Remember: Lavabit

The Snowden leaks demonstrated that major internet companies share user data with law enforcement. What about smaller companies? Let’s look back and remember what happened to Lavabit.

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Recent History: Snowden Leaks

Back in 2013, Edward Snowden revealed the existence and workings of a global apparatus for mass surveillance. What did he reveal? What does that mean for us today?

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Pinephone Unboxing

The PinePhone from Pine64 runs mainline Linux and costs only $150. In this video, I unbox a PinePhone and talk a bit about what it is and how it compares to other phone options.

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Does Your Device have a Universal Backdoor?

Many pieces of modern software, including commonly used mobile phone operating systems, include a mechanism that allows the software provider to remotely access and control the device running the software. This “universal backdoor” cannot be disabled without disrupting important functionality of the software.

What am I talking about? I explain below.

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Unboxing Pinebook Pro

I got a new Pinebook Pro. Here’s a video where I do a quick unboxing and talk a bit about why this kind of device is interesting.

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Running Fiber to My Garage

We just finished moving, and I’m planning to set up a space in our new garage as an office. Unfortunately, there’s no internet in the garage. Solving this required 100 meters of fiber optic cable and drilling through 10 inches of shotcrete.

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Code Is Law; Software Choice is Politics

I’ve been posting videos about open hardware, FOSS software, and privacy. But why bother with this stuff? Aren’t these just technical details that only matter to nerds?

There is one important that people have been arguing about (and having wars over) for all of recorded history: Who makes decisions? The king? Individuals? Liberal democratic institutions?

Selecting computer software means answering this in ways that effect both you and others, and that’s true whether or not that’s what you intended.

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Librem 5 Convergence

In this quick video I demonstrate the basic mechanic of convergence on the Librem 5, where the phone can operate as a handheld mobile device and can dock and operate as a desktop computer. This is especially neat because it uses the same apps in both modes - desktop Linux apps.

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