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 Isolation, AoC, short books
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I noticed that many IRC servers are now blocked, including those of
libera.chat, tilde.chat, newnet.net. Subnets of hosting companies used
for proxying are being blocked. RKN announced heuristics-based blocks
to combat censorship-resistant proxying and VPNs. More commercial
services used for communication are blocked, including Roblox,
FaceTime, Snapchat. In addition to voice call blocking, WhatsApp
messages are now throttled as well, and on the way to be blocked
completely, as RKN threatens to. The government services website
replaces SMS confirmations with a proprietary WeChat-like "Max"
messenger, but fortunately there is still the standard TOTP
option. Yet apartment building maintenance chats are now required
(though apparently optional for Moscow) to be in that messenger
only. An IMEI registry is planned for 2028, reportedly with mandatory
and paid registration (more expensive for uncertified/non-"fatherland"
devices, among which are Google Pixel phones), so that inserting a SIM
card into a new device would render it useless until IMEI
registration. "Censorship" is usually understood as suppression of
public speech and certain information, so at this stage it feels more
like isolation efforts: cutting international communications,
restricting and monitoring domestic ones. And news reading feels like
loss assessment. I have mirrored my homepage to Codeberg Pages,
attempting to ensure that it would stay online for a while, to leave
something outside in case of a more complete and lengthy blockade, in
addition to having some books provisioned to read during it.

Maybe it is an appropriate time to write down a nostalgic text about
the time before wide Internet availability here, how the spread of
computers, global connectivity, and technologies in general seemed so
promising, providing plenty of fun and information, means for personal
education and hopes for mass education, and that being such a contrast
to the everyday boredom and grayness. Followed by an arc that led to
the current situation, where the technologies are increasingly
employed for oppression, with other uses banned. Though that is a path
similar to those of older technologies: television, radio, printing
press, perhaps writing in general; all as a means of speech, which is
being restricted and replaced with state propaganda and other junk.

At work, still dealing with "security" compliance. Noticed that a
local low-end VM at Selectel costs 10 to 14 times more than a similar
one would cost at Hetzner, while Selectel's custom Debian packages
(like cloud-init) do not support Debian 13 still, and while energy
here is cheaper, wages are lower. Such services seem to be in line
with "fatherland" hardware, software, and standards. Also with local
food prices and quality, and with communication prices (which go up
yet again: VympelCom claims that their maintenance costs doubled, even
before taking into account the raised VAT; Rostelecom and others also
announce the raise), along with the crippling of it. On the brighter
side, I get to work on some of the actual security-related tasks,
because of this push for compliance. Likely the targeted ultimate
compliance will break those again, but meantime there are glimpses of
a more sensible setup, including journald logs and munin metrics
streamed to a remote server, using WireGuard tunnels with unique local
address (ULA) IPv6 addressing. Nothing fancy or complex, but such log
shipping is often neglected, and the addressing is often
conflict-prone, so it feels good to set it properly for once.

Also tried out self-hosted Forgejo and GitLab. As expected, Forgejo is
okay and easy to set, even though quite bloated, but nothing like
GitLab: that is a large and erratically behaving system, a pain to
configure or debug, not to mention its poor integration with the host
system, and it being much more painful to configure for integration
with system services, even for merely setting it behind a host
system's nginx with TLS termination there. It is one of those
enterprise projects that look much like rookie ones: no actual
portability, the software is thrown together to barely work on a
single system, with little regard for efficiency, integration, or
maintenance, and then that system is shipped whole (whether as a
physical machine, a virtual machine, a container, or a subdirectory
under /opt/).

Advent of Code 2025 was unexpectedly easy. Only the day 10 task was
tricky, and I used SciPy to solve it; possibly there is a simpler
solution though, and it was just a few LOC with SciPy. The day 12 task
looked tricky at first, but as it happens with AoC puzzles
occasionally, the input had unstated properties making it a special
case, so the general solution to a hard problem was not needed, and it
turned out to be quite easy. This year I used Python for the
solutions, and it went smoothly.

I planned to take a break from reading during AoC, but still picked up
Che Guevara's "Guerrilla Warfare". A relatively quick (light and
short) reading, though likely without much of practical application in
modern times, and not building much on political philosophy; rather,
interesting as a historical piece, memoirs. One may observe the
contrast between Guevara's optimism about Cuba's future after the
revolution, and where it went afterwards: extreme poverty and
political repressions.

Followed that with another quick and autobiographic book, Viktor
Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning". The autobiographic parts are
fine, but the analysis and his logotherapy I found unconvincing. At
times he presented what looked like Stoic views, focusing on one's
attitude when facing difficult external situations, but deviating from
those in suggesting to focus on the future instead of the present,
looking for a meaning there. At other times he suggests to find a
meaning in suffering (and the way one faces it), or brings up
something like a probabilistic version of Nietzschean affirmation for
suicide prevention: not merely using a single good moment to justify
everything, but using the possibility of such a moment in the future
for that. Generally seems more poetic than argumentative. Although the
focus on meaning, the assumption that it is what people strive for, as
explicitly opposed to pleasure or power, is interesting, and closer to
existentialism; Nietzschean affirmation and similar reasoning makes
more sense in that context: not weighting overall pleasure against
overall displeasure, as in hedonistic/utility calculus, but justifying
everything with such a meaning, sounding like a kind of view that
helps one to get through particularly bad times without giving up, as
perhaps do Nietzsche's writings, which Frankl quotes
occasionally. Although the common sources for meaning he lists (doing
something significant, caring for another person, courage during
difficult times) sound rather like virtues; and those tend to be
linked to fulfillment or happiness, which may be viewed as pleasure.

Then I read another short book from the 20th century, Ludwig von
Mises's "Bureaucracy". I found its description of the bureaucratic
management and its contrast with management under the profit system
interesting, possibly because I am mostly clueless about
management. Perhaps a few other speculations as well, such as "the
bureaucrat as a voter", or the examples of good intentions of those
convinced that they know better potentially leading to despotism
(although that is nothing new). The rest looked like a radical
capitalist zealotry and propaganda, akin to a heated argument: an
idealized capitalistic system is described over and over again as an
argument for it, government interference is blamed for observed
imperfections, while socialism is defined as central planning
(ignoring versions with decentralized planning or even market
economy), poor implementations of that are criticized in the more
substantive parts, differing views are attacked with little
argumentation elsewhere. Among the claims I found dubious, there were
those that high taxation would take away an enterprise's interest to
increase profits, that a monopoly is still interested to provide a
good and cheap service in order to lure in those who would not use it
otherwise, that nothing but profit or regimentation can motivate
people to produce anything, that a bureaucracy cannot change. While
capitalism is praised persistently throughout the book, again and
again. It reminded me of Lenin's writings, of poor online arguments,
of technological debates and books unintentionally demonstrating the
law of the instrument. So this is yet another book I have mixed
feelings about. The subject is interesting, but I think it could have
been covered better.

Recently I have obtained a collection of the Oxford "Very Short
Introductions" books, and decided to sample it by reading the one on
existentialism. As expected, it looks less opinionated than the books
mentioned above, covering and contrasting multiple points of view,
referencing the sources, and generally being more like a
textbook. Although I also found it to be more like a survey, like a
Wikipedia article on an unfamiliar topic, rather than an introduction,
with too many terms and concepts quickly defined and then relied upon,
and me finding myself thinking that it would be clearer after reading
the referenced works, while an introduction is expected to be clearer
prior to that.

Among the works referenced there was yet another short book: Tolstoy's
"The Death of Ivan Ilyich" ("Смерть Ивана Ильича") novella, which I
read then. It is good, and makes sense to reference from the prior
book. Bureaucracy is featured there in addition to existentialism,
continuing the theme of another aforementioned book. I should read
more of Tolstoy, but I keep postponing it, along with many others from
the queue.

In non-book news, I tried the "skin the cat" exercise on rings. Feels
like a nice exercise, for both strength and mobility. Unfortunately it
would be tricky to do at home, since my pull-up bar is too close to
the entrance door. I have little experience with rings so far, but
they appear to be neat: apparently capable of replacing a horizontal
bar for most exercises, while being more suitable for additional
ones. They are also cheap and portable, but despite what some books
and online sources claim, it does look quite challenging to find a
suitable place to attach those to at home. Likewise with pull-up bar
mounting, or simply finding something to hang on.

Not cooking much lately, though made hummus, and nachos a couple more
times, with homemade tortilla chips. I may have more time to
experiment with cooking during the potential future blackout, but
possibly a reduced access to recipes and ingredients. Though possibly
will try to bake something sooner: I keep planning to try making a
carrot cake, and now additionally inspired by watching a little bit of
"The Great British Bake Off".

Still spending much time failing to sleep, then not sleeping well, and
having naps during daytime. Meditating myself into sleep while being
sufficiently determined to do so appears to help, but that does not
prevent awakening throughout the night.


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:Date: 2025-12-26