Putin’s brutal aggression in Ukraine has put cyberwar back in headlines. Recently, Carey Parker, host of the Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons podcast, reached out to us at Tech Learning Collective to talk through some of the issues the war in Ukraine has once again raised for laypeople who may be newly concerned about the reliance we’ve developed as a society on digital infrastructures. So, late last month, we sat down with him for another conversation about what anyone and, arguably, everyone could be doing not only to keep themselves safer online, but also prepared in the event of an escalation of hostilities in a cyber theater, rapid shifts in political climates, or even just natural disasters that affect telecommunication abilities.
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Firewalls Don't Stop Dragons: Luck Favors the Prepared
The Enragés: Next Time the Pendulum Swings, Part 2
Earlier this month, we republished part 1 of our interview with The Enragés, where we discussed our blog post, Imagining an Optimistic Cyber-Future. In this post, you’ll find the conclusion of our conversation along with a (somewhat rushed) transcript of the same. Here, we touch on ways in which capitalism has constrained people’s telecommunication abilities, we describe some of our inspiration from earlier political thinkers, and we even answer a couple of listener questions.
Testimonials
“just the right combination of informative and challenging”
I really enjoyed the Clearing Away the Clouds class on networking. I know only a tiny bit about networking but am trying to learn more to be a responsible and safe digital citizen. This class was just the right combination of informative and challenging. The instructutor definitely dove into some really complicated ideas but always took the time to go back and make sure that we understood.
“gain some more knowledge in IT security [at] these webinars that we can really recommend”
If you are looking to gain some more knowledge in IT and especially in IT security, [these] are some webinars coming up that we can really recommend […] held and organized by the Tech Learning Collective and will address various areas of IT and IT security. Check the event calendar out (and even subscribe)!
“wonderful workshops […] eminently practical and affordable”
I first learned of the Tech Learning Collective at a privacy conference in late 2020. I struck up a conversation with one of its representatives and ended up taking one of their wonderful workshops in January. TLC offers some top-notch courses on computers with a focus on cybersecurity. Unlike college courses or cybersecurity certification courses, TLC offers eminently practical and affordable content, focused squarely on doing. It’s like the difference between taking a karate class to earn colored belts and taking a personal self defense class to actually protect yourself. But it’s also much more than that, and hard to describe.
“very supportive to newbies […] I learned a lot”
I found out about Tech Learning Collective through an Electronic Frontier Foundation article about an event they were hosting regarding cybersecurity.
What I really liked about it, is that they were very supportive to newbies (like me) and I wasn’t too overwhelmed during the event. They made it as simple as they could. The communication between the audience and the presenter (and the teacher’s assistant) was really nice too. They tried to answer as many questions as possible and kept going for almost two hours after the event was supposed to end.
Among other things I learned a lot about the Tor Browser, brute-force attacks, and how password hashing works.