The hidden influence of social networks

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There’s No Such Thing as Anonymous Data

by: Scott Berinato February 9, 2015   About a decade ago, a hacker said to me, flatly, “Assume every card in your wallet is compromised, and proceed accordingly.” He was right. Consumers have adapted to a steady thrum of data breach notifications, random credit card charges, and out-of-the-blue card replacements. A privacy-industrial complex has sprung up from this — technology, services, and policies all aimed at trying to protect data while allowing it to flow freely enough to keep the modern electronic bazaar thriving. A key strategy in this has been to “scrub” data, which means removing personally identifiable information (PII) so that even if someone did access it, they couldn’t connect it to an individual. So much for all that. In a paper published in Science last week , MIT scientist Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye shows that anonymous credit card data can be reverse engineered to identify individuals’ transactions, a finding which calls into quest...
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How can we encourage girls to study computer science?

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By  Allison Master Sep 23 2015 Imagine a computer programmer. What does this person look like? What is this person doing? Is the person with anyone? What kinds of hobbies might he or she have? Chances are  that you imagined someone who is: male, white or Asian American, kind of geeky-looking and sitting alone at a computer. This typifies the stereotypical image of computer science in American culture. And this image  has only solidified over the past 30 years: so much so that high school girls  say things like : when I heard “computer science,” I pictured nerdy boys, who turned into nerdy bearded men, slouched over huge computers and click-clacking out codes that meant nothing to me. The real problem is that this geeky representation may prevent girls from seriously considering a career in computer science. As it is, women are highly underrepresented in computer science. In recent years, only  18% of college degrees have gone to women. I am p...
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What High Performers Want at Work

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Karie Willyerd NOVEMBER 18, 2014 Find this and other HBR graphics in our  VISUAL LIBRARY  A high performer can  deliver 400% more productivity than the average performer . Despite this, when most managers look at workforce statistics, all employees tend to be lumped together into a category so broadly defined that it becomes difficult to take meaningful decisions. If your average employee tenure is six years, is that good or bad? You could benchmark the Fortune 500 and find that indeed you would look pretty good,  tied at 40 th  place . But if the people you are keeping are the low performers and your high performers are leaving, would that be really so great? Last summer, my colleagues and I at  SAP conducted a study with Oxford Economics  across 27 countries to find out what the future workforce wants. We led twin studies of executives and employees and asked the employees how they were rated on their most recent performance appraisal ra...
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