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 IT infrastructure frailty
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Issues with multiple online services unfold lately, accompanied by yet
more of potential personal computer hardware issues, and the services
that have no issues being dependent on those that have.

uberspace.net, one of the domains I use for online services (email,
WWW, Gopher, and XMPP), seems to be in peril. Maybe it will turn out
fine, but in case if not, my website is available at
thunix.net/~defanor, and there are an email address and Gopher site as
well; other contacts (primary and backup ones) are listed on its
"about" page. Actually it seems that thunix.net was in peril recently
as well, but apparently not anymore.

I have also set a separate server with temporary free domain names
(steady.mooo.com and beep.boop.ip-dynamic.org), possibly will deploy
my homepage there. Documented its setup at
<https://www.thunix.net/~defanor/notes/simpler-server-setup.xhtml>.

I could mirror the homepage to GitHub Pages as well, maybe Microsoft
will not lock it as it did with the email I registered at their
hotmail.com recently: it claimed that I violated their service
agreement, and asked to provide a phone number to fix it somehow, even
though I only received a confirmation message from OpenStreetMap to
switch the account to that address. Looks like racket, while
comparable large email providers require a phone number at once
(update: a few days later, reportedly Google account registration
ceased to work with Russian phone numbers), and many of the smaller
ones are blocked here (which does not necessarily mean that those
larger ones cooperated with the local government though: the
government seems to deprioritize blocking of the services that would
be too disruptive to block).

Fortunately OpenStreetMap does not use email as a second factor for
authentication, and does not require confirmation from the old email
on changing it, so Microsoft did not take that account hostage. But
some services do those things, and many do require a confirmed email.
In some cases enabling two-factor authentication with TOTP helps at
least to disable email-based account recovery, even if in an awkward
way, so that such an account should not be hijacked easily in case of
an address loss. I wish more services allowed to just register with
login and password, or cryptographic keys, or made registration
optional when viable.

Additionally, emacs.ch (the Mastodon instance I use) announced today
its end of service in 3 months, apparently mostly due to the
administrator being tired of dealing with policy violations (actual
ones, not Microsoft-style), along with personal threats, and similar
aspects of a public social resource administration. One of my goals
with using it was to get a backup communication channel, in case if
things will go the way they seem to be headed now, but there goes the
backup. Not sure if I will register at another instance at once, maybe
will take a break from Mastodon. It was nice to communicate with
others that way though: more interactive than regular self-hosted
blogging (or phlogging), but with posts still being directed at nobody
in particular, which is closer to such publishing than to, say, an IRC
or XMPP conversation (although on some IRC channels, or in some XMPP
conferences, it can be conventional to use them basically as microblog
instances). I did not like the Mastodon software though: from the
beginning did not want to host that monstrosity myself, then had
regular issues with its web interface, with clients, and it is one of
the services that require email verification, with developers
explicitly sticking with it. Some other ActivityPub-based system may
work better for me: to provide federated communication and discovery,
with people actually using it, but without the Mastodon's warts.

To shake things up--pun intended--construction workers in an apartment
below me did something noisy to a central heating pipe, which led to a
minor leak at a junction not far from my computer, and made me to
worry about the computer. I suspect that all the vibrations
contributed to the demise of my UPS and HDD this summer, but for now
it ended with a plumber tightening the valve here, and me planning to
move the computer a bit farther away from that place.

From time to time I mention that some fun activities are rather like
games, but now also finding that online interactions, and possibly
life in general, are also like a game, the kind that gets harder as
you progress, or simply as the time passes.

I have also looked into computer hardware, to be prepared in case if I
will have to build a new computer soon (and this one probably will not
work forever anyway: it is about 12 years old now). Apparently ECC
support is more common now than it used to be: many Ryzen CPUs support
it explicitly (7000s and 9000s do, 8000s do not), as do motherboards
for those (in case of ASUS, even non-workstation ones). Though
computer builders like pcpartpicket.com, or those on computer hardware
store websites, do not seem to prioritize that, and skip "ECC"
flags. Apparently they aim gamers, as do most chassis manufacturers:
computer cases these days are not only covered in LEDs, but also tend
to skip on HDD bays, maybe only providing some places to bolt HDDs
onto. The space, even in larger cases, seems to be used for cooling,
potentially water cooling, those gaudy LEDs and discrete controllers
for those, multiple and large graphics cards (while I would build a
computer without a discrete graphics card, probably). And as many
other things, computer hardware tends to be annoyingly "AI"-themed
these days. I would even consider NAS cases for my primary computer,
but apparently those have a worse cooling, requiring more noisy fans,
as do server cases. Though it might be worthwhile to look into those.

Failed to resist trying ear training, which was mentioned in the
previous post. Failed to find software for that in Debian
repositories, but tried musictheory.net (many settings, though it is a
website, with a lot of mouse clicking), Open Ear on Android (seems a
little buggy, making noises sometimes, but usable overall), and then
wrote a shell script using SoX, just for scale degree and interval
identification practice for now,
<https://codeberg.org/defanor/ear-training/raw/branch/master/ear-training.sh>.

Also mentioned a history book in that post: branched off that to read
Lenin's "The State and Revolution". It is nice to read books written
at the time and place you read about, as well as to go the other way
around: to read about the time and place the things you read were
written in. The book was interesting to read: I thought that Trotsky
exaggerates the differences between initial plans and their
implementation, but at least this book supports that view: it is
radical, and its vision is different from what was implemented. While
reading, I wondered how people in the USSR may have reconciled
contradictions between such works and their daily experiences, and
whether this is one of the discrepancies that inspired Orwell's
"doublethink", but then noticed that this is similar to what happens
with the constitution now, which seems much more mundane. Afterwards
skimmed Volkogonov's "Lenin", also referenced from that history book,
which helps to view Lenin's writings on use of violence in a new
light, references additional ones, cites his orders for mass public
executions and acts of terror. Though some parts of that book look
rather biased, as if trying to be more sensationalist and to pad the
book with more material, like pointing out "Задачи отрядов
революционной армии" as Lenin's inclination towards unnecessary
violence: at least to me it looks like what someone preparing a coup
can reasonably write, and the bits accusing Lenin of not even
considering that Nicholas II's reforms may work out well seemed
dubious to me (though I am barely familiar with any of that).

I keep working through the physics textbook: finally reached chapter
seven, which is still about fairly basic mechanics, the topics that
are taught at school. Other daily exercises proceed as usual.

Hopefully I will have more news of the fun variety next time, but
possibly will post those into different places already.


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:Date: 2024-09-06
