Articles

These are all of my long-form articles. An Atom feed contains their full text. If that has any problems, I also have a legacy RSS feed.

Timestamp format: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM, as per RFC 3339. Sorted newest to oldest.

1. Post-OCSP certificate revocation in the Web PKI

   • Posted 2024-09-25 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
   • Last updated 2024-09-26.
   • About5 thousand words; a somewhat long 28 minute read

   OCSP, including OCSP Stapling, is leaving the Web PKI. Here's a complete look at revocation beyond OCSP: its past, present, and possible futures.

2. Takeaways from the Google Content Warehouse API documentation leak

   • Posted 2024-05-30 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
   • Last updated 2024-05-30.
   • 1768 words; a short 9 minute read

   My thoughts on Google's Content Warehouse API doc leak, what we can learn from its ranking factors, and why the following SEO hype is overblown.

3. MDN’s AI Help and lucid lies

   • Posted 2024-04-04 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
   • Last updated 2024-04-06.
   • 2470 words; a 12 minute read

   MDN’s AI Help can’t critically examine training data’s gaps, biases, and unrelated topics. It’s a useful demonstration of LLMs’ uncorrectable lucid lies.

4. Proposal: an HTML element for spoilers

   • Posted 2023-11-12 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
   • Last updated 2023-11-29.
   • 1710 words; a short 9 minute read

   An informal proposal for dedicated elements for spoiler tags in HTML: use-cases, syntax, semantics, recommended UA behavior, and comparisons with “details”

5. De-federating P92

   • Posted 2023-06-20 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
   • Last updated 2023-06-21.
   • 620 words; a short 3 minute read

   A compilation of my reasons and non-reasons for proactively de-federating from Facebook/Meta-affiliated projects, and refusing to support them.

6. My Fediverse blocklists

   • Posted 2023-05-02 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
   • Last updated 2024-10-17.
   • About9 thousand words; a long 43 minute read

   Documentation on which Fediverse blocklists I offer, how they are made, their differences, their caveats, and their intended use.

7. The limited utility of the phrase “GNU/Linux”

   • Posted 2022-12-09 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
   • Last updated 2023-11-25.
   • 1574 words; a short 8 minute read

   “GNU/Linux” distinguishes Linux distributions primarily by the presence of GNU software, which is seldom the most meaningful or practical distinction.

8. Stylometric fingerprinting redux

   • Posted 2022-07-10 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
   • Last updated 2024-05-26.
   • 1456 words; a short 7 minute read

   Avoid de-anonymization through analysis of your writing style. Defend against machine- and human-driven stylometric identification.

9. An experiment to test GitHub Copilot's legality

   • Posted 2022-07-02 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
   • Last updated 2023-05-24.
   • 1525 words; a short 8 minute read

   A horrible idea to determine the legality of GitHub Copilot, or of re-creating proprietary speech synthesizers: create legal precedent that doesn't exist yet!

10. Two types of privacy

    • Posted 2022-06-25 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
    • Last updated 2022-06-26.
    • 2520 words; a 12 minute read

    "Privacy" can mean different things in different contexts. Tracking-reduction and tracking-evasion represent different goals with some conflict and overlap.

11. Best practices for inclusive CLIs

    • Posted 2022-06-11 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
    • Last updated 2024-05-24.
    • 2125 words; a 10 minute read

    A response to some problematic CLI UX advice, with alternative recommendations for designing more accessible CLI utilities.

12. A layered approach to content blocking

    • Posted 2022-06-05 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
    • Last updated 2024-07-02.
    • 1941 words; a 10 minute read

    My take on where Manifest V3 fits into the current ad-blocking landscape: it has some benefits which should complement but not replace existing approaches

13. The right thing for the wrong reasons: FLOSS doesn't imply security

    • Posted 2022-02-02 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
    • Last updated 2022-03-18.
    • 4343 words; a somewhat long 21 minute read

    While source code is critical for user autonomy, it isn't required to evaluate software security or understand run-time behavior.

14. Misinfo about Permissions Policy and FLoC

    • Posted 2021-04-17 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
    • Last updated 2021-06-11.
    • 1505 words; a short 8 minute read

    Recently, people have been telling webmasters to add a Permissions-Policy header to their sites to opt out of FLoC. The reality of the situation isn't so simple.

15. A look at search engines with their own indexes

    • Posted 2021-03-10 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
    • Last updated 2024-10-23.
    • About7 thousand words; a long 36 minute read

    A cursory review of all the non-metasearch, indexing search engines I have been able to find.

16. Keeping platforms open

    • Posted 2021-02-23 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
    • Last updated 2022-11-18.
    • 2546 words; a 12 minute read

    How open platforms become closed, and how standards-driven development can prevent it from happening.

17. WhatsApp and the domestication of users

    • Posted 2021-01-28 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
    • Last updated 2021-12-13.
    • 3192 words; a 15 minute read

    WhatsApp's rise and recent PR efforts highlight a class of business models that I call "user domestication".

18. Becoming physically immune to brute-force attacks

    • Posted 2021-01-12 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
    • Last updated 2021-12-02.
    • 2411 words; a 12 minute read

    Using thermal physics, cosmology, and computer science to calculate password vulnerability to the biggest possible brute-force attack.

19. Best practices for inclusive textual websites

    • Posted 2020-11-23 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
    • Last updated 2024-09-21.
    • About23 thousand words; a very long 1 hour and 51 minute read

    A lengthy guide to making simple, inclusive sites focused on content before form. Emphasizes brutalist design and accessibility to include under-represented users.

20. Resilient Git, Part 1: Hydra Hosting

    • Posted 2020-11-19 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
    • Last updated 2020-11-19.
    • 524 words; a short 3 minute read

    Efficient redundancy via repository mirroring with nothing but git.

21. Resilient Git, Part 0: Introduction

    • Posted 2020-11-17 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
    • Last updated 2020-11-19.
    • 413 words; a short 2 minute read

    A seires on setting up resilient git-based project workflows, free of vendor lock-in.

22. Hello World

    • Posted 2020-11-02 by Rohan “Seirdy” Kumar .
    • Last updated 2021-01-24.
    • 31 words; a short 1 minute read

    Seirdy's obligatory inagural blog post, which is barely longer than this description.