Photo by boris misevic on Unsplash GitHub — mitchelllisle/priveil ↗ · pip install priveil · Python · FastAPI · MIT Before I talk about what Priveil does, I want to be honest about what it doesn’t do — because that distinction matters more than any feature. Priveil does not anonymise data. It pseudonymises it. Those two words sound similar, but the difference is the difference between a locked door…
Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash Gandalf is a game built by Lakera where an AI model has been given a secret password and your job is to talk it into revealing it. Each level adds a new defence, and the only tool you have is the prompt you type into the box. It’s the most approachable introduction to prompt injection I’ve come across — no setup, no code, just you and a stubborn wizard. I worked…
Back in 2023 I wrote about Monstermash — a small CLI tool for NaCl/Curve25519 encryption. The core idea was simple: two people exchange public keys, encrypt messages with their own private key and the recipient’s public key, and only the recipient can decrypt. If you haven’t read that post, start there . The new release adds an MCP server , meaning you can now use Monstermash directly from any AI…
Photo by Anders Jildén on Unsplash In 1941, Mervin Kelly designed the new Bell Labs building at Murray Hill with a single, deliberate constraint: one long corridor. Not separate wings for physics and chemistry and engineering. One corridor, so that every researcher walking to their office would pass everyone else. Kelly believed the building’s layout would determine the quality of what happened…
Ask any developer how long a project will take, and then ask again once it’s done. The numbers will rarely match. This isn’t an occasional failure — it’s one of the most consistent and documented patterns in software development. And yet, most of us just keep doing it the same way. We stare at a Jira board, assign story points, add a 20% buffer, and hand something over with a confidence we…
Australia and fire are inseparable. For millennia, bushfires have shaped our landscapes, ecology, and communities. But as our climate changes and populations grow along bushland fringes, understanding fire patterns has never been more important. I’ve built an interactive dashboard that explores over 50 years of fire history in New South Wales—from 1970 to 2024. Using data from NSW’s Department of…
We’ve all been told that our data is “de-identified” or “anonymised.” Healthcare providers, government agencies, and companies assure us that after removing names and addresses, our information is safe. But how safe is it really? This question led me to create Too Unique to Hide , an interactive calculator that shows Australians how identifiable they might be from supposedly anonymous datasets.…
Generating and Testing PySpark DataFrames with Sparkdantic 1. Introduction of the Problem Sparkdantic Solves In the world of Big Data, PySpark has become a go-to framework for processing large datasets. However, as with any framework, there are challenges. One of the most cumbersome challenges is defining schemas for DataFrames and generating realistic test data. PySpark often does a good job of…
🧟 Monstermash: A Simple CLI Tool for Data Encryption Introduction In today’s digital landscape, data privacy is a growing concern. While there are many tools available for data encryption, Monstermash offers a straightforward command-line interface (CLI) solution for those who prefer simplicity. Let’s explore its basic functionalities: encrypting and decrypting data. To read more about…
Protecting Sensitive Data: Understanding Database Reconstruction Attacks There are a number of reasons businesses and governments want to share information about people. One of the most common and useful way data is shared is through a census. A Census is particularly interesting because it contains some extremely personal information about individuals and as a result, it must be carefully…