Without a Traceroute

I’m in Madrid right now. I’m surprised by how much I like the city. The weather is nice, and there’s a fantastic variety of outdoor cafes and bars. It’s also way less overrun by tourists than Barcelona. Yesterday, I met with some cool Spanish hackers at Hamlab.

Later, I’ll try to write more about that (and the dozen other things I haven’t really properly written up), but in the meantime, here’s a video the Hamlab guys put together of a protest they organized outside the ruling political party’s headquarters. Based on what they told me, it sounds like under current Spanish law, downloading copyrighted material is not actually illegal, only uploading. I believe Canada has a similar legal situation. Anyway, there’s a proposal to change that, and they showed up to protest against it. When the camera pans around, you can really see how large the crowd is. I was surprised how many people they got out for their protest.

Thanks/blame for the subtitles goes to the Hamlab guys, not me.

In other news, tomorrow is my final day in Europe. I’m catching a 10 pm flight out of Madrid to Buenos Aires, Argentina. The flight takes like 13 hours or so, and I’m planning on spending at least part of that writing, so maybe I can get some longish blog posts again. I’m really excited, but also kind of nervous. I think it’ll be refreshing to be in a country where I at least sort of speak the language. I’m loving the ability to read signs here in Madrid. But it also feels a bit like starting my entire trip over. I do have a lead on some contacts in Buenos Aires from one of the hackers in Paris.