Consumer Reports conducted a comparative privacy and security evaluation of 16 VPNs, guided by the Digital Standard. Today, we’re releasing the full technical report of this comprehensive review, which also utilizes @royaensafi's VPNalyzer tool: digital-lab-wp.consumerreports.org/wp-content/upl… 1/5 We also have three companion stories. The first looks at whether you should use a VPN at all, with comment from @royaensafi @reethika_ @dguido @kennwhite @matthew_d_green consumerreports.org/vpn-services/s… 2/5

twelve tips for writing when you don't feel like it (yes, this works for non-writers who have to do reports)

1) set a timer (there are various Pomodoro apps that will kick you off of social for 25-min increments, followed by a 5-min break) 2) minimize distractions (cafes, libraries, coworking spaces, etc. can help)

3) self-bribery (I like the trapping myself in a cafe with a cupcake trick, but I can't leave until I'm done).

I just made my final student loan payment! "Sex, drugs, and Socrates, We kick ass on GREs!" was actually a good informal motto; it's because of Shimer College that I nailed my GREs and got into grad school for free. 1/4 And the skills I learned decoding cryptic texts, questioning _everything_, and obsessing over original sources is something I use in tech journalism every single day. 2/4

Darren Byler (@dtbyler) spent about a year reviewing some of the police files from Urumqi that I wrote about for The Intercept and spoke about the surveillance infrastructure. Starts at about 4:30. His findings:

1. Internal reports focused on Muslims, even though they're a minority in the city. 2/x

Since it seems like my @WhoPaysWriters posts aren't getting posted, here are some rates. 🧵 1/ WiredUK: £350.00 (about $445) for a post that was syndicated on Wired US at 20 cents a word for an additional $209.40. Quick, easy, great editing, fascinating topic, but very tight deadline. WIRED still has the cool factor for byline brags (tho less so with the paywall) 2/

Since I've been looking into Voatz for quite a while, I wanted to share a 15-month timeline. 1/ November 4, 2018: An editor at Slate asked me to write a retrospective about this blockchain voting experiment that so many experts were concerned about, and how it actually went. 2/

Journalists who don't feel comfortable publicly sharing rates for a myriad of valid, non-nefarious reasons can quietly upload them to @WhoPaysWriters, share them with @IWWFJU, answer questions from on #binders or from people who ask on DM. 💕 @WhoPaysWriters @IWWFJU Transparency helps improve the industry and benefits other writers, but you're well within your rights to be selective about what you share or who you share with. (I don't share editor data with people who can't write, miss deadlines or are jerks b/c it reflects badly on me.)

I'm bi but I don't like the word b/c it implies there's only two genders, but also being bi means straight people think you're pretending to be bi b/c it's trendy and I'm also excluded from the queer community b/c I married a cis dude, happy #comingoutday I'm a third-culture kid and 🏳️‍🌈and an anarchist 🏴who votes and a million other things that ensure that I'll feel alienated from people in any community or group I find myself relating to, but every now and again I find other misfits (like @Layalzebub) to hang out with.

I'm reading @Snowden's book and even the preface debunks a lot of accusations of him misstating his credentials (this was incredibly honest), caring only about gov't surveillance and not the proliferation of ad tech (which he refers to as surveillance capitalism), etc. 1/ I'm also going to be trying to figure out his AD&D alignment as I read because I've maintained for years that he's neutral good while others have argued chaotic good, but I wonder if lawful good is a possibility with the law reflecting a moral principle rather than an agency 2/