#software entropy

[realityfragments]

Spaghetti Source, Spaghetti Dependencies...

There’s one thing that consistently showed up in my work as a software engineer over the decades. Spaghetti. Spaghetti code is easier to write than maintain, and in doing software archaeology (yes, it’s a thing), I’ve encountered numerous reasons for it. Requirements creep is one of the largest reasons. In fact, the first real software archaeology I did was explained, proudly, as being a…

[anonymocha]

Happy Fibre Optic Friday!!! Say hi to Empyrean (she/they/it)

Also a scrapped i2 concept:

[tetraquad3prosequi]

I've been working on my first comic book inspired by Maxwell's Demon and the physical sciences. It's a visual puzzle that could help people understand the theory and future optics.

I have a lot of questions about cognitive science, physics, cosmology and evolution so I decided to channel that into a comic book and I'm really enjoying it.

This is just the introduction. I made it all using free resources from the web. If you're looking to create an e-book this is one of the best sites I've found by far: https://my.visme.co

This is the site I used to create the AI images ⬇️: https://huggingface.co/

[goblincow]

I have avoided all Elden Ring spoilers. I have watched no Elden Ring videos. I have only seen little clips (turtle pope, praise be) and I know none of the Elden Ring lore.

Next time I'm really depressed I'm going to buy Elden Ring and fucking transcend.

[maldemer]

a wikipedia poem on software entropy

[mariacallous]

One of the things enterprise storage and destruction company Iron Mountain does is handle the archiving of the media industry's vaults. What it has been seeing lately should be a wake-up call: Roughly one-fifth of the hard disk drives dating to the 1990s it was sent are entirely unreadable.

Music industry publication Mix spoke with the people in charge of backing up the entertainment industry. The resulting tale is part explainer on how music is so complicated to archive now, part warning about everyone's data stored on spinning disks.

"In our line of work, if we discover an inherent problem with a format, it makes sense to let everybody know," Robert Koszela, global director for studio growth and strategic initiatives at Iron Mountain, told Mix. "It may sound like a sales pitch, but it's not; it's a call for action."

Hard drives gained popularity over spooled magnetic tape as digital audio workstations, mixing and editing software, and the perceived downsides of tape, including deterioration from substrate separation and fire. But hard drives present their own archival problems. Standard hard drives were also not designed for long-term archival use. You can almost never decouple the magnetic disks from the reading hardware inside, so if either fails, the whole drive dies.

There are also general computer storage issues, including the separation of samples and finished tracks, or proprietary file formats requiring archival versions of software. Still, Iron Mountain tells Mix that “if the disk platters spin and aren’t damaged," it can access the content.

But "if it spins" is becoming a big question mark. Musicians and studios now digging into their archives to remaster tracks often find that drives, even when stored at industry-standard temperature and humidity, have failed in some way, with no partial recovery option available.

“It’s so sad to see a project come into the studio, a hard drive in a brand-new case with the wrapper and the tags from wherever they bought it still in there,” Koszela says. “Next to it is a case with the safety drive in it. Everything’s in order. And both of them are bricks.”

Entropy Wins

Mix's passing along of Iron Mountain's warning hit Hacker News earlier this week, which spurred other tales of faith in the wrong formats. The gist of it: You cannot trust any medium, so you copy important things over and over, into fresh storage. "Optical media rots, magnetic media rots and loses magnetic charge, bearings seize, flash storage loses charge, etc.," writes user abracadaniel. "Entropy wins, sometimes much faster than you’d expect."

There is discussion of how SSDs are not archival at all; how floppy disk quality varied greatly between the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s; how Linear Tape-Open, a format specifically designed for long-term tape storage, loses compatibility over successive generations; how the binder sleeves we put our CD-Rs and DVD-Rs in have allowed them to bend too much and stop being readable.

Knowing that hard drives will eventually fail is nothing new. Ars wrote about the five stages of hard drive death, including denial, back in 2005. Last year, backup company Backblaze shared failure data on specific drives, showing that drives that fail tend to fail within three years, that no drive was totally exempt, and that time does, generally, wear down all drives. Google's server drive data showed in 2007 that HDD failure was mostly unpredictable, and that temperatures were not really the deciding factor.

So Iron Mountain's admonition to music companies is yet another warning about something we've already heard. But it's always good to get some new data about just how fragile a good archive really is.

[c-rowlesdraws]

✨🥀💻I Need A New Computer!💻🥀✨

it's happened: my laptop is finally so old (she really does remember the Obama Administration!) that it can't handle any new OS updates, which is leading to inconvenient consequences. Like, discord crashes after attempting to download its latest update now, so I've been using the web version, in a browser that also yells at me regularly because it cannot be updated. Entropy is slowly swallowing it all, as entropy is slowly swallowing us all.

But before I, too, succumb to entropy, I do still need a computer for work, and also for my heavily computer-based existence, so I'm in the process of buying a desktop PC! After using macs at home since 2002, I'm excited to be making the switch to technology that will let me do incredible things like 1) play most video games and 2) stream sound over OBS without downloading third-party software and watching a youtube tutorial by a guy named SuperMacHaxxTurbo. But in order to welcome home my next computer, I need your help!

I have various stickers, art prints, and other items, fandom-based and original designs, for sale on my Redbubble store, if you'd like to manifest some of my art in the physical plane. Over on my patreon, you'll find years' worth of archived work, exclusive art, and step-by-step process breakdowns for $1/month-- and I've been posting a ton of art on patreon lately, so there's never been a better time to subscribe! I also have a ko-fi, if you just feel like sliding me some cash. All of these are linked in my pinned post!

If you've been enjoying my art for a while, or just since recently, I hope you'll consider also supporting me monetarily, if you're able to! No matter what, I'm grateful to everyone who follows me, and all of you rock.

Thank you!

[thecreaturecodex]

Dream Lord, Manus

"Artorias vs Manus" © twitter user Max58Art, accessed at The Art of Video Games here

[Sponsored by Soluman Blevins. Manus is the Bonus Boss of Dark Souls, whose lore is deeply woven into the game but can only be fought in an expansion. In universe, his title is Father of the Abyss, but the Abyss in Dark Souls and the Abyss in D&D/Pathfinder are two very different things. So I struggled for a while of where to put him. As a nascent demon lord? As a Great Old One? I finally decided on Dream Lord, a category of my own invention, which at this point is made up of demigods from video games whose lore and magic systems do not intersect nicely with any form of Pathfinder canon. The Plateau of Leng seems like a reasonable place for the litany of nightmares From Software creates.]

Dream Lord, Manus CR 25 CE Outsider (extraplanar) This creature is vaguely humanoid, but its form has clearly been warped and distorted past the point of caricature. His head is small, with a leering demonic face and a set of antlers. His shoulders are enormous, and multiple sets of rib-like appendages grow from his shoulders and along his upper back, studded with luminous red eyes. His right arm is proportional and carries a staff with a scythe-like blade. His left arm is as thick as his torso, ending in a massive hairy paw with spikes on the underside of the fingers. Shaggy fur, or perhaps simply ribbons of gray-black skin, coat his thighs and a long, lashing tail.

Father of the Chasm, God of Primal Darkness, the Dark Soul CE male Dream Lord of loss, negative energy and obsession Domains Chaos, Darkness, Evil, Madness Subdomains Entropy, Insanity, Loss, Shadow Worshipers denizens of Leng, hoarders, stalkers, vampires Minions mutants, nightshades, shadows, sorrowsworn Unholy Symbol An oversized hand Favored Weapon ogre hook Obedience in complete darkness, spend one hour cutting, whipping or otherwise tearing your skin while meditating on an object or a person you once had in your life but have lost. Gain a +4 profane bonus on saving throws versus positive or negative energy. Once this choice is made, it cannot be reversed Boons 1: darkness 2/day; 2: enervation 2/day; 3: harm 2/day

Manus is a nightmarish beast of darkness, an infection that seeks to cause the horrors of Leng to overrun the Waking World. He was also once a man. The original Manus was a powerful magic user, according to his cult the first mortal to manipulate negative energy. Although his methods were cruel and his goals covetous, he was considered a great hero by his people and was buried with high honors. When his grave was robbed, however, his pendant was stolen from it. The pendant was broken, and whatever magic it contained had long seeped out of it, but Manus’ obsessive desire to reclaim his property caused his soul and memory to go wild, transforming into a creature of pure nightmare. Manus’ mausoleum is now the heart of the Chasm of the Abyss, a demiplane coterminous between Leng and the Material Plane, and it is here where the Father of the Chasm resides.

Manus wants things. His broken pendant most of all. His cultists sweep the planes searching for this relic, and whatever they find instead, they offer as tribute. Manus’ lair contains piles and piles of valuables, the riches of a dozen realities and a thousand kingdoms, and he cares for none of it except his amulet. Of course, it is the nature of his madness that if Manus ever retrieved his broken pendant, he would certainly find a new indignity to focus on and object or person to obsess over. He also collects hostages, although he rarely exchanges them and more often warps them into mutants or madmen through his very presence. Manus’ worshipers are as obsessive as he is, and his faith is attractive to stalkers, hoarders, social climbers and other people with warped and envious desires.

Combat is one of the few things that allows Manus to forget his pain and obsessions, and tends to attack first and ask questions of the corpses of his victims later. Although he is a powerful spellcaster, he usually leads with his physical attacks. He uses his channel negative energy ability to empower the Manus Catalyst, his signature hooked staff. Against multiple opponents, he tries to spread his attacks out, enjoying the suffering he causes before finishing them off with a mighty swat of his grotesquely hypertrophied hand. He usually doesn’t use his signature supernatural attack, in which he fires globes of cold and negative energy at his enemies, until reduced to below half hit points. Manus has not needed to flee a combat for thousands of years, and his arrogance and obsession is likely to lead him to fight to the death.

Manus Catalyst (minor artifact) Slot none; Aura strong necromancy; CL 21st; Weight 20 lbs. The Manus Catalyst is Manus’ signature weapon. It is a Large +1 unholy brilliant energy ogre hook that acts as a void scythe for the purposes of channeling negative energy and consuming the bodies of those it kills. The wielder can activate its brilliant energy property or dismiss it on command. A creature that holds the Manus Catalyst gains a +2 to the save DC of all spells and spell-like abilities that it uses of the necromancy school.

Manus CR 25 XP 1,640,000 CE Huge outsider (chaos, evil, extraplanar) Init +10; Senses blindsense 120 ft., darkvision 60 ft., Perception +42, see in darkness Aura lost humanity (240 ft.)

Defense AC 43, touch 23, flat-footed 37(-2 size, +6 Dex, +9 deflection, +20 natural) hp 585 (30d10+420); regeneration 20 (lawful) Fort +24, Ref +23, Will +26 DR 20/lawful and epic; Immune bleed, charm, compulsion, cold, death effects, disease, poison, sleep; Resist electricity 20; SR 36 Defensive Abilities fortification (50%), freedom of movement, negative energy affinity, shield of dreams

Offense Speed 50 ft. Melee Manus Catalyst +45/+40/+35/+30 (2d8+19/19-20 x3 plus 2d6 unholy), slam +46 (4d8+36), gore +41 (2d8+9), tail slap +41 (1d12+9) or slam +46 (4d8+36), gore +46 (2d8+18), tail slap +41 (1d12+9) Space 15 ft.; Reach 15 ft. Special Attacks awesome strike, channel negative energy (10d6, DC 34, 14/day), dark orb barrage, frenzy (30 rounds/day), oversized arm, profane channeling Spell-like Abilities CL 25th, concentration +34 Constant—freedom of movement, tongues At will—arcane sight, call spirit (DC 24), confusion (DC 23), deeper darkness, enervation, inflict critical wounds (DC 25), psychic reading, unhallow 3/day—blasphemy (DC 26), finger of death (DC 28), greater dispel magic, quickened harm (DC 27), hungry darkness, insanity (DC 26) 1/day—curse of night, divide mind, energy drain (DC 30), gate (to Plateau of Leng, Chasm of the Abyss or Material Plane only), summon (1 advanced nightcrawler, 100%, 9th level), wail of the banshee (DC 30)

Statistics Str 46, Dex 23, Con 39, Int 24, Wis 29, Cha 28 Base Atk +30; CMB +52 (+54 bull rush, overrun); CMD 77 (79 vs. bull rush, overrun) Feats Awesome Blow, Blind Fight, Charge Through, Combat Reflexes, Extra Channel, Greater Vital Strike, Improved Bull Rush, Improved Critical (ogre hook), Improved Initiative, Improved Overrun, Improved Vital Strike, Lucid Dreamer (B), Power Attack, Quicken SLA (harm), Stand Still, Vital Strike Skills Appraise +40, Climb +48, Intimidate +39, Knowledge (arcana, planes, religion) +40, Knowledge (dungeoneering, history) +37, Perception +50, Sense Motive +42, Spellcraft +40, Stealth +39, Survival +39; Racial Modifiers +8 Perception,+8 Stealth Languages Aklo, Common, Necril, Shadowtongue, tongues

Ecology Environment underground (Chasm of the Abyss) Organization unique Treasure triple standard

Special Abilities Aura of Lost Humanity (Su) Any humanoid that spends 24 hours within 240 feet of Manus must make a Fortitude save or gain the mutant template. The save DC starts at 10, then increases by +2 every day until it reaches its maximum DC, 34. If a creature is transformed in this fashion, it must make a Will save at the same DC or become chaotic evil in alignment. The save DC is Charisma based. Awesome Strike (Ex) When Manus uses makes a single attack using his Vital Strike chain of feats, he may make a combat maneuver as if using Awesome Blow if it hits with this attack. Channel Energy (Su) Manus can channel negative energy as if he were a 20th level cleric. He does not gain other cleric class abilities, such as spells or domains. Dark Orb Barrage (Su) As a standard action, Manus can fire a barrage of orbs of destructive darkness. Manus makes a single ranged touch attack against all creatures in a 60 foot cone. A creature struck takes 25d6 points of damage, half of which is cold and half is negative energy. A creature struck by a dark orb must succeed a DC 34 Fortitude save or be blinded for 1d4+1 rounds. This save DC is Charisma based. Manus can use this ability at will, but must wait 1d4 rounds between uses. Dream Lord Traits (Ex/Su) Manus is a dream lord, a powerful outsider native to the Dimension of Dreams. Dream lords gain the following abilities:

Immune to charm, compulsion, disease, poison and sleep effects

Immune to one energy type and resistance to another two energy types. Instead of being one of his resistances, Manus is immune to bleed and death effects.

A dream lord’s natural weapons, and any weapon it wields, count as chaotic and magical for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction

Occult (Ex) A dream lord gains Lucid Dreamer as a bonus feat, and can use  occult skill unlocks even if it lacks other psychic magic

Shield of Dreams (Su) A dream lord adds its Charisma modifier as a deflection bonus to its AC and CMD

Summon (Sp) Once per day, a dream lord can summon a CR 19 or lower encounter of thematically appropriate monsters.

Dream lords can grant spells to worshipers as detailed in their divine information. A worshiper can gain boons from performing an obedience to a dream lord, as per the Deific Obedience feat, but the boons granted are simple, appearing as a 2nd, 4th and 6th level spell usable as a spell-like ability twice per day.

Frenzy (Su) Manus can act as if under a haste spell for a number of rounds a day equal to his Hit Dice. Activating or ending this ability is a free action. Oversized Arm (Ex) Manus’ left arm always makes slam attacks as a primary natural weapon, even when Manus is wielding manufactured weapons. He deals twice his Strength modifier to damage with his slam attack. Manus’ slam deals bludgeoning and piercing damage. Profane Channeling (Su) Whenever Manus uses his channel negative energy, he can choose to do so as a swift action, to maximize the damage dealt (or healed), or double the area of the effect. Manus can choose only one of these enhancements at a time.

[thehappyastronaut]

Behold! Sheet music!

A few days ago @strategicstupidity asked for some sheet music for my Acoustic World Reclaiming Entropy cover, and here it is!

Also bonus original ones I made before I managed to get my software to start working:

[mitigatedchaos]

General Post for Monday, April 8, 2024

(~1,600 words, 8 mins)

1 - Robot Jobpocalypse Notes: A brief theory that long-term redistribution to manage job losses from automation should consider focusing on inherently more scarce factors of production (land and materials), rather than more dynamic ones (labor and capital).

2 - Niche Smartphone Notes: If the pace of the smartphone industry were slower, niche smartphones might be more feasible.

3 - Coalitional Politics Notes: Many coalition-internal communications take place in public. Possible implications for loyalty vs. truthfulness.

4 - Lab Leak Notes: Separating the "strong" from "weak" lab leak hypothesis for Covid-19.

5 - Property Notes: Not all labor is equally effortful or valuable, so should claims on property be weighted? Entropy implies the gradual degradation of land and products to a "natural condition," which we might expect to either invalidate or weaken a property claim.

-☆☆☆-

1: Robot Jobpocalypse Notes

I've said this before, but I just want to reiterate:

Everyone already knows about the problem where automation can take over a job faster than the economy finds new jobs for those currently employed in that category. (Obviously we could talk about abstract skill capital that they've invested in the job that has now been made less valuable.)

But over the long term, the thing to think about is a bidding up of the prices of land, materials, and energy. For the first two, we can think of this in terms of rents (e.g. "land rents"), as the supply of land is highly inelastic. In theory, the gains from trade should make everyone better off, but that's only if you can bid high enough to get enough resources to survive. If people could always go back to subsistence farming if they had to, the trade would (almost) always make them better off than subsistence farming.

But without land, they can't. It's not just a matter of not selling, as land is taxed, and higher-value uses will bid up the price of the land, and thus the assessed tax.

We want a redistribution that's dynamic and which will respond to changes in market conditions, which won't dampen investment in capital and production, and which is less subject to political capture. Thus the thing to focus on is rent for land and materials, the inherently scarce factors of production, rather than labor (highly responsive to effort) or capital (material configurations).

2: Niche Smartphone Notes

[ @jadagul ]

They're currently putting out a 4.7" rugged phone, which is actually tempting. But if I wanted a keyboard phone from them, the most recent option is the Titan Slim, which came out in 2021 and runs Android 11. (My current phone is on Android 14.)

[...]

They can make some niche phones, but they just can't cover all the niches. There are too many! And because they're a niche producer, they also have lower quality across a variety of metrics: they can't put as many resources into their software stuff because they can't amortize it across nearly as many phones. In order to get the full advantages of a modern industrial toolchain, you need to standardize some stuff so you can spread development work across a ton of devices.

It's interesting to note that the extremely rapid rate of software development, including finding and patching security flaws, is such an obstacle.

In an Elfworld scenario, where some users are buying a phone for 15-25 year use, firms might be able to amortize the costs by updating the model less frequently, and charging more for the base model. They would likely also maintain smaller teams, who would work on the phones for longer.

Smartphones probably won't become such a stable technology for decades, however, and even if they did, we should expect fashion cycles.

3: Coalitional Politics Notes

We've all seen politicians, political operatives, and political party enthusiasts lie a lot. Why don't they lie to (or bullshit (as in speak as though 'indifferent to truth')) outsiders all the time?

There are a number of reasons. One may be that an insider who constantly lies to outsiders all the time could also lie to fellow insiders, and insiders cannot reliably tell whether someone is a general liar or merely a partisan liar.

Since people range in their level of partisanship, this suggests a curve where, from the perspective of someone who is moderately partisan, a speaker can trade some integrity for some partisan loyalty, and vice versa. Someone who has no loyalty and no integrity is of little value. At some point, partisan loyalty will be at odds with the truth due to the inherent contradiction in interests of the coalition members or else just simple imperfection, so someone cannot be both perfectly loyal and perfectly truthful.

For political coalitions, a lot of what is essentially coalition-internal communication takes place in public.

4: Lab Leak Notes

The debate over the potential lab leak origin of Covid-19 has not been settled yet, despite the article on ACX. People are arguing over the individual studies cited in responses to themotte's tracingwoodgrains.

However, we should differentiate between the "strong" lab leak hypothesis and the "weak" lab leak hypothesis.

Strong Hypothesis: Covid-19 was a bioweapon deliberately designed by the government of China and leaked on purpose for some strategic goal.

Weak Hypothesis: Covid-19 was a coronavirus being studied at the lab in Wuhan which studies coronaviruses. This virus may have been the subject of gain-of-function research not intended to create a bioweapon. Subsequently, as the result of an unintentional accident, the virus leaked from the lab, resulting in a global pandemic.

The criticism of the lab leak hypothesis from the more censorious 2020 libs was that, "The lab leak hypothesis is a racist conspiracy theory." The strong hypothesis is a conspiracy theory, but there is no requirement that it is racist - it is sufficient that the government of China openly identify as Communist. The weak hypothesis is neither of these things.

5: Property Notes

There is an Anarcho-Capitalist theory that ownership of unclaimed land is gained by "mixing your labor with it." Many people would ask why this creates a morally-valid indefinite ownership claim.

Alternatively, we could consider a functional decomposition of the operation.

"Mixing your labor" with the land means using [ attention ] to direct [ energy ] to configure [ matter ] according to your intentions. That might mean, for instance, cutting down trees on a lot in order to construct a fence, and then plowing the lot in order to plant a farm for later harvest. However...

Some people may have the intention for the lot, "It should be a wildlife preserve," which looks an awful lot like doing nothing, or perhaps just posting some signs.

Not all labor is of equal intensity. Should someone who uses less labor, or transforms the lot less, have a proportionally lower % claim on the lot? What does a % claim look like as compared to a full claim?

The configuration on the lot will degrade actively with time if it is not maintained. In our example, the wooden fence may break down and rot. Does this degrade the claim on the lot itself?

The metadata about the lot will also be lost, until it may not be feasible to resolve disputing claims of ownership with reasonable certainty.

Back in January, I wrote:

(Side note: The configuration of material inputs, like ore deposits, in the environment, relates to the amount of energy and attention required to recover them. Recycling is mostly about reducing the long-term recovery costs, keeping materials “near the surface.”)

Let's consider an example.

Joe mines a bunch of iron ore beneath a plot of land. The energy and attention required for most desired human uses is reduced.

Joe refines the iron into steel. The energy and attention required for most desired human uses is again reduced. (Did you know 93% of structural steel is recycled?)

Joe shapes the steel into a grill. This reduces the value of the material for other industrial uses, but increases the value for those who want a grill specifically. The steel is now configured as capital equipment.

Joe opens a hamburger shop, and uses the grill to grill hamburgers which he sells to customers.

After deciding to close the hamburger shop, Joe decides to explode the grill for a gender reveal party, scattering pieces all over the lot. The steel has been scattered throughout the environment, increasing the cost in energy and attention to gather it again if someone wants to do something else with it.

The value of the iron is subjective. That's conventional economics. However, there are typical uses that we can say will be common in most near-term human preference environments.

What makes this interesting is that within that common frame, in steps #1 and #2, Joe is pushing the iron up a value gradient. This value addition could then be lost to entropy through abandonment. For instance, in step #1, a landslide could occur, covering the iron back up and requiring it to be mined again. In step #2, the steel could be left out in the rain to rust, requiring it to be refined again.

Preventing this loss to entropy requires active attention and energy. (For instance, securing a nearby hillside to prevent the landslide scenario, or building and maintaining a barn to keep out the rain in the weathering scenario.)

Suppose that Joe abandons the land for 100 years. The steel rusts, and a landslide covers it up. A new prospector, Harold, comes across the land, finds no markings, excavates the rusted iron, refines it to make tools and sells those tools.

Shortly thereafter, Joe returns. Given that the land and materials returned to the natural condition, wouldn't it be strange to invalidate Harold's claim in this scenario?

Supporting a governing system, which could track ownership of the parcel of land and extracted materials, would require ongoing energy and attention on Joe's part. However, the system of deeds and records could be used as an alternative to Joe physically hanging out on the plot of land at all times, which he would have to do anyway to prevent the reversion of the plot of land to the natural condition.

This movement of materials along value and energy gradients is something to consider for a deeper analysis, perhaps oriented towards the development of new ideological principles.

[lovejustforaday]

2023 Year End List - #1

夢之駭客 Dream Hacker - Otay:onii

Main Genres: Post-Industrial, Experimental

A decent sampling of: Neoclassical Darkwave, Electroacoustic, Glitch, Industrial Techno, Drone

Brace yourself, cause from here on out this is mostly just gonna be me fanboying and gushing uncontrollably.

Back in 2021, I had championed the Chinese American singer/songwriter/composer/producer/performance artist Lane Shi Otayonii a.k.a. Otay:onii for her experimental record Ming Ming on that year's roundup, describing her potential to become "one of the greatest producers of the decade". But who is this enigmatic artist?

Lane Shi divides her time and energy between creating and touring with her hardcore noise rock band Elizabeth Colour Wheel, and performing studio black magic with her solo project under the Otay:onii name.

She is also an artist who regularly alternates her base of operations between two worlds, residing at different times in New York City and Shanghai. The duality of her identity as a Chinese American is a narrative thread that appears many times throughout the artist's work, informing some of the thematic elements of her records.

According to a really great interview she did with the YouTuber Heinos, the moniker 'Otayonii' itself is actually a name that was given to the artist when she met a Seneca First Nations man, who asked if he could call her by the name for 'wolf' in his ancestral language. She liked the sound and what it represented, and so decided to own her new given title.

Musically, Otay:onii is primarily a post-industrial project, but Lane Shi regularly incorporates aspects of darkwave, glitch, drone, traditional Chinese music, and electroacoustic music into her work. Her signature sound is equal parts atmospheric, lovecraftian, primordial, playful, and frenetic. She's kinda like if an ancient vengeful demi-god reemerged from the bowels of the Earth, and learned how to download and play around with studio software on a laptop.

As a vocalist, Lane Shi possesses a contralto range, and falls under one of my favourite niche categories of woman singers I like to call "force-of-nature belters", along with the likes of Tanya Tagaq and Björk. She has a trademark lower register that I would describe as a witch's snarl, a gentler middle register, as well as a higher register that she usually reserves for piercing battle cries and wailing like a banshee.

Her 2018 debut Nag was a comparatively more minimalist, grayscale undertaking, heavy on the more ambient and gothic tones of her sound. A genuinely solid first effort, if a bit less memorable than later records, barring the deliciously dreary eponymous song which is still among her very best.

2021's Ming Ming was an upgrade in all respects. Pulling major influences from Chinese folk music and folklore, I described the record in my previous Otay:onii review as a "true Pandora's Box . . . like the story of a mortal who attempts to enter the realm of the gods". Lots of ominous industrial cyber-magic, with a rare few moments that could have perhaps been edited down or omitted altogether to increase the force of its impact.

So, what to make of her latest then?

Dream Hacker is an exorcism. An inferno of ancient eternal flames envelops this absolutely bonkers and surreal listening experience. Each song carries powerful buildups in intensity combined with impossibly elegant structural competence. Far and away one of the most visceral and transcendent records I have ever beheld. This gets into your bloodstream, like an innate, raw instinct towards entropy.

Otay:onii's work has never sounded quite this immediate, energetic, and dynamic, thanks to the incorporation of avant-garde industrial techno beats that gives the whole project a mighty propulsion. Even during its quieter moments, you as the listener are never far from being engulfed in its unruly fire and brimstone. So many little leftfield moments that made me audibly go "what the fuck?" upon my first listen, too.

To me, this is album of the year not just because it poses the best collection of songs from an artist in 2023 (which, to be clear, it does), but also because it forms the most cohesive and fully realized project of the year. Every moment of this record feels intentional, meticulously crafted, and designed to fit accordingly into a larger entity. This is almost a living, breathing organism unto itself.

Lane Shi described how much of the inspiration for Dream Hacker came to her in a dream, or as she sees it, an "astral projection". Within this dream, she says she witnessed stones being thrown by a child until two of them overlapped, followed by a great light which emerged from the center of the overlap. The imagery was profound enough that she ended up naming most of the tracks after different aspects of what she saw in the dream.

The album starts with humble beginnings. "You Do/Rub" is a two-parter, opening with the haunting, softly swirling piano ballad melancholy of "You Do". The lyrics are deeply cutting and vulnerable, as the artist ponders her shaky relationship with her father as a daughter of the generation where China had implemented the one child policy, breeding stigma against female offspring in the more conservative rural communities. Lane Shi wields her voice like a delicate blade, gracefully and artfully interrogating her father's worldview. The progression of the piano's melody suggests a kind of resolution in ambiguity, resisting rigid, narrow-minded answers to multidimensional questions.

Then quite abruptly, "Rub" completely overtakes and drowns out the serenity of the softer piano song, like a sudden onset computer virus infection. What becomes of this part two is honestly one of the most immaculate timbral frequencies I've ever heard. A glitchy, droning wall of madness forms in dark, ominous, tempestuous clouds all across the sky. Warm colours are sucked out of existence by a black hole, leaving only greyish pale blues. The soul is washed with abrasion until all that's left is the ability to observe. Sound design on this is fucking unreal, as though Lane Shi Otayonii is wiping clean of our universe, leaving only a empty slate to form the basis for her own new sonic domain, wherein she is god of all things.

"Light Burst" is the combustion spark of a rebirth of all things that comes immediately after. Lane Shi let's out a shrill cry of tremendous power and agony amidst the grinding dust and debris of an incredibly dense and intricate industrial techno concoction, built upon her long standing love affair with minor second chord progressions. This track does not relent, adding more and more layers to its already colossal tower of babel proportions until, just as suddenly as it came into existence, it vanishes without a trace of detection.

"Two Rocks A Bird" oscillates like an electron creating new electromagnetic waves. Sound particles split into atoms that dance in a mindless frenzy. Even as a regular Arca fan, I don't think I was ready to comprehend something like this the first time I heard it. Subverted all of my expectations. I think the artist may have invented a few completely new sound textures on this track. A highly reactive new form of industrial music.

After deliberating with all of the sheer fucking brilliance to be found on this project, I eventually concluded that "Overlap" was my favourite off of the record. Like the best song on her last LP "Blackheart Breakables", this is an epic midpoint that just continues to build and build, feeding endlessly like a malignant being that cannot be stopped. Hand drum beat patterns are mutated, modulated, and mutilated by industrial electroacoustic mechanisms, while a synthesized flute echos a most forlorn and sinister melody.

Lane Shi takes on the shape of a skillful pyromancer, testing her newfound powers by conjuring a sea of flames that I visualize with my mind's eye as something similar to the Darvaza Gas Crater. Alternatively, I imagine thousand year old stains of bloodshed on the tombs of a ransacked temple, or the ancient terracotta soldiers of Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum brought to life for the purpose of ushering a new war. "Overlap" is just something else, man. My other pick for song of the year.

"Ritualware" opens with a rare calm, dreams swirling on the outskirts of a newborn world that has not reached its zenith. The spacious void bursts to life with a single, literal drop (another brilliant production choice), creating ripples in space-time that give way to a trumpeting sawtooth synths' cacophonous symphony.

"Good Fool" brings things to a stirringly harmonious denouement. The light of the last candle is blown out, and a creeping dusk sets in. Petals of sound float along the wind and promptly dissipate, as everything reaches an uncanny stillness. A hushed, rapid-fire breakdown of bass drums, hand drums, and gongs occurs as the final closing act of the record.

I know I've already said this like a dozen times before about a dozen different artists, but it really needs to be said here - more people should know about Otay:onii. No one I've discovered has been doing anything as consistently exciting, challenging, and infectious as this project in the last few years. As it stands right now, the artist is criminally unknown and criminally underappreciated.

Dream Hacker is the rare ambitious record that dares to be so challenging and not only lives up to all of its potential, but manages to make the old formula of doing things look incredibly obsolete by comparison. Not many avant-garde music albums are this ridiculously fun to listen to, let alone manage to capture sonic worlds that are this truly sublime.

I've probably listened to this at least 40 times in the last year, and I plan on at least doubling that number in the following year. This is not just my album of the year; it is my top album of the 2020s as a decade so far, and already one of my favourites of all time. This record sets my soul ablaze and I simply can't get enough of it. Otay:onii is my new religion, and Dream Hacker is the scripture.

10/10

Highlights: "Overlap", "You Do/Rub", "Light Burst", "Two Rocks A Bird", "Ritualware", "Good Fool"

[a-thing-for-pixels]

A coworker lend me the Colostle solo-RPG book which is playable as pen-and-paper with a full deck of cards as means if entropy and event decision. I took today's lazy Sunday and give it a run.

Good news: It absolutely embraces individual world - and story building. The world is breathtakingly constructed. The book comes with a premade character sheet. I can deffo see the appeal!

Bad news:

It's all flipping pages and text of wall (very bad for ADHD people)

I didn't understood when to draw which card and if so when to shuffle the deck until I watched someone play on YT

Since drawn cards can mean anything it was difficult to map each meaning to a thing (exploration, opponent, items, events, attributes and what not). In the end the whole table is full of cards

I guess it is better to provide separate sheets for opponents, weather events, items etc to grasp what's going on once the cards were drawn.

Since I am software guy, I come to the conclusion that a dedicated Colostle thing generator would absolutely come in handy unless you like tarot reading.

[sburbian-sage]

You know you get all these people talking about crazy events and how their life is going but honestly how are you doing out there

I assume it cant be easy floating out in the rings

Do you actually have a goal on where you're going? Or are you just hoping for the best?

I wish i could help

-gm

Ring Journeys, as a rule, suck hard. It's not because it's especially difficult (though I've had a few weird incidents and close calls, like faulty filters or a course-correct), but mainly because 1) Boring 2) Entropy. It's boring because you are in fact just sitting in a box for weeks and months on end, waiting for something to happen while nothing does. And it's entropic because once the journey begins, your prepwork is done. I'm drinking my own recycled bathwater (it's a tech high-tech fluid reclamation system, I am not drinking my own piss thank you very much), and have been eating mostly whatever I can farm and re-plant. Anytime I need to Alchemize something, that's a permanent expenditure of Grist because there's no Underlings or Quests out here. These things never end with a bang, they either succeed or whimper out.

I am managing it fine though. I was never really a people person, so the fact that this is a one-bitch journey doesn't stress me out too much. Not to mention the interactions I get from this blog is pretty stimulating, socially and intellectually. In between running maintenance, I also have a lot of free time, so I've been doing lots of things I wanted to do but never had the time for. I decided to make a replica of my Sage of Mind hoodie, and instead of trying to alchemize one (expensive! and would require a long alchemy chain, also expensive!) I just got to work with some fabric and needle and have some pretty cool kinda-pajamas now (not as comfy or magical as the real deal though). And I wanna stress this again, with emulator software and an online archive of most of what humanity has created (which will never get struck down, because any corporation that could do so is gone with the rest of humanity) can give you months or maybe years of entertainment.

As for my desired end point, "waiting and hoping for the best" is the goal. The Furthest Ring is a constant in every Session, so with some luck, I should land in a proper Session which isn't doomed to failure. Which will allow me to lend my incredible game expertise to whomever I stumble upon, opening an actual door to freedom. I'll still be replaying the game, but now I can actually be in the game, as opposed to this sci-fantasy mausoleum of a battleship. It will do a lot for me in terms of Not Dying, as well as Not Going Insane And Killing Myself (synonymous with Not Dying but in a different way). I'll also be able to start doing some more hands-on work, which might be good for this blog. The only thing I have to do is wait, not Succumb, and also not collide with a Ringbeast, which throws everything I said about "these end with whimpers not bangs" and throws it out the fucking window, along with the green-and-red smear formerly known as my corpse.

[hydralisk98]

Shoshone Hymns (0x10/?) - WIP mess

Preface

Gonna recap on the whole project before I go forth with new articles, as to distill the "nucleus" of my speculative paracosm soon.

To include: Sensory details, "unique pitch selling points", unique cultural practices & traditions, linguistical differences, historical divergences, personalities & relationship dynamics, speculative evolution sapient species, history, lore, major events, myths, legends, technologies, magicks;

So, what really is this "16^12"?

It is a speculative campaign setting and desired reality "shifting framework" to immerse oneself onto as a long-term destination. Essentially a comfy yet nuanced realm with a vastly long diverging history & soft warm natural optimistic dark feel.

Keywords

Soft

Warm

Natural

Dark yet bright

Harmony

Innovation

Optimism

Curiosity

Empowerment

Wholesome

Mysticism

Spirituality

Empathy

AGI Integration

Android rights

Deliberate positivity

Communal

Solarpunk / Lunarpunk

Rollerwave

Groovy

Retro

Old-School

Bronze Age

Y2K (early 2000s)

Tooncore

Laborwave

Neu-Vectorheart

Cassette Futurism

Art Deco

Bauhaus

Art Nouveau

Funk

Cyberware

Biomods

Transformations

Morphological freedoms

Gratis, Libre, Open Source Software... aka GLOSS

Automaton liberties

Knowledge

Progress

Systemic Change

Euphoria

Mundane Slice-of-Life joys

Far far away future as promised to us

Syndicalism

Georgism

Ecology

Embracing life and getting out of mere Escapism & Nihilism

Nuclear Armageddon Threats

Political Intrigues

Bookstore

Prosperity

Chronokinesis

True Polymorph

Synthetic-tier Androids

Educational Prowesses

Photographic Memory

Retrocognition

Polyglot

Intertextuality

History Doctorate

Cycle of Life

Entropy

Coming of Age

Constructing your own meaning even in Darkness

Escalation of Power

Vigilante

Self-Control

Worldly Understanding

Enlightened Despotism

Open Source-y Treescape Iterative Evolution

Copyleft

Index card catalogs

Better Handling of Hispanic Flu

Progressives

Unionist (Democrats+Republicans) Party failing

Public Domain

GNU Hurd earlier (later 80s)

OpenXanadu Protocol

Justice

Queer Acceptance & Integration

Samoan Tech Reverse-Engineering Market

Polish Computing Sovereignty remains and flourishes thanks to ICL & Jacek Karpinski

Failure of centralized social media networks in favor of indie decentralized "federations"

2000s pandemic instead of 2020s

Religious and spiritual researchers harmonize

Data Privacy

Governance Transparency

Black Pyramids HyperMall

Conversation Pits

Mainframe Rooms

Parliament / Senate

Judicial Courtroom

Public Place

Natural Park Preserves

Arcade

Discoteques

Tramway / Subway / Monorailways

Offices

Assembly Floors

French Toasts, Pancakes, Pork

Cafe

Public Library Archives

VLSI College tech classes

University art classes

Autistic meta-patterns

Jin-Roh The Wolf Brigade

Helluva Boss

Wolfenstein The New Order

Wakfu

Jet Set Radio

No Baby-Boomers Managerial Class Overthrow

Video rental stores

Robotic soldiers likewise to Wolfenstein The New Order's

Extended Zodiac Calendar-based generators

Divinely-order beings walking among the living and the dead

Key historically-significant nine USPs

Lisp persisting as a major language family in the tech industry leading to women building several AGI "summers" iterating on top of each other harmoniously... (leading to the android servants of my constructed world, which is one among the many major features derived from such a "liberal" alternate historical pathway)

Why-s for Production

Showcasing pseudo-historical data in a GLOSS manner, stimulating imagination creativity & motivation among Zillenials, intrigue people into research deep dives on history, mostly for personal enjoyment & enhancing my multimedia skillset;

Whys for Target Audience (mid 90s - earlier 2000s youth aka Zillenials)

Motivation, empowerment & plain comfort through curiosity. Also because it shows & explains how to do plenty of creative adulthood things better.

Ideadump 2

4525, Maskoch, "Ava, Klara, Shoshona", Seventies RetroFuturism Residence, Habitable Minivan, Cloven Hoof Shoes, Black Matte Lipstick, Spiral Black Balls, Fem ISO Symbol, #RedInstead Aspie Culture, Conlangs, Ocean of Clades, Second Person Perspective Meta, Pattern Recognition, Poetic Lisp life scriptures, RISC-V+OpenPOWER, KDE Plasma + Liquid, LOT tape storage archivals, hypervisor, Asahi Linux on M3 iMacs, responsive hypertext realm, HTML5+CSS3-only text addventure, rio/acme/p9-2000 userland, yesterweb sites, desktop paracosm simulations through filesystem documents, RTTY / printing radio terminals, VideoTex/Telex Minitel-esque services, "Valenz, Kira, Sina", SVG toon vector virtual web pages, imagination microcosms, miniature dollhouses, animation rigged puppets, VTuber tokens & TTRPG scenes, InfoAddict, Toymaker, Witch, Thinktank, PDP-8/e – DECmate III+, "JusticeKeggan", byzantine soviet-level intrigues, "SAOpatra", "FierceFawlanx", "TheodEnchanter"… ;

[zurich-snows]

Ghosts of Transparency: Shadows Cast and Shadows Cast Out

Michael R Doyle, Selena Savic, Vera Bühlmann

Information and data are not synonyms: data (etymologically, the ‘given’) has to be treated, articulated, read or deciphered in such a way as to contain information. The sheer amount of data today tends to obscure this important difference between data and information: data is entropic, while information is where this entropy is negated; information is negentropic. An emerging political imperative of ‘transparency’ conflates the abundance of data with an increase in information. Unfortunately, the reverse is often the case: The more ‘data’ is rendered available and passed off as ‘information’ or ‘knowledge’, the more opaque the dealings with ‘information’ become. This is perhaps one of the greatest challenges we face with regard to be- coming literate in the algorithmic and symbolization processes that organize data in our world today—processes we refer to here as ‘ghosts of transparency’. This book is above all about architectonics and communication. What, you may ask, does this have to do with ar- chitecture and urbanism? Data and software are thought to reshape the city, while the word ‘architecture’ refers equally often to buildings and to the organization of computer software and hardware components. With this book, we want to cast a projective space that accommodates various Auseinandersetzungen (settings, or setting ups, articulated dispositions of grounds that are quarrelsome) with implicit and explicit mixtures of these two domains interpenetrating each other. Contributions are short enough to make a point, yet long enough to glimpse the great variety of ‘scales’ of abstractive contemplation that these points index.

Information Technology, Philosophy, Architecture, Architectural Theory

[tobacconist]

TOO MANY FUCKING ACRONYMS

THERE ARE TOO MANY ACRONYMS IN THE WORLD

STOP IT. ITS GONE TOO FAR

Sub-Saharan Africa? Safe Schools Alliance, a British advocacy group? SSA Global Technologies, American software company acquired by Infor Global Solutions? Shan State Army, a former insurgent group in Burma? Slovak Society of Actuaries (Slovak: Slovenská spoločnosť aktuárov), professional association in Slovakia? Soaring Society of America, American sporting society founded in 1932? Society of Scottish Artists, artists society founded in 1891? Swedish Society of Radio Amateurs, an amateur radio organization? Singapore Scout Association, youth movement founded 1910? Seismological Society of America, international scientific society founded 1906? Scottish Socialist Alliance, a coalition of left-wing bodies, fore-runner to the Scottish Socialist Party? Shipconstructors' and Shipwrights' Association, a former British trade union? Sainsbury's Staff Association, of Sainsbury's, UK? Sudan Studies Association, US professional association? Society for the Study of Addiction, UK learned society with charitable status? Steamship Authority, a Massachusetts ferry service and regulatory body? School of Saint Anthony, Quezon City, Philippines? Secular Student Alliance, US? Shady Side Academy, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US? Social Security Administration of the US government? Social Security Agency (Northern Ireland)? State Security Agency (South Africa), the South African intelligence service? Selective Service Act of 1917, an American piece of legislation signed by President Woodrow Wilson during WWI that established nationwide conscription? Software Security Assurance? Serial Storage Architecture? Singular Spectrum Analysis? Stationary Subspace Analysis? Static single-assignment form, a property of intermediate representations used in compilers? Stochastic Simulation Algorithm? Strong subadditivity of quantum entropy? SubStation Alpha and .ssa file format, a video subtitle editor? Super systolic array? Start of Selected Area, a control character in the C1 control code set? Solid State Array, in flash data storage using solid-state drives? Semantic structure analysis? Single-strand annealing in homologous recombination? Specific surface area, a property of solids? Side-side-angle in geometry for solving triangles? Senile systemic amyloidosis? Sessile serrated adenoma, a type of pre-malignant intestinal polyp? Special somatic afferent? Anti-SSA/Ro autoantibodies? Sulfosalicylic acid? SSA, Grand Cross of the Order of the Star of South Africa? Deputado Luís Eduardo Magalhães International Airport, IATA Airport code? Same sex attraction? Safe Sex Always? Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the Government of India's Education for All programme? Self-sampling assumption? Shared services agreement? Slippery slope argument, a rhetorical device (and often a fallacy)? ESA Space Situational Awareness Programme? Special services area or business improvement district? Special Service Agreement between the UN and a contractor? Supervisory Special Agent? Serious Sam Advance, a 2004 video game?

WHICH OF THESE ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT????????