The major submarine cable key to Tonga’s online access was back in service as of Tuesday, restoring data access to many of its people five weeks after a volcanic eruption disconnected the pacific island nation from the rest of the world. therecord.media/tonga-submarin… The oversea connection between Tongatapu and Fiji was repaired, according to a press release from Digicel—a major local Internet Service Provider.

ALERT! There was a Blue Heron down by the river this morning!!!

I did not catch a picture, but caught it with my memory and am telling you about it now!

So glad we all caught up. The river!!!

Here's what it looks like when ransomware attacks victimize rural communities:
therecord.media/when-ransomwar… I got into my hometown for a visit just as the County next door was the victim of a ransomware attack that paralyzed its systems and left some services offline for weeks—so I covered it on the ground, seeing how the local government and the community responded.

It’s the anniversary of when a small band of people tried to start a revolution to end the horror of slavery in a raid on Harpers Ferry. This is mostly known as John Brown’s raid. But I want to talk about Osborne Perry Anderson, the raiding party’s sole Black survivor. Anderson escaped the raid and even worked with pioneering Black female publisher and lawyer Mary Ann Shadd Cary to release a first-hand account of the event, which you can read here: archive.org/details/voicef…

I woke up a little too early, so went roaming Encountered some ruins

My first reported feature for @therecord_media is a complicated story about the community and compliance issues I encountered penetration testing mask policies at Hacker Summer Camp
therecord.media/fear-and-covid… It’s not just an exploration of how well the masking rules were followed or enforced in Vegas, but my own identity as a hacker and how it compels me to use journalism to report on public safety issues—like mass travel and gatherings in a delta variant hotspot.

NEW @POGOBlog investigation out with @arstechnica about how industry influence at the FCC is compromising the security of our communications: arstechnica.com/features/2019/…

GET READY FOR A THREAD! When major phone outages hit big cities including LA and DC in the early ‘90s, glitches in SS7, part of telephone software infrastructure, were to blame. But part of the supposed solution, a tech experts group chartered to advise the FCC called CSRIC, is now part of the problem.