Friday, November 26, 2021

Crypto-Currencies are not “crypto”

The name “crypto-currency” has been attached to Bitcoin and a host of online, blockchain based exchange units … but where’s the “crypto” aspect? 


The realm of information security must "reclaim" the word crypto from people who trade in Bitcoins and other digital currencies, according to industry veteran Bruce Schneier.
"I have long been annoyed that the word 'crypto' has been co-opted by the blockchain people, and no longer refers to 'cryptography'," blogged Schneier in a brief posthttps://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/11/crypto-means-cryptography-not-cryptocurrency.html
Look up the word “crypto” in many dictionaries to learn it refers to cryptography, which in turn is defined as “the computerized encoding and decoding of information”. Search “crypto” on Google, however, and you’ll see a host of top results pointing to cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum.


This lexical shift has weighed heavily on cryptographers, who, over the past few years, have repeated the rallying cry “Crypto means cryptography” on social media. 


Read more over at the Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/nov/18/crypto-cryptocurrency-cryptographers


Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Steve Jobs Credited VisiCalc with Triggering Apple's Success

VisiCalc made spreadsheets key to initial personal computer success (Apple IIe). Later, desktop publishing with the Mac. Then, hypertext and the www with the NeXT. Finally, mobile computing with the iPhone and iPad

Steve Jobs was very clear in how crucial it was to the early success of Apple. "If Visicalc had been written for some other computer," he told his interviewer in 1990, "you'd be interviewing somebody else right now."



Monday, November 1, 2021

Government overreacting -- and over-reaching -- subpoenaed data a comms app doesn’t have

According to a post on the Signal blog, a federal grand jury in the Central District of California has subpoena'd Signal for a whole pile of user data, like subscriber information, financial information, transaction histories, communications, and more. HotHardware reports: The thing is, the subpoena is moot: Signal simply doesn't have the data to provide

The company can't provide any of the data that the grand jury is asking for because, as the company itself notes, "Signal doesn't have access to your messages, your chat list, your groups, your contacts, your stickers, [or] your profile name or avatar." The only things that Signal can offer up to the court are Unix timestamps for when the accounts in question were created and last accessed the service. 

Read more here:
https://signal.org/bigbrother/cd-california-grand-jury/