#67: “Your encryption is useless, Charlie Brown”

This week Dave and Gunnar talk about encrypting everything, why encryption doesn’t matter, and why we are all Charlie Brown now.

• Every videogame memory from Gunnar’s childhood, implemented in JavaScript
  • Taipan!



• UK spy chief, parroting his US counterparts, calls for crypto backdoors


• End-to-End Gmail Encryption code is up.


• New from the EFF: Secure Messaging Scorecard
  • Update for 2020 (HT Lydia Yates of Comparitech!): The best encrypted messaging apps (and their limitations) in 2020



• PrivacyGrade: Grading The Privacy Of Smartphone Apps


• Verizon and AT&T “supercookie” MITM attack. See if you’re being tracked at the obviously named amibeingtracked.com.


• D&G bait of the week: Dropbox’s Drew Houston Responds To Snowden’s Privacy Criticism: It’s A Trade-Off


• Aerophobia meets claustrophobia: Windowless Planes Will Give Passengers Panoramic Views. Ready To Use Within 10 Years.


• Yay? Why Facebook Just Launched Its Own ‘Dark Web’ Site


• Check your Hilton HHonors Points: Hackers plunder Hilton ‘HHonors’ rewards points, go on shopping spree


• ORNL and Dave’s replay: GovLoop: How Open Source Can Help Overcome Government’s Biggest Challenges


• OpenStack User Survey November 2014 are out. We maintain the vast majority of technologies used in computer, network, and storage, and 40% of the user base. Sweet!


• Heroism as anti-pattern: “VPAT is Public Sector specific, and therefore all previous cases have been resolved successfully by referring to Gunnar.”


• Ben Balter’s guide to communicating on GitHub works even without GitHub.


• EFF guide to avoiding surveillance includes not just articles, but “playlists” based on user stories.

Cutting Room Floor

• Good Grief! Cancer Boy! is a strange little film reveals the utter futility of Charlie Brown’s very existence – in German!
  • Related: Nein Quarterly



• Windows93


• Movie trailer of the week: Daylight Saving


• Scientific paper of the week: The hipster effect:When anticonformists all look the same


• YouTube Flight Training of the week: Practice landing a Boeing with a charming Lithuanian accent.