mircea_popescu: and all the people at those unis are in wot.
mircea_popescu: better off in the sense of same exact bitcoin maaaaaybe coupla years later [or coupla decades earlier ?] and we wouldn't be in THIS position
mircea_popescu: not better off in the sense of - no bitcoin
asciilifeform: rubbish computers take their toll.
mircea_popescu: it's writen by a windows imbecile that nigh on put lamp in there!
mircea_popescu: neither c, nor unix, nor lisp for that matter were written by people who had computers at home. you understand this, right ?
asciilifeform: and communicate with other mircea_popescus via pigeon.
asciilifeform: otherwise it would cost as mars launch costs.
asciilifeform: and for some reason mircea_popescu is reluctant to confront the fact that even he can only remotely afford fab time because it is subsidized by the drool of a billion 'konsooomerz'
asciilifeform: aha but then you had to steal a million.
mircea_popescu: and also back when going on the internet was, technically, fraud and theft, the internet WAS ACTUALLY WORTH FUCKING STEALING
mircea_popescu: which is exactly hoiw all the shit we use now was written i nthe first fucking place.
mircea_popescu: at the absolute very least you should be able to get a university in fucking brazil with a key ffs.
mircea_popescu: but if you ARENT they why the fuck whine, clearly your notions aren't worth the fab time!
mircea_popescu: there is ~no possibility of this sort of evolution, and what more can be said.
asciilifeform: other than to hitler.
asciilifeform: there is nothing advantageous about the non-programmable computer being the only available.
mircea_popescu: the only specious thing here is the strange notion that somehow they'll get aliens to do the work in alien ways forever.
mircea_popescu: "but those fucking hurt" "fuck you, evil guy" "but i need them for dentistry, for uterine retraction, for" "FUCK YOU!!!!"
mircea_popescu: this argument is rapidly collapsing into a "these damned dentists moved from using fireplace tools to actual dentist's chairs, and i won't have one at home and i won't ever be able to have teeth or chew now"
mircea_popescu: because same board with the signed bios can be made with... different key.
asciilifeform: ok this is the part where i'm lost
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu will personally maintain them ?
mircea_popescu: there's very good scale effects that deeply favour us.
mircea_popescu: the factories will be there to make the shit, and an eight hour run in one will still be 1/1000 or less.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform understand something fundamental. if the whole blockchain takes 200 yottahashes to dig up, one block still only costs you 200 yottahashes / 60 * 10, ie 0.15%
asciilifeform: 500 is closer to the ten cent.
asciilifeform: there only exist 10 cent and 100 million ones.
asciilifeform: but the $10k cpu has not yet been invented.
mircea_popescu: we specifically do not care of this nonsense, we are not feeding the consumers.
mircea_popescu: in the sense that if it's for > 9.95 it might as well not exist
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform> this is why the existence of nintendos was not an evil until they approached becoming the ~only available~ machine. <<< "only available machine" here means something very marketing-driven
mircea_popescu: get the whole run, obviously.
mircea_popescu: then, i will.
asciilifeform: bring me one with mircea_popescu's key in mask rom then
mircea_popescu: as it is today, chinese plants run two shifts a day to make iphones for apple and one shift to make bootlegs for themselves.
asciilifeform: this is why the existence of nintendos was not an evil until they approached becoming the ~only available~ machine.
asciilifeform: i don't care what the enemy bakes for own use
mircea_popescu: we've already agreed this "general computer" is idiocy, what's all the agitation about. it still is.
mircea_popescu: in short, we're ideologically in this funny position where on one hand we want to bake bitcoin miners straight into silicone, and this is fine and good ; then enemy wants to make signable hardware and THIS IS EVIL. but it is on one hand what we do, on the other hand unavoidable due to the idiots and on the third hand perfectly ignorable. so they make theirs and we make ours and whoopdedoo.
trinque: would his experience of the thing be general purpose, or would it be constrained by me
trinque: so then, perhaps *I* own a computer and he may use it via gossipd if he doesn't piss me off
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform for the same reason roman youth was retarded. because people are born retarded and it washes off slowly.
trinque: my brother's 18; I have him on devuan on an old box
asciilifeform: but ~why~ are they retarded ?
asciilifeform: all of us grew outside of the jails.
mircea_popescu: no, the reason there's no folks younger than 20 here is because folks younger than 20 are retarded.
asciilifeform: which is why there are no folks younger than, what, 20, here.
asciilifeform: realize we aren't speaking of hypotheticals
mircea_popescu: what's the problem.
asciilifeform: not even then.
mircea_popescu: why not ? maybe your mother's a slut and knows me.
trinque: I'd put one at the edge of my network and never look back
asciilifeform: if you somehow eliminate them, you get entirely different world.
trinque: yep, I was wondering at whether those were conflated
asciilifeform: i like to call people who by their very presence make various constructive activities impossible, 'neutron absorbers'
mircea_popescu: they miss "general purpose computer person"
mircea_popescu: while you can rely on 1 you have one environment, and it's what the boys here miss. not "general purpose computer"
mircea_popescu: there's a huge difference at work between situation 1. "i'll explain what he did AND I KNOW he'll apologize" and 2. "i won't even explain because i know he won't even understand".
mircea_popescu: they could actually engage in coding so much so permisionless fs were better.
mircea_popescu: absent the ovester feminists and other idiots who wanted to cheerlead because it was popular,
mircea_popescu: trinque the idea more or less is that once you get rid of the power rangers, maintenance becomes 10k easier a task.
trinque: if there are 10k computer users in the world, how many of them to allocate to gentoo maintenance?
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform the only gas mask i use is a condom.
mircea_popescu: and the whole discussion re systemd above is quite germane : even "with" this so called "general purpose in the sense of we dunno what exacrtly" computer of today,
mircea_popescu: the only problem being, of course, that the cure to living among idiots is to stop living among idiots, it can't be resolved with some sort of peculiar computing choice or other.
asciilifeform: some appreciable number of folk are 'in the jail, but not OF it'
mircea_popescu: the fact is that living among idiots damages the brain. ask ustard kids about us history, you'll hear some lulz.
mircea_popescu: so THIS is perhaps the strongest argument i see against my earlier position.
asciilifeform: but when cured, they are as able as anyone
mircea_popescu: for local flavour : the man runs lamp locally like a sort of super-excel.
mircea_popescu: they ACTUALLY are "well i can't tHI?NK about this bs!"
mircea_popescu: imagine that, he found bugs in my fucking client, and i mean that plural. yet... in the end... he can't work with it because he's from windows, and the requirements that puts on him are not merely "well you gotta convert to sql for mysql"
asciilifeform: see, 'alikimbecause it takes alot of time to scrap of the bits and pieces scattered across the internet into something useful'
asciilifeform: it follows from their braindamage.
mircea_popescu: and in the end ? alikim "the trouble" or rather a sad fact is that instead of maintaining one resource everyone maintains their own
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform speaking of microshit and all that : the experience of this alikim fellow in #eulora constituted a shattering moment for me. so, let me summarize :
mircea_popescu: and the ploy to convince them that the way into the future is "being anonymous", and especially THE FACT THAT IT WORKS is no end of high comedy
asciilifeform: question is about the remainder.
mircea_popescu: in some manner or other, "common man" that "just wanted to" will crash against the wall of "wot or take a hike"
asciilifeform: so asciilifeform, phf, ben_vulpes, et al still need their bulldozers.
mircea_popescu: well so then!
mircea_popescu: "we" as in, the relevant part of the species, tried this whole "every life is precious - every life is sacred" thing. because we got scared of ww2, and bla bla.
mircea_popescu: well so then.
mircea_popescu: there's absolutely no reason to have computers in shop like bread and porn mags.
mircea_popescu: today, they are. they will not be able to support this. no matter what you do, they aren't smart enough for it.
mircea_popescu: anyway, the economic issues are incontrovertible. the "general computer" as killer micro is an 80s thing because white people were not mentally ill and mentally retarded then.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform not only maglev : but the driving TRAIN. and for this reason.
mircea_popescu: phf it's not "but everything's always open", it's more "the reason this space is closing is because losing relevancy, and you'd be fools to focus on it if true"
mircea_popescu: there is a definition of train, quite mathematical : if the driving power is transmitted via tyre, you have a car. if transmitted via rigid assemblage - track. if transmitted via rigid assemblage working against a rail - train.
asciilifeform: and no there will not be a mathematical definition. any more than there is of, e.g., 'train'.
mircea_popescu: well this'd be the problem eh.\
mircea_popescu: you understand that just as there's no bridge between "this is what math says" and "this is what our cryptosystem does", there's no bridge between the words you use ?
asciilifeform: optionally in place of ~all~ of the vendor's.
asciilifeform: as in, can you load in own soft that runs with same privileges as the 'official' item.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform you are engaging in the behaviour you derride re folks making cryptosystems, and in spades!
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: how are these distinct ?
asciilifeform: well it is poppycock, thermodynamics has as much to do with the closing of computer as SR has to do with 'cultural relativity'
mircea_popescu: so much so the more astute artists actually use it as a characterisation device.
mircea_popescu: which is in all times and places the universal characteristic of geekdom
asciilifeform: phf: except that they don't
mircea_popescu: this is directly resultant from thermodynamics, and allows no exceptions.
mircea_popescu: phf your measure of "open" is always going to be flawed, in the sense that it's a version of "general fights last war".
phf: i think my lament is that the possibility space is closing, the kind of substrate that allows for a global optimization problem like "pirated movies" to resolve is being gradually eliminated in a counter optimization. i'm warning a potential collapse, mp's arguing that the space is always open
asciilifeform: the thing they ACTUALLY want is precisely to prevent folks from running unauthorized SELF-WRITTEN proggy.
mircea_popescu: the argument is here that a) that joke passed for serious back then ; b) there can not be such a thing as "serious" in this application.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: plox sign for me something with microshit's master key then ?
mircea_popescu: the ~only reason they can keep it together is that they get to define the tasks they want to solve.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform you imagine the same would stay true once every usg item had to use ipad 6 for lack of alternative, and in ALL applications ? phones, servers, metal detectors, everything, ipad 6 ?
phf: but i'm not attributing any agency to the republic, i'm observing and commenting on a tendency
mircea_popescu: nor do they have the optionalities you imagine for them, it's not a case of "republic, on imperial steroidal vitamins".
mircea_popescu: people in the empire are dumb enough to buy, TO BUY, for MONEY, "copy protection" that i can take out with a magic marker. you grok this ?
mircea_popescu: phf that's still not the level of discussion here. yes i'm not entirely blockheaded, i understand THAT angle of it. the point is the other angle however. take all the drm adventures : in spite of all the effort AND proprietary hardware, i can still get any film i want
phf: mircea_popescu: it's the strategic superiority article's position is what i'm saying. you can rig up ipad to do crypto for you, as long as you shield it in a bunker, install some toy language environment on it and spend some time writing rsa algo in that
mircea_popescu: yes, will say to you. and i'm thankful for it, less crud to compete with. it'll be either buy microsoft fly sim or eulora. hurrr.
mircea_popescu: which is why people in 1800 could live well "writing for the newspaper" and ditzy sluts today can't.
mircea_popescu: eulora is a particularly miserable example, in general games by shrewd companies benefit rather than suffer from locked down markets.
mircea_popescu: phf it's not an equivalent of anything. the important point here is that from experience, this rubber band is very slippery. there is no such thing as "tight"
asciilifeform: or will you send plaintext to the monkeys to encipher for you ?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu comes to ft meade and the monkeys make him a personal cray-II from spare partz ?
asciilifeform: the usg 'mistresses' all have syphilis.
mircea_popescu: orc-take. but there's also mistress-take.
mircea_popescu: not take in that sense necessarily. that is take of the sort of people who read trilema and "take" some part to put on their own blog.
asciilifeform: this works great when there is something to take
mircea_popescu: much like any young hussy theoretically owned by her father is really really desperate to give the show away ?
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform what if i, unlike you, that enjoys people, knows for a fact that any item the government nominally owns is mine for the taking ?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: you might not need '$1 computer redditard could buy', but if your only shot at computer was to bake own vlsi in the kitchen, you'd prolly use vernam pad and be done with it.
mircea_popescu: phf i insist on this point to impress upon the more decisive elements exactly how weak a basis for discernment we actually have.
asciilifeform: phf: fpga. is the only reasonable definition.
mircea_popescu: and the problems with "roughly, means 'machine where you can implement new crypto', for mircea_popescu's purposes" should be obvious to someone who astutely points out that there's no math proof for crypto. the same thinking that works there works here, it does not follow i need computers redditard can buy to exist in order for to have crypto.
phf: well, we don't have a definition, i don't think "we" have ever arrived at a point where definition can be provided. what constitutes a general purpose computer, which are necessary/unnecessary parts. i'm reading 80s vlsi papers and it's all up in the air. should there be math coprocessor or bake it right into cpu, etc. etc. and then you have a "microcomputer revolution", when bill/steve start selling this shit to masses
mircea_popescu: as a matter of fact it may appear, but a negative lacks the definition capacity.
mircea_popescu: understand : just because you don't get to have "general purpose hole", it is not automatically thereby proven "enemy gets black hole"
mircea_popescu: the purposes do not matter. causes decide.
asciilifeform: it only makes sense when examined in light of the OPPOSITE
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: but the general-purpose thing cannot be given away.
phf: now a working cpu comes preinstalled with all the gunk that various parties decided is needed, over the course of past 20 years
mircea_popescu: it's not even clear we even want half the shit we have.
phf: back then a working cpu at capacity was the point, we have floating point here now, gives wider possibility space, etc.
mircea_popescu: if this is true then any handwringing of any sort is an exercise in insanity.
phf: now it's starting to look that new hardware, be it for the select elite or plebs is not going to be general purpose in that same sense, because interested parties figured out what kind of constraints are desirable or tolerable
phf: sure, i don't myself grok the cause. i'm more saying that 80s general purpose computer is a time and place kind of phenomenon
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform and i was too dumb to do much with the machine. such is life.
mircea_popescu: distinguish it then.
phf: sure, and you can tell that to americans in the audience, but that's not the issue i'm talking about
mircea_popescu: there were two kids with an actual 286 at home.
phf: i had computer access back when they were extremely expensive one of a kind devices
mircea_popescu: but they are.
mircea_popescu: adding more engineers to a late project makes it later ; adding more bipedal mouthbreathers to anything makes it resemble shit closer.
mircea_popescu: wikipedia is not better for pretending every imbecile is "an editor", it's way the fuck worse. the internet did not gain from the "collected intelligence and experience of the whole world", it turned into a cesspool instead.
mircea_popescu: i can see why it's in the geek ethos. i can't see why i should care.
mircea_popescu: this notion that "every squishi wizard" must have access to the light bolt spell is lulzy, to me.
mircea_popescu: appreciate, i had a computer EVEN WHEN it was ~5k DM and the going rate was half-and-half for 5. and i'm sure that at some point between then and now, some poor black kid in the sticks somewhere wanted a computer only to hear "da fuck ya want dat witey shit fo boe!" from his momma and get to play casino gems on her knockoff smartphone instead.
mircea_popescu: you did your part, let the grunts trash it out now.
mircea_popescu: punkman> could have various proxies, mpex-style <<< yeah, the republic will start printing bitcoin to finance an inept war with the idiot us, because the us is caught in dreams of its war with the soviet union and its delusional relevancy therein.
BingoBoingo: Mebbe next time you can learn to do the preet picture on your own.
deedbot: [Qntra] Bharara Arrests Another Murgio Over Coin.mx - http://qntra.net/2016/04/bharara-arrests-another-murgio-over-coin-mx/
asciilifeform: and yes you have to freeze the hardware.
asciilifeform: and yes, some of it also runs under 'linux' - see the excellent example of the samsung chromebook, which i bought some years ago and tried to civilize
asciilifeform: consider all of the crud hardware that only really fully works under winblowz or crapple's os.
phf: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-04-22#1455447 << i don't believe in this futureeither, it's orwell silly. but much more realistic is something like what i described above. you buy "current hardware", you can't boot foolinux, because need bios keys, need to boot redhat. redhat supports your video card, but only in wayland, and the keyboard only works through modern-udev. both require vendor provided binary blobs. etc.
gribble: The operation succeeded.
phf: but freezing effectively implies lockstep freezing of the whole environment, to hardware. ("oh we deprecated x11, your code better support wayland. oh this new video card only supports wayland, since x11 is deprecated, etc."]
phf: when the solution becomes to freeze
phf: you have a changing subtrate, changing interfaces. you can hot iron parts while it's at a manageable size and localized, but at some point you start dealing with systemd type situation where the tendrils are inside either the code that you use OR inside the subtrate/interfaces part (i.e. connection to outside world)
phf: then wrote a rant how that's unsustainable for a single person on account of having essentially to work as a merge maintainer for a dozen of projects
a111: Logged on 2016-04-12 23:01 phf: freedesktop strategy is to create an abstraction layer on top of base tools that makes things "simpler", and then transparently switch the base. in this case value of gtk & sdl to wreckers is that they both operate on wayland already. sdl seems somewhat sane but i wouldn't be surprised if gnome deprecates their X support at some point
asciilifeform: punkman: i will note that phuctoring wasn't even ~happening~ yet, it was only filling the tank and running heuristics on keys
punkman: maybe even scrap the website part, publish reports once a week/month
asciilifeform: punkman: this would deplete the s.nsa piggy pretty quickly
asciilifeform: punkman: this is doable, with the new design, but would do jack shit for making the site stay up.
asciilifeform: shinohai: the one problem is that i don't have physical control of whole motherfucking net.
shinohai: That seems to be the only way to keep it from being diddled with, having physical control of box.
asciilifeform: phuctor, boiz and gurlz, you will notice, is down. because the box has been apparently again unplugged.
gribble: The operation succeeded.
gribble: The operation succeeded.
mircea_popescu: to go to Heaven yet at the same time are likelier to make a Hell of earth."
mircea_popescu: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims will be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely
mircea_popescu: i estimate the log coudl do with some
mircea_popescu: " if the large number N is the product of two primes, p and q, and someone obtains two other numbers, p' and q' which while prime or not nevertheless multiply to the same N, are not they now able to do anything"
mircea_popescu: in somehow inexplicably overlooked lolz : http://trilema.com/2015/more-factored-rsa-keys-and-assorted-other-considerations/#comment-114319
needsmoarlaser: that you buying up all the arg bonds?
mircea_popescu: and yet inexplicably i'm sure this will son be was already found-ed and documented by research that nevertheless fails to exist etc.
a111: Logged on 2016-04-21 16:33 mircea_popescu: in other news i see phuctor numbers marching steadily up, 440/562 by now ?
mircea_popescu: in other phuctor news, 473/797
a111: Logged on 2016-04-22 02:23 phf: so the idea is what drop $500k on an pure documented fpga, hope that maker crowd will help you recoup your costs, use fraction to run tmsr infrastructure? :)
mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-04-22#1455207 << actually the commodization of prepped si is proceeding apace over the years.
mircea_popescu: and there's no great american novel ; nor a french dictionary. what of it.
mircea_popescu: on the contrary, the more dictatorially insane the society, the absolutely better the private life.
mircea_popescu: i also do not credit the "dictatorial education -> no diaries" argument from experience. there are NO BETTER jokes than the ro/ru/etc jokes from that time.
trinque: and other people get pissed off and burn something
trinque: in what I'd say is a rather despotic society
trinque: I ended up writing CL because I got drunk at ben_vulpes' shop one night; knew of it but hadn't bothered with it yet.
asciilifeform: the range of what can be effectively hermited is quite finite.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: you can mathematicize as perelman but not engineer.
asciilifeform: and had to excavate diligently to turn up the necessary materials, i have 0 meatwot connection to the folks who built'em.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform i don't credit his "man needs the herd" nonsense worth halfpence.
asciilifeform: rmans really got to England my acquaintance of the Cafe Royal would soon have found his painting deteriorating, even if the Gestapo had let him alone. And when the lid is taken off Europe, I believe one of the things that will surprise us will be to find how little worthwhile writing of any kind -- even such things as diaries, for instance -- has been produced in secret under the dictators.'
asciilifeform: because your thoughts are never entirely your own. Philosophers, writers, artists, even scientists, not only need encouragement and an audience, they need constant stimulation from other people. It is almost impossible to think without talking. If Defoe had really lived on a desert island, he could not have written Robinson Crusoe, nor would he have wanted to. Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up. Had the Ge
asciilifeform: Why is this idea false? I pass over the fact that modern dictatorships don't, in fact, leave the loopholes that the old-fashioned despotisms did; and also the probable weakening of the desire for intellectual liberty owing to totalitarian methods of education. The greatest mistake is to imagine that the human being is an autonomous individual. The secret freedom which you can supposedly enjoy under a despotic government is nonsense,
asciilifeform: very hoarding; but up in the attics the secret enemies of the regime can record their thoughts in perfect freedom -- that is the idea, more or less. And many people are under the impression that this is going on now in Germany and other dictatorial countries.
asciilifeform: 'The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside. Quite a number of people console themselves with this thought, now that totalitarianism in one form or another is visibly on the up-grade in every part of the world. Out in the street the loudspeakers bellow, the flags flutter from the rooftops, the police with their tommy-guns prowl to and fro, the face of the Leader, four feet wide, glares from e
asciilifeform: same reason not so many folks running the lispm emulator now.
a111: Logged on 2016-04-22 01:05 phf: who's going to do the burning
a111: Logged on 2016-04-22 00:49 asciilifeform: once the gangrene sets in, you either freeze your toolchain or give up work.
asciilifeform: ference. Short of being dead, it is the final, unsurpassable stage of irresponsibility.'
asciilifeform: reality, able to keep up an attitude of the completest indifference, no matter what happens. A storm that would sink all the battleships in the world would hardly reach you as an echo. Even the whale's own movements would probably be imperceptible to you. He might be wallowing among the surface waves or shooting down into the blackness of the middle seas (a mile deep, according to Herman Melville), but you would never notice the dif
asciilifeform: 'For the fact is that being inside a whale is a very comfortable, cosy, homelike thought. The historical Jonah, if he can be so called, was glad enough to escape, but in imagination, in day-dream, countless people have envied him. It is, of course, quite obvious why. The whale's belly is simply a womb big enough for an adult. There you are, in the dark, cushioned space that exactly fits you, with yards of blubber between yourself and
mircea_popescu: and by the way things work - hey, 99% safe!
mircea_popescu: trinque yeah. and very defensible, too. in principle you could readily sit in there and design robots to protect you even today.
mircea_popescu readily admits he's prolly the most sf-ignorant here.
mircea_popescu: while dudes with socket wrenches roam around the abandoned physical world looking for the better fucktoys in the goop.
mircea_popescu: oh incidentally, anyone read the next generation thing ?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: this brings to mind tales of african throwbacks who tried to use condom ~after the fact~ and genuinely believed, i'm told, that it will save them from syphilis/aids/etc
asciilifeform: trinque: good in theory, but be sure to invent parachute ~before~ thrown from window
trinque: become interesting, then attract allies that can help you get the rest of the supply chain you need!
trinque: +asciilifeform │ you did not make anything, really, and you relied on a supply chain that is quite likely unstable, esp. if you become 'interesting' << this is the wrong strategy.
BingoBoingo: Keeps Enclave from having to worry about Lloyd's paying out to the Great Khans
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: Pest control at the home's periphery. Barrier treatment's etc. Pesticide applicator's license seens to have very low barrier to entry.
mircea_popescu: oh, they will DEFINITELY insure that lol