phf: what's the differential approach?
mircea_popescu: yes, and the objection to this is that you for some reason refuse the cornerstone of management, which is the differential approach.
phf: the problem broadly speaking is that our solution to trust is "read the source code", in order to trust compiler you read the source code of the compiler. the trust chain terminates at bootstrapping. you can't "just" bootstrap on an untrusted system, you have to enumerate defensive approaches
mircea_popescu: (to continue link above : the prb idiocy "oh code is spec" is not invented by the idiots for this occasion. it's universally at the basis of contemporaneous cs, and it's all permeating. it stars with the expectation that you can tell whether the code you wrote is correct BY WHETHER THE MACHINE WORKS. this is utter fucking nonsense!111 appealing to tweens, perhaps, but still nonsense.)
mircea_popescu: ok, but if you meant it in that sense i no longer see how it anticipates the very problem.
phf: well, the plurality makes it non-linear, of course each one can be linear
mircea_popescu: and i suspect this goes to (one of the) roots of the argument : it is not broadly speaking sane for person writing code to expect that he knows what compiler user will use to produce object or machine code.
mircea_popescu: yes, but this is not in reference to compilation. it's in reference to user space. i don't expect there's a magical function f, but that there's a plurality of f1..fi...fn, which can all be linear in principle.
phf: i think the word you used was "unary"
mircea_popescu: phf my hm hasn't returned yet. what conditions are presupposed that anticipate the problem ?
phf: then gosling wrote a version of emacs for a unix machine, that was used by rms as the foundation for his emacs
phf: well, since already spoilt, original emacs was written by a bunch of different people for TECO and long after rms became maintainer of that. then greenberg rewrote it in lisp (multics emacs)
mircea_popescu: make some claims, source the claims, insist the sourcing's balanced, you know, like serious court reporter say.
Framedragger: ^ (i mean the gnu port)
mircea_popescu: ie, didja read the history, confront variants from multiple people ?
mircea_popescu: are you aware of the substance of that claim ?
mircea_popescu: (no, noticing a nail and going "oh, i remember hammer can hit nails" is NOT technical ability. a ditzy blonde / bright dog can do the fucking same. technical ability is when you can say ~use x, because no other tool is more adequate here~. that's technical fucking ability.)
mircea_popescu: and by people with no technical ability i mean the likes of ian murdock or rms. the lot of them, really.
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-04#1637056 << i do believe you have a point, the explanation isn't exactly idiocy, but rather, the fact that in people with no technical ability, the seepage of their political ideas into their practice was unavoidable.
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-04#1637022 << yes, to a large degree the usage of the "tools" is more a function of the presence of the tools than of the presence of a need. just like while car is useful item, if you stop $random car occupant will not be able to explain what he's doing.
asciilifeform: (gotta keep the ion gradient going, heh)
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform talk about beta ingestion. i bet you the "diet" dorks eat more than shaves off my grinders.
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-04#1636999 << in theory this is how it should work ; in practice the sloppy git style does not work with the republican sig nuking. it'll just whine that "dependencies". basically, we're trying to get software from where it builds spirogyra strands to where it builds ACTUAL TREES.
asciilifeform: theory suggests that the effect will be palpable. possibly visible, even, with naked eye.
asciilifeform: get a baseline for the light output
mircea_popescu: can't say as i have. by the age i was hanging out with the rave sluts i was no longer playing with magnets.
mircea_popescu: i don't think anyone takes carbon dating seriously. outside of the you know, "ring" so to speak. it's a trade secret of the substance and nature of wrestling storylines.
asciilifeform: ( and to use the energy for something. )
a111: Logged on 2017-04-04 12:28 mircea_popescu: phf the main objection to your quiet style is that now i can't discern whether you a) understood the arguments and are thinking about it ; b) simply didn't understand the arguments or c) understood what was said but didn't judge it any kind of argument. express yourself, don't repress yourself!
phf: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-04#1636979 << i think the argument presupposes conditions that anticipate the problem, so in a sense it supports what i said originally, while also appearing in opposition
asciilifeform: ( turns out -- another tropos )
jhvh1: asciilifeform: The operation succeeded.
asciilifeform: !~later tell mircea_popescu any idea whatever happened to 'induced beta decay' ? ( e.g., http://www.wmsym.org/archives/1984/V1/89.pdf ) -- the thing with the 'convert forbidden states to permitted with magnetic field'
BingoBoingo: See also just about any small engine powered equipment part other than fuel line
asciilifeform: 'gotta support 10,001 incompatible but otherwise equivalent shits' is a serious hell. it plagued armies in ww1 ('hey a trainload of ammo just came. but none of it fits our 7 types of rifle, it's all for that 8th'), the sov icbm forces ('we have parts but not for these 4 types of rocket, they are for 5th') etc
trinque: RMS, wrathful old testament god, confuses the language of the people to prevent another tower of Microshit from being built.
asciilifeform: trinque: in context, it was either this, or linux dun exist and it's-1995-if-you-want-a-unix-box-buy-a-sun
trinque: sure it does, but someone had to think the user getting to do what he wants was a good thing first
asciilifeform: it was an instance of exactly same thing. ANY attempt to paper over 'i have nfi what the user has, let's support 10,000,001 possible braindamages' ends up looking like autoconf.
asciilifeform: trinque: do you recall the linux kernel modules thread ?
trinque: doesn't discount the beardcrust factor either. "If we maximally shuffle the circumstances around us, surely *someone* will fuck us. Anything can happen."
trinque: was *entirely* intentional in the way wave of human meat strategy is intentional
trinque: "hurd" was supposed to be the culmination of this
a111: Logged on 2016-08-22 13:59 asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-08-22#1526615 << my complaint is that it adds a meg of UNREADABLE and - largely UNTESTABLE (i do not have a VMS box, nor a machine with zsh or ksh, nor do i intend to , and i REFUSE to sign code that claims to run there , srsly wtf omfg) - and that it introduces massive turd, useless language m4, go and learn it, read the implementation
asciilifeform: trinque: except that it doesn't enable anybody -- if autoconf fails to find the headers, you are just as fucked as ever, gotta sit and puzzle out what environment flags to give it so that it has a sporting chance
a111: Logged on 2017-04-04 15:51 asciilifeform: to expand: say your proggy uses, i dunno, pthreads. wants to know where to find the header. WHY does this turn into a MB of scriptolade liquishit ? rather than a 1liner, that tries to find it and if not finds, prompts the user ?
asciilifeform: the living mushroom, with his beard having crumbs from 1985 in it somewhere still. and his circle.
trinque: because trying to enable luser that wouldn't be able to say. it's a sort of accessability for the disabled.
asciilifeform: to expand: say your proggy uses, i dunno, pthreads. wants to know where to find the header. WHY does this turn into a MB of scriptolade liquishit ? rather than a 1liner, that tries to find it and if not finds, prompts the user ?
a111: Logged on 2016-08-22 03:23 phf: well, since asciilifeform's not here "let them eat nagant! wake me up when less stupid people!"
a111: Logged on 2016-08-22 14:07 asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-08-22#1526632 << this is entirely correct. the 'problem' which autoconf pretends (yes, pretends) to 'solve', is EVIL
asciilifeform: the far bigger boojum is that ~95% of the tarballs include megabytes of autoconf liquishit.
asciilifeform: (yes, motherfucking binaryturdolade in 'open sores' tars. e.g., graphics.)
asciilifeform: trinque: my last attempt at 'vtronic portage' ran into the brick wall of 'there are nongenesisable items in the tarballss'
trinque: also costless abandonment of branches ; nothing to back out in the vpatched material
trinque: often yes having the same patches ground onto each path
trinque: subject there was ifdef throughout the code vs having multiple branches descending from the point multi-arch began
trinque: hm, possibly. though it's also possible I trust two separate paths down the v-tree for that
trinque: I don't expect that there would for example be a diversity of republican emacs builds
shinohai: I actually had a Russian camgirl that asked if I was Jew before she paid for services, she said she didn't like jews and wouldn't pay them xD
mircea_popescu: actually it gets it rather close, yevreystvo
mircea_popescu: is this another columbian chick ?
mircea_popescu: phf the main objection to your quiet style is that now i can't discern whether you a) understood the arguments and are thinking about it ; b) simply didn't understand the arguments or c) understood what was said but didn't judge it any kind of argument. express yourself, don't repress yourself!
shinohai: jhvh1 is busy terrorizing jews, but said to send you these retro titties: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C8kTtv2XcAEqFuR.jpg
a111: Logged on 2017-04-04 02:19 mircea_popescu: leaving aside that if you got to meet beria it was all fun and games from there on, the "discotheque" was a thing even for plebs.
asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-04#1636903 << old sovj0ke: 'flyer hangs on barrack door in buchenvald: 'tonight: DISCOTHEQUE! machine gunner Hans will play his two new disks !'
asciilifeform: at asciilifeform's first (dis)honest job, there was a scintillator counting machine based on this principle.
asciilifeform: if you wanted to be even more clever, could use strictly beta detector, and rely on the fact that the things go in two opposite geometric directions every time.
asciilifeform: ( now, good q is 'why do this?' and answer is -- 'you get analogue rng that is VERIFIABLE, just like the digital board in fg.' because you can pick up decay from below/above the board !!)
asciilifeform: there is, however, a correct part for this : 'PIN diode.' i have an experimental setup with one. at some point we might offer a fg rng module based on it. but not yet.
asciilifeform: this means GHz counters, in the most obvious embodiment
asciilifeform: (whereever you are -- there is background gamma)
asciilifeform: now the other, moar exotic, approach, is that you can try to extract mass entropy from background gamma
mircea_popescu: i imagine some of the best electronics for rng would be satellites. measure it straight in the solar panels!
asciilifeform: it is one of the two reasons we aren't selling one (the other being, that it is difficult to get even mild isotope, through post office)
asciilifeform: upstack mircea_popescu had the right notion, though, it is difficult to build a decay rng that does not rot.
asciilifeform: but yes, the taper off to zero is at a few m.
mircea_popescu: phase velocity of light in water is like .75, so if the water glows blue there's electrons there going > .75, meaning they'll go a few meters.
asciilifeform: aha, so is the chair fall..
asciilifeform: i.e. theoretically -- yes.
asciilifeform: beta will go a mile like mircea_popescu will sit down in his chair and go through the floor and into china sea.
mircea_popescu: nah, fast ion - matter interaction is iffy. they can go a mile.
mircea_popescu: its presence means there's fast moving electrons.
asciilifeform: that's the tricky bit. also cherenkov has 0 to do with mechanism here, straight charge transfer.
mircea_popescu: sram in cherenkov, while the cells last.
asciilifeform: dram, rather.
asciilifeform: put the von neumann debiaser in each 'pixel', also.
asciilifeform: and the reason for this is this.
asciilifeform: for the test beds, noshit
asciilifeform: in other lulz, 'XHCI (usb 3.0) in linux kernel is limited to 32 devices. It looks like a bug.'
mircea_popescu: the notion that ~at any point~ teh russkis lacked a night life is borne out of a very strange life.
mircea_popescu: phf they pretend to be millennials. in point of fact are apes.
shinohai: "Hey this water makes our skin more brown, so we aren't pasty like the Chileans!"
mircea_popescu: shinohai yes. their official beach where everyone goes is actually untreated sewage. they don't care.
mircea_popescu: leaving aside that if you got to meet beria it was all fun and games from there on, the "discotheque" was a thing even for plebs.
mircea_popescu: this isn't to say that pre-peron argentina wasn't a major world power, it was. but at no point was greenwich village what lifetime ohioan poet imagined it to be ; and similarily the hallucinated argentina of borges is a place exactly in the sense hemingway's manhood is a manhood or blair's civilisation is a civilisation.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform argentina ? it's great for a week, and for a month. it's horrible for longer because the people are such subhuman shits.
ben_vulpes: well yes i'm familiar with how the bits are laid down, but i am less familiar with how trb handles it internally
asciilifeform: tx format was exhaustively described therein.
phf: asciilifeform: i think the main objection is that it's a country of millenials, lota pretense, not much doing
ben_vulpes: asciilifeform: q more along the lines of "what is least necessary to write to disk in order to be useful later"
asciilifeform: and i dun give a nanofuck that 'nightclubs there are small and crowded'. su circa 1975 had 0 nightclubs and i'd pick it over anywhere in known solar system, yes i would.
ben_vulpes: asciilifeform: walking the blockchain in search of payments to a pubkey or pubkey hash, and indexing those in some manner (accounting for spends) such that they can be reconstituted into a transaction later
phf: i know a few argentinians through yoga jet set crowd, and they are pleasant and fun company if nothing else. i prefer them to americans or germans most of the time
asciilifeform: ( i will say, 0 of the things that drove mircea_popescu barking mad about the place, bother me at all. then again i was there for a week.. )
a111: Logged on 2017-04-02 17:30 asciilifeform: whaddayamean they don't sit around , retired and deposed colonels, deciding which fighting cock to sell, before starving
ben_vulpes: http://btc.yt/lxr/satoshi/source/src/main.h?v=wires_rev1#0261 << kinda looks like all one needs to bake CTxIn's is the hash of the transaction and output index, can someone spot check this for me?
ben_vulpes: shaking the rss reader *out unread
ben_vulpes: in other pki nyooz: http://gcaptain.com/us-announces-selective-availability-gps-devices/
ben_vulpes: sounds like $pet had an eye on the depletion meter
asciilifeform: it makes 0 sense to merge the categories.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform not trb's identity was being defined. the c machine's was.
asciilifeform: to become legitimately 'an algorithm', rather than 'this thing a particular moron shat out'
mircea_popescu: i don't see how it'll seriously run on anything besides a c machine for the mid term.
asciilifeform: the drooling idiot's 'i will Define By Implementation!' horror.
asciilifeform: at any rate this is a bizarre line of thought. trb (or rather, bitcoin, the existing network) has any kind of long term future ~strictly~ if it can be entirely separated from the cpp abortion.
asciilifeform: ('nqb' for instance is about half of a zero-otherpeoplescode implementation of same.)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: it ain't 'the software', either, it's a set of algos, they do not even take much paper to describe.
asciilifeform: trb (the currently existing item) could quite conceivably run on entirely different type of machine, under emulation (smbx , for instance, shipped... believe -- a c compiler, in genera. along with fortran, ada..)
mircea_popescu: it's slowly emerged into obviousness that pretending "bitcoin is software" makes in fact 0 sense, and is entirely borne of idiocy. bitcoin is not "userland". bitcoin is the whole thing.
asciilifeform: 'c machine' has a specific meaning, refers to the type of cpu that traces descent to the transistor-impoverished 1970s, when bounds check was seen as unaffordable luxury.
asciilifeform: 0. but it is imho odd to describe the process as 'fixes c machine'
mircea_popescu: work on massaging the protoypes is work towards the item prototyped, what's so unpalatable about this.
asciilifeform: by looking at the data structures.
asciilifeform: i can't speak for others,
asciilifeform: ( this also ignores the -- screamingly evident -- fact of trb being ~algorithmically~ defective. as explored on several occasions here. )
mircea_popescu: "c machine" defined as "item that runs trb" is thereby fixed through becoming more apparent than it previously was.
mircea_popescu: at the very least things were learned about how trb is ~supposed to~ function, and this is sufficient to qualify it.
asciilifeform: because the conceptual foundations are retarded.
asciilifeform: any day of the week, thing can be silently and imperceptibly broken.
asciilifeform: that is the fundamental discovery of 25 years of c idiocy.
mircea_popescu: in any case : it's work done upon a portion of the c machine. what more is needed to qualify ?
mircea_popescu: well, if you are found with dead body and smoking gun, you'll have to prove the negative alright.
asciilifeform: how do i know that it does not also propel the earth along its orbit.
asciilifeform: not a single second of time spent reading or massaging shitoshi's liquishit, contributed anything whatsoever to the c machine problem.
mircea_popescu: i don't see they are distinct.
asciilifeform: they are wholly unrelated efforts.
mircea_popescu: these are not mutually exclusive statements.
a111: Logged on 2017-03-14 17:34 mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-03-14#1626921 << yes. there's absolutely no argument that bitcoin dying on the enemy's terms would be an unmitigated catastrophe. chernobyl pales in comparison, it'd be on the level of "wheel is useless anyway" wisdom of dropped-on-head amerindians, or "oh pretty, spinning wheels" greek steam engine. utterly catastrophic. which is why eg http://trilema.com/2013/mpoe-march-2013-statement/#selection
mircea_popescu: it is trying to fix the trb, which is a component of the c machine, defined as "runs trb"
asciilifeform: mno, 0 of the work to date did anything whatsoever to 'fix c machine'
mircea_popescu: in any proper statement, all the eg trb foundation's work goes towards one fold of "fixing c machine" in this sense.
asciilifeform: the compiler is now gargantuan. and neither it, nor the binaries disasmed, 'fit in head.'
asciilifeform: the down side is obvious:
asciilifeform: one possible 'fix' is ada-shaped -- compiler makes up for the retardations of c machine, inserts array bounds checks, type checks, etc.
mircea_popescu: but i don't have enough elements piled up to say what elements i need to say whether this is so or not.
asciilifeform: describe the 'fix'
mircea_popescu: the other vaguely relevant point is that it's probably cheaper to fix the c machine than to build the lisp machine.
asciilifeform: i also suspect that any system that can be thompsonized, eventually will be (given as it propagates, the transformation is permanent). but that is separate point.
asciilifeform: that was the only point of contention, from asciilifeform .
asciilifeform: but oughta see that thompson is an absolute bar to hygienic computing ~with gcc~ or any other similarly complex compiler.
mircea_popescu: ~all my interest in this dispute is the imo important point that thompson issue & friends is no actual bar to republican computing.
asciilifeform: and then anything with ~it~.
mircea_popescu: but we were discussing what we can do rather than what's done, or such was my understanding.
asciilifeform: BUT the unfortunate bit is that there are ALSO a variety of ways to end up back ~in~.
asciilifeform: but mircea_popescu has it, there is a variety of ways to break out of a hypothetically thompsonized universe. but -- for some reason -- ~entirely 'not done'.
asciilifeform: the one where 'i can read an eprom without a comp. and write it without a comp. now where is your thompson bomb.'
asciilifeform: but yes, you can elementarily 'exit the cave' by using grid paper, head compiler, toggles. in fact this was one of the first ( the first ?) threads with asciilifeform on mircea_popescu's www comment section
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform the outlined plan was to read it, pare it down for the function contemplated, compile it with itself etc.
mircea_popescu: obviously, "i choose to live in usg" means... you chose to live in usg. "but i had no other options". hurr.
asciilifeform: (rather than by, as bellard did, compiling with gcc.)
asciilifeform: and the latter is largely unexplored
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: it is conceivable that no one now living has ever used a 'pre-patch' gcc. that's the idea, that 'gcc' is not in fact defined by its src, but by the aggregate of 'the published src' + 'the extant sets of built gccs'
mircea_popescu: phf and if you don't keep the machine online, you don't.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform elementarily, i saw the item run pre-patched, now i see it run patched.
asciilifeform: say it introduces an off-by-one 0.001% of the time.
phf: if i have an open ssh port on my machine that i don't know about, then the attack can happen any time in between "rotor3" released "i decide to install rotor3""
mircea_popescu: well ok, so the understanding of the thompson bootstrap problem is that it's not an absolute bar to bootstrapping, but a possible pitfall ?
mircea_popescu: either i get to use my tool frist, in which case i can perceive a change ; or else i don't get to use my tool first, in which case -- prediction is necessary.
mircea_popescu: yes, but this idea doesn't scale the way phf wants it to scale.
asciilifeform: you may be already using it, was the idea.
mircea_popescu: because if "patch after used" then it's created a partition which i can use ; and if "predict" then the inf-in-being is rightthere.
phf: mircea_popescu: if rotor4 comes out, must patch again. there's no inf on our side despite the process being potentially inf, because we're limited by time/energy
asciilifeform: because they add up to multi-MB of asm.
asciilifeform: the problem with applying this principle to c compiler, is that c offers ~permanent~ fertile ground for booby
asciilifeform: take my old example, 'boobytrap an fpga.' elementarily you WILL need to somehow fit an ai in there, to create any serious problem for UNKNOWN bitstream
mircea_popescu: the hope that it'll always find a way to do what you want it to do in front of my boundless requests is essentially the root of government.
mircea_popescu: phf the rub is that you're stuck with infinity on one end. you really can't tell in advance what i'll want your compiler to do.
asciilifeform: phf: the basic theorem involved in breaking out of a thompsonism is specificity-of-diddling.
phf: i think the point is that you can't design the process for an arbitraray chain of transformations
mircea_popescu: ad-hoced it above. the thing which thomson describes, which is a very fundamental "specificly diddlable" process. "man in his cave" sort of thing.
asciilifeform: (picture if two d00dz were sent into two separate dungeons , and promised impalement if they come out with c compilers that produce binaries for particular test program that differ EVEN IN ONE BIT. quite impossible for them to avoid the stake, because c is ~nonstandardized~, in the sense where the standard does NOT specify all cases)
asciilifeform: the standards group stopped short of 'any compiler that shits out a bitstring different from the official one for a particular cpu, is nonconformant', however.
asciilifeform: strictly so that they can be thus compared.
asciilifeform: incidentally the folx who designed ada, read thompson's paper. and immediately acted. which is why in ada you get 'driving stick'-style control over the compiler, the order in which it puts down routines, and data structures during 'elaboration', and can leave bread crumbs for manual binary auditor (yes) to look for when he compares (yes) binaries built on different systems for same rocket.
mircea_popescu: and the "not necessarily" sinks it, because now i have what to compare, and that's the end of that.
asciilifeform: but whereever in the loop one begins to use, e.g., gcc -- from that point on, thompsonized.
mircea_popescu: hey, i proposed unoptimizing compiler for the role for reasons!
mircea_popescu: need i break out the math for this or is it obvious from stating ?
mircea_popescu: and this sad limitation fundamentally weakens the process, so that if i keep building more complex inputs your ability to make the prediction weakens (by the log of the count, in the pure case)
mircea_popescu: what does exist is a version whereby the secret can be built ~on the basis of~ given inputs.
mircea_popescu: the problem with this, however, is that the magical hash-with-checksum function ~does not exist~. it's part of trilema sf for a reason.
mircea_popescu: it was class 1 or 2. this is an equivalent notation of the thompson problem for compilers (there's no difference between hashing and compiling in this sense).
mircea_popescu: phf the premise ("1 item can be compromised") is true ; this however is not a ~systematic~ concern. the reason it isn't a systematic concern has everything to do with the imaginary concept of "the hash with checksum". suppose 1) a hash function existed which 2) contained a secret which 3) allowed the possessor to distiguish possible inputs into two classes and then on the basis of the result know whether the input that led to
trinque: nobody contests the problem exists; it'd be more interesting to discuss where to put it.
asciilifeform: i will add to phf's summary -- if the problem afflicted ~strictly~ compilers, it would be quite easy to solve -- write bootstrap in asm. but there is no rule that it has to affect strictly compiler. could just as easily be - say - the ~loader~.
phf: that's the point so far
phf: and the lack of control means that your bootstrap machine compiler can do arbitrary things to the binary
phf: in this case control of the bootstrap machine is at the very least equivalent to "if i compile a source, would the behavior of the binary correspond to what the compiler specification fully or not"
trinque: phf: that problem is introduced *by* the urge to write your compiler in its own language, neh?
phf: you introduce the hack in the original compiler that you used to compile tcc. the original compiler, having prior knowledge of the chain, or some arbitrary compilation of chains, will ensure that the first tcc you get will propagate the hack further down
mircea_popescu: no, no, start over. full statement of the problem, explicitly terminated. ty.
mircea_popescu: please put a terminator when you're done and i'ma do my best to ignore the interlopers!
mircea_popescu: trinque they're blisfully unaware of the power of comparison, which is why that part of the discussion keeps being shied away from.
mircea_popescu: let's distinguish the genuine problem from "sky is falling in pies and nsa owns thermodynamics"
mircea_popescu: i don't have full control over turbulent flow, nevertheless fly unmolested. and so following.
mircea_popescu: phf now now. don't squirm away. let's have the discussion. what exactly IS the concern.
trinque: answer's trivially yes, but size of the thing isn't moot. or do I misrepresent phf?
asciilifeform: they asmed on grid paper
trinque: question is whether "I must ask $guy for $binaryblob" or not.
trinque: the ASM builds syslisp, syslisp builds compiler, compiler builds system approach works
asciilifeform: trinque: the x64 box that 'you can get the docs for' is , as i learned experimentally and very painfully -- a strictly imagined item
trinque: just like the imagined item
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: if i can't connect comp to $othercomp at bus speed - you lost me.
trinque: he wrote the ASM
trinque: yes still have to apply the WoT to whether I can trust the man, but if I *do*, it is possible to be said that the man who started from step 1 had the whole fucker in his head.
asciilifeform: enemy pumps in new hardware that 'you MUST support, or otherwise you WILL buy your comps on ebay strictly' faster than you can driver.
ben_vulpes: throw the nic out, we're going to shortwave anyways
trinque: it is miles from there
asciilifeform: you can view the result of the last set of folx who did it, 'movitz', which boots on 0 modern irons.
asciilifeform: trinque: the flaw is that you gotta support a megatonne of liquishit for even nic to work -- dma, page tables, etc
trinque being an idiot in these matters, has a very stupid (and unfinished) scheme in x86-64 asm
asciilifeform: ( not to say that this is practical, but it would be ~the~ thompson angle. )
phf: the machine that you built your bcc on could already be infected, and the resulting bcc binary is compromised
mircea_popescu: i think we're not talking of the same thing. so, i have, for the sake of argument, a 50k line bcc, which builds c and doesn't optimize. it's my bootstrapping compiler. it runs on musl, say. i fire up a pogo, put this on, and proceed to build a kernel during the next week.
phf: so it's irrelevant if the bootstrapped code is inspectable
phf: you can design a malicious bootstrapper that will compromise the bootstrapped code
a111: Logged on 2017-02-24 02:36 asciilifeform: veen: let's try a historical angle. according to legend, emperor qin shi huangdi (same d00d as known for taking the 'immortality pill' and promptly croaking) had a palace with 1,500 rooms. and would not tell anyone in advance which one he plans to sleep in on a given night. and which ones he would put cutthroats in, ready to kill anyone who opens door. think 'minesweeper.'
asciilifeform: ( the other is to build system out of movable blocks in such a way that it becomes conceptually impossible to build a proper 'surprise' )
asciilifeform: trinque: recall the 'specificity of diddling' thread; inspection is only one of the two known defenses.