SoylentNews

Looks like OPEC is at it again. With record amounts of Oil all over the place, including the fully loaded ships at sea, Oil prices are artificially Very High!

No good and will not be accepted. Believe me, I'm moving very strongly on this. I'm leasing out our ANWR for oil drilling. We've got to get that oil ASAP. 12 BILLION barrels of beautiful American crude! Thanks to sexy Senator Lisa Murkowski and so many others in Congress who worked very hard on this for many years. And "passed" the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Which I signed. When they put the ANWR thing in it, I really didn't care. At all. Trust me, I care now. And I care a lot. Because greedy OPEC folks think they have us over a barrel economically. They think they can go on savagely raping our economy. WRONG!!!! s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2018-08302.pdf

c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\.bashrc
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\.bash_aliases
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\.bash_history
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\.bash_profile
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\.ICEauthority
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\.inputrc
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\.lesshst
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\.mkshrc
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\.octave_hist
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\.profile
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\.viminfo
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\.Xauthority
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\address.txt
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\Appointment.txt
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\check
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\Chips.txt
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\Code.txt
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\dot-viminfo
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\hosts

Overwrite C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts? (Yes/No/All): no

c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\index.html
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\index.html.1
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\Marketing.txt
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\Messages.txt
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\nohup.out
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\Nuke.txt
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\PlayNice.txt
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\Restroom_Code.txt
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\SeaMar.txt
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\Songs_to_Get.txt
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\Starlets.txt
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\tpID2pXxEB
c:\cygwin64\home\Thunderball\vlad.list
              31 file(s) copied.

Over the last few months, my access to the Internet has been very restricted. I reverted to reading heavily. In particular, after a few iterations of selecting interesting web pages from Wikipedia.Org, I have more than 7000 web pages to read. I thought that I could read through the bulk of long pages with the aid of text-to-speech software. Unfortunately, I fall asleep while pages are being spoken. It is also difficult to pause. This isn't a huge productivity gain and it also leads to less rested sleep. It is fairly similar to sleeping with a radio switched on.

After bothering to implement a script which pipes text to espeak or similar, it seemed like a waste not to use this functionality. I wasn't sure what should be spoken but large quantities of text aren't received verbatim and are likely to be detrimental. Perhaps something in a loop would be more effective? Or timed? Ah! It is possible to make lucid dreaming hardware with a micro-controller and was one of many possible projects when my ability with micro-controllers improved. However, this project has now been reduced to a script for a laptop or desktop computer and the optional use of headphones. (Indeed, it appears that I've had the ability to do this for many years but only had the imputus due to lack of bandwidth leading to a huge backlog of text. If I had more bandwidth, I'd probably be listening to podcasts or similar.)

In my local makerspace, there were a few issues of Make magazine. One issue had instructions for making a lucid dream machine from sunglasses, a micro-controller, red LEDs and a momentary switch. Before going to sleep, wear the sunglasses with the micro-controller and push the switch. The micro-controller is programmed to do precisely nothing for four hours. It then blinks the LEDs a few times every five minutes. If a person is dreaming during one of these blinks, it may be interpreted within the dream as car brake lights or similar. After several incidences over many nights, this should be sufficient to prompt "Ah! I'm dreaming!" and in the long-term, this should be sufficient to bootstrap lucid dreaming without a micro-controller contraption. The micro-controller (or script) aids the relatively difficult first step of lucid dreaming.

The article in the magazine noted an unusual side-effect which is definitely worth repeating. I have not encountered this problem but it is entirely plausible. People using lucid dream aids are more likely to experience false awakenings and this greatly increases the chance of urinating during sleep. Apparently, this is worse among the type of people who keep a dream diary. Apparently, after a lucid dream, a person "wakes", writes in their dream journal, goes to bathroom, "wakes", writes in dream journal, goes to bathroom, "wakes", skips journal because urination becomes more urgent, goes to bathroom, "wakes", bathroom, and suchlike. This cycle can occur eight times or more and you only have fail a reality check once with a full bladder before waking in a urine soaked bed. Welcome to reality. Make sure that you note the incident in your dream journal.

With downsides noted, it is possible to obtain similar functionality with a small script to sequence text-to-speech messages. From experiences in dreams, I suspected this would be more effective than LEDs. One night, I fell asleep with 24 hour news on television. In the dream, I was in an attic with other people. I attempted to watch the television in the attic in the dream but the view was repeatedly obstructed by items in the attic or other people. Despite continual obstruction, I did not leave the attic. This was how a brain integrated an audio channel without its video channel. It could not fake the video channel nor mask the audio channel and so was in a situation where it required the presence of a plausible audio source without video. From this, I know that it is possible to convey more information than blinking LEDs - up to 100% fidelity with zero feedback. However, interpretation is extremely random.

The micro-controller design stays dormant for four hours. In Perl or similar this would be sleep 4*60*60. LED blink is replaced with echo "This is a test." | espeak or similar. I recommend that default rate of speech is slowed from the default. Despite this, I've found that framing errors occur with a repetitive prefix. For example, "Alert! Alert! Alert! Alert! This is a dream!" gets interpreted as "Lerta! Lerta! Lerta!" and the message is missed while you ponder "What's 'Lerta'?" This may be a semi-deliberate action from a brain which is attempting to hold together a coherent experience.

I mentioned my project to a friend. My friend suggested writing a phone app because accelorometers can be used to estimate a dream period. I may have further conversations with my friend because I have more ambitious plans. Said friend introduced me to the SCP Foundation, which is a mix of Cthulu mythos and a warehouse of artefacts; possibly inspired by a scene from an Indiana Jones film. My plan is to make stateful messages which can picked up at any point and prompt a dream narative akin to SCP: Containment Breach or Five Nights At Freddy's. You may ask "Are you insane? Deliberately inducing nightmares?" and I would answer "People watch horror films and play zombie games. Bang for buck, this may be much more effective." At the very least, it should be obvious that lucid dream software (or any closed source accelorometer app) should be inspected very thoroughly; in a manner which does not apply to other software.

Since mentioning the project to my friend, I've conducted four nights of testing. The first was a complete failure due to incorrect insertion of a headphone jack. The third night was unsuccessful due to timing being completely wrong. I suspect this experiment makes me more sensitive to auditory input from other sources. On the third night, I may have interpreted some drama among house-mates. However, making enquiries about events which may or may not have occurred may induce more drama.

The second night was quite good. In the dream, I was in my local makerspace despite it not looking like my local makerspace. After receiving one of the messages, I recall being slouched over a chair, with headphones around my neck, talking to a person in the dream about lucid dreaming software. There are numerous logical faults with this situation. Most significantly, if I hear a message from the software, it is because an instant of the software is running and the reason it is running is to provide auditory prompts while I am dreaming. The fourth night was a long science-fiction dream. At one point, I was Captain Janaway and Neelix told me that I looked ill. When I gained some notion that it was narative, the dream shifted to an office dream where the text-to-speech was interpreted as a hateful door entry system and therefore ignored. It then shifted to a scenario where a house-mate who creates drama was attacked by a giant with Thor's hammer.

Overall, I've made more progress in four nights than would be expected with blinking LEDs. Unfortunately, I may not have anything further to report on this topic for an extended period. Regardless, here is some example code which can be adapted:-

#!/usr/bin/perl

# Example Prompts For Lucid Dreaming
# (C)2018 The Consortium.
# 20180417 finish

# requires espeak to be installed.

$wait=3*60*60;
$rand=90;

$pre="Alert!";
@say=(
  'This is a dream.',
  'You are dreaming.',
  'This is not real.'
);

while(0==0) {
  sleep($wait+rand($rand));
  $wait=$wait/6+30;
  open(OUT,"| espeak -s 60");
  print OUT join(' ',$pre,$pre,$pre,$pre,$say[rand(scalar(@say))]),"\n";
  close(OUT);
}

Addendum 1: The micro-controller implementation may induce photo-sensitive epilepsy. Risk may be reduced by avoiding flashing sequences from 2Hz to 55Hz and only using LEDs which are either red, green or blue. Risk of epilepsy can be eliminated by using the audio implementation.

When I was a kid I used to really hate all the "old" people droning on and on about how wonderful the 1960s were. The TV was full of nostalgia programmes, especially music, and even the radio had seemingly endless programmes of tinny and inane pop songs. Then there were the hippies. They had sideburns and flared trousers! Argh! What's more, adverts on TV all seemed to have 1960s pop songs as soundtracks. There was no escape.

At about that time in the 1980s I discovered Bay Area Thrash. That was my thing. One of my favourite bands of all time is Slayer who are doing their farewell tour this year. A couple of years ago, I had my hair cut short. I still love the music. Mrs Turgid and I went to see Testament playing in London a couple of weeks ago.

Last week I was watching TV in the evening and I was most pleasantly surprised when an advert came on for a company (OVO Energy) which sells electricity apparently from only renewable sources which used Raining Blood by Slayer as the soundtrack! Ladies and gentlemen, Slayer are in an advert on mainstream TV in the UK for renewable energy! The advert starts with a load of clips of politicians and the like stating that they do not believe in climate change.

I am now my parents. I have short hair and my favourite music, frequently accused of being Satanic and antisocial, is now used to sell things on TV. I am the Establishment. I have arrived.

And while I'm at it, allow me to VIRTUE SIGNAL loud and clear: I just got myself a hybrid car. You should see the mileage I'm getting. My dirty old turbo diesel is off to the breakers yard.

Slippery James Comey, a man who always ends up badly and out of whack (he is not smart!), will go down as the WORST FBI Director in history, by far! He’s a showboat, he’s a grand-stander, the FBI was in turmoil. You know that, I know that. Everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI, it was in virtual turmoil. Less than two years ago, it hasn’t recovered from that. Before I fired Slippery James, I met Rod Rosenstein. He made a recommendation. He's highly respected, very good guy, very smart guy, the Democrats like him, the Republicans like him. He made a recommendation, but regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey. I was going to fire Comey. There's no good time to do it, by the way. Comey says I'm like a forest fire. When it comes to him I am, that's so true. I fired him to bring STABILITY to the FBI.

The big questions in Comey’s badly reviewed book aren’t answered like, how come he gave up Classified Information (jail), why did he lie to Congress (jail), why did the DNC refuse to give Server to the FBI (why didn’t they TAKE it), why the phony memos, how can FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, the man in charge, Slippery James, of the Phony Hillary Clinton investigation (including her 33,000 illegally deleted emails) be given $700,000 for wife’s campaign by Clinton Puppets during investigation? Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe, but he never took notes when he was with me. I don’t believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. Same with lying James Comey. Can we call them Fake Memos? I mean, yeah, I guess, why not?

Unbelievably, James Comey states that Polls, where Crooked Hillary was leading, were a factor in the handling (stupidly) of the Clinton Email probe. In other words, he was making decisions based on the fact that he thought she was going to win, and he wanted a job. Slimeball! Comey throws AG Lynch “under the bus!” Why can’t we all find out what happened on the tarmac in the back of the plane with Wild Bill and Lynch? Was she promised a Supreme Court seat, or AG, in order to lay off Hillary. No golf and grandkids talk (give us all a break)!

I never asked Comey for Personal Loyalty. I hardly even knew this guy. Just another of his many lies. His "memos" are self serving and FAKE! I wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors. I just want somebody that’s competent. I am a big fan of the FBI. I love the FBI.

I'm quite impressed with the concept of an exo-kernel. It is one of many variants in which functionality is statically or dynamically linked with user-space code. This variant could be concisely described as applying the principles of micro-controller development to desktop applications and servers.

In the case of micro-controllers, it is typical to include what you need, when you need and deploy on bare hardware. Need SPI to access Micro SD and read-only FAT32 to play MP3 audio? Well, include those libraries. Otherwise don't.

In the case of desktop applications, it is possible to include stub libraries when executing within one process or a legacy operating system or include full libraries to deploy on bare hardware or a virtual machine.

In the case of a server, the general trend is towards containers of various guises. While there are good reasons to aggregate under-utilized systems into one physical server, peak performance may be significantly reduced. For x86, the penalty was historically 15% due to Intel's wilful violation of Goldberg and Popek virtualization requirements. After Spectre and Meltdown, some servers incur more than 1/3 of additional overhead. Ignoring performance penalties, container bloat and the associated technical debt, the trend is to place each network service and application in its own container. This creates numerous failure modes when they start in a random order. This occurs because init systems avoid race conditions within one container but if each service runs in a separate container, this trivial safeguard is defeated.

Regardless, in the case of a server, an application may require a JavaScript Just In Time compiler, read-only NFS access to obtain source code for compilation and a database connection. All of this may run inside a container with externally enforced privileges. However, there is considerable overhead to provide network connections within the container's kernel-space while the compiler (and application) run in user-space. In the unlikely event that a malicious party escapes from the JavaScript, nothing is gained if network connections are managed in a separate memory-space. If we wish to optimize for the common case, we should have application and networking all in user-space or all in kernel-space. Either option requires a small elevation of privileges but the increased efficiency is considerable compared to the increased risk.

Running an application inside in a container may require a fixed allocation of memory unless there is an agreed channel to request more. People may recoil in horror at the concept of provisioning memory and storage for applications but the alternative is the arrangement popularized by Microsoft and Apple where virtual memory is over-committed until a system becomes unstable and unresponsive. The default should be a system which is secure and responsive as an 8 bit computer - and having an overview of what a system is doing at all times.

Similar arrangements may apply to storage. It is possible to have an arrangement where a kernel enforces access to local storage partitions and ensures that file meta-data is vaguely consistent but applications otherwise have raw access to sectors. If this seems similar to the UCSD p-code filing system, a Xerox Alto or my ideal filing system, that is entirely understandable. Xerox implementations of OO, GUIs and storage remain contentious but storage is the least explored.

The concept of an exo-kernel makes this feasible at the current scale of complexity and has certain benefits. For example, I previously proposed use of an untrusted computer for multi-media and trustworthy computers for physical security and process control. Trustworthy computers current fall into three cases:-

1. Relatively trustworthy micro-controllers of 40MHz or more. These have limited power dissipation and may be programmed on-site to user requirements. This limits the ability to implement unwanted functionality. It may be possible to access micro-controller memory via radio but this is a tedious task if each site has a bespoke configuration.
2. Legacy 8 bit computers of 2MHz or less. Tampered firmware must work within very limited resources. It is also slow and difficult to tamper with a system which is constructed 10 years or more after an attack.
3. A mini-computer design which is likely to run at 0.1MHz or less. Cannot rely upon security by obscurity but a surface mount 8 bit micro-coded mini-computer simulating a 64 bit virtual machine is, at present, an unusual case for an aspiring attacker.

In the previous proposal, there is a strict separation of multi-media and physical processes with the exception that some audio functionality may be available on trustworthy devices. This was limited to a micro-controller which may encode or decode lossy voice data, decode lossy MP3 audio or decode lossless balanced ternary Ambisonics at reduced quality. Slower devices may decode monophonic lossless balanced ternary audio at low quality. The current proposal offers more choices for current and future hardware. As one of many choices, the Contiki operating system is worth consideration. It originally a GUI operating system for a Commodore 64 with optional networking. It is now typically used on AVR micro-controllers without GUI. I previously assumed that Contiki was written in optimized 6502 assembly and then re-written for other systems but this is completely wrong. It is 100% portable C which runs on Commodore 64, MacOS, Linux, AVR, ARM and more.

How does Contiki achieve cross-platform portability with no architecture specific assembly to save processor registers during context switches? That's easy. It doesn't context switch because it implements shared-memory, co-operative multi-tasking. How else do you expect it to work on systems without super-user mode or memory management? I've suffered Amiga WorkBench 1.3, Apple MacOS 6 an RISCOS, so I know that co-operative multi-tasking is flaky. However, when everything is written in a strict, subset of C and statically checked, larger implementations are less flaky than legacy systems.

Contiki's example applications include a text web browser and desktop calculator. Typically, these are compiled together as one program and deployed as one system image. The process list is typically fixed at compilation but it is possible to load additional functionality into a running process. This is akin to adding a plug-in or dynamic library. Although it is possible to have dynamic libraries suchlike, this increases system requirements. Specifically, it requires a filing system and some platform specific understanding of library format. Although there is a suggested GUI and Internet Protocol stack, there are no assumptions about audio, interrupts or filing system. Although Contiki is not advertised as an exo-kernel, it is entirely compatible with the philosophy to iclude what you want, when you want.

With relatively little work, it would be possible to make a text console window system and/or web browser and/or streaming media player with the responsiveness, stability and security of an Amiga 500 running Mod player on interrupt. It is also possible to migrate unmodified binaries to a real-time operating system. In this arrangement, all GUI tasks run co-operatively in shared memory in the bottom priority thread. All real-time processes pre-empt the GUI. If the GUI goes astray, it can be re-initialized in a fraction of a second with minimal loss of state and without affecting critical tasks. This arrangement also allows development and testing under Unix via XWindows or Aqua. In the long-term, it may be possible to use Contiki as a scaffold and then entirely discard its code.

If media player plug-ins are restricted to one scripting language (such as Lua which runs happily on many micro-controllers), it is possible to make a media player interface which is vastly more responsive than Kodi - even when running on vastly inferior hardware. As an example, an 84MHz Atmel micro-controller may drive a VGA display and play stereo audio at 31kHz. Similar micro-controllers are available in bulk for less than US$1. Although this arrangement has a strict playback rate and no facility for video decode, it is otherwise superior to a 900MHz Raspberry Pi running Kodi.

I'm working on The Global Computer Employer Index. It's not very global yet but it's making steady progress.

If I upload the HTML file for Beaverton Oregon the W3C validator complains of an invalid </> tag - no opening tag.

If I look at that local copy with Cygwin's vim or with Notepad++ that end tag isn't there. It hasn't been there since I removed it with Notepad++.

If I look at it with Cygwin's less command or do a View Page Source in Chrome for Winderz that invalid end tag is there.

It took me about twenty minutes to clue into that there is some really bad caching problem going on.

I've seen this kind of thing with OS X' HFS+ too.

I scanned my drive for errors. None were found.

Just now I rebooted. Is it going to work for me this time?

Fortunately I have been religious about backups since my third hard drive failure. It would be mostly OK if I have to reformat and reinstall.

RIP @ArtBell51, one of our greatest showmen. He told the truth. About 911, about many things. Struck down at age 72 by unknown or undisclosed forces. Thoughts & prayers with Airyn Bell and the kids.

My final paycheck for the completion of my current project, as well as the ability to focus completely on my next client, just got a lot closer.

High Sierra - I think High Sierra's System Integrity Protection - clobbered the permissions on my log file, so my daemon couldn't write to it.

We don't really need that particular log file so I just removed it from my installer.

I think Apple has a bug in High Sierra, in that a completely fresh install - starting by erasing a volume - would clobber that permission.

But a non-fresh install such as installing on top of Sierra, or a - stale? - install that's been in use for a while led that log's permission to be what I wanted it to be.

The other part of the fix was to remove the "StandardOutputPath" from my launch agent's property list.

If there are no such paths then after forking launchd will close stdout before exec'ing my agent.

I've been tinkering with various B vitamins recently since discovering what seems to be an MTHFR polymorphism or six in my genome. It's just a guess, as I can't spare the money for testing, but the immediate positive effects I've felt from certain forms of certain vitamins all but confirms a) MTHFR SNPs and b) an over-methylation pattern. Which *sounds* paradoxical at first, but really isn't.

People tend to be a little flippant with vitamin C and the B-family since they're water-soluble, reasoning "eh, if I overdose all it means is I get really expensive and really yellow pee." Nooooot...exactly. That's not wrong, but the little buggers will do plenty else before they exit via the kidneys. Here's what I've noticed:

Niacin/B3 - Produces the famous "niacin flush," though much less pronounced than in the first week of taking. About 100-200mg daily. Supposedly there's no harm in taking small (10) integer multiples of this dose, even though 200mg is supposedly almost 2 weeks' worth. Calms me down immensely and helps me sleep. It's also supposed to be good for lowering cholesterol, which is well within normal limits for me, but every little bit helps. Overall definitely a positive.

Pyridoxine/B6 (as pyridoxal-5-phosphate) - Holy crap, this is bad for me. It makes me sleepy and weak and ravenously hungry, then incredibly angry after I eat. How angry? I scared off an almost seven foot tall, 300-pound-plus man at work today. He actually decided not to order because, and this is a direct quote, "Your body language. You're angry and it's scaring me." Now yes, I look pretty much like a six-foot, Caucasian version of my namesake in glasses, and yes, I've been nicknamed "Grumpy Cat" by three separate co-workers at three separate jobs, but that is *bad.* Not touching this one again, at least not before work. Seems to be amping up my metabolism and producing (a lot) more catecholamines such as adrenaline, which would explain the effects.

Folate (as 6(S)-5-methylfolate) - This is the big tell that I've got an MTHFR problem. I felt immediate relief within half an hour after my first dose. Makes me feel, somehow, wet and cool and "fluffy" inside. Not as calming as niacin but still helps, just in a different way. Good synergy. I'm taking this once every few days now, after having spent 2 weeks repleting myself with a daily dose. I don't seem to need anywhere near as much caffeine since starting this one either.

Cobalamin/B12 (as adenosylcobalamin) - Another one for the "nope" column, at least no more than once every two weeks. Has similar effects to B6, though produces more anxiety than outright hostility. I am guessing it's causing either too much glutamate in the brain or, like B6, possibly upregulating stress hormones.

Vitamin C (as ascorbic acid with bioflavanoids, e.g., rutin and quercetin) - I can't tell if this is having any effects, but it doesn't seem to hurt and is important for iron processing, which in turn is necessary during Shark Week. Taking daily seems not to hurt anything, and might have helped me fight off the last two incipient colds I got.

People need to treat these things with more respect. We get people saying "oh supplements don't work," but if that were the case, there's no way they'd be having such pronounced and immediate effects. And, it seems everyone's body is different and even their metabolisms differ from day to day, so in the end, everyone needs to tailor their supplements and the doses thereof to their own physiology. Overall this is a net positive for me, but I'm probably going to avoid the B6...