison of the perturbations in P and S-wavespeed. In accord with previous studies we find that P and S perturbations are positively correlated at all depths. However, in the deep mantle systematic di fferences occur between regions that have undergone subduction in the last 120 million years and those that have not. In particular, below 1500 km depth ∂ ln Vs/∂ ln Vp is signifi cantly larger in mantle regions away from subduction than in mantle beneath convergent margins. This inference is substantiated by wavespeed analyses with random realizations of the slab/non-slab distribution. Through much of the mantle there is no signi ficant correlation between bulk sound and S-wave perturbations, but they appear to be negatively correlated between 1700 and 2100 km depth, which is also where the largest di erences in ∂ ln Vs/∂ ln Vp occur. This finding supports convection models with compositional heterogeneity in the lowermost mantle

High-rate quantum cryptography in untrusted networks

We extend the field of continuous-variable quantum cryptography to a network formulation where two honest parties connect to an untrusted relay by insecure quantum links. To generate secret correlations, they transmit coherent states to the relay where a continuous-variable Bell detection is performed and the outcome broadcast. Even though the detection could be fully corrupted and the links subject to optimal coherent attacks, the honest parties can still extract a secret key, achieving high rates when the relay is proximal to one party, as typical in public networks with access points or proxy servers. Our theory is confirmed by an experiment generating key-rates which are orders of magnitude higher than those achievable with discrete-variable protocols. Thus, using the cheapest possible quantum resources, we experimentally show the possibility of high-rate quantum key distribution in network topologies where direct links are missing between end-users and intermediate relays cannot be trusted.Comment: Theory and Experiment. Main article (6 pages) plus Supplementary Information (additional 13 pages