Setting up my personal website using Nikola

Last year, I had to migrate my web pages very quickly to my own server because changes in my Institute's website made it difficult for me to continue to host my web pages there. My old web site was set up more than two decades ago using raw html, and it used php for on-the-fly…

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Sans Big Tech Part 6: Encrypting emails at rest

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I explained why I start building a personal cloud as part of a long journey towards digital independence from Big Tech. In Part 3, I grappled with the big security risks that come with this choice: When you go for your own cloud, security becomes your…

Sans Big Tech Part 5: File server in the personal cloud

In Part 1 of this series, I explained why I have embarked on a long journey towards digital independence from Big Tech and Big Risk. Part 2 documented the first step of that journey - building a personal cloud, Part 3 discussed the security issues, and Part 4 described setting up an encrypted calendar in…

Sans Big Tech Part 4: EteSync calendar in the personal cloud

Updated January 2, 2020 with a clarification of CalDav Five years ago, I started working towards what I then called Head in the cloud, feet on the ground, but now prefer to describe using Kleppmann's terminology as Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud (h/t Adrian Colyer). Among the the first…

Sans Big Tech Part 3: Security in the personal cloud

In Part 2 of this series, I explained why I went about setting up my personal cloud server as the first step to freeing myself from dependence on Big Tech. The first comment on this was by Suhan Saha (this comment has apparently disappeared from Facebook now): The biggest disadvantage of private cloud is IT-Security…

Sans Big Tech Part 2: The personal cloud

In Part 1 of this series, I explained why I have embarked on a long journey towards digital independence from Big Tech and Big Risk. This post documents the first step of that journey where I start building a personal cloud. When Big Tech provides free services, these are not really free. First, we pay…

Big Tech 2019 = Big Finance 2005 = Big Risk?

In 2005, Big Finance was at the top of the world. Due to financial innovation and advances in mathematical modelling, Big Finance was highly profitable despite operating at low levels of risk. By 2008, it became clear that all this was an illusion. Then Fed Chairman Bernanke has stated: So out of maybe the 13,…

Markdown for Everything

I like to use markdown for everything: for my blogs, my emails (though they are mostly plain text), most of my short technical writing, and for most presentations. There have been many reasons for this shift: Markdown is so much faster. Creating a Power Point presentation from an existing writeup or notes used to take…

Aadhaar and signing a blank sheet of paper redux

The Aadhaar abuse that I described a year ago as a hypothetical possibility a year ago has indeed happened in reality. In July 2017, I described the scenario in a blog post as follows: That is when I realized that the error message that I saw on the employee’s screen was not coming from the…

In the sister blog during December 2017 and January 2018

The following posts appeared on the sister blog (on Financial Markets and their Regulation) during December 2017 and January 2018. Regulation as Pigouvian stealth taxation Financial Crisis and Response History Why Intel investors should subscribe to the Linux Kernel Mailing List or at least LWN (Cross-posted on this blog as well) Madness on both sides…