asciilifeform: the mechanical politruk, which doesn't 'quis custodiet ipsos custodes?', and cannot be bribed, bought, needs 0 rest, can really 'plug into all of the telescreens at one time in the ministry of luvvvv', etc.
mircea_popescu: they will suffer the same fate, too, but until he is killed the death convict still lives like any other.
mircea_popescu: basically, the ~one hope of the imperial technologistic church of some sort of practical results is a peculiar form of ai. they're doubling down on it exactly in the manner usg doubled down on "alternative fuels".
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform incidentally that nonsense is only superficially related to snowden. in practice it is an extension of the "artificial intelligence" used in "spam detection", especially as the doomed but desperate attempt at websites to fight the republican bots.
asciilifeform: dun like drinking piss? then stop being known for 'travail arabe' .
asciilifeform: this 'works' is a pestilence and is largely why clueful greybeards from the meat world , e.g., mircea_popescu , unzip and piss on programmers simply for sport
asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-12-24#1590218 << i cannot resist going back to this and giving it another whack of the spiked club. this variant definition of 'works', whereby things such as clim supposedly 'work', how would folks such as gabriel_laddel like if their cpu worked like this ? on and off, when weather is just right, and randomly melts on odd-numbered thursdays, and 'oh dontcha know you gotta jiggle the handle', and 'wtf did
asciilifeform: or whatever to call the nonsense where 'oh noez, mr.slave is flipping pages TOO FAST'
asciilifeform: or at the very least properly pwn the pnoje, it isn't as if this were especially arduous.
a111: Logged on 2016-12-24 17:00 gabriel_laddel: to complete the autodialer picture: the latest way american corps try to do "IP protection" is to only let you access data from one phone. Writing a program to drive stylus + camera that digs through arbitrary apps and sucks all the information out of them using OCR would be a lot of fun
asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-12-24#1590209 << this sounds like a monumentally retarded idea. enemy will immediately see that you are flipping through the crapola, and 'snowden detection' is the fashionable 'must have!111' corporate idiocy. pull the NAND flash like a real man.
asciilifeform: how about that it isn't in the standard ?
a111: Logged on 2016-12-22 17:58 asciilifeform: common lisp committee was hobbled by babelism, had to stuff in the redundant idiocies, and never got to, say, actually developing streams properly (why the fuck are we stuck with hacks like gray streams? and where is the commonlisp with ~working~ mop ? etc)
gabriel_laddel_p: seems I didn't delete new key, but rather forgot to change my nick to gabriel_laddel_p
mircea_popescu: most resilient use of self-blown glass was because "it's the only way to get a proper seal"
mircea_popescu: the joint objection is quite solid.
gabriel_laddel: all the pharmacy techs right now are running these "apps", which operate as a database interface to all the "copyright blah blah blah protected" pharama data
gabriel_laddel: to complete the autodialer picture: the latest way american corps try to do "IP protection" is to only let you access data from one phone. Writing a program to drive stylus + camera that digs through arbitrary apps and sucks all the information out of them using OCR would be a lot of fun
asciilifeform: i suspect that chemists of old days used a great bit more custom glass than today not only because borosilicate was not a thing (and so, easier to melt) but also because their ground joints sucked
a111: Logged on 2016-12-24 16:40 gabriel_laddel: asciilifeform: are there glassblowing robots for custom labware yet?
gabriel_laddel: I did sign an NDA, so I'm not going to get into the details of what exactly we were cooking. But yes, it was most certainly toxic.
gabriel_laddel: Am not sure. Saw the synth running with broken fume hood, a cracked window and gtfo.
gabriel_laddel: I left out the key part of that story - they released the fumes indoors, in a building the offices they were occupying.
gabriel_laddel: mircea_popescu: I was working for a startup a while ago - but they released toxic fumes into the air without a fume hood, so I quit.
mircea_popescu is curious if the forum will prefer gabriel_laddel parked in sv start-up over gabriel_laddel parked in park.
gabriel_laddel: asciilifeform: are there glassblowing robots for custom labware yet?
gabriel_laddel: As I said: blood is in the water - it's fun.
gabriel_laddel: asciilifeform: I have talentless thiel fellows trying to lowball me at the moment, but expect that they'll pay up soon enough.
asciilifeform: gabriel_laddel: how's the hardware biz?
gabriel_laddel: for some reason this required a restart of the application, which _should not be a thing_ in cl.
gabriel_laddel: Something like that - was hacking out the gesture :control-meta-click in CLIM and was clicking around a lot with it bound to COM-DELETE-FILE
a111: Logged on 2016-12-24 00:23 asciilifeform: i dun even want to picture how the d00d lives.
mircea_popescu: they more or less udnerstand they're a formalisation of what the more numerate philosophers call the theory of knowledge.
mircea_popescu: anyway, i'm entirely not up to speed to this, but there actually exists this field in math, of "boolean function sets"
mircea_popescu: more than that : there can't be conceptual difference between number x and number y.
mircea_popescu: so the statement should be symmetrical.
mircea_popescu: importantly - there is no need for the payload and the padding to be distinguishable.
mircea_popescu: can be constructed so their values are known besides K0(x) = true for K0(a) = 1 if a=x and 0 if a!=x.
mircea_popescu: but yes, the statement is correct. to restate : 1. padding is defined as a function F (x, y) with x, y and F ∈ N such that 2. F is defined for all (x, y) pairs and that 3. given any set of boolean functions Ki(x) along with their values no Kj(y) can be constructed so their values are known besides K0(y) = true for K0(a) = 1 if a=y and 0 if a!=y and 4. given any set of boolean functions Ki(y) along with their values no Kj(x)
asciilifeform: (link -- loads, has a turd by same title and stock photos of 'collegiate' crapolade, i did not read further )
a111: Logged on 2016-12-24 14:39 mircea_popescu: in other lulz : http://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliesportelli/2015/08/24/meet-the-millennials-crowdfunding-their-college-tuition no longer exists. do you suppose this is because a) it turned out that no idiot millenials tried this or b) because the scamsites pretending to be offering a service involved complained to the usg dept of scamsites which then passed a hitler note to the usg dept of scamnews ?
asciilifeform: (and not merely by the obvious lobotomist)
asciilifeform: rivest wss afaik the first to ask for this. but he and afaik everybody since him, used hashes.
asciilifeform: of k rather
asciilifeform: informally stated , it is 'spread out k bits over j bits, j>k, such that the bitness of k that can be learned from knowing any 1 bit of j is minimized, and such that knowledge of a
asciilifeform: that was actually where i stopped last time. to properly and rigorously define the problem
asciilifeform: there is a specific job involved
mircea_popescu: "better" is not a mathematical concept.
asciilifeform: and yes, the cost is high. but i remain unconvinced that a better method exists.
a111: Logged on 2016-12-24 01:15 asciilifeform: the useful envelope of operation comes when you have at least ~16x the bottom limit.
mircea_popescu: the correct margin is N^2
mircea_popescu: specifically 256kb does not even remotely promise for 64kb to be walked. you get a third untouched more than half the time.
mircea_popescu: this resolves the part where "all have been walked" though not the part where there's structure intrinsic in the method.
a111: Logged on 2016-12-24 14:17 mircea_popescu: asciilifeform thinking about it, the walker scheme doesn't seem too great. the theoretical objection is that it ~does~ introduce structure, through the convention that the walker moves from where it last moved. in practice though, run a few simulations over a 16bit message which you can then print as a 256x256 bitmap. your walker makes anthills basically.
mircea_popescu: in other lulz : http://www.forbes.com/sites/nataliesportelli/2015/08/24/meet-the-millennials-crowdfunding-their-college-tuition no longer exists. do you suppose this is because a) it turned out that no idiot millenials tried this or b) because the scamsites pretending to be offering a service involved complained to the usg dept of scamsites which then passed a hitler note to the usg dept of scamnews ?
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes lol that leclerc dude is visiting your blog on a weekly basis ? 2, 9, then nobody gave a shit so he skipped 16 and i guess 23, we see him on the 30th ?
mircea_popescu: good thing there's reddit. now that yahoo "finance" closed the public boards, where'd all the scum go.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform thinking about it, the walker scheme doesn't seem too great. the theoretical objection is that it ~does~ introduce structure, through the convention that the walker moves from where it last moved. in practice though, run a few simulations over a 16bit message which you can then print as a 256x256 bitmap. your walker makes anthills basically.
a111: Logged on 2016-12-24 02:18 mircea_popescu: http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/223991/%E2%80%98an-honest-conversation-is-scarier-than-sex%E2%80%99-for-millenials << in other lulz.
BingoBoingo: Well, they don't know radical honesty is best served nekkid
mircea_popescu: http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/223991/%E2%80%98an-honest-conversation-is-scarier-than-sex%E2%80%99-for-millenials << in other lulz.
asciilifeform: 'This has been a production of Rubbish From asciilifeform's Desk! No actual mathematicians were harmed...'
asciilifeform: say that the first bit of every tape pair means 'left or right', and the second 'flip or noflip.'
asciilifeform: this gives you entirely symmetric probabilities of motion in either direction;
asciilifeform: btw the '00'--> stop thing is unnecessary and harmful, you stop when you run out of feed tape.
asciilifeform: but it takes up space, and if even 1 of the bits gets flipped (misguessed), you get an avalanche of rubbish.
asciilifeform: so, yes, e.g., '1010101001010101' does ~absolutely~ nothing to the waltz tape
asciilifeform: whole point is to minimize the information conveyed to enemy by knowing about the, e.g., 'To: mircea_popescu' inside; and to maximize the consequences of a misguessed plaintext bit in a cryptoanalysis.
mircea_popescu: and other strings are also just as neutral.
asciilifeform: so now mircea_popescu sees why i wanted a noncircular tape -- then the enemy knows nothing about the ultimate length of the output
mircea_popescu: there;s a largest permitted message ?!
asciilifeform: or rather, 3x+Q of it
mircea_popescu: you prolly want circular tape the size of message tbh.
asciilifeform: sorta like 'hang by the neck until dead' spec.
asciilifeform: (because there is a nonzero probability that the whole thing is left alone, for instance. or large segments thereof, more likely.)
asciilifeform: btw you probably would want to mechanically ensure that every bit of the input got stepped on at least once.
asciilifeform: (the fewer possible messages)
mircea_popescu: if you make the waltzer start from ~the end~ of the message, even sqrt(n) steps improves rsa enough.
asciilifeform: the beauty is that you can dial the strength up if you have a great deal of space and a short message .
mircea_popescu: a 5x size penalty for full strength encryption is not inconceivable either.
asciilifeform: sorta was the point of FUCKGOATS.
asciilifeform: possibly we no longer bottleneck on entropy gather ?
mircea_popescu: let's consider the case where i want to exchange a 1kb letter. i won't actually use 1mb to feed the tape, but i will use 4kb.
asciilifeform: you gotta have the actual entropy.
asciilifeform: as in, if i have a good idea as to what is the plaintext, i can verify my guess.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: all schemes where the transform is of 'payload itself' and 0 entropy, suffer from immediate 'penguin problem', https://blog.filippo.io/content/images/2015/11/Tux_ecb.jpg .
mircea_popescu: the thing here however is, that incremental improvement may actually be useful. ie, a ~better~ encryption scheme, even if not ~provably the best~.
mircea_popescu: no, we're clear on the part where it's pretty expensive.
asciilifeform: as in, the cost.
asciilifeform: and yes, you get elongated message. the job imho here is to show precisely how much elongation buys you ~exactly~ what strength.
mircea_popescu: suppose you actually use the payload itself sqrt(payloadsize) times.
asciilifeform: considering that 1 step of the crank eats 2 bits.
asciilifeform: that won't even waltz over the whole message
mircea_popescu: ok, let's go at it another insane way. suppose you pad the message by using... the message as the tape.
asciilifeform: is to take away the algebraic relation.
asciilifeform: fundamental problem here, is that the operation can be written as an equation
asciilifeform: this cannot be ruled out, because hash -- yes, all of them -- is voodoo.
asciilifeform: say i discover that sha output is 'heavy' on 1s (in the von neumann coin sense) if the input was a sha output of a sha output of a string containing word 'nuke'. etc
asciilifeform: costs you, under some entirely possible scenarios, all of the strength.
asciilifeform: but why do you want to constrain the possible tapes thusly
mircea_popescu: i will now use S as a tape for the automaton to be applied to T.
mircea_popescu: other party just pads in reverse.
mircea_popescu: i dunno, i have no actual math to show, but intuitively it seems to me the above "take 64 bytes of rng, iterate hash over the first 60 last 4-times and then use that as tape to pad message, then put padded message + 64 bytes in question in rsatron" is practically useful and theoretically strong.
asciilifeform: most of the 'solutions' do not even vaguely pretend to solve the problem, and in fact expertly avoid to say what the problem even might be.
asciilifeform: btw anyone who tries to dig in the 'official' literature re: crypto padding will barf his guts out, the subjects consists ~100% of obscurantist crapola by weight.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu and others can probably think of some useful and interesting variations on this scheme.
mircea_popescu: the whole discussion of blocks vs whole thing is all about this.
asciilifeform: btw tape cannot be round unless you carry its size inside the message, which is verboten because that would be STRUCTURE
mircea_popescu: so then you're back to blocks and a round tape.
asciilifeform: it is only palpably slow if you insist on doing the entire thing in a gargantuan exponentiation.
asciilifeform: you can split the message.
mircea_popescu: the problem is it bloats the message to an incredible size ; which plays poorly with rsa's weakness (slow)
asciilifeform: all that does is to append a few random bytes to the payload.
asciilifeform: existing padding schemes are precisely what i would like to get away from. idea is to introduce maximal uncertainty re the identity or purpose of any particular bit of unknown plaintext, and max fragility.
asciilifeform: gpg used the weakest known padding scheme iirc.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform but that's my question, the above is actually what rsa currently uses.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: pretty much all of the extant schemes resolve to some variant of that. the problem is that ~all~ of them introduce structure
asciilifeform: btw i scoured the l0gz in vain for entire hour, looking for where i promised this, and cannot find.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform what if i use the following scheme : message padded + 60 bytes of padding key + 4 bytes of iteration count. the tape is producing by doing sha recursively on the padding key and its results iteration count times.
asciilifeform: that's what 'padding' (terrible misnomer) is. the opposite of errorcode.
asciilifeform: (recall, you want a maximally fragile string. it is quite the opposite of error-correction codes.)
asciilifeform: now i have not proved whether 2d gives you more sensitivity to mis-guessed bit .
mircea_popescu: ah thereis that.
asciilifeform: in the end you're trying to end up with a bitstring
mircea_popescu: otherwise why not space.
mircea_popescu: to my mind the only reason to have 1d is if you're going to try and emulate block cyphers ie make it fixed size.
asciilifeform: the problem is that you have to derive a bounding box when you're done and want to turn the playing field into a bitstring for use wherever
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform let me ask you this : suppose the tape is byte-sized, and the 8 bits are as follows : 2 bits x movement ; 2 bits y movement ; 2 bits z movement ; stop and flip bits for a total of 8. the tape is now a space.
mod6: <+asciilifeform> i can only imagine their disappointment. << lol
asciilifeform: which of course you don't want, it is quite obvious that there is no entropy in there if it only got 3x longer.
mircea_popescu: but the space gets pretty narrow. 3n, you shoot n^(1/2) messages you're suddenly losing
asciilifeform: we did not destroy the structure, only made a (slightly) more complicated one.
asciilifeform: this is superficially structure-destroying , either one of the two halves could literally be ANY bitstring of that length
asciilifeform: so one ~horrid~ padding algo would be to get a bitstring from my rng, xor the message to it, then send a message of 2x length of original consisting of: [the bitstring from rng][the result of the xor]
asciilifeform: say i want to encipher (dun matter with what) a string, 'To: mircea_popescu Subj: thermonuke launch codes ...'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the tape size cannot be known to decoder in advance
asciilifeform: then you append a sequence of ops , e.g., '10a10b10c10d.....' for the desired a,b,c,d... that flips the mutilated bits to the desired final state.
asciilifeform: then you produce some sequence of random moves for this machine, nondestructively (recall, all operations are invertible) waltzing over it.
asciilifeform: take the bitstring to be 'padded' (that is, mixed with entropy in such a way that it destroys enemy's ability to know any part of the structure of a plaintext inside ciphertext.)
mircea_popescu: so wait, the plan is a) make integer ; b) convert to automaton tape ; c) use that tape as padding ?
asciilifeform: this is the ideal rsa padding scheme that folx asked for.
asciilifeform: picture the following 1-dimensional automaton, that eats bitstring in sets of 2bits, and : '10' -> 'tape step left' ; '01' -> 'tape step right' ; '11' -> invert bit at current square; '00' -> terminate.
mircea_popescu: the diophantine approach above + the "transfinite induction" / von neumann set are pretty much the scylla and charybdis of this sea.
asciilifeform: incidentally, since (to borrow the lament of turing's school headmaster) 'the room already stinks of mathematics', i'll share a tidbit that i promised folx some half year ago and promptly forgot:
mircea_popescu: anyway, practice of programming, especially in a reasonably clean environment, possesses one of a notion of recursion that is then a fertile ground for mathematical scamming.
mircea_popescu: the general point being, that the mind is not particularly adept to ~counting sets~ (including and especially in the sense of "Evaluating complexity") which is why it's very easy for it to misjudge the reach and power of recursive methods.
mircea_popescu: nah, it's just to my mind the next logical step after wtf are null sets anyway.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform the whole thing was "extension of discussion of basic logic to set theory for the eager minds"
asciilifeform: that being said, there are good methods for certain special cases, if mircea_popescu's diophantines are of a particular ~kind~ i might be able to hit up my dead trees for an algo.
mircea_popescu: ie, that it ~feels~ like the problem should have a recursive solution.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform it's exactly that, restated to discourage googling. the point being that it is difficult to correctly set the limits of recursion's utility intuitively
asciilifeform: i can only imagine their disappointment.
asciilifeform: in other lulz, FUCKGOATS www is getting regular hits from places such as honduras, panama, etc. via search-engine referrer. and i am beginning to suspect that these folx were looking for material concerning the fucking of ordinary goats.
asciilifeform: it is not a very promising problem as-stated imho. sorta like 'my pet mouse died, i want to resurrect it, i have this here industrial vivarium full of 10,001 live mice, how do i use them'
asciilifeform: having tall pile of these does not, via any known method, help.
asciilifeform: then i must say, if i knew the answer, all of the keys on phuctor would be marked 'phucked'
mircea_popescu: individually. like the list could be x^2 = 4 ; x = 1 ; x ^ 3 + 5 = 6 - in which case your arbitrary equation may be a polynomial in x but not in x y
asciilifeform: they ~individually~ have solutions, or list is a system ?
mircea_popescu: 1) you can have a list of equations that do have solutions ; 2) that if your list only contains X Y and Z unknowns, then the arbitrary item won't contain Q unknown
a111: Logged on 2016-12-23 14:07 mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-12-21#1587182 << speaking of this, here's a question for the eager : a diophantine equation is a multivariate polynomial, something like ax+by^2 = 0. the question is : given an arbitrary finite set of known-good equations, can you use recursion to decide whether an arbitrary equation in the same variables is good (has integer solution) or no good ?
a111: Logged on 2016-12-23 14:01 mircea_popescu: (we'll skip over the entire "waka" incident for the sake of public morals.)
asciilifeform: i dun even want to picture how the d00d lives.
mircea_popescu: also updated http://trilema.com/2016/how-to-participate-in-the-affairs-of-the-most-serene-republic/ a little.
mircea_popescu: the most amusing jewish joke in all this - lo, trump MADE A GOOD JEWISH JOEK. this is infinitely harder than the supposed "witty self-deprecation" imbeciles gathering in new york think funny
phf: "that was some good shooting for the revolution there. hey you're good at shooting people. you're now the head of my shooting department"
asciilifeform: then makes sense.
mircea_popescu: he already has a house there. most of these are appointments of convenience, like making serial rapist head of rape dept.
asciilifeform: the one thing i don't quite grasp is why a heavy calibre d00d like the one described, would take the job of ambassador
asciilifeform: 'Intelligence agencies and politicians in Germany are hoping to prevent a similar scenario next fall for the Bundestag elections. Some politicians in Germany have also proposed laws against the production and distribution of fake news.'
phf: seems like the pattern with all the appointments. "competent. has strong animosity towards whatever bureaucratic apparatus he's going to be head of."
phf: i'd make a "my lawyer's jewish, i know, i'll make im speak to all other jews" joke, but so far trump's appointments that i heard have been very competent :o
mircea_popescu: it's not just that the guy's ~not~ part of embassy usg. it's that he's a) pissed publicly on the very faces of the kids of the helicopter moms that make up embassy usg and b) is independently wealthy / intelligent enough to not give the slightest shit about them and their wine parties.
asciilifeform: 'In light of the rise of fake news on social media, the German Interior Ministry has proposed the creation of a "Center of Defense Against Disinformation," according to a report on Friday from the German news magazine "Der Spiegel."'
asciilifeform: 'Friedman, who specializes in litigation and bankruptcy law, was a key adviser to the incoming Republican president on US-Israel affairs during the presidential campaign.'
a111: Logged on 2016-12-19 18:48 mircea_popescu: anyway, to be fair here : the russians have no interest in waiting ; putin might be uncharacteristically meek, but in general a half dozen us ambassadors starting with the resident in manilla within the next week-10days is perfectly possible. at which point obama actually having the gall to call natl emergency and set aside the transfer of power is not entirely inconceivable. after which the russians WILL sink all the us carr
asciilifeform: iirc turks giving helping hand to the kurd-control exterminator crews is old noose..?
asciilifeform: (alternatively, of the 'wrong' wavelength, soften the ceramic a bit, then shoot with ordinary lahti)
asciilifeform: btw i wonder what a 100kw laser, of the right wavelength naturally, would feel like to the occupant of the windowed tank.
asciilifeform: but if you gotta 'ride a tank, hold a general's rank, while blitzkrig raged and the bodies stank'
mircea_popescu: use the subway like normal people.
asciilifeform: sounds expensive. probably cheaper to put steel armour, and camera on one side, plasma tv on other !
asciilifeform: i'd seriously like to see what happens with, say, the lexan window, vs 'lahti' antitank round from ww2
mircea_popescu: the very energetic rounds just ricochet.
mircea_popescu: in fact the most dangeroius rounds aren't the outer (ie, very fast) but the inner (ie, just slow enough to spall the shit out of you)
mircea_popescu: so no, sabot or no sabot you're not shooting through the (tiny ass btw) windows.
mircea_popescu: the thing with it is it's layered, no matter the impact energy you get refraction because of the medium variance.
asciilifeform: also there is bullet and then there is bullet. you can get sabot rounds for ordinary '12' shotgun.
asciilifeform: dun matter what you make them from.
asciilifeform: (obummer's obummermobile was so laden with armour that the british could not fix it, this was a scandal a few yrs back)
mircea_popescu: the reason is that same old mc^2 ; there's no better heat dampener than water nor better energy dampener than mass.
mircea_popescu: in bulletproofing there's really no substitute for mass.
asciilifeform: you hoist it on the same hoist used for bus, garbage truck.
asciilifeform: (unlike the iraq folx he wasn't getting tax-free double pay afaik)
mircea_popescu: pete_dushenski hey, they're on the path of recreating a post-enlightenment history in which females actually matter, what's a movie compared.
asciilifeform: the sysadmin d00d in benghazi, i am told , was also quite surprised in his last 5min of life.
phf: that's sort of part of the deal
asciilifeform: i did meet a d00d who ~did~ get the job, turns out those containers ain't bulletproof, whod'vethunkit.
phf: back during iraq war the salaries for ~sysadmins~ were way above what you could get on the market (i remember looking at listings and vaguely contemplating doing it because it ~looked~ like fun), i.e. 100-150k for 6 month of deployment. i think now because of vc money it has switched.
pete_dushenski: http://archive.is/Q0e9f << and another example of reddit delusions not being confined to ethereum and shillary. apparently these poor kids are making up their own non-existent 90s movies now.
mod6: <+asciilifeform> http://wotpaste.cascadianhacker.com/pastes/F4SWa/?raw=true << another example of convergence << interesting.
asciilifeform: just about every literate young d00d in usa has at one point or another turned down (or accepted, and lived to regret) 200+k usd in sv
mircea_popescu: sure, as in any socialist totalitarian state, it is better to not even care about the worthless money ; and try and achieve positions of power in the necessary feudal structure.
asciilifeform: (incidentally a general who steps anywhere near the battlefield, gets hazard bonus, tax-free-enablement, and several other additions to pay)
asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-12-23#1589102 << it is, perhaps surprisingly, still better to be the general. he does not have to live in a 1room sv flat that costs 95% of that 18k.
asciilifeform: that someone found a method of converting into (at the time, rare) barcode reader. and was sued for his trouble
mircea_popescu: the modern democracy gotta make items that can not be useful ; and ONLY items that can not be useful.
asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-12-23#1589092 << most likely is that they followed the contours of the existing auto
mircea_popescu: nobody could possibly resist the power of modern democracy embeded in its ultimate representation, the unsolicited mailing.
asciilifeform: (quite likely a pious fraud of 'let's bring back the church' idiot '90s)
a111: Logged on 2016-12-23 12:50 mircea_popescu: in further news nobody cares about, "4 million letters of 'empathy, support' dropped on Mosul". this thing, which was a) going to be a war that b) was going to take two weeks twelve weeks ago (and then a month, and then two, and here we are) has now degenerated in a fucking spam offensive.
asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-12-23#1589086 << reminds me of the (legendary) airplane that flew orthodox icon around moscow N times to ward off german encirclement
asciilifeform: one possible theory is that crapple drummed up the hysteria, their headphonejackless marvel was due for release that week iirc.
asciilifeform: i went on airplane in october and there were signs hanging of 'if you have this-here, put it in this fireproof rubbish bin before boarding, or go home'
asciilifeform: iirc battery thermistor.
mircea_popescu: so then the same thing here as there ; this attribution issue is not useful to distinguish between the two methods.
asciilifeform: well yes. mircea_popescu used to teach, right ? how did he determine which idiot cribbed off which other idiot on exam
asciilifeform: you can, but it will be readily apparent to be a later work than the earlier that you will presumably be 'filing the serial numbers off'