Contact

Email

I respond to email semi-regularly, though during the middle of the semester I might delay responding (for not more than one month) if I don’t know you and your message is not particularly urgent. Feel free to send me follow up mail if I don’t respond, though. I don’t mind random emails, but if you can, I’d greatly appreciate it if you encrypt your message with my PGP key (this will depend on the email you choose; see below). You can also search for my PGP key by email on either the standard OpenPGP keyserver or the MIT keyserver. The first of these is much faster!

If you don’t know how to encrypt email with PGP, this page gives a good overview of applications that support encryption and how to enable it. I personally use Thunderbird, which is free software, for encryption.

I have several email addresses, and I check all of them at once, so it doesn’t really matter which one you use to contact me. For completeness, I list all addresses I check for external mail here:

• ananth@monadi.cc

  • That’s the primary address affiliated with this website.

  • Use this PGP key

• ananth@functor.systems

  • I’ve obtained this custom address (also rent-free) as a member of functor.systems. I use it primarily for technical discussions with other hackers.

  • Use this PGP key

• ananthv@mit.edu

  • This is my primary academic address, affiliated with MIT. At the Institute, it’s customary to refer to either the first part of this address (ananthv) or the full address as a “kerb”, short for Kerberos, which is a custom secure communication protocol for internet services developed at MIT and still used for personal authentication.

  • Use this PGP key

Matrix

The great thing about Matrix is that it’s easy to setup end-to-end encryption without complicated key exchanges. You can learn more about encryption on the Matrix in this article. I have two Matrix accounts in separate homeservers, listed below:

• @q9i:functor.systems

  • This is my personal account, affiliated with the functor.systems homeserver.

• @ananthv:matrix.mit.edu

  • This is my MIT-affiliated Matrix account. The homeserver is graciously maintained by the Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) under project Uplink.

Other Communication

I have what proprietary software enthusiasts may describe as a more “normal” communication platform, Discord, but I prefer not to use it, even though I use a free-as-in-freedom frontend for it. If you really want to communicate via Discord, please contact me via email first (unencrypted is fine).

I also use Signal, but I don’t publicly disclose my username for privacy reasons. If we need to communicate directly, Signal is almost certainly the best option, but please contact me via email or Matrix first.

If you want to mail me a physical letter or other artifact, please reach out via email first so I know what to expect.

Git Forges

A while ago I used to be a GitHub enthusiast. Concerns about free software and the platform’s weaponization to support concentration camps have led me to consider self-hosted alternatives. While the latter concern might be particularly acute for GitHub specifically, corporate alternatives such as GitLab and Bitbucket present a major threat to software freedom worldwide. I use the term “git forge” to refer more generally to a web platform for hosting and exploring Git repositories.

I still maintain a presence on GitHub, but I rarely use it nowadays, so don’t be surprised if you see I’ve stopped creating new repositories and developing code—it’s merely that I’ve moved to a different platform. The main reason I’ve maintained my GitHub account is because it continues to be the largest platform for collaborative development on open-source projects.

The main forges I use are:

• code.functor.systems/q9i

  • I now spend most of my time on code.functor.systems, which is a self-hosted instance for the functor.systems team and friends. Most of my new repositories will be uploaded here.

  • This instance is Forgejo-based

• forgejo.mit.edu/ananthv

  • Thanks to SIPB, I also have access to the free and publicly accessible MIT forge. I primarily use this for maintaining MIT-related projects, such as those developed under the auspices of the OpenCompute Laboratory (stylized OCλ).

  • This instance is Forgejo-based

ORCID

If you need to verify my identity as an author for whatever reason, my ORCID is 0009-0003-9165-4690.