All posts by Igor Bubelov
GrapheneOS website Table of Contents Background Stock Firmware First Impressions Scopes Drama Future Plans Background I had planned to wait for the Motorola Graphene phone, but my old Pixel 6 decided to die early, probably from a short circuit caused by a swollen battery. GrapheneOS is fast to support new Pixel phones, so I grabbed a recently released Pixel 10A and used its stock Google firmware…
Picture by Darren Halstead Table of Contents Knee-Jerk Reaction Trump is Neutral Dumb Lenin Empire Can’t be Saved Dying Fast and Slow Destroyer vs Builder Conclusion Knee-Jerk Reaction Some people always assume I refuse to get mad about Trump because I’m Russian and I see him as a useful idiot. I do enjoy the Agent Krasnov memes as much as everyone else, and the whole delusional…
Two loaves, fresh from the oven I’m a Baker Now I picked up Evolutions in Bread by Ken Forkish at a local book sale, mostly because the book looked nice. I know next to nothing about cooking. I can boil pasta or fry eggs, and that’s about it. Bread, in particular, felt like one of those things you should outsource to professionals. I spent an hour or two reading the book and the…
This post is based on the notes I made watching an identically named Arthur Holmes lecture in his excellent History of Philosophy course. Picture by Angelo Casto Table of Contents Knowledge vs Opinion Forms or Eide Math Metaphysics Conclusion Knowledge vs Opinion Plato saw knowledge as something innate. It’s already inside us and can’t even be transmitted. Being “hosts” to knowledge…
Note : this only reflects my personal work this month. Visit the BTC Map Blog for consolidated monthly reports. My previous monthly recap Events Table of Contents API Wallets Electrum Platform Stats Config Maintenance Android Caches Controllers Area Screen Activity Feed Event Admin Dashboard CLI Future Plans API Most of my July went into the API, and most of that went into the wallet subsystem.…
Table of Contents Preface Context Paris London Quotes Vocabulary Tramp Wandering Jew Blackguard Chinaman Conclusion Preface I picked up Down and Out in Paris and London at a local book sale. There was a really nicely made Orwell pack on the table, nine books wide. This book is chronologically the first, and it’s somewhat autobiographical. I expected it to be denser and drier, but it’s…
Table of Contents The World is not Black and White Why This Series Case 1: System Upgrades Verdict The World is not Black and White I have mixed feelings about LLMs. They clearly matured enough to do some small tasks with a high degree of reliability, but the tech has some fundamental downsides. LLMs are non-deterministic, which makes them hard to integrate into reproducible workflows. This is a…
Table of Contents Preface Never Bet Against Hobbes You Can’t Escape Anarchy 2026 is Fun Ancapistan Was Always Here Definitions Matter Welcome to Hell Preface If you mention anarcho-capitalism in polite society, you’ll likely get some eye rolls. The funny thing is that anarcho-capitalism is not even a daring thought experiment. It is, in fact, our lived reality. Never Bet Against Hobbes…
Table of Contents Preface The Regime The Authorship Mystery Drunk Philosophy Gender Equality Notable Quotes Conclusion Preface It’s surprisingly common for people who have heard of the Republic to assume it is the founding document of western political philosophy. Reading it as an adult, after a teenage attempt at seventeen, my main takeaway is that Plato was sketching a hardcore…
Table of Contents Preface Some Inequality is Fine Relative Wealth Why Inequality Becomes Destabilizing The Real Problem Is Compounding Stocks and Bonds Are Extractive Bitcoin Has No Yield The Wealth Tax Proposal Bitcoin and Wealth Tax Are Compatible Conclusion Preface Most bitcoiners I know want smaller government, lower taxes, and full control over their money. So far so good, but they’re…
Preface This is a self-published book by Denis Cavatassi, who is a regular at our Bitcoin meetup in Phuket. This book has a much broader focus than Bitcoin, although it also touches on that. The Invisible Revolution covers the whole history of Homo Sapiens and describes the most important “state changes”. The examples are nomadic to stationary transition, or transition from steam to…
Table of Contents First contact (2018) Nextcloud Hub (2020) SQLite Ambiguity Nextcloud News Running Nextcloud for a Few Years Why I Stopped Using Nextcloud Bugs Huge Maintenance Cost File Sync via PHP Script is Retarded Alternatives Calendar & Contacts Web feeds Files Conclusion This post is the final, definitive graveyard of everything I’ve ever written about Nextcloud, from my innocent first…
Note : this only reflects my personal work this month. Visit the BTC Map Blog for consolidated monthly reports. My previous monthly recap Table of Contents Dashboard API Auth Area Images Place Import Stats Observability Maintenance CLI Website Android Ansible Future Plans Dashboard I started a new internal project this month: BTC Map Dashboard. It is a small static site that talks to the BTC Map…
Table of Contents Form Factors, Chemistry and Voltage Self‑Discharge Rate Batteries Tested Voltage Over Time Estimated Charge Remaining Misconceptions Conclusion Form Factors, Chemistry and Voltage Modern life is not possible without AA and AAA batteries. They power everything from TV remotes and portable milk frothers to tons of small IoT sensors. Standard AA and AAA batteries use alkaline…
At a recent local Bitcoin meetup, sometime around the second or third round of beers, I brought up They Live (1988) in response to someone mentioning the newly released Citizen Vigilante (2026). Only a couple of the guys recognized the title, so I made a point of recommending everyone watch it. I also re-watched it myself, and I’m happy to report that They Live is as relevant as ever. The…
Note : this only reflects my personal work this month. Visit the BTC Map Blog for consolidated monthly reports. My previous monthly recap Ansible BTC Map servers are managed by different people and have no setup instructions, which makes it hard to maintain or reproduce our infrastructure. I’m trying to fix this with Ansible and have made some progress cleaning up and formalizing a few…
Diablo is a legendary game and an everlasting classic. I find myself replaying it every few years, and this time I got to enjoy it on a glorious 85-inch TV. This is a classic action RPG (ARPG) game, where you start near a village and are supposed to clear numerous dungeons to reach the final boss. Village Clearing a gazillion dungeons might sound boring, and many similar games are indeed boring…
Note : this only reflects my personal work this week. Visit the BTC Map Blog for consolidated monthly reports. My previous monthly recap Activity feed Auth BTC Map now has opt‑in authentication, and it’s a necessary step in the project’s evolution. In organic communities, admins often start as regular users, so onboarding new admins is difficult without a pool of user accounts that…
This post is based on the notes I made watching identically named Artur Holmes lecture in his excellent History of Philosophy course. Plato’s cave Table of Contents Socrates and Plato Epistemology Minos Children Rhetoric vs Dialectic Innate Knowledge Socrates and Plato The relationship between Plato and Socrates is a werid one, mostly because Socrates wrote nothing, yet his method and…
Preface Wage-Labour and Capital is a relatively short essay based on a series of lectures Marx gave in 1847. This work consolidates Marx’s early economic thought into a coherent system that he would refine for the rest of his life, culminating in Capital. The only missing element is the distinction between labor and labor-power, but this will be addressed below. Engels’ Comments…
Note : this only reflects my personal work this week. Visit the BTC Map Blog for consolidated monthly reports. My previous monthly recap Nearby communities Global Direction My focus in March was on performance, discoverability, and multi‑language support. Those things might sound random, but if you’ve ever used the BTC Map website, you probably know that some pages are borderline unusable.…
This post is based on the notes I made watching identically named Artur Holmes lecture in his excellent History of Philosophy course. Previous post Next post Acropolis Table of Contents City-State Sophists Moral Question Reaction City-State Because the city-state was the Greeks’ observable world, their philosophy is inseparable from it. When you live in a city-state and have a bit of free…
Table of Contents In Search of Purpose First Gen Second Gen Conclusion In Search of Purpose LLMs are all the rage nowadays, and as with any new technology, people are still figuring out how to integrate them into their lives. It’s a deeply subjective experience, because different people want different things and have different standards. I’m focused on professional programming use…
I had a web feed reader app called News, which I used to fetch Atom and RSS feeds from my old Nextcloud server. It was a client for a Nextcloud News server, so I just called it News. I was never happy with Nextcloud, but there were no known alternatives until one user suggested Miniflux. I switched to Miniflux fast and never looked back. The app gained some traction in FOSS circles, but the name…
It’s a solid documentary on ancient Greece. It describes the origins of a few modern things like the Olympics or marathon running, but the main focus is Athens and the conflict between the Persians and Greeks. Some early philosophers are also mentioned, so it’s a pretty comprehensive overview of the period (~5th century BC) and the region.
Preface Most polities insist they possess free speech, pointing to their constitutions as proof. But the devil, as always, is in the details. The boundaries of acceptable discourse can be enforced at different levels, so it doesn’t have to be the state alone. People may be forced to self-censor in their workplaces, or they might fear that a group of thugs will beat them up if they dare to…
Note : this only reflects my personal work this week. Visit the BTC Map Blog for consolidated monthly reports. Infra Backup Server BTC Map infrastructure is hacky, mostly because we lack contributors with strong ops skills. I handle most maintenance, but I’m no expert, and I tend to prioritize fun tasks over boring ones. Backups are boring, but you can’t avoid them forever as the…
This post is based on the notes I made watching identically named Artur Holmes lecture in his excellent History of Philosophy course. Previous post Next post Table of Contents Pre-Theology Anaximander (610-546 BC) Pythagoras (570-495 BC) Moira Cosmic Justice Nature –> City State –> Moral Life Logos The Opposition Conclusion Pre-Theology Pre-Socratic thought demonstrates the gradual…
Preface There’s something satisfying about gold hitting new records, it’s a clear sign the old world order is under stress. But Bitcoin isn’t following the same pattern. It’s behaving more like NASDAQ on steroids, and there are good reasons why these two contrarian assets are on different trajectories right now. Supply and Demand Gold still has clear advantages over…
Table of Contents Definitions Matter Organizations Matter Bitcoin Echoes of Cold War The Problem With the Axis Useful Idiots Imperialist Values Nationalist Values Conclusion Definitions Matter Before I join any debate, I ask people to define the core concepts we’re about to discuss. Left and right are words everyone uses and no one can define. Ask ten people what they mean, and you’ll…
Table of Contents The Common Narrative Dual Mandate COVID Monetarism vs QE What Actually Happens What if the Fed Sold All its Bonds? Fed Needed QE More Than Banks Helicopter Money Who Really Prints the Money The Sovereignty Question Conclusion The Common Narrative “The Fed prints money” has become the default explanation for everything wrong with the economy. This narrative is mostly a…
This post is based on the notes I made watching identically named Artur Holmes lecture in his excellent History of Philosophy course. Next post Table of Contents Where it All Begins The First Philosopher Monism vs Pluralism Duality Ethics The Annoying Guy Theology Metaphysics Epistemology Money? Conclusion Where it All Begins Western philosophy begins with the Greeks, in the Aegean Sea, on the…
Table of Contents Preface The Limits of Self‑Hosting The TSMC Problem The Scale Problem The Better Model Bitcoin’s Quiet Stake in Sovereignty Sovereignty Is Layered Conclusion Preface There’s a seductive narrative in tech circles, one that can be boiled down to this: individual sovereignty is simply a matter of better tools . Self‑host your data, run a Bitcoin node, encrypt your…
Table of Contents The Old Setup The CLN Shenanigans The Dynamic Linking Problem LND Gets It Right The Counterarguments What I Miss Conclusion The Old Setup I set up BTC Map’s first Lightning node in late 2022, and I picked CLN, mostly because it was ahead of the curve on BOLT‑12 adoption. Installing lightningd wasn’t easy, though. It only officially supports Ubuntu, and BTC Map’s…
The Accident It all started with a deep clean. Buried in a tangle of old cables, I found a dusty wireless charger I’d completely forgotten about, a “Mi Wireless Charger”. I have no idea where it came from. On a whim, I dropped my Google Pixel 6 onto it. To my surprise, the screen lit up: “ Charging Wirelessly ”. My power meter showed a solid 4W flowing into the phone,…
My old blog post structure looked like that: /year/month/title.md . With a few hundred posts, I needed folders, but splitting by month was overkill. Most months only had one post, leaving me with a sea of near-empty directories that made finding and referencing old content a chore. I’ve switched to a simpler yearly split ( /year/title.md ). A flat list per year is far easier to navigate. It…
Table of Contents Preface Samsung Galaxy Gio (2011-2012) Nexus 4 (2012-2013) Nexus 5 (2013-2014) Sony Xperia Z2 (2014-2015) Nexus 5X and 6P (2015-2017) Xiaomi Mi A1 (2017-2020) Samsung A01 (2020-2022) Google Pixel 6 (2022-2026) Next: GrapheneOS Phone? Is it Just Me? Conclusion Preface As a maintainer of a few Android apps, I’ve been into smartphones for a long time. I always thought I should…
The On the Media podcast dedicated an episode to this show and Chinese sci‑fi in general. I didn’t even know that was a thing, so I decided to check it out. It’s a solid show. Not too nerdy, but still intellectually engaging. Some actors, like Marlo Kelly, are a perfect fit for their roles. I’m looking forward to season two, which is in production now and expected to air sometime…
Preface One of Karl Marx’s most famous quotes is actually inscribed on his tomb: The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. I think this is a good place to start if you want to understand Marx and his ideas. He’s clearly flipping traditional philosophy on its head here. He argues that earlier philosophers, by focusing on…
Note : this only reflects my personal work in January. Visit BTC Map Blog to get consolidated monthly reports. Discord is No More I’m proud to report that BTC Map is no longer dependent on Discord. I migrated the remainder of our channels and bots to our new Matrix space. We’ve also removed the Discord links from the landing page footer. I guess we’ll just let the old server…
Table of Contents Who This Guide Is For Why Bitcoin Expected Functionality High‑Level Technical Overview Part 1: Preparing the Server Part 1: bitcoind Getting the Binary Config Systemd Service Sync Part 2: lnd Getting the Binary Config Systemd Service Sync Part 3: Inbound Liquidity Part 4: First Invoice Part 5: Checking Invoice Status Part 6: Further Reading Conclusion Who This Guide Is For This…
Once you’ve had lights you can actually control, you know, brightness, color, the whole deal, there’s zero chance you’re going back to the dumb ones. The whole “smart” light scene is a total mess though, because it’s split between Bluetooth, Zigbee, Wi‑Fi, Matter over Thread, and Matter over Wi‑Fi. Pick your poison. I have a bunch of Wi‑Fi lights (Phillips WiZ)…
Book Overview Chip War was one of the few English-language books on China I could find in Phuket, so I picked it up recently. I wanted some background and a quick overview before my trips to China. I’m particularly interested in tech, and I hoped this book would shed some light on recent developments. Unfortunately, there’s barely any useful signal; it’s more focused on a…
Table of Contents Preface Preparations Arrival First Stop: Shanghai Hotel Hipster Bar Winter Walk Propaganda Art The Bund Getting Around Coffee Battle Trains Second Stop: Shenzhen Hotel Tech Food Infrastructure Third Stop: Guangzhou Hotel Getting Around New Town Departure Conclusion Preface I rarely travel to countries requiring a visa. Luckily for me, China became visa‑free for Russians starting…
Note : this only reflects my personal work in December. Visit the BTC Map Blog for consolidated monthly reports. Improve Startup Time I’m gradually moving BTC Map API chat automations from Discord to Matrix. The first experimental Matrix integration was blocking and significantly increased API server startup time (from ~2 seconds to ~10+ seconds). In December, I set up an asynchronous lazy…
TIL the “CE” mark is basically a self-assigned “trust me, bro” promise, and it’s not going to cut it if you’re traveling to China. Turns out, China has a mandatory safety certification, the CCC, which sets a much higher bar. It requires independent product testing and annual factory inspections. Now that I have visa-free entry, I’ll be visiting more often.…
When I got my first programming job almost a couple of decades ago, I was put under the supervision of a senior programmer. I tried to learn and copy as much as possible from him. Vladimir was a pretty chill guy, and he hated my initial workaholic mindset, I even overheard him trying to get rid of me. I’m a quick learner, so I figured out I needed to take a week for tasks that took a day,…
One of my slow-going hobbies is tinkering with microcontrollers. It all started when I was a child. During a summer school break in my grandparents’ village, I found a huge box of electrical components. The box belonged to my uncle, who was apparently into this stuff. Needless to say, I didn’t understand a thing and broke a lot of it, but the whole process fascinated me and made me…
So I’m a happy owner of a GL Inet Flint 2 router, and it’s a great piece of hardware. Besides routing, it supports tons of extensions like an ad blocker, VPN client or server, and network file storage. The router has a USB Type‑A port with a max bandwidth of 5 Gbps, which is not bad, since its fastest LAN port is only 2.5 Gbps. I had a few spare SSD sticks lying around, so I grabbed a…
Previous post Like I mentioned last time, I got bored with the French press and wanted to try making espresso. These days, it’s not as hard or expensive as it used to be, you need a good burr grinder, but those have gotten pretty affordable. Machines basically split into two kinds: manual and automatic. Flair (~$300+) is the top dog in manual espresso. I’ve used one for a couple of…