CYBERSECURITY AND THREAT INTELLIGENCE
Let’s keep this post simple. We’re near the start of a long cold, cyber war. Many things make this clear - from Stuxnet to Snowden, from the Sony hacks to Chinese DNS poisoning. This is a hard time to be in information technology. Just in raw, technical security terms this is tough - rebuilding every layer of computing infrastructure so that it is safe. And that’s the easy problem.
CYBERSECURITY AND THREAT INTELLIGENCE
### 1. Virtual bugs I first really knew that all software was fundamentally insecure back in 2001. I was working for an artificial life games company. We made virtual pets - amazing ones with a simulated brain, biochemistry and genetics. I’d just built a new networked version called Creatures Docking Station. It let the cute, furry, egg-laying Norns travel through portals, crossing the Internet directly between player’s computers.
MEDIA AND JOURNALISM
One of the pitched battles in this century’s cyber war is about advert blocking and injecting. It’s in full flow. You can tell - journalist friends complaining that ad blockers have killed Joystiq, a 10 year old gaming magazine; web friends complaining that an ad blocker charges advertisers to not block some ads. I’ve got some perspective. Back in 1996, I helped make one of the earliest web advert blockers, WebMask. Why did we do it?
GOOGLEBRETT LEMPEREUR
ELECTIONS AND VOTING
How is she going to vote? My friend (let’s call her F) just doesn’t know. This isn’t unusual - about 20% of voters are like her (see Q3). She needs to work it out fast. She doesn’t like polling stations, so has a postal vote. She has to decide this weekend - or she’ll get busy with work, and not remember to post the ballot in time. mySociety helpfully list 16 voter advice apps, so I decided this was a chance to test them out!
DIGITAL COMMUNITIES AND ONLINE PLATFORMS
Those brief moments when winning seems possible - Francis Irving
This mad dash bad mixen fun up down world. Forces smash hither and fither, 7 billion of us strange qualia, doing, being human. Web culture, open source culture… sucked out of academia, hacking, sharing, making, funning, building. Just late enough for usability to be just there just cheap enough. Smashed with. Political culture… burnt out, tired, so so so good best world has ever been, so so so broken, media corporate capitalist socialist thought tangle.