Newly Ancient

Spiped + SSH = Secure Proxy

2014-04-09T16:00:34-04:00

Recently, I’ve been getting more concerned in security. As an American living in a Middle Eastern monarchy, multiple government agencies are likely monitoring my internet traffic—not to mention that I frequently connect to servers from sketchy internet cafes while traveling in the developing world. To mitigate these risks, I proxy all my traffic through a secure server—but with the recent heartbleed bug, I decided to step my security up a notch.

Now, all traffic is routed through spiped, a simple and secure utility. Using Docker, I’ve automated most of the setup for this system, so you can easily route your traffic securely as well.

Server Setup

Setting up the server for this is quite simple, assuming you have Docker installed.

Clone my Dockerfile, which handles setting up a Socks proxy (with SSH) and the spiped server.

git clone https://github.com/morgante/spiped-docker /home/spiped
Enter the spiped directory, where the magic happens:

cd /home/spiped
Generate a secure key for the spiped socket to use for communication across the internet.

dd if=/dev/urandom bs=32 count=1 of=spiped.key
Build the Docker image (it will automatically load the key you just generated)

docker build -t spiped .
Start the spiped server with Docker:

docker run -d -p 49168:8089 -t spiped

You now have a fully functional SOCKS proxy listening on port 49168 and secured using a private key.

Client Setup

On the client, all you need to do is installed spiped and connect to the server. These instructions are for OS X, but the process should be similar for other operating systems.

Install spiped (with Homebrew).

brew install spiped
Copy the private key from your server.

scp username@server.name:/home/spiped/spiped.key ~/spiped.key
Start the spiped client:

spiped -e -s '[0.0.0.0]:8089' -t '[107.170.94.89]:49168' -k ~/spiped.key
In System Preferences, configure your network to connect to a SOCKS proxy at localhost:8089.

Now all your internet activity is securely routed through your server. If you want to automate this slightly more, I have written a very simple start script.

In my experience, the spiped tunnel is highly reliable and recovers more gracefully than a standard SSH tunnel.

Leave any questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer.

My HackNY Application

2013-11-19T01:35:54-05:00

This past summer, I had the awesome privilege of being a hackNY fellow. Besides providing free housing to a group of fantastic hackers, the hackNY fellowship program is the perfect introduction to the New York City tech community. HackNY directly led to my current job as a software engineer at Business Insider, gave me a group of fantastic techie friends, and inspired me to seriously pursue my own startup (Social Citadel. If you’re a student hacker, there is no better way to spend your summer: apply today.

Since I’ve been getting a lot of questions about what hackNY looks for in applicants, and inspired by Swift, I’m sharing my application below. Hope it helps!

Tell us about a time you built something awesome in code. How did you choose it? Why did you enjoy it?

I firmly believe that we write the best code for ourselves—when we’re the client, it’s easy to rapidly iterate based on client feedback. One such project was creating FundShift, an investment management platform. Having been running a small investment fund since 2011, I was sick of inefficiently creating records of transactions, generating tax forms, and communicating with my partners. Therefore, being the nerd I am, I built a custom platform (using Kohana, a PHP framework, with a MySQL backend) which automatically manages all the details of our fund for me, allowing me to focus on managing the fund while it communicates with partners and gives them realtime information on the fund’s performance. This was truly enjoyable because I love the thrill of seeing something entirely new come together, of creating something where nothing existed before. I also loved the challenge of fitting all the different pieces together, from querying finance APIs to building a reliable, realtime front-end in Javascript. Plus, the client really liked the work.

Tell us about what you hope to learn this summer and why is hackNY right for you.

Though I’ve been coding for years, I look forward to learning more about the “soft” skills which it takes to build great software—working with a team and collaborating to create something better than I could make by myself. Of course, I hope such skills will help me in developing my own startup in the future (FundShift), while also making me a better programmer, especially when it comes to scaling software to many users while maintaing speed and usability. HackNY is perfect for me because I love the satisfaction of seeing the joy which software can bring to someone by filling a gap in their lives. In a startup, I’ll have the opportunity to work on problems directly affecting users and see my solutions actually deployed—a rare opportunity at larger corporations. Having started my own companies in the past, and worked with Vermont startups, I look forward to working hard in a New York startup, learning from older developers, and taking the initiative to start my own projects.

Is there a particular technology or industry you’re currently interested in? How come? Where do you see it heading in the future?

The financial sector is ripe for innovation, as its one of the few areas in our world yet to see true disruption. While technology has certainly changed the way financial firms work, it has yet to change the way they act. Indeed, technology, by enabling esoteric instruments and high-frequency trading, has only widened the gulf between individual investors and large banks. Thus, in the next few years, we’ll see populist dissatisfaction with the financial system translated into new business patterns where capital moves fluidly throughout the system and where information is readily available to investors large and small. We’re already seeing the starts of this with sites like SecondMarket and AngelList, but the potential for innovation is far greater. Indeed, that’s part of what I’m trying to accomplish with my startup FundShift by creating a platform where starting a fund is easy as making a Kickstarter project and communicating with investors is as simple as Twitter. Crowdfunding has already begun, but now crowdmanagement—where even small investors can easily get reliable information and education from managers—is ready to expand. Like most innovation, this won’t come from the top, but from the bottom-end of the market, with people who only have a few thousand dollars to invest but still demand respect and information from managers.

Discuss your technical skills/proficiencies/languages and experience

I’ve been programming for a decade, primarily through my own web development company. My strongest skills are in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which I’ve been using for many years to put together rich, interactive websites. I’m also quite experienced with PHP (including the MVC libraries Kohana and CakePHP) and, in addition to programming for a local startup and building multiple Facebook applications, have contributed dozens of plugins and fixes to WordPress and Habari, all of which are object-oriented and based around MySQL and SQLite. I’m also an expert at using APIs, having built on top of everything from GitHub to Simplenote. Most recently, I’ve learned Node.js and Ruby to put together a few speedy projects using MongoDB as the backend.

When you’re not coding, what do you like to do for fun?

Though I’m also extremely interested in economics & politics, I treasure my time spent backpacking. Besides resting my eyes from all the time immersed in screens and books, backpacking always offers a fresh challenge, even after the hundreds of miles I’ve hiked (including the 270-mile Long Trail and a month in Alaska). Backpacking demands that I look up at a mountain’s sky-piercing summit and deny that height, seeing only the easy inevitability of the next step. But the reward for taking that step, and the next, and the next, is to eventually emerge into a new world. A world above the clouds, with its own weather and laws. A world where poverty is unknown and everyone is equal in physical triumph. A world which even the most atheistic among us cannot deny the spirituality of. Though I wish I could live in that world forever, “you cannot always stay on the summit.” (René Daumal) Therefore, when I come down, I bring the memory of that world — its peace, its freedom, its love — with me and use it to inform how I live my life. Next to the beauty of that world, and the challenge of reaching it, even the best software and hardest challenges are mere anthills.

We’re looking for applicants who are restless builders. Please provide links and a brief description of at least two code samples in the language of your choice.

Much of my work is visible at http://lab.morgante.net, but here’s a selection of my open source contributions. (Sadly, my more substantive projects aren’t publicly accessible.)

HabariBox is a plugin I wrote which integrates Habari (PHP) with DropBox, allowing users to easily share images from it and even update their blog by just adding a file to their DropBox
In Node.js, I built this simple status site for student government projects which pulls information from GitHub. (https://github.com/nyuadsg/status)
Mpango is the (PHP) plugin which powers my lab site by pulling information from GitHub and generating documentation. (http://lab.morgante.net/mpango)
In Node.js, I wrote a centralized authentication system for students’ use at NYUAD. It authenticates against NYU’s servers (using a roundabout method) and serves an OAuth server for all student projects here (https://github.com/nyuadsg/passport)
PolyMatch is a Facebook application which analyzes responses to a few basic questions and identifies respondent’s partisanship through an algorithm and database of 50,000 voters. (https://github.com/morgante/polymatch)
LinkBlog is a (PHP) implementation of linkblogging for Habari, which includes Atom syndication and traffic tracking. (http://lab.morgante.net/linkblog)
SimplyNoted is a (PHP) plugin which uses Simplenote’s API to integrate author’s notes into the Habari publishing process. (http://lab.morgante.net/simplynoted)
Shield is a theme with JS/CSS/PHP which I wrote for my personal blog and the Habari platform (https://github.com/morgante/shield)

I still feel pretty happy about these answers, though FundShift is defunct due to regulatory issues. Node.js and PHP are still my primary programming environment (for pleasure and work, respectively).

This Is Water

2013-05-12T07:09:04-04:00

Listening to this speech by David Forster Wallace taught (maybe, reminded) me why I’m here and pulled me out of a slump.I’ve been having a very difficult time lately, as my first year of university is nearly over yet I don’t seem to have learned a thing. While the video is great, I recommend reading the full speech (paired with this song) to get the full impact.

It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: “This is water.”

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Twitter Consolidating

2012-08-21T20:12:34-04:00

Regarding Twitter, Chuck Soda makes a (more succinctly) similar point to mine about Twitter consolidating rather than innovating:

They should have a vision for what the future of communicating and sharing looks like, and be building it. But from the looks of it, they aren’t. They’re just trying to protect what they’ve already built. That’s always a losing position… Always.

(Via Shawn Blanc.)

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Twitter & Me

2012-08-20T19:25:13-04:00

Since (in both the chronological and causal sense) Twitter announced changes to its API last Wednesday, the Internet intelligentsia has been raising a ruckus. Justifiably so. Though the outlines of these changes have been on the horizon for a while, this new move clearly shows where Twitter is heading as a company and service. And I’m not quite sure that’s a direction I want to be following.

The Company

With this move, Twitter is making it clear that it means ~~business~~enterprise. Just the fact that the announcement is written in MBAease clarifies that Twitter now thinks of itself more as a corporation than a startup. Indeed, its infamous quadrant with social CRM and social influence ranking makes it clear that the company is focused more on monetizing and consolidating than on continuing to innovate. Of course, we know how well that went for other companies.

The Service

There’s nothing inherently wrong with attempting increased monetization except when it ends up being counter-productive. For Twitter, increased attempts at consolidation will quite possibly kill it.

The first problem for Twitter is that its service depends upon the very environment it’s seeking to quash. Many of its best features, from @replies to #hashtags, originally came from users. And it was the simple accessibility of the API which quickly made Twitter nearly ubiquitous—even your house can Tweet now. Without this robust ecosystem, Twitter is essentially just a text field—something that any freshman CS student could pull together in an afternoon.Yes, I realize there’s more complexity to it than that, mainly related to diseconomies of scale. Continue reading. Microsoft, for example, can afford to have MBAs run the company, because the switching costs are high. For Twitter, they’re negligible. Anyone can build a text box.

Twitter’s second major problem is one of direction: it’s astronomically easier to go from closed to open than from open to closed. Apple can get away with tight restrictions because before the App Store existed nobody felt entitled to install applications on their phone. Even in going from open to closed, Twitter could potentially succeed if that change provided a meaningful benefit to users. Facebook was more restricted than Myspace, but those restrictions came with the benefit of not having my eyeballs seared out from using it. Twitter is going in the opposite direction: it’s restricting us to its main website which is, for your average alpha user, shittier than it was a few years ago.

Though these problems won’t prompt an immediate exodus from Twitter (indeed, only 23% of posts come from external apps), Twitter should still be worried. It was that 23% which first left Myspace, Yahoo, and AOL. Particularly for a service as simple as Twitter’s, they really matter—what your tech-savvy friend is using has a greater impact than where Bieber is. Especially if we start to see a chilling effect where new developers don’t include Twitter functionality in their apps due to the possibility of it being cut out of the ecosystem.

Ownership

My biggest objection to the changes is mostly philosophical. With the new display requirements, Twitter is asserting ownership over my content there. I agree with Marco’s reading: rule 5b would seem to preclude me from quoting my own tweets on my own blog without their wrapper. This seems more like something an archaic wire service might try than the policy of a tech startup. Indeed, it make Twitter’s viewpoint quite clear: our content and attention is their property to be sold to corporations for advertising and “social CRM” (whatever that is).

App.net

Twitter’s announcement came at the perfect time for app.net, which easily met its funding goal thanks to the general outcry in the web crowd. But I really don’t think the way it’s being portrayed matches either its potential or position. Despite what internet bloggers and campaign commercials say, there’s nothing inherently virtuous about running an old-fashioned business where customers pay you. Thus, app.net isn’t even truly quixotic: it’ll likely fail, but it was never virtuous.

Probably the biggest reason it will fail is that for the vast majority of people, the $50 annual cost for the service far exceeds the utility it provides. Thus, the service will end up being the playground of the people with $50 to spare for an empty text box. While Twitter might end up being filled with only people following Bieber I likely follow a couple of Bieber-fans and wouldn’t enjoy a platform without some of the regular people.

My other major problem with app.net is that it isn’t even doing what it purports to do. Instead of only charging users, it’s charging both sides of the market. Thus, members are being sold the privilege of being sold to app developers for up to $1000. That might not seem like much for a legitimate business, but it’s the sort of cost which is prohibitively expensive for quick projects and will seriously limit the ecosystem around app.net—you won’t see the ubiquitous support which Twitter currently enjoys.

My Plans

I don’t know where things are headed, but I’m guessing the future is neither Twitter or app.net. Until the future comes around, I’m putting my time where my mouth is and spent the weekend building a Twitter clone for Habari. The system I’ve designed has a couple of benefits:

I control the content, through Habari, so Twitter certainly can’t complain about me quoting their material.
For now, microposts are posted over to Twitter. Once the future comes, it’ll be easy enough to post them there as well.
For ease of mobile use, I can take advantage of the Twitter ecosystem by posting to a secret account which will be subsequently mirrored over here and on my main Twitter account.

This is likely a violation of Twitter’s new requirements, so go ahead and subscribe to my microposts over here. And get started on inventing the future—or just fork mine.

An Invitation to Imitation

2012-07-25T04:44:14-04:00

Although over the past two years of my studies I’ve been drawn toward more human fields (primarily economics), I continue to love coding. Indeed, the times I spend coding are some of the best moments I have, partially because time disappears. While I’ve enjoyed dabbling in other areas, coding up something is still my favorite way to spend a night.

All this merely serves as an explanation of why I spent several hours converting the theme for this site into one anybody can use. It’s a fairly-customizable theme for Habari which I designed to take advantage of the innovations on that platform, particularly modules and areas.

So, if you’re interested in imitating the design of this site, just head on over to the project page and download Shield. Though I doubt many people will end up using this (if only because of Habari’s minuscule reach), it’s been fun to develop and will also give me an incentive to start designing a new theme for this site (after all, I can’t have too many imitators).

Also, I must say I’m quite proud of my project lab. As it serves as the home for numerous projects (primarily Habari bookmarks and plugins), constantly updating it would take too much work. Thus, I have developed a system on top of Habari which pulls in all the data, including releases and help information, from GitHub. If you want something similar, check out the plugin and theme which power it.

So, check out my theme. I promise more substantive posts will be coming soon (I have a ton queued up in Simplenote).

EuroTrip

2012-06-06T04:08:43-04:00

I’m currently on a 6-week trip across Europe and will be posting updates on my Tumblr.

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The Future in History

2012-05-30T18:44:18-04:00

I love reading historical science fiction, as it can reveal the direction of aspirations and fears during a particular period. Of course, it’s also interesting to note when those stories of the future were set. This analysis reveals, for example, that in the 1980s the majority of science fiction concerned a near-future setting in the early 21st century. The change in obsession with the near-future is particularly intriguing to note, as it increases with the rise of Cold War tensions in the second half of the 20th century. This seems to make sense, as that time period contained a real possibility of a world being dramatically altered in the near future, possibly by nuclear war. In contrast, since the end of the Cold War, science fiction has turned more towards the far future, perhaps reflecting the long-term nature of current human concerns such as climate change.

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Playing Life as a Straight White Male

2012-05-17T05:15:35-04:00

John Scalzi offers an excellent explanation of privilege through the conceit of a video game:

Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.
You can lose playing on the lowest difficulty setting. The lowest difficulty setting is still the easiest setting to win on. The player who plays on the “Gay Minority Female” setting? Hardcore.

Although I didn’t choose it, I’m lucky enough to be playing life on the easiest difficulty setting. Still, I’m trying to use the many starting points handed to me to explore new parts of the map where I’m not necessarily playing on the lowest difficulty setting. Hopefully, this can help me to make other difficulty settings a little less hard, with the side effect of making a pretty easy game a little more fun.

This excellent explanation was recommended by Jason Kottke.

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Delicate Decisions

2012-04-26T16:29:46-04:00

I disavow this post and highly discourage people from studying at New York University Abu Dhabi. While it was founded with noble ambitions, changes of leadership have led to a significant pivot wherein students are extremely constrained in their opportunities for global education.

This fall, I will fly halfway across the globe to attend college as a member of the third graduating class of NYU Abu Dhabi. This is a choice which neither my friends nor family could have predicted, and not just because the college was only opened two years ago. Yet, here I am: choosing the road less travelled which not even I could have envisioned myself on a year ago. I’ll be turning down offers from some of the most well-know and well-established universities in the world, and not for financial reasons. Rather, I am choosing to seize the reigns of my own education and embark on an adventure across the globe.

Culture and its Consequences

This decision was, in fact, significantly influenced by my visit to Dartmouth, my other top choice. It probably represents the apotheosis of an American college education: on a beautiful New England campus,Dartmouth’s campus was described by President Eisenhower as what a college should look like and I quite agree. highly intelligent students talk and learn from world-class faculty. Assured of a job post-graduation by the extensive alumni network, Dartmouth students are free to enjoy their life in a Hanover bubble. NYUAD lacks most of these features—it has no alumni to speak of and the academic program is still taking shape—but it also lacks two things which made the difference for me:

Demographic gravity and
Institutional inertia

Gravity & Grounding

To elaborate on my first physical fear,According to my statemate at UWC-USA, I am overly fond of speaking in terms of physics and technology, despite the fact that science is my weakest subject. at Dartmouth you feel an overwhelming center of gravity. White, upper middle class Americans dominate the social atmosphere of the school, and even those who don’t come from that background feel a certain pressure to adopt its cultural norms.Indeed, there are more students from New England alone than from all other countries combined. As a member of that demographic group, it would be all too easy to blend into the crowd, join a fraternity, maintain my current worldview, and graduate—possibly with a drinking problem. However, having attended international school for the past two years, I don’t want things to be that easy. I would miss the thrill of constantly reassessing my place in the world through the lenses of friends from dozens of countries.

Thankfully, as NYU president John Sexton is fond of pointing out, NYUAD lacks a center of gravity. With no central demographic to revolve around, as the school’s 450 students hail from dozens of countries, students are constantly thrown into different cultural combinations and forced to adjust their norms accordingly. This ability to rapidly recalibrate in diverse cultures is expanded by opportunities for extensive study abroad—by graduation, I could have studied in upwards of five different countries. In an increasingly globalized world, I believe the opportunities for intensive internationalism which NYUAD affords will become increasingly valuable, even if I might begin to lose my cultural center.

Above: NYUAD students hail from all corners of the globe.

Inertia & Innovation

Although internationalism is certainly valuable to me, the sense of innovation at NYUAD is even more alluring. The centuries of history which our country’s greatest institutions point to as their strength is also their greatest weakness. With that history comes a tremendous amount of institutional inertia which makes substantive change and innovation highly challenging—just look at the difficulties Dartmouth faces in dealing with hazing. Yet, the modern era increasingly requires entrepreneurship and innovation in all sectors. As Carl Schramm emphasized in a lecture I attended at Dartmouth, academic institutions do not teach entrepreneurship properly or take it seriously, instead emphasizing rigidity and channeling them into careers in established fields (especially Wall Street).

Of the universities which do focus on innovation, perhaps the most famous is Stanford. With its close connections to Silicon Valley, the university has a rich history of entrepreneurs emerging from its faculty and students. Thus, the curriculum and culture places a far greater emphasis on innovation than many of the great East Coast universities. While this is certainly admirable, in the process the university has perhaps lost its way as an educational institution, as a recent New Yorker article highlights. Close ties between the industry and the university have become almost too close, with pragmatic innovation becoming the driving force of the university, rather than higher learning. In short, it seems that Stanford is simply allowing innovation in education.

In contrast, NYUAD is truly emphasizing innovation on education. The curriculum remains firmly rooted in a liberal arts core, including such non-utilitarian courses as Becoming Human. In concert with this liberal arts curriculum, significant educational innovations are encouraged, including pushing the power of technology while simultaneously recognizing the importance of place through study trips within the Middle East. Thus, NYUAD encourages innovation on the traditional liberal arts education in an interconnected world.

Students & Support

Of course, the students are responsible for much of this innovation. Starting a school from scratch, we are pioneering in developing its culture, clubs, and credentials. While this is truly exciting, it is only made possible through the support provided by such an intimate school. NYUAD students are truly given the resources to succeed. Some of this comes from the substantial funding and small classes (the student–faculty ratio is 3–1), but it is also driven by the mentality of everyone associated with the school. The school’s success is entirely contingent upon the success of its students, and with only 450 students every single one can receive the individualized attention necessary to succeed. In the process of making a decision, I have been treated with genuine care by everyone associated with the university, as have my future classmates. NYUAD has gone out of its way to ensure that I can make a well-informed choice, even offering to help coordinate with other college visits. As an example of their dedication to students, when my flight back from an accepted student event was cancelled, an admissions officer worked with me on his Sunday night (well past midnight) to ensure I was taken care of. In short, I truly feel that my individual needs and desires will be fully respected at NYUAD. Or, as John Sexton would likely put it, I’ll be loved.I don’t even know the names of the university presidents at other schools, while at NYU the president personally hugged each accepted student.

Right: The skyline of my future home

So, I am ready to embark on an adventure to the Middle East. But I choose NYUAD not for its generous financial aid, its small classes, or its location, but for the opportunity it presents: the chance to reimagine education.

But before I embark on a new adventure, I must wrap up my current one, which I will be hopefully reflecting on a little more now that classes have concluded. So, if you want to know about living with 200 students from 70+ nationalities in New Mexico, just ask.