Andrei Aleksandrovich Chernov (russian: Андре́й Алекса́ндрович Чернов, translit=Andréj Aleksándrovič Černóv; 27 August 1966 – 16 August 2017), also known as Andrew Chernov and Ache, was a Soviet and Russian programmer who was one of the founders of the Russian Internet and the creator of the

character encoding Character encoding is the process of assigning numbers to Graphics, graphical character (computing), characters, especially the written characters of Language, human language, allowing them to be Data storage, stored, Data communication, transmi ...

KOI8-R KOI8-R (RFC 1489) is an 8-bit character encoding, derived from the KOI-8 encoding by the programmer Andrei Chernov in 1993 and designed to cover Russian, which uses a Cyrillic alphabet. KOI8-R was based on Russian Morse code, which was created ...

. He is also known for his contributions to the esoteric

counterculture A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Hou ...

of the Russian 1990s, especially the popularization of

Thelema Thelema () is a Western esoteric and occult social or spiritual philosophy and new religious movement founded in the early 1900s by Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), an English writer, mystic, occultist, and ceremonial magician. The word ' ...

and the name of

Aleister Crowley Aleister Crowley (; born Edward Alexander Crowley; 12 October 1875 – 1 December 1947) was an English occultist, ceremonial magician, poet, painter, novelist, and mountaineer. He founded the religion of Thelema, identifying himself as the pr ...

in post-Soviet Russia. He also hosted the website ''Vniz.net'', which contained a collection of various rare pieces of media, including

anime is hand-drawn and computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japanese, (a term derived from a shortening of ...

and art by

Fin de siècle () is a French term meaning "end of century,” a phrase which typically encompasses both the meaning of the similar English idiom "turn of the century" and also makes reference to the closing of one era and onset of another. Without context, ...

painters like Nicholas Kalmakoff,

Louis Wain Louis William Wain (5 August 1860 – 4 July 1939) was an English artist best known for his drawings, which consistently featured anthropomorphized large-eyed cats and kittens. Later in life, he was confined to mental institutions and struggl ...

, and Franz von Bayros.

Biography

Chernov was born in Moscow on 27 August 1966. He graduated from

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

in the 1980s, after which he was employed at the first Russian

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privat ...

Demos, and worked on the

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...

RELCOM RELCOM or Relcom (russian: РЕЛКОМ, Релком), an acronym for "RELiable COMmunications" is a computer network in Russia. It was launched in the Soviet Union on August 1, 1990 in the Kurchatov Institute in collaboration with DEMOS co-operat ...

which linked Russia to the global network. Chernov developed the Cyrillic

, which he registered at the

Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster or requirements and a ...

in July 1993. In 1992-1996 he along with P. Sushkov worked on translation of the PGP software. From 1993 to 2000, Chernov was a member of the

FreeBSD Core Team The FreeBSD Project is run by FreeBSD committers, or developers who have direct commit access to the master Git repository. The FreeBSD Core Team exists to provide direction and is responsible for setting goals for the FreeBSD Project and to provi ...

. He is listed as contributor to the FreeBSD. In 2000 he participated in the first full-team BSDCon meeting. Earlier he was denied entry to the US as he was deemed "unsuitable". Chernov died on August 16, 2017, at the age of 50 after a long illness. Before that he allegedly suffered from osteoporosis and broken leg.

Personal website

In December 2018, Chernov's personal website ''Vniz.net'' became unavailable due to the expiration of domain registration, after which it was reconstructed at the new address ''Zachem.ne.jp'' with the use of Wayback materials.

References

External links

Zachem.ne.jp

Another reconstruction of Chernov's personal website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chernov, Andrei 1966 births 2017 deaths Counterculture of the 1990s English–Russian translators FreeBSD people Scientists from Moscow Russian bloggers Russian computer programmers Russian occultists Russian Internet celebrities Russian Thelemites