It was back in the late 1990s when I first got started with ad blocking. I don't remember if it was the "punch the monkey" adverts, or the pop-unders for weird security systems that tipped me over the edge. All I knew was my computer was slowing down and I thought animated ads were the culprit. I found a USENET post which explained how to modify my totally-legitimate copy of Windows 98 to block …
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I don't often venture into American politics. It is hard to know whether Trump is a master strategist - as Dilbert seems to think - or merely a chaos monkey. But, somehow, he seems to have stumbled on genius tactic. Trump has repeatedly called for Clinton to be thrown in jail. This has provoked a howl of rage from the liberal media elite. In a civilised democracy the victor simply doesn't…
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Cheques (checks if you're American) are an amazing legacy technology. Invented in the 17th Century, they immediately transformed the financial landscape. They allowed anyone to transfer both vast and trivial sums of wealth with ease. Whole industries grew up around them - one of my first jobs was programming binary loadlifters repairing computerised cheque-readers - they're an example of a…
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2024 Update. Some of the Tweets in this post have been deleted. You can see them on the archived version of this page. It is a truth universally acknowledged, that any photograph which doesn't fit your political viewpoint must have been photoshopped. A few weeks ago, as I was driving down the M40, I saw a giant "Vote Leave" poster with a fairly repulsive message on it. Terence Eden is on…
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At this point, I think it is a certainty that the UK will vote to leave the EU. The people who are anti-EU are passionate about their cause - every single one of them will be out to vote. For the rest of us, the EU doesn't occupy our every waking thought, we're happy to benefit from it but if the weather is rainy, we might not vote. With all that said, I'd like to take a moment to point out…
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Earlier this year, I attended a lecture given by Alan Rusbridger - the outgoing editor of The Guardian - entitled "The World After Snowden." Held at Oxford University, and attended by journalists, technologists, and former spies - it was an exceptionally interesting talk and provoked a lively debate over dinner. In light of the publication of the disastrous Investigatory Powers Bill, I've…
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The Labour candidate I wanted to vote for just lied straight to my face. So I'm backing his Green opponent. Last night I attended a local hustings for the General Election. The two candidates I was most interested to hear from were Andrew Smith (Labour) and Ann Duncan (Green). The Tory candidate pulled out due to a family emergency, and UKIP didn't bother to show up. The LibDem candidate…
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(An adaptation of my earlier blog post on the same topic.) This is a case study focusing on the usability of encryption systems as used by political dissidents in Apartheid era South Africa. Background - South Africa Between 1948 and 1994, the nation of South Africa was ruled by an ethnically white minority. They set in place a system of government – known as Apartheid - which suppressed, b…
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For the benefit of those who are hard of thinking: I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the Communist Party. One of the delightful things about living in Oxford is that there are a wide range of events going on. Events run by people who I like, run by people I vehemently disagree with, events run by intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals alike. I enjoy hearing from a variety of people …
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My father tells a story of when I was very young and helping him do the shopping in the local supermarket. As I started to lift apples into a bag, he told me to stop, "We don't buy fruit from South Africa," he explained. A woman near us in the aisle turned to him and said, "Quite right too! Imagine all your fruit being touched by black people." At the time, South Africa was control by…
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I have been reading a wonderful account of how The ANC in South Africa developed and used encryption to avoid persecution by the Apartheid regime. The article is a good 15,000 words and will take you some time to read. It is a fascinating account of how an ersatz encryption technology was developed by enthusiastic amateurs using acoustic couplers, DTMF, tape recorders, and early mobile phones. …
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I've written before about the difference between a person being childless and being childfree. It is a simple matter of intention. Those who want children but don't have them are childless - whereas those with no desire to procreate are childfree. This is quite an important distinction - and yet it is almost completely absent from the recent Office of National Statistics' report saying "one…
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