Mastodawn

Soatok Dreamseeker

Retrospective: Five Years Blogging About Cryptography as a Gay Furry Online

The history of this blog might very well be a cautionary tail (sic) about scope creep. AJ The Original Vision For Dhole Moments Originally, I just wanted a place to write about things too long for Twitter (back when I was an avid Twitter poster). I also figured, if nothing else, it would be a good place to write down the things I'm learning…

http://soatok.blog/2025/04/17/retrospective-five-years-blogging-about-cryptography-as-a-gay-furry-online/

Retrospective: Five Years Blogging About Cryptography as a Gay Furry Online - Dhole Moments

The history of this blog might very well be a cautionary tail (sic) about scope creep. AJ The Original Vision For Dhole Moments Originally, I just wanted a place to write about things too long for …

Dhole Moments

Botch Frivarg Apr 17, 2025

@soatok AWOO sounds interesting since for all its faults email is still the best at certain things (long form async communication, and certain forms of mailing lists come to mind), and would be nice to have a true e2e alternative

Action Jay 🐾

@soatok keep up the great work! Unapologetic joy in the face of detractors 🐾

punIssuer Apr 17, 2025

@soatok I must confess I didn't recognize your species' name and therefore mispronounced it in my head; until I realized that Rudyard Kipling wrote about a pack of them in his Jungle Book. Not too flattering, alas, as he set them up to have a big fight against the home team wolves

Olivier M.Apr 17, 2025

@soatok I discovered your blog through https://soatok.blog/2024/11/15/what-to-use-instead-of-pgp/ and then read other posts and learned a lot in the process. Thanks for sharing your knowledge!

What To Use Instead of PGP - Dhole Moments

It’s been more than five years since The PGP Problem was published, and I still hear from people who believe that using PGP (whether GnuPG or another OpenPGP implementation) is a thing they s…

Dhole Moments

Soatok Dreamseeker Apr 17, 2025

@aspyrine Happy to help <3

Wintermute Apr 17, 2025

@soatok @aspyrine Soatok, @deviantollam , @SheHacksPurple , @hacks4pancakes , @thegibson , @sophieschmieg , and probably many more that I forget atm are shining examples of experts in IT security that care and are kind and helpful. I'm so glad that we have you gems in the community <3

Tanya Janca | SheHacksPurple

@Wintermute @soatok @aspyrine @deviantollam @hacks4pancakes @thegibson @sophieschmieg 🥰

@soatok Really cute fursuit.

Spud Apr 17, 2025

@soatok I like ur nomad complex shirt :3

brodokk Apr 18, 2025

> The only thing I do worry about here is that a lot of people who listened to my suggestion to start their own furry blogs will encounter this phenomenon themselves, and might become discouraged by it.

I know it's been years since I wanted to start and this is clearly not the problem, i just don't care about this part (yest?). I just need to move my fluffy ass...

And otherwise thanks for all these posts, the ones i like the most are about fur stuff but i need to seriously read your posts about cryptography... I did read some but not all of them...

S-Config Apr 18, 2025

@soatok About encouraging people to start their own websites and blogs. I worried about this too. Had to post a bit of a disclaimer about it in some of those articles that unlike social networks everything isn't real-time. Blogs are the slow-moving clouds few pay attention to. Reminding readers that you just got to have personal fortitude levels so hard it klinks when you walk. Also, helps when you're doing it for yourself as mental therapy. The readers are along for the ride.

dzamie Apr 18, 2025

@soatok @S-Config Yeah, my mindset for a blog when I get around to finishing up the css and html for it is more that I'm making it for my future self. Little time capsule of present-year me. And more redundancy for my art gallery, of course.
If other people happen to see it? That's neat too.

S-Config Apr 18, 2025

@dzamie @soatok Absolutely. The other neat thing about setting everything up is when people want to see your art gallery. It's a simple address going to you instead of a billion other peeps.

Looking forward to seeing it.

crypticcelery 🔜 EH23 Apr 18, 2025

@soatok that is a really nice retrospective (and some excellent pointers). I discovered your blog fairly early into being on fedi (around the libOLM post), and have gone through a bit of the catalog, but there is quite a lot still on the reading list. It is really nice to see that impact is more important than views to you.
Thanks for your posts so far!

Also a good hint for starting one’s own blog, not to reinvent the wheel. Maybe I’ll listen.

Joachim Schipper Apr 19, 2025

@soatok Thanks for writing! I’ve been an avid reader of Dhole Moments for… apparently it’s been almost five years already.