The Curious Engineer

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rants.org

rants.org

Karl Fogel's blog

Software / engineering practiceSociety / politics / economyEssays / personal

’10’15’20’25
Posts
234 from 17 Sep 2006 to 17 Aug 2026
Posting
now and then (1 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
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2026 1

  1. Your AI policy is unenforceable.

2023 2

  1. The Right to Lie: Google’s “Web Environment Integrity” Proposal is a Geyser of Badness Threatening to Swamp the Open Web.
  2. count-fold-lines: Emacs hack to fold duplicate lines and count them.

2022 1

  1. Twelve Pieces of Classical Music, for Jim

2021 2

  1. Why not to sign the anti-Stallman petition on GitHub.
  2. Actual comment from a LaTeX document that I am writing now.

2020 3

  1. So this happened.
  2. Don’t Cover For, Just Cover: How to Report on Trump
  3. Why the Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library is a Good Idea.

2019 4

  1. Ethics Enforcement Via Software Licenses Considered Harmful.
  2. SOLVED: ‘apt-get dist-upgrade’ error when going from Debian 9.x (“stretch”) to 10.0 (“buster”).
  3. Four Arguments for Elizabeth Warren.
  4. How about a Numeracy Editor?

2018 8

  1. Headline Lossage at the New York Times.
  2. Thinking Creatively About Ban Requests and Content Policing.
  3. Freedom of speech, no-platforming, and the Nina Paley test.
  4. All Posts.
  5. What “normalization” means: a concrete example.
  6. Open Source Archetypes: A Framework for Purposeful Open Source
  7. A Mystery: Firefox and User Privacy
  8. On changing one’s mind. (From ORD Camp some years ago.)

2017 6

  1. What You Need to Know About the Conservancy / SFLC Dustup.
  2. Corrections.
  3. Is Anyone Helping Anti-Trump Republicans?
  4. Another source of good journalism in the Trump era: Talking Points Memo.
  5. What To Do.
  6. Five-Day Forecast: Cloudy With an 80% Chance of DeepFaked Kompromat

2016 10

  1. Back from the Brink: Un-Trumping America.
  2. Semi-optimistic thoughts after the election.
  3. Rants.org now has a comments policy.
  4. Starbucks buys their TLS certs on fiscal year boundaries?
  5. Trusties and Suspies: Knowing Your Place in the New U.S.A.
  6. Obligatory Post Opposing Donald Trump.
  7. Starbucks in China Displays Their Wi-Fi Terms of Service Only as a PNG Image File.
  8. Commenting on ITAPS’s comments on the Federal Source Code Policy.
  9. Dissecting The Myth That Open Source Software Is Not Commercial
  10. SOLVED: Error on ‘git clone’ for Redis GitHub repository

2015 11

  1. My Accidental Radio.
  2. Please Stop Locking Out Users After 3 Failed Login Attempts.
  3. The Software Freedom Conservancy: Why I Donated
  4. The one 18-minute video you have to see this year: Nina Paley’s “Copyright Is Brain Damage”.
  5. Grammar As Proxy: The Experian Data Breach
  6. Privacy is an ecological concept, not a transactional one.
  7. Twitter “Verified” Account… Not So Much.
  8. Freedom of conscience applies to Kenyan immigrants too.
  9. Nice web design, but poor logic: Why OccupyGPL is wrong.
  10. Noel Taylor: A Scholar and a Gentleman.
  11. New York State Senate bill offers tax credit for open source development expenses.

2014 11

  1. How hard is open source winning? This hard…
  2. Fix for WordPress 4.1 front page “Not Found” error (from Stealth Publish plugin).
  3. Disabling the GNOME Workspace Switcher Popup (in GNOME 3.14 on Debian GNU/Linux).
  4. Debian Installation: Getting Past the Grub Error.
  5. Read Andy Oram’s Article “Does Network Neutrality Really Matter?” Please.
  6. Quick update on the Craig Shirley affair: NYT Public Editor agrees Rick Perlstein was smeared.
  7. The Craig Shirley / CIA / Wikipedia Mystery.
  8. According to Craig Shirley, Your Choices are Plagiarism or Amnesia.
  9. Comment to the FCC in support of Net Neutrality.
  10. English to live by.
  11. Support Snowden all the way, New York Times.

2013 30

  1. Lucky in 2013.
  2. Healthcare.gov, why do you taunt me so?
  3. IRC away messages.
  4. My Contempt Knows No Bounds: The Starbucks “Come Together” Petition.
  5. Eben Moglen talks in New York City: “Snowden and the Future”
  6. Dear Lazyweb: How long will it take you to fix the LOVEINT problem?
  7. My favorite RSS reader, Feedbin.me, goes open source!
  8. Offline.
  9. Credit where credit is due: LibreOffice is now ridiculously easy to build.
  10. Missing OSCON this year.
  11. Taking sides.
  12. PRISM: Why the “directly and unilaterally” mistake matters.
  13. Parsing PRISM: Gen. Keith Alexander did not claim “dozens of attacks” were prevented.
  14. PRISM: The Problem with Collect-Then-Select.
  15. Epic botch of the PRISM story.
  16. Privacy Promises and Client-Side Betrayal.
  17. Beyond App Contests: Playing the Long Game
  18. Ectoplasmic Security Is Important Too.
  19. ANVC Scalar looks interesting, but isn’t quite open source yet.
  20. How easy is a Morozov-style takedown of Evgeny Morozov?
  21. Rants.org RSS feed fixed.
  22. Someone designed that on purpose?
  23. That’s one smooth cat.
  24. OpenITP Call for Circumvention Tech Grant Proposals (1st round, 2013)
  25. New backer reward added in POSS Kickstarter campaign; going for overfunding…
  26. Kickstarter Campaign for “Producing Open Source Software” 2nd Edition.
  27. Remembering Aaron Swartz.
  28. The IRC Curmudgeon.
  29. Happy 40th Birthday, Ben Collins-Sussman!
  30. In Memoriam Carl Woese

2012 25

  1. Gabriella Coleman’s “Coding Freedom”
  2. NYC Techno-Activism 3rd Mondays start this Dec. 17th.
  3. My Kickstarter campaign is blocking on the Amazon Payments tax interview process.
  4. Global Database of Public Wireless Networks?
  5. Endorsement.
  6. Journalistic Responsibility and the Voter Fraud Fraud.
  7. Subtle Dokuwiki User Interface #Fail (or, Why User Expectations Matter)
  8. Educating Clearwire about their own Terms of Service.
  9. Google and Patents: When You Don’t Even Get Credit For Being Good
  10. Calling Chicago-area Education Hackers: SLC Code Camp Coming Soon — Sep. 8-9.
  11. OpenITP seeking a researcher to look Into circumvention tech usage (China focus).
  12. Is That App Open Source?
  13. Will someone sell me a mount point, please?
  14. Highlight of OSCON: Release of “Team Geek”!
  15. An Unintentional Reminder of What Journalism Is About.
  16. Congratulate Bradley Kuhn by joining our mini-campaign for the Software Freedom Conservancy!
  17. OSCON 2012 Interview with Mac Slocum of O’Reilly Media.
  18. Calculating the social derivative of follower numbers.
  19. Which of these two apps is not like the other? Answer: Just open source them. Please.
  20. Circumvention Tech in NYC, July 9-12 — Get Your Hack On.
  21. Yo, App Developers: Please Make Your Public Interest Apps Open Source!
  22. Guest Post: Apple Rant
  23. Are you a Monumentalist?
  24. I wouldn’t have thought of that either.
  25. Chicago.

2011 17

  1. Best. Spam. Evah.
  2. How to Batch-Edit Multiple Issues in Redmine.
  3. Happy Dennis Ritchie Day.
  4. Does Cold Fusion Imply a Surveillance Society?
  5. Will Franken at the Purple Onion this Saturday!
  6. You can’t Google “Google+”. Or maybe you can?
  7. An unexpected feature of my trip to China.
  8. Why you should read more of Ben Collins-Sussman.
  9. Interview for French Translation of “Producing Open Source Software”.
  10. Which open source license?
  11. The Open Source Initiative: Beyond Stewardship.
  12. Golosa touring East Coast — Boston, Cambridge, CT, New York! Don’t Miss Them.
  13. Stephen Colbert flashes the mask!
  14. Forty
  15. “Produire du Logiciel Libre” — French translation of “Producing Open Source Software” available!
  16. San Francisco’s Enterprise Addressing System open sourced!
  17. Apache Software Foundation tells WANdisco how it’s done.

2010 21

  1. Wanted: a few PHP programmers looking for a good cause.
  2. Square root rate plans for pay-as-you-go Internet?
  3. Solving the Conference Call Introduction Problem.
  4. This is my 100th blog post, and it is telling you to go see Will Franken’s show in San Francisco.
  5. Go see “Missing” in San Francisco on July 10th.
  6. Two Quotes.
  7. Email Blacklisting Considered Harmful.
  8. NYT Astroturfed by “Conservation Group” in Deepwater Horizon Spill.
  9. At WordCamp San Francisco this Saturday…
  10. PUBPAT / ACLU lawsuit to overturn gene patent wins in federal court!
  11. Objets de Birthday.
  12. Winnie and the Snow Citizen.
  13. Reform? Mr. …of, er…
  14. Dead Pig Coverup?
  15. The Trickster Next Door
  16. “Sita Sings the Blues” at the Red Vic in San Francisco!
  17. Learn how to hack on Launchpad.
  18. QuestionCopyright.org is looking for a legal intern.
  19. Bug Growth is Proportional to User Growth, and Bugs are not Technical Debt.
  20. “Beautiful Teams” Chapter Now Online
  21. An End to Inboxorrhea

2009 19

  1. “Sita Sings the Blues” on the big screen in New York City!
  2. The Instant Answer Protocol.
  3. Subversion to join the Apache Software Foundation
  4. “Sita Sings the Blues” on front page of YouTube tonight.
  5. RIP, Illinois “THE 1729” / Indiana “53T3364” / Illinios “5416870” / Illinois “D830176” / California “5TVJ323” / New York “EJM6485”
  6. Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s position on stolen bikes is clear.
  7. Help QuestionCopyright.org Brainstorm a Grant Application!
  8. Launchpad is now open source.
  9. Version control for MS Word (etc) documents?
  10. Does this dress make me ramble?
  11. “Sita Sings the Blues” playing in San Francisco’s Dolores Park
  12. Planetary Astronomer Mike rocks the house again…
  13. Security through promiscuity.
  14. CiviCRM Saves the Day
  15. Wanted: Patent attorney who cares about software freedom.
  16. Dear Planetary Astronomer Mike…
  17. bkrpr — The Book Ripper project
  18. Sing Language.
  19. Obamadorable.

2008 33

  1. Interview With Nina Paley, at QuestionCopyright.org
  2. 5 Not-So-Easy Questions
  3. The Briefing.
  4. Mission Accomplished.
  5. Endorsement.
  6. Now that’s a pro!
  7. Now that’s wrong.
  8. Unpacking.
  9. Does McCain really believe this stuff?
  10. On The Impossibility of Deregulation
  11. Jessica Ferris’ Birthday Present
  12. Web designer, etc, needed for election-related project.
  13. So how hard would it be…
  14. Mozilla is looking for a build engineer…
  15. What I’m doing.
  16. Looking for office space in New York City?
  17. Spam Insidy.
  18. It’s over.
  19. Why I love Talking Points Memo.
  20. Boy Scouts and Open Source?
  21. Precipitation in Google Chicago Office
  22. Will Franken in San Francisco, tomorrow and Saturday!
  23. The Michigan Primary Problem is Deeper than Hillary Clinton Admits.
  24. Here’s How It’s Done, William Kristol.
  25. What To Do With That Hundred Dollar Bill You Just Found Under The Couch
  26. Thread Theory
  27. Obama-rama!
  28. How Not to Release Software
  29. How did the Necker Cube cross the road?
  30. Mitt Romney on Responsibility
  31. 64 squares: RIP Bobby Fischer.
  32. Thank you, New Jersey!
  33. Barackracy: The Obama Effect

2007 29

  1. A better patent system.
  2. Open Government Data Principles
  3. Anecdotage.
  4. Want to help fix the roof?
  5. Thanks for clarifying, Orbitz.
  6. Weirdest spearphishing attack ever?
  7. Banjovial.
  8. Lee Bollinger Muffs It
  9. Wikipudiate?
  10. Responsible Archiving
  11. Beautiful Code Chapter Now Online
  12. Book Purge.
  13. OSCON, Swedish Pirates, and more.
  14. “Beautiful Code” has arrived…
  15. What Would Euler Do?
  16. Go see Will Franken. Now.
  17. Answering Augusto…
  18. When is Open Source not Open Source?
  19. Embarrassment-based health care.
  20. Keepin’ it real for the Google Summer of Code students.
  21. Score: Bush message machine, 1; New York Times, 0
  22. Does Microsoft’s Horacio Gutierrez lie, or does he just not know?
  23. Ben Collins-Sussman on hacking and hackers.
  24. How to tell that software patents are a bad idea.
  25. Help spread the “search://” meme!
  26. Don Imus comes out against freedom of speech.
  27. A Modest Proposal: How to Make Everyone Happy About Lesbian and Gay Marriage
  28. “Beautiful Code” book soon to be released
  29. Immigration raids and the national conscience.

2006 1

  1. My deal.