Uncategorized – DocBug https://www.docbug.com/blog Intelligence, media technologies, intellectual property, and the occasional politics Mon, 11 Jul 2022 21:48:21 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 Understanding what happened in Bucha https://www.docbug.com/blog/archives/966 Wed, 13 Apr 2022 04:29:08 +0000 https://www.docbug.com/blog/?p=966 Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has flagged articles from Der Spiegel and the Wall Street Journal that together paint a grim picture of how the Russian occupation of Bucha, Ukraine started as a simple occupation but quickly devolved into hellish war crimes against the civilian population. Sounds like a combination of an undisciplined occupying force that became increasingly paranoid as they started taking casualties, and direct orders from above to purge politicians and other Ukrainian nationalists.

]]> Opaekaa Falls, Kauai, Hawaii https://www.docbug.com/blog/archives/853 Wed, 24 Aug 2011 06:43:00 +0000 https://www.docbug.com/blog/?p=853 Taken using SynthCam on iPhone. Address: State Highway 560, Kilauea, Hawaii.

Kilauea waterfall

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]]> Mystery clockwork https://www.docbug.com/blog/archives/833 Sat, 16 Jul 2011 06:22:00 +0000 https://www.docbug.com/blog/?p=833 My father in law goes to clock shows, and recently gave us this piece. It has a lever on the back that you push to wind the spring, and then the gear turns one complete revolution. It also has what looks like two electrical switches. One is closed when stopped and opens while the gear turns, the other is open when stopped but gets pulsed by the gear as it rotates: 4 pulses in a row, then a pause, then 7 more pulses followed by a longer period closed before finally opening again.

So my question for all you creative minds out there: what is this thing? Some kind of SETI communicator for steampunk aliens? An exotic binary-inspired egg timer? What?

Mystery clockwork

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]]> Psiphon: censorship circumvention personal web-proxy https://www.docbug.com/blog/archives/695 Fri, 08 Dec 2006 00:14:43 +0000 https://www.docbug.com/blog/archives/695 Psiphon is a new anti-censorship web proxy just released by U. Toronto. People outside of a censoring country run a Psiphon server, and people inside a censoring country (China&lt/cough>) just go to the server's URL and enter whatever URL they want to visit in the page's own virtual toolbar. The server handles encryption and proxying of the web pages automatically, and gets around URL-based and content-based filters.

One interesting aspect is that they're not doing anything to help people find a particular proxy. Instead they're relying on social networks, which is to say word-of-mouth:

A social network is a structure of nodes - usually individuals or organizations - that have ties between them, such as families or groups of friends or colleagues. psiphon leverages social networks as the discovery mechanism. The psiphonode administrator and the psiphonite(s) have a trust relationship and the web address is known only to these trusted people. Each network of psiphonode/psiphonites chooses how to grow the network. It can be small and extremely private or large and relatively semi-private. It depends on the specific context and needs of the psiphonites.

The nice thing about this set up is that it doesn't need any new routing or discovery infrastructure (since it relies on people to set them up themselves) and it makes it harder for governments to find Psiphon servers and block their ports.

(Props to Infothought for the link.)

]]> Psiphon is a new anti-censorship web proxy just released by U. Toronto. People outside of a censoring country run a Psiphon server, and people inside a censoring country (<cough>China</cough>) just go to the server’s URL and enter whatever URL they want to visit in the page’s own virtual toolbar. The server handles encryption and proxying of the web pages automatically, and gets around URL-based and content-based filters.

One interesting aspect is that they’re not doing anything to help people find a particular proxy. Instead they’re relying on social networks, which is to say word-of-mouth:

A social network is a structure of nodes – usually individuals or organizations – that have ties between them, such as families or groups of friends or colleagues. psiphon leverages social networks as the discovery mechanism. The psiphonode administrator and the psiphonite(s) have a trust relationship and the web address is known only to these trusted people. Each network of psiphonode/psiphonites chooses how to grow the network. It can be small and extremely private or large and relatively semi-private. It depends on the specific context and needs of the psiphonites.

The nice thing about this set up is that it doesn’t need any new routing or discovery infrastructure (since it relies on people to set them up themselves) and it makes it harder for governments to find Psiphon servers and block their ports.

(Props to Infothought for the link.)

]]>