Hi. My name's Celeste Ariana [aka jaruga], and I'm a 23 year old Information Security Engineer and Technical Writer living in Montreal, Canada. I'm known professionally for my entrepreneurial spirit and tinfoil hat, known personally for my blunt honesty, off-colour humour and endearing love of chinchillas. A short tl;dr on my life thus far:
I love the thrill of new challenging experiences and am infinitely dissatisfied, from my personal achievements to the status quo; and while overwhelming at times, these traits have brought me down a huge variety of paths in life, from international racing, metal fabrication, launching several online start-ups, penetration testing and applied cryptography, film production in the adult industry, even teaching English in West Africa. For the past 4 years my career has almost entirely focused on Technical Content Strategy, Project Management and Business Development, allowing me to work with some of the most reputable projects in the blockchain and privacy spaces. I'm currently full-time with Matter Labs, working on zkSync.
My personal interests vary greatly, but my passion is forever in my work. I have been in the privacy FOSS world for roughly seven years now, shortly after learning of the Tor Project [whom, incidentally, would introduce me to technical writing through an internship years later]. Since then I have been fascinated by the potential that anonymity has to offer everyday people in the fight for a voice and access to unfiltered knowledge, as well as the underlying cryptographic technology that makes it all possible.
Following a long stint of self-education, earning a couple certificates, destroying endless cups of coffee and equally as many nights shitposting in IRC, I became able to build a strong career in the privacy industry performing applied cryptography, penetration testing, social engineering and later on, technical writing. I've not looked back since.
As is likely abundantly clear to anyone that's read this far into the page, I love tech -- specifically the anonymity, cryptography, blockchain and open-source variants. Though outside of these categories I have an stack of personal projects and interests; tiny tech / SBCs, vintage laptops, OS development and writing old-school CLI games, to name a few. AFK things tend to get a lot broader. I'm a musical person and have played several instruments in my life, my favourite being the bass guitar. I also enjoy working with my hands, and have a wide variety of shop skills [Arc/MIG/TIG welding, fine machining]. The list goes on.
My downtime is usually much less eventful, often spent reading, gaming, bingewatching cartoons or documentaries, playing with nostalgic things [tamagotchis ftw] or tending to my three little beloved furbabies.