James Vasile

Output

my blog	my code

Social

diaspora	microblog	tweets	linkedin

Current Affiliations

OpenITP	OTS	Freedombox	SFLC

Where To Find Me

• SIDA Dev Meeting in Sweden, March 19-24
• TA3M Portland, June 17
I'll be speaking at this, and it is awesome to be a guest at an event I started.
• Open Source Bridge, Portland, Oregon, June 18
I'll be delivering a keynote at this event.

Where I Was

• Students for Free Culture conference, NY Law School, April 20
Best way to end a keynote ever: spill a bottle of water into your laptop.
• Circumvention Tech Summit in Hong Kong, April 26 through 28
This was an excellent event, and I can't wait for Berlin in the fall.
• ASL 19 Cyber Dialogue Workshop, March 19, Toronto
• Tech@State, March 8, DC
• DRL Implementer's Meeting in DC, February 2013
I talked about OpenITP, FreedomBox and "Appliancification" of security tools.
• Circumvention Tech Summit, Tunis, November 2013
I hosted this conference. Man, that was exhausting.
• Circumvention Tech Summit, Rio, June 2013
I hosted this conference.
• RightsCon Rio, June 2013
I moderated a fun panel on circumvention tools that was translated into umpteen languages. I really wonder how the translators did with all the jargon.
• Software Freedom Day
I gave a talk about the need for community infrastructure.
• Brian Lehrer Live
• Elevate, 2011, Austria
There's a good video of my FreedomBox talk
• Digital Dish @ Ljudmila: James Vasile
I did two talks in Ljubljana, Slovenia about the FreedomBox. What a lovely country!
• Unlike Us, Amsterdam
I gave a FreedomBox talk and was on a panel about community-built social networks.

All My Streams

I haven’t been a pen guy since I wasted too many hours spinning and flipping them in high school. Who really writes by hand anymore? But then I started pocketing these graph-ruled moleskine reporter notebooks and thus began the hunt for a pen that could perfect the notebook experience. A few months ago, I finally settled on Muji gel ink hex pens with 0.3mm tips. (blog)

I just upgraded Planeteria to Python3. It took half an hour. I ran 2to3, upgraded some dependencies, ran 2to3 on a few manually and I was done. It just worked. Like magic. (blog)

Oh look, an article about OpenITP. (blog)

A few months ago, Georgia Bullen and I spent a bunch of time trying to remember what company had the “travel squirrel”. Searching the web for “travel squirrel” didn’t help, and now the travel squirrel is a running joke in our office. (blog)

Friends, I just backed a Kickstarter that I think you should know about. Seven years ago, Karl Fogel wrote a book that became the manual for doing open source software projects. He’s crowd funding the revision. As a community, we need this book to get updated. I invite you to contribute. Thanks. (blog)

Hey word geeks!  This website has fascinating etymology of the words used to name constellations. http://t.co/onHlNDBP

Huh, it turns#MuslimRage is way more complex than just people unhappy about a movie trailer. Who woulda thunk it? http://t.co/SeZaUYek

@jameslosey Oh, I wasn't pointing to causality, but we mght be hitting the limit of abusing people into quitting. Time for a new strategy.

Despite NYC becoming increasingly hostile to smoking, we have more adult smokers than we did a year http://t.co/LtSdinwj

Interesting.#Makerbot backs away from open source but pledges to be as open as possible without hurting its business: http://t.co/SeDtnVW3

This is neat. Quantum key exchange between an airplane and ground: http://t.co/jgVXaNN3

MT @JenLucPiquant: Today is the 10th Anniversary of the Premiere of Firefly http://t.co/gbVfRBpA via @The_MarySue

Italian court says extraordinary rendition = kidnapping, convicts 23 CIA agents in absentia. http://t.co/5ASb9vDh

RT @jenny_molloy: @teleyinex: don't want to use crowd as monkeys - should be involved in the research & often have expertise#opende ...

@chapeaudefee Crowd-sourcing community standards enforcement can be a decent way to get standards that reflect your community.

RT @crookedkeith: 3D print wood! LAYWOO-D3 is is a wood/polymer composite filament that can be cut, grinded or painted! http://t.co/IFYc ...

RT @PostWorldNews: Iran preparing internal version of Internet http://t.co/P91hDMXr

@copiesofcopies Too bad. The open source part of @makerbot's story was a big piece of why I like them. I hope the pendulum will swing back.

@josefprusa @makerbot @bjepson @adafruit @make @hackaday What exactly does open source mean in this context?

RT @josefprusa: So I called @makerbot support and asked. Replicator 2 is NOT Open Source!#FAIL#reprap :-( I'm sad! /cc @bjepson @adafr ...

@copiesofcopies Care to list some of the upgrades?

@jilliancyork In some fora we silence. Go troll#debian. They'll kick you. I don't think that's so wrong.

@jilliancyork At what point do we silence a troll?

Wow. Chattanooga is such a crap town, they'll pay you to move there. http://t.co/rPlJonbw

RT @kaepora: Key evidence in Assange case dissolves: http://t.co/d58I29fk

Come fly with us! (blog)

The Open Internet Tools Project has partnered with FreedomBox, InformSec and ISOC-NY to host a circumvention tools hackfest in NYC right before HOPE. We’ve got four days to plan, code and learn! If you want to hack on anti-censorship or anti-surveillance tools, bring your project, bring your skills and bring your friends. This event will be focused on writing code and solving design problems. We won’t have any long presentations (there will be enough of those at HOPE), though we will have lightning talks and will give away a door prize or two. (blog)

Wow, Amtrak Guest Rewards is an amazing cluster fail. To thank me, a business traveler who uses Amtrak weekly, for buying so many Acela tickets, they gave me Select status and some coupons for 10% off my next ticket purchase. But in order to redeem that coupon, I have to call or buy in person. I can’t use the website. And then when I call, I find out that I can’t just pick these tickets up at the automatic kiosk. I have to present the coupon to a ticket agent, which mean standing in line, which means getting to the station extra early for my six AM train. (blog)

I have a new job! I'm now the Director of the Open Internet Tools Project (#OpenITP). This expands on my #FreedomBox efforts and will let me work more generally on privacy, anonymity and anti-censorship projects. I'm very excited to get this project under way! http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1109649484128&s=54005&e=001YeTkq7tbF0hqVE1jXR4Pe_IQgCtprJ2hUN0XDPnKWrgSMLAjeZ782SKjZRe0tcvyntf6KvQ5zaKdEQCnNRoRoueA8oiR3WEihnmGZrc7iEuY-iOMWCVZvK7IG8YuN-lS">http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1109649484128&s=54005&e=001YeTkq7tbF0hqVE1jXR4Pe_IQgCtprJ2hUN0XDPnKWrgSMLAjeZ782SKjZRe0tcvyntf6KvQ5zaKdEQCnNRoRoueA8oiR3WEihnmGZrc7iEuY-iOMWCVZvK7IG8YuN-lS">http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1109649484128&s=54005&e=001YeTkq7tbF0hqVE1jXR4Pe_IQgCtprJ2hUN0XDPnKWrgSMLAjeZ782SKjZRe0tcvyntf6KvQ5zaKdEQCnNRoRoueA8oiR3WEihnmGZrc7iEuY-iOMWCVZvK7IG8YuN-lS

Just started using #RetroShare and so far I quite like it. DrBob and I had a good chat about how we might bring this functionality to a #freedombox and be of use to RS at the same time. libretroshare looks interesting.

This is awesome and scary, and I wish I understood it a bit better. (blog)

Here's my #RetroShare key. -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) mQENBEzkCG4BCADEZUhTci1k/OeETQN5pAK+aATf59hD2cNjNZZPZizt5v5k2pQ0 k9K5WKUQO+8DQ+PoEJeIKTSvSa1WYSFq+Sw30dpzqlMGzW33EII9ovMFWUaQN3Ll UTO8cc9bWvypx/q8RmYARmKSc52A0f23K8mBbLPl/z3PTQlJnFQTjEFd33eDwvBe jaO/F8Ped0kms069C1OWr1cfE6fmPiwzL2+DUr5dAuW8KalngGdw7apgQU1Y+Wsh SUNAP2hU9RoniXL0QERnnfjSsGPEOQm076qEzW4SU0Lgd3SmzOBks49gkNqxqAxB SW+63mBn8gNu2cF41p5IFqioSJohHVBUUQQtABEBAAG0KUphbWVzIFZhc2lsZSA8 dmFzaWxlQHNvZnR3YXJlZnJlZWRvbS5vcmc+iQE7BBMBAgAlAhsDBgsJCAcDAgYV CAIJCgsEFgIDAQIeAQIXgAIZAQUCTtaoyQAKCRAmg5JTrronWOCBB/9XODFrqaMw B0FEqlb9qB/bw/BwB/uoCRmeGEFyDd6kLsJB5S9VoTFJa08QS1K6i+XBf1vaGCOZ e/Zrnfk0i8U5U/OXB0WFiAvBg69Twxktg7yZ419fn22It79FfPZ8qpSmLdkWjnAl 2BtF2k7T+qbodBOW9gdJIESml8WxRr+RtXp04w4XeUPht6IB0dW5/hK1PAUccWnv eCkNPpyUnObIPcIUo34pv67jidmSvaK+wpu5Gn6A0qO+BhRFU/Pmu/0GFxU6hbOu gzVdtyBN4PCTOgSUmDnRb8A8cYmfwD1T9s9Yeq5DTzceZT91gFuKlL+37++AVaN0 rA6DqZMlcqhN =SE98 -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- --SSLID--27acddb54f6d1e5bb7007310bc2c7e6f;--LOCATION--laptop; --LOCAL--192.168.1.136:44585;--EXT--67.80.152.104:44585;

A woman sued Nutella, claiming she was mislead by advertising into thinking it was a health food. The case settled for $3mm dollars. (blog)

Time for new challenges, so I stepped off the OSM board. Thanks to everybody in the #joomla universe for a fun and crazy 7 years! http://opensourcematters.org/news/190-osm-thanks-ryan-ozimek-and-james-vasile.html">http://opensourcematters.org/news/190-osm-thanks-ryan-ozimek-and-james-vasile.html">http://opensourcematters.org/news/190-osm-thanks-ryan-ozimek-and-james-vasile.html

I'm in #Amsterdam for Unlike Us. If anybody wants to meet about the #freedombox, the conference has a ton of interesting speakers.

I have a #question. What is the difference between ignoring a post and hiding it?

Just posted a list of #freedombox coding tasks at https://freedomboxfoundation.org/tasks">https://freedomboxfoundation.org/tasks">https://freedomboxfoundation.org/tasks

I just bartered a broken microwave for half a can of chalkboard paint. Am I doing it right?

#MPAA afraid that #jailbreaking might threaten the market for crippleware: http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2012/comments/Steven_J._Metalitz.pdf">http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2012/comments/Steven_J._Metalitz.pdf">http://www.copyright.gov/1201/2012/comments/Steven_J._Metalitz.pdf

And more Linsanity, from Doc Searls. Hi, Doc! http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2012/02/15/the-jeremy-lin-story/">http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2012/02/15/the-jeremy-lin-story/">http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2012/02/15/the-jeremy-lin-story/

This morning, Emily Mathieu refused to claim Linsanity. The best she'll admit is a little bit of Linterest.

Nobody google stalks you better than Google itself: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-tracks-consumers-across-products-users-cant-opt-out/2012/01/24/gIQArgJHOQ_story.html?wpisrc=al_comboNE_b">http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-tracks-consumers-across-products-users-cant-opt-out/2012/01/24/gIQArgJHOQ_story.html?wpisrc=al_comboNE_b">http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/google-tracks-consumers-across-products-users-cant-opt-out/2012/01/24/gIQArgJHOQ_story.html?wpisrc=al_comboNE_b

I am seriously sick of #GNOME network-manager not being able to remember my wireless password, and I'm sort of flabbergasted that this bug has persisted over so many versions and years. #wicd to the rescue!

Got stumped working on the car. Emily took one look and told me what was wrong. #mygirlisawesome

This makes my head hurt: http://i.imgur.com/kuyYO.jpg">http://i.imgur.com/kuyYO.jpg">http://i.imgur.com/kuyYO.jpg

You can help people surf the internet even when they're stuck in censored countries. https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins">https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins">https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins

Thanks to *you* FreedomBox won the Ashoka Changemakers Citizen Media prize! Thanks for all your support, your votes and your great ideas! http://www.changemakers.com/citizenmedia">http://www.changemakers.com/citizenmedia">http://www.changemakers.com/citizenmedia

Is it weird to feel pride that a joke I made became a musical genre? http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/01/hobotech-music/">http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/01/hobotech-music/">http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/01/hobotech-music/

First draft of #FreedomBox privacy and anonymity web proxying is up at https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/news/freedombox-privoxy/index.en.html">https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/news/freedombox-privoxy/index.en.html">https://www.freedomboxfoundation.org/news/freedombox-privoxy/index.en.html

The #FreedomBox in 2.5 minutes of awesome video https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ukvUz5taxvA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ukvUz5taxvA">https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ukvUz5taxvA#!