Author: Johannes Ernst

  • The wars between tech firms and governments are beginning

    First there was Apple vs. the FBI about decrypting iPhone data. As Snowden put it: The @FBI is creating a world where citizens rely on #Apple to defend their rights, rather than the other way around. https://t.co/vdjB6CuB7k — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 17, 2016 Now Microsoft is suing the US Justice department over secrecy orders…

  • Good Bye, Uncle Paul

  • Spam or not spam — I cannot tell, dear United Healthcare

    Occasionally I get e-mail that looks like this. I cannot tell whether this is spam or a just very badly made actual e-mail from United Health, my health insurer: Here’s the evidence: Sender: uhcenews@unitedhealthcare-hmhb.com. Looks very suspicious, as anybody can register a domain like that. Googling the e-mail address produces 18 hits, on mostly strange…

  • Breaking into that iPhone seems easy, for somebody with some money

    (Money like the #FBI clearly has, as evidenced by the fact that they can afford a lenghty lawsuit over the issue) All you do is teardown the phone, unsolder the flash memory (see picture below from iFixIt), make 100,000 copies of the flash, resolder them into 100,000 iPhones, and assign 10 attempts each to 100,000…

  • Why Varoufakis’ “Democracy In Europe Movement” (Diem 25) Matters

    Earlier today, former Greek finance minister, economics professor and self-described “erratic Marxist” Yanis Varoufakis launched his long-awaited new political movement in Berlin, Germany. It calls itself “Democracy in Europe Movement“, aka Diem 25. This is rather significant, and I get to why in a second. But first I want to talk about why it looks…