Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
04 Oct 2018, 16:42 p.m.
Miscellaneous Recommendations
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2018 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
- "CARBORUNDORUM > /DEV/NULL" by Annalee Flower Horne is a ten-minutes-into-the-future science fiction short story that works as a feminist Parker Lewis Can't Lose/Ferris Bueller's Day Off homage/critique, a cri de coeur on teen girl agency that ought to be discussed alongside Claire Humphrey's "Four Steps to the Perfect Smoky Eye", and a celebration of teen girl hackers (which Cory Doctorow's "Party Discipline" is, too).
- My fellow Recurser Matt Dupree wrote about push notifications, meditation and noticing. I have started putting my phone in Do Not Disturb mode more frequently, and this essay helps me understand some of the reasons.
- Mechanical engineer and writer Sarah Pavis is available for consulting. She has experience with every stage of designing and manufacturing industrial and consumer products, including travelling to audit factories in China. "...whether you have an idea you're looking to turn into a prototype or a small production run you're looking to scale to high volume manufacture, I can help." I'm working with Sarah right now (Jason and I hired her to run the slides and sound for our show at PyGotham) and she's a detail-oriented, decisive and creative problem-solver.
- Now's a great time to sponsor and spread word about The Recompiler, and to hire Audrey Eschright to work on research and writing projects, or code of conduct implementation and enforcement. I'm working with Audrey on a few projects right now and she's a thoughtful, organized partner with deep, broad experience in multiple worlds of tech and community.
- Ada Palmer, Cory Doctorow and Adrian Johns are crowdfunding enhancements to their project on censorship, information control, and the history of technology -- and for USD$400, you get a one-hour personal tour (in person or via videochat) guided by Ada Palmer. If you've experienced one of Dr. Palmer's riveting history lectures you know this is a tremendous opportunity -- and you could get together with a small group and chip in to do it together. The Kickstarter ends October 25th.
- I'm learning so much from dipping into Sarah Taber's Twitter feed on agricultural economics, food safety, and more. Pretty soon I'm going to start listening to her podcast, "Farm to Taber" ("Farm to Taber" RSS link for your podcatcher).
- If you like Star Trek and don't mind some bodyhorror and sensuality in your vids, "Everybody" by kuwdora is a humorous take on possibly Trek's greatest villain: the Borg.
- My friend Zack Weinberg is lead author of "How to Catch when Proxies Lie: Verifying the Physical Locations of Network Proxies with Active Geolocation". Commercial VPN proxies often promise that your traffic will run through a server in a particular country. Geolocation databases seem to verify their claims. But:
In this study we estimate the locations of 2269 proxy servers from ping-time measurements to hosts in known locations, combined with AS and network information. These servers are operated by seven proxy services, and, according to the operators, spread over 222 countries and territories. Our measurements show that one-third of them are definitely not located in the advertised countries, and another third might not be. Instead, they are concentrated in countries where server hosting is cheap and reliable (e.g. Czech Republic, Germany, Netherlands, UK, USA).
I hope security experts and consumer advocates take note.
- Finally, my friend Karl Fogel, noticing a new (perhaps inferior) competitor in a field, tossed off: "Latecomers will be seated at intermission, is all I'm saying." and I love this diss beyond all reason.
