VPN, or a Virtual Private Network, connects computers and other devices using an encrypted connection. This means that all data travelling through such a network is unreadable to anyone who might intercept the data stream, making it as private as it would be if all of the connected devices resided within the walls of a private property (like your home). In other words if you connect your computer to a VPN, and route all of your online activity through it, this activity can no longer be tracked by your internet Read More

Most people will probably find it kind of ridiculous if someone suggests, with a straight face, that the machines will one day “rise up” against us, essentially realising some of the scenarios presented in pop scifi movies like The Terminator and I, Robot. So I am not going to say that. What I am going to say, however, is that we will likely have a problem with robots that isn’t entirely unrelated to these types of scenarios. Worst of all, the problem will be robots that kill. They will kill Read More

In a previous article on privacy we’ve established what it is, how does digitally networking our world affect it, and in a nutshell, why should we care. We established that the best way to ensure your privacy is through technological means, and in this article I offer an overview of what such technologies are. What is common to all of them is that they let you control access to information about yourself, whether it is your location, sites you visit, conversations you have online, things you post about yourself, and Read More

Believe it or not, this isn’t meant to be inflamatory. This is an honest reminder of showstoppers that persistently prevent Ubuntu from becoming what I really do want it to become, and what I think it has a chance of achieving: a complete replacement of Windows or OSX. In fact, I will confess that I like the user interface on Ubuntu more than one on Windows, and find it almost on par with the one in OSX. You might even find me proclaiming Ubuntu as the OSX of the PC Read More

“Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively.”  That is the definition offered by Wikipedia, and it makes sense. Privacy is all about concealment of information about an individual or a group, and the ability to control what of it to reveal and what to keep private. Privacy has been a big topic as of late, which is unsurprising considering that we are living in an age of information; the time when access and sharing of information Read More

Windows 8 is probably the biggest change made to Windows since Windows 1.0. Sure there were drastic changes in the way the Windows user interface looks and feels, but it always followed the same general concept. With Windows 8 we are getting an entirely new paradigm on top of the old one, and new Windows users land right smack in it when they first boot it up. In fact, it’s not so much that the new Windows UI lays on top of the old desktop UI; the desktop UI is Read More

I suppose it would be quite naive of me to expect the internet not to get politicised, so I don’t expect that, as much as I would want that to be the case. The internet is, after all, just an extension of humanity, and if humanity itself is so painfully divided by politics then so shall the internet. But that doesn’t mean I should like it. So 14 internet oriented tech titans formed a lobbying group called The Internet Association, and announced their policy platform. I don’t quite have a Read More

The world is changing, that much should be obvious to anyone. Change, after all, is the only constant, as greek philosopher Heraclitus said. There are some people who make the change happen. They look to the future in their imaginations, conjure images of the future they’d like to see, and try to figure out how to make those imaginings into reality. They envision, discover, develop, and build stuff. And sometimes, what they discover and create can irreversibly change the world. In other words, they are building the future that many Read More

There were quite a few words on the death of Linux on the desktop lately, but people have been saying that for a long time now. Even I talked about it at one point. In some ways Linux is dead, if you judge a liveliness of a platform by how much relevance it has to the mainstream consumer. That doesn’t, however, mean that a revival isn’t possible. And amidst all these death proclamations a few key trends are emerging that could actually signal a rebirth. In any case Linux has Read More

As these kinds of lawsuits often are the case between Samsung and Apple was quite a circus. When we have adult professionals quibble over the shape of a phone and “pinch-to-zoom” gestures it’s hard not to find it at least a little bit ridiculous. It’s no wonder so many believe that the patent system as a whole is broken, serving less to promote true innovation, and more as an anti-competitive weapon for those who can afford to acquire and wield it. Of course there are those who would point out Read More