The current definition of Proof of Stake is too broad and generic to be useful. It does not imply any information about the security or insecurity of a platform. This definition does a disservice to all parties—the users, the systems, the experts—because instead of discussions addressing the issues…

This week the Elixxir team released a technical brief on the project, a first look into the design of the Elixxir platform. After months of preparation, we were thrilled to be able announce the project to the world, and to give everybody and look under the hood. In the coming months, we will be rel…

This midterm election season, some in the press are calling blockchain the next big thing, enabling online voting and generally being a key part of solving all election security and transparency problems. I caution everyone to be exceptionally skeptical when a single technology is touted to solve s…

We rely on the secret ballot to prevent vote selling and voter intimidation, but the “secret” ballot is not very secret. In this post I will discuss problems that very few people know about or understand—problems that allow us to give ourselves away using the very choices we make!

Lately, I’ve been playing with printers-trying to control the amount of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black printed by the printer. For various reasons I’ve been doing it in Java, and I ran up against some brick walls. There is no good HOWTO available, so I decided to write my own…

From 2008 to 2010, I ran a blog that had a small following with 1-2 thousand hits a month. I stopped only due to my employer’s publication and social media restrictions. While the restrictions had always been in place, I had justification to post due to my academic research. Unfortunately, that jus…