Author: Joop Beris
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WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal?
There are many instant messaging solutions available these days. A quick browse of the Google Play Store or the Apple store gives me Telegram, WhatsApp, Discord, Facebook Messenger, Signal, Viber, Google Meet and a slew of others. So which do you choose when you care about privacy and data security? For the purpose of this…
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War on encryption
Every now and then, police or someone in government will complain that encryption is bad. The arguments are pretty much always the same: encryption is bad because it allows criminals to hide or because it enables terrorists to communicate without the intelligence agencies able to read along. Or, if all other arguments fail, it allows…
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Office pet peeves
Working with people can be challenging at the best of times and sometimes is just plain annoying. A lot of things can get on your nerves, like your word processor or the things people do in online meetings. But there’s a lot more that can really get on your nerves. Here is my list of…
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The app that changed my life
I know titles like this are often considered clickbait but that’s not what I am trying to do here. I want to talk a bit about an app that changed my life. Or rather, I should say that using this app on a regular basis has changed how I relate to life and even to…
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Paying for quackery
A couple of weeks ago I was reading through my health insurance policy, as one does. I am not ashamed to say that I have a fairly broad policy that covers a lot of treatments. One thing struck me, however. This broad policy covers, among lots of other things, a vast category of so called…
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Book review: Revolusi
Someone recently recommended I read Revolusi, a book written by Belgian historian and writer David van Reybrouck. The title Revolusi is Indonesian for “revolution” which shouldn’t come as a surprise. In this book, van Reybrouck tells the story of how Indonesia gained independence from The Netherlands. There’s more literature on this topic but Revolusi differs…