Who are you, and what do you do?
Hey! My name is Jag Talon, and my pronouns are he/him. I was a product designer at The Tor Project and DuckDuckGo working on privacy and censorship circumvention tools, but right now I'm taking a break from tech and involving myself in mutual aid (such as Food Not Bombs), Palestinian, and abolitionist movements.
I'm still doing some computer stuff when I have the time like contributing to OpenBSD ports, toying with small programs, and running a little server for friends and family. You've caught me at a transitional point in my life to be honest since I'm taking a break from work. The tools that I've been using are more personal and tend to be lightweight since I'm using older machines. I'll talk more about that below.
What hardware do you use?
The computer that I've used the most is a Dell XPS 17 from 2020 that unfortunately guzzles way too much power and that's too heavy to lug around comfortably. It's great for doing design work especially when I'm using resource-hungry apps like Figma, but it's not so great when it comes to portability or my electric bill. It's not comfortable to use even at home, but I got it for free at work so I'll be using it for as long as I can.
Because of the issues that I have with the Dell and the fact that I don't have to use Figma right now, I've been using an Asus Eee 1000H from 2009 more and more these days. It's what I'm using right now to answer these questions, actually! I think it's part nostagia since I used a netbook when I was in university, but it's also part curiosity: I want to see how much I can get out of this 15-year-old laptop. I got it on eBay for $30, and I'm really enjoying the size of this machine. I got an aftermarket battery for it as well so that I can use it longer (yes, people still sell batteries for it!), and I also got a Wi-Fi adaptor for it since the internal Wi-Fi seems to have died.
Other than that, I have a Pixel 5a as my phone, a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX10 camera for traveling, a Ploopy trackball for mousing, and a trusty Brother HLL2370DW printer that I got on Craigslist.
And what software?
I'm fascinated with OpenBSD, so both my laptops, my Tor relay, and my personal website all run on it. I've been keeping track of my experience on my wiki mostly so that I could use it as a reference for myself in the future.
Because I'm attempting to use an old machine, I've been using lightweight tools more often. Right now I'm using aerc as my email client and Remind as my calendar. It takes a while to get used to, but they're unbelievably fast compared to Thunderbird. For to-do lists, I'm using Taskwarrior, and I journal using jrnlc. To sync my files between my computers I use Syncthing, and I backup my files using Tarsnap. BadWolf browser and NetSurf run wonderfully on this small machine, too. I've also been toying with Decker for making small programs and ezines in my spare time.
On my phone, I run GrapheneOS and the main apps that I use are AntennaPod for podcasts, YNAB for budgeting, Signal for keeping in touch with comrades, Tor Browser for browsing, and Magic Earth and Organic Maps for navigation.
Finally, I have an OpenBSD server running Mycorrhiza wiki for my website, and a Debian server running FreedomBox that I share with some friends.
What would be your dream setup?
I think my dream is to have a more communal setup where people freely share their tools with each other. There's a lot of waste and consumerism in the computer industry, so I think I'd love for us to collectively apply mutual aid concepts when it comes to our computing resources. I'd like to see people collectively owning server space, gaming consoles, printers, laptops, mics, or drawing tablets instead of owning it individually.
Right now I'm able to do that a little bit with my small circle of friends, but I'd love for it to be more normalized in our culture.