Category Archives: technology

Microwave injury

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Tue 18 Oct 2022 I woke up with something that resembled a bad sinus headache with vertigo and weakness. It turned out that everybody I asked had similar symptoms, but I seemed to be hit the hardest. I concluded that those symptoms can have two most likely causes; one is a very strong, generic broad-band astral impact upon the pranic/physical boundary. The other likely cause is a very strong microwave source, because I experimented with microwaves of various frequencies and they vary from near-imperceptible to a very strong interference on the physical tissues that interface with the astral, and it’s very difficult to differentiate between the two because they strike at the same layer, but from opposite sides, and if the astral strike doesn’t carry information, only an energetic impact, the two would be indistinguishable. Today, Robin told me that he didn’t perceive anything in Australia at that time, and he would most certainly perceive an astral impact of this magnitude. If it were a microwave event, however, he wouldn’t perceive anything as microwaves don’t propagate well over the horizon, or through rock. This makes me put much greater Bayesian weight to the microwave option; most likely, a military radar was turned to high power mode somewhere in Europe, and quite possibly inside or close to Croatia, during the NATO nuclear exercises. It is not unreasonable to hypothesise that they turned the radars to high power mode which would have them detect small stealthy objects, such as a stealthy nuclear-tipped cruise missile, or see stealthy fighter-bombers at a greater than usual distance.

The problem with this is that this event left me with physical consequences similar to those of a strong concussion or a mild stroke, and it was strongly felt by a number of people who wouldn’t be expected to feel anything subtle so strongly. This implies that the power level of this thing was almost lethal to humans, leaving unknown levels of permanent damage, and is similar to the military high-power sonars that cause inner-ear bleeding in the whales and dolphins, and have them strand themselves and die.

The only way I know of that would protect one from such a microwave radiation event is to seek shelter inside an underground garage, basement or any similar facility where you would normally have no cellphone and wifi coverage, or inside a grounded Faraday’s cage. I have no such shelter here on Hvar so I was basically right in the open for this one.

The ever tightening grip

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I watched this video last night:

Basically, with Windows 10 it was “recommended” that you turn on the UEFI encryption keys and the “trusted platform” stuff. In Windows 11, it was a precondition for installation. Now they are planning to build something into the CPU itself, so that you can’t run an OS that hasn’t been approved by Microsoft, basically. What the author of the video didn’t say, and what I find glaringly obvious, is that this isn’t about Microsoft, it’s about America. They want to make sure that “their technology” can’t be used by anyone on their sanctioned entity list, because, if you pay attention, you will see that Microsoft, Apple, Google and similar extensions of NSA routinely sanction countries that refuse to bend over to America, by the principle of “if you refuse to be our slaves we’ll take our toys away”. Let’s say that Macs and iPhones outright refuse to work in any truly sovereign country. You take a thumb drive with Linux, install it, set it up and take a slight hit in comfort and productivity because the open source stuff isn’t written by people whose pay check depends on all the details being polished. However, you will still get the job done, and in some aspects the Linux way of doing things is actually better. I was actually quite productive on Linux when I had it on all my personal systems; the only exception is photography, because nothing on Linux is even in the same decade as Lightroom. But would I manage; oh yes. And if Windows/Mac didn’t really exist as an alternative, I would venture a guess that excellent Russian and Chinese commercial software would start appearing for Linux in short order. So, things would not only work, but also improve with time.

However, if the Americans succeed in putting this “trusted platform” shit in the CPU, it means that you won’t be able to run Linux or BSD on any American-designed hardware anywhere in the free world (because that’s what the “sanctioned entities list” really is). It’s not unexpected, and I actually think they are kind of late with this, but if anyone thinks Microsoft could lobby to put this stuff in Intel and AMD CPU designs without not only approval, but direct order from the NSA (and probably other deep-state structures as well), I have real estate on the Moon to sell you.

So, what does this mean in practice? Is it worrisome enough to warrant an immediate transition to non-American-designed computer architecture and non-American OS? Yes, if you’re a sovereign state. For individuals, it’s a more complicated matter. It’s worrisome enough for me to warrant building and maintaining redundant systems I can use in case this becomes a problem.

Smartphone to dumbphone?

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For some reason I got a few videos about switching from smartphone to dumbphone and back in my YouTube stream, so I actually checked them out because the idea seemed bizarre. It turned out that some people are so overwhelmed by a smartphone that they just can’t leave it alone; they constantly find things to do with it, from social media to all the music and stuff you can listen on it, that their entire lives get absorbed in it. The reason why I find it bizarre is that my iPhone sits somewhere on the desk all day and I use it only for internet banking purposes (because Revolut, for instance, doesn’t have a desktop app so I have to use a mobile device) or when someone calls me; basically, when I’m home, I either don’t use it at all, or I use it for very specific things, the way I use a tootbrush or a coffee cup. When I’m going out, I put it in my pocket and basically forget about it, unless I want to check something. I’m probably the least typical smartphone user; I don’t use social media at all, I don’t listen to music or watch videos on my phone, but I do actually need a smartphone, because when I need it, it’s for checking some website or chat or map or things like that; my “screen on” time on the phone is perhaps five minutes a day, if even that. Still, I do kind of understand the problem people are having with them; it’s just that I get stuck on YouTube, watching hours of political, tech or historical videos, and it’s quite easy to lose the whole day like that. Still, I don’t consider it a loss; I want to keep informed in order to understand what’s going on, and analysis of the kind I’m doing requires keeping tabs on multiple data streams, but I occasionally find myself watching something that’s so far off-tangent that I wonder how I got there in the first place.

In any case, I think I’ve been doing it long enough that I can offer advice on how to manage addictive and time-consuming things on the Internet.

First, you need to be focused, as opposed to scatter-brained, and disciplined, in a sense of being in charge and not just clicking on shit that’s in front of you.

Second, you need to take breaks – take a long walk, or exercise, or something else that has nothing to do with either computers or the Internet. It doesn’t count if you use your phone in any way while doing it.

Third, no using the phone in the car. I can’t even tell you how annoying I find the people who drive while doing something on their phones, not to mention that it’s dangerous.

Fourth, when you’re with someone, talk to them. Don’t even touch the phone.

Fifth, do specific things, and when you’re done, let go of the phone, or the computer. Don’t fidget with it because you’ll always find something on it that will preoccupy your attention and waste your time. It’s a tool, not your connection with God.

Sixth, use an ad-blocker and similar tools for de-cluttering your screen. Don’t watch ads, don’t watch useless “entertaining” garbage, avoid live chats in favor of email and forums. Avoid Internet versions of “hanging out” – if you want to hang out, do it with friends in real life. Avoid functionality that keeps you “tethered”, in a sense that anyone can “ping” you at any time. That just keeps you plugged in and stressed. Turn the chat off unless you actually have something of importance to communicate, or if you expect to find something of importance there. In any case it’s best to write an e-mail. Chats are superficial, addictive, waste of time and for the most part they are disrespectful of other people’s limits and time, and if someone wants to keep you tethered it indicates an insecure personality. Avoid. Also, don’t ping others with useless shit – nobody really cares what you ate, or that you had to take a shit. Communicate important ideas, and if you don’t have any, shut up and read some books, and eventually that will change.

That’s basically it. If you’re scatterbrained, shallow and have an addictive personality, technology will certainly give you enough rope to hang yourself, but it isn’t an iPhone problem, it’s a dumbass problem.

Hardware upgrades

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Every time Apple, Intel, AMD or Nvidia launches new gadgets I get a million fake-enthusiastic “reviews” (in fact paid ads produced by youtubers who whore themselves out to the hardware manufacturers) in my recommended videos, and they are always layered – first comes the “oh, a new gadgety thingy, how wonderful”, then “oh, it overheats, is underpowered, there are flaws”, and finally “why you don’t need it and should stick with the last year’s model”, until they decide they milked the product for all it’s worth and shift attention to the next thing. I find it boring and predictable in direct proportion to the faked enthusiasm of the “reviewers”, who are trying very hard to convince us that we live in some parallel universe where good smartphones and computers are something new and unheard of, while the truth of the matter is that the entire consumer electronics industry has peaked quite a while ago and we’re seeing very small incremental improvements. I recently made an experiment where I took several pieces of “obsolete hardware” from boxes and drawers – a 6 year old CPU and motherboard with integrated graphics, an old 120GB SSD, a 4 year old Android phone and so on, because someone in the family always has an old but perfectly functional device they upgraded from, and guess what, it’s all fine. I turned the PC into a local staging server where I test for service and dependency compatibility before I deploy things on the web, and I turned the old android phone into a backup device that I can switch to in emergencies.

The way I see it, a piece of equipment goes through several evolutionary phases; first it’s promising but flawed, and every new iteration of the product brings great improvement and one upgrades immediately after the new product has been released. Then it reaches maturity, where it’s good enough for what you need, and new iterations of the product are better in this or that way, but not enough to warrant an upgrade. The third phase is when the manufacturers introduce changes in design, or control layout, but the functionality of the device is the same, or even reduced to save on manufacturing cost, and after that point all further “improvements” are basically in finding out what they could remove, make cheaper, or introduce intentional design flaws that will make the device break down more quickly and force you to buy a replacement.

I remember times where a 6 months old computer or a digital camera was considered obsolete, because things were progressing that quickly. Now we are at the point where my “new” camera is 7 years old, my “old” camera is 17 years old, both are still in use, and their picture quality is excellent. My mid-2015 15” Macbook pro is still perfectly functional, and I could use it as my primary computer with only a slight reduction in speed from the new one I use. That’s a 7 years old computer, and it’s fine.

That logic doesn’t go forever, though. I would hardly use a Pentium II-233 today, or one of the early smartphones; those are junk and are better recycled for raw materials, than used. Also, I wouldn’t say that there have been no improvements in the last 7 years; however, I recently replaced my younger son’s perfectly good Xiaomi Mi8 with 11T pro, and joked that he now has a typical iPhone user experience, where you buy the new expensive one with better specs, migrate your stuff to it and everything works exactly the same and you feel like a fool for wasting money replacing a perfectly good thing. That’s where we are with computers, too; the last upgrade cycle I did was particularly meaningless, because I replaced stuff that worked fine with stuff that also worked fine, albeit noticeably faster in 5% of cases.

There’s a reason why my most recent tech-purchases were battery-powered lawn mowers: I can actually do things with them that I couldn’t before. With computers and phones, well, nice that they have a new shiny design and color scheme and all, but I’ll pass.

Why Linux is not to be trusted

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From a recent Wired article:

THE DEVELOPER OF a popular open source package has been caught adding malicious code to it, leading to wiped files on computers located in Russia and Belarus. The move was part of a protest that has enraged many users and raised concerns about the safety of free and open source software.
The application, node.ipc, adds remote interprocess communication and neural networking capabilities to other open source code libraries. As a dependency, node.ipc is automatically downloaded and incorporated into other libraries, including ones like Vue.js CLI, which has more than 1 million weekly downloads.

Two weeks ago, the node.ipc author pushed a new version of the library that sabotaged computers in Russia and Belarus, the countries invading Ukraine and providing support for the invasion, respectively. The new release added a function that checked the IP address of developers who used the node.ipc in their own projects. When an IP address geolocated to either Russia or Belarus, the new version wiped files from the machine and replaced them with a heart emoji.

To conceal the malice, node.ipc author Brandon Nozaki Miller base-64-encoded the changes to make things harder for users who wanted to visually inspect them to check for problems.

Translated to common language, the open source community is motivated by ideology, not money. Since they are motivated by ideology, they constantly need to find “noble causes” and “change the world”. In this case, one such “noble individual” decided that the “noble cause” is to support Ukraine in its valiant struggle for fascism, theft, corruption and enrichment of criminals, and against Russia, and modified a popular open source project by adding malware that damages user data if the IP address is in antifascist countries. The code was base-64 encoded in order to prevent visual detection.

Now – if we have in mind that the supposedly “open source” projects are hardly ever peer-reviewed in normal times, because there are too many projects, and nobody really wants to bother with it because it’s assumed that, because the code is open to inspection, it actually is constantly inspected and reviewed – the fact remains that hundreds or thousands pieces of malware, carefully encoded to hide their real purpose, can be scattered across all sorts of open source projects, maintained by one or two actual developers who do all the work on the project while the “reviewers” will seldom give the source code even a passing glance, those project maintainers are starved for money and therefore easy target for bribery by governments or corporations, they are also possibly sensitive to other forms of pressure/blackmail, and then there are those who are ideologically motivated, in the sense that they, like all godless people, live empty and worthless lives and want to pretend that their lives matter and that they make a difference by contributing to the cause of the day. There’s absolutely no reason why I would assume that open source projects are trustworthy, which means I would have to either personally go through them – for which I lack both time and motivation – or trust someone who will provide oversight, in which case quo custodiet ipsos custodes?

I told the packet manager in the Linux distro I use to list all the installed packages and there were 2147 of them, and I inspected source code in exactly 0 of those. If n (where n,o,p > 0) % of all contributors were sensitive to ideological virtue-signalling, o% were sensitive to money issues and p% were sensitive to blackmail, how many hidden pieces of malware could they have hidden in there, carefully masked by either obfuscation, function by omission or function by interaction with other pieces of the puzzle, which is all very hard to detect?

Basically, if I want something that will work reliably in all kinds of scenarios, Linux and other open source solutions are arguably no better than the proprietary ones; they just have different sets of issues, which is why I try to average-out by using all the available platforms and maintain sufficient proficiency in all of them to be able to instantly platform-hop if one of them is disabled.