Author Archives: Ali Reza Hayati

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About Ali Reza Hayati

Entrepreneur, engineer, hacker, cypherpunk.

I don’t trust giant companies

Take Proton for example. They advertise themselves as a “privacy by default” company. I used to admire their work and suggest them to people. I still suggest them to people who are in their first steps of reclaiming their privacy rights and moving away from Gmail and other proprietary dis-services.

But I don’t trust them anymore. I don’t know why but when a company grows to be large (relatively), serving hundreds of thousands, or possibly millions, of users, they lose my trust.

Something pokes me from inside and tells me that when they grow, they no longer work for my interest, but they work for their own benefit. When they become a giant, they become blind, they forget their initial mission and goals, and they do whatever they can to remain in business by all means, rather to work hard to protect their users.

Perhaps there are measures and hard work from their side to make sure they can’t violate our privacy even if they want to. The Proton case, for example, claims that they encrypt every inbox (or account) individually with our passwords as keys. Or they have an option to enable a second password on your account that further encrypts the account if I understand it right.

But that still doesn’t change my opinions regarding them. I understand that they perhaps do a lot to ensure that our data never ends up in the wrong hands (or any hands), but it’s still internet we’re talking about and it’s still us vs. a company that works for profit.

Of course that I may be wrong, but that’s how I feel about giant companies. I love this paranoia as it reminds me how much I still value my privacy and I haven’t get tired of protecting myself.

The real reason that we can’t have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse: You cannot post “Thou shalt not steal”, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”, and “Thou shalt not lie” in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment.

Anonymous

The quote is attributed to George Carlin on many web pages, yet it’s nowhere to be found on Carlin’s works.

Humanity

A man was in a hurry. He was going to buy some groceries and then heading to his office. Putting his car in reverse after buying the groceries, he gets distracted by the loud music that suddenly starts to play in the car.

While going in reverse, he hits a delivery guy’s motorcycle and breaks a part of it. He gets out of his car and apologizes to the delivery guy. He also asks how much does it cost to replace the broken part. Delivery guy says it’ll be twenty bucks.

He gives the guy the money and goes to work. When he comes back home at night, his wife asks him if he had an accident today. He, surprised that his wife knows, tells her yes, and explains how he hit a motorcycle.

His wife tells him that a guy came to the house. The guy told the wife that he found the address asking the grocery store. He gave 5 bucks back to the wife telling her that the broken piece took only 15 dollars to repair and he came by to give back the 5 bucks he received more.

The story brought back my faith in humanity.

Is lying always bad?

The post has many spoilers about various movies and TV series. The list includes:
* The Invention of Lying
* House (TV series)
* Lucifer (TV series)
* Supernatural (TV series)

Everybody lies, right? I was thinking about this. Small or big, everybody lies and life goes on. You may lie about how far are you from the restaurant, like telling people you’ll be there in 5 when you actually will be there in 10. You may lie about killing people, like when you lie when you’re a psychopath murderer and cannibal and you lie to the court. The point is everybody lies.

But is lying always bad?Like if I tell someone that she’s beautiful just to make her happy, did I do a wrong thing? I know I shouldn’t lie about my work experience when I’m applying as a neurosurgeon while my only work experience is none, but what about lying when you really don’t want to visit some friends at the moment so you tell them you’re busy so you don’t hurt their feelings?

In the movie The Invention of Lying, Mark starts lying when his mom is dying. Nobody can lie in that alternative reality, nobody. Mark (Ricky Gervais) starts lying when his mom, in hospital, tells him that she’s scared of dying. She doesn’t want to go to an eternity of nothingness. Mark, trying to comfort his mom, tells her she’s wrong. He says it’s not an eternity of nothingness, rather you go to your favorite place in the whole world. There will be no pain, there’s love there, happiness, and everyone gets a mansion.

Was he wrong? In that alternative reality he lied to his mother and went on to lie to everybody else but did he do something wrong when he lied to his mother? And if yes, why? All he did was to tell a harmless lie to his mother to comfort her. She won’t realize it’s a lie, it’ll only help her to die peacefully.

Lying has a bad effect. I understand that. In the movie, Mark went on a journey of lying to everybody for his own benefits. Lying to casino about winning, lying to the bank about how much money he had, etc. but at that specific moment, did he do something wrong?

Lying is bad because it makes us lie and lie again to keep up with the first one. We will tell bigger lies as a result. But we do tell harmless little white lies every now and then. If you mom cooks for you and it tastes bad, you won’t tell her that, you’ll tell her it’s delicious. It’s a lie but you’ll protect her feelings. I don’t think it’s bad to lie about this. It makes her happy, and won’t harm anyone.

In the TV series House, there was an episode that Dr. House had a (if I recall right) pastor patient who was an atheist. The pastor hallucinated that he sees Jesus. House was amazed that an atheist could work in church, the pastor told him that he lied to the church and nobody knows that he’s an atheist. He managed to do his work perfectly, helped many people, earned an honest living, and became a good member of the society, all because he lied about one small detail.

I don’t think lying is good, I try my best to not lie, but is that little lie he told the church bad? He did his job with no problem as he was supposed to do. Nobody got hurt, nobody was harmed, and quite opposite, one or more people were more happy and in a better place as the result of this lie.

In the TV series Lucifer, Lucifer is famous for always telling the truth. It’s awesome. I always wanted to be able to do that. Always telling the truth is such an amazing ability to have. However, he managed to not answer somethings by asking a question in return, or changing the subject. I was thinking, isn’t that lying?

To lie is to give a false impression. So sometimes, giving only half the truth, or changing the subject, or asking a question in return, could be considered a lie. We all have something to hide. We have guilty pleasures, we have some people we like but not that much, we all have people who we love and don’t want to hurt their feelings, and so on, and we lie. It keeps the balance.

There will be chaos if we don’t lie. In an episode of TV series Supernatural, son of the devil will make everyone stop lying (warning: YouTube link). It causes chaos in a funny way but also the scene makes you think. It’s not possible to quit lying quickly, and it’s not possible to stop lying when you’ve said countless lies in your life, so is not-lying possible at all?

It’s a dream of mine to be able to not say even smallest lies. Being able to be truthful, honest, and straight with everybody is a dream. I personally believe there’s no harm in little lies we tell every day, such as “I’m fine” when someone asks us how we are, or telling your grandma that the dinner she cooked is delicious. There’s no harm in telling your children that tooth fairy puts money under their pillow or santa gives them presents. It’s OK to tell your children that storks bring babies.

But I still think it would be awesome if we could just tell the truth. Lying is not always bad and telling the truth is not always good. Lying is needed to balance our lives. A lie is a great story that someone ruined with truth. Barney Stinson said that.

Oh and wouldn’t it be funny if someone’s pants caught on fire when we sang liar, liar, pants on fire?

There’s nothing more human than

There’s nothing more human than

  • Texting people you’re on your way when you’re actually not even dressed.
  • Keep having hope when you know it’s not gonna happen/gonna happen.
  • Promising God you’ll behave when you need something from him.
  • Wandering around naked when nobody’s home.
  • Feeling beautiful when you look at yourself in the mirror but feeling opposite when you see yourself in front camera.
  • Wasting your money on something foolish when you need to spend on more serious stuff.
  • Unlocking your phone and then locking it immediately.
  • Looking at clock on your phone then forgetting the time right away.
  • Setting up multiple alarms, each 5 minutes apart, in the morning.
  • Lying about your age.
  • Speaking your mind while joking but truly meaning it.
  • Opening another bag of snacks when you finished one.
  • Grabbing some fruit or sweets from the box when you’re placing it inside the fridge.
  • Making lists of stupid stuff.
  • Dreaming about what would you do if you had Jeff Bezos money.
  • Imagining yourself in a race when you’re driving or walking in the sidewalk.
  • Imagining yourself as a singer in the shower.
  • Randomly counting your money in the wallet.
  • Writing something on social networks and not posting it.
  • Imagining you’re friends with someone famous or someone you look up to.
  • Being indecisive on unimportant matters or details.
  • Forgetting a specific thing when you know you know it, but right now that you need it, you forget about it.
  • Being depressed about your future while you know you’re fine.
  • Keep being calm and acting normal when you’re exploding from inside.
  • Doing the exact opposite of what you advise people to do.
  • Fantasizing about becoming a superhero.
  • Bluffing.
  • Imagining your wedding with a random person you see on street.
  • Randomly removing your mobile screen protection and getting a new one.
  • Being excited for your online order then being completely emotionless about it.
  • Playing a music track on loop too much that you get sick of it and can never listen to it again.
  • Forgetting what you’ve put in the list so you put it on again then you realize it’s duplicate so you remove it.
  • Being excited about a change then realizing what you had before was better.
  • Giving excuses to continue your behavior towards something when you know it’s just an excuse and you don’t really mean it or believe in it.
  • Suddenly doubting everything in life.
  • Forgetting why you were angry at someone/something but keeping your distance.
  • Wanting to text someone but being afraid that you look cheesy.
  • Trying to prove yourself to someone.
  • Getting tired of proving yourself to people.
  • Disagreeing with someone even if, deep down, you agree with that person.
  • Not liking someone you don’t even met. You just don’t like the sound of that person.
  • Answering someone’s messages just because you have to keep social manners but you don’t really want to answer.
  • Leaving someone on ‘seen’, thinking you’ll answer later, but totally forget about it.
  • Having a favorite set of outfit.
  • Drinking something out of habit, not because you really like it.
  • Suddenly starting to cry with no reason.
  • Getting up and your brain decides you’re sad today.
  • Getting up and thinking it’s a sad day but it turns out to be a really good day.
  • Getting up hyped and happy then becoming the least-lucky person alive.
  • Actually being afraid of flying (airplanes) but pretending you’re not.
  • Reading an entire page of a book and then having to read it again because you can’t remember a word of it.
  • Picking up something you dropped by your toes.
  • Checking if something is expired by sniffing it.
  • Holding your breath when the main character in the movie goes under water to see if you would survive in the same situation.
  • Peeing in the shower.
  • Accidentally sending a text to the person you’re talking about.
  • Carrying too much from your car or somewhere so make it in one trip.
  • Running to your room when you turn off the lights in living room so the monster won’t catch you.
  • Drinking something out of the cap.
  • Drinking directly from the bottle instead of pouring it into a cup.
  • Trying to push down every color in those pens we all had.
  • Spinning an apple by holding the stalk.
  • Grabbing and cutting a leaf when you walk past a tree.
  • Trying to put the light switch halfway.
  • Trying to peel an orange in one go.
  • Disassembling and then reassembling your pen and imagining it’s a gun or bomb.
  • Not stepping on lines on sidewalks.
  • Trying to go upstairs but using least steps as possible.
  • Randomly opening the fridge when you’re bored and keep going at it every 10 minutes.
  • Opening the microwave one second before the alarm goes off.
  • Checking if you can do something faster than your shadow.
  • Adapting an accent from someone you’re talking to.
  • Reacting so fast that you think you’re an Avenger. You’ll test if you’ve became Spiderman or Dr. Strange.
  • Writing something someone says instead of writing what you actually wanted to write.
  • Sniffing your armpits to check if you smell.
  • Going up on a slide instead of the stairs.
  • Singling or talking into the fan like a robot.
  • Drinking juice from a wine glass and pretending you’re drinking alcohol.
  • Poking holes in the pencil eraser.
  • Pretending you’re giving yourself a shot with those mechanical pencils.
  • Fake sleeping.
  • Smelling book pages.
  • Closing the fridge door slowly so you can see when the lights go off.
  • Trying to finish your drink at the same time as your cake/meal.
  • Blow bubbles on your drink.
  • Putting hair clip on your mouth.
  • Using your hand as a cup when drinking water.
  • Pretending you’re smoking when it’s so cold that that steam-like thing comes out of your mouth.
  • Writing 07734 on your calculator and turning it upside down so it reads “hello.”
  • Jumping on bed or sofas.
  • TV as background music.
  • Repeating some part of a music that you like more than other parts.
  • Imagining yourself in a movie fight scene and knocking out your enemies.
  • Building a castle using bed sheets and pillows.
  • Looking into a pipe and pretending you’re a pirate.
  • Drawing on the steam on the car windows.
  • Lying when you didn’t need to and you don’t know why you lied.
  • Claiming you have ability and talent when you finished the game completely out of luck.
  • Licking yogurt lids.
  • Walking along the fences and touching it.
  • Peel the paint off the walls.
  • Make a ring with our fingers and put it under a stream of water so it wouldn’t touch our hands.
  • Trying to connect two magnets with same poles.
  • Holding the ice cream stick in our mouth after we finished eating it.
  • Drawing nonsense on paper or books during long phone calls or in classrooms.
  • Hiding in clothes rack in malls.
  • Forcing kids or being forced to talk to relatives on the phone.
  • Imagining you’re driving a race car when you push the shopping cart in the mall.
  • Checking if somebody sees you after using the bathroom so you can skip washing your hands.
  • Sitting next to your parents watching TV but not loving a muscle so they don’t notice it’s past your bed time.
  • Acting suspiciously when you see a CCTV in the store.
  • Being super concerned about the Bermuda Triangle.
  • Opening the battery lid on TV remote.
  • Mixing different soda flavors.
  • Putting glue on your hand and peeling it off when it’s dry.
  • Making origami fortune tellers.
  • Practicing your autograph.
  • Shampoo mohawk.
  • Lying to children.
  • Eating too much that you fall asleep.
  • Getting stressed for no reason.
  • Ending lists on random numbers and items just to mess with you.

Happy Birthday Matt

So Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress, is turning 40 in ten days and he asked for an interesting gift. He wants us to blog!

Well that shouldn’t be surprising. He made something I’m sure every blogger ever has some experience with. This blog is made possible by WordPress. There are some amazing blogging platforms out there but WordPress is something else. Its user experience is best by far.

I used to publish some blogs with static site generators but they weren’t as satisfying and convenient as it is to use WordPress. I’m writing this on a computer at my office. I don’t have my password manager on it so I created a temporary account on my WordPress installation using my phone and started writing this. After that I’ll delete the random user I created.

You see, that’s how easy WordPress makes it to blog. I can blog whenever I need, wherever I want. This is all thanks to you Matt, and Mike.

Matt is one of my favorite bloggers. He’s also on my blogroll and I’m subscribed to his feed on all of my feed readers. I enjoy reading his blogs and I have learnt so much from him. A while ago he posted a video on his blog, excited about experience a ride in a self-driving cab from Waymo. I remember thinking how cool is that, that he’s still sharing his experiences with his blog. And how amazing is that, that there are still active bloggers who enjoy updating their blogs like we used to, 15 years ago.

I’ve expressed my dislike of social networks for enough times but I don’t think I explained my still-growing enthusiasm towards blogging nearly enough and a big part of this is all thanks to what Matt created.

I’ve been using WordPress for a long time on many many blogs. It’s my go-to program when I want to set up a blog for someone. It’s everything someone needs to start. It’s easy to install and easy to use. So, why are you still not blogging? Go and start one, it’ll take about 15 minutes of your time until you publish your first post. Go and give Matt a birthday present.

Happy birthday Matt. WordPress is a wonderful gift you gave us.

Praise be to God

His son was in hospital after a car crash, injured and in critical condition. Doctors said there’s low chance that he survives. He couldn’t tolerate seeing him so he went outside and waited for an answer. His wife and other son came, loudly crying, and delivered the sad news to him. His son died. The car crash was too severe for the son to make it alive. He shed a tear and whispered “praise be to God.”

His wife cried more loudly and started hitting him angrily and asked him “your son died and you’re thanking God?” He replied “God is with us all the time. He gave me my son and he took him away. I thank him for good and bad. I’m his servant and he is my loving lord. Praise be to God for everything, not only in happiness, but also in sadness.”

Whether you believe in God or not, that’s a beautiful story.

A Kurdish woman visits the graves of her relatives who were killed in the gas attack in 1988 on the 24th anniversary of the attack at the memorial site to the victims in the Iraqi town of Halabja.

Saddam Hussein; what a legend!

1987 June 28, the city of Sardasht, West Azerbaijan was attacked by Iraqi aircraft with mustard gas bombs in two separate bombing runs on four residential areas. 130 people died and eight thousand people were injured.

Of the civilians who died, 39 were under 18 years of age, including 11 under the age of 5, and 34 were women or girls. In 2006, out of 20 thousand population of the city, a quarter were still suffering from the consequences of these bombings. There are people who still are suffering from those bombings today.

Many of the 95% who survived the Sardasht gas attack developed serious long-term complications over the next few years, including serious respiratory problems, eye lesions, skin problems, and immune system problems.

It’s almost 2024 and you would think people are sure of their feelings towards Saddam Hussein, the one who ordered the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Sardasht, far far from the war front. Not!

Just visit YouTube and search for Saddam Hussein, open a video and go to the comment section. Comments are filled with people calling Saddam a legend, a hero, a king. You would think that after bombing multiple cities and killing civilians in cold blood, people would realize what a monster he is, but no, they don’t, evidently.

Sardasht, Marivan, Halabja, Sarpol-e Zahab, Gilan-e-gharb, and Oshnavieh are cities documented to be targeted with chemical gas by Saddam Hussein. Not only the civilian areas alone but also medical centers and hospitals were targeted. What a legend!

The cities I mentioned are not the only ones, but the most famous ones. Near 41 thousand people overall were targeted by chemical weapons during the war. Forty one thousand people, at least. The actual casualties are much higher, as the latency period is as long as 40 years.

Iran asked the UN to engage in preventing Iraq from using chemical weapon agents, but there were no strong actions by the UN or other international organizations. The Security Council ratified reports of use of chemical weapons against Iran and two statements were issued, on 1984 March 13, and 1986 March 21, condemning Iraq for those chemical attacks, but the Iraqi regime did not abide by those condemnations and continued launching chemical attacks.

After the war, Saddam hid himself, then got arrested eventually, tried, and got hanged. There were celebrations all around Iran and Iraq by millions of people who finally were free from this monster. Now it’s almost 2024 and I see people calling him a hero. People seem to be blind.

One of my uncles who was 15 years old at that time was killed in Shalamcheh. His body was lost for almost 16 years. My grandfather tells me that during the 16 years of waiting for him in desperation, every time someone knocked on their door they would jump and rush to the door because deep down they had hope that maybe, maybe, it’s him coming back.

Someone knocked their door, finally, and gave them the news. A piece of his scapula and one boot, along with his dog tag was found. They had to do a DNA test to be sure that the bone was in fact his. This is the result of what this legend did. For 16 years they waited.

Halabja was one of the cities that was bombed by Saddam, with chemical weapons, and many people died there.

Qader Molanpour, who 2020 film Walnut Tree is based on him, lost his three children and his pregnant wife during delivery. All of his family members were exposed severely to chemical gases and died as the result of it. The newborn child, due to the improper condition of the hospital (as a result of attacks on hospitals and medical centers), was transferred to a hospital in the city of Tabriz and Molanpour could never find his last child ever. He died in 2016 December 31 while still searching for his child. His last child was named Zhina, meaning “life.”

It’s not really about Saddam. Saddam, Hitler, radical militia and terrorists around the world, these all have fans and supporters around the world. Taliban, with years of experience of torture, beheading, killing innocent people, and terrorist bombing on civilian areas, is now ruling Afghanistan and has its supporters. Hitler, with record killing of 40 million people (and total of 75 million) is a hero of some people.

Military generals of the confederate army who fought against liberation of slaves have their statues and flags up in states. There are some Italians, and some others, who worship Benito Mussolini, a dictator who killed over a million people.

I don’t know what has happened to us but there’s something we did wrong. We did something wrong. We thought history would speak for itself, we thought maybe history will teach us and our children, but that was wrong. It’s sad but I thought that being a mass-murderer, a dictator, a war criminal, and a homewrecker of millions would buy one some bad reputation but I see it only helped people worshiping them.

I don’t know what should we do, I don’t have any idea how to stop this, i don’t know what am I supposed to do against this. I’m hopeless for the young generation.