Essays
Various essays, mostly thinking about society and the future.
2012 Sep 12 | The Clarke Horizon (part 1)
2012 Sep 13 | The Clarke Horizon (part 2)
2013 Oct 06 | The transparent society
2013 Oct 20 | Unknown knowns
2016 Jun 21 | The Kobayashi Maru
2016 Jun 22 | The Prime Directive
2016 Sep 05 | Te Urewera
2016 Oct 08 | The challenge of a post-scarcity transition
2018 Jan 07 | A hierarchy of needs for belief systems
2018 Jun 23 | The Kobayashi Maru (redux)
2022 Aug 15 | Notes from HOPE and DEF CON
2022 Nov 27 | Trying (and failing) to deploy a smart contract using an iPad Pro
2024 Jan 24 | It’s time to explore
CTF write-ups
I also work in computer security, and occasionally write up the CTFs I’ve worked through. Don’t read these unless you get stuck yourself!
2020 Jul 27 | Bandit
2021 Oct 10 | Pickle Rick
2021 Nov 04 | Basic pentesting
2021 Dec 07 | Ice
2021 Dec 08 | Blaster
2021 Dec 14 | Overpass 2: Hacked
2021 Dec 30 | Attacktive Directory
2022 Jan 02 | Retro
2022 Jan 30 | Tools’R’us
2022 Feb 01 | Inclusion
2022 Feb 02 | Jurassic Park
2022 Apr 03 | Net sec challenge
2023 Apr 27 | Union
Newsletters
Archives of the short-lived Five Futures newsletter.
2016 Aug 09 | Camp Century
2016 Aug 15 | A slow rate of reproduction
2016 Aug 21 | I’m not saying it’s aliens…
2016 Sep 06 | A matter of intense but mostly theoretical debate
2016 Sep 19 | Enough behavioral flexibility to persist in a disturbed landscape
2016 Oct 01 | When the sea came in and covered the land
2016 Oct 17 | Pervasive and obligatory features
2016 Dec 18 | And we will know him for a thousand years
2018 Jan 14 | An Error of Scale
2018 Jan 20 | Everything was stripped away
2018 Jan 28 | The last remaining hominin
2018 Feb 11 | Surprise must hide in secret worlds
2018 Feb 18 | Something of adaptive value to human life
2018 Sep 23 | Where Homo sapiens is headed
2018 Oct 03 | Other decisions can be made