Yesterday’s Guardian contained a quarter page advertisement from “hibu” (the company formerly known as Yell, and before that, Yellow Pages). The advertisement showed a picture of a bright red and green fish swimming against a tide of uniformly blue fish. The headline was “Get spotted on all kinds of digital devices”. The ad finished with …
October 2013 archive
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2013/10/25/im-sure-that-is-not-what-they-meant/
Oct 25 2013
Oliver Stone on PRISM
I am a big fan of Oliver Stone movies. Outside the pages of the Guardian and its sister paper the Observer, the level of comment in the UK on NSA/GCHQ surveillance capability remains bizarrely muted. In the US they are at least having a conversation. Whether that conversation results in any sensible decisions, and then …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2013/10/25/oliver-stone-on-prism/
Oct 12 2013
wd caviar green load cycle count
Back in January of this year I upgraded my desktop’s hard drive to a 2 TB WD Caviar Green. Not the world’s fastest drive, but quiet, power efficient, and, so I thought, good value for money. I subsequently used two of the same disks in a new build RAID 1 server (which I must get …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2013/10/12/wd-caviar-green-load-cycle-count/
Oct 09 2013
Snowden paranoia
A recent exchange on the tor-talk mailing list about conspiracy theories elicited this gem from “Ted Smith” (obviously a Bob Heinlein fan). “One of the more Gibsonesque theories I’ve heard is that Snowden is a CIA operative working to destabilize the NSA’s surveillance system on behalf of the CIA and other elite that feel too …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2013/10/09/snowden-paranoia/
Oct 09 2013
running out of money
The failure of the US Government to agree a budget with Congress is having some interesting effects. NIST appears to be completely shut down: (Click images for full size). The NSA says “Due to the Government Shutdown, this site is not being updated.” (Though one assumes that they are still being funded….) Whilst the Whitehouse …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2013/10/09/running-out-of-money/
Oct 05 2013
that’s completely ludicrous
Glenn Greenwald on Newsnight. The full episode of Newsnight’s report including Greenwald’s interview and comment from Sir David Omand (ex Director GCHQ) can be seen here on BBC’s iplayer. Gordon Corera, the BBC’s Security respondent reports here on the Newsnight episode. As an aside, I was amused by Ross Anderson’s claim that many academics had …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2013/10/05/thats-completely-ludicrous/
Oct 05 2013
the guardian on tor
My last post noted that the Guardian had posted a series of articles on the Tor network and Snowden’s latest revelations about how the NSA has been attacking that network. All those posts are worth reading, but my favourite is the one by Bruce Schneier explaining how the NSA has attacked Tor users through browser …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2013/10/05/the-guardian-on-tor/
Oct 05 2013
good news for tor
The past couple of days have seen a flurry of news stories about Tor. Some of the news has hit the mainstream media, some of it hasn’t. Yet. A couple of day ago, a rather plaintive post to the tor-talk mailing list read: “looking for a way to contact silk road.Site shut down.money at stake.” …
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2013/10/05/good-news-for-tor/
Oct 02 2013
another good reason to avoid the kindle
My thanks as always to xkcd (P.S. Take a look at xkcd 533 and read the comment in the “mouseover” title popup. Then try not to laugh.)
Permanent link to this article: https://baldric.net/2013/10/02/another-good-reason-to-avoid-the-kindle/