Containing random links to read about privacy, security, programming and FOSS in general. Sometimes about life.
Resuming this after 2 years. A lot of things happened within these 2 days. I never thought much about how much time will it take to settle down in Sweden, but it seems 2 years is not enough :)
For now I want you all to watch this talk from Mike Monteiro, How to fight fascism.
If you want to discuss any of these topics, hop on to the Libera.chat server (IRC), and come to the #learnandteach channel. Or you can find me on fediverse https://toots.dgplug.org/@kushal.
Too many times, I was asked why I don't invest in various crypto coins. Back in the days when we used to have conferences in real life, random strangers often came to me. They told me to use blockchain which will solve all of the security problems in the application (just imagine any application). When I started asking for a patch with full implementation, that trouble went away fast.
Now, a 2 hours long video has all the explanations as required. Watch it with your family, share it with your friends.
Watch Brian Kernighan talking about The early days of Unix at Bell Labs.
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Kushal
Ukraine Govt websites were attacked couple of days. More than anything else, this is direct way to create pressure on Government . The more our lives are entangled with the Internet, the bigger the chances of getting effected in the thinking process. All the different social media sites, and the algorithms they use to show content to us, are very good example of such attacks to our personal space.
Staying in the same topic, The Wire released the 3rd part of their Tek Fog story.
Btw, my workshop in PyCon Sweden 2021 on Writing Python modules using Rust is available on Youtube.
If you want to discuss any of these topics, hop on to the Libera.chat server (IRC), and come to the #learnandteach channel. Or you can find me on fediverse https://toots.dgplug.org/@kushal.
Kushal
Resuming this newsletter after 10 months. In between, we had the second wave of COVID in India, the whole family was down with it. And then we managed to move to Sweden. Still settling down.
I kept taking the notes in between for the newsletter but did not send it out. I guess I am in a state now to resume it again.
As a primary story, I would love if you all could take a few minutes and read this story from The Wire and learn how technology (especially big IT companies) is helping the current political party in power to
artificially inflate the popularity of the party, harass its critics and manipulate public perceptions at scale across major social media platforms.
Part 2 of the story is also out. Please share the links with our friends and family. Most people around the world will never believe that these applications exist, and they can actually affect the mass.
If you want to discuss any of these topics, hop on to the Libera.chat server (IRC), and come to the #learnandteach channel. Or you can find me on fediverse https://toots.dgplug.org/@kushal.
Kushal
Instead of writing the newsletter, I spent the last few hours figuring how to get back my primary domain. The register system did not auto-renew, and I had a few hours of panic to get it back. Finally, it seems things are working once again.
Device and Data Access when Personal Safety is At Risk is a special guide from Apple. It contains many useful tips which you can regularly use too.
If you want to discuss any of these topics, hop on to the Freenode server (IRC), and come to the #learnandteach channel. Or you can find me on fediverse https://toots.dgplug.org/@kushal.
Kushal
In the last week's newsletter, I mentioned the book This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race. I hope a few of you already started reading it. This week we have new information about one of the major stories from the book. Apparently, the Chinese teams managed to get the same exploits from Equation Group 3 years earlier (2013) before the Shadow Broker leak. They were happily using the offensive tools against the USA, where the original exploits were found by the US folks only. This story warns us once again about why we should make responsible disclosures. All of the computer exploits can be used against the creator. You can read the wired story with details, or the Checkpoint report for technical details on how did they identify the exploits.
A story on Gabriel Weinberg and Duckduckgo
You should listen to Michael Foord talking to Brian from Test & Code on testing, TDD, and many things more.
If you want to discuss any of these topics, hop on to the Freenode server (IRC), and come to the #learnandteach channel. Or you can find me on fediverse https://toots.dgplug.org/@kushal.
Kushal
At the end of September and the beginning of October, Telegram fixed a couple of vulnerabilities on its client applications. The actual flaws could enable any serious attacker to gain access to secret chats, photos or videos by just sending animated stickers. You can read the detailed story.
Another very exciting news came in the Python world, with the acceptance of PEP 634, aka “Pattern Matching”. Read the tutorial from Guido to see how it will look like. I love pattern matching in Rust, and now in the future, I will use the same in Python.
This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth. You can read an excerpt from the book here.
If you want to discuss any of these topics, hop on to the Freenode server (IRC), and come to the #learnandteach channel. Or you can find me on fediverse https://toots.dgplug.org/@kushal.
Kushal
This week I will just pass on the links I think you all should read.
Hopefully this will help me to break out of the no newsletter state of mind. Last few months, I kept taking notes, but never managed to sit down and write this.
This video is different, it is in Hindi language, with English subtitles. It is for the generation of folks who grew up with Internet. Please watch till the end. And if you don't know the person, then search about him after you watched the video.
Bellingcat is an independent international collective of researchers, investigators and citizen journalists using open source and social media investigation to probe a variety of subjects
I hope you will enjoy the book.
If you want to discuss any of these topics, hop on to the Freenode server (IRC), and come to the #learnandteach channel. Or you can find me on fediverse https://toots.dgplug.org/@kushal.
Kushal
For the last few months, there were no letters from me. My wife, Anwesha is showing COVID symptoms, and the tests came negative. But, her trouble is still continuing for around 3 months now. So, I tried to focus on minimal things.
As I am trying to get back into a routine, I will most probably write much shorter notes here.
On the major news, a 6600 words memo from former Facebook data engineer, Sophie Zhang is giving us how Facebook ignored fake accounts. These accounts mostly represented governments across the world and cause misinterpretation and changed political stories in elections around the world.
A story on the recent lawsuite against The Internet Archive.
If you have a Twitter account and want to delete old tweets/dms, you must try Semiphemeral from Micah F Lee.
If you want to discuss any of these topics, hop on to the Freenode server (IRC), and come to the #learnandteach channel. Or you can find me on fediverse https://toots.dgplug.org/@kushal.
Kushal
This week a small Indian company made a name for themselves when Citizen Lab reported how they hacked too many people as “hackers for hire”. Nicknamed as “Dark Basin” is the company BellTroX InfoTech Services based out of Delhi. They attacked people from different backgrounds, journalists, NGOs, EU parliament members. You should also read the excellent story from Reuters on the same topic.
Many of the young readers never read the Hacker Manifesto published in the Phrack back in 1986.
I discovered Practical Typography and enjoyed a lot reading this. The book is filled with various practical tips and details, which we don't think much on a typical day. But, I feel this is something everyone should read at least once.
If you want to discuss any of these topics, hop on to the Freenode server (IRC), and come to the #learnandteach channel. Or you can find me on fediverse https://toots.dgplug.org/@kushal.
Kushal