Tag: university of Canterbury

University of Canterbury Inaugural Conference on Artificial Intelligence

The UC AI Inaugural Conference will take place on 9-10 December 2020.

UC AI is a newly-formed transdisciplinary cluster for artificial intelligence research. UC AI encompasses researchers from UC’s departments and schools of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Mathematics and Statistics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Physics, Psychology, Education, the Humanities and Social Sciences, and the New Zealand Human Interface Technology Laboratory.

UC AI’s Inaugural Conference also provides an opportunity to celebrate Ada Lovelace’s birthday on 10 December. Nearly 200 years ago, Lovelace and Charles Babbage wrote the first programs for a universal digital computer.

The conference is free, but if you are planning to come, please register as soon as possible via the website.

If you would like accommodation in a UC Hall of Residence ($60 per night inclusive of GST for a single room), please make your reservation.

Visual Metaphor Gone Wrong

UC uses wrong design for cyber security campaign.

The University of Canterbury is making an effort to increase awareness for the need of strong passwords. For this purpose they ran the “Longer Is Stronger” campaign, including a poster that is still being shown on displays across the campus.

The problem is that the visual metaphor of a chain is completely wrong. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link and with an increasing length of the chain the likelihood of a particularly week link increases. A longer chain is weaker than a short one. I really hope that our IT security experts are smarter than our visual designers.

A password is indeed usually stronger the longer it is. Encouraging students and staff to use long passwords is a step in the right direction. It would be even better if UC would offer password managers, such as 1Password or LastPass to all its members. That way our passwords could not only be long, but we would be able to conveniently access them. But putting money where you mouth is, is a skill that UC still needs to practice. Purchases of password managers are still being processed on an individual basis and it can take months to complete a purchase.