Updates

2022 March 25

I've had a lot going on. Here's what's been going on.

PeerTube

I will be discontinuing my PeerTube instance. See this post. My videos have been moved to this blog, and tagged with the [video] tag.

I set up a PeerTube instance at peertube.negativezero.link, and I've started publishing videos on there. Here's my account. Most notably, I did a series on the Oxen ecosystem (Oxen, Lokinet, and Session). In addition to my tech channel, I have an ASMR channel. I've only made one video (actually just audio) for that channel, but I want to do more.

I also set up the unfortunately named SimpleerTube frontend at pt.negativezero.link. SimpleerTube is a simpler PeerTube interface which does not require JavaScript.

I did my best to configure mirrors of PeerTube and SimpleerTube for I2P, Lokinet, and Tor. It should be possible to watch videos specifically from my own PeerTube instance here:

These are mirrors of SimpleerTube, so they should work perfectly fine without JavaScript. The content security policy is set to allow only requests to my own I2P/Lokinet/Tor mirrors, which should prevent attempts to fetch data via the clearnet.

That said, this may not work properly. Buyer beware and all that.

Grad school

I have been accepted to grad school! I'll begin as a master's student, but I intend to continue and pursue a PhD after I earn my master's degree.

I'll also be moving to another country for school, which is very exciting!

I don't know what this will mean for the future of this blog and more broadly negative zero. I might have more things to write about. I might have less time to write. The only thing I know is that my sites and services will be temporarily unavailable as I move myself and my server.

I'll probably start using a name online again when I'm in school again. For one thing, I might want to be able to talk about my work. We'll see.

GoToSocial

I also set up a Fediverse microblogging instance running GoToSocial (an ActivityPub server, compatible with Mastodon). I don't actually plan to use this much, but given that I'm about to move to a new place and start a new chapter in my life, I think having some social media is a good idea.

Privacy group

I haven't talked about this on my blog before, but for the past year or so, I've been (attempting) organizing a group in my town to talk about privacy. Lately this group has had extremely low membership and participation, making it effectively inactive. I do not foresee a future for this group after I move, and I don't think trying to focus on growth is worthwhile for a group I expect to dissolve in August. Thus, I have decided to discontinue future meetings.

I've learned some lessons from this experience. One of them is that I'm just not a good organizer. Actually, I already knew that. It stresses me out to do it; I'm not assertive, so I don't want to bother people with reminders, and I'm bad at holding them to their commitments; and I'm not well-networked at all. (Largely this last one is a product of not using mainstream social media, but it's also related to my being an introvert who gets overwhelmed around lots of people.)

I also got some experience presenting technical topics, to both technical and lay audiences. I think this experience will help me in my future career as a professor.

One thing I realized at some point (I think in early autumn 2021) was that the group was too theoretical. I am an academic, so I often take a very academic approach to things. ("Let's talk about how these things work and compare their technical properties.") What's actually much more helpful to people, particularly lay people, is instructive, rather than informative, discussion. ("Let's walk through how to set this up. We can do it together, and I'll be around to help if there are issues.") I planned to start holding something like "workshops" around various privacy-related tasks (such as setting up Matrix). This idea was very well-received.

Unfortunately, due to various coincidental reasons, group membership dropped significantly after I had this realization. From that point on, we never had a stable enough group to properly plan for such events.

If I do something like this in the future, though, I will bear these lessons in mind.

Digital garden

I learned recently about "digital gardening", which as I understand it is sort of like creating a personal wiki. It's a space which can grow and shrink as you wish. It's explicitly non-chronological, and pages never have to be "complete" before publication. You just work on it when you want to, add and remove what you want, etc.

I've started my own digital garden at garden.negativezero.link. It's also available on

I've been working on it for a few weeks now. I don't know if I'll indefinitely continue gardening or stop at some point. Maybe I'll grow tired and shut down the site in a week. Maybe I'll keep adding to it forever. Only time will tell, and I'm explicitly not defining rules regarding how I curate this space.

Personal life

I continue to be in a weird, liminal place, especially since I now have more concrete plans for the next stage of my life. I need to do a lot of preparation. Having a relatively near move date complicates friendships. I want to spend time with people in my town, especially since the weather has started getting more manageable, but I'll also be leaving them soon.

I haven't had any opportunity to make music in a long time. I'll be moving near a huge, diverse city. I'm hoping I'll be able to meet other metal musicians and start or join a band.