How Safe is Your Social Network?


The Twitter logo.

One of the great things about the Internet and Peer-to-Peer technologies is that they are decentralised. If one part of the net goes down - the rest pulls together and manages. If a box somewhere dies, other boxes should take over until it can be fixed.Grimly, we can apply this as an analogy to our real life social networks. If your good friend Fred were to suddenly die - you could still contact all your other friends. You could even contact - with a bit of effort - those people who you only…

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I'm a former Scrable Champion


A random assortment of wooden Scrabble tiles.

Way back before Facebook, when the Internet was made of string and chewing gum, when Scrabble was a game for old people and nerds, I was.... Well.... A nerd!I loved Scrabble and attained the heady heights of school champion! But it wasn't enough. I had tasted power and wanted more. I devoured Scrabble strategy books, word lists, reverse dictionaries and spent the nights dreaming about triple word scores. I even went to the regional finals where our team came second to some suspiciously…

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