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<title>I don't trust technomancy - Archive - MayVaneDay Studios</title>
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<h1>I don't trust technomancy</h1>
<p>published: 2021-01-06</p>
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<p>As Redditors say, "title."</p>
<p>In all seriousness, I don't trust divination done through technological means. There is, ironically, too much margin for error in a medium where error is intolerable and one usually expects a certain output given a certain input.</p>
<p>I can go on Startpage or whatever search engine I'm using to mooch off of Google search results any day and type in "online pendulum" and find at least three results that aren't items for sale or SEO spam. But all of these (that I've seen) are proprietary with no hope of getting the source code. Just as I wouldn't send an email with sensitive info unencrypted across the wire, how could I possibly trust some stranger with not interfering with my attempts to communicate with someone whose non-corporeality prohibits traditional forms of sending messages? Although "IPv7 with inter-dimensional networking" exists in the <a href="../../2020/april/outside-intro.html">Outside</a>, a sort of cross between what we in "consensus reality" have implemented separately as ZeroNet and Yggdrasil, the <a href="../../2021/june/unsung.html">impossibility</a> of <a href="https://deadendshrine.online/p2.html">physical permeation</a> from the Outside to the Inside makes acquiring a "Mirror", the Outside equivalent of a smartphone, impossible.</p>
<p>Even if I were to hack together a simple Python script that outputs "yes" or "no" or "I don't know", I still wouldn't trust it. Because I'd have to trust not only my own coding skills, but also the compiled version of the Python interpreter bundled with Debian, and then the part of the Linux kernel that populates <code>/dev/random</code> with, well, <em>random</em> data, and then the firmware controlling the hard drive and keyboard and screen that lets me see the result, and then the BIOS of the computer itself... I may be losing my mind, but a random rock I found in an antique store tied to the end of a string seems a lot simpler and more trustworthy.</p>
<p>But what of the ideomotor effect? How am I to know, dangling said rock-on-a-string from my fingers, that I'm not subconsciously making up all the answers in alignment with what I want them to be? Well... if it were up to me, my lover would be aceing all of her classes and never have a sick day ever and never get into a fight with her professors. (And she'd visit me often enough and for long enough that I wouldn't have to use a damn pendulum to talk to her about such mundane things, but that's neither here nor there.) And yet not everything is idyllic at her college in the Outside. There are bad days. There are sick days. There are days she wants to be left alone.</p>
<p>And there are days, in my grief, I ask her: when the time comes for me to leave this Inside body behind and arrive in Sablade, and my mental state is too turbulent to handle myself coherently (which would be a danger with me having regained my power), would she rather spend a few weeks, months, <em>years</em> with me A) tucked safely away in a Holy Freezer or B) running feral in a bestial form? Every time I hope she just picks one so my anxiety is assuaged and I know my fate. But instead she spins the rock in the "I don't know" answer and clarifies, a rare occurrence, in my head: "I'd hold you as tight as I can until the feeling passed and then make you go to therapy so you <em>stop asking me this</em>."</p>
<p>And, in any case, she severely dislikes the Internet as it has formed itself in this iteration of the Inside. Maybe even dislikes computers, although I've never gotten a clear answer either way. Why would I trust whatever lies in the wires to give me an honest answer? Regarding her? Regarding <em>anything?</em></p>
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<p align=right>CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 &copy; Vane Vander</p>
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<div class="box">
<h2>2022</h2>
<ul>
<li>January 6 - <a href="./2022/january/pendulum.html">I don't trust technomancy</a></li>
<li>January 3 - <a href="./2022/january/worth.html">Worth</a></li>
</ul>
</div>

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<email>vanevander@mayvaneday.org</email>
</author>
<entry>
<title>I don't trust technomancy</title>
<link href="https://mayvaneday.org/blog/2021/january/pendulum.html" />
<id>https://mayvaneday.org/blog/2021/january/pendulum.html</id>
<published>2022-01-06</published>
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[<article>
<p>As Redditors say, "title."</p>
<p>In all seriousness, I don't trust divination done through technological means. There is, ironically, too much margin for error in a medium where error is intolerable and one usually expects a certain output given a certain input.</p>
<p>I can go on Startpage or whatever search engine I'm using to mooch off of Google search results any day and type in "online pendulum" and find at least three results that aren't items for sale or SEO spam. But all of these (that I've seen) are proprietary with no hope of getting the source code. Just as I wouldn't send an email with sensitive info unencrypted across the wire, how could I possibly trust some stranger with not interfering with my attempts to communicate with someone whose non-corporeality prohibits traditional forms of sending messages? Although "IPv7 with inter-dimensional networking" exists in the <a href="https://mayvaneday.org/blog/2020/april/outside-intro.html">Outside</a>, a sort of cross between what we in "consensus reality" have implemented separately as ZeroNet and Yggdrasil, the <a href="https://mayvaneday.org/blog/2021/june/unsung.html">impossibility</a> of <a href="https://deadendshrine.online/p2.html">physical permeation</a> from the Outside to the Inside makes acquiring a "Mirror", the Outside equivalent of a smartphone, impossible.</p>
<p>Even if I were to hack together a simple Python script that outputs "yes" or "no" or "I don't know", I still wouldn't trust it. Because I'd have to trust not only my own coding skills, but also the compiled version of the Python interpreter bundled with Debian, and then the part of the Linux kernel that populates <code>/dev/random</code> with, well, <em>random</em> data, and then the firmware controlling the hard drive and keyboard and screen that lets me see the result, and then the BIOS of the computer itself... I may be losing my mind, but a random rock I found in an antique store tied to the end of a string seems a lot simpler and more trustworthy.</p>
<p>But what of the ideomotor effect? How am I to know, dangling said rock-on-a-string from my fingers, that I'm not subconsciously making up all the answers in alignment with what I want them to be? Well... if it were up to me, my lover would be aceing all of her classes and never have a sick day ever and never get into a fight with her professors. (And she'd visit me often enough and for long enough that I wouldn't have to use a damn pendulum to talk to her about such mundane things, but that's neither here nor there.) And yet not everything is idyllic at her college in the Outside. There are bad days. There are sick days. There are days she wants to be left alone.</p>
<p>And there are days, in my grief, I ask her: when the time comes for me to leave this Inside body behind and arrive in Sablade, and my mental state is too turbulent to handle myself coherently (which would be a danger with me having regained my power), would she rather spend a few weeks, months, <em>years</em> with me A) tucked safely away in a Holy Freezer or B) running feral in a bestial form? Every time I hope she just picks one so my anxiety is assuaged and I know my fate. But instead she spins the rock in the "I don't know" answer and clarifies, a rare occurrence, in my head: "I'd hold you as tight as I can until the feeling passed and then make you go to therapy so you <em>stop asking me this</em>."</p>
<p>And, in any case, she severely dislikes the Internet as it has formed itself in this iteration of the Inside. Maybe even dislikes computers, although I've never gotten a clear answer either way. Why would I trust whatever lies in the wires to give me an honest answer? Regarding her? Regarding <em>anything?</em></p>
</article>]]>
</summary>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Worth</title>
<link href="https://mayvaneday.org/blog/2022/january/worth.html" />
@ -156,70 +173,5 @@ or jump off the edge and trust you'll become airborne?
</article>]]>
</summary>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>How to run Oasis, a Secure Scuttlebutt client, on a remote server</title>
<link href="https://mayvaneday.org/tutorials/oasis.html" />
<id>https://mayvaneday.org/tutorials/oasis.html</id>
<published>2021-11-13</published>
<summary type="html"><![CDATA[<article>
<p>This tutorial assumes you already have a functioning Node.js and Caddy installation.</p>
<ol type="1">
<li>Install Oasis.</li>
</ol>
<code>git clone https://github.com/fraction/oasis.git<br />cd oasis<br />npm install</code>
<p>Test the installation by running <code>node .</code> (yes, including the period).</p>
<ul>
<li>If the output stops after a few lines and isn't an obvious Node error, hit Control and C at the same time to exit; you're ready for the <code>systemd</code> file.</li>
<li>If you get an error about port 3000 already being in use, use the command <code>node . --port PORTNUMBER</code> instead, where <code>PORTNUMBER</code> is any open port you want.</li>
</ul>
<p>If your instance immediately throws <a href="https://github.com/fraction/oasis/issues/718#issuecomment-927379995">an error about <code>ssb.friends.get</code></a>:</p>
<code>git checkout 4e8f7426a4eb1d95f6e55cf894a3168f523f8af8<br />rm -rf node_modules<br />npm install</code>
<ol start="2" type="1">
<li>Prepare the <code>systemd</code> daemon file.</li>
</ol>
<p>Edit <code>/lib/systemd/system/oasis.service</code> as root with your favorite text editor. Paste the following:</p>
<pre>
[Unit]
Description=Oasis client for Secure Scuttlebutt
After=network.target
[Service]
User=YourUsername
Group=YourUsername
ExecStart=/path/to/your/node/binary . --port 8787
WorkingDirectory=/path/to/where/you/cloned/oasis/
TimeoutStopSec=5s
LimitNOFILE=1048576
PrivateTmp=true
ProtectSystem=full
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
</pre>
<p>Replace <code>/path/to/your/node/binary</code> with whatever comes up when you run <code>which node</code>. You may need to change this if you update Node.</p>
<ol start="3" type="1">
<li>Edit your Caddyfile. (This will probably also require root.)</li>
</ol>
<pre>
yourdomain.tld {
reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:PORTNUMBER {
header_up Host 127.0.0.1
header_up Referer http://localhost
}
basicauth * {
AnyUsernameYouWant EXTREMELYLONGCADDYHASHHERE
}
}
</pre>
<p><code>EXTREMELYLONGCADDYHASHHERE</code> is used instead of an actual password so you don't have cleartext credentials hanging around. Generate this with <code>caddy hash-password</code>. Make sure you save your actual password in a password manager, as you can't reverse a hash!</p>
<p>The <code>header_up</code> lines are there to trick Oasis into thinking it is running on a local machine, as it (very aggressively) wants to be. Normally this would be true, as Secure Scuttlebutt is peer-to-peer and intended to be run on a personal device that may see intermittent internet connectivity. However, if you're looking at this tutorial, you probably want to host a public peer as an <em>actually functioning</em> alternative to a <a href="https://github.com/ssbc/ssb-server">pub</a> or <a href="https://github.com/ssb-ngi-pointer/go-ssb-room/">room</a>.</p>
<ol start="4" type="1">
<li>Get everything running.</li>
</ol>
<code>sudo systemctl daemon-reload<br />sudo systemctl restart caddy<br />sudo systemctl start oasis &amp;&amp; sudo systemctl enable oasis</code>
</article>]]>
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as of 2021-12-30:
as of 2022-01-06:
I have full administrative control of the following domains and their subdomains:
- - mayvaneday.art
@ -55,7 +55,7 @@ My current email addresses are:
- - vanevander@mayvaneday.org
- - lethe@deadendshrine.online
Do not email me to tell me how to run my website.
Do not email me to tell me how to run my website or give me unsolicited advice.
Finally, my GPG public key is:
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