Robert Winter @rw@qoto.org

Site etiquette indicates my first toot should be by way of an introduction. Seldom comfortable tooting my own horn (pun intended)* I'll keep this brief(ish).

I am a philosopher and historian based in Sydney and currently a doctoral candidate at the #Macquarie Business School; researching Edmund #Burke and his implications for executive leadership.

I chose to undertake my study in a business school, grubby though commercial ends may seem to elevated minds, because Burke was an intensely practical thinker. As he noted:

'‘The End of learning is not knowledge but virtue; as the End of all speculation should be practice of one sort or another… [for] Knowledge is the Culture** of the mind; and he who rested there, would be just as wise as he who should plough his field without any intention of sowing or reaping.'***

In this context, it seems fitting to attempt to apply Burkean research to practical ends.

I am also a passionate advocate for technology reform, which drew me to Mastodon, as I do not think unrestricted access to an individual's data is necessary for the provision of services. #ProtonMail, #Signal, #Threema, #NextCloud, #Mastodon and co. are all demonstrating that FAANG methods are not the only viable way of providing digital connections.

N.B.:
*Thinking intended puns, I am always reminded of the joke about a man who entered a local newspaper's pun contest. He sent in ten different puns, in the hope that at least one of the puns would win. Unfortunately, no pun in ten did.

**Culture in the original sense of ploughing for sowing later.

***Burke, A Note-Book of Edmund Burke, 82-83.

#introductions

Long article short... ‘You should quit using these apps and opt for end-to-end encryption instead.’

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2021/02/27/google-android-messages-update-apple-iphone-ipad-imessage-security-versus-sms-rcs-and-whatsapp-encryption/

In this week’s threat spectrum, there are articles about the collection and (ab)use of biometric data.

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-threat-spectrum-10/

If anyone has server expertise... I am flirting with getting my own Mastodon instance running. The build went well (after much trial and error), but I have hit a blocker at the final step with a nginx error. Have read countless documentation pages, but all they can suggest for a solution is ‘it depends.’

A moments guidance would be appreciated.

https://discourse.joinmastodon.org/t/502-bad-gateway/3396?u=rwinter

A comprehensive presentation by Ben Evans on ‘The Great Unbundling.’

It’s a big deck of slides, but well worth the time to go through the numbers around Covid, digital advertising, China, industry regulation and what changes may be in store for the tech industry as it enters its second 50 year cycle.

https://www.ben-evans.com/presentations

Ahh... the arrogance of de Gaulle never ceases to surprise me...

“Who was that transistor salesman.”

Charles de Gaulle after meeting Hayato Ikeda, Prime Minister of Japan in 1962.

A stimulating and detailed analysis of privacy on the Apple App Store.

Although the offenders in the list of top 25 apps that collect and link data to the user for non-app functionality purposes comes as no surprise; the scope and scale still amazes me...

https://hugotunius.se/2021/01/03/an-analysis-of-privacy-on-the-app-store.html

Some interesting ongoing work by Mozilla on cross-site tracking. It is this sort of focus that keeps me using Firefox...

https://blog.mozilla.org/security/2021/01/26/supercookie-protections/

It is hard to saw how the Navalny led opposition will end. Sadly, there is no inevitable march of history from despotism to democracy. Freedom is hard won and even harder kept.

But what is clear, is that be it a totalitarian state or paranoid elected government, ‘more repression on the streets, more investment in sophisticated surveillance technology and tighter controls over the information sphere’ remain the tools of repression.

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-future-of-navalnyism-in-russian-politics/

#russia #navalnyprotests #surveillance

Great piece of historical perspective taking by Niall Ferguson looking at short squeezes from John Law to GameStop.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-07/niall-ferguson-gamestop-robinhood-reddit-and-the-wind-trade

A panegyric on the benefits of cold showers.

‘Like all human beings, I have days when I’d prefer to lie on a couch and eat Maltesers. I may not give in to the urge, but I do, or rather did, find a dozen ways to delay and faff... I could have faffed for England. Then I started the cold shower experiment.’

My own experiences with them also suggest they reduce the amount of faff in one’s life...

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-power-of-cold-showers

“Trials on Smola, an island off the coast of Norway, found that bird deaths fell by 72 per cent after a blade on each of four turbines was painted black, compared with four neighbouring turbines that remained all white.”

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/birds-saved-if-one-wind-turbine-blade-is-black-9fjzwvfqj

“Here is why the privacy issue is so hard to pin down: most actions that end up causing privacy violations happen ‘in the dark’ and without us realising their long-term effect.”

https://www.ivpn.net/blog/privacy-issue-real-vpns-alone-cant-solve-it/