Cryptocurrency, quantum supremacy, imminent death of the Internet. So, Google recently announced that they’d achieved quantum supremacy. One of the things that quantum computers are supposed to be really good at is cracking crypto really fast. The past couple of years have seen an explosion of cryptocurrencies, which are one application of blockchain, which reliesContinue reading “Right Thing, Wrong Time”
Tag Archives: crypto
Why Keybase Is Interesting
Unless you are a programmer, it mostly isn’t. Yet. However, if you are a programmer or if you want to send and receive secure messages, then it is kind of interesting. One interesting thing (for programmers) is that it gives you free encrypted git repos. That’s rad. Also, if you want to start sharing theContinue reading “Why Keybase Is Interesting”
Why I Don’t Write Native Apps
Xcode sucks. That’s why. Seriously. This evening I thought, “Hmm, maybe for my next project I’ll see about writing an iOS client for my turn based game server.” So I started looking at a Swift tutorial (the language irritates me so far, but that’s just because so far all the syntactic sugar is solving problemsContinue reading “Why I Don’t Write Native Apps”
Decent Encryption Is Getting Easier
I just found out a thing that makes using PGP with GMail on a Mac easier. The problem: PGP encrypting an email means that, at the time of hitting the “send” button, the computer where the plain text message is stored needs to have your secret key and the public key of the recipient, andContinue reading “Decent Encryption Is Getting Easier”
Going Anonymous
A friend posted a link to this story about the crypto and anonymity tools Edward Snowden used to communicate with journalists before his big reveal. It’s an interesting read, by itself, with lots of links out to various privacy tools. One that especially caught my attention was Tails, an operating system that, “you can startContinue reading “Going Anonymous”
Security Is Not a Compiler Flag
With the ongoing brouhaha surrounding the NSA’s surveillance of everyone, everywhere, I’ve got a few friends who are getting excited about figuring out how to secure their email. I kind of want to tell them that their questions, which boil down to, “How can I send secure email,” are, in the words of Mr. Norrell,Continue reading “Security Is Not a Compiler Flag”
Nothing New under the Gubmint
So, this week people are getting pretty exercised about how the NSA, in some super secret operation code named “PRISM,” has been watching everything people are looking at on the web and keeping track of what phone calls are being made and received. Wil Wheaton posted on Google+ that he’s gonna cancel all his VerizonContinue reading “Nothing New under the Gubmint”