Koryolink Simulator

When I was in Pyongyang a few years ago and had access to a cell phone, I recorded a bunch of the prerecorded messages that you hear when dialing or mis-dialing numbers. I found them to be an interesting glimpse into the view of technology seen in that corner of the world, and helpfully they… Continue reading Koryolink Simulator

Privacy issues for City Wi-Fi Deployments

At the end of last month, Seattle posted a request for information exploring the feasibility of a municipal Wireless deployment. With others at the Seattle Privacy Coalition, I draft a response to the city flagging some of the major privacy issues that we hope they will consider in the initiative. I believe these are much… Continue reading Privacy issues for City Wi-Fi Deployments

Slab City

I wanted to try to put into words part of what I appreciate about community, through a description of one of the more unique communities I’ve visited: Slab City.

Thoughts on Wulim

One of the exciting developments at CCC last month was a talk discussing the copy protection features in the Wulim tablet produced by the Pyongyang Information Center. This post is an attempt to reconcile the features they describe with my experience with devices around Pyongyang and provide some additional context of the environment the device… Continue reading Thoughts on Wulim

Internet Censorship 2016

We have reached the end of 2016, as well as the annual CCC congress in Germany. I had the exciting chance to speak together with Philipp Winter on the shifting landscape of Internet censorship in 2016. The talk followed mostly the same format as last year’s, calling out the continuing normalization and ubiquity of censorship… Continue reading Internet Censorship 2016

First-party Google Analytics

Third party analytics services are suffering from the growing prevalence of ad blocking, tracking protection, and the trend of minimizing connections and requests. However, from a site owner perspective, receiving usage information remains important for measuring site growth. My expectation is that we are already on the curve where ads and tracking software will be… Continue reading First-party Google Analytics

Thoughts on China’s Updated Cyber-security Regulations

On Monday, China ratified an updated cybersecurity legislation that will enter effect next June. The policy regulates a number of aspects of the Chinese Internet: What data companies need to keep on domestic servers, the interaction between companies and the government, and the interaction between companies and Chinese users. Notably, when considering the impact on… Continue reading Thoughts on China’s Updated Cyber-security Regulations

Clock

A topic of conversation recently has focused on the practicality of Decimal time. Days would have 10 hours, each with 100 minutes. I recently completed a side project of converting an old clock to use decimal time. (If you aren’t willing to switch to decimal time fully, there’s an web version as well.)