| layout | title | description | image | nav-menu | show_tile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
post |
About Me |
~$ whoami |
assets/images/sortaface.jpg |
true |
true |
✓ I am not a Robot.
Hello Friend,
As you're no doubt aware, my name is Alex.
I'm a Systems Engineer by day, and a Systems Engineer by night.
At an early age - the magic of a computer, and the free and open internet was instilled in me.
This was an internet where:
- Women could be treated as peers and equals with (or without) the cloak of anonymity.
- Men were unbound from the chains of traditional masculinity and could loudly exclaim: "19/f/cali."
- Large Corporations were still trying to find their footing on the Information Super Highway, instead of turning it into a Panopticon.
These early experiences with technology shaped who I am today. Which is a 30 year old man, sitting next to a custom built super computer, writing text into a terminal occupying 3.5mb of ram.
I'm an often outspoken FOSS and Privacy Advocate and a Slayer of Privacy Nihilism. During my decade working in K12, I was involved in a case study from the EFF regarding the abuse of student information at the hands of Google, and other K12 Technology Vendors. My childhood was exposed me to a free and open internet however, many children are now being indoctrinated to view the internet through the lens of the world's largest Ad Company. Today's Internet teaches kids exchanging PII for convenience is a worthy trade, and often (falsely) the only option. I'm optimistic that we will look back on these days of The Internet like we now look at old cigarette ads. Facebook is just Lucky Strikes again.
Most recently I was published in the Winter 2019/2020 Issue of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly on the same topic. This was a childhood dream come true. Seeing my words in a publication that means so much to me is surreal. Shame that it had to be for something so bleak. But there's no virtue in not knowing.
I think if a system was paid for with public funds -- it should run public code. I'm a life long advocate for self hosting. I believe that End-to-End Encrypted AND Federated/Zero Knowledge services are only going to become more prevalent in the future. Services like TOR, Firefox, Matrix.org, Signal, ProtonMail, NextCloud, and Keybase, are already showing the growing trend for Privacy as a Right and not "Surveillance as an Economy."
Hunter S. Thompson once said: "If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up." So outside of trying to turn my anxiety into a career for myself, I also enjoy video games, music, hacking, homebrew (software +/- beer), gallows humor, rain on the roof, the fourth amendment, books, going all in, and anything honest.
Nobody ever said the good fight would be easy. I will not wear a wishbone where my backbone should be. I have an ethical and moral responsibility to those I love to build a better future. I always leave things better than you found them, and I intend to do the same for the internet.
If that's on brand for you, drop a line.