mircea_popescu: "Either a priapic clown or an embalmed witch are going to be running this country next year, and all I have is a case of fermented corn syrup." << lol!
asciilifeform: (or how does that go in english..? is there a modern term ?)
asciilifeform: sorta how these work
jhvh1: thestringpuller: shinohai was last seen in #trilema 5 hours, 18 minutes, and 12 seconds ago: <shinohai> The GREAT BITCOIN FORK is coming: https://twitter.com/rogerkver/status/788188693995655168
asciilifeform: https://archive.is/LF2Ym << from same pile o'shit: 'NatWest bank is to close the accounts of Russia's state-run broadcaster, RT. Editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan tweeted: "They've closed our accounts in Britain. All our accounts. 'The decision is not subject to review.' '
mircea_popescu: meanwhile, kurdish zone population swelled 30% in the past year, all civil servants and pashmerga salaries are in arears, and oil prices stay low.
mats: soleimani? there's no independent verification he's in country
mircea_popescu: yeah. iranian guy in command on the ground too ?
mircea_popescu: mats btw how's mosul ? the beobachter surprisingly speaks of "tough resistance" and "slowed advance" ?
mircea_popescu: in other lulz... hillary shit-ton is going into "digital currencies". VEN!
Framedragger: mircea_popescu: lol. maybe they accept alternative "patriot dividends" as asset
mircea_popescu: his declared jp morgan fortunes were 500k to 1mn ; the minimum net worth for the 4147-20 "saphire preferred signature extra hurr durr" is 25mn
mircea_popescu: Framedragger amusingly, he didn't officially report having enough with them to allow him to get that.
mircea_popescu: in other news - know who else goes around with a gangster roll ? that's right, the most powerful kenyan in the world https://archive.is/ZB5sB
mircea_popescu: anyone remember that line where asciilifeform said something like "dorks prove cryptosystem security by the theorem that if it looks complicated to them it probably is complicated enough" ?
mircea_popescu: very simple to show it's better : stale-while-revalidate will show arbitrarily old data to some users ; periodic-recalculate will never show data older than the period.
Framedragger: i don't know if it's better, but yeah a cronjob would indeed work. *however*, you then may not get around those exceptional cases where client requests page which is still processing from cronjob request - and cache already expired. unless you set it to be tightly timed i guess?
mircea_popescu: the solution where it's simply computed with some frequency is better.
scriba: Logged on 2016-10-18: [04:38:11] <mircea_popescu> now it does. what hapopens i suspect is that the queue for the cache becomes overlong, then when a requyest hits the machine starts processing it, takes > 30 s or w/e it is, the connection timeouts
Framedragger: http://log.mkj.lt/trilema/20161018/#23 << it is a pity that nginx caching mechanism does not support stale-while-revalidate - which is: if client requests page which hasn't expired in cache, serve from cache; if expired in cache, serve (the stale version) from cache, and update *in the background*. this is RFC 5861. apparently supported in newer varnish tho.
mircea_popescu: and in other youthful sluts, http://67.media.tumblr.com/37cb25e20c363768aa84df87c9b5822a/tumblr_of1zrs3Amn1vdm1pio1_1280.jpg
asciilifeform: a simple cron job ought to do the trick, actually
mircea_popescu: so could the cache be reconstructed houry or somesuch to avoid this ?
mircea_popescu: then on subsequent request it delivers it fine
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: db is under near-full load most of the time, as we are filling it with Framedragger's keys. afaik this'd account for it.
mircea_popescu: now it does. what hapopens i suspect is that the queue for the cache becomes overlong, then when a requyest hits the machine starts processing it, takes > 30 s or w/e it is, the connection timeouts
mircea_popescu: and in other insertables, http://66.media.tumblr.com/9eb6cdeaf10cd64831eddd709be1b978/tumblr_nesm0ikc2N1sprsiqo1_1280.jpg
BingoBoingo: lol, fuxxed unlike the those Aryan folk.
scriba: Logged on 2016-10-18: [04:09:26] <ben_vulpes> "the âlarge majorityâ of the rise was driven by births to foreign-born women."
trinque: the cycles in this graph boggle
mircea_popescu: anyway. german state/govt has a point : peons are replaceable. if they won't fuck - there's orcs somewhere that will.
trinque: ben_vulpes: foreign born german women tho! because they're german nao!
ben_vulpes: aw man i pooped in the logs
ben_vulpes: the root of "build one to throw away"
ben_vulpes: http://trilema.com/2016/the-planetary-model-of-software-development/#selection-483.79-483.279 << a zillion times this
pete_dushenski: that 'the press' would aim to shelter and coddle morons into the latter camp is despicable, unethical, and destined to fail - for both themselves and their moo-eyed readership.
pete_dushenski: this is presumably what the employment alternatives look like. i) wash dishes for well to do couple, learn, maybe make productive connections along the way (you hope) ; ii) play 'flag the meanies' in your mom's basement ad infinitum.
shinohai: They got a personal army of similar-minded folks to flag post and get it removed, that'll show 'em!
pete_dushenski: ad is included in article and is eminently reasonable. nothing a pa or nanny wouldn't do. i seriously dun get it and it drives me up the fucking wall. the gall of these impotent shits. to think that it's evil for employers to have specific expectations rather than being 'universally' 'inclusive'.
pete_dushenski: people who can afford it and there are folks who don’t have any other options.”" << holy shit does this sort of libertard flailing grind my fucking gears
pete_dushenski: "It’s essentially an ad for a personal servant, said one UBC professor, who added she was not surprised to see it given the country’s growing income inequality. “They’re not calling it a personal servant but that is what they’re asking for,” said Sylvia Fuller, who studies employment and inequality. “Its not surprising that you start to see more of this kind of arrangement because there are
deedbot: http://trilema.com/2016/the-planetary-model-of-software-development/ << Trilema - The planetary model of software development.
scriba: Logged on 2016-10-17: [20:03:26] <mircea_popescu> http://trilema.com/2016/the-planetary-model-of-software-development/ << /me recommends to asciilifeform phf Framedragger and all those interested in the theory of sd ; very curious as to comments.
scriba: Logged on 2016-10-17: [18:26:57] <mircea_popescu> Framedragger they're pretty much on turkey's kill list. seems unlikely there's gonna be that many to celebrate 2020.
mircea_popescu: http://trilema.com/2016/the-planetary-model-of-software-development/ << /me recommends to asciilifeform phf Framedragger and all those interested in the theory of sd ; very curious as to comments.
pete_dushenski: asciilifeform: despite your protestations for 'non-mac' dieharder test results, here are a couple of em for your project all the same : http://wotpaste.cascadianhacker.com/pastes/fch7o/?raw=true http://wotpaste.cascadianhacker.com/pastes/olgha/?raw=true
shinohai: no results for the week pete_dushenski :/
a111: Logged on 2016-10-16 20:02 asciilifeform: b00k r3c for pete_dushenski : 'the cruel hunters' (engl.)
pete_dushenski: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-10-16#1555972 << cool. though gotta love how the only amason review is 1 star from james storemski. apparently the title is heavy on the numbers and politics. "stuff the nobody really cares about" mkay. because ofc he asked the entirety of the nobody and they all concurred with james in the most unambiguous terms.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform yeah, but usg is always very keen on counting the jwzs on its own lists. nixon's "silent majority" and all that.
mircea_popescu: Framedragger they're pretty much on turkey's kill list. seems unlikely there's gonna be that many to celebrate 2020.
mats: i give it 1/2 odds usg packs their bags and goes home if isil is routed from mosul
Framedragger: mats: since i guess you're following news more than me, i'm curious if you know anything about how the kurds in northern syria are doing, assuming anything new in the last couple of months? (not really following news there but just curious)
mats: syrians disinterested in any political cause, looking to live their lives in peace
mats: lots of folks reporting on isis in .sy, attacks in Aleppo, Darayya, etc but nobody is discussing .ir, Hezbollah funded sectarian militias, IRGC commands on the battlefield, IRGC providing the majority of Assad's troops, active targeting and destruction of aid convoys, ru's efforts to destroy moderates and local civilian authorities
asciilifeform: there isn't a 'b2slave' yet afaik
mircea_popescu: i have nfi what junk is in them. changes every year. maybe handicrafts, or w/e.
mircea_popescu: in other news, the b2b cocksucking season is open early this year. if anyone wants to receive those inane gift baskets corps keep trying to send on my behalf, drop me a line (with your physical address).
mircea_popescu: if there isn't any infrastructure, the difference between "extremists" and "civilised people" is nil. much like when there aren't any balls, the difference between usg presidential hopefuls is nil.
mircea_popescu: they can't be finished
mats: .sy will be one big smoking pile of rubble once assad, the various insurgencies, IRGC, ru, and isis are finished
a111: Logged on 2016-10-15 05:05 mircea_popescu: anyway, it's pretty evident russia is pivoting from syria to a iraq spur via turkey. so yeah, sure, whatever, bazaar al-asado won't be there forever.
mats: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-10-15#1555598 << .ru appears committed to turning the fight into a cage match among extremists, by diligently double tapping remaining civilian infrastructure - water & food storage facilities, courthouses, hospitals
BingoBoingo: Why destroy one ship when you can incur the cost of 8 ships in mold remediation?
BingoBoingo: Eh, that kind of force and the center mounting bracket is likely to fail
mircea_popescu: lol someone's been reading the prev shotgun quadcopter thread ? :)
a111: Logged on 2016-10-17 05:22 ben_vulpes: the stationkeeping fuel budget will be...expensive.
PeterL: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-10-17#1556180 << just fire one off in the other direction for every one you shoot forward
mircea_popescu: the large guns, esp of ww1, are an utterly lulzy subject of anthropology.
asciilifeform: the calibre stepup..?
mircea_popescu: yup. fired like 50 shots, send the barrel back to krupp
mircea_popescu: no pretty sure the germans had ordnance in numeric order
asciilifeform: iirc they were sabot anyway
mircea_popescu: so much so the projectiles fired were actually of increased caliber over time
mircea_popescu: fun fact : the large cannons, much like the rail guns, actually wore down considerable metal off the barrel
mircea_popescu: so yes, there is ONE possibly useful application of a military railgun : making the deep space interdictor. but this is slight.
mircea_popescu: and this isn't "in orbit". too much friction there. this is in outer space.
mircea_popescu: the interdictor itself is stationary.
mircea_popescu: that's the point here. a 10 gram pellet that got accelerated for 200kJ is now moving at 5km/s
ben_vulpes: you're providing all the angular speed by virtue of being in orbit!
mircea_popescu: think what speed you'd have to have to bother me angularily at that distance.
mircea_popescu: hence the advantage of rail gun.
mircea_popescu: no, the point is, the dust in the rings of saturn doesn't enter spontaneous fusion because it all moves ~the same direction and ~the same speed. so sure, leave it there, it'll make a nice bing sound as it hits the outer casing.
ben_vulpes: i'm seeing buckshot in orbit where a target will pass in the next 2 seconds.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform it means that they never hit you with a speed in excess of say 100m/s. and if they do, it's goodnight
ben_vulpes: if one's to consider the orbital-kinetic weapon, why bother accelerating the pellets when one could simply ballistically heave them into the path of the enemy sats?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: if this is so, how do the ships even get to the 'battlefield' without having been perforated by rubbish ?
mircea_popescu: and your 100kw won't actually allow you to make a laser strong enough to cut al alloy or w/e ther fuck i use.
mircea_popescu: the first pellet that touches you takes you out.
mircea_popescu: now then. you happy with 100 kW per each of your 15 zergs ?
mircea_popescu: gotta do the whole thing! patience young vulpes!
ben_vulpes: i am more interested in the "never get close enough"
mircea_popescu: i fire them at a rate of three a minute, meaning each 10 gram pellet acquires an energy of 200kJ
mircea_popescu: alright. i shall employ this to accelerate 10 gram pellets ; at the usual loss of 99.99% i will then have available 10kW for my pellets.
ben_vulpes: you're far better at the fudgestimations, so plz to lead
mircea_popescu: ok. so for the interdictor : can i have 1 MW of power ?
ben_vulpes: either microwaves or a uv laser.
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes beat the crap using what ?
ben_vulpes: 15 identical sats beat the crap out of a single sat with one finnicky fucking railgun on it.
mircea_popescu: you could actually make bullets shoot 10x as fast as they do now. it's not worth doing.
ben_vulpes: have another bird in that hemisphere at that time!
mats: mircea_popescu: what's special about the railgun IS NOT that it is better than other precision guided projectiles, but rather it is very-long-range artillery, with really small payload, and no rocket motor
mircea_popescu: spaceships suffer very much from the problem of transformers discussed ealier - no practical way to armor them.
ben_vulpes: the stationkeeping fuel budget will be...expensive.
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes the "interdictor" is this item which has a railgun, a supply of pellets, and a huge array of solar panels etc to power them. this item can then shoot fast pellets towards any other ship, crippling it.
ben_vulpes: getting the bb into the right spot with the right delta v either means shooting it from the orbital platform or letting it accelerate itself, no?
mircea_popescu: but yes, they're friable as all fuck.
mats: sure, just putting it out there.
mats: also important to note that railgun (lack of) durability has been highly understated, the rails can currently handle ~400 shots, with plans to take it to ~1000
mircea_popescu: (the outer space idea being that you get up there a thing with immense rtg / solar panels, and a supply of bb shells. because far from heavy grav fields (as per definition of outer space) all shots are guided by default - you just gotta get close enough. fast flying bb projectile hitting the other ship is ~doom.)
mircea_popescu: on land it has ~no utility other than novelty item.
mircea_popescu: actually, it's only suitable in outer space fights, and even there very dubious.
mats: where the railgun tech is now, its only suitable against land-attack
mats: i recognize that existing tech/tactics work well against railguns, they're not faster or longer range weapons than SM-2
mircea_popescu: they dun really have the proper buckshot-lattice firing devices up and running, but nature will teach all.
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-10-17#1556071 << firing hail of bullets at incoming missile is probably the best available strategy.
ben_vulpes: wake me up when they coat benches along feral ave with it
asciilifeform: in chigagabad they had little stakes on everything the birds might remotely consider perching on
a111: Logged on 2016-10-17 04:32 asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: 'invisible' is not the word, object above absolute zero is 'visible', just not to any device that doesn't also fire at pigeons.
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-10-17#1556053 << for the record, i support indiscriminate firing at pigeons.
ben_vulpes: THEY WILL BE AWESOME
a111: Logged on 2016-10-17 04:30 ben_vulpes: the point is that deployed systems have a hard upper bound of inbound targets they can handle, and there is no such hard upper bound to how many inbounds can be lobbed at them, much less any sort of constraint on btc/lobbed body.
mats: >The Florida test will place a static floating target at a range of 25 to 50 nautical miles from the test ship and fire five GPS guided hyper velocity projectiles (HVP)
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes of the total energy available to the projectile, some % is given at launch and some % is given in flight. if you got a bullet (100-0) ballistics dun work. if you got a missile (0-100) ballistics work
mats: at least... they're trying. https://news.usni.org/2015/04/14/navsea-details-at-sea-2016-railgun-test-on-jhsv-trenton
mircea_popescu: it's a dynamic pressure problem - on the bottom it's high on the top it's low, your projectile trajectory curves badly.
mircea_popescu: nono. think. railgun is a direct fire superfast projectile. if its target is not taller than 1m above "waterline", both the "ground effect" of flying so close to water and the actual wave/spray will make your trajectory impossible.
mats: railgun doesn't change the 'kill chain', yes - you still need to detect, identify, track target, communicate this information to the firing platform, then launch the weapon
mircea_popescu: (railgun is not useful as ballistic fire, because well, air friction ; as short range direct fire it has the obvious problem : your firing platform kinda has to be afloat too.)
mircea_popescu: this is ~already the logical trend ; and used in some applications (the ones where idiots and imbeciles weren't involved)
mircea_popescu lolz at the notion of a railgun array. because slow to fire and not really directionable.
ben_vulpes: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/09/22/palmer-luckey-the-facebook-billionaire-secretly-funding-trump-s-meme-machine.html << already cool
a111: Logged on 2016-10-17 04:01 mats: this cycle, 'nazi' is a catch-all word used by the unimaginative and slow
ben_vulpes: have used the wrong word.
ben_vulpes: mircea_popescu: cascadia slavers for the clinton dirt
asciilifeform: eh, somebody's making the gear.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform we're not discussing the aspie 14% fantasy here. usg dun got no money nor any workers.
a111: Logged on 2016-10-17 03:50 asciilifeform: if the d00d weren't a zhirinovsky-style muppet, he'd be recruiting good old-fashioned brownshirts just about now.
mircea_popescu: aegis being, of course, the one remaining "us superiority" item.
ben_vulpes: mats: has the usg defense industry made a thing that was ready for use against anything-thats-not-goatfuckers-with-twenty-year-old-mortars?
mats: ultimately the report was about how unready the Aegis was for use against strategic ballistic missiles
ben_vulpes: less than twelve months later, americans are wondering what we did to deserve the plane-bombing
ben_vulpes: raytheon sells upgradeable systems?
mats: also important to note that the DoD's review office (OT&E) found Aegis to be very difficult to upgrade circa 2002
ben_vulpes: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/fashion/modern-love-pregnancy-miscarriage-app-technology.html << Seven months after my miscarriage, mere weeks before my due date, I came home from work to find a package on my welcome mat. It was a box of baby formula bearing the note: "We may all do it differently, but the joy of parenthood is something we all share"
mircea_popescu: mats yeah, except the usg is in no position to offer anyone anything. but w/e, all sorts of charlies ready to suicide, so.
mats: the SM-2, SM-3 are also known to be shite for ascent or mid-course intercepts (insufficient velocity iirc)
asciilifeform: where n is sum of how many aimed shots the defender's turrets can shoot before the end.
asciilifeform: whole thing is the 'star wars' idiocy in miniature. all that is needed to kill the ship is to have n+1 independent kamikazes.
ben_vulpes: baww, targets shrink two orders of magnitude and billions of dollars get flushed down the drain.
mats: i have read reports by DoD that indicate dissatisfaction with the Aegis system's autonomous detection and tracking
ben_vulpes: these two threads ducktail so nicely!
asciilifeform: let them play 'duck hunt'.
asciilifeform: say they are perfectly distinguishable.
ben_vulpes: my money's on less than 10 concurrent inbound targets while the systems have payloads to deploy.
ben_vulpes: mats: well why would they say anything, much less anything indicative of how badly the systems actually function
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: 'invisible' is not the word, object above absolute zero is 'visible', just not to any device that doesn't also fire at pigeons.
ben_vulpes: asciilifeform: this is effective enough to make them invisible on ir?
ben_vulpes: the point is that deployed systems have a hard upper bound of inbound targets they can handle, and there is no such hard upper bound to how many inbounds can be lobbed at them, much less any sort of constraint on btc/lobbed body.
ben_vulpes: how many tonnes of fudge in the chocolate shop?
ben_vulpes: mats: granted they can handle 1, 2, 3 at a time.
asciilifeform: they are... air cooled.
asciilifeform: esp. since they emit ~0 helpful ir beacon.
mats: or maybe they used some other sekrit forward deployed countermeasure, like a directed energy anti missile weapons system
asciilifeform: the 'cost of the rocket' always leads in my head to the obvious question, how many frag-on-quadcopter would that sum buy, and what % can 'phalanx' etc. shoot before they reach the addressee.
ben_vulpes: mats: is there a 'hard kill' in this context?
mats: i suspect these were also 'soft kills' though
ben_vulpes: "yeah sure, his campaign is dead. you realize that his base actually wishes they were as witty and erudite in public as he is in private?"
mats: this cycle, 'nazi' is a catch-all word used by the unimaginative and slow
BingoBoingo: <ben_vulpes> eh we've got a few more cycles between here and there << Trump's too old to have more cycles
ben_vulpes: eh we've got a few more cycles between here and there
asciilifeform: if the d00d weren't a zhirinovsky-style muppet, he'd be recruiting good old-fashioned brownshirts just about now.
asciilifeform: , had been struck through a front window with flammable material and an adjacent building wall was spray-painted with a swastika and the words "Nazi Republicans leave town or else."'
asciilifeform: '"The election is absolutely being rigged by the dishonest and distorted media pushing Crooked Hillary - but also at many polling places - SAD," Trump wrote on Twitter ... In another tweet later on Sunday, Trump blamed "animals representing Hillary Clinton" and Democrats in North Carolina for an overnight attack on a local Republican Party headquarters in that state. Local authorities said the building in Hillsborough, North Carolina
BingoBoingo: Well, Turkey prolly thinks otherwise
mats: prob not. helluva bet for the pesh - usg offers statehood in exchange for the lives of tens of thousands of their young men
mircea_popescu: i dun imagine teh isis can afford to lose their only port.
mircea_popescu: they're most of it neh ?
mats: i wonder how the peshmerga feel about coalition forces being too cowardly to put troops in the fight
mircea_popescu: on the other side, desperation tends to paint the map - they're now considering whether to declare az, georgia or utah blue.
mircea_popescu: o hey check it out, gingrich and giuliani backing up the democrat election fraud trump thing.
mircea_popescu: oh and their own about page. and shit like that.
mircea_popescu: but hey, references from their own subreddit are apparently wikiplopedic now.
mircea_popescu: and of course the shitstain has a wikipedia page. because wikipedia is not for commercial advertising of utterly irrelevant mfa sites.
mircea_popescu: imagine that fucking pile of nonsense. next they're going to give them an obama prize.
mircea_popescu: http://trilema.com/2016/kismia-dating-scam/ << exact equivalent of "todd and clare", "the first dating business to be accepted by the United Nations Global Compact[1] based on the company's commitment to gender equality."
mircea_popescu: especially when involved are total scamsites with the dating gimmick. here's a newsflash : the only reason these exist is because the owners are working an angle.
mircea_popescu: since when the fuck can "investigation" on the basis of words be a cause of action in the first fucking place.
asciilifeform: 'As disclosed in this report, the context of our UK court action against Mr Assange significantly relates to a criminal investigation by the Royal Bahamas Police Force (RBPF) into Mr Julian Assange’s alleged procurement and internet grooming of an 8-year-old girl in Nassau, Bahamas, that was reported by the family of a ToddandClare.com female user.'
asciilifeform: b00k r3c for pete_dushenski : 'the cruel hunters' (engl.)
pete_dushenski: i was thinking of the win against charles xii of sweden when peter i was at the helm at Lesnaia 9=[']0(not routing by swedes near narva)
pete_dushenski: speaking of peter i's artillery, militarily-inclined russophiles (aren't they all) will enjoy http://www.artillery-museum.ru/en/main-exposition/the-history-of-russian-artillery-up-to-the-mid19th-century.html
pete_dushenski: russians win 'how to make effective artillery brigade' race then 'how to make spaceship' race then 'how to make strongman' race. next ? 'how to make elbrus' race ?
a111: Logged on 2016-10-16 12:48 mircea_popescu: pete_dushenski i expect she hates him which is how she got to be a nanny in canada in the first place. "he gets in way of unipolar us world!!" in alt-statement.
pete_dushenski: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-10-16#1555875 << possible she hates him, possible she's less than familiar with him other than third-hand via fambly back home. she left the country close to a decade ago, worked in electronics assembly in korea, then nanny in singapore and hk before landing here a few months ago.
mircea_popescu: oh the fuck
pete_dushenski: the peruvian article is showing up as http://trilema.com/2016/the-married-whore-and-the-cynful-whore/
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/nazi-rally-argentina-1938 << the old ar, that had ballz
mircea_popescu: then clearly.
mircea_popescu: were they making america great again ?
asciilifeform: lizards dun particularly care that these can, at best, supply 1% of the current mains current. point is that they cannot be shot out. lizard current - stays on.
mircea_popescu: depends on the design etc. lots of places - including romania - are built on ring pattern interchange. this has the obvious weakness.
asciilifeform: and it is at least part of the reason for the desperately -ev windmill, photo, etc. crackpotteries
mircea_popescu: this is what they're not saying, not that it isn't evident.
mircea_popescu: losing the major interchanges can fry your whole system
mircea_popescu: that's the issue - losing distribution transformers is mere nuisance.
asciilifeform: these - put under water.
asciilifeform: the gigantic ones - yes.
mircea_popescu: anyway. REALLY hard to defend from "hunting rifle". 30-06 soft charge (say like the M2 ball) will cut through 1cm of steel
asciilifeform: that this was not done leads me to suspect that these marvels already leak
mircea_popescu: they could detect holes and shoot down as it is. that's the more rational approach, than brick
asciilifeform: at some point they will have to move to 'expensive transformer - under ground, cheap radiator - above'
mircea_popescu: and in the bad news department, even handgun fire will cut through six inches of brick. a proper assault rifle with AP round will do what, two walls and a sheet of steel.
mircea_popescu: anyway - the numbers aren't exact ; but the principle is inescapable. the more you insulate the more you pay to dissipate.
mircea_popescu: tomorrow, you build a six inch brick encasement. the extra heat load due to the added insulation is, say, 50 MW.
mircea_popescu: take the matter in the following terms : today you have 10k transformers, doing stepping of 1TW each for a loss of 1MW each. these 10 GJ are being pumped into the atmosphere.
mircea_popescu: none of it is wholly pointless, just altogether inefficient is all.
asciilifeform: brick isn't wholly pointless, you are forcing the attacker to use a shorter-range weapon with considerably louder/flashier shot
asciilifeform: as to why, and why, i suggest the armour/brick/whichever subcontractors.