It's labelled as a book for 'Juvenile & Young Adults' and fittingly we start with our protagonist W1n5t0n sitting in school and being bored by it. It is quickly established though that he is a real nerd and I had many good laughs during the first two chapters. Then I made the mistake of deciding to read just one more chapter before going to bed. And that chapter made me so angry, I couldn't sleep. It made me angry because it felt so real. All the idiocy and hypocrisy of the way the USA fights its so-called "War on Terror" collapsed onto me. I just had to continue reading to get over this hump and see W1n5t0n fight back. And then I didn't put the book down until I was finished with the first half of it and just had to rest my eyes.

I inhaled the second half of the book the next evening.

If you are not a geek, it is well worth reading. You will learn a lot about computing, security and privacy in today's world. And if you are a geek, it is still worth reading. Most of the technology in the book is existent today and nothing new for me, but it was a real pleasure seeing Doctorow explain it in layman's terms. And then see W1n5t0n, meanwhile calling himself M1k3y, use it to overthrow his oppressors. If you always wondered what I mean by 'digital guerilla', then you should definitely read this book as M1k3y is a proper one!

The book left me behind a little empty and exhausted. There was a lot of suffering in the victory. But let's face it: reality is tough and this book isn't going to lie to you. And when I turned the last page, there was an afterword from one of my big heroes and the smile came back to my face immediately.

I am sad not to know any young adult I could give the book to. It is such essential reading in my opinion. Luckily there is a great system that Cory set up to donate this book to schools and libraries and that's what I'm gonna do. You should download and read this book to arrive at the same conclusion as me. And while you are doing that, I will be reading the sequel Homeland, which is the book that you can see Edward Snowden packing into his bag in Laura Poitras' film CitizenFour.

I reinstalled my laptop with Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) mainly because if I have to install an NSA backdoor called Skype for doing business, then the finely tuned Gentoo system is worthless and I'd rather save the time. LMDE is lovely and a recommendable choice for any Linux user. Turned out though that having an (almost) fully functioning KeePass installation prevents you from installing Skype, as that binary trojan horse can't work with one of the latest system libraries. I am not ready to compromise on the excellent KeePass, so after countless hours of trying to install Skype I resorted to an old plan of mine: put that sucker into a virtual machine! Only place it can be trusted at least a bit.

And who would have thought that this sledgehammer cracks the nut so elegantly?! I wanted the application to be seamlessly integrated into the desktop, a bit like in Qubes OS. And even this was not much of a problem with the usual Linux on-board means. On boot a minimal Debian Wheezy with only the needed libraries to start Skype is being auto-started as a libvirt KVM machine. Then on the laptop I have a script to start Skype like this:

 ssh -X amette@skype.local -C PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30 skype & 

The -X in the ssh command allows X11 Forwarding so that Skype gets rendered on the local desktop just like any other application. PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=30 is a fix for a well known Skype bug with Pulseaudio. And as LMDE uses Pulseaudio by default, the X11 Forwarding also takes care of forwarding audio which is no problem over the virtual network device. Make sure that your virtual machine can resolve the host name of your desktop.

Having a dedicated machine for Skype might seem overkill, but the installation is issue-free as you can install everything the way Skype likes it. So it works perfectly, doesn't interfere with your system and the NSA can go snoop on my minimal Debian. What's not to like? :)

EDIT: Yes, I am fully aware that one can break out of a virtual machine. And if anyone has a ready-made exploit for that, then it's the NSA. This project started from not being able to install Skype and KeePass2 on the same machine and as KeePass2 was more important to me, Skype went into the virtual machine. Never the less thank you for all the e-mails I got from pure strangers - it is great to see that people care! :)

EDIT 2: I switched away from LMDE as it is not really a rolling release. There hasn't been a proper upgrade of packages in months despite Heartbleed and whatnot. This is not acceptable for the main machine of a SysAdmin. So now I am using Debian Stable and believe it or not: this is the first Debian Desktop installation of my life and I am very satisfied with it.
I also switched away from KeePass2. It might be a great tool on Windows, but running with Mono on Linux the UI could suck a golf ball through a garden hose. Also the format of the password database is vulnerable to attacks. Do the right thing and use something that was designed by a pro: PWSafe.

Someone of Team Yo-Yo Maniacs managed to make me look real good while performing my freestyle at the German YoYo Masters. The real kicker though is what facebook/bing made out of a comment when translating it! I guess I must have quite a bit of bosons whizzing around me. And here's also the video of our ad-hoc 1.5h preparation runner-up Team Freestyle.

The BurninBerlin YoYo Crew went to Leipzig to compete at the German Masters from 5.-6. October 2013 and with lots of success, I'd say! Two titles were defended and many other good positions achieved. But lets take this step by step. The most amazing part is the community! When I arrived, I knew that three of my eight compulsory tricks won't work. At the meet-up on the first evening I was trying Eli Hops and it didn't take long and I had a couple of little people standing around me asking: "Do you need help with the trick? Would you like me to give you some tips?" I probably heard every different variation of trying the trick from more people than I can count to finally get a grip on it. I still can't do them properly on cue, but on stage they worked out on the first try. And with such a good crew behind my back, we were able to make this Sports Class preliminary almost an exciting event! ;)

So I quite unexpectedly got past my compulsory tricks and got to do a freestyle, which was basically letting myself flow as much as possible as I just don't know enough tricks to really fill two minutes. Even nicer then to hear from those twelve-year-old kids that have fingers faster than my brain that that they liked my freestyle. Ended up making the top ten, so that's something!

BurninBerlin was able to virtually own the 5A Freehand (counterweight instead of attached to finger) and Team Masters though! Both titles went to Berlin for the second time in a row. Making Bao repeated double champion and Tina and Luzi arguably the first girls to win a title in German YoYo history. Another strong contender is Team Class mastermind Gesine, who choreographed the winning BurninBerlin shows of the last years. This year she did a special trick and created the Mixed Pickles team from scratch one and a half hours before the show to take second place. Rainer, Conan, her and me never once practiced the whole freestyle before or even with real music for everyone on the team to hear. But we had a show and glitter! Yes, you read that right: I got to play another freestyle and that BurninBerlin/North Rhine-Westphalia collabo made me runner-up in the Team Class! w00t! :)

I think my personal highlight though was Schmidti in the 1A Masters Class. I liked his preliminary freestyle very much already. Great choice of tunes, played nicely close to the beat, very enjoyable to watch. He then walked right through to fifth place in the most crowded class of them all on his first attendance at the Masters! If you're into YoYoing, check out his tutorials - they are just the same relaxed style as his freestyles. His brother got into 2A YoYoing, that's looping with two YoYos at the same time. From what I saw him playing just for fun this year, I'm really looking forward to his first freestyle the next year!

On the picture you see the winning BurninBerlin Team in the front row with the North-Rhine Westphalia guys, Gesine and me in the back. Our team's certificate is missing from the picture cause I was overwhelmed and couldn't be bothered with holding it up. And Conan from NRW is wearing a BurninBerlinOpen T-Shirt... I guess we'll meet again! ;)

Did my first Geocaching ever. Discovered Canada this way and also by just travelling around. I really do like Canada and it is a lovely nation to be in. I'll be back for sure and if it's just for finally getting a train ride there (mine was cancelled and I had to take the replacement bus service - which is a "discovering Canada" story of its own).

Thanks to everyone who made this possible! :)

Pictures to follow.

Last month we had TikiFest Barcelona 3 (or 2012 depending on which way you prefer to count). I think I rarely worked that much per day or even in a week as I did there. The first night I had about four hours of sleep, then going down to three and after that it was slowly going up. Having a headache on the last day was probably inevitable with that kind of schedule.

Anyways.. we managed to work out the discrepancies in the perception of what WorkSpaces really are and also clarified issues with features that tried to mimic WorkSpaces, like the badly names 'Areas'. In Tiki 10 (October 2012) there will be real Wiki NameSpaces that in combination with Perspectives allow for creating full-blown WorkSpaces across all features. If you don't understand what I'm telling you here - don't worry, it's the Tiki way of doing things. Available features are plugged together to create amazing new ones. :)

You probably heard the recent story about this guy getting really badly hacked and loosing his digital life of the last years. If not, check it out here: Yes, I was hacked. Hard. It's a really good story (sort of) and made me shoot out the following tweet.

Hey, iBitches! See? You don't own your hardware!! Poor sucker can't even reinstall his machine! http://t.co/v1QINODN MuahahaROFL!! Sorry! :P

Which then spawned a discussion on Fakebook.

isn't that like saying we should burn down the apartment of everyone who chooses not to own their own house and destroy whatever might be in it?

I should have probably laughed like "BwaahahaROFL" and not "Muaha...". Anyways...

I don't say burn anything down, I just say: realize what you have there!
Might help people to understand, if Apple would just rent out their machines and never sell.

do you think this guy did something wrong to use iCloud? seems kind of more like someone maliciously destroyed this guys data for no reason. not really sure why? maybe there's more to the story than I understand.

As I respect her a lot (and she's an Apple user), I thought I owe her an explanation. And because that explanation contains lots of things that are bugging me, here it is for all of you to read.

To me there are two parts to this story. The first and probably most discussed is the (i)Cloud and the second, and most neglected, is the hardware part.

No matter to which cloud, you give your data away. You show huge trust to the service. This does not only mean that you trust them not to spy on you or sell your data, but also that you trust them to take good care of your data. People show so much trust in their cloud services that they use them for backups. It's your decision how important the digital extension/part of your life is to you. My life is quite important to me and I don't want anyone to mess with it. I don't even synchronize my Android with Google, but with my own server as I want to be responsible for my data. The interesting thing now is, that with remote wipe (and no self-responsibility for backups) - you not only give your data away, you literally don't own it any more! This guy lost his complete digital life of the last years - just like a physical object that was taken from him! That isn't necessarily good or bad. Some people are submissive masochists and each to their own. But to be able to choose this consciously you need to know what you have - and most cloud users really don't.

The second part is the hardware. I don't know enough about iCloud/Apple specifics to give a detailed analysis, but I can tell you what's basically wrong here. To stay with your metaphor: this guy signed a sales contract for his house only to now find out that the vendor still manages the keys and decides when the buyer is allowed to enter it. I suppose this is meant to be a security measure. But when you think it through, it is just an annoyance measure. It is to annoy a potential thieve about him not being able to use the stolen machine and now it annoys the "owner" himself - he can't take ownership of his very own, bought hardware without the geniuses at Apple. If someone steals your machine, he just has to take out the harddisk and has your data - and try to remote wipe your machine when someone really plans to do that. That's a fake sense of security and as we see, it can turn against you. (I'm now not going on about trusted computing and locked boot loaders and whatnot. They are awesome technologies, but the trust model in Apples planned implementation is completely the wrong way around - _you_ have to be able to trust your machine to entrust your digital life to it! Why does Apple have to be able to trust your machine? They sold it to you!) Most Apple users don't know what they have - I get a really strong gag reflex when I hear people saying that Steve freed them.

Ok, one shouldn't point at others without having some better solution. And it's simple: take the red pill! Take responsibility for your (digital) life! Cloud is easy, people are lazy and so they give the responsibility for their lifes away.
What can you do to prevent the fiasco (and still keep using iCloud):

1. Backups
I mean: real ones! This is such age-old wisdom that I find it puzzling how little it is being followed.
2. Full disk encryption
It's the only way to prevent your data getting lost. You don't need a remote wipe then which in the worst case wouldn't work anyways. But I fear that you can't deactivate remote wipe... it's a built in security flaw of Apple/iCloud. And if you really need to annoy someone stealing your machine, set a BIOS boot password.

With this setup the guy would have said: "FUCK!! Someone stole all my Cloud data, addresses, appointments, mails... shit!! All my life is exposed!! And now I need to reinstall my computer, damnit!! Well, ok, let's get going, it's just two hours of work from my last full backup..." Well, actually he wouldn't have said the last part, because he wouldn't have had remote wipe.

So, to give a direct answer to your question: it's not necessarily wrong to use iCloud, but this guy used it in the wrong way. He trusted it way more than he trusted himself.

This was a lot about trust. And the person you should be able to trust the most is you.

The four most important things I learned there (see images):

1. Only thing you need additionally to your normal baggage is an Aloksak full of PowerBars to survive in the world's most expensive city
2. The festival was amazing and the setup for the evening program just as well
3. Everything, really everything in the world is held together by Duct Tape - even the opera of Oslo
4. The more expensive alcohol gets, the more binge drinking is seen as a sport (well, actually that was more a reassurance - knowing that from Finland already.. ;) )

I am really interested in going again to Oslo and not only to see more wicked art installations made from computers, cameras, projectors and sand from a children's playground at the next Art.on.Wires Festival... ;)
.. but also to do some gourmet tourism! A flight from BLN costs just about nothing (20€ both directions) and basically you can already turn around at the airport after having bought decent reindeer and salmon in the tax free shop. Invest some Euros in the airport shuttle and you get a nice daytrip in a lovely city on top. With the PowerBar-trick and a bit of Sisu you don't even need a place to sleep... ;)