=================================
 Ongoing blackout and more books
=================================

The partial Internet blackout here continues. Among the blocked
networks are those of Cloudflare, Hetzner, Oracle, AWS, Akamai, CDN77,
Contabo, Scaleway, Constant, Linode, Frantech, Digital Ocean, OVH;
some of the many websites in those are thunix.net (and I cannot check
my thunix.net mail directly over IMAP anymore, but SSH still works),
apnews.com, radionetz.de, xmpp.org, haskell.org, hachyderm.io,
existentialcomics.com, small.r7rs.org, library.kiwix.org, openzim.org,
allrecipes.com, standardebooks.org, academic.oup.com, static.lwn.net,
lobste.rs, direct.mit.edu, eater.net, www.hup.harvard.edu,
www.ohchr.org, www.cbd.int, www.unep.org, www.undp.org, www.ifrc.org,
cdn.britannica.com (britannica.com itself was blocked previously),
marxists.org, haubooks.org, p4-ofp.static.pub, artincontext.org,
scipy.org, backblaze.com. Connections to archive.org also occasionally
time out now, though possibly it is unrelated.

Additionally, there is a new bill allowing FSB to impose a complete
communication blackout (stationary Internet, phones, postal
service). Apparently both its roots and particulars are
classified. Though unsure by how much it worsens the situation, since
it does not look like anything that is actually enforced prevents a
complete blackout now. Out of lesser annoyances, there is a new Moscow
metro "security" measure, already practiced in the Saint Petersburg
metro and other cities, to check that passengers' phones turn on. In
addition to the existing measures of everyone going through metal
detectors, of scanning the bags other than purses on entrance,
ubiquitous video surveillance with face recognition (and ethnicity
classification in some cases), not to mention the somewhat-optional
forms of surveillance. Almost like modern airports, except that they
do not perform full body scans yet, and only demand passports
selectively. And the government-provided WeChat-like software is
advertised everywhere, including supermarkets advertising age
verification with it, and the online government services allowing to
bypass a 3-day period of account suppression "for security" upon a
password reset if one uses it.

It is still possible to leave the country, but money transfers are
increasingly complicated, and jumping into a different country with no
legal way to stay there indefinitely, no job there (with the IT job
market being odd and uncertain), and limited funds, but with some
obligations, seems reckless. Though it is unclear whether the
alternative will turn out to be any better.

Checked Levada Center's local opinion polls again, there was a
surprising one: 73% of respondents feel free "within the society"
here, and that number increases. Though it is not explicitly about
civil liberties, and maybe people understand that differently. Also
63% think that people around here always need a "strong hand", and
most approve of the government and the general direction the country
moves in, especially since 2022. Uncertain how representative those
are. The demographic splits they show do match my observations, but
they also match general cases and not hard to guess: older men tend to
be the most jingoistic, older people -- more conservative, younger
people -- more liberal and progressive.

Noticed that yet another hosting company, which I use for a backup
VPS, increased the prices, two times within a few months. Unsure
whether to transfer more funds there: it is nice to have such a
backup, but it could be blocked at any moment, and the hosting
company's behavior does not seem nice. Yet payments may become even
more complicated (and the fees higher) in the future. But either way,
it is negligible, compared to the financial losses imposed by the
government.

As a less worrying rant, noticed a new fashion among websites of local
organizations (such as stores and delivery systems): an infinitely
looping redirect set in <noscript>. In some cases it results in an IP
address ban, with a message suggesting to contact the tech support by
email, but typically for such websites and organizations, without an
email address mentioned, without it in the WHOIS data or anywhere on
the website.

Finally tried out Briar on Android. It looks nice, approximately as
expected: for blogs, forums, and group chats it uses message
synchronization reminiscent of NNTP, but over Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, as
well as over Internet. Though it only uses Tor for Internet
synchronization, which is being blocked, and I guess custom pluggable
transports (turning it into a more general overlay network) would be
more reliable: things like email, HTTPS connections to private
servers. Even without that though, it seems potentially great for
apartment building chats, office or school ones, to use in places
where many people who know each other meet. Or for a person working as
a postman, walking a route specifically to synchronize messages with
certain people. But the old and general issue with distributed systems
is the lack of users: many nice things would be possible if
sufficiently many people simultaneously wanted to make those happen
and somehow cooperated, but usually they do not, even when a
government does not try to crush such organizations.

I keep preparing for a potential complete blackout: backed up more
books missing from Wikisource and Project Gutenberg, including
programming language reports and specifications (for C, Haskell,
Scheme, Python; considered Rust as well, but both its infrastructure
gears towards Internet connectivity and external resources, and even
the Rust book is primarily online, without a good offline version),
the RFC and XEP archives. Investigated mirroring of operating system
repositories, to ensure availability of the software, together with
its sources and documentation. Thought that this would be Debian's
weak side, since I expected Linux distributions and BSD systems that
aim building from sources to be more suitable for that, and more
lightweight if sources alone are mirrored. But then discovered that
they have distfile piles with multiple versions of the same software,
and/or not necessarily include sources for all the software, since
that is being pulled from external repositories on building, which is
unsuitable for use during a blackout. Only Debian and Slackware seemed
complete, but Slackware has very few and dated packages. A Debian
stable (trixie, 13.3) mirror, as can be created with debmirror, only
takes about 230 GB. And a few more GB for its wiki dump, and a live
CD/USB image. I hope I will not have to use it, but the way things are
headed, it is not hard to imagine the government blocking such
mirrors, demanding that everyone uses proprietary and backdoored
"fatherland" forks, so it is useful for the peace of mind to stash
such a mirror. Documented it in more detail in the "personal data
storage" note, complete with a book list, though maybe I should move
the "public data backups" section into a separate note already.

It is fascinating how such a good chunk of human knowledge and effort
can be stored on a single small device these days, without being
particularly optimized for size (much of software has overlapping
functionality, not to mention statically linked binaries, and many
books contain overlapping information). I wish I contributed
substantially to that corpus myself, but proud that I submitted at
least minor edits into the software that is in Debian repositories, as
well as into Wikipedia and Wikisource, so occasionally recalling it
while copying those large backups. Maybe it would have been more
useful to attempt contributing to a democracy here somehow (apart from
voting), to ensure continued access to everything else. Chances are it
would not have had any positive effect, while this way I made at least
some use of the better times, but a decent society and government are
unlikely to happen without people working towards them, and one can
work on multiple things.

To the reading news. I have read Epictetus's "Enchiridion" (handbook)
and "Fragments", which look like usual Stoic writings. Perhaps
emphasizing acceptance more than virtuous action in this case, but
nothing unexpected.

Followed by Nikulin's "Воспоминания о войне": WWII memoirs, describing
and criticizing various war aspects and atrocities, immoral behavior
in all directions and at all levels, poor planning and organization,
general baseness; generally what one may expect from those. Reminded
me of the first part of Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" and similar
books, except that it is non-fiction, and the scale is much larger,
multiplied by millions. It also reminded me of Glukhovsky's "Metro
2033", which featured hordes of people (humanoids) walking at machine
guns, and mentioned it being challenging for the gun operators to
shoot; possibly it was inspired by such memoirs. Now I learned that
Glukhovsky emigrated and was sentenced to 8 years in prison, in
absentia, so there is another connection to the times about a century
ago here, in which many people who made it into history books,
including writers, were arrested, killed, and/or forced to emigrate
(though some were on the other side of those actions, and some were on
both, at different stages; and many people who did not make it into
history books individually have experienced that as well). A reputable
history book would be a more reliable source of information, while
memoirs should be verified in order to trust them, but I rarely read
memoirs, and was curious to check those.

Then I have read Anderson's "Imagined Communities: Reflections on the
Origin and Spread of Nationalism". An interesting investigation of
nationalism's relation to decaying religious ties, dynastic rule,
vernacular languages and their changes with the assistance of the
printing press; changes in views with the introduction of mass
literacy, novels and newspapers, census, maps, museums; pushes for
nationalism from different sides and in different
circumstances. Apparently there are different theories (views) on the
topic though, and possibly I found it particularly interesting because
of my poor familiarity with the topic. The parts on official
nationalism reminded me of what the government tries to do here, which
looks like a poor imitation, on par with its (information) security
theater, the speeches like a poor adaptation of JFK's "Ich bin ein
Berliner", the on-camera acts borrowed from Western politicians, the
local conservatism apparently imported wholesale from the US
Republican Party, the uninventive propaganda employing classical and
documented tricks. Though as both this book suggests, and
history-related books generally do, there is a lot of imitation around
politics: conquerors try to imitate the past ones, revolutionaries
draw inspiration from past revolutions, tyrants try to mimic those
from the past, politicians (or their speech writers, advisers)
generally peek at the others' successful acts. Some improve on those,
and others perform sillier versions. Though the same can be said about
entrepreneurs and artists, and there is the concept of role models.

Next, Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", with an
introductory essay by Ian Hacking and a 1969 postscript. Another
popular and interesting book. As pop-sci books, it is a relaxed
reading, which reminds you of progress happening, of people working
together to learn more about nature; quite the opposite of what one
may see in local news, in history books, or in everyday life for most
people. As another good portion of sensibility, it analyzes the
interaction between people with differing world views. Among other
interesting bits, there is questioning of theory-falsifying
experiences (which may be viewed as merely anomalous ones), and of the
teleological view on the evolution of science (presents it as
"evolution from", rather than "evolution toward" a fixed target). I am
not sufficiently familiar with the subject to judge how well the
described structure matches the reality, but enjoyed the book, and
would generally recommend it.

I have also spent a couple of days setting up a new laptop, Lenovo
IdeaPad Slim 3 16AHP10. Debian 13 with Xfce on it, with LUKS + LVM
(ext4 for home and root file systems, mounted with
"noatime,nodiratime"). All the hardware I checked worked smoothly so
far. Its I/O is more basic than on IdeaBook and ThinkPad laptops, but
it is inexpensive, and has a newer and more efficient CPU, which I run
in the "battery saving mode", so I can rarely hear the fan, which is
nice. Had to spend additional time setting censorship circumvention,
and did not set software such as a mail client yet, since by the time
I will actually use it, the servers may be blocked, so the setup would
either require adjustment or become useless.

The shoulder pain mentioned in the last post is mostly gone. I reduced
some of the exercises I suspected in causing it, then gradually
started resuming them, and found that somehow I have progressed in
some of those during it: used to hold L-sit for 15 seconds on hands,
and then for 30 + 20 + 15 seconds on parallettes (the aim being to
hold for a minute total on those), but recently found that I can now
reach a minute in two runs: 35 + 25 seconds. Still have not resumed
other isometric holds, but planning to. The sleep was quite awful and
the schedule was messed up this month, with me frantically picking and
saving the books, so the slightly reduced workout times were welcome.


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:Date: 2026-02-14