âš‘ â’¶ Free Software developer, Black Lives Matter, abolish all prisons, 0xACAB âš‘
Enhanced transcript of panel introductions at the “Technology, the Internet, and Race: Tool for Liberation or Oppression?” session at the recent at 25th annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Washington, DC held on October 14th, 2015. The transcript is “enhanced” because its links were added by me, the transcriber, and do not mean to …
Continue reading “Technology, the Internet, and Race: Tool for Liberation or Oppression?”
Today is the fourth anniversary of Len Sassaman‘s passing. Len was a gifted programmer, he was a passionate privacy advocate—Len pioneered and maintained the Mixmaster anonymous remailer software for many years—and he was a very, very kind person. He was also a friend. Len was the first person to walk me through setting up OTR …
I’ve been enjoying my brief but focused time in The Federation and away from corporate social media so far. (“The Federation” is what we nerds who love freedom and, by extension, free software, call the distributed social network outside corporate-controlled filter bubble prisons like Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.) Oh sure, there’s the usual Internet asshole …
Continue reading “No one understands what censorship even means, because they are being censored”
I recently announced that my blog archives will no longer be publicly available for long: Let me repeat that: while I am still “on Tumblr†and so on for now, my archives will not remain available for very long. If you find something of mine useful, you will need to make a copy of it …
A classic exchange from the WordPress Support Forum for one of my plugins: Them: Hi, When I first installed this plugin, there was an automatic horizontal scrollbar so that users could move to see all of the columns. However, it has now disappeared which means one of the columns is not fully readable. Can you …
Continue reading “The mystery of the disappearing horizontal scrollbar”
Everyone realizes that the Internet’s public squares have a harassment problem. No one seems to know what to do about it. I argue that’s because they don’t know how to think about online harassment and abuse—or even power, more generally. I argue that I do. But don’t take my word for it. Take my ideas, …
Continue reading “How would you design an online social network that was hostile to abusers?”
When I saw that a friend had shared this years-old post about Facecebook founder Mark Zuckerberg‘s infamous remark that “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity,” I thought I’d chime in: Actually, Zuckerberg’s is a common misunderstanding of telecommunications. If you’ve done even a tiny bit of academic study …
Continue reading “The Internet as an Identity-Multiplying Technology”
When you wear these [“URME Surveillance”] devices the cameras will track me instead of you and your actions in public space will be attributed as mine because it will be me the cameras see. All URME devices have been tested for facial recognition and each properly identifies the wearer of me on facebook, which has …
If you’re not a computer nerd, buying web hosting can feel like buying a house. Or, worse, like buying a car. Or, even worse than that, a new computer.
It doesn’t have to be painful. In fact, most people who want a simple blog or website don’t even need to buy web hosting in the first place. And, this is the kicker, if you do end up buying web hosting, sooner or later you’ll realize that you’ve invested your whole identity, or your business, or whatever’s important to you, in a place that you don’t actually have any control over, and can’t easily leave. Backups will become important, but they’re gonna be a massive headache. You may find yourself hitting resource quotas, or your credit card will be charged for hidden and contract “renewal” fees or some such bullshit like that, none of which you were told about when you signed up. And, worst of all, you could find yourself digitally gagged, censored, or even outright banned just because someone else on the same “shared server” you were assigned was behaving badly.
Fuck. That. Shit. And, more to the point, why on God’s green Earth would you pay to be subjected to such bullshit?
With just a little bit of patience, enough computer know-how to understand how to click a few download links and move files from one folder to another, and a willingness to read this post, you can avoid every single one of those frustrating web host experiences, all while ending up with seamless, automatic backups of your entire blog, the ability to legally dodge shitty censorship and corporate contracts alike, and the ability to easily participate in the ever-expanding social media frenzy without spending hours managing all your different accounts manually. And did I mention it’s free?
Read the full post, it’s worth it.
This post was originally published on July 28, 2012, on my other blog. Transcript: Why are you so angry on the Internet? A lot of what I think confuses people about me is the fact that I interact with them in a way that’s unfamiliar to them. And that can be scary ‘cause it’s inherently …