TLA+ (Temporal Logic of Actions) is a language for writing down two kinds of objects: A transition system: what the system can do. There are states, which are snapshots of the system (who is a candidate, who has voted for … Read more
File Transfer, Randall Munroe, https://xkcd.com/949, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 In this comic, the concept of an ordinary person having a FTP server is quickly dismissed. And yes, it’s not common. To the average computer user, the idea that someone could … Read more
August 29, 2026 Reading Mode Wider I’m a kid of the 90s, and I still remember the early internet. It was slow, ugly, unreliable, and full of cranks, a strange world of wheezing dial-up modems, Usenet flamewars, tags, and dancing … Read more
Friday, 28 August 2020 Standards The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) has published RFC8890, The Internet is for End Users, arguing that the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) should ground its decisions in what’s good for people who use the Internet, … Read more
Here we are. The part of this post I recall most vividly. The mid-2000s were a phenomenal time in my personal history, as they were my transformative years. As it relates to computing and the internet, this means that the … Read more
On May 5th, 2026, Internet Archive Switzerland celebrates its launch at the exhibition hall of the Abbey Archives of St. Gallen, one of the oldest continuously active archives in the world. We are grateful to Peter Erhart and the Abbey … Read more
Thirty years ago, Brewster Kahle founded the Internet Archive with an ambitious goal: Universal Access to All Knowledge. Today, that mission continues to grow with an exciting new chapter: the launch of the Internet Archive Switzerland, a non-profit foundation based … Read more
I recently invited a job applicant to a first-round interview. Their CV looked promising and my AI slop detection didn’t go off. But then I got this reply: This made me realize that the dead Internet arrived faster than expected. … Read more
As part of its mission to preserve the web, the Internet Archive operates crawlers that capture webpage snapshots. Many of these snapshots are accessible through its public-facing tool, the Wayback Machine. But as AI bots scavenge the web for training … Read more
A couple of days ago, the small server hosting this website was temporarily knocked out by scraping bots. This wasn’t the first time, nor is it the first time I’m seriously considering employing more aggressive countermeasures such as Anubis (see … Read more