Archives

I’ve been telling everyone for a few years now not to use Telegram because it lacks end-to-end (E2E) encryption by default and cannot be trusted. Without E2E encryption enabled by default, Telegram is able to read and monitor most one-on-one communications on their servers. On top of that, group chats are never E2E encrypted so Telegram can monitor and read all communications in group chats. Read more ⟶

Back in September 2018, I wrote a post criticizing Cloudflare’s IPFS gateway, which they claimed would be ‘highly-reliable’ and ‘security-enhanced’. I argued that this claim is dubious, especially after the company’s CEO arbitrarily decided to take down a website they were supposed to be protecting. Read more ⟶

If you’ve been paying attention to what happened a few weeks ago with PayPal, you’ve seen a glimpse of the dystopian future that awaits us. Read more ⟶

I came across a well-written paper last week titled “Cryptoanarchism and Cryptocurrencies” (August 20th 2020). The paper is written by Usman W. Chohan and it is available for download for free. I highly recommend reading it, even if you think you know a lot about the history of cryptocurrencies. Read more ⟶

With yesterday’s release (version 0.3.5), the QuantumGate C++ networking library introduces support for peer-to-peer Bluetooth connections using the RFCOMM protocol. Bluetooth connections enjoy first class support in the library just like TCP and UDP connections, which means that all other features of QuantumGate are also supported over Bluetooth. Read more ⟶

MobileCoin is a relatively new cryptocurrency developed under the technical guidance of cryptographer Moxie Marlinspike, the designer of the communication protocol used in instant-messaging applications such as Signal Private Messenger (‘Signal’), and later implemented by WhatsApp. Where MobileCoin differs from other cryptocurrencies is in its strong focus on privacy, speed and transaction throughput. Read more ⟶

Several articles have been published in recent months about the problems that people constantly face at local banks. There are also many complaints on social media. Members of parliament even speak of a banking ‘mafia’. Read more ⟶

A few months ago I noticed the new skill assessments feature on LinkedIn and decided to try out the one for C++ to see what it was about. And before I knew it, I spent almost a whole day — without any preparation — behind the computer doing these assessments for all the skills that I had listed on my profile. It was kind of addicting to see the blue checkmark appear behind the skills and I wanted to earn as many of them as possible. Read more ⟶

A little more than a year ago I first blogged about working on support for UDP connections in QuantumGate, and for the past few weeks I’ve focused on getting UDP support in QuantumGate ready for its initial release. I had originally planned for releasing UDP support much earlier around December 2020 or January 2021 but other stuff got in the way, such as Cyberpunk and the two lawsuits I started against the criminal local government. Read more ⟶

In the past I’ve warned multiple times not to use hardware and software from Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei, and more examples keep piling up showing why that’s a bad idea. Read more ⟶

I recently made a commercial for Energy Management & Saving Solutions (EMSS) N.V. Suriname to promote their services. It’s really more of a balance between a commercial and infomercial. The final result can be seen on YouTube (embedded below) or on Archive.org in better quality (larger). Read more ⟶

A recent article by NRC shows how banks are engaging in financial censorship. The article is in Dutch but I’ve translated some of it to English below. Here’s from “De complotdenker bankiert maar elders, zegt de bank” (August 17th 2021): Banks and payment services regularly block accounts of organizations they consider to be spreading fake news about corona and vaccinations. Read more ⟶

There’s a lot to lean from the way in which Big Tech took down social media platform Parler more than a week ago, and one of the lessons to take away from that whole debacle is the fact that Amazon Web Services (AWS) can also not be trusted (with your business). Thanks to AWS stopping their service to Parler, the social media website has now been offline for days. Read more ⟶

WhatsApp has given users an ultimatum to agree to sharing more information with Facebook before February 8th 2021 if they want to continue using the application. As I’ve written about ever since August 2019, Mark Fuckerberg planned to integrate WhatsApp and Instagram much more with Facebook, and this also included advertising and sharing of (user) data. The coming change to WhatsApp will be an even bigger violation of users’ privacy. Read more ⟶

Yesterday I tried sharing a speech by Malcolm X on Facebook and noticed that Facebook is censoring part of the speech based on copyright claims. The speech is included in a cartoon animation video, illustrating the things that Malcolm X talks about, namely the difference between what he calls ‘house negroes’ and ‘field negroes.’ You can see the notification I got from Facebook below. Read more ⟶

A team from the University of Michigan published a study titled “Censored Planet: An Internet-wide, Longitudinal Censorship Observatory” where they look at censorship around the world. Things appear to be getting worse as mentioned: “What we see from our study is that no country is completely free,” said Ram Sundara Raman, U-M doctoral candidate in computer science and engineering and first author of the study. Read more ⟶