Simson Garfinkel

A Simulated Reconstruction and Reidentification Attack on the 2010 U.S. Census Forthcoming. Now Available: Just Accepted Version.

Just published! How we reconstructed the individual-level records from the 2010 Census tables for tens of millions of people and reidentified millions using only commercially available data. hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/ntchx9im

My experience vibe coding, with citations and recommendations for making it safer. databasenation.substack.com/p/vibe-codin...

YouTube video by Bilawal Sidhu How Google Accidentally Built a Time Machine

@bilawal.bsky.social has put together a 30-minute documentary on the history of Google Earth. Highly recommended. www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhMl...

Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray Whether pondering black holes or predicting discoveries at CERN, physicists believe the best theories are beautiful, natural, and elegant, and this standard separates popular theories from disposable ...

Just finished @hossenfelder.bsky.social's book, Lost in Math. I highly recommend for the author's lively writing style, and her key points are even more valid today then when the book was published in 2018.

amzn.to/4kuVdmt

Ben's Book of the Month: Differential Privacy

@benrothke.bsky.social has written a lovely review of #DifferentialPrivacy for his "book of the month" column at the RSAC Conference website. He notes that the book is available as an open source download from @mitpress.bsky.social .

www.rsaconference.com/library/blog...

Has anyone noticed that ChatGPT as made Ted Rall a non-person? It simply will not answer any questions about Ted Rall.

Someone should write about this.

@tedrall.bsky.social

Anchor Bolts xkcd.com/3078

I'm talking about #differentialPrivacy on the SecureTalk podcast by @StrikeGraph.

Website: www.securetalkpodcast.com
Youtube: youtu.be/eZFgxKsFvYg?...
Apple Podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/4o9h...
SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/user-7796943...

I stopped by the @mitofficial.bsky.social bookstore to sign some @mitpress.bsky.social books on #DiffeeentialPrivacy

Recent books from the MIT community March/April 2025

#DifferentialPrivacy made the top position of @techreview's "Recent books from the MIT community" in the March/April edition.

www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/25/1...

I'm talking about #differentialPrivacy on the SecureTalk podcast by @StrikeGraph.

Website: www.securetalkpodcast.com
Youtube: youtu.be/eZFgxKsFvYg?...
Apple Podcast: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/p...
Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/4o9h...
SoundCloud: soundcloud.com/user-7796943...

A hand holding a copy of "Differential Privacy." The features an illustration of an equation.

Simson Garfinkel's addition to our Essential Knowledge Series, "Differential Privacy," is a robust yet accessible introduction to the idea, history, and key applications of differential privacy—the gold standard of algorithmic privacy protection: mitpress.mit.edu/978026255165... @simson.net

Whoops! It's published in 2025... Sorry about that!

Differential Privacy (2026) my new book, is published by MIT Press today!!!! The soft cover and kindle versions are available now. The open access PDF should be available shortly!!!

mitdpbook.com

Amazon sent me this lovely email today.

Better search and management of very large mail archives.

Which wonderful web app?

Actually, Apple Mail app on the desktop. I don’t know if the iOS app has the same problem

MIT prepares for nuclear attack In the early 1960s, the Institute grappled with going beyond “Duck and Cover.”

My article MIT Prepares for Nuclear Attack was published in @technologyreview.com ! www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/25/1...

The OpenDP project has published a Q&A with me on the occasion of the #DifferentialPrivacy book, which is launching on March 25: opendp.org/blog/qa-sims...

Glad you like them!

Actually, would you be willing to deal with a website that does it? You would need to give the website access to your email. But it wouldn’t do anything with it. I promise!

For you, I will write it and send it into the Apple Store. It will take some work.

Thanks! I have a book coming out in March, and I publish an infrequent column on LinkedIn…

But I don’t listen to podcast with that app. I just listened to top of the hour news. I don’t know what it was doing. I deleted it.

Thank you so much.

Differential Privacy A robust yet accessible introduction to the idea, history, and key applications of differential privacy—the gold standard of algorithmic privacy protection...

Simson Garfinkel's (high-level) intro to Differential Privacy (DP) book will be published in March at MIT Press.

A well-written, insightful, and engaging non-technical intro to DP, with discussions, motivations, and historical context. Highly recommended!
mitpress.mit.edu/978026255165...

Why is the @npr.org app using so much data?

T

GitHub - simsong/remove_apple_autosave: de-duplicate multiple drafts in gmail de-duplicate multiple drafts in gmail. Contribute to simsong/remove_apple_autosave development by creating an account on GitHub.

Apple Mail & Gmail Users: Are you tired of seeing thousands of autosave messages in your Gmail archives? I have written a program to delete them! Find it here; knowledge of python required. If there is interest, I can package this with a UI for the Apple App Store.

github.com/simsong/remo...

XFS Implementation by eyalgolan1337 · Pull Request #3118 · sleuthkit/sleuthkit this branch is based on #1461. I added a test so we can merge the xfs implementation

@sleuthkitlabs.bsky.social's development branch of TSK now supports XFS. Thanks to everyone who helped. github.com/sleuthkit/sl...

Database Nation | LinkedIn Simson Garfinkel | Data, ethics and AI

We can simultaneously end the journalism crisis and provide AI with fresh training data.
bit.ly/40lWVyG