A current meme is that one of the major points of limitation in our ability to execute is coordination systems. The claim, which is somewhat enticing, is that our communities are already incredibly powerful, but we lack the coordination systems to reliably be productive together, or to scale up the types of systems we can… Continue reading Coordination, or Attention
Category: Post
Private Retrieval
It’s very exciting to have a public face to the thoughts around how to enable effective private access to data. Research Announcement The basic hypothesis here is that there’s a high-leverage opportunity to attract thought around scaling the range of anonymous database or data transfer techniques to reach something with better properties that the systems… Continue reading Private Retrieval
Building Decentralization
I talked earlier this week on some of the current problems in decentralization at the rc3 event. It’s easy to be pessimistic about the current silo’d technological landscape, but decentralized platforms are continuing to make progress and there’s reason to be hopeful. At the same time, there’s a green field of many more decentralized protocols… Continue reading Building Decentralization
Unlocking North Korean Karaoke
I recently got the opportunity to understand what was going on with a Tianchi android KTV console with north korean content loaded on it. A description of the encryption and evolution of DRM protections associated with the device is published on the North Korea Tech blog.
What's Left for private Messaging
I had the privilege to address the annual Chaos Communication Congress (36C3) in Leipzig last week about the state and remaining issues in private communications. The recording of the video has been made available by the CCC, and I have also posted the slides. The TL;DR for me is that many of the trade-offs are… Continue reading What's Left for private Messaging
Email Security Checklist
There are a lot of various standards and protocols in play around SMTP that are being used today to validate email. when setting up self hosting, recently, I found it useful to refer to the following checklist of the following validations that I should be configuring. For a server receiving email on behalf of a… Continue reading Email Security Checklist
Ethics of Censorship Measurement
I gave a talk this past summer at DEFCON on the ethical quandary that continues to play a role in the academic discussion of network censorship measurement. Over the course of my phd studies, there was a significant arc of time where the community yielded to caution as the issues around ethics were better understood.… Continue reading Ethics of Censorship Measurement
Tibet 2018
In the second half of August, 2018, I biked from Golmud in Qinghai to Lhasa. The road, the G109, is a lifeline for Tibet, with 85% of supplies for Tibet imported along this route. It parallels the primary train line into the region, and was one of the first paved routes on the plateau. It’s… Continue reading Tibet 2018
HOPE
I’m excited to see a bunch of friends next week at HOPE, an annual New York conference in the same vein as CCC. I’ll be participating in a panel on Internet Censorship on Friday morning, with a fantastic group of co-panelists. The talk recording is available here.
NextGen Scholar
Excited to be included in the 2018 class of CSIS NextGen Scholars.