# THE SILVER CRESCENT ## APRIL 2020, ISSUE 4. ### "A Free Press for a Free Internet." ### QUINTUPLICATE CONFEDERATION, Editor. ### MINIWA, Publisher. ### FLOWER, Treasurer. ### YORI, Technological Advisor (NEW!). *The content in this issue may be reproduced at will, except for matter specifically marked "copyright"; attribution is kindly requested if you find the content useful.* ## COMMUNITY NEWS. ### BURYCHU BANNED FROM TOXSPACE. On the 31st of last month, Burychu was banned from Toxspace by Lyra. For the past few days he had been posting "spoof" videos with shock titles and stills but comparatively innocent contents. Quintuplicate decided to limit all content that was either not safe for work or had a description that suggested it to a new channel. He defied this. When Quintuplicate asked Lyra for advice, she simply banned him. She justified her decision immediately after by claiming his intention was always to cause trouble, and that "this time it's just intended to be subliminal". "If left to his own devices he would just get gradually more annoying over time", she said. The new channel remains, as does the new rule. ### SCAMBAITING TEAM STARTED. A Systemspace scambaiting team was formed on the 6th. In essence, scambaiting is a sport that trolls scammers, makes them do useless things with the promise of material gain, and in general wastes their time. The thinking is that the more time they spend getting trolled by scambaiters, the less they'll have to hurt people. "We do not plan to connect it with 419eater or other larger, older scambaiting communities, or affiliate it with any group of people except for Systemspace", Quintuplicate, its founder, said. ### AMADEUS AND SANYA LEAVE AND REJOIN; FLOWER LEAVES. On the 25th of April, Amadeus posted a screenshot of a conversation with a friend in Miniwatrix. This agitated Sanya, because she thought Miniwa's Riot was supposed to be private. After that, some other people also became angry at Amadeus and forced him to leave; Miniwa said he "had his finger on the delete button". dln_ and Quintuplicate said his account should not have been deleted. The next morning, Flower noticed and became enraged as well because he thought Amadeus had been harassed, and believed it was acting like a lynch mob. The argument got heated, and at one point Flower talked about demodding Sanya. Later he apologized for it, but it was too late. That evening Sanya said she had "made her family angry". This meant she had failed her only purpose in Life: giving people "soulful awareness". To her this meant she was going to kill herself. This caused a lot of concern among the community, and most of those who were present at the time sprang to action and attempted to save her life. People posted recollections of how she described the town she lived in, in order to find a location to which emergency services could be called, and a backup of her site was made. Fortunately, she appeared about three hours after she left, having evidently been talked out of doing it by people who cared for her. Amadeus also rejoined that same night. Flower has not yet rejoined. ### GOT A NEWS TIP? **Contact us** at silvercrescent[at]protonmail.com and get subsidized ad space! ## SPECIAL FEATURE: INTERVIEW WITH YORI, TECH ADVISOR, ON CURRENT TECHNOLOGICAL PROBLEMS IN MINIWATRIX On the 17th the Silver Crescent interviewed Yori, our new technological advisor, on the technical problems that are facing Miniwatrix today. Our principal goal in doing so was to distill certain questions he had raised in our technology channel to be understandable by those without specialized knowledge. This interview has been reformatted, and edited for spelling, grammar, clarity, punctuation, and capitalization, but in a way that ensures no meaning or context is lost. SC: What are CDN's? How were they used before you pointed out the vulnerability? Yori: Well, a CDN is a content delivery network, the idea being that it's a collection of servers put all over the place meant to deliver a file as fast as possible. Without hashing the content, in theory when your web browser downloads the file from the CDN it could give you a altered version of the file / library. Another concern is that a CDN can log your IP so they can build up a profile of what times you use your browser and other personal information. SC: I see, what did you suggest Miniwa to do to avert this problem? Yori: Well, the thing is that it's only a small file that's just jQuery, so I think he should put it on his own server at miniwa.space. SC: So are you suggesting we make our own CDN, or just deliver files without one? Yori: I'm suggesting no CDN, especially for one file, since the performance improvement is negligible at best. SC: Now I'm going to go on to VPSes. What are VPSes? Yori: VPS stands for Virtual Private Server, basically you're renting a virtual machine from someone to host your site on. SC: What will be the consequences of going without one? Yori: We will have to host this site ourselves. SC: Is there a reason why we should switch to other VPS providers? Do we have one right now? Yori: Yes, it's called DigitalOcean. Well, I don't think DigitalOcean is the most privacy respecting and bulletproof host, not to mention it's an American company, but at the same time it's not the worst. SC: Do you think there is a difference in how different countries respect privacy? Yori: Yes, of course. SC: Would you care to explain? Yori: Simply put, here in the US, the NSA is a very real thing that spies on most Americans. Also, if you're a company that's under US jurisdiction any of the 3 letter government organizations can get involved way easier than if you were out of the country. Another concern of mine is cancel culture, it's a plague that is consuming the English speaking realm and so I feel big US corporations are susceptible to this more than others. SC: Do we use CloudFlare? Yori: Yes. SC: What are the advantages and disadvantages to using it? How does it work? Yori: riot.miniwa.space & matrix are running on a DigitalOcean VPS, whereas miniwa.space is going through CloudFlare and is being hosted on his own server (a Raspberry Pi in his home). Basically CloudFlare is a reverse proxy with DDOS protection. That gives Miniwa 2 advantages. It hides his IP and, well, gives it DDOS protection. The problem is that it's literally a man in the middle. It can see everything, if it were not for https it could even see the content. Right now as it stands it knows everything but the content itself. SC: So a normal proxy hides your IP to sites you visit, but a reverse proxy hides your IP to people who visit your site? Am I correct? Yori: Yes. SC: Thank you for participating in this interview. Yori: No problem, it was a pleasure. ## CRESCENT DAY, CRESCENT TIME! Leftevent's birthday was on the 1st. A history channel was formed in Toxspace. Zentraedi's birthday was on the 6th. Birthmark's birthday was on the 20th. Genosad made a new Systemspace board on 9chan on the 28th. ## HELP WANTED. ### Writers - Writing news stories - Coming up with "Puzzles" and "Trivia" ### Copyeditors - Proofreading and formatting articles ### Correspondents - Collecting notable and interesting community happenings for the "Crescent Day, Crescent Time" column - Reporting on stories for the "Community News" column Needed Give back to the community, hone your writing and people skills, and have fun along the way! Apply **today** at silvercrescent[at]protonmail.com ## PRIVATE ADVERTISEMENTS. ### ADVERTISE WITH US and get access to an audience of almost ***fifty*** penniless autistic NEET's! - $1 for every 100 words of text, or 250 characters of ***area*** (length * width) of any ASCII art illustrations, ***not*** how many characters are actually used, or part thereof. - This rate is a maximum, and may be waived or reduced at our sole discretion. - We reserve the right to reject or request modifications to all advertisements. - Send Bitcoin Cash to bitcoincash:qq9ncyspj2k6uj7tmhyez0pgshr2r0gaasse0wsccg - Contact us at silvercrescent[at]protonmail.com if you would like to donate any other currency. ## PUZZLES. ### ANSWER KEY TO LAST ISSUE'S PUZZLE. Another brain teaser this time! Since the peaches were put through an industrial fruit dryer, that means the quantity of water, not that of fruit, changed. In the beginning, the peaches weighed 1,000 pounds altogether. 99 percent of that means 990 pounds of water, which means there are actually only 10 pounds of fruit. When the peaches are out of the dryer, the amount of fruit, 10 pounds, remains unchanged, but since the end product is 98 percent water, 10 pounds is now 2 percent, 1/50th, of the weight of the peaches. This means all the other 49/50ths is water, 490 pounds of it, and therefore the peaches weigh 500 pounds now. ### THIS ISSUE'S PUZZLE. In an enclosed cafeteria, a teacher is standing in front of the students with a ball in her hand. She says she will throw the ball, and whoever catches it, if anyone, will have no homework for the rest of the year. The students in the cafeteria are seated in 25 rows of tables, some facing the teacher (on the *far side* of the tables) and some with their backs to her (on the *near side*). They are level with each other. Assume that: - the teacher is 160 centimeters tall, and is throwing the ball from a height of 120 centimeters above the ground, from a random angle between 0 and 90 degrees, - the heads of the seated students are 100 centimeters above the ground, but they are holding their hands above them at a level of 140 centimeters above the ground, - the first row of tables (and therefore the students on the near side of that row) is 50 centimeters apart from the ball, the near and far sides of a table are 25 centimeters apart from each other, and adjacent rows of tables are 10 centimeters apart from each other, - the students will move their hands left and right to catch the ball, and up and down so that they are between 130 and 150 centimeters from the ground, - there is no air resistance. Which row should a student sit in, and in the near or far side of it, to maximize their chances of catching the ball? ## TRIVIA. Oklahoma was originally established as a giant reservation to which Native Americans could be removed. Until 1965, Botswana's capital was not even located in the country - it was in Mafikeng, South Africa. Before the 1950s North America and South America were not considered to be separate continents. Australia was originally planned to include New Zealand and Fiji. ## LITERARY LUNACY. - The following classes of works are accepted: poetry, skits, short stories, essays, song lyrics, and serialized parts of novels and plays, of any genre, relating to any subject except political or religious. - All submissions must be in English only, and contain no promotional content. - Submissions shall not exceed 1,000 words; exceptions are available on a case-by-case basis where the word limit would seriously detract from the merit or quality of the work. - All work will be deemed released into the public domain UNLESS you explicitly indicate otherwise, and provide an email address for contact regarding permissions. If one is not provided, the one you sent it with will be used. - Send it to silvercrescent[at]protonmail.com. ### THE SWORD OF THE WILDERNESS. *An Alternate History.* By Quintuplicate Confederation. *continued from last issue...* That very night, when Jim Jones, Jr tried to present the authenticated text to his adoptive father, he was called a "sell-out" and savagely whipped. His father then forced him to cut the agreement into little squares, which were mixed into the stew for the next day. To make it clear that his son had fallen into disgrace, the whole conversation was broadcasted throughout the compound. Then Jim Jones wrote a letter to the Guyanese Government, stating that since the attestation statement misspelled "Peoples Temple", the whole agreement was to be invalidated. The thickly forested border between Venezuela and Guyana was too difficult for Guyana's 500-man army to keep an eye on constantly. As a result, many prospective residents simply flew into neighboring Curiapo, from which they took a variety of tracks across the border into Jonestown. The most heavily-trafficked paths were christened "Paths to Heaven." However, Burnham implemented a $20 U.S. reward to all who would inform the government of unauthorized trails across the border, so "Paths to Heaven" were constantly blocked by Guyanese government troops. But believers were somehow always forewarned a day or two beforehand, so that no user of these paths was ever captured. Tips suddenly stopped in late March and rumors began to circulate of Peoples Temple members having the ability to come out of mountains. No direct sighting was ever reported of any member coming out of a mountain, though, so no hypotheses could be made at the time. The truth only came out in the testimonies after Operation Gedaliah. It turned out that George Collins, a member of the Peoples Temple, was also an avid amateur spelunker. He entered a cave he had found by the side of the road, but got trapped inside because of a cave-in. He had no choice but to go deeper and deeper into the cave system. After three days of traveling and surviving only on one rotten potato he found in the bottom of his backpack, he finally saw sunlight, eighty feet above him. A heavy rainstorm began and the cave was flooded. By dog-paddling desperately with his last strength he was able to float to the top, where he was found by a group of migrants, having traveled across the border to Venezuela. The members of the Peoples Temple soon named this route the "Collins Expressway". While the reason it was discovered and named the “Collins Expressway” had not been found, it was known that they were using some sort of cave. Neither Guyana nor Venezuela possessed soldiers of the caliber needed to seal off the "Expressway", though, so it was left open. The only mention of Collins we found in the Jonestown broadcasts was not praising him, but castigating him. Jim Jones accused him of receiving help from the Devil and of having traveled to Hell to learn all his secret tricks. Jones forced every member of his inner circle to urinate and defecate into his mouth, and then electroshock him to "exorcise the diabolical spirit". After that, while still moaning, he was placed inside a tied-up trash bag and thrown into the Kaituma River. While Jonestown remained blockaded, Curiapo continued to receive triweekly deliveries of essential supplies which were then smuggled into Jonestown in small parcels. To catch the smugglers, Sergeant Joe Dawes of Kaituma police decided to disguise Kaituma as Curiapo. This was done with the expectation that under low-visibility conditions, flights carrying things destined for Jonestown would land at Kaituma instead by accident, where they could be seized by waiting customs agents. This was accomplished by dimming the lights on Kaituma's Town Hall come nightfall, while Dawes and his men were busy erecting a fake model of the Curiapo church with its trademark spire, which was bathed in light. All this work finally paid off April 8, 1978, when a regularly scheduled delivery flight to Curiapo landed at Kaituma by mistake, as it was dark and stormy. Realizing his mistake, the pilot, Harry Longman, tried to take off again, but was apprehended by six customs agents and taken into confinement. The articles on the plane, which mainly comprised crates of Flavor-Aid, with other negligible quantities of miscellaneous foodstuffs, were sent to be analyzed by laboratory staff at the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Guyana. They reported that "within the drink there is an almost unbelievably lethal dose of cyanide." At the same time, Longman had admitted that at least two planes carrying similar goods had been sent to Jonestown. ## OPINION. ### Why we matter Why does Systemspace matter? Because that's us and who we are. If that doesn't convince you, here's why: Since we learned our lives would end one day, we have always wanted to put off or lighten that uncomfortable truth. Religion occurs when an idea of what you will experience after death becomes organized, and supplemented with a series of other ideas about the nature of this life, who controls your behavior, are you naturally good or evil, and the like. We call these other ideas "philosophy", and religion is the compound of the primal idea and philosophy. *All* religions are founded on the idea of exchange. Many religions will promise a good outcome in the future in exchange for doing good works, most of the rest will do so in exchange for devotion to a god or supreme being, and all will do so for faith in the god or supreme being. Each of these is open for abuse because they are *ambiguous*: the definition of "good works", "devotion", or "faith" is uncertain and can be changed. By using supernatural incentives and threats, especially those that relate to the individual's own afterlife, people have utilized religion to enrich themselves, restrict individuals' actions, and control the rules of societies. These incentives are *unlimited*: they are for ever, and their loss is of unlimited scope, as sins can be made up "on the fly", or it can be just said that everything unsaved people do is sin, and of unlimited consequence, as their nonexistence condemns people to oblivion or eternal torment. For us, the situation is different. Salvation is *unambiguous*: the act of registration commences and completes it, without need for further definition. It is *limited*: it is for a limited time, until the move to LFE, and its loss is of a limited scope, only such as Tsuki and the companies, in exercise of the Project's unquestionable right to self-preservation, decide to take away from those who endanger it, in much the same way as a person who uses a motor vehicle to hurt people loses the privilege of driving, and of limited consequence, for it will not end existence or consciousness or say that unpleasantness is you'll ever feel. The reasons for transgression may be justly criticized as overbroad, but there is no doubt that it arises from the same right to self-defense all beings have, rather than a desire to regulate the conduct of all members of a society. *We retain religion's rewards, but we remove religion's restraints*. And it is this statement that if we ever cease to exist (which I hope will never happen), should and will outlive all our other statements. Even the possibility that no actions except joining and refraining from active harm, no prayers, not even belief, is necessary to salvation, will promote liberty. Law and moral conscience are enough to regulate behavior, and when they are not, religion will not help. We are flexible; we have never claimed to be infallible; we can be intertwined with any religion or theory, and serve as the beginning of any way of knowing. *We are not a religion, though we contain the roots of religion; we are not science, though we contain the seeds of science*. For responses, additions, and replies to this editorial, the word limit for letters to the editor is waived; the other rules still apply. Give comments...express feedback...propose suggestions...make your voice heard with ### LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Tips to maximize your chances of acceptance: - Write to silvercrescent[at]protonmail.com, and clearly label it as such. - Keep it under 250 words. - Give it a descriptive title, and focus it around one main idea. - Be clear and respectful but firm. - We try to be fair and balanced, but we will select a cross-section of all viewpoints; yours will not necessarily make the cut. - We will try to respond publicly to your letter, but there are no guarantees.