Update
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Someone seems to have made a clone of Hidden Answers. Don't ask me
about it, I have nothing to do with it. The admin there seems to be
having fun acting like I'm a crazy egomaniac though, despite the fact
that he spammed my E-mail demanding me to give up HA's database, and he
encouraged his other friends to spam me as well.
Any official announcements will be made only on the onion you are
visiting and only signed with my PGP key.
Don't believe everything you see. Use your judgment.
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This website is unavailable. It may or may not return at a future date.
I have had to migrate from my old dedicated server to a new one, due to
better pricing. The old server has been slated for termination on 2021
July 9. I have moved critical services (such as E-mail) already, since I
personally depend on those services to be running. Everything else, I
have made a backup which will be stored until I decide to do something
with it.
Currently, I do not have time nor energy to focus on resurrecting these
websites on the new server. I run these sites solely because other
people want me to, not because I personally use them. I am not sitting
on a treasure chest of bitcoin; the entire first half of this year, I
have been focused on applying for jobs, almost burning completely
through my savings, and now I am poor as hell, but thankfully I recently
heard back from an employer that I now have a wage job. I've applied for
software dev and other shit as well, heard back from a few companies,
but for now I do not think I would be happy working with computers more
than I already do. Nor do I want to deal with coworkers or customers
much; I need a lot of time to myself so I can regain my energy and
figure out where to go forward with my life.
~ ~ ~
For Hidden Answers:
I pretended to care about the site for *months*. I have neglected to
upgrade the Question2Answer software that runs the site; I have not
focused on features that users and moderators want; I have not been
willing to babysit the Spanish and Portuguese versions of HA. I know
that there are a lot of people who appreciate HA's existence, who
appreciate a place that is relatively free of censorship and available
for asking and discussing any questions anonymously, who dedicate their
own time in moderating the site and contributing their own knowledge.
However, I feel far removed from whatever community may exist on HA, I
feel unqualified to run such a community, and frankly I have little
interest in heading such a website in the first place.
I like open communication platforms, but I'd rather focus on federated
platforms such as Matrix, XMPP, fediverse (ActivityPub, Mastodon,
Pleroma, GNU social, however you may have heard of it), and even
NNTP/Usenet. Platforms that are resilient to server takedowns, to shitty
admins, to censorship. With Hidden Answers, there has always been a
single point of failure: me and the moderators. If we decide to kill the
site, it's gone. And this is the perfect example of that, the fact that
I shut down this website for a while -- possibly forever, but
optimistically I want to at least update the software, test it with the
HA database, and give the site to a trustworthy host, thus exchanging
it from my hands to someone else's.
Aside from my lack of interest, I have been worried about the legality
of hosting a service such as Hidden Answers. I want to focus my efforts
toward clearnet, going forward, even as far as to start a nonprofit
organisation by getting a lawyer and filing all the paperwork for that.
It's a project I wanted to focus my full attention on for a while, and
stuff like HA has been distracting me from it. So, if HA does come back
up, I want it to be in the hands of an administrator who understands and
can handle running a site such as this.
I'm sorry I had to announce this news in such a way. I was hoping to
transparently get the site ready for a move, instead of shutting it down
entirely. But life happened, I'm running on fumes, and I need to cut
some of my responsibilities and have time to myself. I need to focus on
my job, my hobbies, my projects.
You can follow my blog for updates on my own projects:
<
> or
<
>
I plan to set up an NNTP server, open to anybody, so once it is
configured, I will announce it on my blog and people will be able to use
it. For people who simply want an uncensored forum for discussion, feel
free to keep on top of that development.
The Hidden Answers MUC is still on XMPP, if you want to regroup there
and chat with others: <xmpp:
[email protected]?join>
~ ~ ~
For other sites I host:
If you were responsible for the site at this address, I still have your
data backed up. E-mail me at <
[email protected]> and I can attach it for
you (PGP-encrypted if you prefer).
I don't think I am going to host these sites any longer. Most of them
were using HSv2 onions (the short ones) that were going to stop working
this year anyway, because Tor Project is planning to obsolete them in a
later version of their software.
I hope you understand my circumstance.
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