ThreeHalflings

I suspect you can't replicate scenario 4 because it was never a thing (Pretty natural to skip over something by accident). A trailing newline was my first thought, but scenario 4 ruled it out. If you can't replicate it then it's the likely answer.

Something like this would confirm

echo "$mypass" | md5sum

Vs

echo -e "$mypass\n" | md5sum

I'll have a play tomorrow and see what I get.

I suspect opening up the two files in a hex editor will show the difference, assuming I can replicate your results.

Perhaps do it with the string "test" and post results so we can replicate.

Could it be a character encoding issue? Are you using utf-8 on both machines?

locale charmap to check (other ways: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5306153/how-to-get-terminals-character-encoding )

Love it. I'd never have thought to look for it, but I'm glad I stumbled across this post!

There is (was?) a great website called cooptimus

The spice is the source of the prescience, I don't think you can draw a line between them (the Tleilaxu could, but even then I think they used what they called synthetic spice, I don't really recall that very well though).

Aside for that point, yep, I agree with pretty much everything you said!

Unless I'm missing something?

Spice is more LSD than meth.

Paul Erdos has entered the chat.

The 2022 movie covers the first half of the first book and that theme only really comes into its own in books 2 and 3.

I don't really agree that the spice wasn't put forward as a way to salvation. I think it clearly was key to finding the golden path.

The spice enabled the Bene Gesserit to see what was needed in their breeding program, and they were trying to breed Kwisatz Haderach who would lead humanity through a dangerous time, avoiding the destruction of the race. (Also the scene in the sietch that I won't go into detail about, becuase spoilers)

Leto II uses the spice to see the golden path and forge humanity into what it needs to be to survive. (Also the other thing which I haven't mentioned due to major spoilers of a cool moment).

The spice is pretty clearly necessary for the path taken to salvation.

While the spice may not have been necessary to avoid the destruction of the human race had another path been found, in the story as it was told it was absolutely central.

It had a bottom banner. Dunno if you could turn it off for free?

In Dune, the imperialist "nonsense" was the path to salvation. Genocide by machines was what we were saved from.