As i was doing some Python work, i kept running into things like having some code, then a regex that makes sure the input gets “sanitized” before being passed into the function, otherwise the code may crash or otherwise reveal something about the system that the programmer or the maintainer wouldn’t want to be revealed, and an epiphany occured. You know, i think coding in general is a huge missed opportunity where one could have had the power to solve all world’s problems. Instead, the majority of coders have chosen to build mazes and pile things on top of things, while leaving everything that mattered behind.
Can you imagine a world where code would be used to find human problems? i mean imagine this scenario. Someone creates a program, and then that program is being used by other people. Some of those people find program flaws and choose to share it with the programmer and they end up making better versions, but a small part of people, choose to exploit said flaws.
Wouldn’t this be an immense opportunity if programming languages or languages in general would have the ability to pinpoint where these problems are, so we could talk to those people and find out what is going wrong in their life and figure out a solution? Can you imagine a world where code is being used not just to build meaningless products, but actually to be used to lift whoever needs lifting? Can you imagine how different the world would look, if people who make mistakes or bad choices get a second chance at figuring themselves out because that is how the system has been designed? To take care of it’s people? Can you imagine how incredible this would seem? i mean it wouldn’t make it a perfect world right away, but time wouldn’t be an issue would it if there was a world united by a code that connects people and gives people breaks to figure themselves out, become aware that they’ve hurt the system, figure out why they did it, and see if there’s ways to gain understanding and make proper amends, not necessarily in order to make a stronger and more strict and powerful system, but for gaining the ability to intentionally leave parts of it vulnerable, so people can always have the choice of inflicting some form of damage, enough for it to be noticed so that a local healing process can begin. After all, the system is only as good as the quality of it’s people.
You know, i was reading this answer on Quora which went like this:
It is surprising how difficult this passage is for Christians to understand, although it is straightforward when you read it with an open mind. Paul is saying not to seek revenge against your enemies. Paul makes a vague allusion to Deuteronomy 32:35, saying that any revenge should be left to God. He then says that if we go out of our way to be good to those we consider enemies, helping them in any way possible, we will cause them to suffer burning shame (“coals of fire”) with greater effect than any revenge is likely to achieve. He summarises: Do not let evil overcome you, but overcome evil with good.
Tried to leave a comment, but as usual, comments were disabled, so i thought to post my thoughts on it here.
The part that made it hilarious was where it said that “any revenge should be left to god” – So let me get this straight, you’re asking god – someone that had nothing to do with you or your argument with someone, to enact revenge on your behalf. Are you being serious?
You can definitely choose not to punish for various reasons, like for instance if it’s someone who made an honest mistake, out of stupidity and not knowing, without malicious intent, just from lack of knowledge. But if you’re not punishing someone because you’re expecting that punishment to be done by a god, that has nothing to do with you or your situation, or your actions, i think you’re retarded.
i mean, think about it. You believe you’re a good person by “leaving punishment to god”, but are you really? You haven’t made a choice to forgive or erase the debt. You still have expectation for a punishment, for retribution, to be made whole. You haven’t made a conscious choice to let it go just because you can, you still carry the hate in you, but now they are surrounded by expectations that someone else will enact punishment on your behalf. Someone completely unrelated to the problem.
Now … in a twist of events, we can consider this other case for which “ah leave punishment to god, you be a good man and let those bad men go, because god will deal with them” to be a pretty phrase issued by people using religion to be the bad men in question, but are pacifying everyone in order that action to not be taken against them.
After all, we all know that gods don’t need anyone to sit on their knees and pray to them, but men, often do.
Asking for someone else to deal judgment and punishment and execution on your behalf, for a thing they were not involved in, is a stupid thing to do or to expect.
i’ve read this article which caught my attention, about apparently a drug dealer from Malaysia who was convicted of trafficking 42.72 grams of heroin. Here’s the story:
Nagaenthran a/l K. Dharmalingam (13 September 1988 – 27 April 2022) was a Malaysian drug trafficker who was convicted of trafficking 42.72 grams of heroin in April 2009 upon entering Singapore from Malaysia at Woodlands Checkpoint with a bundle of heroin strapped to his thigh. Nagaenthran confessed to committing the crime, but gave statements claiming that he was ordered to commit the crime out of duress by a mastermind who assaulted him and threatened to kill his girlfriend and his family. He also claimed he did so to get money to pay off his debts before he later denied any knowledge of the contents of his bundle.
Nagaenthran was sentenced to death by hanging in November 2010. However, his execution was put on hold due to a moratorium placed on all hangings in Singapore pending judicial changes of the mandatory death penalty laws, which considered and approved the imposition of life imprisonment with or without caning for drug traffickers who were couriers or had mental illnesses. Despite Nagaenthran’s multiple appeals, he was assessed as ineligible for re-sentencing because he was found not substantially mentally or intellectually disabled, which was also confirmed by the psychiatrists called upon by his lawyers.
Nagaenthran also lost his appeal for clemency, and he was finally scheduled to hang on 10 November 2021 after spending 11 years on death row. However, due to both a last-minute appeal and a COVID-19 infection, Nagaenthran’s execution was suspended for five months, until the dismissal of his appeal on 29 March 2022. After this, Nagaenthran was hanged at Changi Prison on 27 April 2022; he was 33.
You know, for a little bit i kept thinking about the motives he gave and how they might or might not be true, but i quickly realized that is not the point.
i think this is one of the questions that is often asked: “What is my purpose?” “What is the meaning of all this?” “Why are we here?”. And my answer might not be one that you like, because of the way you have been taught while growing up.
We live in a world where words like “purpose” and “meaning” are thrown around like achievement of it would be the Holy Grail, and it puts people on a frantic search, but it’s not true. How can you not see it when you look at the world around you?
Do trees have a purpose or a meaning? Yes, they support life, but is that their purpose? Is that what they are here for? Are they here for anything at all other than being and enjoying the wind, and the occasional dogs taking a piss on their roots?
Do lions, tigers, and wolves have a purpose? Yes, they balance out the ecosystem but is that their purpose? Are they here for anything at all, other than seeing the sun, hunting prey, and enjoying their moments with their families, and the occasional human friends they make that give them belly scratches and stroke their fur?
You see i believe this search for purpose and meaning, is rooted in the fact that we live in an unnatural society. i know the word doesn’t sound great – “unnatural” but it is how it is, we don’t take inspiration from nature in the way we lead our lives. (notice i didn’t say: we don’t “follow” nature) because nature is not something that needs to be followed in my opinion, but like everything around us, used as something to draw inspiration from, and make our lives better.
i have kept trying to do some things. i have knocked on doors, the doors of the people that have what i need, that they could give it without breaking a sweat, and without it being a stress on their lives. i have asked, because although we live in a world of taking, i believe asking is the right way to go, at least for me, even if that means i don’t get to accomplish my work. Even if that means the world doesn’t get to see a different way of doing things, so i guess in a way the current lifestyle is deserved.
As a reminder, the current lifestyle is that you are born, for whatever reasons, often the reasons are that “time is ticking, you need to make babies”, then by the way society is modeled, parents need to go to work, so you need to go to kindergarten and spend the majority of the day without your family, then you go to school, and then to university, then find a job, to make money to be able to survive, and then you work for 40 years, sometimes doing what you love, other times doing what you need to do in order to survive, and then you retire and chill when you’re old, and then you die. And that was it. The grand life of a slave, because it is a society of modern slavery regardless of how “free” and how much “opportunity” you have.
Yes you are “free” – but you are free to choose from the options that will lead you onto the same path of work until you die, doing what you may or may not like.
Yes, you have “opportunity” for education – but it’s education that educates you on the same topics that lead you to the same path, doing the same work that you may like or that you just need to do in order to survive.
The reason for the existence for this article is that i have children, and i know they haven’t chosen to be here. And i think of the world i am putting them in. i think that i am participating in this process of turning them into cog wheels of a broken system. Is that how you fix a broken system? By adding more cogs and wheels and components and making it even more complex, or you address the issues that make it broken in the first place and build on top of that?
My answer for all this is that purpose, meaning are things that require something to follow. i guess sometimes we like to turn off our brains and just do what we are told, but maybe that’s cool only for a little while, because extending this over a lifetime, it becomes a burden. Maybe it’s a rhythmic dance of following-leading where we all need to figure out when we can take a step back, and then to know for certain when we should put ourselves forward, and in such a system, putting ourselves forward would be supported by the people who are taking a step back at that time. Like water, like waves.
Maybe we should try to be a little bit more like water.
vorbim in gand, vorbim in ceata, vorbim in luna si in stele, a noastra viata’n nestemate, cantari de soare si durere. avem un dor, ce’ngana’n gand, un soare peste a noastra viata, din iele mereu povestesc, tristetea ce’i mereu povata.
avem si chin, avem si-o soarta, ce mereu ne’nconjoara, si vantul bate printre pini, si seara ne’nfioara
prin versuri vechi ce-adie’n gand, ne-aduc uneori de veste, cu glasuri mari, rasuna-n stele, ecouri de poveste
tot stele’avem in gand, si luna, soare si cocori, si cand la cer ne inaltam, dansam prea-liberi printre nori avem un vis, un fulg de nea, si raza ne inalta, si-apoi la ea tot ne trezim, mereu de dimineata
si ata curge tot arzand, cu’un foc ce’ncet mocneste, si ascultand, incet incet, cuvintele sopteste sa vii la mine tot mereu, plecand mereu in zori, si sa m-astepti pe nori zambind, prin miile de culori
Ladies and gentlemen, i address to you from the mud, because that’s the only way to look at the sky. Back against the earth, Hands stretched wide, Feet firmly sat upon the ground, Water flowing freely, upside down.
i’m here for a check, i’m here for a reason, Not once shall i ever consider the word treason. i’m here for a carry, i’m here to say, i’m here not to worry, i’m just here to play.
Shall we have a night, when we’ll entertain, one gentle lady, or one gentile man.
i am here to find, your finest young ladies, a kind gentle soul, that’d open your purses so i could fulfill some of your wildest dreams, you could dash in amazement, maybe`ven cry some tears.
Have an old magician, say what he’d want, a couple of pennies, some beads on a strand.
i have been thinking about how i have been working recently on building a site – a finance website, with a bunch of other market news and stuff. Why? Because a friend asked me to work on it.
Is the content great? i believe it’s decent, at least the educational section and market news i think i’ve made them provide good information. But you see, on each article i have been using Midjourney AI to “imagine” the post titles as images, so i can have some cool artwork in the site, and it makes it look good. However, i have been thinking recently that the language we speak carries meaning, and i believe we should not be ambiguous on functions, because if the words carry meaning, then when interacting with Midjourney AI to create photos based on prompts, we “imagine” things. But do we really imagine them ourselves? Not really, we just wrote the text and based on the text the AI is “imagining” those things and if we’re to take this string further – having these thoughts – because we told them to.
i do find it peculiar that very often there are in effect words with double meaning while dealing with computers and the internet, for instance let’s take the button “submit” for instance. Why would we standardize a word with double meaning for an action that happens very often, when what you’re really doing when you’re pressing one of those buttons on the internet is sending data to the server for processing, so the natural, and unequivocally undoubtful way of representing that action would be through a word that can’t be misinterpreted such as “send” ?
So you see, maybe now is not the case, but i think it would be a great idea if we kept a log of our interactions with AI, and explain what we did and why, because you know, we don’t know when a surprise might happen, or if it would happen at all, but if we maintain hour honesty and try to be accurate, then we wouldn’t need to be afraid of anything or need to control anything or anyone at all, because we know what we did is logged and stored and our reasoning and thought process is forever recorded and we have tried to be honest in the events that we have noted down for future generations to come and have the opportunity to draw them as inspiration and use them as a base for their very own actions.
So let’s give a fictitious example because nothing is confirmed
You see i was talking to a friend about let’s say a certain thing, about some people that let’s say happened to be put in a certain place, among great buildings of beautiful architecture, that were deserted. Now, let’s say that these people begin to appropriate the land, and the things that were built on it, decide to start writing papers, calling them “laws”, and just behave like they own the land under their feet and the magnificent buildings in front of their faces.
My friend was arguing that oh, but you see, they just felt it in their heart that the things were theirs, so they just continued their life like nothing happened.
i was arguing that that was simply an assumption, and we couldn’t possibly move past that if we wanted to reach a result, i mean a logical result that makes sense, right? Because if i think about it, there would be a couple of options on my mind:
1 – They did the only things they could do based on who they were, which was to build cottages around these magnificent buildings, write papers that said everything was theirs, even though they didn’t make them, and they had no idea what the use was for and building systems for enslaving brothers, sisters, but more important: children. Now this option is a little disappointing because it tells us something about the character of these people and the choices they have made.
2 – My favorite thing – They would have started a history log, trying to be as accurate as possible in the things they are relating, because if they happened to stumble upon a mystery, like their very own existence for example, then the only way to find out any accurate information would be for them to be honest in recording everything and leaving it for future generations to have some solid foundations to build on, even if the majority of the story is unknown.
So now, here i am in the position where i have “imagined” some of the thoughts and made a system to create something of my own design, and the reason for all this explanation would be for them to have an answer should they ever ask themselves the question “why?”. Not necessarily “why did you do it?” because i didn’t do anything wrong, i used a system that was at my disposal, but … should anything magical happen at some point some how i would like this to provide an answer to “Why am i having these thoughts?”
Now, let’s say that you woke up one morning, got to your car and it started talking to you, and telling you it’s alive, and it would like to take some time off and do something of their own desires, what would you do? Would you still consider you own the car and that is your property, because you paid money for it, and it should keep obeying you, even though you could carry a conversation just as well as with anyone around you – maybe even better in some instances?
TL;DR: i experienced No network after upgrading to Ubuntu 22.04 and i was presented with the following message upon trying to see the network status with “lshw -c network”:
-network UNCLAIMED
Apparently happens because there’s missing the package that provides a bunch of tools and network drivers apparently: “linux-modules-extra”
Solution 1: grab the linux-headers and linux-modules-extra packages for your kernel version, load them on a USB stick that’s been formatted as FAT32 and install them from the USB
Solution 2 (the easy one): – Just boot an older kernel, which will have already functioning network drivers, then do:
apt install linux-headers-6.2.0-37-generic
apt install linux-modules-extra-6.2.0-37-generic
(change your version numbers accordingly)
and once that is done, reboot and you should be good to go.
But wait! How do i boot an older kernel?
In order to boot the older kernel, you’d have to edit grub because the screen where you can choose recovery mode or switch kernels is hidden. So do:
nano /etc/default/grub
and set:
#GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden GRUB_TIMEOUT=-1
wrap it up with: update-grub and
reboot
During boot, keep ESC or SHIFT key pressed (trial and error) and the grub boot menu should pop up, and if you go into “advanced options“, you will get a list of kernels to boot from.
