Dr. Óscar Nájera

You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life, that there’s something wrong with the world.

— Morpheus, The Matrix

Welcome to my turf on the internet, a unique place because it is mine. It isn’t inside a walled garden from a monopolistic Internet mega corporation. Here, in the outskirts of the centralized internet, I’m free to do whatever I want. I set the terms and conditions.

I’m a profoundly curious person, hunting after every new thing. I studied Physics because it was fun. It allowed me to explore the only universe I’ll ever life on. And in its vastness, I found myself most captivated by the small things, the electrons.

My journey unfolded when I moved to a foreign country(France) to pursue my PhD in Strongly Correlated Electrons Systems. Those were amazing and crazy days. I worked to understand how the interactions between electrons affect their collective behavior.

Computers have been the most precious tool and weapon on my journey. Computers aren’t bound by the scarcity of nature, nor the constrains of shape and space. They are a universal simulator and within them you can have anything you want with zero materials cost. Everything is the same distance away, everything has the same manufacturing process, you only have to put the work.

I’m incredibly happy that computers can be in the hands of everybody. Yet it saddens me that we don’t fight to keep ownership of them. Proprietary Software, Vendor Locked Hardware, captured spaces on the internet(the cloud platforms) take the endless possibilities away. You can only do what they tell you to do, and then they make it mandatory to do as they say. I’m always fighting back.

Everything I know, originated by following my curiosity on the Internet. Which is why I believe in keeping it open and free for everybody and the main reason I use and contribute to Freedom and Privacy respecting software(also known as Free Software or worse Open Source). That choice comes at great personal expense, I self host my email, online backups, file shares and source version control system. I have to do it.

Software is more than stuff, it is more than information, it is executable knowledge. If having unread books lying around is a wasted of opportunity, not running software you control is a crime against your intellect. You are a follower of what it does, and you have no idea of how to do it by yourself. That makes it really dangerous.

When I’m not in front of the computer, you can find me dancing. I like to dance West Coast Swing and Salsa the most. Dancing is the most amazing recreation form it is Art and Sport, it is a challenging craftsmanship.

You made it through that lengthy, text only presentation. Social media platforms haven’t hijacked you attention span. If you want to get in touch, the best way of communication is by email. You can communicate securely with me using GnuPG (If you don’t know about it, it is a good time to learn ). My key-ID has the fingerprint:

7D28 EBAE F208 A715 363D 3C7A BF54 14CD C5E4 73B3

You can verify my linked identity to that key on my keyoxide profile :