Тег: Telegram

I’m a vibecoder to my mom

I’ve moved to Serbia, rented an apartment, spending almost all my money, and ideally, I should be looking for a job, but it’s quite tough here: to legalize my stay in the country, I need legal employment, and the main condition for being hired almost everywhere is having a residence permit: nobody wants to deal with the local bureaucracy and fight for a residence permit for a potential employee. So for now, I’m procrastinating: I walk around the neighborhood a lot, I’m researching where to buy pots and pans, I overthrew Vučić, signed up as a game master for a city-wide vampire game, and vibe-coded a publisher for Telegram, which is essentially what this post is about.

Telegram has many different formats for publishing: there are regular messages, to which you can attach a single picture or a YouTube video using a clever life hack; there are trendy rich messages, available to premium account holders (I was recently gifted one, but I don’t use it) and bots; there are albums of up to ten media files—and each format has its own limitations: some have truncated text formatting, some have expanded, some have a maximum text volume of 1024 characters, and some have 32k—in short, it’s a mess. So, to avoid getting lost in this zoo, I gathered the ability to publish in any available format into a single application.

To do this, however, you need to start a channel, create a bot, give the bot administration rights to the channel, and enter the channel and bot data into the app settings. You can create many channels, and you can either give each one its own bot or use the same one everywhere, but in my publisher, you can save profiles for each of the channels.

It seemed to me that this pet project is already quite worthy of being presented to the public. So download the app from GitHub, check how it works, and throw suggestions into the issues about what to add where. The interface is unrefined, even the icon is still standard, but I’m tired of endlessly tweaking the code and just want to share it.

Of course, donations are very welcome if you find that this thing has been useful to you.

And, to save time, I’ll mention other cool things I’m involved in and could theoretically earn something from.

  1. My book about ancap, published on paper at the Svoboda publishing house. There is also a little bit of Friedman’s “The Mechanics of Freedom” left in my translation, along with other good things. I have also been hired to typeset Tallock and Buchanan’s book “The Calculus of Consent”; we will send it to print soon, and I will announce it once it is available for sale.
  2. A VPN service, for which I was hesitant to advertise, doubting how worthwhile it actually was; however, as far as I can tell, people occasionally register via my referral link, and they don’t seem to message me privately complaining that they bought crap.
  3. A Telegram sticker pack with me, in which the main contributor became Soz.

Telegram as an indicator

Sperry UNIVAC

Итак, российские власти наконец-то решились заблокировать святое – Telegram, на котором стоит не только большая часть русскоязычного комьюнити, но на него также завязаны и практически все процессы в самой стране – от пересылки депутатами мемов друг другу во время заседания, до координации действий подразделений на фронте. Естественно, это вызвало пожар, подобный Чикагскому и все наперебой (и слева и справа) умоляют товарища Сталина РКН отменить это дикое решение.

Однако, важно здесь немного иное. Блокировка Telegram – лишь следствие, а не причина. И нет, дело вовсе не в цензуре ради цензуры — например, российская цифровая инфраструктура совершенно не готова к массовому использованию населением «национального мессенджера» по причине банального отсутствия серверов, которые, кстати, Москва безуспешно пыталась арендовать в странах Центральной Азии и Китае.

Причина лежит в другой плоскости: Российская Федерация находится на пороге кризиса, причем кризиса открытого, и он, очевидно, должен открыто проявить себя в текущем году. Экономические санкции, силовое давление на инфраструктуру экспорта, отсутствие устойчивых союзнических отношений (что также связано с экономикой) уже прямо демонстрируют своё влияние на функционирование государства. Российские же экономические отчеты показывают нехватку бюджетных средств, урезание экспортных доходов, растущую инфляцию и все прочие издержки «мобилизационной трансформации».

До определенной поры Москва умело маскировала нарастающий ком проблем в глазах населения. Полагаю, что скором времени подобная политика уже не будет оправдывать себя в полной мере – и потому требуется превентивная, ещё более жесткая зачистка информационного пространства. Никаких даже условно «независимых» (не секрет, что фактически все российские каналы более 100 тыс. читателей финансируются и де-факто принадлежат тому или иному ведомству и подконтрольны чиновникам куда в большей степени, чем могло бы казаться) информационных ресурсов и средств коммуникации, доступных широким массам, существовать не должно.

Секретом Полишенеля является и то, что инициатором закручивания всех гаек являются чекисты (просто по принципу – торчит гайка? крутим!), даже если это не только не оправдано логически, но и катастрофично экономически и социально. КГБ – сама по себе организация не из приятных, но когда КГБ радостно бежит в сторону КСИР – это заставляет задуматься о том, что же их так подгоняет.

И, на мой субъективный взгляд, в действительности населению РФ нужно больше размышлять именно над этой непростой темой, а не сокрушаться и сетовать на следствия в виде ужесточающейся цензуры. Правильные вопросы находятся в области первопричин этой цензуры, а не её природы – и ответы на них куда более злободневны и оттого чудовищно неприятны для многих.

RKN is rolling out a fresh update for Telegram

Your account no longer belongs to you: what’s behind the SMS blocking in Russia

Recent case from Russia: State authorities have begun to mass-filter incoming SMS messages with authorization codes from popular messengers such as Telegram and WhatsApp. This essentially means that if you want to register or even just log back into your account, the code sent to you via SMS will not arrive. Why is this happening?

This is not a fight against fraudsters and spam, as officials claim, but a deliberate attempt by a stationary gangster to completely block Telegram without resorting to crude methods that have repeatedly failed. Telegram has been technically resisting attempts by Roskomnadzor to block it for many years, does not cooperate with the authorities of the Russian Federation on the removal of inconvenient content and does not disclose its user data to them. The state, unable to directly block the application, decided to strike through mobile operators, preventing the sending of authorization codes. A simple and effective (at first glance) tactic: no code – no account. As a result, millions of ordinary users suffered. Authorities traditionally use the argument “concern for citizens” to hide their true goal – obtaining full control over the population’s communication.

It is worth generally asking the question: why is linking to a phone number bad? For authorities, a mobile phone number is like a passport, only digital. It’s difficult to get a SIM card without a passport, and therefore all your online activity is immediately linked to you personally. Moreover, there’s SIM-swapping: fraudsters (or even intelligence services) can reissue your SIM card and gain access to all your accounts. Even using anonymous registration services like Onlinesim – it is not a panacea. These virtual numbers are often flagged by anti-fraud systems and blocked during registration; access recovery to an account is impossible after the rental of a number, there’s also a risk of logging and leaking them to intelligence services.

But what about spam if not through a phone number? Good news – there are many methods, and most of them are better:

1) Captchas and humanity tests. Yes, choosing pictures of buses can be annoying, but it’s better than giving a stationary gangster your personal data.

2) Proof-of-work. A small technical trick: the user’s device silently performs a short mathematical task during registration that requires computing power. This is easy for one person, and hell for mass bots, making their use unprofitable for the attacker.

3) Limiting new accounts. New users cannot immediately send thousands of messages, for example, within 24 hours after registration. Spammers lose interest, and ordinary people don’t even notice it.

4) Reputation system and community moderation. If a lot of complaints about spamming are received against an account, it is blocked.

5) Technical restrictions (by IP, device identifier, browser fingerprints). A good platform can easily detect multiple automated registrations and prevent them.

6) Paid verification in cryptocurrency without revealing your identity. Let spammers pay for their entertainment, and a decent person wouldn’t mind spending a few cents on entry if it guarantees anonymity.

So what to do? Fortunately, the world hasn’t split into two halves on Telegram and WhatsApp. There are messengers created by people who understand the value of privacy.

Session – complete anonymity without a centralized server.
Threema – Swiss confidentiality. The app costs around $5 one-time payment, but it doesn’t require a number or even an e-mail.
Briar – Even if they cut off your internet, it will find your neighbor via Bluetooth, which is very important for protest participants.

Why is this important to all of us? Freedom of communication is the most basic condition of any freedom. In a world where states are trying to tie every person to their phone number with digital handcuffs, any attempt to maintain anonymity becomes a small revolution. And remember: either you control your data and your identity, or the state will do it for you!

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Ancap-chan and Friends

Friends, I would be glad if you joined my telegram chat. I set it up literally last night; at the time of writing this post, there are about fifty people there, and so far I really like the atmosphere.

What is the chat for? I would like to discuss fresh posts from the channel there, ask for your opinion on the project’s development, and answer any short questions about libertarianism — but if a question requires a detailed answer, then it can be asked on the website, as before. Of course, I have nothing against chat participants discussing libertarianism without my involvement; my opinion is just one voice in a general intellectual discussion.

What else would I like to see in the chat? I want to set a standard of respectful communication. We have a subject of conversation: libertarianism in all its aspects. Settling personal disputes or public declarations of personal attitudes toward third parties is not interesting. There are many wonderful platforms for arguing, but they are outside of my chat. I wouldn’t want to silence anyone, so moderation will be as unobtrusive as possible. I might entrust it to another chat participant, but only if I have strong reasons to assume that it will not disrupt the existing atmosphere of trust.

See you in the chat!

Love you all!