I was quite busy in 2019 and worked on two big things that were never shared here. Both were fairly large undertakings for me, and I figured it was good to make note of them here.

NODE VOL 01

I served as the editor for the premier issue of the NODE zine, a really cool publication to come out of NODE (which you may likely recognize from its video offering). Production of the first issue took many months, and while I had worked previously writing content for NODE, editing proved to be a new and different animal. That said, I also ended up writing a handful of articles for the issues, and am currently working towards production of a second! The zine is licensed under Creative Commons, and is available freely to download via the Dat network. A physical version was released but is currently sold out.

NODE VOL 01 is an 150 page zine for the NODE community. Volume 1 is packed with features on P2P projects, such as Dat, Beaker Browser, Ricochet IM, Aether, and more. There are many tutorials showing projects like the new NODE Mini Server, how to 3D print long range wifi antennas, how to chat via packet radio, and how to do things like Libreboot the Thinkpad X200. There’s also a handy open source directory at the back, along with lots more.

Radical Networks 2019 - BGP: The Internet’s Fragile Beast

In October of 2019, I had the pleasure of presenting at the Radical Networks conference in New York City. My talk was on Border Gateway Protocol, the sort of invisible glue that holds the Internet together. The talk is available for download in odp format as well as pdf!

BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) manages how all of our packets are routed across the Internet. It is one of the most powerful and important protocols currently deployed on the ’net, but it is also incredibly fragile. Devised as a quick fix 30 years ago (without concern for security), BGP is constantly blamed in the news as Internet outages occur worldwide due to misconfigurations by multinational telecommunications conglomerates or hijackings by government actors.

This talk will demystify the misunderstood protocol that is BGP, and explain how entities exchange giant flows of data across the Internet, highlight past misuses, and consider what we may be able to expect in the future.

See you all in 2020!