nora

Proud to finally share what I've been working on. I'm excited for a future where privacy is normal. encryptedspaces.org

Developers from Signal (including its protocol's co-creator) along with Microsoft and Harvard unveil Encrypted Spaces, an open-source codebase for a new generation of private collaboration apps. Think Slack, Discord, Google Docs, all end-to-end encrypted. www.wired.com/story/signal...

this is terrible, and yet sadly so common. we need a standardized system for ownership over our digital IDs so big tech companies can’t just flip an off switch for your whole digital life (working on it, but it’s a long road). google, microsoft, etc doing this everyday too and users have no recourse

pre-writing a devastating obituary for your enemy is god-tier hating of a kind you don’t often see anymore. renaissance haterism. beautiful stuff.

"Tzefardea Tzedek" (Frog of Righteousness) As soon as the Portland Frog became a meme, Jewish social media blew up with jokes about the 2nd Passover plague - tzefarde'a (frogs) - and the Rabbinical commentary around it. I knew I had to make a calligraphy piece encompassing all of it. (more in alt.)

I really dislike how science has started calling almost any fancy computational technique AI. 🧪 The framing of this entire article makes it sound like a benevolent AI independently made these drugs. That is *pure fantasy*. Instead: a team of scientists made a machine learning model for a study.

When I die, please do not write an AI obituary of me *or* code an AI replica, however well-intentioned, but feel free to build a shockingly realistic rotini sculpture & then eat it at my shiva

The fate of ordinary Gazans trapped by Israel in a war zone and ordinary Israelis held hostage by Hamas in a war zone will be one and the same. They are starving. They are buried beside one another. They are cast aside by those with power to save them. For this we weep.

Read this in full. I'm short: The ADL has fully given up on its mission to fight real antisemitism. Instead, they are focused on unconditional support towards Israel, including justification of antisemitism if it serves that goal. Plus, working with fascists & antisemitic groups and people.

🤖 Always on the lookout for potential net positive uses of “AI”, esp for elderly…but the claims here pissed me right off: “There was no way that we could have found enough songwriters out there to be able to create those tracks in an authentic way” 🚫 No. MANY musicians [wc]ould do this. And, 🧵

As a Jewish person who worked at Harvard for 7 years, including much of the period covered by the Department of Ed. investigation, I object deeply to this retaliatory bullshit being laundered as on my behalf. www.ed.gov/about/news/p...

I have been using the em dash for about 10 years (I only learned English 13 years ago, for context). I even got a whole book I published before ChatGPT to prove it. I am not stopping—too useful!

I wrote a bit more about X’s new encrypted DMs and the Juicebox protocol. blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2025/06/09/a...

This is just a flat out lie and everyone involved is either malicious or incompetent

I'd argue it's less than not great, it's bad. Since they're not using HSMs for Juicebox, and they control all the realms, they have the ability to easily brute force anyone's 4-digit PIN and get their stored secret. It's basically just backdoored.

If your DMs are “encrypted” but one org holds all the keys, you haven’t distributed trust – you’ve built a backdoor. Juicebox only works when boundaries are real. Separation isn’t optional. Replication != distribution.

We are truly living in the worst world. Who asked to have AI monitor every aspect of their digital lives, by default? These features should be opt-in, not out. If you can even justify their existence at all.

A dragon emerges from an egg, within a nest among others waiting to hatch atop a majestic castle. The dragon is embedded with a DragonRNA, a DNA strand covalently extended with an RNA tail. Variants of precursor DNAs are backlit by a glowing polymerase within each egg,

Incredibly proud of the brilliant work Emily has done – these little monsters have so much potential in RNA therapeutics! So glad it’s finally in the world. It was a privilege to help with some figures and artistic renderings (spot the dragon flying through the abstract!). Mazel tov to all involved!

let’s be clear that personalisation amounts to determining a person’s future based on recurring patterns of the past. if you belong to a groups that society has not been kind to in the past (black & brown, LGBTQI, poor, disabled, etc), AI personalisation ensures your future encodes past injustice

Ok, look people: Signal as a *protocol* is excellent. As a service it’s excellent. But as an application running on your phone, it’s… an application running on your consumer-grade phone. The targeted attacks people use on those devices are well known.

Niche adorableness (if you get this you’re my people): Teaching 6th graders at Hebrew school. A passage has the word “mitzvah.” 6th grader interrupts lesson to excitedly yell “wait the commandments are GIRLS.” After a beat they continue: “the Torah is a GIRL! Who run the world?! Girls!”

Signal was designed to be a consumer-grade messaging app. It’s really, really good for that purpose. And obviously “excellent consumer grade” has a lot of intersection with military-grade cryptography just because that’s how the world works. But it is being asked to do a lot!

Purim reminds us that resilience and joy go hand in hand. The world is uncertain, but at least we get cookies (made with @emilymbgreenwald.bsky.social!). Chag Purim Sameach!

Double Union was my home away from home in SF, and it was a pleasure to help run it for the last ~6 years! DU’s not just a makerspace, but a vital community space that helps spark creativity, friendship, and a feeling of safety and belonging that such spaces often lack. Donate if you can ❤️

One of the things I’ve come to appreciate being with privacy folks this week is how unique Signal is at this moment. I know it’s maybe a cliche at this point, but it needs to be said.

Some days, it’s just hard to be a human. The world cries out in pain, justice is sidelined & it’s scary & maddening. So we cry & then get back up again to fight for what’s right, & to protect the vulnerable. Because that’s what humans do when humanity works. The job falls to all of us.

Incredible.

I am proud to join over 350 rabbis and cantors, plus a long list (and growing) of Jewish creatives to sign on to an ad in the @nytimes.com crying out against the president’s (ימ"ש) call for the removal of all Palestinians from Gaza. #SayNoToEthnicCleansing #GazaIsNotForSale 1/

💘 Psst ... We have something super cute for #ValentinesDay: A @signal.org sticker pack, created by @freedom.press and our friends at Calyx Institute 🔗 Download it and send it to your loved ones to signal your love (pun intended): signal.art/addstickers/... 🖨️ version: freedom.press/valentinesday

I’m on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme (c1hr18:30) talking about @joemenn.bsky.social’s scoop that 🇬🇧 gov’t has apparently ordered Apple to unlock encrypted cloud services I try to explain why, as well as provoking a needless 🇺🇸backlash, it probably can’t even work 1/4 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

We’re all going to die.

ALLS I CAN SAY is omg. What a bad idea. Feel free to pick the context...

Thinking about this classic recently, which is available free here: monoskop.org/images/d/df/...