For years Silicon Valley looked to Apple.

Apple was the leader of the industry. The visionary. The one who brought personal computing to us all. There was a genuine excitement in the air. Every time Steve got up on that stage, it was like Christmas. A magical feeling. But today that feeling is gone. The light in the back of the Mac is also gone. A metaphor for what happened to the company.

While Apple lumbers on via intertia, a growing number of disillusioned users continue to carry the torch that Steve Jobs lit so many years ago.

In today’s post, we will dive deep into many of the issues with Apple’s iOS, what it takes to migrate from iOS to a little-known alternative called GrapheneOS, and why you might want to do so. Continue reading →

We’re back!

This year’s status letter covers all news-worthy updates since our previous letter.

Inside This Year’s Letter:

• Missing Updates
• Group Income
  • Beta Testing! development
  • Group Income at BIG (Chicago) education
• Shelter Protocol
  • Building Shelter research development
  • DWebCamp 2023 (Camp Navarro) education
• Miscellaneous Decentralization Related
  • Noteworthy Decentralization Tech research education
  • How to tell if something is decentralized education
• Organizational
  • New Website
  • New Blog
• Conclusion

As usual, this year’s status letter covers all news-worthy updates since our previous letter.

Inside This Year’s Letter:

• Group Income
  • 2018 Hawaii Hackathon development
  • Group Income team continues to grow development
  • Group Income Presentation at BlockCon 2018 (Los Angeles) education
• Miscellaneous Decentralization Related
  • Rebooting Web-of-Trust (Toronto) research education
  • Scaling Bitcoin (Tokyo) research
  • Internet Identity Workshop IIWXXVII #27 (Mountain View) research education
  • Noteworthy Decentralization Tech research education
• Organizational
  • Server infrastructure
  • Finances

From the Better Late Than Never dept. comes our third yearly status letter. It covers all news-worthy updates since our previous letter.

Inside This Year’s Letter:

• Blog Silence
• Group Income
  • July 2017 hackathon development
  • Anikó Fejes and Sandrina Pereira join Group Income! development
  • BlockCon Basic Income Q&A With Scott Santens (Los Angeles) education
• The DCS Theorem
  • Presentation at Block2TheFuture (San Francisco) education
  • Rebooting Web-of-Trust (Boston) research education
• DPKI: Decentralized Public-key Infrastructure
  • Presentation at NLUUG (Netherlands) education
  • Presentation at BlockCon (Los Angeles) education
  • Slate article on Certificate Transparency education
• Miscellaneous Decentralization Related
  • Net Neutrality research education development
  • Noteworthy Decentralization Tech research education
• Organizational
  • We’re a 501(c)(3)!
  • Retroactively deductible donations
  • Server infrastructure
  • Finances page!

This is our second yearly status letter. It covers all news-worthy updates since our previous letter.

Inside This Year’s Letter:

• Group Income
  • Voting systems research research education
  • Victor Morrow Joins Group Income! development
  • Group Income Shorts! education
  • San Francisco Basic Income Create-A-Thon education development
  • New York Meetup! education
• DPKI: Decentralized Public-key Infrastructure
  • ID2020 - Rebooting Web-of-Trust Spring 2016 education research
  • “DCS / Slepak’s Triangle” at Rebooting Web-of-Trust Fall 2016 education research
  • DPKI vs CONIKS vs Key Transparency vs Certificate Transparency education research
  • Slides: “Fixing the Internet of Sh*t” education
• Misc. Decentralization Related
  • Zcash research and coverage education research
  • Updated “5 Open Source Slack Alternatives” to mention Matrix/Riot education
  • Noteworthy Decentralized Tech education
• Finances

Previously, we reviewed Google’s Certificate Transparency efforts, and observed that while it does not prevent MITM attacks, it might detect at least some of them. We compared it to blockchains, and described what a Decentralized Public-key Infrastructure (DPKI), which uses blockchains, might look like.

Today we compare these approaches with two new systems: Key Transparency and CONIKS. Continue reading →

Listen up, super-villains and laboratory mice!

Outlined in this post is a masterplan for how to “take over the world!” — by compromising Zcash.¹ Continue reading →

Also see our followup: How To Compromise Zcash And Take Over The World

As part of our work, we will sometimes put a new system under scrutiny in order to provide constructive feedback, and/or clear up a widespread misunderstanding that could lead to problems down the road (for example, see our series on Certificate Transparency). Continue reading →

Thanks to insightful feedback from John Light, I realized it would be good to do a regular Turtle Status Letter in order to keep our followers and supporters abreast of our activities and decision-making process. We now plan to do one every year.

Inside This Year’s Letter:

• How We Got Started
• The okTurtles Browser Extension
• DNSChain
• DPKI — Decentralized Public Key Infrastructure
• Voluntary Basic Income: Group Currency & Group Income
• Educational Content
• Future: What's Next for the Turtles?

Some turtles got together this weekend to hack on a thon—err, for a Group Income hackathon! Continue reading →