asciilifeform: mp_sails: on account of becoming ever more reluctant to put it to the torch
asciilifeform: mp_sails: investing in existing infrastructure, paradoxically, makes us all the more fucked - imho
asciilifeform: mp_sails: only to have whole edifice poisoned by a subtle multithreaded 'bug' in kernel, or small 'mistake' in cpu microcode.
asciilifeform: mp_sails: not merely huge workload. journey to the moon on stacked chairs - unless done correctly - i.e. bonfire of the computations.
asciilifeform: mp_sails: 'it's all in one strand!'
asciilifeform: mp_sails: precompiled << for what. (e.g., which libc? and who volunteers to grok and sign that? etc)
asciilifeform: mp_sails: new meaning for 'drumhead court-martial'...
asciilifeform: mp_sails: The20YearIRCloud: 3 other people << try 33.
asciilifeform: mp_sails: i'm gonna guess you hadn't paid for dedicated 'horns' on multiple sats...
asciilifeform: i dare say mp_sails probably seemed quite a bit more insurable than a usaschwitz inmate - from appraiser's point of view
asciilifeform: mp_sails: a story about buying insurance, to be truly educational, has to involve... actually invoking the policy.
asciilifeform: mp_sails: demand-side subsidies are a ratchet - who wants to be the first to have a repeal apply to him, and starve...
asciilifeform: mp_sails: actually, prior to herr obama, they could afford insurance (actual insurance against, e.g., sudden injury) but not the 'insurance' that most usaschwitz inmates speak of (not an insurance at all, but a scheme where someone - usually employer - pays so that a plebe can actually get medical care of any sort, which, as result, is not affordable in any other way)
asciilifeform: modern computing "just works" << lol!
asciilifeform: xmj: this is roughly the situation of modern computing.
asciilifeform: most computer systems have no business really existing.
asciilifeform: karl friedrich gauss was also an impressive chap at 16, if in different ways, yes
asciilifeform: legal representative will point out errors in ancient fortran code, or resolder a loose component?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: one of my jobs is indeed a company i co-own - but the only customer is usg, and the office is required to be within a few km of a particular institute.
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: traditionally, even 'tele-'whatever work in usa requires at least an occasional physical visit, simply to make sure you haven't republikfluchted, apparently
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: what's he to do in argentina? teach the pampas cats and ocelots common lisp ?
asciilifeform: ' Physical components are in great condition, vacuum testing and electronics replacement is underway.'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: 'On January 31, 2009, Bauman reported that ZVUE fired him and the rest of the staff and replaced them with a new team. Furthermore, Bauman claimed ZVUE are falsely using his name in connection with new material, making it look as if Bauman is still employed...' (pediwikia)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the actual impedance of a stepper almost never matters
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: not entirely complete mount bracket for this: http://imgur.com/Cd4Kghs
asciilifeform: student exercise. prove that the minimally-braindamaged implementation of hardware finite-precision floating point requires a base of 'e'.
asciilifeform: decimation: halfway on the road to african method - sit in a tub of own shit and call it a 'computer'
asciilifeform: this is an important definitional point.
asciilifeform: where we're really trying to simulate an analogue computer, for some gnarly physical model
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the extreme computational poverty of the 20th c.
asciilifeform: and then you say 'british admiralty's logarithmic human calculators were merely emulating this here computer, on account of lacking one'
asciilifeform: but instead an entity which simulates the behaviour of one where possible (in much the same way a tcp/ip telephone attempts to behave like a traditional electric telephone.)
asciilifeform: just as in, for example, common lisp.
asciilifeform: on a proper computer, e.g., 'quicksort' or 'newton-raphson method' are distinct entities. and there are no 'programs' as such, only a graph of circuit linkages.
asciilifeform: this is how we got these things that we call 'computer' even though i can't flip a switch that stops all cpus and shows me all the places 'quicksort' is mentioned on the machine and which ones got invoked in the last 7 days.
asciilifeform: sometimes - a chimp finds a loose brick, and you have a little infestation problem.
asciilifeform: example of mr y and his thought process - http://lesswrong.com/lw/y3/value_is_fragile
asciilifeform: chinese system did then - and afaik, still does - select, with mind-boggling efficiency, for the uncreative 'human computer' type.
asciilifeform: moriarty: in point of fact, given correct hardware design ('dataflow' machine) neither compilers nor 'parallelism' as conventionally understood - are necessary concepts at all.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu, others : http://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/not-all-programmers-alike/#comment-3728 << smbx for the impatient.
asciilifeform: e.g., a crowd of simple 'visual basic' bots each playing arbitrage and programmed with a 'stop-loss' threshold
asciilifeform: !s chumpatron
asciilifeform: xmj: more fun - ferret out simplistic bots and rape them.
asciilifeform always wonders, on first meeting a trading bot enthusiast, whether he considers basic game theory and contemplates counterpoint rape-bot answers to his strategies.
asciilifeform: moriarty - lisp on x86 pc is 'lisp' in much the same way 'holy roman empire' is the roman empire.
asciilifeform: bounce: Forth is an example of 'lisp' re-invented by an outsider. there is another example - 'refal'. (soviet)
asciilifeform: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/07/my-navrozov-moments.html << linked from above, mr mold's explanation (written presumably before the chumpatron re-swallowed him, this time - for good.)
asciilifeform: haskell is an american chumpatronic masterpiece.
asciilifeform: (^ above is a terrible oversimplification. lm was not simply about language, but the entire interface.)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the final doom of smbx corp. was sealed by 'ai winter.' in turn, the demise of the lm ensured that there would be no 'spring' - because carrying on the work in a non-homoiconic language is much like attempting algebra with roman digits.
asciilifeform: i used to be rather into the idea of 'hard ai' before realized that we don't even know how to build a computer.
asciilifeform: i'll be impressed when they build something - anything.
asciilifeform: attempts at what ?
asciilifeform: currency can survive about five minutes with a dead usg << more complicated. reichsmark outlived reich by a few years (until occupying armies got their shit together)
asciilifeform: whoever bumped off the girl, the Sg gov happily covers for him.
asciilifeform: next year, after binge of dope in cia operative station: 'trial of cocaine baron takes bizarre turn after evidence - bag from his toilet tank - turns out to contain treatise on suicide methods. kilo of cocaine found in pocket of shitcoin ceo who jumped from tower.'
asciilifeform: but an 'official' price will exist, if only for the consumption of the faux btc press
asciilifeform: a 'gulch' or 'compound' or whateverthefuck the turdmeister of the day calls it - doubly so if pitched with fanfare to the drooling hordes - is an elementary honeypot, whether deliberately built as such or not.
asciilifeform: beck gulch << what an old chumpatron, snore
asciilifeform: speaking of whizzdum - recently read about 'luer's connector' and discovered that some of today's medicine men are campaigning to have it abolished. because dumbshit orderlies can't be trusted not to plug an x hose into a y port (e.g., x == blood 'in' and y == piss 'out')
asciilifeform wonders why folks always say they'd like to be 'employable' rather than 'fed and sheltered'
asciilifeform: just as unrelated q: anyone know of a laptop comp. currently on the market which isn't a complete piece of shit? (everything i see either has display with < 1080 lines, glossy, or both - imho unusable.)
asciilifeform: employ a mentat.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: if you're thinking of a sequel, might be interesting to go into the biological hooks made use of by a qualified ce (chumpatronic engineer)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: re: chumpatronics? it was very spiffy.
asciilifeform: so, there's a compliant bank in the loop.
asciilifeform: so you get a vacuum that is about as good as the water's vapour pressure at the room's temperature & pressure. not bad. cheap. if you remember school - you used this 'medieval' gadget.
asciilifeform: water is pumped from a tank up, and then flows down a pipe back into the tank. in the down pipe, there's a spigot to the side, where a vacuum forms - water carries away air.
asciilifeform: so, for the record, what i'll call 'buterin's waterfall' - picture a water-powered vacuum aspirator pump, of a kind used in school chemistry class.
asciilifeform: (some people see this as something which has already happened, but that's besides the point of the example)
asciilifeform: or, also trivial example, that chinese sub off the californian coast.
asciilifeform: ^ trivial example
asciilifeform: chances are, vintage unit. otherwise, he'd probably succumb to the temptation to post photos of hand-crafted phonograph.
asciilifeform is not entirely awake but will attempt explain
asciilifeform: as i understand, they are simply baking on painting the tape 'dark enough' with arse-mouth lowball bids.
asciilifeform: had a thought. usg's btc price dampener strategy has no clear endgame - the 'ethereum' thing will carry on while the usd printing press runs, because it stands to reason they are running both the sell and -buy- ends of the machine. 'arse-mouth system.'
asciilifeform: hasn't worked correctly till about 2004 >> imperial collapse isn't terribly great for satellite constellations. as usa will soon discover.
asciilifeform: 19bn bezzlars? try to spend that much empty paper and buy one rocket.
asciilifeform: temperamental machines, they were, not where you'd stuff a precious handmade '40s nuke
asciilifeform: jurov: x86 is not scar tissue because it is popular, but because it genuinely sucks, and sucked from day 1 compared to virtually all known alternatives.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: simple heuristic. folks who incorrigibly piss in apartment lobbies, elevators - 'orcs.' those who don't - 'humans', or 'germans' if you like.
asciilifeform: and what his plan is for the recruited chump.
asciilifeform would much rather see computer cost (and worth) 50k then wheeled coffin
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: herr jobs is credited with resurrecting the company, but he actually strangled it and turned the taxidermied skin into a kind of animatronic dinosaur.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: steve jobs - as described in my 'hypercard' piece - was a master of chumpatronics, not of electronics. when he returned from exile, he zapped pretty much all r&d personnel, killed every project, smart or foolish, replaced all apple tech with repainted 'next'.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: bad example, 'pi' is a pseudo-open turd
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: hook it with any number of tablets and watch a film with your friends << verboten, order of usg dept. of copyrasty (riaa/mpaa/etc)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu, kakobrekla: it is important to remember that mac product actually died. it is deader than many other dead things, even, because got hollowed out and taxidermied.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: who complains? vegetarians ?
asciilifeform digs for ancient report of zoologies who lost fingers, toes, nose, ears, eyes, cock to chimps in one evening. beasts he worked with for a decade, who decided to have some sudden fun.
asciilifeform did not personally measure chimp strength, cannot guarantee results.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: nontrivial - chimp has >2x the strength of a man gram for gram (muscle fiber quirk. they get greater synchronicity in fiber motion in place of our precision.)
asciilifeform vaguely recalls the zoology lesson - if condemned to choose what animal to be locked with unarmed, and choices are chimp and, e.g., grizzly, or lion - pick the mega-carnivore. at least quick death.
asciilifeform: just as, in the words of an old sage, 'a kill file is simply a file containing list of people you are going to have killed.'
asciilifeform is actually rather fond of analogue computing as a concept, and as it once existed, but has yet to meet a 'meatware' proposal that isn't transparently grantsmanship.
asciilifeform: jurov: turing's apparatus is not even a particularly good abstraction for electric computer. much less 'wet' kind.
asciilifeform: why even bring this up: the 'answer' - physical structure of properly folded protein - is 'computed' instantly.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: good example. but, not only must accept 'close enough', but go and try to get the answer out with reasonable speed.
asciilifeform: anyone who 'comes with a sword' - doesn't get his back. that simple.
asciilifeform: patent office specifically proclaims that employees are retained & promoted based on piecework (their term, 'production')
asciilifeform: implies (apologies to orwell) some actual relationship (if inverted) with fact.
asciilifeform: a 'classroom' example necessarily overdramatizes.
asciilifeform: graphical terminals for proles, while having an actual computer in your possession will be seen as rather like owning, e.g., a Kugelrohr.
asciilifeform: nintendo for the lumpen, lisp machine for man ?
asciilifeform: 'even entire free operating systems... ...existed around the turn of the century. But not only were they illegal, like debuggersyou could not install one if you had one, without knowing your computer's root password. And neither the FBI nor Microsoft Support would tell you that.'
asciilifeform: e.g., 'log all the palmprints' means -all-, not merely the ones which didn't come with benjamins. or, alternatively - means all but the district attorney's, when he buys his dope.
asciilifeform: greendot << homeland severity compliant, long before its demise
asciilifeform: u. of md. used to have another one, kept in the car impound lot. but it must have broken down, was sold.
asciilifeform: https://chronicle.com/article/On-Campus-Grenade-Launchers/148749 << that tank was actually where claimed, i went in.
asciilifeform: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lampi%C3%A3o#mediaviewer/File:Degola_de_Lampi%C3%A3o_MB.jpg
asciilifeform still finds the picturesque scene in 'bird' implausible.
asciilifeform: http://pastebin.com/8d55BT9v << example from well-known work of fiction
asciilifeform reveals that he has not, in recent times, succumbed to the temptation of connecting current to brain
asciilifeform: if controversy is manufactured from whole cloth, in empty space, then typically - both.
asciilifeform: 'A simple no in answer to questions regarding NSA involvement could end the controversy. The governments failure to answer generates a presumption that either no would not be a candid response or the prosecutors do not know the answer.'
asciilifeform: both belong to the state-god-emperor.
asciilifeform: re: container houses piece << classic chumpatron. put up steel container on empty lot to live in -> illegal, confiscated. bezzlamatic cuts costs for self by using shipping containers (painted to look like house) -> 'amazing company, innovators!'
asciilifeform: the example jurov (inadvertently) gave us - is instructive. someone succeeded in 'tefloning' the 'juvenile justice' thing before it entered his brain.
asciilifeform: as the anglo empires get swept from the stage, the bantustans they created with heroic strokes of pencil will go away. arabian, soviet, wherever.
asciilifeform: what you do << 'what do you do when a shell lands in your trench? jump up twenty metres and scatter yourself around.'
asciilifeform: how are sd and jd more than simple chumpatronic pumps ?
asciilifeform: your isp also may succumb to temptation to nudge a decimal.
asciilifeform: (or drunken impostor. don't lose keys, people will wonder.)
asciilifeform: pronounce as 'champions' for extra bite.
asciilifeform: homo chumpiens isn't meant to keep his iPnohe for longer than a year, or the like.
asciilifeform: decimation: not so much example for output (you can see that in 'man' page) but of where you might actually bother with profilers.
asciilifeform: decimation: http://pastebin.com/scRkxz9w << example from life
asciilifeform: decimation: intel's ice port - http://www.loper-os.org/?p=1441 (empty)
asciilifeform: hams use a 'flagpole' << think from this angle - any scenario where a gigantic antenna is a plus, it is also quite important that it be hidden from prying eyes
asciilifeform: though, if i recall, it concerned employment rather than real estate
asciilifeform: ;;google disparate impact
asciilifeform: it was example.
asciilifeform brings this up as example of something that you certainly, definitely, under threat of harsh punishments, could not get away with in allocation of american housing.
asciilifeform: doesn't have to be integrals. i just picked an example from 'captchas' used on some russian forums.
asciilifeform: cannot, for example, 'to buy property here you must solve this here single-variable integral.'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: it'd be great, but would have to be deep in a forest, secret, with a stump for a chimney - just like during the war. because living in something that isn't a house is highly illegal in usa (unless part of a designated ghettoschwitz)
asciilifeform: mortages grow on gubermint trees << more complicated than this. no houses in the usual sense, near what remains of civilization in usa, are permitted to cost less than mid six digit.
asciilifeform saw, not impressed
asciilifeform: that was example of 'can't'
asciilifeform: didn't say - successful escape. attempted.
asciilifeform doesn't know the secret of the hypothetical, legendary 'motorized sleep.' but suspects that, just as eight cylinder engine is an improvement over the most skilled runner, there could be a means for improvement here.
asciilifeform: just as the example you gave, of stimulant abusers - most of the documented medical sequelae, afaik, are from extreme sleep deprivation...
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i vaguely recall an experiment from the '70s where everyone who was placed in apparatus had seizure. from ordinary flash lamp - but not at the familiar 20hz which sets off known sufferers
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: for the latter, i never found a satisfactory setting where i could pronounce the old papers - replicated. but the usual idea is to set 100-200 Hz, square wave (some insist sinusoid instead), constant current (not constant voltage) output, and ramp up from zero.
asciilifeform: http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~dsculley/tutorial/opamps/opAmpCurrentSource.JPG << like this.
asciilifeform used a constant-current amplifier
asciilifeform: ''There are straps for the hands here, for the feet here, and for the throat here, to tie him in securely. At the head of the bed here, where the man, as I have mentioned, first lies face down, is this small protruding lump of felt, which can easily be adjusted so that it presses right into the mans mouth. Its purpose is to prevent him screaming and biting his tongue to pieces. Of course, the man has to let t
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: in usa, never such a problem. they'd simply confiscate houses, cars, mattresses of money, until shortfall vanishes.
asciilifeform: cazalla: a casino is an example of a controlled environment. no one comes remotely near a machine - a door, hell, a toilet - without being filmed from several angles
asciilifeform: did he carry out his traditional routine of attempting to speak local language ?
asciilifeform: doubt that there is anyone in usg that is empowered to use garotte << apparently they prefer limpet mines on auto and plane fuel tanks. perhaps they're also short on these ?
asciilifeform: xmj: complicated. imagine you happened to live near a fission reactor.
asciilifeform: the presumption of a totalitarian 'we' - that will 'fix things' once 'take control' - jumps straight out of the page.
asciilifeform feels like a chump, apparently works for russian foreign service for free, should demand pay
asciilifeform: but have some sympathy for poor dr. evil. he only has, what, half a dozen vans in a city. doesn't care to sift through every idiot playing 'quake' pissing in his sse regs.
asciilifeform: likewise compiler has the option of pissing out 'xor reg, reg' etc - clean up after yourself
asciilifeform: compiler can use 'fancy' instruction that does various things 'in one shot' - or can use ordinary i386-style fixint multiply, etc.
asciilifeform: but the cpu manual offers compiler writers the option of using 'our new exciting accelerator for 4096-bit chinese remainder theorem'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: fundamental misunderstanding. machine does not know (unless it is fiendishly complicated, and elaborately trapped, perhaps) that you are doing, e.g., rsa.
asciilifeform: if your compiler does not respect 'volatile' - throw it out
asciilifeform: even then - can simply declare 'volatile'
asciilifeform: let's suppose that you cannot escape the sin of running crypto on a multiuser os with von neumann cpu (for sake of argument.) let's also suppose that you are stuck with a traditional 'C' compiler, and your work must remain portable (no inline asm)
asciilifeform: the poor beast promptly got run over by a bus.
asciilifeform: usg caught an alley cat, tamed, and implanted a listening device, then released (in moscow, i think)
asciilifeform: more like the olympic drugs.
asciilifeform: 'Recently I heard a story on NPR about a poor family that went around looking for discounted food items at various groceries and stopping at the food pantryin their own private minivan! And so here is a poor family that owns what in many parts of the world would amount to a bus company!' (orlov)
asciilifeform: not impossible - but difficult if work for a living
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: by now i'd imagine that assumption is SOP. but we're dealing with a vintage piece here.
asciilifeform: 'All Soviet interrogations are based on the assumptions that: (1) all prisoners are liars; (2) most Westerners can be bought; (3) those who cannot be bought can be broken; and (4) the process of breaking the prisoner can be continued as long as necessary to acquire the desired information.'
asciilifeform: compare with:
asciilifeform: lol! '5. Agents should not have been members of the armed forces of the United States nor employees of the United States Government. 6. Agents should be chosen from those persons who will not be logical internees of the enemy.'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: empowering betas to be weird >> http://www.wired.com/2014/09/armys-new-laser-cannon-blasts-drones-out-of-the-sky-even-in-fog << e.g. this. yes, let's draw a ruler in the sky straight to own artillery position,
asciilifeform: physical Bitcoin << two-legged vacuum lamp half filled with gallium.
asciilifeform: 'They tend to show up late at parties because they figure they can always steal the cake anyway, so why bother go early ? Let the suckers figure out first - on their own dime - where the good cakes are, then just swoop in and collect... This means the only way they can get in is if you let them get in. Don?t let them get in for cheap - they have no business here.' (mp's http://trilema.com/2014/people-us-dollar)
asciilifeform: 'There once was a cyber attack; / The Chinese our network did hack. / Since arguably / Cybers WMD / Do you think we should nuke them right back?' << actual example from usg's limerick contest. (http://cryptome.org/2014/09/natsec-thesis.pdf)
asciilifeform: '...served as chairman of the board of Wiscraft Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping blind people find employment in manufacturing.'
asciilifeform: http://www.workingbase.com/project/Design-and-Build-a-Website-for-a-Law-Enforcement-Product.3052162.html << and the company site...
asciilifeform: https://www.freelancer.com/contest/Design-a-Logo-for-a-Police-Product-67956.html << and apparently he 'crowdsourced' the company logo...
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: no. think - simplicity. no seat, sharpened seat-post. stakebike.
asciilifeform: '(S//REL) Covertly, IC agencies form front corporations to participate directly in the market and emplace spyware that detects speculative tradinga leading indicator of systemic risk in this market. The findings help the United States build international support for stronger oversight.'
asciilifeform: 'NSA's multicultural workforce can be challenging for a supervisor, with separate rules for dealing with military, civilian, and contractor employees. As the Agency has moved to a 50-50 military/civilian mix, this challenge has only grown...'
asciilifeform: 'Dear Zelda, (U) I'm new to the agency and I'm also a young employee (in my late 20s). I have noticed that the older managers/supervisors think that we don't have the skills/knowledge/potential to run this agency in the near future. I heard them saying that. They tend to stereotype/discriminate without knowing our intelligence and fresh knowledge. What can we do to make them think differently? Thanks, Younger Sk
asciilifeform: http://cryptome.org/2014/09/nsa-ask-zelda-14-0828.pdf << mega-lol. nsa printed its 'employee etiquette q&a' column.
asciilifeform: there was more life here at the height of mp's april party, even.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: if enemy died when you said 'bang! yer dead' life'd be a lot simpler, yes.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: we call this 'добровольно- принудительно' ('voluntary-compulsory')
asciilifeform: u.s. presidential car is an infamous laughing-stock - broke down recently in england (?) and they had one hell of a time finding a shop that would attempt repair
asciilifeform: the other pertinent 'psychiatric' observation here is that the waste decried in the airplane piece is - mandatory. consider - in savage tribe where, e.g, hats are worm, chieftain might have longest hat. or he might get the choicest slice of long pig, whichever. in 'consumption' tribe - modern usa - what badge of rank for royalty?
asciilifeform: these folks actually picture themselves as 'chinese emperors', with 'forbidden city' conjured up anywhere they like.
asciilifeform: re: story with airplanes: i once saw something quite like this in life. was in wash., d.c., and an entire sixteen or so blocks were barricaded off, no one knew why. some days later, newspapers triumphantly described dick cheney's dinner at a certain restaurant in middle of said place.
asciilifeform: handiest way to answer this question is build the amp & show firsthand.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: this is not just about depriving you of knobs to turn. the hearniators must clear some ground to emplace their hearnias - this requires demolishing some very well understood, traditional widget, so that it -must be replaced, dontcha know, it's obsolete-.
asciilifeform: this is also applicable, in theory, to any other people who would simply hammer a wot, were they to build one, to copy exactly their existing hierarchies
asciilifeform: if pumped through 'google translate' - all bets are off
asciilifeform: people have asked me why haven't escaped, and i answer 'i haven't $xx mil.' to which, eyes bug out, and i have to explain 'a real escape means retrieval is not simply legally, but militarily uneconomical.'
asciilifeform: it's interesting how people ask questions that have this bizarre presumption of sameness baked in
asciilifeform: 2-3k usd is chump change for folks who can otherwise afford to escape, though
asciilifeform: happens also at computer shops, yes
asciilifeform: -- lamport's 'The Future of Computing: Logic or Biology?'
asciilifeform: f this trend continues, we may soon see homeopathic computer repair. Perhaps it will consist of adding a virus to a program, deleting the virus, and then running the program. You may soon be able to take your laptop to a faith healer, who will lay his hands on the keyboard and pray for the recovery of the operating system. Is this the future of computing? Or can we instead build on the idea that a computer progr
asciilifeform: i always use the term 'calmed down' for these people. starting from having played 'half life', where there is a scene of an einsteinesque white coated figure who gets an alien 'headcrab' jump on his head. it takes roots, he struggles for a while, then 'calms down' and ambles on as zombie.
asciilifeform: aha empty carapace
asciilifeform: symptom.
asciilifeform: (as if this needed repeating - but for completeness - don't keep sensitive non-public material on 'nexus' or similar machine.)
asciilifeform: decimation: can't fix with money. soviet professors rolled in cash (compared to most other occupations.) this just attracts poseurs.
asciilifeform: this, as i understand, is why schwartz never made any attempt to raise funding
asciilifeform: but to even begin the kind of work it would take to 'technologize', is an investment that no one would remotely contemplate without the kind of proof that can only be obtained after his enemies were to give in.
asciilifeform: decimation: adelberger, for example, would have to perform seppuku - and all of his students, and their students
asciilifeform: i recall mircea_popescu even used this tale as an example in an essay
asciilifeform: (atmosphere of controlled temperature, pressure - and, more importantly, provenance)
asciilifeform: if you want the needed accuracy - it's rather more complicated.
asciilifeform: al schwarts published a possible recipe for room temperature supercon - afaik, it was ignored.
asciilifeform: e.g., home 'mri' scanner plus some fairly simple image processing.
asciilifeform: room temperature supercon is a box of surprises.
asciilifeform: heat loss in conductors isn't terribly critical << consider why virtually all present-day applications of low temperature superconductors is in high-strength magnets.
asciilifeform: room-temperature superconductors << unless we all perish in laser pistol duels.
asciilifeform: to go back to the example with coins - you're probably safe if you melt them down and sell by gram
asciilifeform: upon reading of that contract, i came to inescapable conclusion that the box thing is an active chump-magnet rather than simply a poor deal.
asciilifeform: divorce << probably the worst possible use of a bank box in usa. other tidbit in the contract was that the bank will immediately impound any box against whose owner there are civil proceedings
asciilifeform: implication, to me, was - if you're happy with the box, take your goodies and post them straight to the enemy - at least then you'll know where they are.
asciilifeform: hence the sea capsule example. for some classes of object (nuke?) this might be cost-effective storage.
asciilifeform: hold territory - sure. impale enemies - yes. bury treasure - why ?
asciilifeform: seems like we've this one nailed down. now, implementation... 'exercise for alert reader.'
asciilifeform always found it interesting that people whine if they try to use his computer, but never think to borrow eyeglasses and then complain
asciilifeform: afaik patent trolls succeeded in more or less exterminating acceptable compression for scanned books. djvu was devised by folks who didn't care to comply.
asciilifeform: the americans, for some reason unknown to me, pre-empted this project by destroying own industry.
asciilifeform: not simply as a hiding place, but as the weapon
asciilifeform: no need for this. a simple strobe light should suffice for night search.
asciilifeform: decimation: something was left in the Box on last authorized entry, and was found to be missing on the next entry, will not create a presumption that it was lost << conclusion: bury your goods in the forest. fuck bank.
asciilifeform: must assume this happens, whether 'tor' or simply playful isp / backbone operator
asciilifeform: example:
asciilifeform: back to subject - imho btc client is 'safety critical code' - but none of the existing implementations rise to even the most basic standard for such.
asciilifeform: decimation: when 'better compiler' sits on 'same old cpu' - yes
asciilifeform: for your puzzle, famous example - http://code.google.com/p/corkami << grep for 'polyglot'
asciilifeform: not only google, but apple, and microshit before them, turned away from traditional 'gcc' suite and proclaimed elaborate crud in its place. i could only ever assume - for ease of 'thompsoning' people.
asciilifeform: many american 'public' unis publish complete lists of who's paid what - where i live, this is required by law
asciilifeform doesn't read scans on normal computer
asciilifeform: would require more than a simple electrical mod
asciilifeform: compared to a distant ground, yes
asciilifeform: (nice thing about 'djvu' is that it automagically decompresses to whatever your native device resolution is, with no scaling op. hence speed.)
asciilifeform: (djvu is the canonical b00k w4r3z format - wavelet compression)
asciilifeform: or, the traditional explanation for how italy went from an interesting place to pesthold (unification. warring states - think. unified empire - stagnates)
asciilifeform: where a well-born (though not always - gotta have the lumpenbait) hack is carefully groomed, lipstick is put on the sow, is heavily advertised, 'a star' is made
asciilifeform: purpose is to 'wash' the bezzlars and maintain 'merit' illusion for the lumpens to swallow
asciilifeform: (idea of pumping the ionosphere to solve the 'mains socket in your pocket' problem is quite old. dates to at least n. tesla.)
asciilifeform once inhabited an office with a mostly complete set of haarp manuals
asciilifeform: (rumour has it that it was obsoleted by a clever satellite downlink employing laser)
asciilifeform: decimation: the more interesting thing is the belief that 'compliance' will save them from gasenwagen
asciilifeform: whatever has the serial number stamp is 'the rifle'