Hide in the network. Implement hidden services. Use Tor to anonymize yourself. Yes, the NSA targets Tor users, but it’s work for them. The less obvious you are, the safer you are.
Encrypt your communications. Use TLS. Use IPsec. Again, while it’s true that the NSA targets encrypted connections — and it may have explicit exploits against these protocols — you’re much better protected than if you communicate in the clear.
Assume that while your computer can be compromised, it would take work and risk on the part of the NSA — so it probably isn’t. If you have something really important, use an air gap. Since I started working with the Snowden documents, I bought a new computer that has never been connected to the Internet. If I want to transfer a file, I encrypt the file on the secure computer and walk it over to my Internet computer, using a USB stick. To decrypt something, I reverse the process. This might not be bulletproof, but it’s pretty good.
Be suspicious of commercial encryption software, especially from large vendors. My guess is that most encryption products from large US companies have NSA-friendly back doors, and many foreign ones probably do as well. It’s prudent to assume that foreign products also have foreign-installed backdoors. Closed-source software is easier for the NSA to backdoor than open-source software. Systems relying on master secrets are vulnerable to the NSA, through either legal or more clandestine means.
Try to use public-domain encryption that has to be compatible with other implementations. For example, it’s harder for the NSA to backdoor TLS than BitLocker, because any vendor’s TLS has to be compatible with every other vendor’s TLS, while BitLocker only has to be compatible with itself, giving the NSA a lot more freedom to make changes. And because BitLocker is proprietary, it’s far less likely those changes will be discovered. Prefer symmetric cryptography over public-key cryptography. Prefer conventional discrete-log-based systems over elliptic-curve systems; the latter have constants that the NSA influences when they can.
If you haven’t already read the full post, you should.
Conor, EI4JN asked me a few weeks ago if I would help him out at the Ocean to City , as he was doing safety boat and could do with an extra pair of hands.
Last Saturday was a fabulous day on the water. I thoroughly enjoyed it, though I was quite envious of the kayakers, they all seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely.
After the last competing boat passed our location, we motored up to the city and I started taking a few pictures again. This family passed us heading downriver, the parents looked to be getting the most enjoyment from the spin.
Fingers crossed that that was not the full extent of summer 2013 in Ireland!
Got organised enough to get away this weekend so we headed into the Nire Valley. Making it to Hanora’s Cottage just in time for a fabulous dinner on Friday evening.
The weather was looking decidedly dodgy when we started our walk on Saturday morning, with a planned destination being the viewing point over Coumduala Lough. Herself was not impressed when we got soaked even before we got up to the Sgilloge Loughs, but other than a few menacing looking clouds, that was the only rain shower that hit us for the day. Enjoyable walk, enjoyable weather, great weekend, just what the doctor ordered!
So I thought I knew what a kilogram was until I read this.
Photo: Robert Rathe/National Institute of Standards and Technology
Once a year, three officials bearing three separate keys meet at the bottom of a stairwell at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, in Sèvres, France. There they unlock a vault to check that a plum-size cylinder of platinum iridium alloy is exactly where it should be. Then they close the vault and leave the cylinder to sit alone, under three concentric bell jars, as it has for most of the past 125 years.
“So what?” you say.
The trouble posed by the master kilogram is apparent in the many friction-filled steps by which it calibrates other masses. Once every few decades, a scientist plucks the cylinder from its perch with chamois-leather-padded pincers, rubs its surface with a cloth soaked in alcohol and ether, and steam-cleans it. Then he puts the prototype in a precise balance that compares it to the bureau’s official copies, which are in turn compared to copies kept by member countries. And thus the prototype’s mass trickles down to set the standard for the rest of the world.
The system has been far from seamless. When the cylinder was last removed from the vault in 1988, the bureau’s metrologists were disappointed to discover that its mass and those of its official copies had drifted apart by as much as 70 micrograms since 1889. That discrepancy is tiny—comparable to the mass of a small grain of sugar—but it confirmed a troubling instability. All that metrologists can say is that the master kilogram seems to have lost as much as 50 µg over the course of a century relative to its siblings. But the actual drift could be up or down, and it might even be a lot more than 50 µg, because the prototype and its metallurgically identical copies could all be changing as an ensemble.
I attended Jimmy’s book launch last Saturday evening. I had never been to a book launch before, so I was curious. There was huge demand for his signature on the night, and with the demand for the book, all the hardback copies seemed to evaporate. Pictured above is my own copy, and I duly got in line to get Jimmy to sign it.
As to the book itself, excellent photos. Some different perspectives of familiar places, and some of unfamiliar places, places that wouldn’t be on the normal hillwalking path or places where you wouldn’t think to stop and look around.
In his speech, amongst other things, Jimmy highlighted that a major challenge for walkers is how to look after the fantastic resource that is the Galtees (and indeed all our mountain ranges) now, and into the future?
This evening, a long partnership ended. This partnership has existed for approximately 15 years, longer than I’ve owned my car, my (our) house, indeed longer than I’ve been married.
It was a long and amicable relationship, based on mutual dependency and trust. I supplied the power, and, in return, it provided me with light. I am talking of course, about a now defunct, Philips 18watt energy saving lightbulb. It has now joined it’s colleague in lightbulb heaven!
As far as the potential applications, Clanet waxes futuristic. “I can imagine [designing] a car. The faster it goes, the more it deforms and the less friction it has with surrounding air, so it can go even faster. It would be a fantastic car.”
Random thoughts — Mostly Amateur Radio, Satellite, Linux or Work related.
