+++ /dev/null
----
-title: Living according to values
-date: 2024-09-18
-draft: false
----
-We, humans, are hypocrites and it's okay. To be a human is hard. There are many
-cases in every situation, it's a mistake to see everything naively in black
-and white. But it's important to notice personal hypocrisy and reassess the
-personal values on a regular basis and live according to them. I want to write
-down steps I've made in this direction.
-
-I value privacy. And over years it became a some kind of obsession and hobby.
-A never-ending journey to go deeper and thinking what and how I can do better.
-I think the first important step was a migration from Gmail to an alternative
-email service — Fastmail. It took changing emails everywhere and a long
-transition period forwarding emails to new address.
-
-The next one, even more important, is <a href="https://grapheneos.org">https://grapheneos.org</a>. Thanks I bought
-Pixel. Not only it sandboxes Google Play Store, improves security, provides
-granularity in sense of settings scopes and reduces tracking as much as
-possible, it also helped me to completely abandon Google account. The only
-thing besides GMail I was using Google Photos which I replaced with
-<a href="https://ente.io">https://ente.io</a>. Also 1TB hdd, yeah.
-
-After a few years of using Fastmail I decided to cancel the subscription. The
-main motivation was their attempt to cooperate with the Russian government to
-avoid being blocked in Russia. I decided it's not the compromise I want to see
-from an online service I use especially since they tried to do it preemptively.
-Also they are from Australia which is far from the privacy values (my general
-impression, maybe I'm wrong).
-
-I've moved to iCloud because they provided $1 subscription allowing to use
-a custom domain. It was a temporary solution to find a better replacement
-which in the end is <a href="https://protonmail.com">https://protonmail.com</a>.
-
-A bit later I've installed <a href="https://asahilinux.org">https://asahilinux.org</a> on my Macbook M1 Pro, coming
-back to linux after almost 10 years of osx experience. Works fine for me. This
-helped to delete iCloud account as well.
-
-I also have tried to delete as many accounts as possible on all websites I ever
-used. Turned out it might be not so easy sometimes. I also changed usernames
-where it's possible to reduce the links. Some kind of debt by using the same
-username for about 15 years.
-
-For example I deleted LinkedIn, because it's almost completely useless. I've
-found a job using it only once for all these years of email spam. Not worth it.
-Also dropped Twitter because it became useless when all interesting people went
-to Mastodon but I decided not to follow them. Got tired of social media. I read
-books instead.
-
-Same with github. I dislike the current data harvest situation with LLM hype.
-Also I don't contribute much nowadays and if I want to I would rather
-contribute to projects hosted on a private gitlab instance (such as GHC) to
-decentralize the open source projects. Sending patches over email also works.
-I host all my personal code on my own digital ocean instance via gitweb.
-Using my own VPS allows to host my website, personal gitweb, and AdGuard DNS
-instance, allowing me easily to inspect, filter and block all tracking domains.
-
-Instead of Spotify I've started buying music on Bandcamp which means that my
-money reach artists directly without awful Spotify distribution schemes. Hello
-old offline audio players. I use <a href="https://powerampapp.com">https://powerampapp.com</a> for Android. It also
-helped me to start collecting vinyl records.
-
-The trickiest part so far is to migrate from Telegram to Signal. The network
-effect is strong in this domain and not many people willing to install one more
-messaging app. But if people care about my values and respect my choices they
-will do it. I will delete Telegram account as well in some near future
-(UPD. deleted it the next day) and I acknowledge that it's kind of social
-suicide as a lot of people and communitiesuse it. But I don't care. Telegram
-became a social media app and all I want is a good messaging app that provides
-privacy.
-
-Overall this whole journey is an attempt to live according to my core values.
-To care about privacy, avoid corporations, using open source, choose small
-businesses and support nonprofit organizations (donate to Signal!). It hurts
-and it's okay. It also aligns well with my desire to spend more time offline.
-The current state of web feels unhealthy and active enshittification is
-depressing.
+++ /dev/null
----
-title: On coffee shops
-date: 2025-01-15
-draft: false
----
-I started working remotely at 2018 and it was lonely to stay at home all the
-time. At some point coffee shops become an option as a workplace for me. I
-enjoyed the atmosphere there, people sitting around me, chatting, reading,
-working as well. It was a silent socialization, feeling a part of the tribe I
-guess, that helped me to feel the productive vibe.
-
-A bit later, next year or so, I started reading fiction in English. I wanted to
-dive deeply into the English language, to explore via prose. It grew into a
-serious habit I still have, 6 years later. I read about a few hours every day
-now.
-
-What's interesting is that my reading was mostly done in coffee shops as well,
-despite the noise of the crowd. Again, I was feeling comfortable and warm to
-sit by myself near people around, focusing on my book, listening to music,
-thinking.
-
-It became an important thing to me, after moving to a new place, finding a new
-coffee shop which will pass the vibe check. Since it's a place which I will
-visit almost every day, interact with baristas on a regular basis, noticing and
-remembering regulars in face, becoming a regular myself. Each place got its own
-mood, culture, audience.
-
-At some point the mental hygiene came into and I've started separating the
-places. One coffee shop just for reading and taking a rest, listening to music,
-and so on. Another coffee shop, with standing desks, just for work.
-
-What's funny is that I'm not a coffee geek or passionate about it after all. Of
-course I got used to good coffee since a lot of places serve specialty coffee
-nowadays, with a variety of different beans, roast degrees, brewing options.
-I still mostly care about the space, interior, design decisions, and values
-(but writing this I realized that if the coffee is not tasty I just won't
-visit again).
-
-I find it curious how coffee shops become a daily routine for me. In the same
-way, it seems, bars/pubs become for some people. It's more than just a factory
-for remote workers, more than just a shop, a place to drink bewerages or meet
-friends. Lifestyle attribute it seems.
+++ /dev/null
----
-title: Why I am not a scientist
-date: 2024-02-03
-draft: false
----
-I was an obsessive tv series binge-watcher in my teens. One of the numerous
-titles was "The Big Bang Theory" that I enjoyed while it was ongoing around
-2010. Only recently (around two years ago) I have realized the degree of
-influence towards my personality and decided to write it down.
-
-The show got me interested to become a scientist and try myself in the academia.
-It created an image of a cool scientist, nerdy and funny. That's why, up to
-a certain degree, I've tried to learn lambda calculus, followed a lot of people
-from academia, learned about type theory, read different papers, played with
-Agda, Twelf and other proof assistants, visited <a href="https://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/splv/splv19/">https://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/splv/splv19/</a>,
-and participated in the creating of functional programming course for Ural
-Federal University (this was mostly about giving back to the community and
-getting teaching experience). I seriously thought about applying for different
-PhD programs.
-
-Sounds great and cool! Except the fact that most of this, at the beginning, was
-about Ego. The biggest motivation was the desire to build an image of a smart
-person who has a PhD degree, knows cool words and facts, draws mysterious
-smart-looking diagrams on the board and notebook using greek letters and arrows.
-It was all about collecting and assigning different attributes myself that
-seemed cool to me, building a simulacrum and an absolute fetishization of it.
-
-It took me some time (years) to realize this and finally give up on this absurd
-quest. I have tried myself in teaching, learning things, creating educational
-materials, and tried to contribue to different scientific projects (not much).
-Yes, of course, I enjoyed some of these activities. I learned a lot of
-interesting things and it was a pleasant experience. But it was a wrong
-direction. A good test to check if the path is correct is to ask yourself
-(citing Naval Ravikant <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHkcs3kG44">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qHkcs3kG44</a>):
-
-> Would I still be interested in learning this thing if I couldn’t ever tell
-anybody about it? That’s how I know it’s real. That’s how I know something I
-actually want.
-
-That's a perfect way to figure out what's worth learning. What's the real
-interest. Unfortunately, I have learned it too late. I realized that I
-overvalued the theoretical and scientific stuff, that I prefer engineering and
-the practical side. It just feels more natural to me. And it took me some time
-to understand that software engineering is not less cool than doing science.
-All activities are different and require different skills. All we need to do is
-to find what suits ourselves better and makes happy.
-
-I talked to great researchers (who are amazing persons) about their experience
-and everyday work. I learned that scientists depend on their funding, on grants
-and writing grant proposals, and they can't just start researching what they
-find interesting. They deal with a lot of bureaucracy (which I can't stand,
-I'm extremely allergic to it) and exist in the rigid social structure
-(a university or a research institution), while I value freedom too much.
-
-That's how removing the Ego from the equation was a major factor that helped me
-to resolve my long-standing self-identification crises — to be an engineer or a
-scientist.
evgenii akentev
===============
-hi, i'm a software engineer interested in functional programming, compilers,
-programming languages, zero knowledge proofs, &c.
+hi @ ツツツ.com
posts
-----
- <a href="https://git.ツツツ.com/?p=gcs.git">https://git.ツツツ.com/?p=gcs.git</a>
Garbage collection algorithms
+- <a href="https://git.ツツツ.com/?p=punycode.zig.git">https://git.ツツツ.com/?p=punycode.zig.git</a>
+ Punycode library in Zig
+
- <a href="https://git.ツツツ.com/?p=temple.lean4.git">https://git.ツツツ.com/?p=temple.lean4.git</a>
A rudimentary template engine written in Lean4 without fancy dependent
types and useful operators yet. It can parse, build a tree, and substitute
An online course on functional programming that I helped to create and
teach between 2019 and 2021. Designed for bachelor students at Ural Federal
University (taught in Russian).
-
-contact
--------
-hi @ ツツツ.com
</pre>
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