Until October 4, 2026, the Pro upgrade of Privacy Bar is free, via a special code entered at checkout. I’m making this promotion so users can test all the capabilities of Privacy Bar with zero risk and suggest improvements. After that date, you’ll still have the Pro upgrade forever. So get it now. Details below.
Category: News
Doesn’t fit any category, but it’s relevant
One Year, Ten Tools, One Winner: Why I Stopped Juggling AI Apps and Just Use Gemini Plus (for now)
It is late July 2026 as I write this. A year ago I had several AI subscriptions running at once. Perplexity for research. A multi-model hub for “access to everything.” A couple of niche writing tools. I told myself this was rigor — using the best tool for each job. Mostly it was just tab-switching dressed up as strategy.
Here’s what that year actually taught me: the AI industry keeps selling a story where the endgame is one enormous, all-knowing black box that does your thinking for you. That story is wrong, or at least beside the point. What’s actually changed is something quieter and more useful — a single person can now move across disciplines that used to require a team. You don’t need to have memorized a citation style or a syntax spec to work like someone who has. The AI handles the narrow technical execution; you supply the judgment, the taste, the “does this actually make sense” instinct, because you are the one who has a soul inside.
But that only works if the tool gets out of your way. And that’s where most of my stack failed me.
How I Tamper-Proofed my Web Server
Imagine building a world-class digital vault, complete with un-crackable elliptic curve cryptography and advanced quantum-resistant algorithms. You host it on a remote server, confident that no one can peer inside. But what happens if a malicious actor doesn’t try to crack the vault itself, but instead secretly slides a modified, compromised keyhole onto your front door while you aren’t looking?
In the web security world, this is a massive vulnerability. Traditional browsers blindly download and execute whatever code a remote server throws at them. If a server is compromised, your security app can be turned against you before you type your first keystroke.
To protect PassLok, KyberLock, and now Privacy Bar Mobile, I decided to flip the script. With Gemini’s help, I built a zero-trust, Authenticated Bootloader—a miniature cryptographic gatekeeper that turns your browser into a self-checking logic engine.
Here is the exact story of how I made my applications entirely tamper-proof, running smoothly both on the remote web and natively offline on your mobile home screen.
Privacy Bar is out!
Privacy Bar: The Evolution of Personal Encryption
It’s finally here. Privacy Bar 1.0.2 is my new extension for Chromium browsers, and it represents the culmination of everything I’ve built over the last decade. If you’ve used my previous tools, you’ll recognize the DNA: it combines the versatility of PassLok, the post-quantum armor of KyberLock, and the logic of SynthPass into a single, streamlined interface.
KyberLock released
KyberLock is a new web app, similar to PassLok, making quantum-proof cryptography easy to use. It is based on the recently released standard for post-quantum encryption, and has a strength comparable to that of AES-192. The main method is called Crystals-Kyber by its authors, hence the name of the app.
You may ask, why mess with quantum-proof cryptography now, since quantum computers capable of breaking current methods are not yet expected to be available in the next ten years? Because you may have private data right now that you would not like to be vulnerable even in ten years’ time. Someone might record it in encrypted state, and wait until quantum computers can decrypt it.
You can get it from its GitHub page, or run it from its own page. Don’t forget to look at the code.
Long article on Cryptography
I have written a fairly long article, entitled “Can a Tabula Recta provide security in the XXI Century?” combining several posts from this website. The overarching assumption is that, in a world where connected computers are everywhere, we may get to a point where no electronic means within a given person’s reach can be trusted. What then? Use low-tech means that have been tweaked and optimized using computers, to stand against computer-aided attack if if comes to that. You can find the article here.
Introducing Flutino
Under wraps for quite some time, now that it is Patent Pending I can finally talk here about one of my latest inventions, the Flutino. It is likely the world’s smallest (playable) musical instrument. It has a range approaching two octaves and loudness over 100 dB. Better yet: it works in every scale, and never needs tuning or even batteries. No fingerings to learn, and you can be playing another instrument (or anything, really) at the same time. You can sound like a pro in very little time.
All my crypto apps updated
It’s a fairly small change, but one that may mean much. The versions I just pushed out include an icon on the toolbar, plus sometimes a special button, in order to download encrypted and decrypted files loaded in the box as a link. This gets around the file size restriction of the right-click and “save as…” method that was used until now, especially on Chrome. I’ve been able to load and save files over 1 GB in size. Then you can attach them to a regular email, for instance. This affects the following apps: PassLok Privacy, PassLok for Email, PassLok Universal, FusionKey, SeeOnce, and URSA.
PassLok v2.5 is here!
It’s been a while without an update, but now here’s one that may be bigger than it appears at first. PassLok has moved to version 2.5, which allows users to share their Locks with friends nearby via a QR code. The picture here contains my Lock, in case you want to communicate with me through PassLok.
VideoSkip updated to version 0.4
This is not a minor update. By popular demand, the interface has moved to the video page itself, rather than reside in a separate window. This means that VideoSkip will no longer load invisibly behind the video. It is also accessible when the video is fullscreen. But there is more. Read on for a list of improvements. Read More