Who Is This “SynAck” Person, Anyway?
I am a middle-aged, career software engineer currently taking a sabbatical from the tech industry to decide if I want to continue in tech or make the jump to something else - basically trying to figure out what my second act in life is going to be. I am currently living in Austin, TX, and I spend a lot of my time in the Fediverse, a decentralized social network, as well as trying to bring about the downfall of surveillance capitalism and megacorp silos by any means necessary.
The best place to checkout my current interests is by heading over to myMastodon profile. That’s where I do most of my social interactions these days. As one of my chooms over there says, I consider myself an “aging cyberpunk”. I’m into martial arts, technology, and building my online presence away from the prying eyes of those who would seek to turn me into nothing more than product.
The “SynAck” handle originally comes from the middle step of the TCP handshake protocol, SYN-ACK, which is the step where the server recognizes that a client wants to connect and is indicating receipt of that request as well as the confirmation that the server is open to establishing the connection. This seems like a very succinct way to sum up how I see social media interaction.
You can find me on social media here:
- corteximplant.com (Mastodon): SynAck - This is currently my main social media presence
- corteximplant.net (Akkoma): SynAck
- Night City Bar (OTS Discord): synack7891
- Totentanz (stand-alone Discourse forum): SynAck
- Matrix: @synack_ci:matrix.org
- Bookwyrm: SynAck
- Bluesky: @agingcyberpunk.bsky.social
You can also check out some of my Mastodon Pinned Posts that I moved over here in order to get to know more about me and how I operate in the Fediverse.
And you can also contact me via email at SynAck@preemchro.me.
There’s more nova data to be downloaded from the Links section.
So What’s Your Real Name?
I have chosen to use only my handle on this site for several reasons. Mainly, I believe that ideas should exist without being attached to a specific person. Using my name would ground that idea in my own persona which could attach or convey extra meaning beyond what is intended. I want these ideas to be explored neutrally and I don’t want anyone who knows me in meatspace to be unduly influenced by that when considering these thoughts.
A second reason is very closely related to this insofar as safety is concerned. As I posted in my article about Personal Responsibility Online, the Internet is not a “safe place” and it is wise to be wary of sharing too much information. I value my privacy too much to be flippant with it and overshare. One of my favorite quotes regarding privacy from the movie Anon is this:
It's not that I have something to hide; I have nothing I want you to see.
I don’t have anything to hide, but there are things that I don’t want just anyone to see. It is my choice to whom and when to reveal personal details about myself, and I do not believe that a public blog on the global Internet is that place.
And lastly, I keep in mind a quote from everybody’s favorite hacker, Joey, from the movie Hackers:
I need a handle man! Without a handle, I don't have an identity!
SynAck is an identity that I created. It is not a name that I was assigned, but it is the name I have chosen to use as my “public identity” so that people who know me online can find me and know that it is me. I have had several handles over the years, but this is my current one and so I choose to extend that public identity to this space. By interacting with my various constructs on various sites and services, one can get a more complete picture of all of that information that I am willing to share publicly to whoever wants to read it.
For you programmers out there, consider “SynAck” to be the public DTO of my private object. Only those with access to the private API get to see the full object as it exists in durable storage.
