occultist_throw

To answer the question, what good does discussing this do?

The issue with "Tech + Workplace + Women" is a discussion topic flameworthy of abortion, gun rights, and the like. To the opposition, you are evil. Nothing good came come of this.

There will be people who bulletpoint everything wrong. There'll be others that call for fallacious statements. There will be others that claim that they're not getting proper discussion because of being screamed out. There'll be others that just will be blatantly sexist (and removed/hellbanned).

What good does discussing this do? Ive seen various combinations of these same discussions, and devolve to a textural screaming match.

Tl;Dr. Boring, no answers, everyone's "wrong" some way and some how. How about nice mathematics or programming puzzles?

edit: seriously, modded down? I'd much prefer why you think I'm wrong. I've seen 300+ comment threads about "sexism in the tech workplace" more than a few times. They devolve to screaming matches and dry commentary nobody responds to.

Indeed! It reminds me of the root foundations of a TurboLift from Star Trek.

Given that they control the hardware and software, I believe they know full well what they're doing when they put out a new update to devices that cannot handle it. They could provide a warning "During testing, your device may not run at full speed, due to age of hardware and new features added." and offer to install.

With Microsoft, I give them a bye primarily because aside their Surface line, they don't control every possible configuration, and have to deal with a wide ecosystem of hardware.

From the article you linked...

"Professionals worry that jurors may acquit guilty defendants because forensic evidence is not presented by the prosecution at trial."

How is that bad?

The same reason they fail at representing the Occult. 95% of it is not flashy.

I spend a great deal of my time reading, be it new tech documents, papers, or other findings that interest me. Or I read musty old tomes, scans from Oxford library and wherever on mysticism and occultism.

Do you know how exciting it is to show someone reading for hours? Not very. No, people have very low attention spans, and can barely read a facebook post or moderately sized comment. Discussing intricacies of anything on TV is verboten. Small bites are acceptable, and even better if they have flashy and pretty graphics or effects.

So instead, dramatic "interpretations" are used, to ill effect. Insert CSI "zoom - zoom - zoom - caught them", "uber hackers" that can make blenders turn on remotely, to "evil warlocks" that kill at a glance. It's all theater, and badly done at that.

And Apple is well known for installing updates that kill their devices by way of ram and cpu exhaustion. I've been called too many times, because Apple update, one of, destroyed machine.

In reality, open hardware is also what's needed, so we can patch firmware ourselves when vendors cant or wont. That too is a massive uphill battle.

Indeed. If he didnt get permission to stop WanaCry, then he violated the CFAA.

No, a "crime" is not good justification of a different crime.

I wish I was making this stuff up, but thank overly-broad '80s laws regarding "access", "permission", and that sort of language which weaponizes EULAs.

Indeed they do. I can think much of the NPM ecosystem which assumes (incorrectly) that packages are unique, stable, and good. That whole situation a while back showed that not to be the case.

I'd be OK with grabbing code elsewhere, as long as I could guarantee that it would never change. Primarily, immutability. I'm thinking of something like an IPFS repo which is "elsewhere", but still very much crawl-able, scannable for bad stuff (aside turing issues...), and can be shown to reproduce stuff if it is broken.

Also, using an immutable self-certifying system would also solve the second point, regarding the single MITM. The trust would be with the file/package, and not some ephemeral cert (whos trust is brokered from above).

Well, it's pretty simple to legally dodge these kinds of threats.

If you scrape regularly, then pick up a dozen or more machines around the world, in less than friendly areas to US law. Pay with a rechargeable credit card or bitcoin. And the buy servers and set up a hadoop cluster that handles scan-jobs.

The worst case scenario is that LinkedIN, YELP, and others get some of your servers shut down. Wash, rinse, repeat.

EDIT: please note, this was only a thought-game to bypass rude and destructive laws like the CFAA, which weaponizes TOS'ses, EULA's, and other implicit contracts of adhesion (as in, you have to agree to see). Ideally, we would be better off with both these laws to have a sane scope, and for companies to not expect things to happen with content in public.

So how does unsafe-eval and loading scripts dynamically pass any sort of "google security scan"?

It would seem obvious that the moment a script tries to load arbitrary code outside of the package, it should fail.

YES, you can have different devices on the same RING account.

All you need to do, is to export the profile and import it, so all devices share the same profile.

Just confirmed from one of the devs!

Indeed. I had the same issues of "No workey" for my machines as well. It locked up on viewing video status page on all platforms previously.

Im primarily curious if it supports terminating the same data to multiple endpoints. Facebook and other centralized chat servers do that. That functionality guarantees that regardless which machine is logged in, I can get my messages.

I know that recent TOR chat server doesnt. There's a GH issue open to "try to deal with it", with no comments.

I also know that Tox doesn't support the same key with multiple endpoints. That too defeats my purpose of having it on my phone and laptop: I then have to have a new "contact" per device, which easily balloons out of control.

Edit: Am on freenode's irc #ring . They seem asleep. No comments, positive or negative.

Alas.. that it is.

I much prefer lower level programming, preferably programming the hardware I designed. I know the hardware limitations, side effects, and overall the how-to behind the hardware that allows the software to do its thing. Most software engineers I know have no want to understand the underlying mechanics (they're certainly capable of it - they just don't care).

I'm currently trapped in a "devops full stack" with much of the tooling as NIH. My routine day is a mix of keeping the trains rolling on time, and getting horrid stuff like " my $database_root_password = <password> " out of SVN...

I keep applying to positions in my wider local area (Midwest). But so far, only headhunters that want to waste my time with endless "pre-interviews". Tomorrow, it's back to tickets, high-ho!

Unfortunately, We've tried. It does little good.

This last Saturday, there was a peaceful protest of around 200 people held in DC in front of Congress. One of my friends attended this protest. Around 150 of them were arrested, and then given bullshit charges, like crowding, obstructing, incommoding, or resisting arrest (of what charge were they being arrested for, angering Trump...).*

When you try to "peacably protest", and "redress the government for a redress of grievances" and are arrested, detained for 6 hours, and then given a $25 citation of 'crowding' - what else do you do? Molotov Cocktails? AR-15's?

The answer, unfortunately, is nothing. You keep your job, eat decent food, and live a life under whomever the current 'king' is. And hope to the gods that nothing knocks you down to a lower socioeconomic ladder rung.

* https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/police-ar...

Does anyone know if a lawsuit has been lodged questioning these practices?

I've always thought that my informed consent should also apply to cost of procedure - I have a right to say "NO" to something in the medical establishment. And had I known the price and the success rate, I would have said "No".

Now, I'm not asking "What is my exact rate?", although that would indeed be nice. But given minimal complications, I should be able to get a range of what to expect.

>> The other option is that there is some unknown type of "energy" (boy, do I hate that word, BTW). And our bodies are some sort of receiver.

> Ok, so test this.

I heartily agree.

I'm approaching this from my own perspectives in working with the occult. For me, I personally know its true, however this stuff must absolutely be not only measurable, but quantifiable and comparable. That's the basis of science. That's the problem with this area, given that you are the only one in the study.

I've highlighted a few areas that seem interesting and possible to detect. I'm working with the basis that when psychics talk of energy, I'm assuming something within Strong/Weak/gravity/EM with regards to energy. EM is probably the easiest to construct sensors, given that Strong/Weak are extremely short range forces, and gravity sensors are... expensive.

The first area I've determined that shouldn't be as hard, is to construct a way to see an aura in a camera system. It's rather easy to train oneself to see it, occult speaking. But there are some significant difficulties in even this. (One difficulty: Some can see the aura of a jpeg of a person, but when the image is cropped significantly, the aura disappears. What's going on?)

I'm keeping an open mind about this, but also trying to incorporate science in quantifiable ways.

Oh, but you're the arbiter of the equality of opinions and theories?

And I thought I was arrogant.

Really? Looking for science given enough anecdotes is now "religion"? I spoke of no deities, no dictates, no 'holy orders'. But you know, I'm sure that everything has been invented and there is nothing new...

How fitting, given someone naming themselves after Norse deity Odin's raven Muninn, meaning 'Mind'.

I've trained myself how to do this. Sure, call them psychics. I usually attribute them as having an innate ability to do this.

As for me, there are schools of magic that teach how to develop this. I didn't believe at first, but with enough "coincidences", I accepted it tentatively.

I still seek for a way to harmonize this with science proper. But most people are too caustic and closed-off to even give this a consideration.

There are really 2 options:

1. Everything is purely physical. When you die, you are worm food, the end. Many people 'believe' this, given no proof of either way.

2. The other option is that there is some unknown type of "energy" (boy, do I hate that word, BTW). And our bodies are some sort of receiver. Some times, we can receive other stuff. It would also explain out of body experiences, dreams that feel like more, feeling people watching you, near-death experiences, parents being able to sense when their child's hurt at a distance, and other things. How does this work? No bloody clue.

If everything's simply physical, then who cares? You're worm food anyways. The second offers much more - some people can communicate with it. So, how does it work? How can I receive it, say, from a computer receiver? How do I transmit? How do I view it?

But hostiles will be hostiles, well, until we start seeing more "Science of Consciousness" work. Then finally, we can bring the Occult and Psychism to science proper.

------------------------------

(EDIT: Wow, again, another mod-storm. It seems the staunch atheists and antitheists are going at this thread with a vengeance.

I'm only highlighting 'interesting' phenomenon, for a possibility others might find something interesting and share their findings. You know, it's kind of how science works. Well, unless it's an echo-chamber filled with sycophants repeating their own religious dictates that 'the occult and psychism doesnt exist'. I know the path I understand it, but it is unprovable to others. Tl;Dr: study of N=1.

I'll wait for you deniers to explain consciousness. I'll be waiting.)

> Anyway, if ignorance is a defence, what made you 'eat of the fruit of knowledge' so to speak?

It was a long string of events that started with my ex fiancee and I unwittingly witnessing a Thelemite ritual in the state park. I could feel the waves of hatred and anger off of it, even not having done anything in the occult.

My ex had an instantaneous migraine. To the point of screaming for it to stop.

I happened to know someone who was a practising pagan, and we explained what happened. Evidently she has had run-ins with that group before. She and I went to the site. Lets just say craziness happened. I saw 3 of them show up, like holograms over my vision. She knew 2 of them but didn't know the third. I described the third, and knew her.

Nonetheless, remote viewing shouldnt be able to occur with our technology. Nor is separating the energy side of a human from their body temporarily. And other things. But I saw them. My ex felt them. And she saw them.

I knew from that night, that this realm is real. Can't prove it. But I know it. And I'll figure out its laws; its rules; its physical attributes of how it works.

> I should probably have said something about Confirmation Bias which I suspect is what is at work here.

Indeed. I know well about the confirmation bias. I've considered it early on as a likely candidate. I've ruled it out by too many extremely improbable events, many which include other people unawares about anything that I do.

(In 'unrelated' computer science, do you consider a zero knowledge proof to be 0% likely even after 100 iterations? How many iterations would you need as proof?)

> Note that you say the times it doesn't work, you dismiss as being due to circumstances beyond control; when it does seem to work, due to random chance, you seize on that as proof, confirming that there is a hidden occult mechanism at work.

You misunderstand. I do not classify them as failures, because they are not. I can tell when a divination won't work. Call it a little message in the back of my mind. Something. Doesn't happen often.

> Even a really low success rate -- maybe only 5-10% of your guesses are correct -- is still enough to generate the illusion, particularly if you are able to dismiss the failures as unimportant, so the successes stick out more.

Id say much higher than that. But you've already dismissed this as some self-inflicted mental health issue. If you've read any of my meager posting history, you'd know that I'm trying to blend both this mysticism and science, and bring it so all may use and benefit.

> We have been trying very hard for centuries to contact any kind of afterlife, spirits or gods, and failed.

I'd suppose you haven't tried spending time with people who do practice and do this, do you?

> Even if we cannot perfectly rule it out in principal we can rule out anything we have conceived and tested thus far.

Simply put, you can't. "Absence of proof" does not equal "proof of absence".

> That and Ouija boards are made by Parker Bros [1]. Unless you believe that a group of people with a reliable channel to the afterlife chose to keep making Scrabble and Monopoly games with their super powers, then we really should just discount it as an obvious money grab, because it is.

Not at all. The Ouigi boards are just a tool. There's usually nothing in them that would be manifest to a specific entity or emotion. Not even that, but they are made by machine, so there would be very likely no emotion in contact with them.

Since you seem unlearned in this area, divination can use any sort of tools. Tarot, pendulum, sand, tea, coffee grounds, bones, compass (luao-pen), ruler, entrails, fire, water.. Any of these can be learned and used. Or some are versed in doing divination using no instruments at all - although even in the occult and esoteric areas, this is considered very difficult.

And then it comes full circle with religion. These are religious practices. If you're thinking of Miss Cleo, you're further from the truth. Those are advertisement services ; whereas what I talk of are honestly held beliefs. And when understood from the occult mindset, do give valid answers.

It's one area where I work in regularly, is divination. Sometimes, it doesn't work. In that case, I say as such. Usually, it does.

Well, there's 3 avenues to this.

1. Divination is real, and they are consulting whatever they called. Could be the victim. Could be someone/something else. Could be a deity. Long and short, unless you're practiced in this realm, you can't know. And there's no empirical proof.

2. It's a link to their subconscious. Nothing mysterious. But it's a way they can interrogate their own ideas about a situation without personally owning said ideas. Think of this akin to a couch and therapist.

3. Someone is playing with them and controlling a weak-willed person. In other words, they're choosing what's being divined in order to exert influence over someone else. This is not only a bad situation, it's likely illegal.

The tough part, is when divination is integral to someones' religion. What's to say that your reading verses with a bible is any less than me relying on the tarot? If you're allowed your religious expression, why not I? And speaking of such, isn't it common still to "swear to tell the truth, the only truth, so help you god"? My first question to that is, "Which God?"

1 would appear protected, 2 isn't, and 3 looks illegal. Hard call.

> What can a normal person do to avoid harm from these things?

The best defence against this sort of stuff is ignorance. From my experiences, knowing opens these 'doors'. It doesn't make you immune, but staying away from it certainly helps.

Then again, I look at these techniques as part of what makes me human. And living and being is dangerous. I'll embrace these things, to know thyself. It is a very dangerous road. I know the Buddhists also talk of the same, saying the route I take is the quickest to enlightenment, but also one that can have disastrous consequences (usually to myself).

> Is it that we don't cross paths with them as often as we did, or perhaps the concern to protect oneself in the past was overblown, or perhaps they don't even exist?

Oh, they exist alright. I've met many, and butted heads against a few. Go no further than reddit.com/r/occult . There's 40k members subscribed. There's a healthy book selection at the local bookstores over Paganism, Wicca, Witchcraft, and Occultism.

One thing, is the secrecy is still in effect. Even I created a throwaway to disambiguate my normal tech persona from this. If people at my workplace found out what I believe and do, who knows what would happen. Mockery, derision, fright, anger, indolence. Ive had those aimed at me, by both atheists and christians (but usually christians).

> I admit I am very skeptical, but it's been interesting topic to discuss.

That's fine. So was I. And in a way, I still am. I'm talking with someone with a background in physics about further ways to make sensors that can bring the occult to physical world. Instead of this realm being all eerie, and shrouded, I want to blow this idea of occult wide open, so that all may participate. That, as you can probably understand, angers quite a lot of people.

yep. clow_reed@protonmail.com

Im also on Tox as well.

Gotcha. Wasn't quite understanding what you were asking.

It was a demon, one of. There's honestly too many different types of things out there, I'm never too sure if there even is a nomenclature that could be attributed. But this thing was definitely a demon. That's what the first half of the ritual does, from the Mathers' book.

What can they do to humans? All sorts of things. This is probably a better list than I can cover: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_demons_in_the_Ars_Goet...

Do note, some of them are rubbish... But not the ones you might think. Things like "become invisible" doesn't always mean that you turn transparent - it can be that nobody notices you.

This one, had a murderous vengeance towards the one whom imprisoned it. We just installed a vehicle lift in our hackerspace, and there was an open house that evening. It would have been catastrophic if 'somehow' that lift malfunctioned and crushed someone... And having an electrical malfunction or a hydraulic breach would be well within the power of that entity.

Its old laws, when dealing with Demonics especially, that if you do something for them, they have a debt to you. In this case, I freed one that was bound. I, therefore, effectively owned it if I chose.

I've had plenty experience in this realm. I didn't want someone harmed. Nor do I have some great need for resources. And it couldn't/wouldn't provide knowledge that I require. The easiest thing to do here is to free it of any obligations it has to me. Because otherwise, the costs of what amounts to slavery is just too much.

_____________

What happened:

I made that decision rather quickly, when I saw this. The idiot hackerspace member left a pentagram on the table in blue painters tape. I recognized the junk latin words as from (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_Key_of_Solomon). The presence in my mind was that it was howling and screaming at everything and everyone. Anger was present everywhere. Murderous anger. Usually, to dissolve these bonds is to do so by fire and salt, if it's a demonic presence. Didn't have salt, but fire was readily available. I verbally said it was free (but also said esoterically - look up vibrating names with the practice of LBRP, similar idea).

After I set it free, I could hear it ask me what I wanted. Frankly, no. Not worth it. So instead of reserving this for later, I absolved any and all debts owed to me for freeing it. I said so verbally and 'vibrated'. I felt it mostly left. It was still angry at the one who trapped it.. I ended up having to protect this place for a time against it, for retribution reasons. But I'm more than happy to be past that whole situation.

Read through my rather short message history. Feel free to contact me.

Tl;Dr. Looking for a way to reproduce esoteric phenomena in a reproducible way, using scientific instruments.

> Do you have any evidence to suggest the phenomenon of consciousness is (or is not) isolated to the brain? (Existence of human spirits, natural spirits, that sort)

You're not going to get material evidence. Anyone who can is probably looking for money or other goods. They're usually a good sign to stay away from.

The proof I talk of, is personal. I look at it more like one would look at a Zero Knowledge proof: there's no such thing as 100% confidence, but (2^64-1)/(2^64) is pretty damn close to 100%. Same idea.

> Particularly with the Chaos mages, there is an indication of an extra fundamental force to reality- much like electricity would have seemed in the 1600s. Do you think this is the case? Or do you think there is some other interaction between the mind and the 4 normal fundamental forces?

I would accept this to be fact if we can find proof of this new force. But as for now, I'm operating under the fact that we know of 4 fundamental forces. I'm assuming that most magic and auras are actually specifically under EM, and not Weak/Strong/Gravity.

Although, some divinations I've done does seem to indicate that there might be another force, but not as a "force".. But more of interdimensional interference. If one accepts the Multiple Worlds Interpretation, there are a near-infinite amount of dimensions nearby. If they could interfere with each other, we could see effects percolate from seemingly nothing. My divinations also indicate that a likely area where we will first see this effect is with the EM_Drive. If this is shown to be proven correct, this is the first case of a reactionless drive--- The key here is a new phenomenon to investigate. Possibly leading to a new force.

> What theories do you have with regard to the prime mechanism of action in magic?

Hard to say. I'm doing the equivalent of firing bowling balls into a kilogram of solid gold, and trying to interpret its atomic structure...

That's hard to say.

I've trained myself to be sensitive to different types of energies (or whatever they really are). But my spells are to manipulate these energies in ways I wish teem to be.

For example, I felt 'malice' from a server I and a colleague were working on. Servers shoukdnt have emotion, unless someone left that imprint. Well, turns out it was a popped machine from 6 months ago from an Apache Tomcat install where they badly fixed the hacked server. And they didn't clean it well enough. Rkhunter and chkrootkit both found kmods that were still resident.

In that case, it was noting more than feeling maliciousness, and then using my technical prowess to prove it.

Other cases, I've done things like debug heisenbugs simply by willing them to resolve or make the error evident. Most of those types of "spells" are mental. I dont need candles or whatever.

Another time, someone in our hackerspace got ahold of Mathers Grand Key of the Legemetton and decided to do a demonic summoning as provided. He was an atheist, and was just following the motions. It worked. He trapped something there, that was frightening every sensitive type that walked through the doorway.. I found it, and took care of it in the proscribed manner (release, dismissal, and freed from any cost it may have incurred to me).

But to answer your question, no its not like casting D&D fireball. Most things dont have physically perceivable effects. But the underlying question: yes, harm to others can very much be done.