About Us

About this site

About Revolutionary Information

Most of what goes wrong later was allowed earlier. A default left switched on, a standard written to suit the people who wrote it, a rule with no teeth. That is the job. This site takes one of those and argues that it ought to be compulsory, which is a slower argument than a review but it lasts longer.

What you get here

• Revolutionary Information has been running since 2009 and is still publishing. More than 400 articles are here to search.
• A claim about a standard has to point at the standard. So the piece quotes the clause, the guidance or the draft, and links you to the thing itself rather than to somebody’s summary of it. Advertising and sponsored placement pay for the work, and every paid link is marked. Policy writing that hides its funding is worth nothing, so ours does not.
• The questions here are the boring ones that decide things. Should this be switched off by default. Who is liable when the update stops arriving. What does the rule actually say, as opposed to what the press release said it says.
• We argue that some things should be required rather than encouraged. That is an unfashionable position, and we hold it in public where people can push back.
• Follow along and you get an early view of the arguments that turn into rules a few years later, which is useful to anyone who builds these things. It is just as useful to anyone who has to live with them. You stop being surprised.

How we work

Each piece starts from a document rather than a headline. A standard, a consultation paper, a security advisory, whichever one the industry would prefer stayed unread, and then we say what it would mean if it were enforced. Nobody pays us to say it.

A rule with nobody enforcing it is a press release with a longer shelf life.

Keep Revolutionary Information going

Argue with it in public.

Follow along and the next security story arrives with some background already in place. Read on. If a piece here gets one default switched off, or one clause taken seriously by somebody who can act on it, that is a year well spent.

Revolutionary Information is one of fifteen titles published by G R Sites, an independent publisher writing since 2008, under one editorial policy and one disclosure standard. The other fourteen work closer to the ground. The bill. The broken screen. The refund nobody wants to give you.

See what else the network covers →