infosec
I joined Leonhard Weese and Fabian Lischka in leading a 60 minute workshop on information security and encryption for journalists at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Central, Hong Kong. Our goal was to give journalists some basic steps they could take to improve the security of the information the collect
china
Great post about in ChinaLawBlog about how China is putting an end to so-called variable interest entities (VIEs) that most of China's large internet companies, including Tencent, Sina and Baidu, used to IPO overseas and raise funds from foreign investors. Yet, the remarkable fact is that these
identity
Came across this video where a number of students in a British Chinese language school are asked whether they consider themselves British or Chinese or something else. I tweeted the link without comment intentionally hoping no one would notice and a Twitter follower called me out on it. Some thoughts:
china
Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the death of former Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang. The BBC reported on those mourning the anniversary of his death in Beijing: Mourners have gathered to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of China's purged former leader, Zhao Ziyang. More than 100
politics
Many have asked why there has been so much more attention to the Charlie Hebdo attacks compared to Nigeria's Baga Massacre. Here are my thoughts: I've been to Paris multiple times. I've studied French. I've read French cartoons. I've read
bitcoin
Update: Bitstamp CEO Nejc Kodrič issued a comment via Twitter an hour or so after this post went live Bitcoin had a rough year in 2014, losing much of its value. The first few days of 2015 aren't looking much better. Since January 3rd, we've watched
blog
Richard Stallman's views are always "interesting"...his latest on Uber are no different ranging from well-reasoned to the absolutely insane * It requires passengers to run a nonfree program (an app). As always, a nonfree program tramples its users' freedom. Free software has never figured
technology
Paul Graham in his latest treatise argues that the USA should allow more foreign tech workers into the country. American technology companies want the government to make immigration easier because they say they can't find enough programmers in the US. Anti-immigration people say that instead of letting
technology
Great conversation with NYU artificial intelligence expert Gary Marcus by Russ Robert on EconTalk puts our progress on AI in perspective. TL;DR: Progress on artificial intelligence as we know it today is almost all the result of brute force and not actual intelligence. people have always been saying it&
infosec
Great security analysis of promises-to-make-bittorrent-anonymous app Tribler TLDR: Do not use this if your threat model includes active attackers, adversaries versed in cryptography, those with lots of money, or if you wish to be anonymous. Many problems come from using sources of "random" numbers
bitcoin
Apple Pay launched in the US on October 20, 2014, and has been doing very well. 1 million cards added in the first 3 days. In the first 3 weeks, just one merchant, Whole Foods, saw 150,000 Apple Pay transactions. Few Bitcoin accepting merchants are seeing anything close to
politics
Asks a friend of a friend on Facebook: Not absolute sure if legal legitimacy is close to moral legitimacy... Can contravention of the law be justified on moral grounds? Legality and morality are not the same. From [Bastiat's The Law] : "The law perverted! And the police powers
