Me
My name is Mark Doliner. I’m a computer software engineer living and working in North Carolina, USA. I worked in the San Francisco Bay area for 13 years before moving back East in 2019. My email address is mark@kingant.net.
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Category Archives: Computers
On the Shadow Brokers NSA leaks
The leaks published by The Shadow Brokers (Wikipedia, New York Times) are the perfect example of why we should minimize the sensitive information kept by the government. I posted about this in the context of encryption backdoors two years ago. … Continue reading
Posted in All, Computers
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Technology news briefs
There were three events last week that I thought didn’t get enough news coverage: 1. Good news: Proposed restrictions on warrantless electronic device border searches Bills were proposed in the Senate and House to require a probable cause warrant before … Continue reading
Posted in All, Computers
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Safari invalid certificate handling sucks
Update 2020-06-03: It’s been a long time since I first posted this. It’s quite possible these problems are all fixed. I haven’t tested—sorry! Update 2017-11-03: Some of these issues have been improved on macOS Safari (I didn’t check iOS). Original … Continue reading
Posted in Computers
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Dear Government: Please Don’t Muck With Encryption
I was prompted to write this after hearing that the Obama Administration is meeting with the creators of a petition for strong encryption (edit: you can now read the EFF’s thoughts). Over the past year officials of various governments have … Continue reading
Posted in All, Computers
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Net Neutrality, Netflix, and Comcast
Net neutrality is weird and complex. It’s been in the news increasingly more over the past few years. Let’s look at an example. Netflix recently started paying Comcast (info, more info) so that Comcast would provide customers with a better … Continue reading
Should the NSA be allowed to scan our personal email?
It seems pretty likely that the NSA is operating a large-scale system called XKeyscore that captures and scans private Internet communications like email. Yesterday I talked about the constitutionality of such a system. Regardless of whether the NSA is allowed … Continue reading
Violating the Fourth Amendment
I recently tweeted: “Hey why do @NSACareers and @BarackObama seem to think it’s ok to break the law and access my communications? I find that strange.” That’s a bold assertion, so I’m obliged to explain myself. The Fourth Amendment to … Continue reading
Four Pidgin Summer of Code students
Pidgin was awarded four students for this year’s Google Summer of Code. It was a difficult process to select just four students from the 34 great applications we received. These are the projects we finally chose: Ankit Vani will be … Continue reading
Posted in All, Computers, Pidgin
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