Look, it’s heartbreaking that Hillary Clinton lost the electoral college while winning the popular vote by almost 3M votes, with as many votes as Obama won in 2012, while Trump won only 0.35% more than Dukakis. That said, the Electoral College is the name of the game, and, until we change it, we should live by its rules. I don’t buy the Trumpian argument that, had the rules been popular vote, Trump would have campaigned in California and NY and won that, too. I don’t buy that for a second. But it doesn’t matter: rules are rules, democracies follow rules, … Continue reading the electoral college should reject Trump

Donald Trump is the President-Elect of the United States of America. What a catastrophe. I’ve been trying for days to write some thoughts. Every time, I am gobsmacked by yet another insane development. Bannon. The Muslim Registry. The “blind” trust. The business meetings interspersed with mild transition planning. We know what’s going on. We know who Trump is. He told us throughout the campaign, and he’s telling us again, every single day. He wants power and money. The truth doesn’t matter as long as he gets his way. He doesn’t believe in the Constitution unless it serves his purpose. Trump … Continue reading We know what’s going on and we know what to do

It’s voting season! Which means everyone is asking questions like: wait, why can’t I vote online? how hard can voting really be? shouldn’t this all be open-source? isn’t it just as easy to hack paper voting as electronic voting? is Russia hacking our voting machines? why do we even need voting machines when other countries count by hand? maybe there’s enough time to fix things before November 8th? Hasn’t the blockchain solved voting already? For your convenience, I have compiled this handy election technology & security cheat-sheet. you can’t vote online for good reason. (a) We don’t know how to … Continue reading Voting Security Cheatsheet [2016 Edition]

[This is … hopeful fiction] My fellow Americans, When I ran for President in 2008, in the last stretch of the campaign, a woman at one of my rallies stood up and expressed fears about Obama because “he’s an Arab.” I could have stoked those fears, and many Republicans wanted me to. Instead, I chose to answer “no, Ma’am, he’s a decent family man, a citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues.” I chose decency over easy political gain and demagoguery. (Ignore for a moment the implication that “Arab” and “decent family man” are opposites.) At some point … Continue reading What John McCain could say

If you pay attention to tech/policy stories, then surely you know about the Apple/FBI situation. Though this story has been broadly covered, I don’t think we’re having the right debate. And the right debate is, of course, very subtle. So here goes my attempt to nail that subtlety. What’s Going On? The FBI wants access to a particular criminal/terrorist’s iPhone. They have a warrant. The iPhone is locked, and if the FBI tries a few bad PIN codes, the phone will erase its data as a defense mechanism. Also, iPhones are programmed to slow down password attempts after a few … Continue reading On Apple and the FBI

[this is a little bit raw… on purpose.] My sons, You are just 6 and 3, and so you don’t know what happened tonight. A group of suicide bombers killed 150 people in Paris, your father’s hometown. The feeling in my gut today is much like the one I felt on that Tuesday in September 2001, as I tried to get to my office in TriBeCa, shell-shocked people on the street walking past me, thousands of dead in the rubble. Profound sadness, deep anger, frustration, and powerlessness. And this nagging feeling that one of the victims could, under slightly different circumstances, … Continue reading Letter to My Two Sons – November 13th, 2015