Recently, I learned that at least one of my readers is dissatisfied with my current favourite “open source license”. For him and any others like him, I would like to propose a new one, and offer to “relicense” under it any of the VTronic items I have published on my site (strictly by explicit request, […]

There are innumerably many reasons for writing a computer program; but, to my knowledge, the publication of its source code is nearly always motivated by one of these three: I. Subordination: “Open Source.” Some of the earliest — and arguably, highest quality — computer programs with openly-published source code were developed inside conventionally-structured organizations, by […]

This is a continuation of “Pest” v. 0xFC. This is the heaviest revision of the spec to date, approaching a total rewrite. Pedantic details concerning data types and their encodings were added; several algorithms have been reworked and substantially simplified; and a number of ugly gaffes — corrected. There is a pretty-printed mirror of this […]

This is a continuation of “Pest” v. 0xFD. There are currently two published prototype implementations of Pest: “Blatta” (by thimbronion); and “smalpest” (by jonsykkel). Thank you, prototype implementers! A quite lively Pestnet is now active, and a public log thereof, operated by billymg (WOT) may be seen here. There is a working draft of v. […]

This is a continuation of “Pest” v. 0xFE. There is a pretty-printed mirror of this page. There is now a prototype! (Thank you, thimbronion!) 14 Dec 2021: And there is now a second prototype! (Thank you, jonsykkel!) There is a working draft of v. 0xFC. (Note: it may change without warning!) The document (very much […]

This is a continuation of “Pest” v. 0xFF. Edit: A note for the innocent — this series of articles concerns an algorithm! It is not, at the time of writing, fully implemented anywhere! There is now a prototype! (Thank you, thimbronion!) Or even entirely complete. Edit: There is a working draft of v. 0xFD. (Note: […]

What follows is a long-promised detailed specification of a DDOS-proof, CPU-inexpensive, ciphered-authenticated peer-to-peer communication protocol. I would like to thank Thimbronion for implementing a large subset of this spec already despite not having seen it yet! The document (very much a work in progress!) is available as a vtree. You will need: A V-tron. If […]

The thought began, as many good things begin, in #trilema. Users of the WOT, of V, and other systems where your cryptographic identity is wholly in your own hands1 live with a certain risk of “cryptographic death” – i.e. the compromise of one’s signing key. A conscientious user of public key crypto might keep the […]

Once upon a time (in August of ’15, to be exact) I wrote a very simple versionatron called ‘V’. Edit: See also Ben Vulpes’s excellent introduction to V. V is a carefully-designed poison against the scurrying little vermin who feed on the proverbial ‘fear, uncertainty, and doubt.’ For readers who are not in the little […]

Mircea Popescu writes: ‘Now making an irc channel is quite the pleasant experience : you create something out of nothing, get to name it and are now the boss of it. For a generation devoid of proper “empire building” avenues, this is about as cool as it gets. So you can do anything you wish, […]