Blog

This personal blog comprises whatever I feel like saying on any given day, which often involves topics like new media, journalism, Web technologies, Racket/Scheme/Lisp, Free and open source software, societal issues, cinema film, Boston, frugality, and humor. Many things noted here are solely for the benefit of future Web searchers trying to solve particular esoteric problems, and are not of general interest. This blog is largely insulated from my professional life, and vice-versa. I attempt to provide full disclosure of potential conflicts of interest. Last time I checked analytics, my site was getting over 1000 unique visitors a day.

Surveillance Society

Decades ago, I heard the joke, "Want a job at the NSA? Phone your mother and tell her."

Today, simply Google search for "jobs at nsa", close your browser without clicking any search hits, and the NSA will be in touch?

Whilst vetting you for a job, do NSA hiring managers review every sext message to which you were a party?

Doomed to Repeat It

Normally, when I think a point should be made in an online forum, I might speak up and make the point myself, but sometimes I want to keep distance and see who else makes the point.

Today's distance-keeping comes from the Litecoin Forum -- perhaps the main forum for the Bitcoin-like cryptocurrency, Litecoin -- in which someone acting as an official, responding to a concern about ``behind closed doors,'' says:

If you appreciate my approach, please donate. Identify yourself in PM if you want your name to be on a list of donors. The list of donors will need to be published much later in order to obscure the identity of donor addresses. If folks donate a meaningful amount and identify themselves with a crypto signature of the sending address, I am more likely to consider the merit of their ideas. If the idea is bad, I will at least respond with why I believe the idea is not workable.

—Litecoin Forum message 26072

So, we have an official who controls the currency infrastructure, inviting others to make donations for `access' to the official. And measures will be taken to keep such lobbyist donations anonymous.

This currency has barely even begun to be used, yet already the officials have learned so much about how things work. :)

But seriously, I think that they just didn't realize how bad that could sound. Now to see who calls them on it. (I doubt anyone reads my blog anymore, since I refuse to Tweet or Facebeek.)

More later on a loosely related topic, which is widespread criminality in the Bitcoin world. It's amazing to me how much apparent scamming is going on. It's like everyone has been dumped into the streets of the most corrupt and crime-ridden city in the world -- no longer insulated by borders, distance, gates, cultural mores...

Home Office

My primary desk this morning.

I also do a good amount of work involving cloud computing and virtual machines, but sometimes you need to do testing/debugging with real iron. As real iron goes, laptops are a nice form, since they are self-contained, easy to purchase, and don't take up much space when not in use. Also, a laptop's built-in battery backup means you can shuffle the computer around the office without powering it off and interrupting whatever is running.