=========================== IT infrastructure frailty =========================== 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 . 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, . 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. ---- :Date: 2024-09-06