===============================
 Politics and security theater
===============================

This is about Aristotle's "Politics", as well as about local politics
creeping into work, mandating a security theater. And my other minor
discoveries and musings.


Aristotle's "Politics"
======================

From the beginning there is a premise used that some people are
"natural slaves" (including those who were enslaved by a conquest, for
being somehow inferior since they allowed it), reminding to take such
texts with a grain of salt, with more dubious premises, lax reasoning,
and arbitrary classifications to follow. But there also are
interesting ideas, arguments, and questions. Which is quite common for
philosophical works.

It advocates for the rule of law and a popular government, which
sounds quite progressive even these days. Wealth equality (and its
relation to crime) is considered as well. Proposes to combat the
possibility of rich people exploiting public offices for their
advantage with transparency, which also sounds progressive. A twist
(or a loophole) in those progressive-sounding views is that in the
ideal state, Aristotle declares some of the essential occupations
(husbandmen, mechanics, merchants) unfit for citizens (who are
supposed to have leisure to focus on a virtuous life), leaving them to
slaves or other non-citizen servants. So, liberty and equality of all
the citizens, but with a city-state inhabited by many
non-citizens. Not only this sounds rather like an
oligarchy/aristocracy, but even a tyranny/kingdom can be represented
as a democracy/free state if a single person only counts as a citizen.

Everything described in the chapter on preserving a tyranny (book V,
chapter XI) seems to be employed by the local government here. Just
some of it is modernized, such as computerized mass surveillance
instead of human listeners. If one squints hard enough, it looks
similar even to what the democratic states do, but they do it to a
lesser extent.

Afterwards, I have read Bertrand Russell's "In Praise of Idleness"
essay, which mentions the dependence on slave labor in order to have
leisure needed for other activities in ancient times, and calls the
arrangement where work is treated as a duty a "Slave State". Though
also claims that people used to be able to handle leisure better in
the past, while Aristotle (who lived in the past) describes it
similarly to the other view mentioned (and criticized) by Russell:
that it can be spent on mischief or vice, rather than on useful and
virtuous activities.


Security theater at work
========================

The situation around here develops in the same direction as before:
indoctrination lessons now begin in kindergartens instead of schools,
social sciences and English lessons are reduced at schools, "Satanism"
is prosecuted (apparently including rock band symbols), prohibition of
the search for "extremist" materials is now in effect, tens of
thousands of ethnicity-detecting surveillance cameras are set in Saint
Petersburg, migrants seem to be terrorized even more than citizens,
buying tickets and entering theaters and similar public places now
requires a government ID ("for transparency and security"), the prices
keep growing at increased rates.

At work, we are required to switch to "trusted" hardware and software,
which is defined as "fatherland" hardware and software, which is
Chinese hardware and rebranded FLOSS. The hardware is dodgy,
expensive, and has the "Z" military symbols on it. The software,
particularly forks of Linux distributions, is a horrific combination
of bureaucracy, scam, and enterprise (or other commercial) software:
security updates delayed by weeks in non-certified versions and by
months in certified ones, most of those distributions' images are not
freely available (even for testing and non-commercial use), their
licenses seem to violate GPL (prohibiting copying, redistribution, and
so on, while containing GPL-licensed components), there are no or
little communities, the documentation sometimes contains marketing
materials and the awful local standards (GOSTs) instead of actual
technical documentation, it all costs quite a bit, and there are
closed-source components, at least in some of those, as well as people
advertising it as "providing both flexibility and security with the
optimal combination of libre and proprietary components". So we will
have to work with these untrusted "trusted" components somehow.

The odd lists of security threats and controls did not go away,
either. Since those include quite a few threats related to
virtualization, such as VM or container escapes, we are now
"mitigating" those by getting rid of virtualization, reasoning that
software cannot escape if it is not isolated in the first
place. Lately I considered a more extensive use of virtualization, to
avoid the issues of bastardized ("fatherland") Linux distributions,
including security ones, but apparently it is going to be harder to
do. That reminded me of some people suggesting to avoid OpenPGP for
email, since some MUAs may not encrypt what a user thought was going
to be encrypted. And there are plenty of jokes of that form.

Unsure how it is supposed to fit into a bigger picture. Some of it
looks like racket, but in that case we probably would not have been
required to actually use the acquired hardware and software. Most of
it looks like deception, but unclear who is supposed to deceive whom
with that: if it was simply so that some officials could claim that
everything is import-substituted, they could as well do that without
messing everything up, about as truthfully. Probably it is simply a
consequence of layers upon layers of bureaucracy, incompetence,
carelessness, and some opportunism. With the definitions like
"trusted", it may also look like yet another channel for newspeak
introduction (but jokingly: I doubt that they are intentionally doing
that this way).

I wondered what would a "fatherland", "traditionally-valued"
programming language look like: not simply an existing language with
keywords replaced, but something with semantics matching and
reflecting whatever is going on here; it seemed like a viable
foundation for a weird esoteric language. Did not come up with
anything fun though: I guess its characteristic would be simply lies,
like declared types not having any effect if the language was
typed. This must be more of a paradigm: deceptively named functions,
variables, and classes, everything obfuscated. Although maybe
something more elaborate and amusing can be constructed, with layers
of absurd hacks, but following some patterns. And with built-in
censorship, and unnecessary hoops to jump through. Maybe actor-based,
with some actors ignoring the rules.

I am glad that we have no private user data at work, so we are not
forced to put it at risk, at least. Data loss and system
unavailability are the primary concerns there, but the former could be
somewhat mitigated with WORM storage for backups, to ensure that even
all the servers compromised could only lead to a limited
damage. Hopefully we will have some time and budget left for that
after spending those on "trusted" hardware and software.

To make it a little less sad, I am considering names for the future
"trusted" junk server. The theme (as per RFC 1178) is planets there,
so for "import-substituted" ones it might be appropriate to pick
fictional planets instead of real ones. And that opens possibilities
for even more fitting planet names, those from dystopian novels. At
first I thought of planets from the relatively recently read sci-fi
novels: "The Bosom of the Forest" (from "The Day Lasts More Than a
Hundred Years", in which isolation is a major theme) and Hyperion
(from the novel with the same title, where the arrow of time is
reversed locally), but perhaps even more appropriate is Krikkit (from
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy": an isolated planet in a dust
cloud, finally being discovered, then waging a war on everyone, and
being pushed back into isolation). I remembered that Arkady and Boris
Strugatsky wrote some novels featuring suitable planets, and have
finally read "Hard to Be a God" now, which indeed describes a
well-fitting planet, yet unnamed. Maybe there are suitable and named
ones in their other novels though. Sci-fi TV series also supply plenty
of messed up planets. Earth itself is a strong contender, in both
fiction and reality.


Job search
----------

Given the prospect of spending time doing something silly, I decided
to update my CV and look for job openings, maybe even those with
relocation. That would be quite stressful and time-consuming, but at
least it should not harm to look around, and either way I would be
more content knowing that I did. I heard appalling job hunt stories
featuring semi-automated (and LLM-powered, as of recently) spammy
recruiters and interviews, hundreds of applications that one has to
send before finding a job, time-consuming programming tasks followed
by ghosting, but did not even reach those stages (yet).

The major websites for job search, AFAIK, are linkedin.com,
indeed.com, and maybe monster.com. LinkedIn is blocked here, Indeed
serves the "Indeed does not provide services in your region." page,
Monster simply drops packets from around here. LinkedIn is the largest
one, and appeared to be the most welcoming (not explicitly
unwelcoming, that is). I recall that they used to ask users for email
addresses and passwords, rummage their mailboxes, and send invitations
to all the discovered addresses, which looked like phishing combined
with spam, so I have been avoiding it. But being desperate enough, I
decided to register. Only had to update my Tor bridges, since most of
the previously collected ones ceased working (were blocked or died on
their own), as I discovered then.

LinkedIn required a phone number, which I would not provide normally,
but decided to keep going in this case. Turned out that they do not
work with local phone numbers, and the other option was to
authenticate via Google. I had no Google account, but decided to
create one then, also providing my phone number. Google said "This
phone number cannot be used for verification.", but I recalled reading
that registration from an Android phone worked when verification of
local phones did not work (supposedly temporarily) in the recent past,
so tried that, and it worked. Now having a Google account, I went to
LinkedIn again, authenticated, and it sent me to an infinite captcha
loop, even after I disabled uBO and noscript for the tab. Spent
another hour or so trying to get past that, eventually registered
there using a preinstalled Google Chrome on a smartphone. Filled the
profile/CV, tried adding a few contacts (some of which worked, some
not; some users saw my profile, some did not). On the third day,
LinkedIn greeted me with "Access to your account has been temporarily
restricted", saying that it needs to be further verified: they want a
government ID's picture for that (just as the silly local services
do), but taken with their smartphone software specifically. I guess I
am not desperate enough for that; even though the local government
also issued regulations to preinstall some suspicious junk on all the
sold smartphones, I did not have any of it so far. I tried to file a
support ticket, after finding a form's URL in a Reddit thread of
people discussing such restrictions, but received no response, and
unsure if it even went anywhere: I was simply redirected to a page
describing how to take a picture of the government ID using their
smartphone software. This was not quite unexpected though, and matches
my overall experience with large commercial companies, centralized
systems, and power imbalance more generally.

Then I tried indeed.com, which worked smoothly so far. Composed a
profile, searched for Haskell jobs, only found the combination I saw
before: an university requiring a degree and teaching experience, a
blockchain startup, a right-wing tabloid, and mere mentions of Haskell
in vacancies for JS developers. As I thought before, it would be
useful to focus on non-Haskell skills: actually right before the COVID
pandemic I was looking into Python for that. Practiced it a little
since, but perhaps should practice more. While C also seems to be
quite hard to find a nice job in. Focusing on PostgreSQL alone would
not be a great match for me (since that would ignore much of the
programming experience), on Linux-based system administration alone --
probably the same, and additionally tricky because most administration
or DevOps openings seem to require Kubernetes, with which I have no
experience. Maybe I will have to practice those things that seem less
fun or sensible to employ, after all, which is basically the same as
what I try to avoid by looking for a different job. Using technologies
for fun as a hobby, and then employing them at work to do something
sensible, used to be a nice arrangement.


Exercises and walks
===================

I follow the updated workout schedule and the new routine for more
than a month now. I think there is a little progress, though unsure if
it is more about strength or skill. More certain results are injuries
of tendons in elbows, which appear to heal gradually (while I add a
few stretches for elbow rehabilitation into the stretching routine).

Caught myself worrying whether I have enough time to reach (unlock, be
able to perform) some exercises, so trying to remind myself that the
primary goal is not those, but rather to stay fit and to feel
better. Same thing happens with all sorts of studies and skill
practices: the more advanced levels are basically unattainable for
most people, especially if you do it casually and begin late, but that
should not discourage from working towards attaining the reachable
levels.

On most rest days, I keep walking, usually for about two
hours. Enjoying parks the most, since those tend to be free of various
war advertisements, noisy vehicles (including many police cars with
sirens), hobos lying around, while some even ban electric vehicles on
pedestrian roads, allowing to calmly walk among trees and around
ponds. Boulevards are nice, too. Some parks, boulevards, and garden
squares are rather empty on chilly workdays, which has its own
allure. The sky with clouds, the sunlight, and the wind are still out
there, and can be enjoyable.

During those walks, and likely related to the increasing censorship,
sometimes I recall the past time, before I had the Internet
access. There were better and freer TV and radio, and my pastime
staples used to be books and music: the same things I try to collect
and backup now, for the eventuality of a more complete and prolonged
local Internet shutdown. Remembering the hopes and aspirations, how
promising the technologies and online communication seemed, and how
nice they actually were at times. And still are, especially around
enthusiast communities.


Other
=====

- Apparently Google plans to lock down Android more, introducing
  developer certificates, prohibiting free execution of custom
  software. This is unfortunate, but not unexpected: large commercial
  companies keep doing those sorts of things. In the past few years I
  started using a few programs from F-Droid repositories, which are
  convenient, but not essential while there is an actual computer at
  hand.

- Checked out some web-based self-hosted music streaming services,
  like Navidrome, and spotted the Diablo Swing Orchestra's "The
  Butcher's Ballroom" album in the demo there; learned that it is
  released under the CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license on jamendo.com (which is
  blocked here). It is a nice album, which I had in the playlist for a
  while (probably from about the time of its release), and it is nice
  to see such works under a CC license.

- Checked some physical books, wondering whether I still can read them
  without glasses; I can, but not easily, requiring a good
  light. Probably will need glasses for that soon.

- Was thinking of making a music player, mobile and/or stationary,
  with a microcontroller. Though probably a mobile one would be tricky
  to make sufficiently sturdy, and it might be more practical to
  simply use a small computer (an SBC, or even a mini PC for a
  stationary one). And once considering a small computer, I start
  looking into larger ones. It crossed my mind to hoard some hardware
  while it is sold freely, and taking into account that my primary
  computer is fairly old now, yet it feels wasteful to get new
  hardware without actual need for it. It is nice that computers are
  now easily usable for more than a decade.


----

:Date: 2025-09-20