About troubles - ongoing and future possible

Friends and Colleagues!

This is much difficult topic. And very sensitive. So I'd like to limit it to things related to the site itself.

There is some probability the site will have troubles and may be down one day, not sure for how long. Given the site's audience was never very large, it is not the world-scale problem. But some people have devoted much time to it (either solving or even inventing problems) - so it would be good to take care about their "investment" of time and efforts as much as possible. That's what I'm going to meditate upon below.

What's it about? Here is an ongoing armed conflict in Europe, namely between Ukraine and Russia. Europe and North America provide support to Ukraine with sanctions and limitations imposed upon Russia. And it so happened that author and maintainer of this site (that's me) is Russian, which under various circumstances may mean anything from "unwanted" to "hated" nowadays. Well, that's happens :)

Note: I'm not going to make any political statements, and no one should, please! CodeAbbey should be kept as much apolitical as possible! Though of course as most of us I don't like wars :(

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Means of communications

If something goes much wrong, hopefully I'll be able to send notification via email subscription list. Also probably there'll be opportunity to publish some words at github codeabbey page. Sure, feel free to contact me directly.

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Now about consequences as they are developing

Personally I'm not much affected and would gladly continue. There are difficulties with prcies, goods etc - but mind you, this is nothing to compare with troubles our colleagues and relatives in Ukraine have now :(

As you may have noticed - donations are not accepted now to avoid complications and controversies to anyone. It's not problem, at least unless I lose my job and can't find something matching. We'll discuss this if this happens, perhaps I'll impelement my dream of becoming a street musician :)

However, there are technical "impediments".

Few days ago I got a letter from domain name registrar (namecheap) which said that Russian customers should move anywhere asap. It proved difficult since the first attempt to move to other (Swiss) registrar ended up with rejection "due to current situation" and money transfer lost not sure where exactly. Hopefully second attempt (moving to Indian registrar) will be successful, it is ongoing.

In any case, if you once found domain codeabbey.com is lost (or abused by some unrelated webpage) - let's agree the next I'll try would be codeabbey.org, codeabbey.net and perhaps codeabbey.in at last :)

Now, the second thing is hosting - some server where web-site's scripts are, its database etc. Hopefully there'll be no "get out of here, russkie" on their side, but nowadays things are much unpredictable.

Real issue with hosting, suddenly, is that there are no more straightforward way to pay for it! General means are visa/mastercard/paypal - they won't make transactions anymore. Bank transfers are not restricted (yet) but most providers don't use them, of course.

On this point - for main hosting there is prepaid period for some months, so either situation gets better during this time. Or I find some indirect way, hopefully lawful. Or shall try moving to other hosting (as usually this is somewhat difficult and may lead to things lost or broken).

So, in case of hosting problems, site may be down, but should get back in about a week, even if a bit broken. The important point, probably, is that I should download backups weekly - in case I won't be allowed to grab them at last moment. Loss of database without backup will leave us without user profiles, solutions and even tasks themselves :)

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There could be troubles of other kinds - but no much reason in discussing them. E.g. connectivity problem if I'm cut off the web (currently it doesn't seem likely - but who knows, connections could be cut from either side, theoretically). Or some mega-spam attack difficult to survive. Hopefully there are no much reason in taking such measures about such a small web-site :)

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I really hope the peace efforts will succeed at some point and things get brighter. For everyone.

Thanks for being with us, your participation and attention bring more meaning to this place and to my life!

sincerely yours, Rodion

Vadim, thanks a lot for quick (and compassionate) reaction and your kind offer. I'll keep it in mind though let's keep it for "last resort" - as I mentioned currently it is difficult to understand possible outcome of money transfers linked to russian residents :)

But you mentioned virtual payment cards - does it mean card of your bank, or some 3-rd party service anyone (including me) can use? If such services exist this could be fine solution, supposedly they have their legal teams to make sure everything is lawful and correct.

how much does all the hosting normally cost per month?

main site body is sitting at hostgator shared plan for roughly $14 per month, some auxiliary stuff (most notable - sandbox) - on digitalocean VPS for $6 per months, at last some things (like interactive puzzles you are now solving) enjoy free "disposable" hosting (to avoid unintentional overloading of anything else). In both cases here is VAT included which probably is not added for other countries, not sure.

But as I mentioned for now it's not urgent - everything is paid till April, inclusive (and perhaps even more if the last payment from Friday succeeds). If no better solution arise during this time, I'll write to you, weeping and begging, I promise :)

To CondorHunter and other Friends, thanks for all your kind responses and suggestions! This really is of great value - helps to calm down and assess environment better :)

Just small follow-up, somewhat relieving (though "global" situation still utterly wants improvement). Briefly - there seem to be no immediate danger now.

• name transfers at last succeeded few days ago, and even registrar which rejected initially (Swiss one) later wrote their decision was "probably hasty" - and we agreed they forward stuck funds to some charity

• prolongation order for main hosting initiated week ago ended successfully, so hopefully no worry till November - and even then, I found a hint, this provider may accept plain bank transfers if asked kindly, shall see if this works.

• auxiliary server on digitalocean (used for sandbox etc, and even for small proxy I use to visit few sites temporarily "banned", like linkedin) - no solution there, but still some time - and it would be not very difficult to move from it, either to some vps in my homecountry or better to some provider accepting unionpay or bank transfers.

• rumors of detaching russian segment of internet from the world (on March 11) mostly remained rumors. yet, ha-ha :)

• last but not least - here come kind proposals (like Vadim's) of helping with payments etc - thanks a lot, let's keep it in mind - may become crucial one day - even due to exciting inflation rate we observe - though hopefully situation shall rectify earlier.

So for now it seems possible to focus on task-solving, task-writing and making small improvements to the site!

Kostis, glad to meet you here again :) and thanks for your kind words, and same to everyone!

if it at some point you are inspired to shift to street artistry

Ha-ha, don't worry please. It's my long term joke (and partially a dream, perhaps).

but for the kind of impact on the Russian population, reports of which are a mixed bag

Curiously, this is pretty correct. Impact there is, but impression is rather queer. Again we understand it's close to nothing compared to people's troubles in Ukraine. Probably it's ok if I share few observations "from inside".

1. Prices go up, but not all at once. Say from x1.2 for local products to x2 and more for foreign. Some people lose jobs due to stopped/delayed business, but not big percentage yet. Generally people are worried but in "s..t happens" mood. For me most sensitive things seem to be cat's food and electronics components for my classes, but these expences are not very large anyway. And we expect salaries in IT to grow fast enough.

2. Buckwheat. I doubt anyone plants and eats it in other countries. Here it is popular enough. And at times of troubles people rush to shops sweeping buckwheat to make a store at home. This creates hysteria "buckwheat disappears" and even more agitation. Though logically it can't really disappear - we are doomed to eat past year's harvest as no one wants to import it.

3. Just seen spectacular old lady in the street - quite aged, small and fragile, slowly passing with walking-stick. She had large Z letter of orange-black ribbon proudly sewn on her jacket's left. It is used by supporters of "operation". Meanwhile my wife told one of her piano students (adult) have painted nails in yellow and blue (Ukrainian colors).

4. Thus while all here wish the affair to end, they diverge radically on how exactly it should end and whom to blame. Generally anti-war (and anti-govt) views are among "intelligentsia" while "common people" tend to support "our ways". Of course there are enough people not supporting (rather disliking) both polar views.

5. My job is in EU company with hq in some nordic country. CEO decided to ask teams to reorganize so that people from Ukraine and Russia could avoid communicating and even seeing each other. This helps making people more calm but not more happy. Sometimes colleagues from both countries violate the rule on mutual agreement and prefer to solve working issues tete-a-tete rather than via managers. To clarify - there are also many from Poland, Serbia, India, somewhat less from UK, Italy, Germany, Pakistan and some African countries.

6. At job some colleaues working from Russia got their CircleCI accounts banned (starting Mar 14). This is a fundamental tool used to automate testing / deploying services and in some cases this causes much troubles for everyone. Luckily company's business isn't healthcare or anything critical. It feels yet they are not in the position to say bye to Russian members since some work here for years and business may be damaged beyond repair with losing them.

7. So more IT-related services move to block Russians - though generally it affects people unrelated to govt or even "opposition-minded". Notable example - one of popular "protester's" sites, helping people to find ones detained after actions etc. After some study it seems US-based services are more "harsh", while EU-based may be more "tolerant".

8. Musicians and sportsmen who had competitions and work in other countries are massively demanded to publicly denounce invasion (and the govt along with it). Supposedly this is peace-keeping effort, but people are much enraged, even if they have no compassion to govt's ways. No one likes to be forced to have political views.

9. I composed myself enough to write to our Ukrainian relatives. My granddad had 5 sisters there and so there are our "second cousins", though regretfully most contacts were lost during 1990s. I was reached on social network by my cousine in 2013, just before troubles began. I learnt they, younger generation, moved from "breakaway regions" to central Ukraine few years ago and year more to Poland. Though elder people of course preferred to be left where they lived the whole life. Well, you see, significant amount of people here have relatives or friends there.

So you see, as I mentioned, things are queer, people are worried (I found an occupation of trying to console them, though worrying myself) - and everyone would like to hear news of peace talks succeeding at last. Sorry for that many words :)