Author Archives: Alireza Hayati

About Alireza Hayati

Hacker, cypherpunk, and user freedom activist.

Regrets

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I regret a lot of things. Small and big decisions. It’s part of growing up. I try to keep an open mind so with new evidence, my ideas change. There’s no shame in that. I change my ideas because I’m not just another hard-headed person who sticks to what he believes in forever.

Something I do regret for a while, now that it’s more than two thousand hours that the internet is shut down in Iran, now that it’s the 85th day of the digital blackout, is helping and contributing to all those projects and organizations in the name of digital and software freedom.

I believed that a free society needs free software, but I now believe that those who promoted this idea didn’t really care about people’s freedom, if they did care they would’ve protested the current situation in my country. With my limited unstable slow internet connection that I barely have access to after weeks, if I’m lucky, I browsed through some of those projects I used to contribute to and not a single word.

It was a sad yet awakening realization.

Still offline

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This is an scheduled post, written when I had a slow internet connection during the nationwide internet shutdown here in Iran. You’re reading this post because I didn’t have internet connection to delete this, meaning we’re still living in digital darkness.

It should be the 60th day of the blackout and I wrote this post because I felt it’s necessary to remind everyone how important is their life. How we sometimes take stuff for granted, such as the internet connection you’re enjoying right now.

I may not be alive by the time this post gets published. If I’m not I hope I be remembered as someone who fought for freedom and liberty, openness, human society, and making life a little better. If I’m alive, then maybe I get more chances and more opportunities to fight for what I believe in.

Online again

Aside

It’s the 22nd day of complete internet blackout here in Iran and I just could get connected with a help of a friend for some time. Never thought we would experience such situation. Just hope everything ends well for the people.

Happy Nowruz everybody.

The Witcher

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When I was a child, I used to be influenced by movies I watched. Pretending to be a superhero with a cape, a gangster smoking a cigarette, an old wise man drinking beer and living happily with his family, an army guy who saves the country and wins the war. I believe a lot of kids were and are this way.

Later when I grew older, this changed a little. I still were influenced but I wasn’t playing the character anymore, rather I tried to imitate that person and act like him. I tried to behave like him. I was a young man (not that I’m old now) and my personality was still shaping.

Lately I found something new about myself. Now when I watch a movie or a series, I don’t try to become anyone, I don’t try to act or behave like them, rather I try to learn from them. Now when I watch a movie, I think more about the reason behind their attitude, the logic of their acts, the story they’re telling, and the message they carry. I feel more grown up right now.

I’ve been watching The Witcher series recently and what I’ve learned from it was that no matter how much you’re hurt, no matter how much damage you take, physically or mentally, your mission and purpose is more important to give up. It doesn’t matter how lonely you feel you are, doesn’t matter how many people come and go on your route to destiny, you can’t give up.

In these times, when we feel we’re alone in this world, when we feel that our mission and our purpose is impossible to reach, the most important decision to make is to just take another step forward and finally we’ll succeed, in our way. Disappointments come and go, we may get exhausted, fearful, feel broken, and hopeless, but we shall continue because stopping is never a wise choice. You may slow down, you may have to take the longer route, you may have to get some rest and take some time to recover, but you must always get back on your feet and continue forward until you reach your destiny.

Name update

Aside

For a long time, I used to write my name as Ali Reza, which I believed was the correct way and form of writing it. Now I switched back to Alireza, which is the current standard and accepted way of writing it, and is how it’s written in my passport. I updated my blog and every online presence I could think of. Please, if you link to me anywhere, update it to this form.

Not that it matters but I needed a distraction from what is happening right now in my country.

Living behind firewalls

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The internet censorship and filtering in Iran is now in another level. We’re now living behind a firewall. Not long ago, before the 20-day full blackout, we had a blacklist-type internet filtering system. If you’re not familiar with it, living in a normal country, a blacklist filtering system means everything is open to people unless the regime decides you’re not supposed to access something. But we’re passed that, moved to a whitelist system.

Now instead of deciding whether you’re not supposed to see something, it decides whether you’re supposed to see. Meaning everything is down, filtered and censored, and every access is restricted unless the regime decides it’s OK for you, the peasant, to see it.

Us the serfs and slaves are now behind the firewall. Internet is now a class system. Not everyone is equal. Those who are trusted may access a wider range of web sites, services, or internet-connected applications while the rest of us are lowest class, accessing the minimum when our owners decide so.

We’re now dogs, not humans. While our masters and owners are sitting at the table having a feast, we’re sitting under the table waiting for a bone thrown at us so we don’t starve to death.

With the shadow of war now hanging over us, we only wonder, is there any future left for us? And what can we do except hoping for brighter days?

Mental health with no internet

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Aside from being unable to contact your loved ones abroad, updating your computer programs and operating systems, getting new or needed software, or simply getting music and videos/movies, being disconnected from world makes you mentally unstable.

It’s the 20th day of internet blackout here and the frustration is making me crazy. It’s some new feelings I’m experiencing. Anger on top of them.

I have to try hundreds (no exaggeration) of VPN configurations just to be able to load this blog, refresh and wait for more than an hour to be able to enter the “posting” page and then try hundreds of times again to finally post something. Just to get a feeling that we’re not North Korean yet.

I’m telling you. It’s driving a lot of people crazy.

Internet blackouts

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The internet situation is beyond bad. Calling it “the internet” hardly makes sense anymore. Nearly everything is cut off. A few VPNs, made available by free-internet activists, work sporadically and only for short periods. There is no real access to anything: no email, no international websites, nothing reliable. Verification SMS messages don’t arrive. All we hear from the regime are the same hollow promises about restoring access “today or tomorrow.”

Maybe one percent of people can connect to the global network, and even that connection usually collapses after a few hours. What’s happening to us goes far beyond the loss of internet access. It’s difficult to even put into words. Language fails to convey the true scale of this disaster.

I wish there were a rescuer.

Alone and lonely

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Words can’t explain our suffering here. Nothing can express the pain we are in. You have no idea what has happened to us.

This to remember those days. No internet, no SMS, and no phone calls. Absolute silence, cut off from everything. Hopeless. Helpless.

My lost brothers and sisters, may you rest in peace. You’ll be missed but never forgotten.

I just connected to internet using a VPN. I don’t know how long this will last and whether we experience another complete blackout or not but let this be a reminder that we lasted this long trying our best to better our lives and make a future for our children and we’re still fighting.