Thunderous Ambivalence
Because being off the grid is next to impossible in many societies, it is tempting to give up and proclaim 'I have nothing to hide'.
Read MoreTechnology
Acting for Privacy – An Australian Story
There is the case to be made that this is not only the cost of doing business in the digital age but that, like environmental protections, there are great rewards to be reaped in improved quality of life.
Read MoreTempus Fugit
As Apple's privacy respecting posture gives way to the pull of marketing dollars through making user data the product, their third way begins to fall short.
Read MoreOur Mind is a Blurry Image of Life
The hope is much, for having gotten this far is to be forewarned and thus forearmed. In that we do well to employ scepticism when listening to a human interlocutor. Because even the best of us are filling in the blanks in our memory.
Read MoreGhost Writers — Rise of the Machines
Ultimately, I do not think the problem is that we are building machines so ‘smart’ that their output is indistinguishable from human compositions. The problem is that we are educating humans whose output is so illiterate, and devoid of experience, it is indistinguishable from computer generated text.
Read MoreAutodeleting the Public Record
Rage if you will and burn screen time if you like — I simply accept if I want my thoughts to be personal and private then I ought not post them online.
Read MoreA Warning From Content
You can join me in camp confusion or post using or not using CWs with a certainty that would make a prophet blush.
Read MoreTwenty Years of Firefox
Little did I know how consistently Firefox would be my window to the World Wide Web, nor how its security, and in time privacy focus, would shape my understanding of what it means to be online.
Read MoreThe Subjective Nature of ‘Nothing to Hide’
Whether you have something to hide has far more to do with who is looking than what they can see.
Read MoreJotting – Anatomy of a Search Engine
I wonder if there is an alternative reading in which they did not make a conscious decision to be 'evil'?
Read MoreHugo: Or, There and Back Again
Time again at a premium, I mused on my latest quest for minimalism. In doing so I realised that I was creating as many problems as I was solving.
Read MoreHow I Write — Long Form Research
From time to time, I contemplate how I publish. Mostly because I like 'the elegance of a refined workflow'.
Read MoreMoxie and the Server
To determine if the statement is 'true', we don't need to poll everyone — only to understand the category of the statement.
Read MoreThe Linux Paradigm
In science, a paradigm is a model or pattern — a typical instance or exemplar. But in rhetoric, my chosen field, it is an example or guide as to how one should behave.
Read MoreFourth Way – Living in Harmony with our Online Presence
Instead of these three paths, the Fourth Way seeks to provide an alternative in which a student can seek to find a sense of mastery while still living their everyday life.
Read MoreLife is Long, Access is Short
If not accidentally lost, your data can vanish in other ways: the community project shutters, a company goes under, or the subset of services you use are axed.
Read MoreA Peer’s Tube
Winter Ink PeerTube will allow for the documenting and preservation of videos to which I can link in my ongoing speculations about life and art. Links, and the content they reference, which are permanent and will always work. A necessity to promote the adoption of individually-owned and controlled sovereign spaces which enable an open and healthy web.
Read MoreIntellectual Warehouse
While access to information is now relatively more widespread than in the past, the modern paywall can often prove to be as much of a hurdle to access as the price of manuscripts was in yesteryear.
Read MoreThe New Cathedral Door
Does it truly safeguard that which is dangerous and true while restricting that which is dangerous and false, and does it arrive at this determination through a process of deliberation; or, does it merely replace one arbitrary determination for another about that which is dangerous.
Read MoreBitcoin’s Dirty Little Secrets – Political
In praxis, the result for Bitcoin is that the ideological claims for a decentralised, government free, anonymous currency has given way to the ‘worse-is-better’ ideology of why most people seem to be dumping cash into crypto: to get rich and live the capitalist high life.
Read MoreBitcoin’s Dirty Little Secrets – Environmental
I have long been concerned with the negative human impact on our environment and while I am some way off from thinking the world is on fire, it is clear that business as usual is going to leave a decidedly lessened planet for our children. Thus my spotlight on the ecological effects of our choices is slowly widening and most recently has taken in cryptocurrency.
Read MoreA Mastodon To Call My Own
Mastodon allows you to run your own server which means you have "absolute control over your own voice on the web, not subject to anyone else's rules or whims. Your server is your property, with your rules."
Read MoreHow I Publish – Back to the Future
A few months back I gave a short sketch of how I publish online. But today is back to the future as I return to WordPress.
Read MoreArt as Background
Turner was something of a privacy advocate. In the 1841 census he rowed a boat into the Thames so he could not be counted as being present at any property
Read MoreNibbled By System
I am a simple man who fears being nibbled by system. I like things I can see and touch. In…
Easy To Use
I learn today that Jules-Albert de Dion took the chequed flag in the world’s first motor race, the Paris–Rouen in…
To CDN Or Not To CDN
As the great bard made a Prince of Denmark once say: To be, or not to be, that is the…
Site With Less Byte
This has started me on my own quest for a lighter footprint in my publishing platform. To that end, there is much tinkering to do.
Read MoreTo Federate, But How?
It also raises questions about cross posting to other platforms, such as Medium, which are the natural hunting ground of avid readers.
Read MoreLosing Readers?
While I am not a popularity junkie, it is more gratifying to know one is writing for a large than a small audience as I write to try and assist others.
Read MoreHow I Publish — Version 3.0
Avid readers, and those who accidentally stumbled in searching for something else, will have seen deliberations on whether or not to switch platforms.
Read MoreLabours of Love
As the saying goes, 'God is in the detail' and only by finessing the little things does the overall project take on a majestic form.
Read MorePoint Of No Return
Ever a man to love a bit of tinkering, the blogging process has also proved to be as much a technical as a mental exercise.
Read MoreConfessions of a Platform Junkie
Having perused and discarded a number of options (Medium, Tumblr, Squarespace and Jekyll), I am now caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.
Read MoreUpdating My Plank
As a man who loves his technology, one thing I enjoy reading about is how others use theirs. There is…
Take Notes, No One Is Watching
End to End Privacy requires providing users with encryption everywhere they don't control. This is a promise a platform needs to uphold.
Read MoreDistributism
To replace a People's Republic network with a Democratic Club network isn't necessarily an improvement because it only prefences one centralised solution over another.
Read MoreThe New Commons
As our forebears strove for the aspiration to vote, the mortgaging of our data for access to services requires us to strive for the aspiration to privacy.
Read MoreAirbrushing Memory
With digital services often serving as our memory, to remove content from personal drives is to airbrush our memory.
Read MorePlease keep scrolling
Perhaps this is the heart of my distaste for much social media: it is designed to halt my thinking and focus my attention, not impell me to think on.
Read MoreCode is Speech?
A point to remember when next your private moments are leveraged to improve a marketing algorithm. The unintended consequence of code is speech.
Read MoreLanguage Defect: Privacy
The issue is not can they keep my data safe from an unauthorised third party, but can they keep my data safe from their algorithms.
Read MoreCentralising the Decentralised
The only prevention is to discourage the banning of alternative views and instead engagement in rational discourse.
Read MoreHow I Publish — Version 2.0
My quest for a publishing platform which was both elegant, unencumbered by endless plug-ins and left me alone with my text, brought me to write.as.
Read MoreSo this is how privacy dies…
To be a part of a society which doesn't take these choices means the most meaningful solution is to look at ambient as well as personal privacy.
Read MoreThe Pied Piper of Zoom
In a sense, our online privacy is much like a child, vulnerable to the world and easily spirited away by a platform which offers ease of connection.
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