Never let a good crisis go to waste

It’s been a terribly busy year in politics in the UK, and whilst we’ve all been busy worrying about Brexit and the US elections our glorious masters have been quietly getting on with business. Doing such things as deciding that our ISP’s must block legal adult sites if they don’t do enough to verify our ages, not matter where they are located. The OpenRights group have a petiton to stop that. However the bill also requires that ISPs record every site you visit for 12 months. Of course if those weren’t bad enough on their own search engines and social … Continue reading

Yet another Facebook contender

I meant to write about the problems with Facebook alternatives quite a while back, as there are many many problems with Facebook (and indeed all social media platforms) but so far no platform addresses them all or indeed very many of them. However the news that “Anonymous” are launching a Super-private social network is an excellent excuse to revisit the topic. As they’re in the news and the new kid on the block I’m going to use them as an example of how difficult the problems of online social network platforms actually are, all of the complaints and criticisms I … Continue reading

Digital glory holes

A bit of a break from politics as articles about burying USB sticks in walls are once more doing the rounds. These are not new articles, they just seem to get picked up and re-circulated every now and again. So far I’ve not seen any of the these USB sticks, I suspect I don’t frequent areas with a high enough hipster quotient. To save you reading the article the theory is something like this – it allows for an anonymous off-line file sharing mechanism. So a bit like the old hiding messages in walls that I read about in something … Continue reading