Interesting reads, 4 June 2018

Interesting things I read on the Internet this week

• Wi-Fi EasyMesh — Wi-Fi Alliance have released a specification for mesh networks. Mesh networks (where routers bounce traffic around themselves) are interesting because they’re tricky to censor and surveil since they can mix up people’s traffic and connect people directly to locally hosted services. In theory they can also be more efficient and resilient to failure too.

• Things For Which Cryptographic Signing Would Be Useful — You can often replace the word “blockchain” with “cryptography” (or even “public database”). Some nice examples of where old fashioned cryptographic signing would be useful.

• The Snooper’s Charter puts UK firms on track for a GDPR headache post-Brexit — After Brexit, we’ll need to continually convince the EU that the UK is GDPR-compatible. Our privacy-trampling Investigatory Powers Act — the Snooper’s Charter — undermines our case, so something will have to give. Lol.

• Goodbye, Amazon — Amazon’s AppStore censors AdGuard for Android, a system-wide ad-blocker. I hadn’t realised Amazon was an advertising company, too.

• Unfortunately, the Electric Scooters Are Fantastic — An electric scooter sceptic is converted after actually trying one. Oh my, I think I’m close to buying one.

• Fusion Project overview — The Tor browser is getting integrated into Firefox’s Private Browsing mode (more or less). I guess this will massively increase traffic to the Tor network. Incidentally, some friends and I operate a tor relay which we fund through OpenCollective.

• I know what you’ll do next summer — A detailed Economist special report on the future of technology and law enforcement. The graphic novel is well worth a look. I’m more sceptical about predictive policing, but a good read nonetheless.

• Empowering Reason — Great concept, an online app designed to facilitate rational debate. I’m really happy to see people working on this sort of tool.