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What is off-the-record messaging (OTR)?
For journalists, the ability to protect a source is vital to successfully communicating with valuable people. For sources, the stakes are even higher: their security and liberty depend on not being id...
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Tech safety for survivors of domestic violence
Content warning: This guide discusses aspects of domestic violence and abuse. Domestic violence is about the abuse of power and control, which can take many forms. Often, technology can serve as a maj...
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The essential crypto glossary: Blockchain terminology explained
Bitcoin is big news, but many of us don't understand it. This crypto glossary explains the blockchain terminology you need to hold your own. 21 Symbolic number, as there can only ever be 21 million Bi...
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We’re at the dawn of medical surveillance
The past year has been dominated by the consequences of a new coronavirus that has spread rapidly to every corner of the globe. New legislation and emergency regulations have allowed nearly every coun...
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All in your head: Creating a Bitcoin ‘brainwallet’ with Diceware
One way to store Bitcoin is in your head. You do this by remembering a list of words—a method called brainwallet. The words need to be random and secure, which can be achieved using Diceware. In suc...
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Bitcoin paper wallets: Taking your Bitcoin security offline
While we generally say we are worried about hacks and data theft, there is often little we can do, as our data is stored by third parties on remote servers, outside our reach. In many cases, a hack of...
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OONI, an app that measures how much of your internet is censored
OONI, the Open Observatory of Network Interference, is an organization that aims to document and investigate internet censorship around the world. Affiliated with the Tor Project, the group has releas...
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Tor outage: How a major attack felled the onion network
On 10 January 2021, the Tor Network experienced what appears to be a DDoS attack on its core infrastructure, causing users to be unable to use the Tor Browser, with most Version 3 onion sites becoming...
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Upgrading Bitcoin, Part 2: A challenging process
Previously we discussed why upgrading Bitcoin is so difficult. Bitcoin is a network that’s reliant on full consensus of all participants, so it is notoriously difficult and often highly controversia...
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Upgrading Bitcoin, Part 1: The pitfalls of hard forks and soft forks
The Bitcoin protocol is known for developing slowly, favoring predictability and compatibility over the prevalent Silicon Valley ethos of “move fast and break things.” Indeed, the Bitcoin network ...
