Isn't this what eventually became Kali linux? I remember Knoppix and Whoppix then I didn't really check on the projects for a while then Kali came along
I fondly remember Backtrack 2, running as a Live distro. I remember going to university labs where a teacher taught us a couple of techniques or so. Great days.
I remember burning this on a CD as a preteen. It's what got me into Linux. It blew my mind that an OS could be live-loaded off a disk. Ever since then, I tried to daily drive linux, but came back to Windows again and again for gaming...until this year.
I remember using PHLAK (Professional Hackers Linux Assault Kit) that I'm pretty sure was based on Knoppix. I don't know if PHLAK actually had any pedigree heading into Kali, but Kali stepped up when PHLAK stopped.
I don't think I've shared my thoughts on here, but this sounds a lot like my thought process: what if you start with nothing but consciousness, then find a path to a physical universe?
Consciousness is inherently about awareness, so at some point the consciousness would be aware of itself. Now it has the concepts of before/after, and from that opposites, incrementing, subtracting, 1 dimensional space etc. Eventually through this process you could "spawn up" other consciousnesses each expanding their individual bubbles of experience and understanding, eventually getting complex enough to create an entire universe with physical matter that can be experienced by other consciousnesses.
The problem with this line of thought is that consciousness can be damaged when it's physical container is damaged. A piece of falling masonry can be enough to shear off large parts or all of it. If consciousness was fundamentally distinct, this wouldn't be the case, would it?
There is a "The Matrix" (the movie) argument where we posit these:
1. Whatever you believe is true is true (this is how the consciousness builds worlds before there is any physical existence)
2. Our consciousness built the physical world and runs it like a simulation.
3. The reason our minds and consciousness are highly correlated to the physical situation is to make the simulation feel real. It's a specifically designed feature that to a large extent synchronizes the "host" and the simulated objects so that despite being outside of the simulation, the "host" feels like they are inside the simulation.
4. The corollary to 3 (and 1) is that if you are damaged or die in the simulation, that effect is mirrored outside the simulation too (to some extent).
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(Never thought my adventures in metaphysics would be useful in a HN discussion thread!)
There is no problem here. [I may have shared this thought experiment before here using a different handle.]
Let us assume there exists in our planet an undiscovered island that has developed independent of other human societies. This is not an island of primitives. The inhabitants pride themselves on their scientific and empirical approach to knowledge acquisition, however they are not quite on par with the rest of the planet in terms of scientific knowledge and technology. Specifically for our purposes, they have not yet discovered Electro-Magnetism.
Now assume somehow (via a shipwreck, or whatever) these islanders come into possession of advanced transmitter/receiver communication devices, and we'll assume they are in working condition and have some sort of power source (magical internal or solar or whatever - they can be turned on).
As the scientists on this island fiddle with these boxes, they notice that certain configuration of the device interface will cause it to 'emit voices, songs, and music'. Various knobs seem to change the voice, etc. Further experimentation and they discover that speaking to the device under certain configuration seems to establish a sort of 'communication' with the box. After these blackbox approaches, they start taking apart these mechanisms (while they are turned on). Now let's just pretend the internal radio communication components are perfectly modular (in terms of functionality) and can be removed and put back as required.
They systematically begin removing various components and noting which uncanny features of these mystrious devices cease to function. One board removed and they no longer get certain band. Another board removed and the box doesn't talk back (think CB). They meticulously map out all these component to function mappings. The results are indisputable: These boxes are some sort of 'thinking machines'. The 'brains' of the machanisms is isolated to the radio elements of the devices. The 'proof' of this is that the boxes cease to speak or respond to communication when these elements are removed.
> consciousness can be damaged when it's physical container is damaged
I don't think the GP's objection is fatal either (for reasons mentioned in another reply), but let me try to poke holes in your argument.
If I understand your analogy correctly, you're saying the brain here acts as an intermediary between the real consciousness and the physical world, and not really the underlying thing that generates consciousness.
But this seems to contradict actual experience -- if somebody's head is hit very hard, they kind of get knocked dizzy for a moment. Their consciousness halts, until their brain recovers. If your analogy truly holds, then subjectively it should feel more like disconnecting from World of Warcraft. "The real consciousness" fiddles their fingers idly while waiting for reconnection, and once they reconnect they'd have a recollection (on the non-physical, consciousness side) of what happened during the physical blackout.
I don't think the insistence on the requirement of 'hard disconnect' is reasonable. Per the brain as transceiver analogy, you are jiggling a part and may get 'static' while you are doing it. Stop the jiggling and static stops. Jiggle too hard and the part disconnects from its socket (knock them out /g) and you'll have the desired disconnect from the "World of Warcraft".
p.s. Realized I didn't address your "subjectively". This is true, since the radio analogy was to address the analog of neuroscientists examining people with damaged brains. You want to know what the 'radio' feels :)
So this is in fact an interesting aspect you bring in. The answer to this is: this seems to conflate 'ego' and 'self'. This is a different problem: Is the self the same as the ego? My own view on this is that is the ego is not the true self.
I must admit I've never been hit so hard that I am 100% knocked out, so I can't really speak as to the subjective experience of being knocked out (from the non-physical consciousness perspective, not the brain)... but surely it isn't like disconnecting from World of Warcraft?
That said, if the injury is serious enough I suppose it might trigger some Near Death Experience where people have reported seeing things purportedly on the other side.
So I guess that answers my original concern.
(I think you might have confused my question though, or perhaps I've confused you. No worries, my questions are answered anyway.)
This is a facile thought experiment, and I'm surprised it's weakness hasn't already occurred to you.
But as it hasn't, let's change your island to an island of supremely skilled butchers. Your islanders are apparently capable of reassembling the mystery radios to restore function, so let's allow my island's butchers the skill of dismembering flesh atomically - and reassembling it exactly. Perhaps via quantum knives and very strong prescription lenses.
Their own religion has long prohibited them from peering into their tribe's flesh - and their tribe is all there is on that remotest of islands. But the day a missionary washes up on shore they see an opportunity. They can finally take a proper look. They begin with his head - by far the most interesting part of him, with the delighted and friendly if slightly smug smile and neverending chatter.
Once dismantled and laid out in trillions of tiny pieces in a large hall - a bit like a crashed plane - they decide to reassemble his head in different configurations - to test how the behaviour would change with each layout. There's an unusual fruit on the island which allows them almost superhuman focus and speed - so that billions of reconfigurations can be completed over an afternoon.
BUT WHAT DO YOU KNOW...? Every single reconfiguration results in a totally inert missionary! No more drunk on the milk of paradise look, and no more "Hallelujah!"s. Just a lump of meat. Perplexed - they decide there must have been something truly unique about the missionary's head's original layout and composition - so reassemble him in the way they found him. But when they have done this - calamity! - he doesn't come on any more. They check their work 18 times - but not a single atom is dislocated. And so the wise islanders come to the only conclusion possible, and hurry to note it in their scientific literature:
"Radios aren't animals. And anyone pretending otherwise is a ginormous silly billy."
> "Radios aren't animals. And anyone pretending otherwise is a ginormous silly billy."
The results presented to the scientific community of the island was that the "mechanisms" are "thinking machines". They clearly did not think the boxes to be 'living creatures'.
There are a lot of similar ideas in various ancient/traditional spiritual/esoteric teachings. "Consciousness first" is actually the more typical assumption among the traditions that have something we'd label as a philosophy.
I remember reading this as part of GCSE English, unfortunately the school system in the UK makes poetry dry and uninspiring. In terms of anti-war poems I prefer "The Box" by Kendrew Lascelles.
Reading and reciting this poem and the works of Benjamin Zephaniah (particularly ‘dis poetry’) in gcse English convinced me that it wasn’t ‘lame’ and poetry can be inspiring
Same here! This poem and Anthem for Doomed Youth lodged deep in my memory. We all had to perform a poem from one of those GCSE collections and I chose Anthem for Doomed Youth. The silence in the classroom afterwards... We were lucky with English teachers though.
I wonder if you can age a person based on them knowing this and whatever the Siegfried Sassoon poem that was covered in order to demonstrate onomatopoeia? I suppose it would depend how long it was (or indeed if it still is) part of the curriculum.
I've tried suggesting this for my team since there are constant complaints of lack of communication. However, the response to this is "we have Teams/Jira/Confluence", but 99% of Jira tickets have no comments for clarification, Confluence has articles that are out of date by 5 years and Teams is never used for clarifying requirements.
It's clearer if you deconstruct the conversation about Jira and then think about the washing hair and shampoo comment. It's a stretch, but when you see it is should make sense.
I ask my team to clarify requirements better. They say that they already have Jira. It's as if they were implying that the presence of a tool (Jira) should be enough to provide clear stories. But it's not about the tool. It's about them not using the tool properly but pointing at the tool (or process) as an excuse.
I ask my son to wash his hair. He says there is shampoo in the shower. It's as if the presence of the shampoo implies that his hair should be clean. It's not about the lack of tooling, but about the fact that he did not wash his hair with the tool that he had available.
People often blame tooling or methodology, but most often its that they don't know how to use the tooling or methodology well. They will say things like "if we only used X our problems would go away." Most likely, they won't.
I posted a lazy comment earlier because I did not have time to type it out. Apologies.
I see, thanks. All analogies are flawed and that's a fact of life but your clarification made it crystal clear.
RE: your work, I would probably fight hard to reduce all the bureaucracy-inviting tools (like Jira). That removes the excuse "we have tools already, why don't we have clear stories?" -- though I am aware that for many people this fight would cost them their job.
He's saying that there's shampoo in the shower but he didn't use it (implied) -- however, the question wasn't about the presence of shampoo in the shower.
Aha, but that's not a rebuttal at all. The son is just stating a rather very loosely connected fact. If I was the father I'd immediately respond with "Yeah, and?".
It's not the lack of communication. IMO, it's the lack of team culture. Keeping documentation up to date is something only the team could do. And it can't be solved by using Confluence/Wiki/mailing lists tools.
I've had to write an entire backend to interface with Sabre - using SOAP/XML - it was anything but straightforward. But yeah, you need surprisingly little information to book/cancel/view flights and PNR data.
As a child one of my favourite scenes from Twister was the successful deployment of "Dorothy" and the data streaming into the laptop with cool colourful visualisations.
Over 20 years later, as a software engineer I decided to recreate the software to finally fulfil that childhood dream!
A reality-bending anomaly game where you are the anomaly: as you interact with items in your environment, you may notice some anomalies. Moving a cookie jar opens the fridge door. Closing the fridge door makes a painting on the wall shrink, and rotating that painting switches the lights on.
The idea is for the game to make logical sense, but make the player sound completely unhinged from reality "I need to put the toaster on top of the oven to make the lamp spin around, that way I can move the lamp across the room near the couch to unlock the next level"
This sounds interesting; how are you guiding the player from one object to the next? E.g. if I'm looking at the fridge, I have to observe the painting shrink or that it's a lot smaller the next time I see it. And if there are a lot of objects in the room, how do I know what's relevant? I'm curious!
I haven't completely decided yet, but I'm thinking of having the next object emit a "scraping" sound as it moves/scales, that way the sound gives you a general idea of the vicinity of where you should be looking. It will take some experimentation to get the balance correct: too easy and the game isn't fun, too difficult and it's just frustrating and tedious.
This is definitely an interesting UX puzzle to solve from a game design perspective. I get what you're saying on finding the right balance.
Beyond sound alerts, some glow effect around an object might help? A tutorial at the start almost seems necessary so people get the mechanics, if you don't have that already. Just my $.02!
I think sound gives just the right amount of help to get you in the general vicinity of the next clue, without completely giving it away. Of course there could be lower difficulty levels with visual indicators as well.
I will definitely be adding a tutorial since the mechanics are so bizarre. I was also going to add an additional mechanic: it's not just about moving a specific object, but also placing an object within the vicinity of another unknown object.
I just had a chance to watch the video and think it’s coming together pretty nicely! I wonder if more different sound effects would help. I like the size of the level - I don’t think something like this could work as well in a giant room.
For an intro/tutorial, I think the first 1-2 minutes of the video would provide a pretty good outline for the player, especially if it’s text on the screen. Have them move a couple of things in sequence and then they know the gameplay.
“Also, long-sleepers were more likely to report symptoms of depression,”
Couldn't that also be interpreted as "People with depression are more likely to report long sleep durations?"
