The Internet is an amazing place, and occasionally you can find things on the web that have somehow lingered online for decades longer than you might expect. Today I’ll take you on a tour of some parts of the early Internet. The Internet, of course, is a “network of networks” and part of its early … Continue reading Memoirs of the Early Internet→| The Changelog
A few days ago, I announced NNCPNET, the email network based atop NNCP. NNCPNET lets anyone run a real mail server on a network that supports all sorts of topologies for transport, from Internet to USB drives. And verification is done at the NNCP protocol level, so a whole host of Internet email bolt-ons (SPF, … Continue reading NNCPNET Can Optionally Exchange Internet Email→| The Changelog
From 1995 to 2019, I ran my own mail server. It began with a UUCP link, an expensive long-distance call for me then. Later, I ran a mail server in my apartment, then ran it as a VPS at various places. But running an email server got difficult. You can’t just run it on a … Continue reading Announcing the NNCPNET Email Network→| The Changelog
As I write this in March 2025, there is a lot of confusion about Signal messenger due to the recent news of people using Signal in government, and subsequent leaks. The short version is: there was no problem with Signal here. People were using it because they understood it to be secure, not the other … Continue reading Why You Should (Still) Use Signal As Much As Possible→| The Changelog
In light of this week’s announcement by Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads, etc), I have been pondering this question: Why am I, a person that has long been a staunch advocate of free speech and encryption, leery of sites that talk about being free speech-oriented? And, more to the point, why an I — a person … Continue reading Censorship Is Complicated: What Internet History Says about Meta/Facebook→| The Changelog
I last reviewed email services in 2019. That review focused a lot of attention on privacy. At the time, I selected mailbox.org as my provider, and have been using them for these 5 years since. However, both their service and their support have gone significantly downhill since, so it is time for me to look … Continue reading Review of Reputable, Functional, and Secure Email Service→| The Changelog
$ grep kermit /etc/services kermit 1649/tcp What is this mysterious protocol? Who uses it and what is its story? This story is a winding one, beginning in 1981. Kermit is, to the best of my knowledge, the oldest actively-maintained software package with an original developer still participating. It is also a scripting language, an Internet … Continue reading Try the Last Internet Kermit Server→| The Changelog
I have several TB worth of family photos, videos, and other data. This needs to be backed up — and archived. Backups and archives are often thought of as similar. And indeed, they may be done with the same tools at the same time. But the goals differ somewhat: Backups are designed to recover from … Continue reading Recommendations for Tools for Backing Up and Archiving to Removable Media→| The Changelog
Probably everyone is familiar with a regular VPN. The traditional use case is to connect to a corporate or home network from a remote location, and access services as if you were there. But these days, the notion of “corporate network” and “home network” are less based around physical location. For instance, a company may … Continue reading Easily Accessing All Your Stuff with a Zero-Trust Mesh VPN→| The Changelog
Inspired by several others (such as Alex Schroeder’s post and Szczeżuja’s prompt), as well as a desire to get this down for my kids, I figure it’s time to write a bit about living through the PC and Internet revolution where I did: outside a tiny town in rural Kansas. And, as I’ve been back … Continue reading The PC & Internet Revolution in Rural America→| The Changelog
Note: this post is also available on my website, where it will be updated periodically. When things are difficult – maybe there’s been a disaster, or an invasion (this page is being written in 2022 just after Russia invaded Ukraine), or maybe you’re just backpacking off the grid – there are tools that can help … Continue reading Tools for Communicating Offline and in Difficult Circumstances→| The Changelog
I’m going to lead with the technical punch line, and then explain it: Yggdrasil Network is an opportunistic mesh that can be deployed privately or as part of a global-scale network. Each node gets a stable IPv6 address (or even an entire /64) that is derived from its public key and is bound to that … Continue reading Make the Internet Yours Again With an Instant Mesh Network→| The Changelog
In the aftermath of my report of Facebook censoring mentions of the open-source social network Mastodon, there was a lot of conversation about whether or not this was deliberate. That conversation seemed to focus on whether a human speficially added joinmastodon.org to some sort of blacklist. But that’s not even relevant. OF COURSE it was … Continue reading Facebook’s Blocking Decisions Are Deliberate – Including Their Censorship of Mastodon→| The Changelog
Update: Facebook has reversed itself over this censorship, but I maintain that whether the censorship was algorithmic or human, it was intentional either way. Details in my new post. Last November, I made a brief post to Facebook about Mastodon. Mastodon is an open-source and open social network, which is decentralized and all about user … Continue reading Facebook Is Censoring People For Mentioning Open-Source Social Network Mastodon→| The Changelog