security · · 9 min read
Built to destroy itself
Six funded months building CZAssist, a machine that erases everything the moment it is touched. What we proved, what it cost, and why the barriers to building serious security hardware have collapsed.
Colin Domoney — 30 years of breaking and building things. Still curious.
Three decades in security. Now also building. CTO and co-founder of LibertiTec — privacy infrastructure for organisations with a duty of care. Here's where I think out loud about security, AI, code, and the occasional road cycling sufferfest.
Latest Writing
life · · 11 min read
We can't keep doing this
A tribute to Professor Jason Arday, and what ordinary people in Britain can actually do about the machine that hounded him. Not a rant. A to-do list.
life · · 10 min read
The Rainbow Nation
Three weeks back in South Africa, thirty-five years after the country nearly tore itself apart. What it taught me, and what it still has to teach.
code · · 10 min read
Cooked to within an inch of its life
A stranger in a pub watched me use my Mac and was mildly alarmed. This is what he was looking at: the utilities, the terminal, and the small army of AI tools.
code · · 4 min read
Surviving SSH on a lossy 4G link
Working from South Africa against UK servers over cellular broke my SSH sessions, and my Claude Code context with them. Tailscale, mosh and tmux fixed it.
ai · · 7 min read
The Adventures of Mr. Colin
Seven hours of webinars for Gaza Sky Geeks, three of them Q&A, and the best audience I have ever stood in front of. On hard questions, courage, and a nickname I did not earn.
life · · 9 min read
No barriers
A corny sales slogan, a decade-old joke, and the strange way the joke came true. On leaving a life that never lined up and finding one that does.
ai · · 9 min read
Through the looking glass
A Sunday I'd planned to spend doing nothing in particular, and instead spent building a personal stack I can't quite believe I have. The case against the 'AI is making us dumber' line, written from the other side of it.
life · · 5 min read
A few days in Paris
I went expecting to tolerate it. I came home a little rearranged.
life · · 5 min read
They won and changed the subject
Net migration is at the level Farage spent fifteen years demanding. There has been no victory lap. There has been a quiet pivot to a different scapegoat, and the audience is not being shown the second number.
code · · 10 min read
The Privacy Layer That Broke launchd
On macOS Sequoia, my AI agent ran fine in the foreground and silently failed as a service. The reason is a privacy feature you've never heard of, and the workaround is to ask AppleScript to ask Terminal to start your daemon.
life · · 7 min read
I watched them leave
I stood on a harbour in Barcelona on 12 April 2026 and watched the Global Sumud Flotilla leave for Gaza. Last night, the IDF intercepted them in international waters. The question I'm sitting with tonight isn't whether they were brave.
life · · 6 min read
The hoarder's vault
Bookmarks, folders, tags, starred chats. None of it works, and all of it feels like it does. The problem isn't the tools, it's that I can't bring myself to delete.
ai · · 6 min read
The opportunity cost compression
A book I've wanted to write for two years kept losing on cost. The maths just flipped, and a whole class of projects flipped with it.
life · · 6 min read
The post I deleted
I wrote a tribute to a Palestinian photojournalist killed in Gaza, and a former friend's pushback shamed me into pulling it down. I should not have. So here it is again, not softened.
ai · · 8 min read
The point of writing it down
I designed a Hermes skill across four tools without writing a line of code. The point wasn't speed, it was making sure the design didn't live in my head.
life · · 7 min read
No feeling is final
Imperial revanchism and genocide on one side, the most democratised creative toolkit in history on the other. The trick is holding both without picking one.
ai · · 9 min read
I Wanted OpenClaw to Be the One
Three credible open-source personal agents, all vying for the same slot in my life. I ran them all for long enough to mean it. Two stayed. The interesting part is why.
code · · 7 min read
I Didn't Want to Give My AI Agent SSH
Most of the suggested use cases for personal AI agents are lame. Infrastructure monitoring turned out to be the one. But only after I'd refused to hand over the keys.
life · · 8 min read
What I Refused to Build
Most design decisions are claims about what matters, but most don't feel like claims. Building thetoll.memorial meant crossing out every default and asking what each refusal actually said.
Currently
Full /now page →Last updated: August 25, 2026
Working on
Submitted my first two PRs to Hermes Agent. Building a PoC for an agentic AI fundraiser website ... watch this space. Building the automation behind our next product ... also watch this space. Day job: CTO and co-founder at LibertiTec, building privacy infrastructure for organisations with a duty of care to the people whose data they collect.
Reading
Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams — insider account of Facebook that Meta tried hard to bury, which is reason enough. Manufacturing Consent by Herman and Chomsky — the classic analysis of how power shapes the news. Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee — finally. Bleak and beautifully spare.
Listening to
Evolver by Chris Liebing. Mezzanine by Massive Attack. Beatport Top 100 — Today. Sprinting Gazelle: Palestinian Songs from the Motherland and the Diaspora by Reem Kelani — the British-Palestinian singer and researcher's 2006 debut, traditional songs and settings of poetry, and a thoughtful way into the repertoire.
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