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The Illusion of Limits: How Maya Reveals Our Self-Made Boundaries

The concept of Maya, the cosmic illusion, isn’t about a grand deception. It’s a gentle unveiling: a persistent whisper revealing the boundaries we believe define us are largely constructs of our own minds. If all is illusion, then all limitations within that illusion are, fundamentally, self-imposed.

Understanding Maya

Maya isn’t a malevolent force, but a veil – obscuring the underlying reality of interconnectedness and infinite potential. It’s the framework within which we experience duality: self vs. other, success vs. failure, limitation vs. abundance. Within this framework, we assign meaning, create narratives, and subsequently, build walls.

The Self-Imposed Walls

Consider these common manifestations of self-imposed limitation:

  • Fear of Failure: A belief that failure equates to worthlessness.
    This prevents exploration and growth.
  • Limiting Beliefs: Deep-seated convictions about what’s possible for us – often inherited or learned early in life.
    “I’m not creative enough.” “I can’t achieve that.”
  • Perfectionism: A relentless pursuit of flawlessness, paralyzing action and fostering self-criticism.
  • Comparison: Measuring our worth against others’ perceived successes, creating a constant feeling of inadequacy.

These aren’t external forces holding us back; they’re internal agreements—contracts we’re signed unknowingly, limiting our potential.

Recognizing the Illusion

The first step towards liberation is *awareness*. Begin by questioning your assumptions:

  1. Identify Your Limitations: What are the perceived boundaries holding you back?
  2. Trace Their Origin: Where did these beliefs originate? Were they truly yours to begin with?
  3. Challenge Their Validity: What evidence *supports* these limitations? What evidence contradicts them?
  4. Reframe Your Perspective: How can you view the situation from a different angle?

Practice mindfulness. Observe your thoughts without judgment. Notice the stories you tell yourself – are they true, or simply interpretations?

Empowerment Through Dissolution

Recognizing the illusory nature of limitations isn’t about denying reality; it’s about reclaiming your power. It’s about understanding that you have the agency to dismantle the walls you’ve built.

  • Embrace Imperfection: Perfection is an illusion. Progress lies in consistent effort, not flawless execution.
  • Cultivate Self-Compassion: Treat yourself with the same kindness and understanding you would offer a friend.
  • Focus on Growth: Shift your attention from outcomes to the process of learning and evolving.
  • Take Inspired Action: Small steps, guided by intuition, can create significant shifts.

As you begin to perceive the illusion, the self-imposed limitations dissolve, revealing a boundless expanse of potential. It’s a continuous practice, a gentle remembering of your inherent freedom. Maya isn’t a prison; it’s a stage—and you are the playwright.

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The Illusion of Limits: Releasing Self-Imposed Boundaries

The concept of Maya, the cosmic illusion, has always resonated deeply within me. It’s not about denying reality; it’s about recognizing the layers of perception that color it. We exist within a framework that appears to be fixed – a world of choices, limitations, and consequences. But what if that framework is, at its core, malleable? What if the very boundaries we perceive are constructs of our own minds?

My own journey began with a persistent feeling of being held back, a sense that potential was stifled. I chased external validation, striving for goals that felt prescribed rather than truly desired. It was a frustrating dance, an endless pursuit of something just beyond reach. Then, the veil began to thin.

Think of Neo’s leap of faith in The Matrix. He initially believed in the concrete reality presented to him – the physical world, the rules, the limitations. But through questioning and introspection, he realized the world was a simulation, a construct of code. His ‘limitations’—his inability to fly, his perceived weakness—dissolved as he understood the nature of his reality.

It’s a powerful analogy. We, too, exist within a Matrix of sorts – the Matrix of our beliefs, our fears, and our conditioning. The ‘physics’ of our lives are dictated by the mental code we’re running. Our minds are not merely passive recipients of information; they are active creators of experience.

Even the freedom to choose feels paradoxical within this framework. It seems empowering, yet is the choice itself another element of the illusion? Perhaps. But even if it is, the experience of choosing – of actively shaping our narrative – remains potent. The act of choosing, even within a constructed reality, sparks evolution. When we consciously select a new thought, a new action, we subtly reprogram the mental code.

Realizing that self-imposed limitations are, well, self-imposed, is a profoundly liberating experience. It’s like waking from a dream, though the dream doesn’t disappear; we simply gain the awareness that we’re dreaming. The feeling of confinement loosens, replaced by a sense of spaciousness. Suddenly, the ‘impossibles’ become possibilities to be explored.

So, how do we actively dismantle these mental constructs? It’s a continuous practice, a constant return to awareness. Here are a few threads that have served me:

  • Meditation: Daily practice allows for observation of thought patterns without judgment. It’s a space to witness the illusionary nature of thoughts as they arise and pass.
  • Self-Reflection: Journaling, mindful questioning, and honest introspection. Asking, ‘Where did this belief originate? Is it truly mine?’
  • Creative Expression: Painting, writing, music—any form of creative output can bypass the rational mind and tap into a deeper, more fluid sense of self.
  • Exposure to New Perspectives: Engaging with diverse viewpoints, philosophies, and cultures broadens understanding and challenges pre-conceived notions.

It’s not about denying responsibility or disregarding consequences. It’s about recognizing that our response to circumstances is what truly shapes our reality. The world will present us with challenges, but our perception of those challenges—our belief in our ability to navigate them—is entirely within our control.

I invite you to pause, to question the boundaries you perceive. What limitations do you believe to be absolute? Where did those beliefs originate? What would be possible if you dared to entertain the possibility that they are not as fixed as they seem?

Embracing the fluidity of potential—acknowledging that the universe is not a rigid structure but a field of infinite possibilities—can lead to a richer, more liberated existence. Dare to awaken from the dream, not to escape reality, but to truly live it.

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A Token-Fee Approach for AI’s Use of Copyrighted Texts

Back in high school, I attended a seminar on overseas undergraduate education options. The speaker explained that if you simply ask a university for all its materials, your request is likely to be met with silence or delays. However, if you include a token amount—say, $5—with your request for select materials, you’re much more likely to receive a positive response. That small fee acknowledges the inherent work behind those materials and makes clear your genuine intent to learn.

I believe this principle can be effectively applied to AI’s approach to copyrighted texts. As it stands, AI systems are trained on vast amounts of content, including copyrighted works, without a direct economic exchange that respects the value of those texts. Imagine if AI developers adopted a policy akin to the university scenario: for each work ingested, they would include a token fee (for example, the publisher’s non-discounted sale price). This fee would serve as a respectful acknowledgment of the creator’s or publisher’s effort, under the understanding that the usage is analogous to human consumption—carefully moderated to avoid excessive verbatim reproduction, much like TV shows that only use brief spots from commercial cinema.

Such an arrangement would not only compensate the publishers fairly but also reassure them that each instance of use is part of a larger, value-adding ecosystem. It’s a controlled and respectful model that treats AI’s consumption of content like a licensed, single-sale transaction rather than an exploitation of intellectual property.

I call for stakeholders in AI development and content publishing to consider a token-fee model for training on copyrighted texts. This framework—much like the university analogy—could provide a balanced means of advancing technology while honoring and financially supporting the creative works that fuel it, ensuring that this isn’t exploited as a free-for-all but is managed in a manner akin to personal, respectful consumption.

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Home Lab III

The main cost with every new host is that it needs a monitored, smart uninterruptible power supply (UPS), preferably a dedicated one due to its limitations of a one-to-one physical connection to a single host Securing multiple hosts wherein one provides the UPS monitoring data to the others might introduce points of failure preventing the graceful shutdown of those other hosts, though I have set that up untested with my fingers crossed.

This is why one computer that does the work of four, such as one with 256 GB RAM, a 48 virtual core processor, and many more PCIe lanes for multi-port network interface and storage controllers that can be passed through to virtual machines. It might be prudent to consolidate even at a cost equal to the sum of individual computers for such a system, since it eliminates the hassle of sharing a UPS and likely consumes less electricity with lower heat dissipation than four physical PCs, and allowing greater runtime when on battery power.

A reputed, well-supported, smart and especially a rack mountable UPS is obtained through a B2B reseller, which translates to higher costs and hassles of both initial acquisition and periodic battery replacement.

Consider these additional “costs” as well:

You need a cool secure space away from possible water damage, with hardware either locked up or at least not having accessible removable external storage that is easy to steal.

To access the PC at the console for maintenance, you might also need an IP KVM switch, usually one for each PC, especially if distributed due to space constraints or to mitigate the risk of physical loss. I use slower, somewhat glitchy, host bus-powered single-port nano KVMs for occasional management rather than an expensive multi-port one that I only ever had in the wired VGA/USB era. A higher-tier Pi KVM is reserved for accessing the Intel-based Mac mini server remotely since there is no Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) for non-Mac clients and VNC viewer does not scale the display resulting in a scrolling mess.

This of course makes sense only if one does not require physically separate hosts such as for high availability or locational diversity. Not having a remote location except a t2.micro (1 GB RAM) FreeBSD instance on AWS, I have chosen to separate hosts across floors, coupled with automated off-site backup. The basement utility closet with the water supply has a wall-mounted (hence off the floor) mini rack for the essentials at the utility point of entry, whereas the larger and noisy equipment like a NAS with 7200 RPM spinning drives, and a Proxmox host is across the passage on the same floor on a non-conductive wood stand with feet.

File-level backups of configuration files backed up to the NAS from the various services are synced to TrueNAS SCALE (see Home Lab II) as a second copy two floors up, with ZFS snapshots of that copy to TrueNAS CORE in a full-sized rack starting this quarter once I order, receive and set up TrueNAS Mini R in the full-sized rack upstairs. A very costly unit once outfitted with under-provisioned power-safe data centre grade SATA SSDs for performance storage in addition to quiet NAS HDDs.

I would not put noisier surveillance HDDs in a NAS unit that I could already hear from across the hallway, considering the ambient sound level is 32 dB without, and the Mini R is stated to be 45 dB. Noise is a price I don’t ever pay, so I might have to move systems around if the security NVR project ever gets off the ground.

Off-site backups are automatically uploaded on a schedule to one or more cloud storage providers. Often, there’s an additional cost for proprietary cloud backup with dissimilar products given that even S3-compatible storage integration does not work as universally as intended.

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Home Lab II

I added a new PC (system76 Thelio Prime) as a node to make a Proxmox cluster, and in doing so expand the services and robustness of my home lab. Equipped similarly with 24 virtual CPU cores and 64 GB RAM as the original host, except being AMD Ryzen 9900X with PCIe 5.0 for higher IOPS.

The second NVMe slot on the mini-ITX motherboard being PCIe 4.0 – and hence likely in a separate IOMMU group – gave me an unexpected advantage of being able to make it my future network-attached SSD by passing that controller through to TrueNAS in a VM, hosting Nextcloud. This makes for an insanely powerful NAS compared to the Synology DS-1019+. A similarly powerful pre-built one would have cost thousands of dollars just to get the processing capability and otherwise would be overkill in the number of drive bays and thus fan noise and power consumption. A single backed-up SSD is adequate for me; and as a courtesy reminder – RAID is not a backup plan.

Next year will add an additional performance tier of onsite backups using ZFS snapshots to TrueNAS Mini R ZRAID pool 3 × 6TB, in addition to the existing file-level onsite backups to Synology DS-1019+ BTRFS pool 5 × 4TB over NFS.

The NVIDIA 4060 Ti GPU pass-through enabled a gorgeous Ubuntu remote desktop for when I need to work in Linux, so I don’t have to rely solely on Windows Services for Linux (WSL) on my portable computer. This being unstable over RDP has been set aside as of this writing. I use Spiral Linux (or Bodhi Linux for slimmer) if I need a GUI but not necessarily remote desktop.

These are of course just some of the building blocks and more services are becoming production ready for 2025.

Lessons learnt:

My next PC would definitely not have a motherboard that maxes out at 64 GB (effectively just over 60 GB) RAM. 128 GB is more appropriate for how much processor you’re leaving on the table without the RAM to utilize it in typical loads. The computer hardware itself is the relatively easy part, the bigger consideration when acquiring an additional host is power, both as in consumption and reliable availability thereof, plus accessories, as I will discuss in my next post.

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Home Lab I

I had bought a new PC in 2022 to revisit Linux after my initial troubles a quarter century prior.

The fan noise of the (Dell XPS 8950) computer never let me use it stationed next to me for long. It went on a shelf in the rack cabinet as a Wake-on-LAN (WoL) remote access (RDP) Windows OS device. RDP on desktop-focused Linux distros did not work in a typical headless setup i.e. without both the dummy display plug and sacrilegious autologin user. The PC in any event seemed wastefully underutilized considering I have reservations about the use of capable hardware (24 virtual CPU cores) for trivial purposes and that made me both uncomfortable with tolerating its power draw (Intel i9-12900) and resistant to the grating noise.

I was recently intrigued by the Type 1 hypervisor Proxmox how-to, and that opened up a new world of PCIe passthrough that included concurrent use of both the Windows 11 OS using passthrough with the NVIDIA 3060 Ti, to deliver an equivalent experience over RDP to that of the OS running on bare metal as it was previously, and one or more virtual machines (VMs) of Debian or any other Linux distro used for servers without a local GUI using the virtualized on-board Intel graphics.

I could somewhat justify the existence and power draw with the PC being productive 24×7, the on-demand ability to remotely fire up Windows OS as needed, and while allowing me to run experimental VMs alongside. Next was getting the PC to run quieter yet cooler, for which the quickest fix was replacing both 120 mm chassis fans with Noctua fans.

I tend to use hardware that was cutting edge two years ago, usually over-spec for the job but running at or below spec for reliability, so burned-in and with mature Linux kernel support by the time it is deployed. This one was especially new since it underwent a motherboard change in its first year.

This is the kind of productivity I have always wanted, access to multiple machines over RDP and SSH, running in virtual desktops on my Windows on arm portable, that I can swipe through, snapshot, rollback, backup and restore.

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Year of the (Snap)dragon ’24

The most significant change in CPU architecture in almost 4 decades of computing for me comes in the form of the Qualcomm (remember Eudora Pro?) made SoC, Snapdragon X Elite.

I had always wondered about RISC, having read about DEC Alpha, MIPS, Sun Sparc and Intel iA64.  None of those, if at all attainable, ran consumer operating systems.  My first non-x86 experience was with the Apple M1 Pro-based MacBook Pro in 2021, which by 2024 had software support to virtualize Windows on arm OS.  I was amazed at the smooth x86-64 Windows OS apps compatibility and decided to go bare metal with the Samsung Book4 Edge.

I am quite certain after 6 weeks that this is a great choice for right now since it has WiFi7 and, as a Copilot+ PC, early access to Windows 11 24H2 features; else the Samsung Book4 Ultra with Intel Meteor Lake and WiFi 6E [or upcoming Book5 360 with Intel Lunar Lake and WiFi7] would have served me better for native software availability.

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Linux Revisited 2023

I bought a PC in the Summer of 2022 after 15 years, with the intention of re-exploring Linux on a separate SSD. The hardware being secure boot capable with Microsoft Windows 11 OS and having an NVIDIA graphics card, narrowed the choice of Linux distribution literally to what “sort of works” in that combination, as I write this in early 2023.

I started with the üniversal choice – Ubuntu seemed to install fine including the proprietary NVIDIA drivers with secure boot, but wouldn’t boot up post install. Pop!_OS was pretty much the same except it did not support secure boot.

Fedora Linux showed the most promise, but it was after weeks of struggling that the Arch Linux wiki helped me wrangle a display from the graphical login manager. Rocky Linux and RHEL were a smoother experience save the suffocating dearth of basic software.

I have maintained since my first experience with Red Hat Linux in 1999, that Linux (distributions), and by extension Android, is a hack job. The fragmentation in Linux led me to FreeBSD (for servers) twenty years ago. For a hot backup OS I have a perfected Windows 11 Pro image on the original SSD, that accesses the same external NAS data as the Linux install.

Read my follow up post

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Should I profess my love?

If a person is clearly available and has not explicitly excluded you as a potential suitor, then conventional wisdom suggests, of course! The worst answer you can get for asking is, “No”, and as such you’d be no worse off than having not asked. That is simply not the case in many situations, because one is obviously not hitting on a stranger when professing one’s love – and as such risks jeopardising their existing relationship with this person.

So, well, “No”, and possibly they then immaturely go off and tell everyone that you hit on them (adding in whatever to make you sound creepy) and to avoid you. In any event, there’s a more evolved reason than rejection, shaming and embarrassment to keep one’s feelings to oneself.

It’s about not burdening another person to carry the weight of your feelings for them just so you can get it off your chest; when there are clear indicators that this person would not, for whatever reason, be interested, able or willing to reciprocate. If you know it would not change a thing except the satisfaction of having vented, but with the possibility of losing the proverbial bird in hand.

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PC vs Mac

My biggest argument in switching to a Mac 15 years ago was that I would rather be hardware-constrained by Apple than software-constrained by Microsoft. A lot has changed with Macs, starting with the T2 chip post-2015, to on-device scanning of images in 2021. Plus forced obsolescence of software, and with Apple Silicon, missing macOS features on Intel hardware. I am now both hardware and software constrained by Apple.

The last straw was when, as per my previous post on this subject —

I would be dependent on Apple to release parts to me at their discretion and have to needlessly suffer downtime

Mac vs PC

Apple in its high-handedness, refused to replace my Watch battery since they require that the watch battery be down to 79% of its charging capacity to authorize a battery replacement.

The cost of Apple hardware apart, macOS holds not much appeal.

Ownership
I would literally rather run Windows 11 on a Mac than macOS on a PC, considering how much slack Microsoft has recently allowed in activating Windows, thereby ensuring a user’s data isn’t held ransom if one is offline. In contrast, many essential third-party macOS apps have adopted subscription and online authentication to login to local apps, preventing or limiting their offline use.

Usability
macOS Messages and Mail show no contact names without native CardDAV support, but at least with Windows it can be hacked in to perform relatively flawlessly. Mail app activity never ceases when one or more non-Exchange Microsoft accounts are added, and it’s been that way since Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Since then, Windows OS has evolved more into what Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard used to be; “it just works”.

Reliability
The infamous BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) or STOP error seems rarer on Windows, than a kernel panic on macOS since Catalina, and the odds of the latter seem to go up with additional processor cores. Sleep mode that Windows 98 never woke from is a thing of the past, whereas its the Mac Pro with macOS Big Sur that doesn’t automatically sleep when ‘Power Nap’ is disabled.

Performance
Mac Pro hardware feels underpowered or not as optimized, from how slow Finder is at file operations over the network (NFS and especially SMB) compared to Windows Explorer. Add to that, both 3 x 3 MIMO 802.11ac on the Intel Mac Pro and 2 x 2 MIMO 802.11ax on the Apple M1 Pro MacBook Pro far underperform my Dell PC “Killer WiFi” 2 x 2 MIMO 802.11ax. Apple Remote Desktop or Screen Sharing too refreshes slower and has poorer graphics quality over 2.5 Gbps wired Ethernet versus Microsoft Remote Desktop over 5 GHz WiFi 6, each accessed over 5 GHz WiFi 6 using their respective clients.

Recovery
I no longer find my previous issue of having to reinstall and reconfigure the operating system, updates and applications from scratch a deal breaker in choosing Windows OS. All considered, disk imaging is the least painful and bulletproof [backup and] restore strategy for any modern OS.