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0 points_9xrb3y ago0 comments

This reminds me of a story involving Terry A. Davis, the late schizophrenic programmer behind TempleOS:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS

He had a famous video (which I won't link here, as he goes on a racist tirade about incandescent CIA employees) in which his random word generator- which he claimed sent him messages from God- prints the words "China virus election." The video is from 2017. Of course it printed lots of random garbage too, and any impression of prescience is merely coincidental, but certain corners of the Internet did notice and remark on the coincidence.

These dark corners of the Internet, 4chan in particular, have their own large populations of users who sincerely think they're victims of gangstalking. While it's amusing to see them find strange coincidences like COVID and the output of Terry's word generator, it's depressing to see such ill people feed off each other's delusions.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

LeonTheremin3y ago· 2 in thread

Here is an Ask HN in this line.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30214652

Instead of assuming randomness coming from computers full of black-box microchips, assuming malicious interference may be just a better option - survival wise.

walterbell3y ago

Thanks, another data point for future audits. Such incident report claims can be aggregated in an open-source, CC-licensed index, to improve visibility for defensive analysis and benchmarking of potential responses.

_9xrbOP3y ago

In the case of TempleOS, a hand-built operating system where every aspect of the software was written by Terry himself, I think it's safe to assume no outside factor twiddled those bits.

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