Benlog

security, privacy, transparency.

Archive for January, 2011

a personal update

Posted: Sunday, January 30th, 2011 @ 11:02 pm in personal | 2 Comments »

Tomorrow (Jan 31st) is my last day on the Research Faculty at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital Boston. It’s been a fantastic ride thanks entirely to the folks with whom I had the pleasure of working, in particular Zak Kohane and Ken Mandl. Ultimately, I finally noticed what was staring me in the face: [...]

the difference between privacy and security

Posted: Wednesday, January 26th, 2011 @ 11:51 am in privacy, security, web | 5 Comments »

Facebook today rolled out new security features, both of which are awesome: SSL everywhere, and social re-authentication. True, SSL everywhere should probably be a default, even though I continue to believe that the cost is significantly underestimated by many privacy advocates. Regardless, this announcement is great news. The only nitpick I have, and I point [...]

Facebook, the Control Revolution, and the Failure of Applied Modern Cryptography

Posted: Friday, January 14th, 2011 @ 2:40 am in crypto, privacy, web | 9 Comments »

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was widely assumed by most tech writers and thinkers, myself included, that the Internet was a “Control Revolution” (to use the words of Andrew Shapiro, author of a book with that very title in 1999). The Internet was going to put people in control, to enable buyers [...]

an answer to John Gruber: Google dropping H.264 is good for everyone

Posted: Wednesday, January 12th, 2011 @ 12:22 pm in web | 19 Comments »

Google just dropped support for H.264 in Chrome. John Gruber, among others, is not happy. Now, John Gruber is a very smart guy, but his Apple bias is too much even for me, and it’s preventing him from seeing what is fairly obvious. So, allow me to answer John’s questions, even though I have no [...]