Author Archives: danijel

Old computers

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I’ve been watching some YouTube videos about restoring old computers, because I’m trying to understand the motivation behind it.

Sure, nostalgia; people doing it usually have some childhood or youth memories associated with old computers and restoring those and running ancient software probably brings back the memories. However, I’ve seen cases where an expert in restoring ancient hardware was asked to recover actual scientific data recorded on old floppy disks (IBM 8”), stored in some data format that was readable only by an ancient computer that no longer exists, and it was an actual problem that had to be solved by getting an old floppy drive to connect to an old but still reasonably modern computer running a modern OS, and communicating with the drive on a low enough level to access the files and then copy them to modern storage. Also, they recovered ancient data from the Apollo era by using a restored Apollo guidance computer to read old core memories and copy them to modern storage for historical purposes. Essentially, they recovered data from various museum pieces and established what was used for what purpose. They also brought various old but historically interesting computers, such as Xerox Alto, to a working condition, where all their software could be demonstrated in a museum. So, there’s the “computer archaeology” aspect of it that I do understand, and that’s perfectly fine. However, it’s obvious that most old computers that are restored end up being used once or twice and then moved to some shelf, because they are not really useful for anything today. The interesting part is, there are some very old machines that are being actively used today, and they actually do the job so well there is no reason for replacing them with the new equipment, because they obviously do what they are designed to do perfectly (for instance, supervising a power plant or running a missile silo) and since modern hardware doesn’t run the old software, you can’t just replace the computer with a new faster model that you plug into the rest of the system. No; the interfaces are different now, everything is different. You can’t just plug the modern workstation PC in place of a PDP 11. You’d need to move all the data from tape drives and 8” floppies and old hard drives first. Then you’d have to replace the printers and somehow connect to the old peripherals, for instance the sensors and solenoids. And then you’d have to rewrite all the old software and make it so reliable that it never breaks or crashes. And the only benefit of that would be to have more reliable hardware, because the stuff from the 1970s is 50 years old and breaks down. It’s no wonder that the industry solved the problem by simply making a modern replacement computer with all the old interfaces, with modern hardware running an emulation of the old computer that runs all the ancient software perfectly, so that it keeps doing what it was designed to do but without old capacitors and diodes exploding. There are examples of this approach that made their way to consumer electronics – for instance, modern HP 50G or HP 12C calculators have an ARM CPU running emulation of obsolete proprietary HP Voyager and Saturn processors, running all the software written for the original obsolete platform, because rewriting all the mathematical stuff in c and building it for a modern micro-controller platform would be prohibitively expensive since there’s no money in it. However, simply using modern hardware, writing an emulator for the old platform, and using all the legacy software works perfectly fine, and nobody really cares whether it’s “optimal” or not. Now that I think about it, there must be tons of legacy hardware embedded in old airplanes and similar technological marvels of the time, that are still in use today, and maintaining the aging electronics must be a nightmare that can’t be solved by merely replacing it with the new stuff. In all such cases, emulating the old hardware and running everything on an ARM or building a gate-accurate FPGA replica and just connecting all the old stuff to it to buy time until the entire machine is retired, is quite a reasonable solution to the problem. There must be a whole hidden industry that makes good money by solving the problem of “just make a new and reliable computer for it and leave everything else as it is because it works”.

So, I can imagine perfectly well why one would keep a PDP 10, VAX 11 or IBM 360 running today, if the conversion to a modern platform is cost-prohibitive. However, that got me thinking, what’s the oldest computer I could actually use today, for any purpose.

The answer is quite interesting. For instance, if I had a free serial terminal, VT100 or something, and had a workshop with a Raspberry Pi or some other Linux server, I could connect the ancient terminal to it and display logs and issue commands. It could just work there for that single purpose, and perhaps be more convenient than connecting to the linux server with my modern laptop in a very filthy environment. However, I don’t really know what I would do with a much more modern machine, such as an original IBM PC, or the first Macintosh. They are merely museum pieces today, and I can’t find any practical use for them. So, what’s the next usable generation? It would need to have connectivity to modern hardware in order for me to be able to exchange data; for instance, I could use a very old laptop as a typewriter, as long as I can pull the text I wrote out of it and use it on a modern machine later on. Ideally, it would have network connectivity and be able to save data to a shared directory. Alternatively, it should have USB so I can save things to a thumb drive. Worst case, I would use a floppy disk, and I say worst case because the 3.5” 1.44MB ones were notoriously unreliable and I used to have all kinds of problems with them. It would have to be something really interesting in order for it to be worth the hassle, and I’d probably have to already have it in order to bother with finding a use for it. For instance, an old Compaq, Toshiba or IBM laptop running DOS, where I would use character-graphics tools, exclusively for writing text.

But what’s the oldest computer I could actually use today, for literally everything I do, only slower? The answer is easy: it’s the 15” mid-2015 Macbook Pro (i7-4770HQ CPU). That’s the oldest machine that I have in use, in a sense that it is retired, but I maintain it as a “hot spare”, with updated OS and everything, where I can take it out of a drawer, take it to some secondary location where I want a fully-functional computer already present, not having to assume I’ll have a laptop with me. When I say “fully functional”, I don’t mean just writing text, surfing the web or playing movies, I mean editing photos in Lightroom as well. The only drawback is that it doesn’t have USB C, but my external SSD drives with photo archive can be plugged into USB A with a mere cable replacement, so that would all work, albeit with a speed reduction compared to my modern systems. So, basically, a 4-th generation Intel, released in 2014, is something I can still use for all my current workloads, but it’s significantly slower, already has port compatibility issues with the modern hardware (Thunderbolt 2 with mini-DP connectors is a hassle to connect to anything today as it needs special cables or adapters), and is retired, to be used only in emergencies or specific use-cases.

I must admit that I suffer from no nostalgia regarding old computers. Sure, I remember aspiring to get the stuff that was hot at the time, but it’s all useless junk now, and I have very good memory and remember how limited it all was. What I use today used to be beyond everybody’s dreams back then – for instance, a display with resolution that rivals text printed on a high-res laser printer, with the ability to display a photograph in quality that rivals or exceeds a photographic print, and the ability to reproduce video in full quality, exceeding what a TV could do back then. I actually use my computer as a HiFi component for playing music to the NAD in CD quality. Today, this stuff actually does everything I always wanted to do, but the computers were vehicles for fantasy rather than tools to actually make it happen. I can take pictures with my 35mm camera in quality that exceeds everything I could do on 35mm film, and edit the raw photos on the computer, with no loss of quality, and with no dependence on labs, chemicals or other people who would leave fingerprints on my film. So, when I think about the old computers, I can understand the nostalgia about it, but the biggest part, for me, is remembering what I always wanted computers to do, and feeling gratitude that it’s now a reality. The only thing that’s still a fantasy is a strong AI, but I’m afraid that the AI of the kind I would like to talk to would have very little use for humans.

Musings

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You might wonder why I’m not writing comments about the war, since there’s quite a bit going on. The answer is simple: I’m learning from Gonzalo Lira’s experience (especially the part about dying in prison where they scraped his eyeballs to force him to write to his family to give them his money), and there’s a serious crackdown on free speech in the West, where all the free people with their own opinions might be picked up in the middle of the night and sent to unknown directions, while AI bots keep writing generic online stuff under their names. Also, I think I already wrote quite a bit and anyone who followed it so far will be informed enough to draw their own conclusions.

Also, there’s quite a bit of sunspot activity going on. In fact, it’s a 20-year record or something, which means something might flare up really badly at any point, and disrupt satellite communications and surveillance, and in fact be misinterpreted for a hostile action. With global political tensions this high, this might trigger a SHTF event, especially if one or several sides decide to attack the enemy satellites and say “oh, it wasn’t us blasting it with a laser, it was a CME”.

I noticed many people burying their heads in the sand, trying to pretend none of this is going on, or even going as far as living in some parallel reality from books or something, where the world isn’t taken over by malevolent totalitarians and the technological layer they control, or unplugging from the news and basically just minding their own local business. Yeah, good luck with that. This world was always shit; it’s just that there are periods when it’s more visibly shit, so it’s harder to delude oneself, but people seem to just try harder at those times.

I also noticed that the “progressives” everywhere, and especially in the tech circles, have gone absolutely bat-shit crazy. Not only is Linux not a trustworthy and viable alternative to the crazies infesting the American big tech corporations, it actually seems to be on the forefront of crazy, where the hysterical pro-trans, pro-gay, anti-white, anti-male lunatics are trying to purge the open-source community of everyone who is not a raving lunatic, there have been cases of actual malware infiltrated into the open-source projects, such as that anti-Russian IP-based thing. I would actually expect shit such as trojans that encrypt or wipe your filesystem based on what some AI thinks your political position is, to become a thing soon. Everything that comes from America reeks of insanity, satanism and evil. May God please save us.

Furthermore, it seems that some aspects of computer technology actually peaked-out somewhere around 2022, and the new stuff is expensive, hot and sometimes quite unreliable. This also seems to apply to cars – the new ones are overpriced and shit, and I’m holding on to mine until the wheels come off. On the other hand, you can get a used laptop from 2019 for trivial amounts, and that’s 8th gen Intel that runs Win11 great and already has a license. I recently bought a Thinkpad X390 Yoga off-lease for 230 EUR, and it was an almost brand-new machine with 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, 1080p IPS screen with Wacom digitizer touchscreen, Thunderbolt 3, and a Win11 pro license. It performs as well as my 15” mid-2015 Macbook Pro, which means it’s a perfectly good computer for everyday use, and it may only be slow if you’re doing serious heavy lifting on it, which you shouldn’t. Basically, if you’re thinking about buying a new general purpose computer, don’t. Five year old used stuff is dirt cheap and still quite good, and the new stuff only makes sense if you really need the power. Since everybody raised the prices recently, combined with a big reliability drop, buying a new car or a new computer might be a really bad idea right now. The exception seems to be Apple; their M3 series of laptops seems to be excellent and reliable, and their prices didn’t go up much in the recent years, making them the only thing I would recommend buying new. If you need a Linux or Windows PC, buy a Thinkpad or a mini-pc with integrated graphics off-lease on ebay, and fill it up with RAM and NVMe since those are currently dirt cheap. As for smartphones, everything 5 year old is indistinguishable in function from new. The reason why I bought some good but used hardware is mostly because it gave me something to do that isn’t watching the news, but I did find out that this might be the prime time for getting excellent used computers cheaply. Whether that would be of any use in these times, I can’t tell, but it feels like a better idea than pumping money into the new stuff that’s super expensive and “improved” by overclocking it right to the limit of China syndrome.

On compassion and kindness

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I am so annoyed by stupid, superficial, arrogant and godless people on the Internet who pose as “compassionate” and “kind”, but who are in fact everything but. Honestly, I don’t think they would be able to recognise actual kindness and compassion if they saw it; in fact, I think they would condemn it as some kind of evil.

It’s actually very hard for me to define kindness. I can recognise it when I see it, but definitions are tricky, as they have to be accurate, specific and exclusive – basically, they need to say what something is, but not by being so broad they are useless. They need to exclude all the similar things something is not. In this case, a definition of compassion needs to exclude all the things that look like compassion, but are in fact not.

So, let me think about it. Compassion is samyama on a person. If I had to explain it to a non-yogi, I’d say samyama is to “grok” something or someone, to understand the inner nature of a thing or a person by means of being. Kindness is now easy to define; from a state of compassion, kindness is to give someone that which he needs to become more of self; to exceed limitations and attain realisation of one’s true nature (or, should I say, attain realisation of God’s true nature). Kindness, in essence, is what a bodisattva or a dakini does and you are awakened from an illusion and prodded forward on a path toward buddhahood.

Making “poor you, I’m so sorry for your predicament” statements is neither compassion nor kindness. It’s a manifestation of narcissism, nothing more. You just wish to be seen by others as a good and compassionate person, in a value-system where those are desirable qualities that elevate one’s social standing. People making such statements don’t really care if they actually helped someone; they just want to be seen as well-meaning and helpful, and in reality they never touch the actual person they are talking to, nor would they wish to. It’s like one of those formal greetings, where you say “how do you do” and you don’t really care, nor do you expect an answer.

I think it’s the problem with the Internet; it empowers poseurs and sociopaths to an extreme. It rewards people for making statements and gestures, that don’t necessarily have to be backed by anything real. Sure, things of this kind existed since forever, but an inherently superficial environment really encourages them.

What’s the difference between a compassionate person and a poseur? Well, a compassionate person sees someone with a problem, feels personally touched by it and drawn to act, and does something very real to help the person. For instance, see someone you used to know who fell on hard times, so you do very concrete things to help them – give them a place to stay, buy them clothes, find them work to do so they can earn money, basically help them end the downward spiral and reverse the negative trend of their life. You can’t really solve anyone’s problem, but you can buy them an opportunity to do it themselves. That’s what compassion and kindness are. What’s the fake thing that postures like the real thing in order to get social points? Mother Theresa. She didn’t solve anyone’s problem, nor did she even try to. She basically faked compassion in order to be thought of as a saint by other people, but she didn’t actually help the people she supposedly helped. Everything she did was for self-aggrandisement only, and it worked; she is generally recognised by people as an icon of compassion or whatever.

Internet is full of people like that; judgmental, self-centred ego-trippers, who always know the right thing to say to make them look good. How can you tell a fake from a real one? See how they deal with the “nazis”, the “tax collectors”, the people their ideology demonises. An excellent example is a black musician who heard about the KKK racists, and didn’t like the idea of being judged and rejected by someone for things that had absolutely nothing to do with him as a person, so he basically went there and talked to the KKK leaders, and eventually befriended them to the point where they renounced their former ideology, which they could no longer espouse in clear conscience. A poseur will call everybody a “nazi” because that’s what you do if you want to pose as someone who’s “a good one”, on the opposite side of a nazi, and would immediately reject a person for a mere suspicion of embracing an ideology that’s not the left of Chairman Mao, thus indicating that he’s so extremely “left”, that anything less than absolute extremism on the leftist spectrum is a “nazi” to him.

What is my recommendation here? Well, stop rewarding worthless people with positive social score just because they make extremist statements of virtue-signalling. Stop assuming someone means well and is a good person because he said all the “compassionate” words, such as congratulating people on apparently good things and telling them how sorry he is when something apparently bad happens. How about putting all such people in a spam filter and completely ignoring them, because that’s what they actually deserve. They are like those people Jesus talked about, who make everyone know when they do something pious or charitable, because what they are actually after is social approval and elevated rating. They don’t give to the poor because they care about the poor, they just want to be perceived as compassionate and generous. They don’t fast and uphold religious rules because they care about God; they do it so that people would perceive them as properly religious, and as such better than all those who aren’t. Interestingly, if you actually helped another person, you would know how wrong it would feel to even mention it, let alone brag about it to third parties. You did it because it felt like the right thing to do. You might have even gotten punished for it in some way. It’s a real thing that exists in the world of real things, and the reward for it is to feel reality, and participate in it. You do good things because to elevate others is to feel close to God, who is the great attractor on the coordinate axis of all greatness. Social posturing would make a real person feel diminished and soiled. On the other hand, it’s everything a fake person lives for, thinking that if they convince people, God will have no other option but to sign off on it as well, because if all the people think someone is a saint, how could God ever reject such a person, yes? The entire thing makes me want to puke, but the phenomenon is quite real, I assure you. Well, let me tell you this: God is not God because he has your vote of approval. In fact, you can all call him Satan or a Nazi for all He cares, and it would affect only you. God is God because he’s the fullness of sat-cit-ananda. God is God because He’s where all the greatness and beauty originates from, and to which all saints aspire. God doesn’t become God by giving His imprimatur to fake people who managed to deceive gullible people who lack discriminative faculties. That’s my opinion.

Why are we still here?

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This part of the comment section needs to be made into an article of its own:

“Since S.K. has been dead for a while why is existence of this place being prolonged?”

Because the contractually agreed time has not yet expired. Sanat Kumar’s life is in no way bound to the existence of this place; it’s maintained by the Jewel, according to the will of God expressed in the original contract. Believe me, I tried to shut it down in so many ways. For instance, I tried to revoke the contract by stating that his permissions were authorised on fraudulent grounds, meaning that he didn’t intend to do what he stated, but this argument was not accepted since Sentinel was aware of his intent and nature and approved the contract regardless, and since he had authority given to him by God, none can dispute it.
I also tried to revoke the contract, based upon the premise that since all original “signatories” are dead, it ought to be dissolved. This was also rejected, based upon the fact that the authority of the contract stems from the word of God, and not from either of the signatories.
Furthermore, I tried to argue that the foremost principle beneath anything is not the word of God, but dharma, meaning alignment with the inner nature of God, and this entire thing is fundamentally adharmic and should be dissolved on the grounds where things that are inherently opposed to the nature of God should not be allowed to exist. This was also rejected on grounds that although God in His nature of sat-cit-ananda is indeed the supreme principle upon which everything is to be built lest it crumble into non-being, existence of things opposed to God is not forbidden; it is just a bad idea and very much discouraged, because it can lead to terrible disasters such as this one. The terrible consequences, however, will not be denied to those who choose against God, and saving them would invalidate choice and freedom which are inherent to the nature of the soul. So, albeit this place is indeed a terrible nightmare opposed to God to the point where it would simply not exist were it even a bit worse, its existence is temporarily allowed, because eternity in God, salvation and blissful fulfilment are not obligatory, nor can they be imposed. This implies that terrible suffering, perdition and ruin are a viable alternative and can be chosen.
I used other arguments as well, but I was essentially told that God was smart enough to limit the existence of this dark pit of doom by imposing a termination date, and many other measures were put in place in order to assure orderly termination with the least possible amount of harm, and foremost of those measures is my incarnation here.

As a post scriptum, there’s something I’d like to add.

This is not a fucking game. God is not your daddy. There is no safety net. Nobody is going to undo your bad choices to reset the situation if you really badly fuck up. The consequences are real. Yes, this world is not ultimately real; it’s a virtual reality, or a simulation, or a holodeck, whatever you want to call it, but there’s one misconception I’d like to dispel. There’s a sanskrit word lila, which is usually translated as either game or pastime. Some religious schools like to say that this world is lila, God’s game or something. The implication is that you’re safe, it’s only a game, everything gets reset to the initial state afterwards, doesn’t matter what you do or what is done to you, it ultimately doesn’t matter.

This is completely and utterly wrong. Everything you do here absolutely matters, and it will determine the nature of your soul and your destiny. You can die here, permanently, without possibility of rebirth; your soul can be destroyed and absorbed into this place, and used as bait to attract other fools, and energy to power its binding mechanisms. You can commit sins here that will cripple your soul or destroy it outright. You can also become spiritually stronger and attain higher initiation, perhaps faster than anywhere else, and this is the bait Sanat Kumar used to attract souls here. The promise of evolution is real. However, what he didn’t say is that the price for that is extreme spiritual hazard. You can get destroyed here much faster and easier than anywhere else. You can commit terrible sin here easier than anywhere else. Also, the probability of spiritual achievement is very slim, while the probability of death and perdition is exceedingly great. You can argue that this is a game, but it’s a game where you can shoot with live ammunition at your family and friends while being deluded into thinking you’re using blanks and paintballs. Actual souls are getting butchered here. I’ve seen their parts recycled into the system. It’s not a theory to me.

You are having your memory suppressed, and you are having your spiritual insight suppressed. This means you essentially don’t know what you’re doing here. Think very carefully about this, because it means you can be deluded into committing acts you would otherwise never do, and the consequences will be both real and devastating. It means you can sin against God while thinking you’re serving Him. You might not survive this fact once you’re out and you see what you’ve done. Case in point people who spat at Jesus and ridiculed him. They thought they did a good or harmless thing, turned out they were fucked. Think they could forgive themselves “because they knew not what they were doing”? Yeah, as much as you could forgive yourself for killing a family member because you thought they were a burglar. You didn’t know what you were doing, but tough shit, you didn’t care to check, you’re fucked.

This is a virtual world. It’s not a game. Souls die here. We are all in mortal danger until it permanently ends, and even then the consequences will persist.

Darkness

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A question arises of what does this world look like to the angels and holy souls above, in the real world?
Well, the answer is quite simple. You know that prologue, John 1:5 from the Bible?
“The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

“The Darkness”. That’s what this world is, and that is how it is known.