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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months ago

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Subprime gadgets

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me THIS SUNDAY in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON: YA Fantasy, Room 207, 10 a.m.; Signing, 11 a.m.; Teaching Writing, 2 p.m., Room 213CD.

The promise of feudal security: "Surrender control over your digital life so that we, the wise, giant corporation, can ensure that you aren't tricked into catastrophic blunders that expose you to harm":

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

The tech giant is a feudal warlord whose platform is a fortress; move into the fortress and the warlord will defend you against the bandits roaming the lawless land beyond its walls.

That's the promise, here's the failure: What happens when the warlord decides to attack you? If a tech giant decides to do something that harms you, the fortress becomes a prison and the thick walls keep you in.

Apple does this all the time: "click this box and we will use our control over our platform to stop Facebook from spying on you" (Ios as fortress). "No matter what box you click, we will spy on you and because we control which apps you can install, we can stop you from blocking our spying" (Ios as prison):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

But it's not just Apple – any corporation that arrogates to itself the right to override your own choices about your technology will eventually yield to temptation, using that veto to help itself at your expense:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Once the corporation puts the gun on the mantelpiece in Act One, they're begging their KPI-obsessed managers to take it down and shoot you in the head with it in anticipation of of their annual Act Three performance review:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

One particularly pernicious form of control is "trusted computing" and its handmaiden, "remote attestation." Broadly, this is when a device is designed to gather information about how it is configured and to send verifiable testaments about that configuration to third parties, even if you want to lie to those people:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/your-computer-should-say-what-you-tell-it-say-1

New HP printers are designed to continuously monitor how you use them – and data-mine the documents you print for marketing data. You have to hand over a credit-card in order to use them, and HP reserves the right to fine you if your printer is unreachable, which would frustrate their ability to spy on you and charge you rent:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/hp-wants-you-to-pay-up-to-36-month-to-rent-a-printer-that-it-monitors/

Under normal circumstances, this technological attack would prompt a defense, like an aftermarket mod that prevents your printer's computer from monitoring you. This is "adversarial interoperability," a once-common technological move:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

An adversarial interoperator seeking to protect HP printer users from HP could gin up fake telemetry to send to HP, so they wouldn't be able to tell that you'd seized the means of computation, triggering fines charged to your credit card.

Enter remote attestation: if HP can create a sealed "trusted platform module" or a (less reliable) "secure enclave" that gathers and cryptographically signs information about which software your printer is running, HP can detect when you have modified it. They can force your printer to rat you out – to spill your secrets to your enemy.

Remote attestation is already a reliable feature of mobile platforms, allowing agencies and corporations whose services you use to make sure that you're perfectly defenseless – not blocking ads or tracking, or doing anything else that shifts power from them to you – before they agree to communicate with your device.

What's more, these "trusted computing" systems aren't just technological impediments to your digital wellbeing – they also carry the force of law. Under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, these snitch-chips are "an effective means of access control" which means that anyone who helps you bypass them faces a $500,000 fine and a five-year prison sentence for a first offense.

Feudal security builds fortresses out of trusted computing and remote attestation and promises to use them to defend you from marauders. Remote attestation lets them determine whether your device has been compromised by someone seeking to harm you – it gives them a reliable testament about your device's configuration even if your device has been poisoned by bandits:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil

The fact that you can't override your computer's remote attestations means that you can't be tricked into doing so. That's a part of your computer that belongs to the manufacturer, not you, and it only takes orders from its owner. So long as the benevolent dictator remains benevolent, this is a protective against your own lapses, follies and missteps. But if the corporate warlord turns bandit, this makes you powerless to stop them from devouring you whole.

With that out of the way, let's talk about debt.

Debt is a normal feature of any economy, but today's debt plays a different role from the normal debt that characterized life before wages stagnated and inequality skyrocketed. 40 years ago, neoliberalism – with its assaults on unions and regulations – kicked off a multigenerational process of taking wealth away from working people to make the rich richer.

Have you ever watched a genius pickpocket like Apollo Robbins work? When Robins lifts your wristwatch, he curls his fingers around your wrist, expertly adding pressure to simulate the effect of a watchband, even as he takes away your watch. Then, he gradually releases his grip, so slowly that you don't even notice:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/ppqjya/apollo_robbins_a_master_pickpocket_effortlessly/

For the wealthy to successfully impoverish the rest of us, they had to provide something that made us feel like we were still doing OK, even as they stole our wages, our savings, and our futures. So, even as they shipped our jobs overseas in search of weak environmental laws and weaker labor protection, they shared some of the savings with us, letting us buy more with less. But if your wages keep stagnating, it doesn't matter how cheap a big-screen TV gets, because you're tapped out.

So in tandem with cheap goods from overseas sweatshops, we got easy credit: access to debt. As wages fell, debt rose up to fill the gap. For a while, it's felt OK. Your wages might be falling off, the cost of health care and university might be skyrocketing, but everything was getting cheaper, it was so easy to borrow, and your principal asset – your family home – was going up in value, too.

This period was a "bezzle," John Kenneth Galbraith's name for "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." It's the moment after Apollo Robbins has your watch but before you notice it's gone. In that moment, both you and Robbins feel like you have a watch – the world's supply of watch-derived happiness actually goes up for a moment.

There's a natural limit to debt-fueled consumption: as Michael Hudson says, "debts that can't be paid, won't be paid." Once the debtor owes more than they can pay back – or even service – creditors become less willing to advance credit to them. Worse, they start to demand the right to liquidate the debtor's assets. That can trigger some pretty intense political instability, especially when the only substantial asset most debtors own is the roof over their heads:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/06/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom/

"Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid," but that doesn't stop creditors from trying to get blood from our stones. As more of us became bankrupt, the bankruptcy system was gutted, turned into a punitive measure designed to terrorize people into continuing to pay down their debts long past the point where they can reasonably do so:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/bankruptcy-protects-fake-people-brutalizes-real-ones/

Enter "subprime" – loans advanced to people who stand no meaningful chance of every paying them back. We all remember the subprime housing bubble, in which complex and deceptive mortgages were extended to borrowers on the promise that they could either flip or remortgage their house before the subprime mortgages detonated when their "teaser rates" expired and the price of staying in your home doubled or tripled.

Subprime housing loans were extended on the belief that people would meekly render themselves homeless once the music stopped, forfeiting all the money they'd plowed into their homes because the contract said they had to. For a brief minute there, it looked like there would be a rebellion against mass foreclosure, but then Obama and Timothy Geithner decreed that millions of Americans would have to lose their homes to "foam the runways" for the banks:

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2012/08/how-treasury-secretary-geithner-foamed-the-runways-with-childrens-shattered-lives/

That's one way to run a subprime shop: offer predatory loans to people who can't afford them and then confiscate their assets when they – inevitably – fail to pay their debts off.

But there's another form of subprime, familiar to loan sharks through the ages: lend money at punitive interest rates, such that the borrower can never repay the debt, and then terrorize the borrower into making payments for as long as possible. Do this right and the borrower will pay you several times the value of the loan, and still owe you a bundle. If the borrower ever earns anything, you'll have a claim on it. Think of Americans who borrowed $79,000 to go to university, paid back $190,000 and still owe $236,000:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#strike-debt

This kind of loan-sharking is profitable, but labor-intensive. It requires that the debtor make payments they fundamentally can't afford. The usurer needs to get their straw right down into the very bottom of the borrower's milkshake and suck up every drop. You need to convince the debtor to sell their wedding ring, then dip into their kid's college fund, then steal their father's coin collection, and, then break into cars to steal the stereos. It takes a lot of person-to-person work to keep your sucker sufficiently motivated to do all that.

This is where digital meets subprime. There's $1T worth of subprime car-loans in America. These are pure predation: the lender sells a beater to a mark, offering a low down-payment loan with a low initial interest rate. The borrower makes payments at that rate for a couple of months, but then the rate blows up to more than they can afford.

Trusted computing makes this marginal racket into a serious industry. First, there's the ability of the car to narc you out to the repo man by reporting on its location. Tesla does one better: if you get behind in your payments, your Tesla immobilizes itself and phones home, waits for the repo man to come to the parking lot, then it backs itself out of the spot while honking its horn and flashing its lights:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

That immobilization trick shows how a canny subprime car-lender can combine the two kinds of subprime: they can secure the loan against an asset (the car), but also coerce borrowers into prioritizing repayment over other necessities of life. After your car immobilizes itself, you just might decide to call the dealership and put down your credit card, even if that means not being able to afford groceries or child support or rent.

One thing we can say about digital tools: they're flexible. Any sadistic motivational technique a lender can dream up, a computerized device can execute. The subprime car market relies on a spectrum of coercive tactics: cars that immobilize themselves, sure, but how about cars that turn on their speakers to max and blare a continuous recording telling you that you're a deadbeat and demanding payment?

https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/miss-a-payment-good-luck-moving-that-car/

The more a subprime lender can rely on a gadget to torment you on their behalf, the more loans they can issue. Here, at last, is a form of automation-driven mass unemployment: normally, an economy that has been fully captured by wealthy oligarchs needs squadrons of cruel arm-breakers to convince the plebs to prioritize debt service over survival. The infinitely flexible, tireless digital arm-breakers enabled by trusted computing have deprived all of those skilled torturers of their rightful employment:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

The world leader in trusted computing isn't cars, though – it's phones. Long before anyone figured out how to make a car take orders from its manufacturer over the objections of its driver, Apple and Google were inventing "curating computing" whose app stores determined which software you could run and how you could run it.

Back in 2021, Indian subprime lenders hit on the strategy of securing their loans by loading borrowers' phones up with digital arm-breaking software:

https://restofworld.org/2021/loans-that-hijack-your-phone-are-coming-to-india/

The software would gather statistics on your app usage. When you missed a payment, the phone would block you from accessing your most frequently used app. If that didn't motivate you to pay, you'd lose your second-most favorite app, then your third, fourth, etc.

This kind of digital arm-breaking is only possible if your phone is designed to prioritize remote instructions – from the manufacturer and its app makers – over your own. It also only works if the digital arm-breaking company can confirm that you haven't jailbroken your phone, which might allow you to send fake data back saying that your apps have been disabled, while you continue to use those apps. In other words, this kind of digital sadism only works if you've got trusted computing and remote attestation.

Enter "Device Lock Controller," an app that comes pre-installed on some Google Pixel phones. To quote from the app's description: "Device Lock Controller enables device management for credit providers. Your provider can remotely restrict access to your device if you don't make payments":

https://lemmy.world/post/13359866

Google's pitch to Android users is that their "walled garden" is a fortress that keeps people who want to do bad things to you from reaching you. But they're pre-installing software that turns the fortress into a prison that you can't escape if they decide to let someone come after you.

There's a certain kind of economist who looks at these forms of automated, fine-grained punishments and sees nothing but a tool for producing an "efficient market" in debt. For them, the ability to automate arm-breaking results in loans being offered to good, hardworking people who would otherwise be deprived of credit, because lenders will judge that these borrowers can be "incentivized" into continuing payments even to the point of total destitution.

This is classic efficient market hypothesis brain worms, the kind of cognitive dead-end that you arrive at when you conceive of people in purely economic terms, without considering the power relationships between them. It's a dead end you navigate to if you only think about things as they are today – vast numbers of indebted people who command fewer assets and lower wages than at any time since WWII – and treat this as a "natural" state: "how can these poors expect to be offered more debt unless they agree to have their all-important pocket computers booby-trapped?"

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/29/boobytrap/#device-lock-controller

Image: Oatsy (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/oatsy40/21647688003

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

#pluralistic #debt #subprime #armbreakers #mobile #google #android #apps #drm #technological self-determination #efficient market hypothesis brainworms #law and political economy #gadgets #boobytraps #app stores #curated computing #og app #trusted computing

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letomills · 9 months ago

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Download: SFS / Mega

Outfits converted for the MartaXL edit body shape. All are for AF & EF and have fat & preg morphs. Files are compressorized, recolors are BSOK'd.

Full previews, credits and details under the cut.

Hodgekiss Polly dresses

With loafers (2,824 poly) ↓

With sneakers (2,920 poly) ↓

Categorized as everyday. Converted from my edited versions of @hodgekiss's Polly dresses.

io Audrey Sweater Rolled Skinnies

Polycount: 2,306. Categorized as everyday. Original sweater and jeans by io / @serabiet.

io Cardigan Horne Skirt

Polycount: 3,246. Categorized as everyday. Original cardigan and skirt by io / @serabiet.

io Bbdoll Dress

Polycount: 2,966. Categorized as everyday. Original outfit by io / @serabiet. The @berrynooboos textures are from here (I edited most of them for more variety - mostly the socks, also the tops in the case of #24 & #25).

Amaryll Slitted Dress

Polycount: 2,282. Categorized as formal.

Original dress by Amaryll. The io / @serabiet retextures (Valene dress) are from here, the @artemida-sims recolors of io's textures are from here, the @skulldilocks retextures are from here.

The shoes' texture and material definition are in the mesh file to save space.

MissTiikeri Begging You Dress & Nightie

Dress ↓

Polycount: 7,224. Categorized as everyday. The boots' texture and material definition are in the mesh file to save space.

Nightie ↓

Polycount: blockfeet: 1,890 // Marvine feet: 2,198 // sexyfeet: 6,472 (choose one mesh). Categorized as sleepwear.

Both based on tops by @misstiikeri. The boots are my edit of Klira's 4t2 Shoetopia A Little Death Boots. If you like these boots on MartaXL, I made outerwear featuring them here.

I also have versions of this dress for Maxis-size AF & TF here and for Athletic Girl here.

Slip

Polycount: blockfeet: 2,054 // Marvine feet: 2,362 // sexyfeet: 6,636 (choose one mesh). Categorized as sleepwear.

Original mesh by Maxis. The Maxis recolors can be either standalone or repo'd to the Maxis AF & YAF recolors. The @aweeshie textures come from here - the Chalkmetal textures are from their Girl's Night In and Wild sets - the @littlelittlesimmies textures are from here.

I also converted these nighties for Melodie9 fat AF & TF here.

Serenity Aster Undies

Polycount: 1,948. Categorized as underwear.

Textures from Serenity's Aster Set 4t2 converted by @kestrelteens (I made some edits).

This is a new mesh distinct from the one I made for the MartaXL swimwear & underwear set. It has no alternative feet options since that wouldn't work with the socks, so feel free to delete the sockless recolors (2 & 14) if you have a 'no blockfeet' policy for your game.

#sims 2 #download #body shapes #MartaXL #clothing:everyday #clothing:formal #clothing:sleepwear #clothing:underwear #sims 2 cc #sims 2 download #ts2cc #s2cc

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livingforstars · 4 months ago

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Galileo's First Colour Image of Io - July 19th, 1996.

"Above is the first colour image of Jupiter's volcanic moon Io, released by the Galileo Project. The image was made on June 25th, 1996, when the Galileo spacecraft approached within 1.4 million miles. It reveals features as small as 14 miles across - comparable to the resolution of the best 1979 vintage Voyager images. The Voyager flybys discovered active volcanos on Io's mottled surface, and this image indicated that dramatic changes had occurred since, notably in the region of the Masubi volcano, located in Io's southern hemisphere. This region, apparently covered with new deposits of sulfur and sulfur dioxide frost deposited by volcanic eruption, is seen as the pronounced white area at the bottom of the picture. While scientists continued to analyse this image and other Galileo data, the robot spacecraft would continue to explore Jupiter's moons. The next scheduled close encounter was set for September 6th, 1996, with the moon Ganymede. Higher resolution images of Io were also expected during the mission."

#nasa #space #cosmos #universe #astronomy #astrophysics #astrophotography #io

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fashion-foxy · 3 months ago

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EVER AFTER HIGH AND MONSTER HIGH MOBILE GAMES DOWNLOAD AND INSTRUCTIONS

CURRENT GAME LIST : Baby Dragons , Charmed Style , Tea Party Dash, Minis Mania, Monster Salon(it's a knockoff but still interesting), Ghouls and Jewels (for issues, warning, ect related to specific games, check the section I wrote on them)

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, PROBLEMS, CONCERNS, ECT DONT HESITATE TO DM ME

INSTRUCTIONS (Android only sorry Apple users but IOS is hard to work with)

Download the game(s) you would like to play. Then there will be a pop-up that asks if you want to open it with package installer, click yes.

Then it will tell you that for your safety, you can't install unknown apps by default. Go to settings and click allow. (Or if it doesn't come up go to setting search "unknown" then go down to unknown apps installer. Allow Chrome, My Files, and Drive to install. Then you should be good to go!

Also, some of the games relay on you running an old version of android to check what version your device runs on yo to settings and search "version," and it'll tell you.

ONCE YOU INSTALL A GAME, MAKE SURE TO DISABLE PERMISSIONS (some ask to see your contacts for dead social features.)

Most of the Content for these games are locked behind a paywall. Don't worry I'm working on it.

BABY DRAGONS INSTRUCTIONS :

This is an old outdated game. Here are the things that break it:

Upon leveling up, the game tries to display 2 items that don't exist. Pick the one that does, then check, then close the game.

Don't go to the chest armor tab in dress up or the game will lag and won't display any armor.

Don't close the game while you're playing a minigame, or when you open it back up, Braebryn will spawn inside the first egg and you'll have to uninstall the game to play the it again.

Don't open the shop button on the main menu. The game will lag really bad, and you'll lose control of the screen, close the game, and reopen to fix it.

The daily reward doesn't work I don't know why.

Don't try to buy anything with real money. You'll get scammed.

Ads don't play at all so you need to use gems to skip adventures.

CHARMED STYLE INSTRUCTIONS :

From what I can tell this one runs great! Just don't buy things (The game wont let you anyway).

TEA PARTY DASH INSTRUCTIONS :

The only real problem I've run into so far is that when you install it, it makes sure to tell you not once gut twice that it's not compatible with modern android. For the the android version I'm running, no issues but if you have above 14 (15 isn't out yet I don't think so don't worry about it quite yet) should be fine.

Just standard don't try to buy things and you should be fine

MINIS MANIA INSTRUCTIONS:

Prepare your ears for a nightcore remix of the frightsong being played on repeat. It has near identical game play to Tea Party Dash. Minis Mania was actually released after Tea Party Dash, so it is interesting that Mattel made an eah game before a mh one and remade it but monsterized.

MONSTER SALON INSTRUCTIONS:

OK, so unless you have an android device running 7 or less, the game won't even install, let alone run. The game asks you to connect to a server, and it is safe to connect to select connect. The game runs extremely slow and doesn't respond at times. Also, Draculaura does have a system for liking her hairstyle, but I don't know what hairstyle she wants.

GHOULS AND JEWELS :

This app was built for Android 8. It won't install if you have anything above that. Before you start, just make sure to turn off the game reading your contact list. This is a match 3 game so not the most interesting thing ever, but you do get to use the coins you make from matching to dress up your character and at some point get to use some of the g1 ghouls as avatar.

#ever after high #eah #eah game #ever after high game #monster high #mh #mh game #monster high game

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zalia · 4 months ago

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Episode Echoes thoughts

Pondering after Act 2 Part 2 of Episode Echoes because I have thoughts... They're not entirely coherent, and definitely aren't gonna be a definitive answer to anything, but there's some really old lore which seems extremely relevant right now, especially regarding the Conductor's possible plans/motives.

So, we've got Saint-14 with differing memories to Osiris. A version of Maya Sundaresh acting as the Conductor. A series of Battlegrounds featuring a giant Vex minotaur that looks a hell of a lot like Atheon. A Vex cyclops that looks like Dendron Root Mind, in an area that is very similar to the Pyramidion on Io (Ikora even comments upon it being like the Pyramidion in a voice line so we're meant to pick up on that, rather than it just being reusing assets).

First thought: Everything that is happening to Saint and Osiris feels very targeted. From what Saint says, the Conductor knew a lot about him, and about Osiris, about Sagira. Makes sense if she's scouring the Vex Network since they're probably the two Guardians the Vex know the most about (barring possibly Kabr who became Vex, and Asher who was partially Vexified and became subsumed in the network). If she's using the Vex's simulation abilities, I think even paracausality would not prevent them predicting that the Last City would send their Vexperts to investigate, even if they couldn't 100% accurately simulate the Light. If I was trying to take over the Vex, I would probably want to compromise the Guardian who killed so many Vex they built him a tomb, and the Guardian who wrested control of the Infinite Forest away from them. And she seems to know just where to dig in to Saint's mind. The Conductor also says some things about shaping people's realities in the Polychroma Ghost Shell lore:

Naturally, few are capable of positive contribution to this work, but that will be manageable. We don't need a chorus to form a quartet. People of science, vigorous study, those are the future humanity needs. There are individuals that would meet the qualifications, of course, and those who possess unique brilliance that is impossible to duplicate. What ease can we provide those careful few? How to best shape their world from the inside out?

The whole lore entry is rather disturbing (and in attitude towards people reads more like Clovis Bray than Maya Sundaresh. Or like the Witness in many ways). But wanting individuals with unique brilliance, and shaping their world from the inside out... Is Saint a test run for this? The entry also talks of 'more complex minds prove difficult'. Well, how about experimenting on an exo whose mind has a Radiolaria component. Something like imprinting a memory on the Radiolaria to affect the exo mind? To shape an individual's reality from the inside out. And Osiris also would kinda be one of those people with unique brilliance. And a whole connection to the Veil. Anyway, the main thought before that got away from me was... Saint's memories. We so far only have one very specific memory which differs, and that difference in memory only appears after he'd been yoked. Could be Saint from a different timeline, sure, that is a possibility. Could be an entirely fake memory that the Conductor has forced him to believe. What if it's a real memory from a different timeline's Saint, forced into this timeline's Saint? And that's where I come to think about mind-forking. Mind Forking is something that only comes up a few times in lore, always in connection to Maya Sundaresh (barring one time when it's just mentioned as a thing that raises concern in the Golden Age). The earliest mentions of it come from the D1 grimoire cards, specifically: Ghost Fragment Vex 4 and Ghost Fragment Vex 5 (CW for suicide)

In Ghost Fragment Vex 4, the Ishtar Scientists are releasing their simulated copies into the Citadel on Venus.

Chioma puts an arm around her. "That's what we're going to find out. Where the Citadel can send us. Whether we can come back." "They're not us any more." Maya looks down at herself, at the cache of her self-forks. "We're not going anywhere. We're sending them. They're diverging."

So the Vex simulations are like mind forks. (We will be coming back to this lore entry. In Ghost Fragment Vex 5, Maya is in Lhasa working on a project that will later become the Future War Cult's device.

We built the device in mimicry of the Vex gateway systems from Ishtar. An observatory, yes, but I think of it as a mind-ship. Capable of displacing its payload across space and time.

So Vex technology capable of displacing a mind across space and time (and don't think I don't see you there 'observatory' reference - I have no doubt the writers of the Final Shape CE lore were looking at this grimoire card for reference). Experimenting with this device goes... poorly. People are driven mad by it. Maya has an idea:

I’ve suggested that we attempt mind forking. We need more sane people to work with. Please forgive me, my love.

She doesn't explain what mind forking is, but she describes the copies of the Ishtar scientists as 'forks', and from the context, I'd guess that it's a way of creating a copy of a mind that diverges at a specific point. That copy can then be sent out using the device and if it goes insane or dies, well, you've got the original. If it goes well, the forked mind and the original reunite. Maybe? It's never quite that clean where this stuff is involved - the simulated Vex scientists were fully independent, sapient, entities. Not just computer copies. From another standpoint - it would be like having Saint-14 there, and then making another exo based on the original mindprint of Saint.

The Device is eventually picked up by the Future War Cult, led by Lakshmi-2, who is sort of but not quite Maya Sundaresh thanks to the Veil! Lakshmi-2 also talks about Mind Forking in Season of the Splicer

The Future War Cult has long used Vex-derived technology to see into the future. I won't bore you with an explanation of mind-forking.

The experiments with the device do not go any better and you can read them on the Future War Cult grimoire card.

No wonder the Device was abandoned. The human mind is too weak for it. Too weak to look into the Future, or to understand what it sees. What the situation calls for, little Ghost, is a better sort of witness.

(oh yeah the writers were absolutely looking at these grimoire lore cards for a lot of recent stuff.

We don't really hear anything about it again until... Season of the Seraph. In the Spire of the Watcher chestpiece.

[AUGURMIND] Predictive Matrix  Potential Colony Sites  Chronoscopic Analysis  MIND FORK II PROTOTYPE INTERLACING  PROJECT FILE: Ishtar-Joint, Sundaresh

Oh yeah, we've got Soteria the Occlusion in the Vex Network on Neomuna, Maya Sundaresh, one of the founders of Neomuna, and Mind forking. Is Soteria a mind-fork of Maya Sundaresh as well? Not enough info to say. But Soteria is very entwined with Maya and the CloudArk and thus, the Veil. She is also partially created from Vex prediction technology.

Where is this going? I don't know. Regarding Saint though... could the Conductor have found a mind-fork of Saint from another timeline and IDK, pasted that specific memory into his head?

One last thing, going back to the Vex 4 lore. In Season of the Wish, in the Starcrossed mission, we enter the Black Garden, and are confronted by a very specific Vex structure:

The Citadel on Venus. You can still see it in D2 from the starting area of the Vault of Glass raid. In D2 you get to climb it. It's a really specific structure which had not really been referenced at all since D1. And suddenly it's back in Season of the Wish. And now we have lore mentioning the Ishtar scientist copies and Praedyth.

In the Vex 4 lore, there is this conversation between the Ishtar Scientists.

"Do you think," Duane-McNiadh begins, halting, "that you could use this place to change things? If you regretted something, could you find a way through the Citadel, go back, and change it?" "I wish I could go back and change you into someone else," Dr. Shim grouses. Chioma's shaking her head. She knows physics. "Time is self-consistent," she says. "I think it's like the story of the merchant and the alchemist. You could go back and watch something, or be part of something, but if you did, then that was the way it always happened." "Maybe you could bring something back to now. Something you needed." Maya runs a hand across the surface of the Vex aperture, feeling it with sensors ten thousand times as precise as a human hand. These proxy bodies are limited— they crash and need resetting every few hours, they struggle with latency, they can't hold much long term memory. But they'll get better. "Or go forward and learn something vital. If you knew how to control it, how to navigate across space and time."

The Merchant and the Alchemist section sounds a lot like Saint's paradox. And there's a lot here that seems to point to the Conductor maybe possibly wanting to change time to fix something that went wrong. Also from Vex 5

I am beginning to wonder if we were wrong about the merchant and the alchemist. Or if that explanation of time was incomplete.

The Merchant and the Alchemist is also a reference to a Ted Chiang book where an alchemist shows a merchant a mysterious black stone arch which lets you travel to the future (and there is another gate which leads to the past). I haven't read it, so can't give more details but again, it's not an idle reference.

tl;dr there is absolutely a picture forming here, and, like a magic eye picture, I just haven't managed to make my vision go funny in the right way to see it yet.

#destiny 2 #destiny the game #episode echoes #episode echoes spoilers #echoes spoilers #destiny spoilers

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mayalaen · 11 months ago

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VPNs aren't just for pirates and company data anymore

A friend complained to me that they couldn't access pr0n anymore because the government is now requiring ID to verify age where they are, and due to data leaks and privacy issues, didn't want to share their ID even though they're of legal age.

Shit like this doesn't work on the intended target. It only frustrates people who are aren't tech savvy while a lot of kids have already found their way around it because that's what kids do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

When I talk about VPNs (virtual private networks), non-tech savvy people's eyes glaze over 😂

It sounds like complicated, unknowable magic. It's not! And you don't even have to understand it to use it!

With the government and ISPs (internet service providers) invading privacy more and more and hackers breaking in and stealing user data from companies, VPNs are becoming necessary.

Some Things a VPN Does for You:

hides your data from others

can make your internet speeds faster if your ISP does speed throttling (purposely making your speed slower)

hides what you're doing from your ISP

keeps you safer from some malware, viruses, hackers, and trackers

allows you to access things that are either restricted in your area or not available in your area (such as content in other countries)

keeps you safer when you're out in public connected to wifi

Below is a basic infographic on how VPNs work. When you access the internet, a VPN encrypts your data - making it into a secret code that can't be read by anyone else including your ISP.

Tech companies, ISPs, etc. want you to think VPNs are complicated so that you won't use them.

When searching for a free VPN, please be aware that a lot of the free VPN services out there are malware or full of viruses and trackers.

Either do some research into which one to choose or use a paid VPN service. You can either pay monthly or yearly - the yearly is always cheaper in the long run.

Some of the Top Rated VPN Services:

ExpressVPN $7 - $13/month

NordVPN $3 - $13/month

Surfshark $2 - $14/month

PrivateInternetAccess $2 - $12/month

ProtonVPN (some sites block this one) $4 - $10/month

CyberGhost $2 - $13/month

I use ExpressVPN, so for the purposes of this post, I'm going to use screenshots from ExpressVPN.

Once you have an account, download the program from the website to your desktop/laptop or find the app on Android or iOS app stores.

Signing in requires a code that the VPN will email to you that unlocks all the features. Pay attention when the program installs because it'll ask you about preferences, and you can easily check yes on blocking pr0n when that's the reason you wanted a VPN in the first place 😂

When the program is open, you'll see this:

As you can see in the screenshot, not only do I have the program, but I have an ExpressVPN icon on my browser. The program installs this automatically, and when the program is running, the icon will have a green checkmark on it so you know it's working in your browser.

You'll notice I've recently connected using Japan. I did this so I could watch a series that isn't available outside of Japan.

The program automatically chooses a location near you, but if you want to access things that are restricted to you, make sure you click on the three dots to the right of the selected location (see screenshot below) and search for a state/country/place that your content will be available in.

Once your location is selected, click on the start/power button, and you'll get a popup notification from your computer that ExpressVPN is connected.

Go to the site you want to use and use it like you normally would.

Here's what it should look like when it's running correctly:

Keep in mind that if you leave a VPN running all the time (which is perfectly fine to do), search engines like Google will assume you live wherever ExpressVPN tells it you live, so searching for "stores near me" will give you results that aren't close to you.

When you're done using the VPN, just hit the power button again and it shuts off.

I use this on all my handheld devices, my desktop, and my laptop for business and personal reasons. I'm a pirate, and I've been using VPNs for a long time, yet none of the ISPs I've used have ever given me a warning about torrenting.

Good luck, and enjoy all the new things you can access!

BTW for anybody wondering, my desktop wallpaper is a map of the world's time zones. So pretty!! 😍

#vpn #virtual private network #vpns #privacy #technology #info #advice #how to #long post

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