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Ryan Vogt
Randomizing Someone Else’s Creativity as a Form of Creativity
A few nights ago, I saw a friend of mine from Utah, USA, whom I know from a previous video game charity event (Darkwing_Duck_SDA on Twitter), playing a randomized version of The Legend of Zelda. For those of you who haven’t played the original Zelda for NES (I hope I’m not aging myself too badly as the resident […]
Game of Thrones Piracy
The first four episodes of Season 5 of Game of Thrones were leaked early online. Interestingly, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes has stated: “Our experience is [piracy] leads to more penetration, more paying subs, more health for HBO, less reliance on having to do paid advertising… If you go around the world, I think you’re right, Game […]
Online Shaming or Sadistic Trolling
There was an article in the Globe and Mail earlier this week about online shaming, including a discussion of sadism as an inherent character trail. I thought it tied in well to some of our discussions in class; plus, it’s an interesting read as a study break 🙂 Cheers!
John Oliver with Edward Snowden
Here is the John Oliver interview with Edward Snowden that was mentioned in class today. Hilarious, sad, and insightful — all in one.
Who Owns Your Data (Hint: It’s Not You)
Cool little animation from Jorge Cham, interviewing Irene Ng and David Reynolds from Hub of All Things: http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1788 Cheers!
An Older Version of the Four-Chord Song
I thought I’d break from my usual raving rants-about-cryptography-style posts, and just share something a little funny with everyone. If you enjoyed the Four-Chord Song video from yesterday’s class (for people who missed it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I ), here’s one going all the way back to the 1600’s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM Enjoy 🙂
Rogers Calls for End to VPNs
At a conference on 26 February 2015, a Rogers executive called for the Canadian government to shut down VPNs. Here is Dr. Michael Geist’s take on the matter. VPNs, or “virtual private networks”, are a technology used to securely link two physically non-connected networks, and make it is as though the two were one seamless network […]
FCC Votes for Net Neutrality
Just in case Jon forgets to put this little story in News of the Week for next week 😉 FCC votes for net neutrality, a ban on paid fast lanes, and Title II Cheers!
The Lenovo and SSL/TLS Nightmare
In under a year, two horrible incidents (that I can recall) involving SSL/TLS have made the news (I’ll place a link to the older one in the comments). As a cryptography nerd, that makes me happy. SSL/TLS is a protocol that protects online communication. It ensures that your communications are encrypted end-to-end (e.g., only you and […]
The Digital World Reviving Old News
Today in class, we briefly discussed how the BCTV footage of the 1994 Stanley Cup riots is available on YouTube, and how the digital age has a memory that seems to predate the (widespread) digital age. There was an even more amazing example of that memory which came out just today. The handwritten notes of Dr. Alan Turing — the […]