the chaos archive of old mailing lists
Thinking I didn't have much training in methodology as part of my PhD, so I have always been sort of butterfly-meme about methodology generally, if you know...
Locked iPhones and the FBI
Thinking After the assassination attempt on former President Trump earlier this month, after which the shooter was himself killed by law enforcement, I was...
Codebreakers
Thinking One of the most common responses I get when talking about my work in a casual setting (dinner parties, weddings, airplanes) does something like “Oh,...
On RushTok and algorithms
Thinking It's been about a month since the conclusion of sorority rush at the University of Alabama, aka #RushTok, but I still find myself thinking about it....
Officially PhDone
Well, 2023 is more than half over, and I'm finally sending a second newsletter out. But it comes with good news: I successfully defended my PhD dissertation...
Forward progress
Thinking It's the fifth--no, seventh--week of 2023 and I'm just now getting around to writing about my word for the year. Last year it was PRACTICE, in an...
Why study the history of cryptography?
Welcome to the doldrums of the year between Thanksgiving and The Holidays, where if you are anything like me your brain feels like molasses that you'd rather...
Historian detective work: tracking down "crypto wars"
Thinking The term "Crypto Wars" gets used these days to describe the repeated attempts by the government to control various aspects of consumer encryption...
Infodumping in history writing
Thinking
The stories we tell about ourselves
Thinking Last week on the SIGCIS listserv, someone circulated a new-ish collection of oral histories out of Stanford's engineering school, which includes...
Edges and Ends
Thinking We left off last week with the idea of connecting time-sharing networks. To make a very long story short: the Arpanet and subsequent development of...
Security before the internet
As promised, I'm writing a bit more about the history of internet (in)security. This week is part 1, covering the basics of early computer security and what...
The internet has never been secure
Thinking Last week, Twitter's former head of security, Pieter Zatko, aka Mudge, testified before the US House Judiciary Committee about his allegations of...
Oh no, I have to write it
We just got back from a nine-day trip and I am tired. But one of the goals of this newsletter is forcing me to write even when I don't want to, so here we...
Escaping a narrative
Thinking I've been reading and rambling my way into the last part of my dissertation lately, while simultaneously trying to think through how I want to...
When incremental progress doesn't work
Welcome to my experiment in keeping up with writing and thinking and getting better at both. Thinking The first draft of a project (or a chapter, etc) is...