HOWTO: Set up and secure a local Spark-Core Cloud

It took quite a bit of tinkering and a couple of clarifying sessions on IRC (Thanks to lbt and aholler for their input and support), to deploy the local Spark-Cloud test setup and interpret/abstract the scattered docs into one whole system view model. But why go through all this hassle, when you can just comfortably use the “official” spark.io cloud service to develop & manage your cores instantly?

Personal Log: The Post-Snowden Age

In 2013, some tech guy with a conscience got fed up covering up. He had access to many secret documents proving at which scale people are being unlawfully monitored and all of their information/communication behavior is logged and stored. He became a hero when he released documents showing the audacity, capacity and greediness of these “agencies” in full detail: People all over the world are constantly being spied upon by the NSA, GCHQ the BND and all the other players around the world. We have …

Random numbers: The fast and the furious

The expression security = usability-1 can be interpreted in many ways. Either things become far too complicated, so that regular users just don't want to be bothered with them or the amount of energy it takes to complete a security-related task is just insane.