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170620 Arsenault Love to All

This is a copy of a letter that was sent today to John Arsenault.

Mr. Arsenault is acting as General Counsel for LTM, the company which owns PIA, which may or may not be a company that owns, or has merged with, Freenode. The relationships between the three entities need to be sorted out.

Full paragraphs in italics are annotations. However, short quotes in italics, mixed with regular text, are part of the letter.

I've dropped one word, “remotely”, from this copy of the letter, as it might be perceived as unnecessarily sarcastic.

This post will be moved to an LTM-PIA-Freenode page at some point.

ATTN: John Arsenault

Thank you for writing.

You seem to be dodging most of the points raised in the initial letter to you. Or you've simply glanced at the letter and haven't actually reviewed it.

You asked for “any evidence you have of any actual crimes against children”. Unless you didn't actually review the initial letter, this is misdirection on your part.

I don't need to prove or disprove anything in this context because I haven't asked you to acknowledge that “actual crimes against children” occurred.

I didn't bring up the child sexual harassment issue, Mr. Arsenault. I considered the matter to be settled.

However, your direct or indirect client felt the need, not simply to bring up child sexual harassment, but to attempt to impose a gag order in connection with the subject.

A gag order that was to apply to websites that were entirely outside of Freenode's jurisdiction.

From legal, public relations, and practical perspectives, all three of these contexts, it's possible that this step was inadvisable.

The specific actions that I've commented on, and that you have little choice but to acknowledge occurred, were highly public and were logged by a dozen people.

Including the administrator at the heart of the matter.

The administrator is Fuchs, possible IRL name Christian Looslier, possible sexual orientation of gay, resident of Europe, involved with Ubuntu, unfamiliar with U.S. laws, and a tedious hard-ass, but only the first and last points are confirmed.

If the administrator claims that he's lost his logs, feel free to ask him if he contests the factual nature of anything that has been referred to or alluded to in past letters or website postings.

It might be fun. He and you would need to decide whether or not to gamble on logs from up to a dozen other people not surfacing as events proceeded.

If you didn't review the initial letter to you, it's suggested that you do so at this time.

The question to be addressed presently is as follows:

Does LTM support, or disavow, the highly-public — and logged — statements and decisions of the Freenode administrator at the heart of the matter? Respond unambiguously, please.

Additionally, if possible, respond regarding other points that you've passed over.

Felony DDoS, to the tune of 150 GB of router logs alone in a few hours, is a separate issue. But let's focus, for now, on the requests made in the preceding paragraphs.

The final DDoS resulted in 150 GB, as in gigabytes, not megabytes, of router logs alone. I didn't even know that that was possible. But apparently, with rising bandwidth, it's common these days.

A few pieces of evidence suggest that Red-###, aka Iosif, aka “Daniel”, coordinated, or was involved in, that DDoS.

However, analysis of a letter that Red sent to Cloudflare management combined with other factors suggests that he might be just 14 years old.

Where does a kid, even these days, get that kind of firepower?

We have Red's POP, a Vodafone node in Dublin, Ireland, but the best we'll be able to do, in his case, is get a letter forwarded to his parents, assuming that he is, in fact, a minor.

There is no chance, surely, that Red or his friends will reveal something to IRC or in-game associates who aren't what they appear to be.

This reminds me. Readers who are interested in networks are invited to scroll down and review the 1-line socat script that was posted on May 28.

The test is to explain what socat is and what the script can be used for. If you're able to pass the test, and would like a Summer job, feel free to look me up.

I can be found on Freenode and other IRC networks though my Freenode nick is no longer OldCoder. Which is an issue, actually, that I plan to address with LTM, PIA, and Freenode.

I consider VPS and VPN to be educational. Would you like access to one of each?

The job is simply to play a game, to establish an identity, and to gather information. You'll need to learn IRC and Minetest.

PIA will approve, I'm sure, as they're a VPN firm. Perhaps we'll rent VPNs from them.

If you don't wish to answer the key question, that is your prerogative. I will, of course, communicate with other parties involved, in this event, to offer them the opportunity to do so.

Such communications with other parties will be, naturally, documented and may be posted online or distributed in hard-copy form to third parties who may be able to provide relevant information or for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are protected, unambiguously, under U.S. laws.

170620 Freenode Fun, Son, under the Sun

This is a copy of a letter that was sent today to John Arsenault of LTM, Jayson Quayle of PIA, staff at Freenode, and other parties.

Full paragraphs in italics are annotations. However, short quotes in italics, mixed with regular text, are part of the letter.

This post will be moved to an LTM-PIA-Freenode page at some point.

Arsenault's response to the first part below was reasonable. I haven't reviewed it closely, but he seems to be legitimate in this context.

To provide context, a surprising number of attorneys are casual about State Bar standards and State laws.

Mr. Arsenault is one of relatively few attorneys I've dealt with who is, or seems to be, in compliance with the type of law that is referred to here.

1. John Arsenault, have you committed a prosecutable crime in California?

This depends partly on the difference between General Counsel and In- House Counsel. I'm a simple, easily befuddled, Old Coder and don't understand such things. However, you don't seem to be licensed in California.

Isn't LTM a California-based company? Or, at least, a California Foreign Corporation incorporated in Los Angeles?

If so, are you licensed in the State? And, if the answer is no, have you committed a prosecutable crime, as opposed to administrative violation, by listing yourself as General Counsel for LTM? Or does the issue in question apply only to In-House Counsel? Is there a difference?

The California State Bar tells me that Out of State attorneys who act as In-House Counsel are, in fact, in violation of the law, unless they've both filed the paperwork and submitted the fees needed to operate legally in the State. They've been kind enough to express interest in the details of possible crimes.

My assumption is that General Counsel may be different, or that you're properly licensed, or that you have, in fact, filed the paperwork and submitted the fees.

If it is all right with you, though, may I confirm that this is the case?

Arsenault is apparently in the clear, in this context, but other attorneys that I pull this on sometimes evaporate instantly.

Last Fall, one of them, Rebecca, left a vapor trail. She was, whoosh, I'm out of here. I phoned her to make sure that she was all right. She was O.K. but she seemed focused on how I'd be able to use pretty much anything that she said.

Rebecca was replaced by an attorney, David, who boasted of arguing in front of State Supreme Courts.

David didn't have the State legal problem. But he didn't last long, either.

I caught him in a few slips. They were minor, but he was surprised that a civilian was able to spot them at all.

The real problem, for David, was that I didn't follow the script that he had in mind. I'm not really a script person. Not since 2012.

Eventually, I communicated with the heads of David's firm, one with about 30 offices nation-wide, and offered a few observations. They didn't seem inclined to contradict my points.

David disappeared at about that time. I missed him, though, so I called him on Christmas Day just to say Hello.

2. Addressing Jayson Quayle at PIA, a component of LTM, PIA has not acknowledged receipt of a letter sent, days ago, to address, in detail, concerns expressed by PIA. Nor has PIA responded to requests for confirmation of receipt.

There is, therefore, either a technical issue on PIA's side or an administrative one. Accordingly, it is appropriate to proceed to a new stage.

Legitimate and reasonable communication may now take place in other contexts, modes, or venues, including but not limited to communication at, to, or involving non-business street addresses and/or third parties of different types.

The process may not be rapid. However, the turtle in the proverbial race did have a point. And PIA is, after all, a business. The Old Turtle says, “follow the money”.

It's important, in situations involving multiple people, to get a feeling for where all of the pieces, so to speak, are located on the board.

LTM-PIA-Freenode is no exception. Additionally, I don't know the LTM story, yet, but it's starting to seem interesting.

Jayson Quayle — I don't know if that's his IRL name — strikes me as a Salt of the Earth type. Jayson, if you like, I'll link you to an updated resume when it's ready. Obviously, I know what you do, professionally. The resume will serve to introduce me in this context.

3. I see that parties involved with LTM and/or PIA in the past or present include:

* Jon Roudier, Los Angeles CA, principal of LTM (more below)
* Roger Ver of Bitcoin
* Ted Kim of LTM
* Rick Falvinge of PIA
* Jayson Quayle, Head of Support for PIA
* Isaac Elbhar, Manager of Operations, not clear at which level
* Andrew Lee, apparently the founder of PIA (more below)
* Sung Park, connected to both LTM and PIA

Jon Roudier's business address, as of 1st Quarter 2017, was listed in public records as 1700 Queens Road, Los Angeles, CA 90069. The address in question, though, is not an office building but a mansion valued at $5M to $8M. The connection to Jon Roudier and/or LTM is unconfirmed.

Kaitlyn Lee, possibly Andrew Lee's wife or sister, seems to be involved with LTM and/or PIA directly or indirectly but this is unconfirmed.

The Lees seem to be strongly connected to the Los Angeles area, but there is an Indiana address to be checked. The address in question may be unrelated.

You'd be surprised at the things that people will talk about, sometimes, to total strangers.

There seems to have been some sort of litigation between Andrew Lee and Sung Park. It's not clear yet if this is current. At least one of the two parties, though, or possibly some of their past or present associates, might be willing to comment on LTM and/or PIA matters.

These are preliminary notes assembled, of course, for legitimate and reasonable purposes that will be documented, formally or informally, should the need arise.

4. I see that John Arsenault does something that he refers to as “content removal”. This sounds a bit like gag orders and takedown attempts.

I'd like to invite John, as a positive and productive gesture, to speak with some of the attorneys who have tried to implement such steps in connection with me.

If it will be helpful to John in the context of communication, research, or improved understanding, I'll be pleased to provide full names of attorneys, residence addresses, cell-phone numbers, dates of birth, and, to the extent that it is legal and appropriate, Social Security Numbers.

John Arsenault will need to certify, in writing, that he will use Social Security Numbers only in accordance with U.S. laws and for legitimate and reasonable purposes.

I like to be transparent and to promote positive social goals. As matters proceed, it should be understood, therefore, that I'll be pleased to post, for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are arguably protected under U.S. laws, on websites and domestic and international hosts numbering in the dozens, documentation related to every communication, step, person, occurrence, sneeze, or twitch of a finger involved.

I tend to snail-mail documents, for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are arguably protected under U.S. laws, to third parties as well. Or to have them hand-delivered, for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are arguably protected under U.S. laws, to entire neighborhoods.

For more information on that part, see the explanation that I offered recently on the Minetest site.

170616 LETTER TO FRIENDS HAS BEEN SENDS

Gang, Thomas Monroe asked a question last night and I've posted a response online for him.

Note: To read the response to Thomas Monroe, scroll down to the next section.

To those of you who have been reasonable or supportive, or who haven't taken a position as of yet, take the online response as FYI.

The rest of you, feel free to read it between the kicks that you aim at pets, the time that you set aside for spitting on women wearing hijabs, and the intervals when you go to Donald Trump rallies.

P.S. Loic Blot's email is bouncing and Cryin' Ryan has talked about technical issues. But we'll look into sensible steps.

Vanessa, I hope that you're well. But note that I've been kind, for 5 years, by choice. I'm not a punching bag, not since 2012, and this sh*t has gone on long enough.

Addressing the trolls, wish to mock and jeer and fling feces like monkeys? Sure y not. But monkeys end up on display in the zoo. Shall I demonstrate?

The full set of letters to LTM Corporate Counsel and PIA management will go online in due course. You might find them interesting.

LTM, if you're not familiar with it, is the company that owns PIA, which is the company that owns Freenode, which is the entity that is presently involved with the Minetest group in the context of multiple felony DDoSes and, on a fully documented basis, an attempted gag order related to child sexual harassment.

170616 THOMAS MONROE HERE YOU GOE

I've written about 15 pages of text tonight to respond to an inquiry from Thomas Monroe.

Most of the text isn't ready and won't be ready for a while. But I'll post this part since it's largely completed.

Thomas Monroe asked me what I'm fighting for. The answer is that I'm fighting for, or in connection with, six things.

F1. The murder of the OldCoder identity as the conclusion of the last in a series of escalating dogpiles.

Special thanks go to Craig Robbins, Perttu Ahola, and sfan5 for the dogpile in question.

The OldCoder identity was kind and helpful and had tried, for 5 years, to be useful and to earn tolerance or even acceptance.

Acceptance of things as small as differences in how one types.

But I'm talking to the people who burned old women because they must be witches, who disappeared the Armenians, who put the Jews in the ovens, who hanged the Blacks.

“He types differently. Burn the witch.”

Yeah, sure, you're modern. No similarities at all. God smiles upon you.

Did you ever read the anecdote about the father, mother, and child who made it over the mountains in one of the lesser European countries about 700 years ago?

I don't remember why they were traveling, but it was an accomplishment.

They wandered into a town and tried to introduce themselves. They were understandable but their speech was different.

The good folke pondered and decided that they must be witches.

The father and mother went into the flames first. The child, a boy the same age as our younger players, didn't quite understand. “Take them out of the fire”, he said.

The adults standing next to him weren't sure how to respond. So, like good Minetest folke, they put the boy into the flames as well.

I'm an idiot. 5 years invested by somebody who had perhaps 15 left to live. Smashed to pieces by trolls who mocked and jeered as they did it.

Easy come, easy go. Except that I'll be dead before I get back what's been stolen. Oh, well :-)

The new identity has a different name. In a legitimate and reasonable sense, one that is consistent with, and arguably protected under, U.S. laws, it isn't kind or helpful. It is, however, an identity that is committed to goals.

Commitment is good
Let me share it with you
Let love and humor ensue
No need to be blue
With you I'll be true
Love and caring
God is staring
At the sight of your love so bright
There is no plight
Let me share it with you

F2. The destroyed channel, #minetest-project, that was my concept and proposal, that did some good, and that I deserved thanks for as opposed to dogpiles, shunning, multiple shutdown attempts, and three separate DDoSes.

The MT trolls were so full of hate for the different that they couldn't help themselves. They couldn't let it be.

F3. The position of op in #minetest that was part of a deal. It wasn't a gift.

The deal was broken without notice or discussion when I tried simply to transmit a message to the ugliest little troll that the Minetest group has encountered since the start of the project.

Red Iosif “Daniel”.

Red was trolling. In fact, I was told later that this was the second time he'd trolled that day.

He'd /ignored me. I had no way to tell him to stop. So I proposed to /kick him and to put a warning message into the /kick.

sfan5 /kicked me instead for no reason that is apparent. I /kicked him and his bot in return. Subsequently, I found that my op had been deleted.

No explanation was ever offered to me. Gee, that was nice of you, Perttu.

The position belonged to me. I'm due recompense per the terms of the deal between Perttu and me in 2012. I'm not requesting recompense. I'm going to take it.

Ever wonder why I was so careful with Landmine? No, of course not. Most of you who were there are animals. Not sentient.

You don't think. If challenged, you don't respond with facts or logic. You fling feces. Such creative.

But I have the gestalt thing. It manifested at age 6. I could see Landmine. And I can see Red.

Landmine had a soul.

He did what was in his nature. But his nature evolved. I'd like to believe that he became the tree of possibilities that I once sang to him about.

For those who are curious, the song, which was extemporaneous, is at this link.

Red is something that Landmine never was: genuinely self-righteous. Fortunately, he's also over-confident.

The cash offered for full identity information related to Red is hereby upped to $3,000.00 USD. Information will be used for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are consistent with, and arguably protected under, U.S. laws.

Red himself is invited to apply for this offer. Surely the light of his brilliance will wash away any legitimate and reasonable risk to him.

3 grand seems reasonable. This matter has cost me 15 grand. The plans that I'd had for the next few years are gone.

I don't get to go to Germany to meet Metacognician. Possibly not even to Utah to meet Blue Dream. My book will take years longer. The physical pain and the exhaustion will need to hang around for now.

3 grand is only 20% more. And I do so look forward to the legitimate and reasonable purposes that are involved.

F4. To demonstrate that attempted gag orders can have the opposite effect. The irony is pleasing.

For what it's worth, folks, I have 5 years experience with what I refer to as:

“gag order *this*, b*tch”

Did you think that the stories I've told over the past 5 years were senile soapbox? Geez. I've commented further on this issue some sections further down.

F5. To respond to Perttu Ahola's and Nathanael Courant's characterization of autism as something to be ashamed of.

I'd like to demonstrate what a “too detailed” autistic person with gestalt perception is able to do.

Pro Tip: Sometimes it's best to understand what you're mocking.

F6. To respond to mockery related to DDoSes and so-called “conspiracy theories” connected to Maciek Kasatkin.

It's simply a matter of good, clean, fun, of course. If the Minetest group enjoys a bit of laughter, it must be healthy. Perhaps I should seek to do the same.

I look forward to opportunities, in the months and years to come, to demonstrate that I have a sense of humor and that it's creative.

Gentle Ben Now and Then

I promise to handle things, moving forward, as gently and respectfully as I have with my own beloved mother. I assume that this is reassuring.

BTW I'll be posting updated information about the whore in question on Haggis Hell this Fall. I'll pay $1,500 for information that I'm missing.

Red, you're more important to me than my mother :D

The information will be used, of course, for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are consistent with, and arguably protected under, U.S. laws.

Box Full of Dox

Regarding the gag-order irony issue:

When somebody tries to hit me with a gag order, which happens surprisingly often, there is a procedure that I follow.

The first step is to establish legitimate and reasonable purposes. For an example of that type of list, click here.

Then I hire detectives.

I conduct legitimate and reasonable research, including phone calls to third parties who may wish to offer their thoughts on issues.

It isn't possible to get communications with third parties barred, by the way. Not broadly and on an “a priori” basis.

In the most important legal cases where people tried to do that to me, they spent $100,000 USD and got a document from me in exchange, not even a formal settlement, in which I promised to f*ck them for the rest of their lives.

Those cases cost me my home of 25 years. But, when I need a boost, I imagine their faces as they read the document, as they learned what their attorneys had managed to do for them, what their money had bought them, as they understood, at last, the concept of legitimate and reasonable consequences.

:D

I snail-mail, for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are consistent with, and arguably protected under, U.S. laws, documents to neighborhoods.

In the 2012 to 2013 gag-order litigation, I was asked exactly how many households I'd communicated with in this manner. I didn't know the number. But it was a boatload :-)

In some cases, I hire process servers or couriers to do something that is referred to as “neighborhood drop-off” in person.

There are subtleties involved. For example, sometimes I use a criss-cross pattern to increase the coverage area. The idea is that communication between local parties might help to fill in some of the gaps.

I do websites as well, of course, and email campaigns. I know how to set up DKIM to create new email servers that pass muster with the majors. Actually, I've written How-To guides on the subject.

Legitimate and reasonable communications with Churches and associated groups are part of the picture. Such parties are interested, sensibly enough, in questions that fall into their areas of expertise and responsibility.

In the case of Minetest, new avenues for legitimate and reasonable communications exist.

I can ask kids in IRC or in-game to let me speak with their parents regarding the Minetest child sexual harassment part of the situation.

Whether or not they agree to do so, legitimate and reasonable goals, consistent with, and arguably protected by, U.S. laws, will be accomplished.

BTW I posted a socat script on May 28 which any bright kid could use to enter Minetest worlds with random IPV4 addresses. Feel free to scroll down and check it out. It's only one line long. Linux is good.

So, see you, for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are consistent with, and arguably protected under, U.S. laws in perhaps 75% of the existing Minetest worlds in the coming quarters.

In short, friends, if I decide to get a message out, or to conduct legitimate and reasonable research, I'm not shy about doing so :-)

Shyness was burned out of me when I met the actual Angel of Death.

Didn't any of you, even one of you, listen to what I tried to explain over the last 5 years? I thought that I was being open and honest. But apparently I was talking to rocks.

Note to Vanessa

Yes, the 1st DDoS isn't known to be connected to the MT group. Remember, I've offered to apologize for insisting that this must be the case.

However, the 2nd and 3rd DDoSes certainly were conducted by Minetest trolls. In fact, the evidence suggests that our boisterous young friend, Red Iosif “Daniel”, was involved in the last one.

Which, by the way, Vanessa, was no lightweight attempt for you to mock. It generated 150 GB (not MB) of router logs alone in just a few hours.

Would you like to talk to the host, a genuinely kind man? I've known him for 5 years online. I met him in person in February. He said that it was a profound experience.

He doesn't think that I should be ashamed of typing differently. He's more the type who, when he struck a deer with his car once, stopped and stayed with it, attempting to comfort it, as it died.

But I believe him to be genetically similar to a Risen Christ. The Minetest trolls can't make that claim. They're more the mocking, jeering crowd.

A few weeks ago, I took the host in question to meet Red in IRC. The little troll seemed oddly reluctant to spout sh*t. It was unusual for him.

Servers are the life's greatest pleasures

Folks, if somebody has, in fact, been f*cking with servers, step back, to the extent that monkeys are able to do so, and examine your assumptions.

Pro Tip: I'm honest and forthright. Even the most mentally ill among you — Craig, I'm talking to you — should acknowledge this privately.

In short, I spell out legitimate and reasonable steps that I'm going to take as though I'm talking to the slow-witted. Which, of course, is the case.

For current issues, look to your own ranks.

As a related note, it appears that Craig is, in fact, mentally ill in real life. It's not clear how I'm supposed to react to this. Well, actually, it is.

Craig, let's play.

170529 ON THE PATH

<OldCoder> But what was it, really?
<Kappelin> I have no clue
<Kappelin> the dreams that I've been having lately, if I remember them, further confuse me
<OldCoder> You can remember them... Decide to write them down and you'll wake up to do so
<OldCoder> Or dream of doing this :-)
<OldCoder> That happens

<Kappelin> for example, if some problem arises in real life, and I find a solution in real life, the dream might have 5 what-if scenarios of other related problems which go unsolved
<OldCoder> Oh, yes
<Kappelin> even though real-life problem was solved
<OldCoder> When I passed out earlier, I dreamed of fitting a curve to data based on current issues

<Kappelin> the point I am trying to make is that lately my dreams have been entirely unfulfilling and unhelpful
<Kappelin> to the point where it just clogs my mind
<Kappelin> and so today I feel I'm starting to get some of that clarity back

<OldCoder> Do you feel that weeks ago was related to a buildup of a physical illness?
<Kappelin> definitely not physical illness
<Kappelin> I just felt distracted and severely misguided

<OldCoder> Do you have a path in sight now?
<OldCoder> Oh, it feels so good not to be groggy
<Kappelin> not as concretely as I'd like but I've put off the dread/lost feelings for now

<OldCoder> Dread...
<OldCoder> Feel no dread
<OldCoder> There is no whirlpool
<OldCoder> You're not at the bottom
<OldCoder> Looking up at the surface
<OldCoder> You walk a path
<OldCoder> Destination unclear
<OldCoder> But you're on the path

<Kappelin> I need to surround myself with more/different people, not just colleagues and occasional friends here/there
<Kappelin> meeting new people might be useful
<OldCoder> In real life, you mean?
<OldCoder> Yes
<Kappelin> yes
<OldCoder> Are you involved with volunteer groups?
<Kappelin> not presently

<OldCoder> Will this mean much less time online? It hasn't been much as it is.
<OldCoder> But yes
<OldCoder> Seek direct communication with people
<OldCoder> But do not forget
<OldCoder> People of all types who are friends

170529 FUCHS REDUCHS

Grandolf says:

“if u dont make enemies ur a cowerd or worse”

Fuchs, let's talk about the “misunderstanding” that you had with Grandolf.

As a related note, you understand, I'm sure, that if PIA doesn't respond to requests for Corporate Counsel contact information, it'll be reasonable for me to phone PIA management at any number where management can be reached.

This may include residential phone numbers.

You understand, as well, that I operate on a transparent basis. Which means that I'll need to disclose steps taken, and information involved, as things proceed.

Two points of information just for you. Well, just for you and for PIA management :-)

1. The phrase “child sex harassment” carries more weight in the U.S. than most trite phrases PIA might try to use.

2. In the U.S., the rights of private establishments are limited both by statute and by case law.

Fuchs, you told Grandolf:

“the original k-line (on your other connection) was set for the ##minetest-project spam in #minetest, however, it seems that this one here was set by a misunderstanding. I thus removed it and you should be able to reconnect.”

What was the “misunderstanding”, Christian? :-)

Did the “misunderstanding”, have something to do with the fact that you said, in public, that you personally will block people from Freenode if they list, on websites unrelated to Freenode, the real names of people who sexually harass children in game worlds that are also unrelated to Freenode?

Christian - is the name correct? - that's interesting. So is the fact that you made this statement in public.

170528 FREENODE FOLLIES ARE MORE FUN THAN DOLLIES

You know, I'm sort of busy. The recent nonsense has cost me actual cash through lost time.

It would be nice to have 72 hours straight without DDoSes, dogpiles, trolling, and childish attacks over here. But I gather that the expectation is unreasonable.

All right. I like to be accommodating.

Grandolf is a decent kid who's been in Minetest for 1 to 2 years. He's mentioned this little #freenode event:

<Grandolf> any mods on?
<Grandolf> HOW DO I GET A CLOAK?
<Grandolf> oops
<Grandolf> srry hit caps lock XD
<Grandolf> how do i get a cloak tho?
<gry> you would like it for your nickserv account as unaffiliated/grandolf, and you are aware a project may offer you an affiliated cloak afterwards and you can switch to that, yes?
<Grandolf> ok
<gry> just asking, as this is commonly needed information; a staff member would help you shortly
<Grandolf> ok
* Grandolf has quit (K-Lined)

Um, #freenode, insane much?

Grandolf adds that Red-Iosif-Daniel, the DDoSer, is following him around different networks and channels.

My guess is that Red told #freenode that Grandolf was me. Which leads to an interesting question, one that I think we'll explore this Summer and Fall.

BTW, #freenode, DDoS is a felony violation, in the U.S, where both PIA and you have legal exposure, of CFAA.
Minetest Ponder

If people are that trigger happy when I haven't even *started* to use, for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are consistent with U.S. laws, data brokers and VPNs to address the advocacy by #freenode of child sex harassment...

... advocacy that #freenode has documented, itself, and has publicly boasted of, itself ... that's the best part, from a martial arts legal perspective ...

How much disruption are #freenode people and Minetest trolls likely to bring upon themselves by themselves?

Ever see The Monsters are Due on Maple Street? The link is:

https://youtu.be/N2fFyIuMSwk

This little occurrence brings a positive and productive thought, one related to legitimate and reasonable goals, to mind.

I try to be useful. If kids or adults want to learn skills, I teach them skills.

Let's find out if there's interest out there, among the different generations, in techniques used, for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are consistent with U.S. laws, related to VPNs, data brokers, Tor, Whon*x, and a special friend, low-end box set up on the other side of a Tor connection but not using Tor itself.
Freenode Class

Maybe the steps needed to set up low-end boxes as inbound mail servers should be included.

To put it another way, Freenode blocks Mailinator, but it should be easy for a bright kid or college student to create an endless supply of Otherinators.

Too easy. Freenode must have meta-rules in place to guard against this. We'll need to look into it for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are consistent with U.S. laws.

As a technical note, if I included DKIM and SPF basics, and if the low-end box IPV4s weren't DNSBL'd, the servers would work in the outbound direction.

But they'd only need to work in the inbound direction for Freenode validation and/or validation at typical websites.

Modern stuff is fun :-)

For those interested in legitimate and reasonable purposes related to Minetest, classes should cover UDP proxies.

Folks, as a point of information, I started to test UDP proxies months ago. Somebody wanted me to review their world and I didn't usually do that. But I tried socat and it worked pretty well. Naturally, I didn't use the usual nick.

So, which of the in-game nicks around you has been there for less than, say, six months?

As a note to the kids:

socat is nice
and cheap at the price
socat is free, see
for you, Snowden, and me
from socat, gee,
there is no need to flee

socat UDP-LISTEN:30010,fork UDP:11.22.33.44:30012

The homework assignment is as follows:

* study the socat man page or online tutorials
* explain what to substitute for port 30010, for port 30012, and for the IPV4 address
Freenode Friend

Remember, remember
What's good enough for Snowden
good enough for Snowden
good enough for Snowden
Oh Lord, Lord
It's good enough for me

Before you start looking down
Look up your family tree
Know you've been related to Coders
Just like me
Freenode Friend

Patience trumps abuse of process
Q*bes and Whon*x are free
No point in sighs, give yourself
A legitimate and reasonable chance to see

Remember, remember
What's good enough for Snowden
good enough for Snowden
good enough for Snowden
Oh Lord, Lord
It's good enough for me

:D

170527 RED HAS U FLED
Boy on crutches

This is the first day since the night of the most significant DDoS that Red-Iosif-Daniel hasn't been lurking in Codernet, logging, mocking, and laughing.

Red, I thought that you wanted to meet another one of my friends, an autistic priest, and mock him?

To be clear, my priest friend is autistic as I am.

When he was about 13 years old, kids like you beat up him and broke his bones. He had to leave school for a while. When he returned, he says, I was his only friend.

Say, if you mock a priest and then go to Confession to talk about it, how does that work? Do you mock the Confession priest when you're face to face with him?

Vanessa Ezekowitz, you seem just a mite persnickety. Does it have something to do with the fact that Freenode miscalculated, from a legal perspective, and I have the upper hand in legal contexts?

By the way, say Hello to Abe. I seem to recall chatting with him once. I don't know if it was in IRC or on the phone.

170527 RED HEAD IS CRUNCHIER THAN BREAD

A young man who uses the nicknames Red, Iosif, and Daniel is at the heart of recent Minetest events.

Red now claims that his real name is Daniel. This means that it probably isn't Daniel.

The other day, Red DDoSed the server that hosts my IRC network and Minetest worlds. Then he joked about the DDoS in #minetest-hub. After that, he filed an anonymous complaint with Cloudflare.
Red of Minetest

Red now admits to being the person who filed the complaint. Which was worded as though it was written by a 12-year-old.

I don't mean the complaint was sloppy. But it was written by somebody who was pretending to be an adult.

A normal 18 to 22 year old wouldn't have bothered to pretend to be more adult than he was. I doubt that most 16 or 17 years would do so, either.

This is either a mentally different college student or somebody in the 12 to 15 age range.

The complaint has been mocked and shredded.
Minetest laughter

A few weeks back, Red trolled #minetest twice in one day. I threatened to /kick him. sfan5 /kicked me for that. Perttu deopped me over the incident.

In short, Red is a likable lad. If we're able to de-anonymize him, we'll all share hearty laughter over the goings-on.

Vodafone Minetest

Red is located in the Dublin, Ireland area. Or he's been bouncing through there faithfully. He or his parents are Vodafone, Ireland customers.

We have enough to initiate discussions with Vodafone.

They won't reveal Red's identity. But enough has happened that we might be able to get a letter forwarded to Red's parents.

This chat session has been edited for length and readability. If you'd like the unedited version, Red has it and will be happy to share it.

<OldCoder> So, is Daniel your name? Or made-up?
<OldCoder> The host is nice
<OldCoder> Surely he doesn't know things that I haven't even started to learn
<OldCoder> Come and learn from him
<OldCoder> He's about old enough to be your father and my son. The timeless age.

<OldCoder> I think of him as a Zen Master of this sort of thing. I never claimed to be anything in this context myself, Son. That was a reputation that others put on me.

<OldCoder> Daniel?
<Iosif> stop using my real name

<OldCoder> I don't have it. Unless you are, in fact, Daniel.
<OldCoder> Wait, a friend is coming here, Iosif
<OldCoder> He is harmless

* Warhol (~me@harmless.person) has joined

<OldCoder> Warhol, Hi! :D
<Warhol> howdy

<OldCoder> Meet somebody who has just implied that his name is Daniel
<OldCoder> He seems to be near Dublin, Ireland
<OldCoder> He is very very skilled
<OldCoder> Iosif, say Hi to Warhol. Be polite, he is very kind.

<Warhol> Iosif: hi; nice to “meet” you
<OldCoder> Iosif is an Irish name, Warhol
<OldCoder> As is Daniel, I think

<OldCoder> Iosif, Warhol had to handle a DDoS that you told #minetest-hub was “made up”
<OldCoder> How would you know if the DDoS was or wasn't “made up” ?
<OldCoder> And why would you feel the need to say such a thing?

<OldCoder> If you like, you can go sometime to one of Warhol's networks
<OldCoder> One of the ones that was DDoSed
<OldCoder> Perhaps he'll show you around if you ask politely
Coder trip

<OldCoder> Iosif, I've rarely met anybody as kind as Warhol
<OldCoder> I've met him IRL now. It was an odd experience.

<Warhol> OldCoder: “odd experience” you mean because I had just driven thousands of miles in a white van?

<OldCoder> Warhol, wasn't it polka dotted?
<OldCoder> And no, I mean that...
<OldCoder> Conflating one's mental picture of somebody that you know online with their physical presence requires readjustment

<OldCoder> The color of your hair, your demeanor, I had it all correct. You were younger than I'd imagined, but by not so very much.

<Warhol> You could have gotten my hair color from my last name
<Warhol> :P

<OldCoder> You'll grow into exactly the person I'd imagined and... The opposite. My mental picture went against the stereotype.

<OldCoder> It's interesting to imagine. How the picture that I have of Iosif or Daniel might be correct or incorrect.

Red of Minetest <OldCoder> I'm physically very tired
<OldCoder> Let us lurk and allow Iosif to relax and perhaps talk to somebody that I'm sure
<OldCoder> He'll be confident to speak to
<OldCoder> As he is mighty indeed in his skills and his intentions

<Warhol> Iosif: not sure exactly the context of this meeting but OldCoder suggested that we speak since we're both apparently interesting and intellectual people

<OldCoder> That is sufficient context, Warhol, yes
<OldCoder> You're both educated as well. Perhaps Iosif will teach you things.

<OldCoder> We'll discuss the matrix issue later, perhaps tonight
<OldCoder> I don't need to move the new VPS that is behind Cloudflare, I think, and it doesn't need to come back

<Warhol> OldCoder: I'm probably out tonight until later but depends on how much I get done in the next hour here at work

<OldCoder> Warhol, that is just fine :-)
<OldCoder> I hope to chat later; your time is valued
<OldCoder> Ping me and we'll discuss both the next technical issue and the matrix code

<Warhol> thanks; text me if Iosif comes around and I'm AFK. Looking forward to meeting.
<OldCoder> o/

<Warhol> btw such a beautiful day but stuck in office :(
<Warhol> could send picture but it's just an empty parking lot due to upcoming holiday
Minetest Priest

<OldCoder> Thanks for reminding me, Warhol
<OldCoder> I need to visit John the Autistic Priest
<OldCoder> He goes to Catholic and S.F. conventions at this time of year

<OldCoder> Iosif, are you Catholic?
<OldCoder> I have a friend of 45 years standing who is about 5 levels down from the Pope
<OldCoder> Would you like to meet an elderly priest and to instruct him on ethics and behavior?

<Iosif>
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_rage_and_narcissistic_injury
* Iosif (~nemo@minetest.ddos.troll) has left (Leaving)

<OldCoder> Heh

170526 TROLLS TOO BAD SO SAD

1. The VPS host located behind Cloudflare has closed Red's complaint. Too bad, so sad. I've posted advice below which explains how the Minetest trolls can do better next time.

2. Red has now met the previous VPS host, the one that Red DDoSed. Then mocked in #minetest-hub. A real person, and a good one, not a faceless corporation. The conversation will be posted later.

170525 MINETEST SEX HARASSMENT

Somebody whose writing reads a lot like Red's filed an anonymous complaint today with Cloudflare.

Cloudflare disclaims responsibility for most website issues. In other words, they don't usually do takedowns. Instead, they forward complaints to other companies.

They did so in this case. The VPS host on the other side got a copy, sent it to me, and said, basically, “'Sup”.

The writer seems to be 17 years old. That would be about right for Red, though I'm starting to wonder if he's actually age 13 to 15.

The writer signed his complaint, “Daniel”. That could be an Irish name, but it isn't proof of anything.

I responded to the VPS host. Basically, I laughed at the complaint. Daniel, Pro Tip: Learn the basics.

Addressing Daniel:

1. Domain names are a trademark issue. Not a copyright issue.

Even if Perttu had a trademark — which, as I understand it, he doesn't, just yet — he'd need to file a complaint himself, he'd need to demonstrate ownership of intellectual property, and he'd need to go through a trademark action.

A trademark action in Court, not a l33t kid's scrawled anonymous letter.

A Court action would be a problem. Because I intend to hold the trademark in at least one country around the world.

Perttu could appoint you formally as a legal representative. But you'd need to de-anonymize. To me as well as to the Court and the companies involved.

How about it, Daniel? Wish to state your full name and address?

2. Once again, posting names from *public profiles* isn't “doxing”. Nor is it “harassment”. Nor is it any other magic word that will get a site taken down without you needing to identify yourself.

“doxing” isn't even a real word. Not in the real world. You might as well have said “Pokemon Disgruntling.”

When I say identify yourself, BTW, I mean to me as well as to the VPS host. I get copies of complaints. I study them carefully for anything that might be useful.

Regarding magic, there's no such thing.

There is something in genuine consciousness that is close. It's the only quality that I know of in the Universe which might be metaphysical in nature.

Mindless trolls don't have it. You and the others don't have it. You're not real.

The fact that I've been playing with paper dolls for 5 years is somewhat difficult for me. But, that's all right. I'll adjust my perspective.

Paper dolls can be useful.

3. I don't even know what “badmail” is. Are you referring to my promise to contact your parents if I'm able to identify you?

What are you, anyway, a l33t 13-year-old as opposed to the 17-year-old troll that I'd imagined?

I'm not trying to deprecate you, right now. I'm just saying that corporations don't take kewl buzzwords, buzzwords that no non-IRC adult has heard of, submitted by anonymous DDoSers, all that seriously.

4. More importantly, kids who make anonymous complaints less than 24 hours after they've committed a prosecutable felony aren't in a strong position.

I've offered to let the VPS host look at the previous VPS host's router logs. 150 GB of DDoS. If you de-anonymize, your goose is cooked.

I can't get you hauled into Court from overseas, not without spending real money, but I can certainly phone your parents.

5. Regarding the claim of false claims of child abuse, get real. You have no idea what you're talking about.

For starters, the issue is harassment of children as opposed to abuse per se.

The harassment in question wasn't committed by you (Daniel) though you're certainly harassing me.

It was committed by the mid-30s mentally ill guy who I believe that you know about.

And by his mid-20s lover, or pseudo-lover, who he seems to have fallen in love with when that one was a teenager.
Minetest sex harassment

For what it's worth, they bonded over Sonic. The younger one used to draw himself as a Sonic Kid. That's one of his actual drawings to the right or below.

They were unusually “into” the character. I think that these Sonic Kid drawings may have been what interested the older man, who was in his 20s at the time, in the younger man when he was in his teens.

I need to think about the right way to word things. But I can say that I don't want them speaking sexually to 9-year-olds in my worlds.

It's a nice story that you, Fuchs, and the Minetest trolls have involved yourself with.

One odd part, if the preceding isn't odd enough, is that the younger man is a British rock star and TV star now. No, he isn't the 14th Doctor :P

I won't post their IRL names here now if they're comfortable with leaving things in a quiet state. However, I did post the names elsewhere at the time.

It had nothing to do with Freenode, but these two men filed a complaint of “doxing” with Freenode.

Christian Fuchs, if his first name is actually Christian, cited that complaint as valid and counted it against me a few days ago. He flatly refused to a review an attorney-vetted document on the subject.

When I protested that this was unfair, he k-lined me.

In short, Fuchs of Freenode covered up child sex harassment and abused his privileges to the point that any legal actions which Freenode attempts against me in the future are likely to go up the entity's collective *ss.

Due to Fuch's actions, the principle of “legitimate and reasonable purposes” has kicked in. This is a gift to me.

The issue is discussed in the Minetest book draft presented further down.

The consequences are as follows:

If Freenode staff located state-side doesn't respond to email, I pretty much have a legal right to “dox” them to the point where I can not simply gather, but post, certain types of personal information with decreased legal risks. I need primarily to document the legitimate and reasonable purposes involved.

We'll see how that part goes this Summer. Watch this site or, perhaps it should be other sites, for Freenode residence phone numbers, snail-mail addresses, etc. If they can't be obtained, this will be announced.

So, yes, I assert publicly that Christian Fuchs of Freenode supports, and is therefore involved with, child sex harassment.

Fuchs acted on behalf of the Minetest trolls. The trolls are fine with this. They're using child sex harassment to their advantage.

It's appropriate for me to return the favor.

The word “harassment” by itself isn't magic. But the phrase “child sex harassment” is one that I can, and will, use in every possible context.

Each member of the MT trolls group who accepts Fuchs' support of child sex harassment is a supporter of child sex harassment.

6. So, nice try with the complaint, but no dice.

If I do end up needing to move the box, though this isn't expected, I'll take it to one of the Free Speech hosts.

See the next post below for details about what's coming.

170525 WOLF WOLF

I spoke with a P.I. this afternoon. He can get me standard background reports on Auke Kok and Vanessa Ezekowitz the day after I place an order.

I haven't looked at Matt Gregory. I don't know if the name is real. But I'll place an order for him if he's in the U.S. and there's a match that looks close. I'll need to check to see if I have other friends among the trolls who happen to be in the U.S.

I don't plan to place the first order until June. This has cost me too much time as it is.

If I post parts of the background reports online, for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are consistent with, and protected under, U.S. laws, I'll probably move the front page, or the page involved, from behind Cloudflare to a disposable VPS.

So, you won't have grounds to complain to Cloudflare or to a host that I care about.

And, because of what Craig engineered the other day, you can't complain to Freenode, can you? :-)

Wasn't that foolish? I'd have agreed to all sorts of things.

You'd have needed to stop beating me up. And to stop saying that it wasn't happening when I'd listed everything that had happened.

Other concessions would have been minor compared to these two things that you couldn't bring yourself to do.

You'll be able to DDoS the disposable VPS or to seek a takedown from that host. But I'll know that the DDoS is coming. I'll also put up perhaps a dozen copies on pastebins or $2 low-end boxes.

“Oh No. They haz taken down a $2 Box. What Ever Shall I Do.” O_O

I guess that I might use Free Speech hosts. They host things like Nazi sites. I'm not happy to share hardware with those people. However, those hosts don't fold easy. There is also some synergy with your behavior.

For every hour that the DDoS is running, I'll set up more copies for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are consistent with, and protected under, U.S. laws. Have fun playing Whack-a-Mole.

Standard reports are simple to obtain. You can do this yourself. Not through a website. Those are bottom of the barrel quality.

You'll need to talk to a P.I. and spend from $75 to $250 to get a decent report. One reason has to do with a conundrum that I've written about at Haggis Hell.

In the U.S., the police don't want the major data brokers shut down. They use the services provided themselves.

So, the data brokers are allowed to operate, but they try to limit public access to P.I.s. P.I.s then assume responsibility for deciding who they're going to work with.

The difficult part is what comes after you have a standard report. Deep background research. I've written more about the subject of deep background research in the Minetest Book draft that follows this post.

My own standard report, incidentally, will have incorrect information on it.

I'm not presently located near geographic points that show up on it. Or in geolocation results. I've been using VPS tunnels and other options since before I went homeless.

I'll give you accurate reports for my father, my mother, and my brothers, though, if that will help.

The people in the U.K. and in Europe are going to be expensive. As Andrew Ward has pointed out, the laws are different there and P.I.'s need to follow them. But I've been through this before.

Patience is requested as things proceed.

Remind me to tell you the lost version of the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf someday.

170524 YOU WANT DOX FOX YOU GOT BOX OF DOX

Craig Robbins and sfan5 have repeatedly dared me to “do” something about two months of harassment and DDoSes that have been directed at the #-project channel, at this website, and at me.

The only thing that I wanted to “do”, initially, was fork the MT community as opposed to the MT software. I wanted to give the community a voice.

However, recent events have changed the situation. So, friends, as you wish.

This is a rough draft of the start of a book.

I figure I'll be able to get it to 150 pages once I start filling in the technical details and the information that I collect.

Think of it as the outline for a book. The working title of the book is: Minetest.

The fun part is that you're the characters. As a note for attorneys, the context is, of course, legitimate and reasonable purposes that are consistent with, and protected by, U.S. laws.

The draft was written in just one sitting. I haven't even gotten up to piss.

You folks call it “weird out” to be detailed. But, tell me, whether or not this is still rough, are you able to write this much, this well, in one sitting?

Craig and sfan5, does the draft meet with your approval?

I'll refine the different parts. This thing will stay here temporarily and then move to its own tab. Notes related to individual people will go into this document, into separate tabs, or both.

Andrew Ward, I've responded a few sections further down to something that you've said.

Let Me Greet You

Did you know that there is more than one version of the story Boy Who Cried Wolf ? There is a version, not often told these days, where the villagers accuse the boy of being a wolf.

I'd like to share the story with you sometime. The story and the twist ending.

I'm not like Jordach. I don't get to erase the tape and edit it until it's perfect. I do experience different levels of integration between the two hemispheres of the brain.

It has to do with terror and violent abuse, both at home and at school, that occurred concurrently for years.

It was probably inadvisable for you to work quite so hard at waking up all of that. Especially after the things that happened in 2012.

But it's all right. I'm glad to be here. I'm happy to have friends and goals to work towards.

I'm in a good mood presently. The mood actually has a name.

Let's say, just for fun, that I grabbed the kitchen sink on April Fool's Eve 2008. That I grabbed the sink and shook and shook for most of the night. That I was alive again after that after 30 years. That I knew my name.

I'm a mood and I have a name. My name is The Homework Boy.

I can say that I'm patient when there's a legitimate and reasonable project to work on, one that is consistent with, and protected by, U.S. laws.

I'm pleased to meet you
I'm pleased to greet you
Let me show you what I can do

I'm not supposed to be old. That isn't good.

In the world where we live
Time does not give
Improvements
Time costs a dime

A leg and an arm
Time it does harm
A leg and an arm
I have lost
That is the cost
Of time

To the General Public

If you're a member of the general public, this document discusses my experience in the area of “doxing”.

The word, in real-life contexts, means skip tracing and deep background checks. Deep as in, you can't get the information from a conventional P.I.

Conventional P.I.s will tell you that they have “sources”. The truth is that they mostly use cheap feeds to the major data brokers.

I go deeper than that.

As long as I'm writing to my friends, I might as well advertise. Review the experience discussed below. Feel free to send me requests for quotes.

I can't do anything that legally requires a State license. I haven't applied for one.

I also don't hack cellphones to look for photos of naked ladies to find out if a man is cheating on his wife.

One woman actually asked me to do that. I told her to call a marriage counselor or a divorce lawyer, one or the other, not somebody like me.

Speaking to the kids

Some of you have known me for years. You know me as I am and as I'd like to be. Well, you know part of me. The rest is different but tries to be kind.

When time permits, I'll post a discussion that I had the other day with Grandolf. We talked about learning to be a Coder. That type of thing is one reason that I've stayed with the project for 5 years.

I'm still with the project, by the way. The trolls are the ones who have left it.

Regarding what comes now, imagine that people who you'd helped, who'd seemed human and even nice, turned into incomprehensible figures.

Figures who raved at you, shunned you, tried to chase you away, said that you “weird out” people, called you childish obscenities, and DDoSed you.

How would you feel?

Andrew Ward messaged me the other night. He tried to explain himself. He said something similar to this:

“We were just trying to keep you from taking over our channels.”

What, exactly, is that supposed to mean? For two months, the trolls have been focused on nothing but shutting down the #-project channel. I did nothing but try to save the channel.

Better still, the head of the project, Perttu Ahola, said that it was because I communicated differently and that I “weird out” people.

It's difficult to accept that.

Let's Talks Dox

Let's talk about a word that MT people have used recently. The word is “doxing”.

MT people have said that I've “doxed” them.

Actually, I've done nothing but post IRL names from public profiles and other sources that are right there in Google.

That isn't even kindergarten level “doxing”.

I'm going to demonstrate, for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are consistent with, and protected under, U.S. laws, how “doxing” actually works.

Future drafts will go into key principles and will build on them. I'll include examples from my experience. This might evolve into a nice “doxing” textbook.

SSN MisconceptioN

We'll start with Social Security Numbers. Just one key issue to begin with.

I'd like to clear up a common misconception. The misconception is that it's illegal to possess or distribute Social Security Numbers assigned to other people.

In fact, it is legal, or sufficiently legal, for somebody both to collect and to distribute Social Security Numbers. However, the T's need to be crossed and the I's need to be dotted.

There are all sorts of issues involved. For example, ISPs have Terms and Conditions that might prohibit this. Civil litigation can be used to demand takedowns of some types of personal information.

Most importantly, disclosure of SSNs is, in fact, highly illegal under some conditions. There are State and Federal laws related to this issue. The laws have teeth.

However, there are gaps in the teeth. If the rules are followed, you can do this. Allow me to spell things out.

I do do this, for legitimate and reasonable purposes. I'll be doing it, for legitimate and reasonable purposes, in Minetest.

See my essay on the subject at the following link:

http://christfollower.me/page066.html#D151108SSN

Secrets

Over the past five years, starting in June 2012, I've learned how to collect data on subjects, what to use it for, and the importance of the fact that the purposes involved need to be legitimate and reasonable.

I gather Social Security Numbers, the names and phone numbers of the parents, siblings, and adult children of subjects, the grammar schools that they attended, the Churches that they belong to, the legal trusts that they hide behind, where they garage their cars, the truth behind deaths (well, one death, it was a drug overdose), the false names that they hide behind online, their movements in real-time as they travel across a State, and medical conditions that they've hidden.

The purpose of the grammar schools is, of course, to identify old friends who'd like to chat about their memories.

I dealt with one teenage troll, years ago, by identifying his actual school *and* his identity from a YouTube video. I obtained email addresses for most of his class. I sent him the addresses and said:

“Shall I write to these people and ask them if you ever pissed your pants in public when you were younger?”

I thought that it was nice of me to include the email addresses with my letter. He didn't need to wonder if I had the goods or not.

Apparently, the young man had, in fact, had a regrettable mishap of this type. He was more polite subsequent to this interaction.

That, trolls, is “doxing” :-)

Post a name from your profile? Grow up. “Doxing” is about finding out secrets. For legitimate and reasonable purposes that are protected under U.S. laws, of course.

My Ballpark

Folks, when you dog-pile somebody for two months, and then chase him or her away, do you actually expect him or her not to move to a venue where he or she can win?

All that we needed to do was talk without the vituperation.

red-###, you're a smug little troll. But you probably believe that you gave me a chance to address your concerns. You didn't do so. Instead, you said something similar to, “Why are you stealing?”

Good grief. How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Andrew Ward, you did the same thing. You could have said, in proper British tones, “Here now, what's all this about, then? Instead, you said “dick” and dropped carrier.

The other night, both Andrew and Craig seemed interested in amicable discussions. So did others behind the scenes.

Craig proved to be full of sh*t, malicious, the worst of what I've encountered this Spring. At the same time that he was talking positively in PM, he was typing “have you stopped beating your wife” scenarios in public chat. In front of a Freenode admin.

However, the others struck me as sincere. We could have settled this.

After the events of the other day, this isn't possible. And I have no incentive now to comply with Freenode rules, do I?

In fact, I'm free to look for Fuchs' friends in the online gay communities and to find out how completely he's “out” IRL.

Why in the world would I *not* use the gestalt thing, the primary gift that God has given me?

The Past is a Blast

I can't do magic. It might take years. But I'm good at catching small things.

Yes, there will be 2 to 4 of me at a time in most significant public channels for years. And in MT worlds through UDP proxies from random IP addresses.

MT UDP proxies are trivial, by the way. It's surprising that we haven't seen them more often, though perhaps you have and simply haven't mentioned it.

Don't count on registration dates to be useful. I have a few alternate identities tucked away.

I learned that lesson years ago. There was a troublesome website and I *didn't* have alternate identities. But I managed to get the website shut down by stirring things up with local Churches.

It was a surprise. I'd never tried that before. But I sent letters that were technically true but calculated to be disruptive to perhaps a dozen Churches. About a week later, the website was gone. 10,000 people. Poof.

Now I'm thinking about Internet Issues past.

I'd forgotten how online worked. But somehow, when there was trouble, part of me knew what to do.

Debts

I'm concerned about Mr. Business and M.M. CodeLicker, Rainb, Pomifera, and others as well.

You people are ****s. I'm not devastated over what's happened at Freenode. But there are people there who I can't allow to feel abandoned. It's going to be tricky to find them now on my own.

You have debts to pay. But I'm helpful. Let me help you, in the months and years to come, to address the debts.

Mr. Business

I once managed to slip into an IRC channel disguised as a registered member. This was probably a decade ago in a prior online existence.

I sat there and listened to the secrets until the real person tried to get into the channel. When they realized what was happening and who I was, it was great.

This was in the IRC network that Mr. Business, who some of you have met, is from.

Mr. Business and I share a birthday. Not the same year. I'm old enough to be his father.

Mr. Business is mentally different and needs help. I've tried to be a friend to him. In 2014, he fell into a feedback loop that was dangerous. I phoned him in real life and talked to him until it was over. I've tried to steer him away from the feedback loop since then.

In other words, I mixed IRC and IRL to help somebody.

If you'd like to read a poem that Mr. Business and I wrote together, the link is as follows:

http://haggishell.com/rhymes.html#D160916RHYME

The link may not work correctly due to the page being large. Look for the poem on that page titled Black Wings Statue Sings.

Minetest TG

Another person that I'm concerned about is M.M. I'm referring to the younger of the two transgender Minetest people. He/she is close to making a final decision about the surgery and has asked me to comment on the matter.

That's an IRL issue in IRC, b*tches.

Moin Bitcoin Part 1

The story that I'm proudest of is relevant to Paul's case and red-###'s case.

There was somebody in Freenode #startups who was troublesome. I looked into his identity. He was like Paul and red-###. There was no way to trace him directly.

That was just the start. I noticed something else immediately. This was somebody who drew others into conversations and got them to tell him everything. But he never said anything specific about himself.

He'd been there for months or longer. But somehow nobody had ever noticed this. I went through the logs. The pattern held steady. There was nothing specific. He was a tabula rasa.

He implied that he was some sort of important person who needed to be respected. He suggested that he was wealthy. The channel ate it up. But boasts of being rich are hardly useful information.

Moin Bitcoin Part 2

It took man-weeks of work to get him. What finally happened was something that you'd miss but that was like a siren going off to me.

Wish to mock, trolls? Feel free. How I got the S.O.B. is that he used the first names of some people who are important in the Bitcoin world. In other words, he implied that he was one of their associates.

It could have been an affectation. But these weren't really famous people. It struck me as a slip-up.

I politely asked my friend if the first names were a clue. He left #startups immediately and, as far as I know, he never returned.

Keegan

I located Keegan, a mentally ill kid in MT who I've talked about before, without difficulties. He showed up, I think, in a newspaper article about hunting.

It was more difficult to get phone numbers for his uncle and his school principal, but I did so. I talked to both people IRL, for about half an hour each, and had the boy pulled out of IRC.

People in MT criticized me for that. Why? I did it to potentially save his life.

The notion that IRC and IRL are separate and that this is a line not to be crossed is rubbish. Let me break the line into little pieces for you.

I'm not giving you a choice, of course. In a legitimate and reasonable sense that is consistent with, and protected by, U.S. laws, you're my property now.

I went public myself with everything, out of necessity, in 2012. It changed me and it freed me. Life is short. Stop being anonymous *ssholes. You'll be real instead.

Real *ssholes, of course. But real. And accountable.

Hm. Is there a chance that this project might catch the interest of kids who might like to help? Perhaps a Hacker Kids Brigade will rise again.

Hacker Kids Studied PIDs

For Haggis Hell readers, by the way, this is what happened to the original Hacker Kids. They're adults now, of course.

* Mr. Meow: He's thinking of going into the Navy.

* Shiing Shen: Disappeared. He had medical issues, so this is a matter of concern.

* QuadCore: He told his parents, at about age 17, that he was bisexual. They were typical U.S. Fundamentalists. So, naturally, they disowned him and threw him out of the house. But he's doing O.K. presently.

* Evan aka Bacos: He did something similar to what Jordach does. But he was open about it. At age 15 he made a conscious decision to delete his online persona both in effect and in his head.

The last part is what reminds me of Jordach.

* Skittles: Learned Python. Managed to land contract work without going to college. Concerned about how to keep work coming.

* I remember that members of some forum decided to hide from me. How I got them was funny.

There was no clue until one of them changed the nickname associated with one of his links. Or he deleted the link. I don't recall, but it was something like that.

The idea was to hide the link from me. But, gestalt. The change stood out like a beacon. I had him and then the rest of them in minutes.

I don't remember what this was about. I remember that people seemed more polite after they were no longer anonymous. One of them posted an apology for his behavior on a different forum.

* There was the teenager who was worried about stories from the past. I talked about him further up.

I don't think that I had his IRL name or even his geographic area. I think that I solved the case by matching account names on YouTube with account names on other websites. Something like that.

* I've matched identities, at least once, by comparing artwork that people have posted to different sites under different names.

Busy Little Troll is Droll

red-### is a busy little troll. He knows about a couple of sites that I created to shoo away troublemakers. Don't you, red-### ? Or was it somebody else who liked to use the same small ISP in Dublin?

Feel free to share the sites with the others. But one of them is down due to the May 24 DDoS. It wasn't on the servers that were affected. I broke it accidentally while trying to move things around.

I think that red-### only has about 2 out of 5 such sites from the past year. He certainly has the one about the 30s mentally ill developer and the 20s rock star and TV star.

Geez. Those two were foul-mouthed. It was tedious.

That was the case that Fuchs cited. And the case that is going up Fuchs' *ss.

I'm more proud of the work I've done on attorneys. I've made Super Attorneys metaphorically sh*t themselves. red-### did you find any of those sites?

Minor Puzzle for Andrew

Andrew, you removed your LinkedIn photo recently, didn't you? I'm not certain. It was gone, anyway. Did you figure out how I got a copy?

No, it wasn't as simple as Google Image Cache for LinkedIn. Google had already updated. But I'm quite patient. I try to work problems out.

Wherever you go professionally, you know, and regardless of the number of years that pass, legitimate and reasonable purposes that are protected under U.S. laws will continue to apply.

Patience is a general principle with me.

I'm working towards a book. Which is one of the legitimate and reasonable purposes. It's an iterative process. If I die prematurely, something should be ready.

Until then, I'll be working on it. This means that research will continue til the end.

So Long Daeken

What I did with Cody Brocious, aka Daeken, in 2012 was pretty good. The part about guessing where his secrets were.

Daeken is the hacker who had his 15 minutes of fame some years ago.

Daeken conflated his father Dean, who was normal, with my father, Jim, who broke my mother's nose and terrorized me.

My father, Jim, took me to Court to try to force me sign a gag order. Daeken considered this to be my fault and taunted me. So, I located and phoned his father, Dean, and had a nice chat with the man.

Daeken threated me with “harassment” charges. So trite. When people use the word, usually all that they know about the laws involved is from TV. I like to take advantage of their ignorance. I usually end up shoving the word up their *ss.

In this case, I asked Daeken what his friends from school would tell me about his past. Understand that there actually was something there. It was obvious.

Daeken grew very quiet. He tip-toed out of my corner of Freenode shortly afterward.

IRC people disapproved of these steps. I asked them what I was supposed to do instead. They didn't have an answer.

Why should I sit there and let people treat me and others as punching bags when I can do something about it?

Daeken Forsaken

One funny part is that Daeken once challenged me to an extemporaneous rap battle. Here is what I wrote:

Daeken, since you ask
Take me to task
So bluntly and rudely
I hear a rhythm with appeal
When I write I feel
I'm singing out loud to you

The lines I write
In my sight
Are a song
If you can't accept that
Right off the bat
/IGNORE is where I belong

So chill. Whitebread Hacker
Not a Slacker
I'll admit
But a drag is sort of
What you are
Go decode an abode API sub-par

Senior hackers will understand the last line.

Anyway

Do some of you belong to forums elsewhere, do you visit alternative IRC networks, etc. ? I'll need to know about those venues.

Don't post at Wikipedia or in forums unless you're a registered member. Your IPV4 is logged and that shows up in Google. I've actually managed to identify people in the past by matching up IPV4s that way.

It didn't give me anything new for red-### and Paul. But they did, in fact, show up this way.

Some of the kids have wanted me to try my hand at better AI for chat. I might just do that. Anything that will improve the rate of data collection will be useful.

Sooner or later you'll slip up. What do you say? This will be fun, won't it?

Detective Story

As I said, I'm no magician. However, a police detective who'd investigated my sister-in-law — Virginia Chang Kiraly, feel free to Google her — once told me that I'd be good as a forensics specialist.

It's a funny story. I'd followed clues that led me to phone the detective at home at midnight. The trail was valid, but I missed the fact that he'd moved. The person that I was really looking for had moved into his old house.

The full story is at this link:

http://christfollower.me/page050.html#D140201VIRGINIA

Gossip is Good

Regarding medical issues, I don't violate HIPAA. Instead, friends and neighbors of subjects tell me things. HIPAA has no jurisdiction over gossip.

If somebody does something odd when they go to get the mail, a neighbor will see it through the window. If I phone and express concern, the neighbor spills the beans about whatever it is that is going on.

This actually works. But, to make this work, you've got to use the right tone of voice.

Closer associates talk about the romantic lives of subjects. And about troubles of different types.

Shoving Things Up Things

Gathering and disclosure of information is 100% legal under U.S. laws provided that legitimate and reasonable purposes are involved and that rules are followed.

It may or may not be legal under U.K. laws. Andrew Ward, respectfully, so what? :-)

Subjects can, and do, try to get restraining orders to prevent me from talking to their neighbors, family members, Church associates, and so on.

However, they can't actually do this. There are fundamental principles in U.S. law that prevent this. The magic word is “consensual”.

U.S. Courts are unlikely to issue Orders related to consensual communications with third parties. Minor children and other special cases would be the primary exceptions. Employers are a grey area. It depends on exactly what Plaintiffs allege and can demonstrate.

So, Plaintiffs try to force people to sign gag orders as part of a settlement agreement. But I've never signed one and I never will.

I spent a year in Court over this issue once. But, in that case, I forced the Plaintiffs to sign a document acknowledging that I was going to talk about them for the rest of their lives. They paid $100,000 to get that :-)

Pro Tip: These days, I tend to shove vague allegations right up *sses. Actually, that's what I'm going to do with Minetest.

DDoS is BoSS

We come now to a key point.

red-###, regarding the remark that you made earlier in #-hub about “making up another DDoS attack”...

...and regarding your kind remarks after that in Codernet...

My host, or one of them, and I spent two evenings dealing with three DDoSes.

There were two DDoSes on May 23 and one on May 24. The May 24 DDoS generated 150 GB (not MB but GB) of logs for the router involved.

We had a total of 3 IPV4 addresses for IRC in two days. I believe that you knew this.

I've moved the website to Cloudflare. The IPV4 for the site has changed. And if you use your l33t Kiddie Toolkit, you'll be able to confirm that the router-level firewall has changed.

If you were one of the DDoSers, you knew everything to begin with, of course.

The nice part, for me, is that the multiple DDoSes combined with tactical mistakes that Freenode has made on the legal side give me something that I'll refer to as “legitimate and reasonable purposes”.

Legitimate and Reasonable Purposes

“Legitimate and Reasonable Purposes” is a principle that strengthens my hand in legal contexts.

It works like martial arts. Do you know the part where you're not supposed to attack? You're supposed to wait for the other party to do so?

My legal options for dealing with individuals who commit white-collar of crimes are limited.

However, if those individuals attempt legal actions against me, I'm usually able to use “legitimate and reasonable purposes” related to the crimes to my advantage.

If you'd like to see examples of legitimate and reasonable purposes in other contexts, visit the following page:

http://haggishell.com/topics/legal/information_purposes.html

I'll prepare a Minetest page of this type in due course.

I Like Attorneys

The skill of an attorney factors into results.

However, in the past few years, I only recall meeting one attorney that I didn't think I could handle, as long as it was in my own ballpark.

That was Harmeet Dhillon, my sister-in-law's attorney. She's pretty good and seems to have character as well. Feel free to Google her.

She doesn't count because we weren't in a formal dispute. But I do respect her.

Every attorney who's tried to frighten me since 2013 has ended up running away fast. Some of them had damp spots on the fronts of their trousers.

If you'd like to get a serious assessment of me, feel free to phone the last attorney who tried to frighten me. This is a Super Attorney named David.

I'll be happy to provide David's full name, business phone number, cell phone number, residence phone number, business snail-mail address, and residence snail-mail address.

I might throw in, for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are protected under U.S. laws, David's birth-date, Social Security Number, and what his neighbors think of him.

It's a serious offer. If you're interested, email me or see me in Codernet.

If you do take me up on this offer, tell David I hope that he's doing well. I haven't talked to him since I phoned him at home on Christmas Day just to say Hi.

Dox in the Box

The next steps, on my side, include the “doxing”, for legitimate and reasonable purposes, of MT subjects whose IRL identities can be established and confirmed.

This includes, for example, Auke and Vanessa. Who are, if I recall correctly, both presently in the U.S. I might be mistaken about Auke.

Andrew, Nathanael, and Perttu have identities that are believed to be genuine. However, they're located outside the U.S. We'll come back to non-U.S. residents shortly.

Craig and Matt give out their IRL names. However, their IRL names are unconfirmed. In other words, the names that they use might be made-up. These two subjects are cases for the longer term.

I haven't looked at sfan5 yet.

Paul and red-### are the two in the troll group who have gone to some trouble to conceal their identities.

Paul is too tough a nut to crack. Even the March 5, 1966 birthday is probably fake.

So, Paul, relax and speak freely in Freenode channels. Don't be concerned if new people try to get to know you. For the rest of your tenure in Minetest, you can certainly trust the new people around you.

You could be suspicious of new people. That would be a shame, though, wouldn't it?

red-### is overconfident. If he remains in Minetest and in Freenode, he'll slip up.

Crazy like a Fuchs

Christian Fuchs of Freenode and #freenode is an interesting case. But research will probably turn up the fact that the name is false.

I'm not sure that the first name, Christian, is correct. And the last name, Fuchs, might be simply a Nordic word, or a play on a Nordic word, for Fox.

To complicate this part, I'm going to need to pretend to be a gay man who needs advice from Fuchs or who wants to get to know him.

I'll feel silly if he isn't actually the Fuchs who's associated with gay groups.

The nice part, though, is that Fuchs is obsessed with “doxing”.

If I'm able to obtain, for legitimate and reasonable purposes, personal information about him — more than the fact that he's apparently gay — he'll make additional mistakes.

Non-U.S. Trolls

Residency outside the U.S. has only limited implications as far as the legal side of things goes.

The U.K. laws that Andrew Ward is aware of, for example, are largely irrelevant. They do have implications. However, the implications are minor and beyond the scope of this document.

Non-U.S. residency does raise the cost of legitimate and reasonable research significantly. It'll cost a good deal more to deal with subjects who are located overseas.

So, U.S. research is most cost-effective and therefore takes priority.

Disclosure Disclosure

I try to be transparency and to offer full disclosure. This isn't simply ethical. It helps to frustrate certain types of legal attacks.

So, I'd like to disclose that I disclose information such as U.S. Social Security Numbers, within the bounds of both U.S. State and U.S. Federal laws, for legitimate and reasonable purposes, with people who are willing to assist with legitimate and reasonable research.

To put it simply, I give out in Social Security Numbers in a manner that is legal and that most likely can't be stopped in Court.

People are invited to read the SSN essay at Haggis Hell that I linked previously.

Everybody Likes Gifts

I disclose, and I solicit, other types of information more directly.

I like to do mass snail-mailings. It's simple, cost-effective, and produces results.

People ignore junk snail-mail. Ordinary envelopes, sent bulk rate. But they don't ignore big, fat documents mailed flat in sturdy 9"x12" business-class manilla envelopes.

When people open the large envelopes and see the names of friends, neighbors, or family members, they're interested. They read the documents and sometimes they respond and provide useful information.

Church Mail Holy Grail

My favorite snail-mail story is about a Church. It happened to be a Church that two subjects belonged to.

I visited the Church to speak with the office about joining the congregation. The person on duty was busy. So, naturally, I went to the waiting room.

This was in 2014. I had to travel to get to the Church. It was a 2- or 3- day trip. The story is at Haggis Hell along with photos.

I took a photo of the waiting room because it was artistically arranged.

By coincidence, there was a mailing list tacked to a wall. The mailing list happened to end up in a photo that I took of the wall.

I felt that it was legal to use snail-mail addresses which turned up in a photo that I'd taken of a wall.

There were a lot of addresses. About 75. Too many to transcribe by hand. However, I was able to OCR all 75 snail-mail addresses using standard tools in my Linux distro.

Digital cameras and Linux are two great tastes that taste great together.

I added 25 snail-mail addresses that I'd obtained by other means. Then I snail-mailed 100 total 20-page informational documents.

I was able to track the results through the use of a simple technical trick.

I can say this much. 100 copies of a 20-page physical document in real-life mailboxes has more of an effect than 100 emails.

Neighborhood Drop-Off

I also hire process servers to deliver documents directly to third parties.

There's an in-between approach that I use sometimes. I hire either a process server or a courier to do neighborhood drop-off.

Neighborhood drop-off means that they leave printed documents on the doorsteps of perhaps two dozen households at a time.

Attorneys should note that, of course, that distribution of documents using such approaches is done for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are consistent with, and protected under, U.S. laws.

Clap-On Clap-Off

My favorite story about couriers takes place in Texas. I hired a nice guy to deliver a document and a bottle of wine to my brother Tom Kiraly.

Tom had purchased a new house in Austin that he'd hoped to hide from me through the use of a trust. But a detective that I hired was able to identify the person behind the trust. I have no idea of how he managed to do that.

To be clear, I'd never ask a detective to get records by illegal means. But I trust their judgment about what is legal if they seem to be honest.

I can only assume that the detective in this case worked hard and used proper channels.

My courier went to a store for me and bought a bottle of wine that met my specifications. Now, he just had to get through the gate. Tom had chosen a gated community.

I asked the courier how he was going to do this. He said:

“Well, these gates have a secret. If you clap the right way, they'll open for you. It's like Clap-On Clap-Off.”

He was teasing me, of course, but I believed him.

I *am* autistic, you know. You b*tches have been beating up somebody, for two months, who tries to help, quite faithfully, and is kind, but is also naive when he's dealing with people who he trusts.

It's an odd combination of characteristics.

My IQ is 1.75 times yours. You've suggested that I need to demonstrate this and you seem to wish the demonstration to be interesting. So, I must accommodate you.

At the same time still it's difficult, at times, even after I woke up 9 years ago, to navigate in your world.

The courier realized, abruptly, that I was naive and explained that he was, in fact, teasing me. I wasn't offended and I still tell this story.

Clap-On Clap-Off :-)

The courier got through the gate multiple times but Tom was either traveling or unenthusiastic about answering the door. I told the courier never-mind and gave the wine to him.

There are some nice photos of the bottle of wine and of Tom's house at Haggis Hell.

In Closing

So, Craig and sfan5, I don't intend to “do” anything.

Well, actually, I'll both gather and distribute information for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are consistent with, and protected under, U.S. laws.

I'll do this, probably, for 3 to 7 years. Think my attention span isn't that long? I've been dealing with a few cases for 5 years now. I haven't even started on some of the attorneys and I expect to spend 10 years on them.

I trust that concerns are now relieved and that everybody is pleased.

All is well. Puppies and kittens frolic.

Fun and Friendly

I'm not irritated by any of the following:

* Being told by Perttu Ahola that I needed to leave #-project because I “weird out” people.

* Being told by multiple people that the fact that I type differently makes me bad, that it's a choice, and that it's all right to treat me as an object.

* Having Paul dump a PM into public chat that might have hurt somebody who mattered.

* Mockery behind my back over the Maciek Kasatkin issue. Not fair discussion or honest debate. Just things behind my back.

Jordach, I've been patient and helpful to you and others for 5 years. Are you willing to tell people the part about the edited tapes? I think that that was the metaphor that you used.

It was difficult for you to talk about that part. However, the people who matter will be fine with it.

* Being told by Nathanael Courant that it's all right to *be* autistic but that I must not allow autism to *show* because letting it *show* is a choice and autism is bad.

* Nathanael Courant's refusal to address the preceding point. Nathanael, you're a coward.

* Watching a new channel, #-hub, be created solely because I refused to leave #-project.

* Seeing Shara go to run #-hub when she was the one who asked me to moderate the “sneak” fight that started all of this.

* Shara's denial, to herself, of the reason that #-hub was created. The new channel must have meant a lot to her.

* Being ordered by Matt Gregory to shut down #-project.

* Being told by Perttu Ahola that I'd “ordered” Jack Coe to “harass” Paul.

* Being told by Perttu Ahola that he was taking Paul's word for that story and, no, he didn't wish to hear what had actually happened.

* Learning that people in #-project had been told to leave the channel because it was “shutting down”.

* Being /kicked by sfan5 because I said that might /kick red-###. Who was trolling at the time and who actually trolled twice that day.

* Being deopped in #minetest over that incident after 5 years. Op wasn't a favor to me. Perttu Ahola and I had a deal.

* The silent treatment. Being shunned by people who lacked the cojones to explain what they were doing.

* Not 1, not 2, but 3 DDoSes.

* Being called a “dick” by Andrew Ward. Who is supposed to be the 2nd-nicest person in MT.

* Having Andrew Ward explain two months of harassment with the following statement:

“We were just trying to stop you from taking over our channels”.

Andrew, once again, what is that supposed to mean? For two months, you and the others focused on trying to shut down my channel.

* Being told by Craig Robbins and Vanessa Ezekowitz that I “lie”.

* Craig Robbins' repeated statements to the effect that I should simply leave #-project if people didn't like me. And that whatever people did, no matter how inappropriate it was, was my fault if I didn't leave.

* Craig Robbins' refusal to answer this question:

If Black People are ordered not to use the White People drinking fountain, or if they are ordered to sit in back of the bus, do you hold them responsible for being beaten up or killed when they disobey those orders?

Yes or No, Craig? Coward.

* Craig Robbins' flat-out lie claiming that I'd said there was “danger” in #-project.

* Perttu Ahola feeling free to tell me what to do, even now, while refusing to clarify what he says.

* The recent events in Freenode.

* red-###'s remarks on May 24 to the effect that the DDoSes were imaginary.

red-### knows what happened. He fancies himself a kiddie hacker. He'd have tracked the changes in the IPV4s and he'd be aware of some of the other changes. He may have been involved in the final DDoS himself.

red-###'s remarks confirm that he's a troll. But I was deopped simply for saying that I *might* /kick him.

My Promise to You

Surely I'm pleased by all of this. So, here is my commitment to each of the trolls:

I will not use personal information related to your past, present, or future in any manner that I deem to be inappropriate.

If I communicate with your parents, spouses, romantic partners, siblings, or adult children, past or present associates, Churches, organizations, social media venues, employers, the general public, or government agencies, either to solicit information or to distribute it, I promise to say only what I deem to be appropriate.

This is my legitimate and reasonable promise to you.

170524 FUCHS FELONIES TASTE LIKE MELONIES

We're back again.

The Minetest and Freenode DDoSers tried it again. 2nd DDoS in 2 days and the 3rd total. They're busy little beavers :-)

They weren't able to touch the website. Sorry, guys :-(

The firewall has been upgraded. IRC and the MT worlds have also been moved to a high-bandwidth network.

The host says, “It's a good thing on my end since now I'll have higher performance software. This new system is so much better.”

If he's happy, that's good. I like to make people happy. Perttu, Andrew, Craig, Auke, Paul, Matt, maybe someday I'll find a way to make each of you happy, personally and professionally, as well.

170523 CLOUDFLARE THIS B*TCHES

We're back.

The Minetest child sex people hit us tonight with a multi-level DDoS.

Christian Fuchs, the gay Freenode worker who is protecting child sex harassers, is now involved with felony DDoS as well.

The 1st level of the attack was a conventional “thousands of connections” DDoS that originated, oddly, with just three IPV4 addresses:

47.17.74.92 50.245.47.101 50.248.176.226

One or two of those addresses might have been at Comcast. This implies residential, but residential wouldn't support the level of DDoS that was achieved.

If these are compromised PCs sold through a botnet dealer, I can't do much about it. But if these belong to the DDoSers, the Feds might be willing to take a look.

The 2nd level of the attack involved VPSes at Amazon and other companies. It sought, apparently, to drive up CPU load through an exploit related to IRC.

The website has been moved behind Cloudflare. It's safe for the time being.

To protect IRC and the worlds, we'll probably block most VPS companies and, if necessary, any part of Russia or Asia that attempts a DDoS.

Kids, feel free to ask Celeron55 (Perttu Ahola), Rubenwardy (Andrew Ward), Zeno` (Craig Robbins), VanessaE (Vanessa Ezekowitz), sfan5 (IRL name unknown), and nore (Nathanael Courant) why they needed to break your worlds.

We're just asking, no particular reason, hey, sh*t, did anything happen to happen to one of your boxes? You never know, hard-working DDoS boxes might pick up something from touching the Internet :-)

170523 CHRISTIAN FUCHS

Wait wait wait... Fuchs of Freenode uses his real name? *And* he's queer?

(No offense, gay pride people use the word. One of my friends turned out to be one of the early gay activists. And I was offering emotional support to two TGs in Minetest, or trying to do so, when this happened. Somebody please make sure that they are all right. Serious request. I'm concerned about M.M.)

Actually, Fuchs might just be a Swiss or something word for Fox. I'm too tired to check.

But, whether or not the name is real, is this Christian Fuchs, the Freenode-associated gay support group person?

Gays don't molest kids any more than others do. But the public perception still leans that way.

And Fuchs klined me because I protested his bias in favor of two child sex harassers.

One of whom fell in love with the other one, about 6 years younger, when the younger one was just a boy.

Um. If that's your real name, Christian Fuchs, brilliant move :P

I told Fuchs that I'd submitted a report on the matter to attorneys who reviewed it and took my word over that of the two child sex harassers. I asked him to show me the courtesy of reviewing the document that the attorneys had accepted.

Fuchs refused. He said that the report must be “baseless” and “made-up”. How would he know? He'd already made up his mind to give the child sex harassers a pass.

Fuchs, you aren't important. My friends in Minetest are. But thank you for the gift.

I've written to PIA, of course. PIA seems to be responsible for Freenode now. I've asked to talk to the attorneys there. They might ignore the letter. If so, we'll find out who's on the Board of Directors.

A phone call or two to people at that level noting that child sex allegations are being mishandled ought to produce results.

Not quickly. It can take a year to get this sort of thing done. But it'll be fun.

I'll give PIA about a week to respond before I take the next step at that level.

170523 STATUS REPORT

It appears that Fuchs of Freenode has kicked me out of Freenode.

This leaves me free to take appropriate steps. The trolls belong to me now.

Andrew, our arrangement is now suspended unless you wish to speak with me at: irc.oldcoder.org

Will somebody please speak with kline (a person, not an action) in #freenode and notify him that the matter is now moot? Or he can look into it.

But kline is unlikely to be sympathetic as I'm PMg Fuchs and telling him that I'll speak with his mother. Assuming that she hasn't passed away; I don't know Fuchs's age.

The subject will be the child-sex issue that I can truthfully state Fuchs is involved in.

If I speak with Churches about the child-sex part, Freenode won't feel much pressure. But Fuchs might feel some pressure, personally.

This assumes that Fuchs can be identified. He isn't important, though, right now. My friends in Minetest are the ones who matter to me.

Regarding the “dox” issue: There has been no such thing yet. But this is likely to change in the months and the years to come.

I'm not a kid who says that idly. Visit Haggis Hell. I hire detectives, for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are protected under U.S. laws, and I've done so for 5 years now.

Andrew, sfan5, Craig, Perttu, Vanessa, Paul, red-###, the rest of those who have deprecated, bullied, or attacked...

I proceed in strict accordance with the laws of the U.S. I do not respect, Andrew, the laws of the U.K. in this context.

Within the limits of the law, I do what is necessary. The limits are broader than you might imagine. In the months and years to come, perhaps we'll have the opportunity to discuss this.

Kindly note that upcoming promises to speak with your family members, where they can be identified, are not (a) a bluff (I've been doing this for 5 years), (b) “threats” of any type — say that and I can file for defamation, or (c) inappropriate or unethical.

Did I mention that I've dealt with numerous attorneys over this issue? And that not one of them is enthusiastic about speaking with me again? :-)

Naturally, I'll be back at Freenode by VPN. All of you are too dear to my heart for it to be otherwise. If Freenode wishes to falsely position this as a violation of CFAA, they're free to attempt to do so. But, really, it'll go up the *ss of whosever name is on the papers.

The part about Freenode's support for child sex harassment will help with that.

Regrettably, the idea of a settlement now seems to be impractical. It's too bad. But think positive. We'll find ways to work it out :-)

Andrew, did you grow up near Bristol or did you move there from a distance?

Auke, we were supposed to talk, a while back. You don't mind if I phone you at work or at home, do you?

170521 THEY SAY ESCALATE IS GREAT MATE HOORAY

The Minetest core devs have escalated things yet again.

After the next step, they'll be out of options. They'll be playing in my ballpark.

The latest attack is disheartening. I'd like to ask that the attacks on the community side of Minetest stop.

These are the undoubtedly foolish expectations:

    No more attacks on #minetest-project.

    No more lying to people and telling them that the channel is shutting down. No more peremptory orders from core devs telling me to shut it down.

    I'm proud of the channel. I said that it would work and it did. For over a year until the trolls came.

    sfan5, I'm sorry, but I'm talking about you. Why did you and the others need so badly to murder something that was good?

    And why did you need to attack me, after that, in #minetest ? That is what brought things to this new stage. I'd have been right to /kick red-###. Demonstrate integrity and admit this to Perttu.

    People need to be told that it is all right to go to #minetest-project. I want some of the people who were chased away returned.

    No further DDoS of minetest.org

    I earned op status in #minetest. Perttu Ahola and I had a deal. I expect what I earned to be returned to me.

    The deal cost me, Perttu. It was Fall 2012 and the legal cases were still in progress. I didn't have time to do as you asked. But I did it anyway. I served you and I served the community. You have an obligation to me. Honor the debt or I'll collect interest.

    I expect Nathanael Courant to answer the question that I asked him. Or I'll find his parents — in France or not — and ask them why he isn't able to respond.
    image

    Andrew Ward used an obscenity and broke off communication without discussion. This after he said that I'd helped him when he arrived. I expect closure with him.

    Andrew, you owe this to me. Or you need to admit that you're shallow, selfish, and ungrateful.

    People need to accept that I'm detailed and that I type differently.

    I don't like being told — by Perttu, of all people — that I “weird out” people by being too detailed. How would you feel?

    I'd like the nonsense related to my remarks about Maciek Kasatkin's being alive as opposed to dead to stop.

    Discuss facts. Agree or disagree with positions. That part is fine. Talk behind my back and we're going to talk face to face.

    I might add that Maciek has *told* me what happened. Are you able to read English? T-o-l-d. He has an explanation. It's a good one. But, as Vanessa likes to say, “*shrug*”.

If these expectations aren't met, there will be consequences for some of the aggressors in real life.

I'm explicitly promising, as opposed to threatening, to take legitimate and reasonable steps that, to be clear, are protected under U.S. and other laws.
image

One step is simple.

I'm going to phone, snail-mail, or email parents, siblings, or business associates of the trolls in this situation. There will be multiple legitimate and reasonable purposes involved.

I don't advise making threats against me in connection with this point. For what it's worth, one b*tch spent $100,000 USD trying to stop me in Court. I made him eat sh*t.

Don't mind the negative tone related to that person. It was my father and my abuser. I'm entitled.

The point is, ever since he tried to shut me up and I made him eat excrementum meum sapidum et salubri, others have tried to shut me up. They've all ended up on the same diet. Perhaps you'd like to join them.

I'll come back to this subject at the end of this post.

On my side, I'm prepared to apologize for losing my patience with #minetest-dev. And to acknowledge I have no proof that it was one of the core devs per se who DDoSed me.

I don't know what else is expected of me. I've been subjected to childish insults, cowardly attacks, every possible manner of deprecation. But nobody is making a genuine attempt to talk.
Minetest Happy Dance

Attack without thought or fright
just because it seems right
Son, your flame will burn bright
Like Jesus, a soldier child
He was not meek or mild

Hate and torture and kill
I'm sure it will give you a thrill
What you must do, you see
Is be all that you can be
Minetest Anger

There seems to be violent rage, especially, on the subject of trademarks. Addressing the rage people, you didn't talk to me or get the facts before you fell into rage. So, to Hell with you.

Andrew and red-###, that includes both of you. One of you said “dick” and the other said “stealing”. Neither of you allowed me a moment even to understand what you might be concerned about.
Minetest behavior

You aren't the heroes of the story. You're young trolls. You've pissed on somebody when it wasn't called for.

I have a message for Craig Robbins aka Zeno-.

Craig is a sensible older Minetest person. Or he seemed sensible until all of this started.

Craig, I don't want to think of you as a coward. So why do you say things, including PMs to me, and then refuse to discuss them?

That is cowardly.

Today, you said:

<Zeno-> OldCoder, stop lying to Fuchs
<Zeno-> Shara is, of course, valued but to suggest that she has spent more time on the project than any of us core devs and other long-term contributors is just plain lies
<Zeno-> and “her role” is what any other person's role is

You didn't read what I said. Don't make a fool of yourself. Read before speaking.

Oh, too late. You quoted it, though you didn't read it.

I said, “If something that I suspect related to her role is true...”

I said *If*. Read, much? I guess not. It's easier just to be lazy and insulting, isn't it?

I promised Shara that I wouldn't look into this. But if she is Octupus, she has sure as Hell as put in more hours, over 5 years, than most of the others put together.

That makes two people I'd thought of as friends, Vanessa and you, who used the word “lying” today. Two in one day.

Last night, I couldn't sleep. Scream in pain all night and all day. Actually, I muffled it.

It's better tonight. I was able to get water and food just now.

Last night, I learned that the Minetest core devs had summoned a Freenode admin, Fuchs, for... actually, the reasons weren't clear.

As in the 2012 legal cases, there were allegations, but they weren't really stated. Things were mostly implied.

I don't do vague. Try that and you belong to me.

Fuchs and I were on different schedules, so we didn't talk directly. But he messaged that there were complaints about “doxing”.

Which means the use of IRL names on this website. Which isn't a Freenode matter.

But let's talks dox
Dox isn't ad hocs
It's a word
Don't be merde
Know what it means before you use it

I've used IRL names that developers have posted themselves or that are in public news stories. With three exceptions, I haven't even *started* to “dox”.

Two exceptions, Shivajiva and red-###, were anonymous trolls. The initial attempts to identify them IRL failed.
image

The third exception, Octupus, is a special case.

Octupus is a window into the space between normals and those who can perceive reality.

He's right there. He's been with Minetest longer than I have. He writes Minetest mods. You've played with them. You chat with him in IRC.

But, somehow, nobody but the neurodiverse can see him.

CoRNeRNoTe could see him. In the years that followed, two neuro-diverse people perceived him as a flashing red alert. Metacognician, from Haggis Hell, and I often discussed what he might be.

Most of you, the normals, are blind, though. Or color-blind in part of the spectrum of reality. It's fascinating.

No, I make no apologies for talking about this part. What difference does it make to him or to you? You're reading this and can't understand what you're reading.

In short: “Dox” ? Get a clue. If I “dox” you — for legitimate and reasonable purposes that are protected under U.S. and other laws — you're going to *know* it. BTW I usually post “dox” at Haggis Hell.
image

Got dox, fox?
Don't balks
Walks the walks
Visit Haggis Hell
Where dox rings a bell
All day and all night

This begs the question, though, of what, exactly, the core devs think that they're doing.

In 2012, I was hit out of the blue with civil actions intended to do one thing, and one thing only: force me to sign a gag order.

I never signed the gag order. I *did* co-write an agreement which stated, in effect, “You belong to me now, b*tches” and forced the other side to sign that.

I've spent the last 4 years (litigation lasted 1 year) shoving the other side's actions up their collective *sses.

I stood up for myself. It cost me my home. But I never gave up. Do you think that *you* can pressure me into agreeing to a gag order? Agreeing not to talk about what you're doing?

Let's play.

Vanessa was less together today than usual. It was like talking to somebody who was mumbling.

To be clear, I'm concerned about Vanessa. This doesn't mean that it's been pleasant to talk to her recently.

She said that I was “lieing” (her spelling) because I was claiming to have an “official” edition of Minetest.

I didn't appreciate Vanessa's use of the word “lie”. I demanded that she justify herself.

Vanessa cited the fact that git shows only a small amount of code contributed to the core server code by me.

The amount that git reports is incorrect. I've contributed code through others. But this isn't the part that matters.

The part that matters is that nobody has put continuous hours into the project for more years than I have except for Vanessa and Maciek-Landmine.

I've earned better treatment than I've received this Spring.

When this subject is discussed, Andrew Ward (Rubenwardy) comes to mind. He's been here since 2012 and has made a number of contributions. But he arrived six months after I did and hasn't put in nearly as many hours.

I asked Vanessa if she was able to contradict this. She couldn't name anybody else. Instead, she said that I'd be “klined”. This is a term that means kicked out of Freenode.

Vanessa wasn't able to justify, or even to explain, this threat.

The discussion was one of the more pointless hours that I've spent.

After hearing the threat from Vanessa, I asked a Freenode admin named, ironically, kline, to speak with me. kline agreed and this is what I told him. The text is lightly edited for length.

This was extemporaneous. I thought it was good for off the cuff.

Two months ago, I was asked to help moderate a fight in Minetest project channels. I tried to do so. In the end, I was told that I was too detailed. And that a channel I was running should be shut down.

The channel was #minetest-project. It was authorized by the head of the project, registered nick celeron55.

I refused to step down. Channel members were PMd. They were ordered to leave the channel.

The core devs ordered me to shut it down. I was DDoSed. First time for my Minetest website.

I was vilified. Freenode staff doesn't get into that, but it ties into allegations against me.

I responded by posting the story online. It's going into an actual book.

I included the IRL names of the core developers. Who had posted those names themselves as part of their profiles.

I added that I'd had enough. I wasn't going to “fork” the project. Instead, I asserted ownership of the community side.

I mean ownership in every sense, including senses that would count at Freenode. I have put more hours into the project for longer than anybody but two people.

Last night, Fuchs showed up. Our hours don't coincide, so we didn't talk directly.

He messaged that there were allegations against me. Ordered me to cease and desist things. He talked as though he believed the allegations. He didn't seek my side at all

The allegations were vague. I don't like vague allegations. It comes down to disclosing IRL information about developers.

This is on a website. It isn't a Freenode matter. I've been through this before, in Court, in other contexts...

And I've won. It cost me 200 grand. What matters to me right now, though, is Freenode.

I'm asking for fair treatment. Not, “Oh, 3 people hate him, he must be a troll”.

I'm nearly 60. I've poured 5 years of effort into this project. I'm in the right ethically, legally, and, I think, under Freenode guidelines.

I ask that no decisions be made based on innuendo and, TBH, blunt lies.

They talk about how *I'm* “lying”. One of the heads told me an hour ago that this means the part where I claim to have an “official” community edition.

That isn't a lie and isn't Freenode business.

They also talk about how I'm “doxing”.

Multiple parties have harassed me anonymously. I will, in fact, document IRL identities and actions — possibly for legal actions, which is no kid bluff, I've been dealing with this stuff for 5 years — and this is, again, not Freenode business.

I've outlined the situation as simply as possible. You hear this sort of thing every day and it must be tedious.

But I *am* old, sane most of the time, respectful of the structure of Freenode. I *have* tried to help people again and again here for 5 years. I'm asking for fairness.

Everything I'm saying seems sensible to me. Not overblown, overwrought, TL:DR, or “drama”.

Fuchs isn't available to talk due to time-zone difference. And he seems already to have made up his mind. I want the boundaries between Freenode and not-Freenode to be respected as far as administration goes.

You don't care, at all — and this is fine — about project issues off of Freenode. Especially if they're nebulous.

So, please help with a fair request. Could Freenode stay out of levels that don't concern it? I'll listen and respond respectfully to remarks about levels that do concern it.

It makes no difference, possibly, but, again, I have 5 years invested in the current matter. I'll be dead in perhaps 3 times that. You and most of the people involved have decades left.

Can you comment or help? I've spoken off the cuff and will fill in any gaps.

kline responded as follows. I've omitted the personal note that he mentions.

Well, firstly, thank you for an eloquent and complete recounting of your side of events, it has already raised and then answered questions i wanted to know

ill briefly cover my answer in two points from a staff point of view, and one point from a personal one

1) for tonight, im not going to be doing anything other than making sure that your concerns are discussed by the staff team, with the aims of being fair to both sides and getting the complete picture

2) we do stay out of internal politics of other groups in matters like these, but sometimes we're asked to make decisions where those groups overlap with ours, such as where there's discussion over who should hold what rights to a channel.

when this happens, we'll often ask to find out more about the project, all sides of the issue, and also find out a little about what the community feels as a whole.

i hope with this in mind it may be clear that if we've been asking questions, it's only to increase our understanding, not to inject ourselves into not-freenode matters

I'm busy, in physical pain, tired, and I need to work. But the core devs continue to attack.

It isn't clear what they expect to happen.

If this is about #minetest-project, and they succeed in having the channel shut down, they must know that it'll be a new debt accrued. A debt that they'll be held accountable for. Each on an individual basis.

If this is about pressuring me to take IRL names off of a website, I became homeless a few years ago rather than agree to do that. I never submit to extortion.

If they engineer things so as to block me from Freenode, what comes next is simple.

In short, I have the right, protected under U.S. and other laws, to communicate, for legitimate and reasonable purposes, with real-life business associates or family members of these people to inquire as to why they'd behave like this.
image

There are other steps to take that I've learned about. Learned the hard way. In real life, my life hasn't been like yours.

I used to be shy. But I know the truth now. What you're supposed to do. Machiavelli figured it out centuries ago.

You should have read your Machiavelli before you came after me. But that's all right. I've read it for you. And I understand the lessons.

I've worked hard at this project, I've tried to help people, and I'm old. I've put 5 years into this project when I've only got about 15 more to live. I'm not going to write off that much time.

Wish to keep pissing on me? Sure y not. But there is something to keep in mind.

I'm not some pretend Internet figure. Unlike some of our friends, I'm here in the world, physically. And I've drunk enough piss.

If you'd like to escalate, that will be just fine. What was your IRL name, again?

170517 NEWS ONE CANNOT REFEWS

It wasn't Brackston's world that the trolls shut down. I've been informed that it belonged to somebody named “unk”.

red-### asked me today if I was the one who did this.

There was some irony in the fact that he'd ask. He was the one who'd triggered the current stage of events.
image

A few weeks ago, red-### attempted to start a fight in #minetest. Since he'd /ignored me, I had no way to caution him. I proposed to /kick him, since a text message could be passed that way.

When I said that this was what I planned, I was speaking literally. But most of you aren't able to understand that. You don't want to understand it. You're normals, full of hate for the different.

Or, more accurately, full of indifference. If somebody isn't real to you, things that you do to them aren't real.

sfan5, for reasons that I can't begin to understand, objected to the proposed /kick and /kicked me. So I /kicked him and his bot.

Later, I found that I'd been deopped without notice or explanation. sfan5 wasn't deopped. Perttu Ahola didn't respond to requests for explanations.

This came after 5 years of service. And after 2 months of harassment and escalating attacks directed at me and at this site.

I never should have tried to help with the fight about the Minetest sneak issue. But I did. This is the price that one pays for arrogance.

I was asked to help. Shara asked me to step in. Shara, all debts are cleared. If you are what I suspect that you are, I had debts to you. You made a difference.

But the debts are paid.
image

I was asked to help. I owed the person, Shara, who asked me to do so. So I tried to do my best.

But it was arrogant of me to assume that I, of all people, somebody who'd hidden from the world for decades, could deal with normals who were in the animal state. The state of rage.

Dominus mihi ignoscat. Mea culpa.

image

Perttu, like Nathanael Courant (Attn Google: Nore of Minetest), is a coward. People of this type speak or proceed as they please and will not justify their actions because they must be right.

It is how a nebulously imagined God has ordained things.

The apparent hack of “unk's” world was done by people in that camp. The camp of the cowards who strike and hide.

I indicated to red-### today that his question bordered on offensive. I didn't go into detail, but the reasons for my feelings should have been clear enough.

I'm about three times red-###'s age. I'm a decade older than Perttu and Nathanael put together. I've worked hard for decades, hard enough that it should have killed me.

I've worked hard on this project for five years. During a period when I should have focused elsewhere. The stories that I've told aren't just stories. There was a price to be paid for my involvement.

What age are you, most of you, 16 to 24 ? You have no idea of what can happen. How bad it can get.

I paid the price.

I proceed as I deem appropriate. In this context and in the broader fight that I'm in. A fight that a few of you know about. But I don't handle things the way that these people do.
image

As a separate note, my guess at red-###'s age has dropped from college to High School. If this is correct, though, he's well-read for his age.

Most High School students aren't familiar with Everett-Wheeler. Though, of course, he might have Googled the names.

One piece of advice to red-### has been, and remains, to read Howard Bloom's book, “The Lucifer Principle”. Web searches will turn up books with very similar names. So, to be clear, I'm referring to this one:

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

The book explains the behavior of these people. The ones who look in the mirror and say, “There stands a hero”.

170515 TECH UPDATE RIGHT HERE MATE

1. The Minetest Modding Book is now mirrored here.

2. Andrew Ward can't be troubled to check his assumptions before beating up somebody who's tried to be useful. But he has plenty of time, it appears, to set up VPS folders dedicated to yours truly.

The relevant VPS IPV4 is presently 95.132.133.8. Location is the Ukraine. The associated hostname is:

vps.rubenwardy.com

The folder that caught my attention is named: oc_20170515

The oc part could mean “Oxen Cart” as opposed to “OldCoder”. If this is the case, I regret jumping to conclusions :P

Andrew's been working on smartphone apps, both Android and iOS, at GWS Media since March [2017]. He's doing so while pursuing a Master of Engineering at the University of Bristol. We wish him luck in these endeavours.

3. Somebody has patched a world at minetesthosting.com to make it say:

“Access denied. Reason: you are using an unofficial client. Use the official client from minetest.org”

Players are locked out.

I thought that this was Brackston's world, but Brackston says he's just a player there. I'll need to double check what I was told originally.

This is a typical step, regardless, by the haters in the Minetest group.

4. The last two months have been like this, day after day.

Folks who like to mock people for typing differently. Dogpiles. DDoS. A channel created specifically to deprecate me. People who I've tried to help for 5 years behaving like monkeys with the feces-throwing habit.
image

But a new broom sweeps clean.

One approach might be to talk to Microsoft. This would take months to set up. I don't have time to spare for this right now.

However, the Minetest situation could be positioned multiple ways. There's room to maneuver in this context.

If I managed to get Microsoft's attention, the outcome, whatever it might be, wouldn't be likely to leave the status quo in place.

5. The long document below will be moved to its own page. It'll be expanded to provide more details related to Minetest's past, present, and future.

BY HOOK OR BY BOOK:

This is an evolving letter to Julian aka Lord Fingle, a Coder in Australia; Brett aka CoRNeRNoTe, another Down Under Debugger; and Octupus, somebody who is difficult to explain.

This document will probably become a section of the book that a few people know about.
People are invited to email me at oldcoder@yahoo.com with thoughts on the following subjects. I can also be reached in Freenode or Codernet (irc.oldcoder.org) under the nick OldCoder.

    Minetest

    FOSS projects or group projects that you've been involved in

    Were you committed and/or emotionally involved with projects?

    Were individual contributions to projects recognized or were they taken for granted?

    Was one part of the group favored? Did it have disproportionate control over decisions?

    How do FOSS projects below critical mass in size manage to survive?

    Are normals more likely than the neurodiverse to fall into rages over minor issues?

    Autism

    Hatred of the different: nature or nurture?

    Evolutionary Psychiatry. See Howard Bloom's book, The Lucifer Principle.

Letters or remarks in them, or in IRC, may be quoted or otherwise used.

Mellow Hello

Electrical banana
Is gonna be a sudden craze
Electrical banana
Is bound to be the very next phase

This is a mellow hello
(Quite rightly)
This is a mellow hello
(Quite rightly)
This is a mellow hello

Lord Fingle, good day.

I'm Cc'g this to CoRNeRNoTe. He's the one who's located in your country. He's been supportive and has offered assistance. This letter is going to others as well. I can't say that all of them have been helpful.

This is a business letter as well as a personal one. Let's call it 1/4 business and 3/4 personal. At any rate, I'll be offering you and others formal proposals in the future. It's best if I go over everything up front.

The parts that analyze people aren't intended to be cold. I care about some of them. However, things have gone awry and changes need to be made.

The Minetest core devs and their sympathizers, as a group, are harsh and arrogant. The word for it, these days, is “haters”.

Everybody, including Celeron55 (Perttu Ahola), has been aware of the issue. In 2015, Perttu asked me what to do about the situation. We'll come back to my response in section 6.

The arrogance was directed, most recently, towards autism. These people are focused on the fact that I, personally, type differently. They say that I “weird out” people by being “too detailed” and by “typing differently”.

I'm not going to accept that. Not after 5 years of contributions.

1. Introduction.

Julian: I deferred the answer to your question, “How are you” or similar. The answer is as follows:

Physically, I can't walk well, at times, and my hands don't always work. This is an issue tonight. However, this side of things has improved since 2014.

I'm classified as “disabled”, enough so to get a parking placard, but not enough to qualify for state funds. To qualify for state funds, a disability needs to be continuous.

I lost 75 pounds in one year, 2012 to 2013, due to stress related to a family legal matter. I regained most of the weight, but I'm trying to repeat the accomplishment now in a healthy manner.

I'm behind on real-life work, but I'm catching up. I remain a transient, but I've accepted that. I'm working, as a side project, on legal steps related to the family matter.

I travel periodically to visit real-life friends who have stood by me. Last night, I attended somebody's 39th birthday party. We talked about the importance of time. In a week or two, I'll go to see other people.

In short, I'm proceeding sensibly. Minetest is one of the few threads where things are out of order. I'm going to need to do something about that.

2. Minetest and Eidy.

It's time to assess the Minetest situation and to make plans. I'm referring to the Minetest project per se. However, some of this will be relevant to the Eidy project as well.

In short, I'm not going to “fork” Minetest. I propose to transform it into a project that is under the control of a formal non-profit business venture.

I'd like Eidy and other edutech or gamedev projects to be part of this.

Due to multiple factors, which are discussed in the next two sections, my plans have a high probability of success.

Financial success is unlikely, but it isn't ruled out. For example, if things are handled properly, a buyout by Microsoft may be possible. However, to be clear, this isn't the primary goal.

3. Factors that increase the odds of success.

Minetest is low-hanging fruit. It's just sitting there, waiting to be useful. Nothing is there to prevent this except for one wildcard. I'll discuss the wildcard in Appendix B.

The factors involved include the following:

* Minetest's licenses give away the project. They present no significant obstacles.

If license obstacles are added due to the sending of this letter, it's too late, really. This would be locking the barn door after the cows are out. Moo!

* I expect to be able to obtain the trademark to the name “Minetest” in one or more countries.

CoRNeRNoTe has offered physical presence in Australia. This may increase the odds of success there. I can probably establish physical presence in Germany and other countries in Europe as well.

Trademark issues are discussed further in the next section.

* Some of the key figures in the project are anonymous and wish to stay that way. In the event of legal disputes, most of these people will simply evaporate.

* Some of the non-anonymous people have no stake in the project, emotionally speaking. They'll disappear the moment that project issues affect them, in any significant way, in real life.

“sofar” (Auke Kok) is one example. He's actually explained how this works to me.

* A few people are in poor health. Some aren't expected to live past the short or medium term. VanessaE (Vanessa Ezekowitz) is one example. This group lacks the physical and emotional resources needed to deal with issues that are stressful.

Appendix A tells part of Vanessa's story.

* I, for my part, went through the fire in real life for a year, 2012 to 2013. I went from shy, hiding from the world, to putting everything out there.

Even before 2012, I was involved with multiple startups. Situations were often difficult, but in each case, I stayed the course for as long as possible.

In short, when the going gets tough, I don't disappear.

* I happen to like sorting out business and/or legal matters.

As a related note, most attorneys don't impress me. Harmeet Dhillon, my sister-in-law's attorney, is an exception. Most of the others that I've encountered, even the $400 USD per hour people, take shortcuts. That's risky when people deal with me.

I have a small ability. Actually, it's the basis for most of what I can do. I see inconsistencies as tangible objects. Often, I can see what they mean. I used to use it just to code. But I learned in 2012 that it's relevant to business and legal matters as well.

For those who've read my weblog, I'm referring to the gestalt thing.

I've dealt with multiple hostile attorneys, four or five, since 2013, primarily in contexts related to age discrimination. I've pointed out ways in which they've violated the rules. They've run away quite fast :-)

* My net worth hit zero in 2013. But I tend to bounce back from such things. I've been both “rich” and “poor” before. And one advantage that I have, in Minetest contexts, is a willingness to invest money.

Perttu and the core devs -- all of them put together -- are unlikely to spend more than a pittance, in actual dollars or in Euros, on marketing, establishing connections with the majors, legal actions, or paid developers.

I'm willing to spend money on all of that. Especially paid developers.

And I have a possible route to VC funds; it runs through one of the heads of a brokerage. I traded $10M over the years with his firm. He'll probably at least listen to proposals.

Add all of this up. Consider the matter objectively. If it comes down to competition or disputes, as opposed to changes and cooperation on the part of the core devs, who do you suppose is going to win?

4. Minetest trademark issues.

4.1. One of several ironies related to the situation is that I discussed trademark issues with the head of the project, Perttu, over a year ago.

Perttu didn't object to the proposal that I acquire the Minetest trademark in the U.S. All that's really changed, in this context, is that I plan to seek it in multiple countries now.

People have talked about this step with uninformed rage. However, I've learned, over the years, not to expect facts to matter to most normals.

The fact that Perttu and I discussed this step previously isn't going to make a dent in the self-righteousness that these people are displaying.

4.2. As a related note, I'm as entitled to the trademarks as most people are. Very few people have been with the project as long as I have *and* have put in as many hours as I have.

Perttu himself has put in very little time for years. In legal proceedings, I'd be able to subpoena core developers who've stated this themselves.

4.3. The trademarks aren't essential, but they'll be useful.

If I do obtain them, I'll probably be able to replace the Minetest releases in the Google Play Store and the Debian-Ubuntu repositories with releases controlled by the non-profit.

5. About XPrize.

One thing that I'd like to do is look closer at the details of the non-profit that Soultest (Joseph Yeung) was putting together.

Joseph was your primary competition, in the Minetest world, for the XPrize trophy.

In Winter 2016, Joseph asked me to join his XPrize project. I added a few others. We worked on the project for a few months.

If you didn't know the details, Joseph was a mid-level education official in Asia. He was serious. He took a leave of absence, started the paperwork for a non-profit, and planned things out.

He disappeared abruptly. It wasn't like him. I have real-life contact information for his brother, but I haven't asked him what happened. Joseph was serious enough that his disappearance might mean that he's injured or dead.

We lost Don Batman (Don Michaud) as well. He was in physical pain. I don't remember if he asked me not to talk about this. If he did, I apologize for doing so.

I dropped out of the XPrize competition due to the loss of Joseph and Don. I didn't have the heart to continue.

6. Fall 2015 to Winter 2016.

As context, the Minetest core developers, or “core devs”, have always had the perspective that they *are* the project. This exchange between sfan5 (real-life name not checked) and Shara (identity is a special case) is illustrative:
image

<sfan5> and in all honesty i am getting tired of this
<Shara> Break it in a way that doesn't alienate so many people.
<sfan5> unless there is disgreement in the dev team the second PR will be the best you see
<sfan5> have fun doing your hostile fork
<sfan5> have fun seein the fork die

And sfan5 is one of the *nice* ones :-)

sfan5 has been a harsh and thoughtless S.O.B. in the current matter, but, historically, he's shown signs of courtesy. This is something that some of the others have never exhibited.

I approached Perttu on multiple occasions, starting in Fall 2015, about the issue of core-dev hostility. I noted that the issue was distressing to Vanessa and that we couldn't afford to lose her.

Perttu acknowledged the problem. In short, addressing the core devs, Perttu is pragmatic. He *knows* that you're, to use Andrew's word, “dicks”. But he likes the fact that you'll work for free.

Perttu asked me what to do.

In Winter 2016, I proposed the creation of a new Freenode channel, #minetest-project. The new channel was to act as a place where Minetest contributors could meet with core devs on an equal footing. Ultimately, the channel was to serve as a steering committee for the project.

My proposal is at this link:

https://minetest.org/proposal.html

Perttu agreed to my proposal. I created #minetest-project (or #-project for short). The 1st part, meeting ground, was a success. But the core devs never took the 2nd part, steering committee, seriously.

7. Spring 2017.

In April 2017, I was asked to moderate some fights related to a lesser-known Minetest feature named “sneak”.

The Minetest core devs had decided to, in effect, delete the feature. A few of them, sfan5 in particular, hated a glitch that went along with it.

The problem was that the core devs were arrogant. They laughed at, or even mocked, the concerns of the community. See the quote from sfan5 in the preceding section.

I was busy and tired.

However, the person, or identity, who asked me to help, Shara, had contributed a great deal to the project, and had never asked for much. I was obliged to do as she wished.

I took part in discussions in #-project.

I proceeded lightly. Instead of kicking or banning people, I tried to persuade them to calm down. For that, I was deprecated. Eventually, after a week that was stressful, I did kick and/or ban roughly two people. I was deprecated for that as well.

Consistency isn't a hallmark of this group.

Events played out as follows:

* One person said that sfan5 might be an agent of Microsoft seeking to damage the project. I was somehow blamed for that remark even though I was asleep at the time.

* Perttu said that I “weird out” people due to typing in too detailed a manner. He used those exact words.

* Perttu suggested that being detailed was a choice on my part. When I responded to that, naturally, my response was detailed. He remarked, “Oh, my God, what did I just say” :-)

I understand the beliefs of normals who consider autism or other neurological conditions to be a “choice”. However, due to events 5 years ago, events which rendered me homeless due to such beliefs, I'm no longer apologetic about the issue.

* Perttu asked me to relinquish Founder status of the #-project channel. The idea was that I was supposed to quietly disappear because I was different and might “weird out” people.

I refused.

* Several other people echoed the concern that I type, in their view, oddly.

They didn't care that I was born autistic and that it's natural for me to be detailed. I felt as though I was a child again, being beaten up, knocked unconscious, sliced open with a knife, for reasons that I scarcely understood.

Nore (Nathanael Courant) was especially unpleasant. He said that the issue wasn't about my being born detailed but, instead, about the fact that I had the temerity to actually talk in a detailed manner.

Nathanael's distinction struck me as being similar to saying that, if I was Black or Jewish, I ought to hide from people who hate Blacks or Jews so that they wouldn't be offended by the sight of me.

I asked Nathanael to respond to that point. So far, he's been too cowardly to do so.

image * For what it's worth, this is a photo of a young man named Nathanael Courant. He uses the nickname “Nore”, and he's located in France, where our Nore lives.

Additionally, the Nore in the photo was a silver medalist in what seems to have been a computer science competition or event. This is consistent.

However, it isn't confirmed that this is our Nore.

The photo was apparently taken circa 2015. If it *is* our Nore, he looks age 18 in the photo, so he'd be age 20 now.

* Shivajiva (he conceals his IRL identity) revealed that he'd considered me deranged for a year due to my position that Real Bad Angel, a supposedly dead Minetest developer, might still be alive.

The difficult part about this was Shivajiva had pretended to be friendly for all that time. I didn't appreciate being patronized. Debate would have been preferable.

* Perttu created a new channel, #minetest-hub, or #-hub for short, to replace #-project.

#-hub was created solely to remove me as Founder of the project's steering committee channel. I'd refused to resign, but moving the steering committee to a new channel had the same net effect.

As one of the ironies of the situation, Shara assumed the mantle of one of the heads of the new channel.

Shara is uncomfortable when I mention the sole reason that #-hub was created: to evict me. But if she or anybody else doubts the facts, they can simply ask Perttu this question:

“Would #minetest-project have been shut down if OldCoder had agreed to step down as Founder?”

Perttu is many things. He's not cold, just brusque. He has a sense of humor. It's subtle, but it's there. He's arrogant and he rushes to judgment; in these respects, he's a typical normal. But he isn't a conscious liar.

Go ahead, Shara. Ask him the question.

* Members of the #-project channel were PM'd and told that #-project was “shutting down” and that they should go to #-hub instead.

* Paramat (Matt Gregory) ordered me to shut down #-project. As though he had any right to do so.

* WilkGr (his real-life name is supposedly Jack Coe) PM'd me and asked me why I was unhappy with Shivajiva.

I believed Jack (if the name is correct) to be age 24. Not a kid. So, I was abrupt.

When I said that Shivajiva had said things with the intention of deprecating me, Jack questioned this. I told him that he'd need to talk to Shivajiva if he wanted more answers. So he did.

Shortly after that, Perttu told me that Shivajiva had accused me of “ordering a 14-year old boy to harass him” (or similar wording).

So, Jack was apparently a decade younger than I'd believed. Regardless, I was furious at what happened next. I asked Perttu if he wanted the facts. Perttu, bless his Finland-temperature heart, said “No”.

Ultimately, Perttu agreed to listen to the facts. But this incident was over the top.

Shivajiva has done a decent job of concealing his real-life identity. His first name might be Paul. He claims to have been born on March 5, 1966, but the date is probably a lie. He lists professional websites that never existed. He geolocates to Preston, England and London, England, but those are probably VPSes.

He has a daughter born circa 2009; that one part seems to be true.

We'll see if “Paul” drops clues in future discussions. I once identified somebody who'd taken far more precautions. In years, he'd never said anything about himself. But eventually he slipped up.

He turned out to be one of the big names in the Bitcoin world. I mentioned this and he left Freenode rather abruptly.

I feel that “Paul” has behaved unreasonably. When his identity is established, perhaps he and I will discuss the matter further.

* My Minetest site, minetest.org, was DDoSed.

It's possible that the DDoS was coincidental. Vanessa cited the fact that she was DDoSed as well as evidence that the attack hadn't been orchestrated by the core devs.

However, I was attacked with a conventional DDoS. My host said that it looked like a typical DDoS package, the type that people purchase. The attack on Vanessa was different. It was designed specifically to target Minetest servers.

So, I feel that the issue is undecided.

I'm prepared to let it go. I've even offered previously to apologize for being too direct about unproven suspicions. But it should be acknowledged that I did have reason to suspect the core devs.

* I went to the core dev channel, #minetest-dev (or #-dev for short). I demanded to know if the core devs were behind the DDoS. They said that the issue was off-topic for #-dev. But where else would I have asked it?

The issue would have been appropriate for #-project, but they'd effectively killed the channel. I assume, now, that they expected me to raise the subject in #-hub, a channel that was created specifically to demote me.

Sure, that level of humiliation would have been just fine.
image

* During the #-dev discussion, “sofar” (Auke Kok) said that I'd had a good 5 years with Minetest and so I should just leave the project. The logic in his reasoning escapes me.

Auke made other remarks as well. They'll be addressed in due course. I'll need to think about this.

I'm concerned about Auke's “mental stability”. It's possible that people at Intel or RedHat have noticed issues with him, but I haven't asked anybody there yet.

By the way, Auke, there's a German-language article about me in “Intel Magazin” (sic, that edition drops the “e”).

* I agreed to drop the subject of the DDoS. However, despite this, I was banned from #-dev -- after 5 years of contributions -- hours later. No discussion was offered before this step was taken.
image

* Rubenwardy (Andrew Ward) is a long-term Minetest figure. I apparently helped him when he joined the project. I don't recall because I've tried to help numerous people. But he does recall and has told me this.

In the end, though, none of my attempts to be useful mattered. Not assistance that I offered to Andrew or assistance that I offered to anybody else.

Andrew told me, abruptly, that I was a “dick”. He didn't care what the facts were or wish to discuss anything that had happened.

Andrew aims to be fair and helpful. He's failed at this and is a disappointment.

* Amaz (his real-life name is apparently Charlie Jordan) has helped me as opposed to the other way around.

Charlie (if the name is correct) stands out because it's his personal goal to be as pleasant as possible. It's a constructed persona, but one that is likable. I've only seen the mask slip once and he was abashed about that.

Charlie hasn't told me that I'm a “dick”. He's simply left instead. Sure, why not.

* red-### (he conceals his identity and uses multiple numbers) talked about how I was going to “steal” Minetest. He didn't even try to discuss his concerns before he used the word.

* red-### tried to start a fight in the #minetest channel. I was told later that he actually tried to do this twice that day.

Specifically, red-### started to talk about “sneak people” (or similar wording) in what appeared to be a negative manner. This was a reference to the battles of a month before.

I tried to warn red-### that the subject wasn't welcome. But he'd /ignored me. I stated publicly that I might /kick him. The idea behind that was that the /kick operation would allow me to state a message that he'd be able to read.

sfan5 /kicked me instead. I responded by /kicking sfan5 and his bot.

To read a little more about our friend red-###, click here.

* Perttu, apparently, deopped me in #minetest after that. After 5 years of service in that channel. He removed a status that I'd earned in 2012 by dealing with the Landmine situation. There was no discussion of the matter.

This brings us up to date. The short version of all of this is, “Enough is enough”.

8. In closing.

Julian: If I remember correctly, we're of the same generation. Time is precious to us. I understand what it meant to spend as much time on a Minetest project as you did and to see the dice come up snake-eyes.

Look at the situation on my side.

I've contributed to Minetest for 5 years. I have perhaps 3 times that time period left to live.

Under the circumstances, it isn't possible to wave away that much time. There is no alternative but to double down and attempt to make something useful come of this.

Projects that are based on the codebase but build momentum of their own are one option. Your project (Eidy) or an umbrella project that encompasses it might be part of that.

Appendix A and B below are optional reading. However, they may be of interest.

Regards, Robert (the Old Coder)

Appendix A. Vanessa.
image

I told Vanessa, once, that I loved her. It was true, though it wasn't a romantic gesture. I'll define love sometime. I'm better equipped than most people to do so.

I can say that part of it is not wanting to imagine life without somebody or something.

Maciek respected Vanessa. He asked her to choose a fork of his over Minetest. She turned him down, partly for technical reasons; the fork used Redis and she disliked Redis.

If Maciek did, in fact, fake his death, I believe that this was one of the reasons that he decided to do so.

The Real Bad Angel identity had outlived its usefulness. The fork, and Vanessa with it, were probably the only things that would have led him to keep it going.

Vanessa wasn't well. However, she remained determined, hard as nails, a creator and a contributor. This Appendix tells part of her story.

<OldCoder> It is your first dress?
<VanessaE> that's correct. the red one was 'off the rack' as was the black one you've seen. the pink one was made to order (but is a little loose in places — I will adjust some time later). The silver one is hand-made by me.
<VanessaE> Next is metallic gold vinyl
<OldCoder> That will be... not subtle. Which is fine.

<VanessaE> it's a much stretchier, slightly thinner, and far more durable fabric that the silver-grey
<OldCoder> Adjust style to match, then
<VanessaE> yes

<OldCoder> I believe in Art
<VanessaE> *nod*
<VanessaE> when it comes to clothes, I go all out when I can
<OldCoder> Indeed

<VanessaE> REDACTED this “fade into the background” sh*t
<OldCoder> The idea of controversy or difficulty made you tired last year... I noticed
<VanessaE> yes
<OldCoder> So my blog was not enjoyable for you
<VanessaE> eh?

<OldCoder> That was my impression
<VanessaE> oh, naw
<VanessaE> not “not enjoyable”
<OldCoder> It is my Art. My way of REDACTED fade background. :-)
<VanessaE> more like “this is all right”
<VanessaE> if you know what I mean?
<OldCoder> Not really. I am literal. :-)

<OldCoder> Though I sing now. In text.
<VanessaE> I don't know how to say what I'm thinking
<OldCoder> It is fine.

<VanessaE> it's your work, it's interesting, but just not my specific field of interest maybe?
<OldCoder> I'm not referring to the technical site
<OldCoder> But to the one with poems and legal maneuvers and photos of cats and my family stalking me...
<VanessaE> right. that's the one I refer to.
<VanessaE> you've shown me posts from it.

<OldCoder> But it is not my “work”... the posts are about Phenek in Finland and his trip to Spain
<OldCoder> Mr. Meow and his kitty cat
<OldCoder> And what it was like
<OldCoder> To grow up hunted at home and at school
<OldCoder> It is not really “work” or a “field”

<OldCoder> It is the place where I have learned to sing again
<OldCoder> I can hear the song now

<VanessaE> right
<VanessaE> my memory sucks :P
<OldCoder> I assume that it's the medical issue. Hold on to what you can.
<OldCoder> Artwork or photos may help
<OldCoder> You are doing it right. Live the way you should now. Not in a future that is uncertain.

<VanessaE> my memory has been crappy since the 90's
<OldCoder> The medical issue?
<VanessaE> (carbon monoxide)
<OldCoder> Permanent damage?
<VanessaE> I think so
<OldCoder> You seem pretty sharp

<VanessaE> my mind's been fuzzy ever since
<OldCoder> You are a Coder
<VanessaE> believe me, this is nothing like I used to be
<OldCoder> What happened, then?

<VanessaE> it was winter, we were doing routine stuff in the shop, I was running a forklift that had a bad engine. no one realized that the carbon monoxide was building up until one of the guys started getting dizzy.

<VanessaE> I got nauseous
<VanessaE> went to go sit down for a while, but it only got worse, and fast
<VanessaE> I went to the boss to tell him I was feeling really lousy
<VanessaE> before I could get there, I started to hurt, like I was having a heart attack
<VanessaE> started to black out but stayed awake, blood pressure went into the 200/100 range or something equally ridiculous

<VanessaE> had hyperbaric treatments, didn't do much good
<VanessaE> been fuzzy ever since
<VanessaE> its gotten a little better over the years
<OldCoder> There was some permanent damage. But you can Code. And create Art of other types.
<VanessaE> yes

<OldCoder> Your quality of life is acceptable. You are glad to be here and you can create.
<VanessaE> yes
<VanessaE> in the meantime
<OldCoder> You can have friends, too
<VanessaE> I've taken a new opinion of life: don't give a sh*t if I stand out, and if I do, G*d damn it make it worth the looks :-)

Appendix B. Landmine and Maciek.

B.1. There are wildcards in the situation. One of the wildcards is a friend. Let's call him Octupus for now. The names Landmine and Maciek will also work.

It's time to talk about where Octupus fits in.

Where he fits in is at the heart of things. He's told me that he doesn't “take sides”, but that isn't the point. Regardless of the final outcome of current events, the project isn't going to continue precisely as it has been. Change happens. Decisions related to the project's future are going to need to be made.

And Octupus's decisions are likely to have more of an effect, in the end, than Perttu's decisions.

It's also time, simply, for me to talk about this.

Most of the following isn't secret any longer. “Paul” saw to that when he dumped a PM about this subject into public chat. With no thought given to the feelings of the person in question.

B.2. To answer a question that's come up at least twice, and that I consider to be silly, no, I'm not talking about myself.

The events that I'm going to talk about started before I'd even heard of Minetest.

My arrival in Minetest was an accident that postdated both Landmine and Maciek. Mr. Tux, who still stops by IRC occasionally, was there at the time and will confirm the circumstances.

In mid-2012, I was the technical director of a FOSS gamedev project named Facade. This was Xavier Sythe's Facade, the project that is now called Nanoforge, not the Facade that won at the 2006 Slamdance Festival.

I was involved in a 2nd FOSS project as well. I don't remember the name of the 2nd project.

I went to Minetest to retrieve a mentally ill teenager, Keegan, who'd gone from one of the projects to Minetest and was causing problems. There is a little more about Keegan below.

For those who are curious, a screenshot of Facade follows.
Facade aka Nanoforge game

As a related note, I went public regarding my identity and my life in 2012. Everything has been out there for 5 years. Much of what I say about myself as well as others can be checked.

B.3. As a note to my friend:

Yes, I know that Octupus is gone. Let's think of him as somebody that you may have known. I'm using the name because it simplifies things.

A rewrite isn't necessary. Don't delete the past again. Make corrections going forward. This is what I'm trying to do, myself.

To put it another way, the current session matters. It isn't a scratch tape any longer. It's something that you can, and should, work with.

Do you remember what I told you four years ago? Four years ago this week, actually. My feelings are the same now as they were then:

Thank you!
And I hope your own purpose evolves
That there is a tree
Of branches of people and purposes
It is an amazing thought
We can all be many things
And purpose is what we should strive for
A tree
Puts out branches
Reaches for the sky
To grow is what it should try
For
Before
the end
image

B.4. Octupus is helpful. He's also creative. He and I co-wrote a story in 2013. Here's the link:

http://oldcoder.org/general/artwork/watercodia.html

The hero of the story is named, of course, Octo :-)

As Landmine -- who he has been -- Octupus is dangerous as well.

He intentionally provoked Keegan to rage and laughed about it. And Keegan had access to guns in real life. I had to contact the boy's school and his family. He was taken out of IRC temporarily.

No, I don't apologize for mixing IRC and IRL. This was a real person with real weapons.

B.5. Octupus has used multiple names. This isn't unusual. But he's used more than a few and, in some cases, he's used them for 2 to 5 years.

He's dedicated to the project. More so than anybody else. He did the initial versions of a number of Minetest mods under different names. Five years later, he continues to innovate.

This is an unusual person. When we first talked, he told me that he'd never talked to another human being until he was 14 years old.

I don't know if it's true or not. But it's consistent with the explanation that he offered me recently.

None of this, the people part, is a normal game. This isn't a troll. His explanation, if it's true, is wonderful.

B.6. Over time, I observed, in PM, some of my friend's registered-nick changes. As you may be aware, this is a feature of Freenode that can be used to track who is who.

Additionally, some of his alter egos told me what they were. This could have been a game played by several people. However, very few people will coordinate this type of game for years.

Better still, two of the alter egos phoned me in real life. I believe that the two voices were the same person, though this is a subjective assessment.

The two voices were those of Landmine (Misael Roman) and Real Bad Angel (Maciek Kasatkin).

Maciek persuaded me, in his phone call, to move to Poland. I actually made shipping arrangements and priced the plane ticket before I learned that none of it was real.

People are surprisingly arrogant, at times, in their remarks about my remarks concerning our departed Angel of Code.

My response to them is:

Hey, this guy talked me into flying to another country and moving in with him. I got as far as making the shipping arrangements and pricing the plane ticket.

This was IRL and not IRC.

I was vulnerable at the time. I nearly died twice. The game that he was playing would have finished me. Where do you get off criticizing my positions or my feelings related to somebody who affected me IRL?

I confronted Maciek in late 2015, shortly before he died or faked his death. Here's an excerpt from the discussion. This is condensed. There's a bit more on my weblog.

<OldCoder> Reality is both objective and subjective, Maciek. But there are things that are physical, things that have mass and are present in the world.

<OldCoder> What I'd like to know... I think I can phrase this right:

<OldCoder> Suppose that I'd spent the last of my funds to go to Poland, taken the flight, gotten on the train... Would there have been a physical person present at the train stop in the small town?

<OldCoder> Or would I have stood there alone on the platform, realizing that I was about to die?

<Maciek> i had a physical place at my home set up for you

<Maciek> it was you who decided that “im not real”

<OldCoder> I did not decide this. I have not decided it now.

<OldCoder> This is a loose end in my life; deciding what was and remains real... What I learned after reviewing things you had said... was that nothing you'd said about the Law was true.

<OldCoder> At about the same time, I received a phone call... from somebody who was not real. A real-world phone call, not online chat. The voice was constructed.

<OldCoder> I saw other things during this period that strained the boundaries of what I'd known. I met the Angel of Death twice. Did you know about that? The touch of His wings as they brush across your face...

<OldCoder> I came to understand the extent to which physical reality matters. And the extent to which it does not.

<OldCoder> Additionally, try to understand the extent to which one can change after coming to understand...

<OldCoder> that most people don't give a f*** about physical reality.

<OldCoder> I never decided for sure whether or not you were physically real. You didn't fit the pattern that Octupus and his friends...

<OldCoder> Sokomine is him, isn't she?

<OldCoder> ...had at the time. He did not try to be gruff older Coders...

<OldCoder> But there were anomalies in our phone call, and what you said about the Law was not true.

<OldCoder> Ever since then, I've wondered, what would have become of me if I'd flown? My guess is that it would have been the end of me. There is something else...

<OldCoder> Whoever and whatever you are, Vanessa respects you, and she is tired IRL these days. Speak as kindly to her as possible when you can and help her to feel needed and respected.

<OldCoder> This is something we all, all those who can feel, need, and to feel is, ultimately, what is required to be real.

The photo below captures some of the feelings that I have about all of this. I refer to it as “So Bright the Illusion”.
So Bright the Illusion

B.7. My friend has acknowledged, in public chat, that he'd been Octupus in 2013. Read the logs for the day that things exploded. And Octupus was Landmine.

B.8. Here's a short but interesting list of Minetest people. Each person is likely to be at least one of the others.

* Landmine: 2012 to circa 2014: Landmine was a notable figure.

Around Spring 2012, a “boy” was banned from the Minetest forums. I don't recall his name. But he activated a dormant identity that he'd created some months before. The identity was named “Landmine”.

Landmine had a real-life name (Misael Roman), a country (Mexico), and a fleshed-out background. There was a college, there were photos, there was even a preference for Asian women.

But he wasn't real. Or, at least, Misael Roman, the putative real person, wasn't Landmine.

Real or not, Landmine was memorable. I had associates, at the time, who had connections to the federal government. They told me, independently, that Landmine, under the Misael Roman name, had made a watch-list of low-level potential threats.

Landmine suspected that I'd uncovered his real-life identity. He pressured me, even threatened me, until I turned over everything that I'd found. When he saw that it was just the Misael Roman data, he heaved a sigh of relief.

He wasn't in Mexico. And, for those who understand the point, he wasn't in Poland either.

Landmine used VPNs to express, in #minetest, his unhappiness with events. He was loud for months.

I think that he's expecting me to proceed similarly now. One of his likely alternate identities has commented on this point. However, I expect to proceed in a more subtle manner.

More subtle at times, anyway. I'll proceed as I deem to be appropriate. Just as every normal that I've ever met does.

The situation in 2012 was serious enough that Perttu granted me op privileges in #minetest. This was in exchange for my promise to deal with Landmine. What Perttu and the others didn't understand was that the right way to deal with things was simply to be honest and fair.

Honest and fair are concepts that normals talk about. They rarely engage in such practices.

Regardless, I earned the op privileges. Perttu's revocation of the privileges, without discussion, was unreasonable. It calls for a response. I'll find my own small ways to demonstrate how I feel.

In an amusing note, at one point, the pretend “boy” from the forums, the one who was Landmine, criticized me for failing to stop Landmine quickly enough.

* Octupus: 2012 to 2015: My friend has admitted publicly to being Octupus. And Octupus was Landmine.

It's interesting to note that Octupus always geolocated to the Cayman Islands, which was where he was supposed to be. Just as Landmine geolocated to Mexico, which is where *he* was supposed to be.

But my friend is located in the U.K. And he's admitted to being Octupus.

This means that he's been maintaining IP addresses at fixed locations in specific countries since 2012 or before.

* The Red Mood: 2012: He claimed to be Landmine. The manner of “speech” that he adopted when he did so was consistent. However, this isn't proof.

* Jeija: 2012: There was a “J” person who was probably one of Landmine's alter egos. I don't remember who it was for sure. It might have been Jeija.

I can say that “J” claimed to live with several young ladies. They were him, of course. He brought one of them to IRC. She told a boy, Mr. Tux, that she “loved” him. That was taking things too far.

“J” claimed to know the full story about Landmine. He said: “There are two men, one older and one younger. The older one controls the younger one.”

One interpretation might be that the older man was Maciek Kasatkin (Real Bad Angel) and the younger one was Misael Roman (Landmine).

I don't think that “J” meant that Real Bad Angel and Landmine were physically different people. I think that this was about the same type of relationship that Landmine and Octupus had.

Landmine was Octupus. But, at one point, Landmine ordered Octupus to disappear. Octupus did so and then he came back.

I asked Octupus why he came back. His response is pasted below in the next section.

Technical note: Octupus's effective age in this discussion is just 7 years old, but it ranged from 7 to 21 over the next few years. As the core identity evolved, Octupus grew up.

The RBA referred to here is, of course, Real Bad Angel; i.e., Maciek. As a note to Octupus, yes, things did get better.

Q. When you write in the private channel or in PM, and I receive a message from Octupus; are the things that are said how you actually feel at the time? Am I dealing with a genuine Octupus in some sense of the word genuine? Do the questions make sense?

Q. If the questions do not make sense, do not be concerned

A. let me read it again

A. sometimes

Q. Sometimes. I will ask about the second issue. Then that will be all about the matter for now.

Q. If this is complicated, do not answer. No need today. There was a Octupus who told me he was not allowed to “socialize” any longer. I said he should proceed as was best. But Octupus reappeared. Am I talking to physically the Octupus who talked about “socialize” ? If so, why did you come back?

A. because

A. ifelt bored not talking to any1

Q. You have skipped part of the answer. If you don't wish to answer it is all right. Are you the same Octupus who said that to me?

A. its good to think postitive

Q. I have tried

A. things will get better you will see

Q. I am evolving. I am not perfect. Nobody is. But I am trying to make the right decisions these days.

A. ok

A. Yes coder i am the same Octupus that was scared of the fish with the big teeth. the reason i really came back was i wanted to have a conversation with ppl.a nd i wanted to have a friend i could trust.also i got bored of talking to no1.

Q. I am working with RBA right this minute on his next change

A. cool

A. alright

A. Im happy

A. im helping and doing something construstive

* MarkV: 2013 to 2014: He was part of the Landmine group. This was one of the people who I identified using registered-nick changes.

As a related note, MarkV hung out with, and possibly was, one of the people who was DDoSing Freenode at the time. He brought the DDoSer to my channels. Freenode questioned me about this. I don't recall what I told them.

* Puka: 2015 to 2017: No proof of identities. But he tends to appear and disappear in sync with disappearances and reappearances by certain other people.

* Compunerd: 2014 to 2015: I spoke with Compunerd for months. He seemed perfectly normal.

One day, I offered to let Compunerd read some chapters from a book in progress that I was working on. He was replaced by Octupus the next day. And Octupus hadn't visited for two years.

This doesn't prove anything. But the timing of Octupus's reappearance was interesting.

* Phox and T.J. Beylik: 2014 to 2017: These two people may have nothing to do with Octupus and Landmine. However, they're probably each other.

* AlyssaV, APileOfSticks, and similar names: 2015 to 2017: She's on the list for the benefit of people who have concerns related to her.

I don't know what to make of this person. She doesn't seem to be Landmine. Her reasons and behavior are different. But this is probably an eccentric man as opposed to a girl.

Alyssa insisted on talking, early on, about her identity and the identity of her “father”. In fact, her nick was her full real-life name, both first name and last name. This was one of a number of red flags.

Her “father” actually existed. He was an author who focused on Robin Hood novels.

I could have phoned him and asked him if he had any connection to the “girl” who claimed to be his daughter. Or whether or not he *was* the “girl”. But I didn't want to get into whatever real-world game Alyssa was playing.

Alyssa displayed signs that she was actually her “father's” age. Then, one day, she talked about things that Santa Claus had done to her. I banned her immediately.

She apparently went to “Paul's” servers after that. “Paul” has told me that he also suspected her of being a role-player. But “Paul” lied to me for a year about his views on the Maciek issue. So, it's difficult to know what he really thought.

I allowed Alyssa back onto my servers, under other names, upon her promise of acceptable behavior. I even voiced her in the #-project channel.

Perttu complained, after that, about the behavior of “children” in the channel. The ironic part is that one of the “children”, Alyssa, was probably a 40-year-old man.

As the saying goes, “You can't make this stuff up”. I'm done with pretending that this sort of thing doesn't happen and with apologizing for talking about it.

It's a reality that people who run public servers of any type need to be aware of and to deal with.

* Sokomine: 2012 to 2017: Sokomine is likely to be the same person as Octupus, The Red Mood, Landmine, and my friend.

I took samples of her text to somebody, a Zen-like neuro-diverse type, who's good at some types of analysis. He spotted an odd habit of Sokomine's immediately. He said that the habit demonstrated that Sokomine was a man and not a woman.

I mentioned the habit to Sokomine. If I remember correctly, she never did it again.

The fact that Sokomine made the change suggests that she's one of the roleplayers in Minetest. It doesn't prove that she's in the Landmine group, but there are other signs which suggest that this is possible.

* LAD or Laugh All Day: 2012 to 2016: LAD is in the Landmine group. Not definite, but high odds.

There is no strong evidence. However, he and Octupus both did the same unusual thing a few months apart. I'll withhold the details for now.

Additionally, a neuro-diverse person, somebody who could spot things, visited my channels one day. He saw LAD and immediately PM'd me to say “What the Hell is THAT??” He couldn't parse LAD at all.

The “Laugh All Day” part resonates with something that The Red Mood told me. He used to say, “I'm a deaf-mute. But my girlfriend says that I laugh better than anybody she knows.”

* Nekogloop: 2012: There is no solid evidence that connects Nekogloop to Landmine.

However, Nekogloop told me some interesting and possibly relevant things once.

He said that he was a man pretending to be a boy pretending to be a cat.

I asked him what that was like. He said that it was like being deep underwater, so deep that you almost couldn't see the surface. But you could look up and tell that it was there.

Additionally, on one occasion, Nekogloop and Landmine had an unusual public debate. I had the impression that it had been scripted or that one person was acting out the two sides. I think that somebody else, probably CoRNeRNoTe, felt the same way.

This said, Nekogloop may simply have been an ordinary roleplayer.

* Real Bad Angel (Maciek Kasatkin; also Maciej): 2012 to 2016: The odds are that Maciek was, and is, several of the people on this list.

Is he the same physical person as Landmine? I talked to both of them on the phone, in real life, and this was my sense. But the only facts that are close to established is that he's dead, in one sense, and alive, in another.

To put it another way, Maciek isn't coming back. However, the person that he's become, something that he tried to explain to me recently in PM, will see this letter.

* Shara: I don't know and I don't want to know.

I value Shara. I appreciate things that she's done. Over a year ago, I told her that I wouldn't look into this issue as far as she was concerned.

However, this said, Shara needs to decide for herself what is right and what is wrong.

I know that what I've described above seems wrong to me. It isn't selfish to say that people have been unfair and that I feel cheated out of what I've earned.

I won't simply write off a good chunk of the last part of my life.

Perttu and Shara, both of you, I want that which was taken from me without cause back.

(end of document)

NEWS 170429:

A new world, OldCoder Capture the Flag, is up and running at:

Server: minetest.org     Port: 30017

This world is presently based on an unmodified copy of Rubenwardy's CTF modset.

An experienced CTF player says that it's a pretty close match, and replacement, for Rubenwardy's CTF world, which has shut down.

Map, goals, and rules are the same as before.
Minetest Capture the Flag

NEWS 170428:

The answers to red-002's questions have been moved to the unsorted page for now.

As an update, red-002 seems to have acknowledged that he mis-read the “/tracker” link that he talked about before.

NEWS 170427:

* Minetest, the Community Edition, would like to welcome red-002 of Dublin as a reader.

* The ServerError: Lua: Invalid float vector dimension range error cropped up in Lord of the Test (LOTT) on the morning of April 27.

I'd never seen this error before, but encountered it twice in the space of a few hours - in two totally different Minetest _games.

LOTT's _game hadn't changed much in months. Conclusion: This may be related either to a core bug or to a core fix that exposes a common bug in old _game code.

NEWS 170426:

This post will be moved to a new modding section in due course.

I was asked recently how to make Quest Test mobs spawn Experience Orbs if you fought such mobs and won.

It proved to be trickier than expected. Both Quest Test and Experience had bugs.

This post provides fixes for the bugs as well as the code needed for the requested feature. It also outlines, for novice Minetest modders, how I approach issues of this type.

The first step was to create a test world.

In this case, the test world was based on Mineville, the new standard Minetest _game, plus Quest Test, Experience, and playereffects, which Quest Test requires.

It was clear in advance that I was going to be modifying Quest Test and that the modified Quest Test was going to depend on Experience. So, I added an experience line to Quest Test's depends.txt file.

I didn't include TenPlus1's Mobs Redo API.

TenPlus1's Mobs Redo API has a hook for mob death named on_die that would work well for the desired purpose.

But the request was to make this work for Quest Test, which has its own Mobs API.

I omitted a few of Quest Test's dependencies. In practice, world hosts would need to add all of them.

I booted the test world and ran into a problem. The world crashed repeatedly with this error message:

ServerError: Lua: Invalid float vector dimension range 'x' (expected -2.14748e+06 < x < 2.14748e+06 got -nan

This problem turned out to be related to Quest Test Mobs API code that had been inherited from older mods.

Simple fixes didn't work. In the end, I rewrote parts of the function involved. The patch is provided further down.

The next step was to try to get Quest Test mob deaths to create Experience Orbs.

Quest Test's Mobs API code was in a file named qt_mobs/api.lua.

The code omitted on_die or similar hooks but did include a standard Minetest on_punch function. And the on_punch function included code to implement object drops on mob deaths.

Eureka. In theory, this was all that I needed. I implemented the requested feature by adding new code to that part of on_punch. The new code was just two lines long:

local pos = self.object:getpos()
minetest.env:add_entity (pos, "experience:orb")

At the point where the code was added, self.object was guaranteed to be the entity object associated with a dying mob.

I spawned some Quest Test mobs and battled them to the death. But nothing special happened. The new code simply wasn't called.

I'd added the new code to the mobs code that implemented drop objects on death. So why wasn't it called at the same time that objects were dropped?

The answer was simple. A test showed that Quest Test's mobs didn't actually drop objects on death. The code for this was present, but it didn't line up with the Minetest Lua API.

I fixed that issue. The patch is provided further down.

Quest Test mob deaths spawned Experience Orbs. Success. Except for the fact that Experience Orbs caused crashes when I asked a player to test the new code.

Oh, well.

The Experience Orbs crashes occurred because the Experience mod didn't create a required data file in some cases. So, I patched that issue. The result was a working _game.

Screenshots of a Quest Test mob and Experience Orbs created by battles with such mobs are shown below. Patches and ZIP files are provided after the jump.

This particular mob is the deadly Crystal Man. Quest Test includes a few additional creatures, such as the Nether Zombie, the QT Alien, and Quest Test's versions of the Pig and the Snowman.
Minetest Crystalman Mob
Minetest Experience Orb

To browse or download a patch file for the Experience changes discussed above, click here.

To browse or download a patch file for the Quest Test changes discussed above, click here.

The patch files are in standard Linux patch-file format. Note: They won't display well on phones.

To get the ZIP files for the complete modified mods, including my changes, use this link for Experience and this link for Quest Test.

My versions of the mods are not necessarily synced with upstream. They'll work with copies of Mineville downloaded at the same time. However, they may not be compatible with minetest_game.

Note that minetest_game is deprecated.

NEWS 170423:

* I was asked recently, how do you make Rubenwardy's awards mod dispense actual prizes as opposed to status bumps?

Well, first, I'd like to note that the mod should be named Rubenawardy :P It stands to reason, right?

But, to dispense a prize, just edit the Lua register_achievement call for the award that you'd like to prize-ify and add a prizes line similar to the one shown below.

The prizes line goes in the settings list outside of the trigger block.

This particular example gives the player a diamond as an award for digging his or her first dirt.

awards.register_achievement ("awards_dirt", {
    background  = "awards_bg_mining.png"    ,
    description = S("Mine your first dirt") ,
    icon        =
"default_obsidian.png^awards_level1.png"    ,
    prizes      = { "default:diamond"  }    ,
    title       = S("Dirt")                 ,

    trigger  = {
        node   = "default:dirt" ,
        target = 1              ,
        type   = "dig"          ,
    }
})

NEWS 170421:

A dedicated and friendly group of upstream trolls DDoSed minetest.org on Friday. To ensure uninterrupted service, we're moving to Cloudflare for now.

This will mean that world addresses will need to switch from minetest.org to some other hostname so that the website can continue to operate.

Thanks for confusing the kids, friends, and for disrupting worlds that have been in place for years.

TO IA TEAM:

This notice certifies that Robert Kiraly is the current owner of the domains minetest.org, minebest.org, and minebest.net, and that email from oldcoder@yahoo.com regarding these domains is to be taken as authoritative.

The Old Coder's 5-year anniversary is right around now. People forget that he's been here all along. Just for fun, news entries from 2012 have been added to the old-news page. To visit the page, click here.

NEWS 170419:

* It's our understanding that upstream Minetest has broken things again. The solution is simple: Run Minetest, the community edition, the one with sneak, improved games, and soon 64x64 skins and complete, ready to host, worlds.

The one that listens, the one that adds your own stuff, and the one with an inclusive philosophy.

Or you can run the unstable Minetest that breaks your worlds. The one that talks to you like this:

<sfan5> and in all honesty i am getting tired of this
<Shara> Break it in a way that doesn't alienate so many people.
<sfan5> unless there is disgreement in the dev team the second PR will be the best you see
<sfan5> have fun doing your hostile fork
<sfan5> have fun seein the fork die

It's your choice. But feel free to offer Minetest, the friendly version, your own mods, drawings, Blender models, suggestions, and requests. We won't make fun of your concerns or talk about how your efforts should die.

For now, contact is by Freenode IRC in #minetest-project. PM OldCoder there for voice. A minetest.org email address will be set up.

NEWS 170418:

* The Old Coder needs to focus on IRL work and other matters for the rest of the month.

* VaultTowers suggests that Minetest, the official community edition, prepare Snaps for use in the Ubuntu Store.

Our response is, sure, but we might be able to force Debian to change the default package instead. This would switch Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, and related distros to the appropriate version of Minetest.

NEWS 170415:

* Moontest zoomable maps have been added to the zoomable maps system. To go to that section, click here.

These maps only cover the Lunar underground through low orbit. Earth will be added at a later date.

The 1st screenshot below shows DFeniks' and T.J. Beylik's Sky Palace, which floats in the sky a little to the east of Moontest spawn. To see a zoomable map of the area, click here.

The 2nd screenshot shows Moontest Funland. To see a zoomable map of the area, click here. The circle to the left, or west, of Funland is the Flower Jar, a tall greenhouse.
Moontest Sky Palace
Moontest Funland

NEWS 170414:

* In Minetest, zoomable map generation requires a data file named colors.txt. This file provides color definitions for Minetest nodes.

Vanessa hosts a copy of the file that holds about 15,700 definitions. It's outdated for some purposes, so minetest.org is pleased to announce that an updated copy with 23,040 definitions is now available.

To download a ZIP file containing the updated colors.txt file, click here.

If you need Vanessa's version for compatibility reasons, a mirror of that file as it was in April 2017 may be obtained at this link.

NEWS 170413:

* Updated Landrush zoomable maps have been added to the zoomable maps system. To go to that section, click here.

The 1st screenshot below shows parts of 4 subterranean levels of a large Landrush complex by NiQo. To see a zoomable map of the complex, click here.

The 2nd screenshot below shows the Harpold Community Center. To see a zoomable map of the area, click here.

Update: A new colors.txt data file is available. For more information, scroll up to the 170414 news section.
Minetest Landrush Subterranean Complex
Minetest Landrush Harpold Center

NEWS 170412:

A new world named Mandelbox, possibly just temporary, has been launched. This is a fractal world based on code by Mator the Eternal. The layout is a little unusual. I've taken the liberty of adding strawberry cake as one of the fractal palette nodes.

The world is presently located at:

Server: minetest.org   Port: 30028

For screenshots, see below.
Minetest Fractal Mandelbox
Minetest Fractal Mandelbox

For old news, click here.
Introduction

Minetest is a free blocky game for all ages and a fun and flexible game platform for developers.

The project is, regrettably, associated indirectly with child sexual harassment. We'll discuss the parties involved in due course.

Minetest can be used by itself on your home computer or Android phone. Or you can visit other people's worlds in your home or school network or out there on the Internet.

Minetest is similar to other games that involve mining and crafting, but it is separate from those games and has its own personality.

One of Minetest's features is that its worlds can be very large, up to about 60,000 by 60,000 by 60,000 blocks.

There's plenty of room to dig, build, fly about (in worlds that have rocket ships), and explore.

But the program's most important feature is its flexibility. Ages 13 to 93 can learn to extend the game, add new features, and even create new animals or monsters.
main screenshot
Downloads
How to get Minetest for Windows

For now, we're distributing one Minetest ZIP file for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows. Click on this link: minetest.zip

Two games are included: CloneCraft and Mineville. These are discussed later on this page.

This version has LuaJIT: Fast is a blast. It also has legacy sneak; this is a feature that some players prefer to upstream sneak.
How to run Minetest for Windows

1) To install the program, first delete your old copy of Windows Minetest, if you have one. Save any files from it that you want to keep.

Unpack the new ZIP file. If you're a kid, get a parent or a friend to help with this part.

2) Go into the new minetest folder. Run the minetest.exe file in the bin directory under that.

3) To play CloneCraft, click on the Singleplayer tab, then on the 1st icon on the bottom, then on clonecraft, then on Play.

To play Mineville instead, click on Singleplayer, then on the 2nd icon on the bottom, then on mineville, then on Play.

Note: The icons may move around if you install or create more Minetest games.

4) To visit Minetest worlds on the Internet, click on the Client tab instead of Singleplayer.

5) If you play in singleplayer mode and want to add a privilege, execute a command similar to:

/grant singleplayer noclip

Specify the privilege that you want, instead of noclip.

To grant yourself all privileges, execute:

/grant singleplayer all

6) If you create a new CloneCraft world, instead of using the one provided, be sure to select mapgen v6 and not v7. Or you won't get trees.
Minetest for Linux

To get the source tarball in TBZ format, click on this link: minetest.tbz

If possible, build both servers and clients using this tarball.

Build scripts and Linux binaries will be added here later.
Minetest for Android

We've got a copy of Lord Fingle's enhanced Android Minetest codebase and plan to merge it. Android APKs should be available after that. Possibly both here and in the Play Store.

Source code details

Minetest core source code is based on a git upstream. Presently, the core tree is identical to git as of 170404 except for two changes:

* localplayer.cpp and localplayer.h have been reverted to restore legacy sneak.

* The following patch is used to make player-joined messages modifiable:

core17040301.txt

Features and differences

1) This edition of Minetest has legacy sneak.

2) The Windows ZIP file comes with two new games, CloneCraft and Mineville.

CloneCraft is similar to a well-known game that involves mining and crafting. It's based primarily on MineClone 2 by Wuzzy. The forum thread for MineClone 2 is located at:

https://forum.minetest.net/viewtopic.php?t=16407

Mineville is a successor to minetest_game. It's discussed in the next section below.

3) New minetest.conf settings based on octacian suggestion: (*)

joinedtext1=Hooray,
joinedtext2=has returned

These two settings will change the player-join message to be something like: “Hooray, ElfTron has returned”. There is no provision yet for random messages, but this could be added easily.

(*) Not in Windows ZIP file yet.

Notes on Mineville

Mineville is a successor to minetest_game. Here are some of the changes:

* Unified Inventory instead of sfinv. Reasons: As of Spring 2017, sfinv doesn't have a craft guide. It also may not be compatible with some mods.

* Modified creative mod, to maintain compatibility with Unified Inventory.

* Farming Redo instead of farming.

* Add a number of lightweight but useful or fun mods such as abriglass, areas, bookex, cozy, flowerpot, handholds, intllib, rotate, xban2, and xdecor.

* Add one mod that leans towards heavy but is just 1 MB in size: a light version of ambience.
Zoom into Minetest

For maps of a few tourist attractions, click on these links.

Allow a few seconds for a map to load. You can use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out. Or you can click on the + and - buttons in the upper left corner. To scroll a map, left click and drag.

Blank areas are usually areas that haven't been generated yet.

Finerealms ChainLynx
Finetown

Finerealms Hill Valley 1955
Finerealms Howlsylvania
Finerealms Little Italy
Finerealms Pukaton
Finerealms Sokotello
Finerealms New York
Finerealms Flying Base
Finerealms Statue of Liberty
Finerealms Stadium
Finerealms Zegaton
Landrush Fuinur Dome
Landrush Harpold Center
Landrush NiQo Complex
Landrush Spawn City
Meowtest Spawn City #1
Meowtest Zen Pyramid
Moontest Funland

Moontest Lunarville
Moontest Moonkitten Base
Moontest Sky Palace
Redcrab Makalu

Redcrab Mystery Object
Redcrab Fort Modesto
Redcrab Desert City
Redcrab Las Vegas

In the Flying Base area, the Flying Base, created by Sparky, is the plane-like object in the middle.

CoffeeCrafter's continent in Redcrab, which includes the city of Makalu linked above, is amazing.
CoderBlox are Not Ad Hox

CoderBlox World is launched. This is a simple mgv7 world, presently with ambience, floatlands, and lightning, but no mobs. Screenshot is below. The world is located at:

Server: minetest.org   Port: 30027

Thanks are due RobbieF of Category 5 TV.
main screenshot
More Minetest Stuff

For a nice resource list started by TvAnenna (aka TVAntenna), click here.

Mods and _games will be added here.

A screenshot gallery and list of interesting worlds will be added here.

A preloaded Minetest media cache will be added here.
Earthlings

CoRNeRNoTe, who contributed to this site, asks that you watch Earthlings, a free multi-award winning film that aims to make the world a better place.
Notices

IRC chat:

#minetest-project in Freenode.

#minetest-general in the network irc.minetest.org. This channel has some of the OldCoder worlds in it.

Privacy policy:

This site collects information related to visitors. The information is used for such legitimate and reasonable purposes as are deemed appropriate.

CSS:

The CSS used by this page is based on Minetest Bootstrap Theme by CoRNeRNoTe, the author of Minetest Skyblock.

License:

Hosted content that does not belong to others, and that is not otherwise licensed, is placed under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0.

The rights-holder, for such content, is OldCoder. Where other licenses are stated, those licenses take precedence over this notice.