Annabel Rothschild

  • Configuring Mailbox.org and Addy.io

    I previously used addy.io (used to be called AnonAddy) with my Proton Mail account with no issue and no additional configuration. However, when I moved to Mailbox.org recently, I kept getting bounce-backs with unconfigured (misconfigured?) DKIM, DMARC, and SPF policies, despite having configured them in NameCheap (my host). Ugh. Issue appears to be the policies…

  • “Please add a picture to your student profile”

    This is a fairly innocuous request by one of my PhD advisors: please add a profile picture to your student profile so the rest of the faculty can recognize you during student review. The student review is a time when my graduate program’s faculty gather and each PhD student’s profile is discussed to make sure…

  • Configuring Hetzner turn-key (“Storage”) Nextcloud with OnlyOffice

    *** Sad update as of 30 April 2025: due to incompatibility between the latest version of CDS and NextCloud, there has been a major bug (https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/onlyoffice-nextcloud/issues/1066). Via email, Hetzner announced (https://status.hetzner.com/incident/e9878d8c-9875-49bb-ba10-3aa263957db2) they are discontinuing the built-in document server. Ugh. *** I recently switched to Hetzner’s Storage solution (from self-hosting via YunoHost on a raspberry pi),…

  • The problem with proxies

    AIES – 258: “The Problems with Proxies: Making Data Work Visible through Requester Practices”

  • Zotero 7 and ZotFile

    I suspect know I’m not the only person out there that used ZotFile to manage their slightly-overflowing Zotero libraries. Turns out, ZotFile is incompatible with Zotero 7. After paging through a series of Zotero forum posts, I came across ZotMoov which functions more or less the same. I was pleasantly surprised to have no compatibility…

  • Fedora 40 and the case of the missing wifi

    I’ve out-of-the-box transformed enough machines from Windows and MacOS to Linux that missing wifi is no great surprise. What is, however, an extremely unpleasant surprise is when functional wifi goes missing, as it has during the transition to Fedora 40. As it turns out, this is not such a big problem to fix, but isolating…

  • A self-hosting journey

    A couple of months ago I decided to finally take the plunge and try self-hosting. In particular, I was sick of trying to find a Google Docs alternative, and sharing random CryptPads and Etherpads with academic collaborators seemed dodgy. I’d been interested in Nextcloud, but I’d been using a random provider through their marketplace, which…

  • Operating a Kindle without Amazon (sort of)

    I suppose the title gives it away. After the untimely (only 13 years of use!) death of my 2011 Kindle Touch, I’d been in the market for a replacement. I’ve been trying to buy most (re- or non-programmable) tech products used, that I either feel confident I can fully wipe or don’t have to worry…

  • Configuring Vikunja on YunoHost

    1 – create new todoist authorized app: https://developer.todoist.com/appconsole.html 2 – o-auth redirect should be [your domain]/migrate/todoist 3 – take note of client id and secret 4 – then edit your Vikunja config located at /opt/vikunja/config.yml 5 – in the config.yml, add client id, secret and redirect url under migrate –> todoist 6 – then reload…

  • SEA/SAW 2024

    Curious about DataWorks? Here’s an article and a podcast about the organization. And the critical data literacy curriculum is available here. Poster: “Calculating the cost of data refusal” Abstract: How does data refusal fit into the economic structure of a pro-social data work enterprise? If data is seen as “the new oil,” how can we…

  • Datasets are eggs

    This excerpt is premised on the differences between eggs at American and European grocery stores. Eggs in the US are pasteurized (cleaned) before they can be sold, resulting in a bleached shell that must be refrigerated. Eggs sold in Europe (and some US farm-to-table situations) are more commonly unpasteurized and therefore maintain the dirt and…

  • Privacy Diary: 5+ months running Lineage OS

    I finally switched to Android when, in 2020, my old iPhone 5S forcibly and needlessly bit the dust at the behest of the Apple Corporation’s planned obsolesce policy. While in the process of moving back to Germany during the COVID-19 pandemic, my temporary housing was through a shall-not-be-named platform, whose app no longer ran on…

  • Privacy Diary: On data brokers

    By last count, I’ve lived at six addresses in the United States, with varying degrees of permanence (I’ve been an official resident of one state the entire time, but had mailing addresses at five other locations, some in-state, some out, due to temporary jobs and schooling). So, when I recently went to fill out an…

  • De-Googling a Samsung Galaxy Tab A 8” 2019

    When I started grad school in 2020, I wanted a basic tablet to read papers. Having switched to an Android phone, I figured I’d give Android tablets a shot. The Tab A (SM-T290, also known as ‘gotowifi’ model) was sluggish from the start, but now, ~3 years after acquiring it, it’s unusable. Beyond wanting to…

  • Moving from Word, with Zotero citations, to Overleaf

    This post is a workaround for indirect transformation of Word (or any word processing software) with linked Zotero citations into Overleaf. This post expands a StackOverflow answer. Known bugs:

  • Recruiting for study on dumbphone use and users

    9 Jul 2022 – Annabel We (researchers at Aalto University) are running an interview-based study to better understand users of “dumbphones” and the people who use them. Are you a “dumbphone” {1} user (or have previously used a dumbphone since 2017) and are you over age 18? We are researchers at Aalto University (Finland) investigating…

  • Running standalone Tor-Snowflake instance on PineBook Pro

    06 Mar 2022 – Annabel I’ve been running browser-based Snowflake instances for a week or so now and notice that I get the most activity (aka my instance is actually useful) at times I’m not reliably on my laptop. So, I set up a standalone instance on my currently minimally-used PineBook Pro. I wanted to…

  • How to write a statement of purpose for computing-as-an-approach PhD programs

    26 Nov 2021 – Annabel This guide comes with a few important caveats:

  • New GT CoC Pre-App Review Program

    02 Nov 2021 – Annabel The College of Computing has a pre-read program where students from underrepresented backgrounds can have a current PhD student informally read their application materials and give feedback (completely separate from the actual application). The goal is to provide the informal support network that students from overrepresented backgrounds likely already have.…

  • An early “Guerilla Linux”

  • PhD Recruiting Panel Discussion

    06 Nov 2020 – Annabel As part of the larger “PhD Recruiting” event, I’m speaking on a panel with some other super cool folks about the PhD experience and how we arrived at our current positions. The whole event is geared towards students both interested in a PhD and those who aren’t sure if it’s…