pete_dushenski: "Drivers who work for Uber should verify their vehicles are insured for commercial use, the Insurance Bureau of Canada said Tuesday after the Alberta government concluded the ride-hailing service's insurance policies don't meet that province's requirements." << ayup. sv's 'sharing economy' is a whole whack of insurance fraud.
BingoBoingo: Windows wasn't really even much of a thing apparently until Windows 95 when the local Walmart had lines for it thanks to "marketing"
BingoBoingo: <mircea_popescu> << this was maybe os/x and generally crapple. it pretty much never was microsoft. microsoft was historically more like george costanza's annoying tune. << Unfortunately for everyone's enshittenment Constanza and Windows 95 ascended to prominence at roughly the same time.
assbot: Logged on 29-07-2015 00:28:06; nubbins`: nobody wanted windows, they wanted the experience of being dazzled by shiny things
mircea_popescu: the very dangerous dual edged blade of discipline.
mircea_popescu: <phf> lizard hitler's stash <<< yeah, aka "i'll believe this outside phenomena happened if and only if, and only to the degree it, confirms convictions i held previously and independently of reality"
mircea_popescu: but the beating usg is taking online for the past half decade makes the beating it's been taking on the ground in any military engagement since ww2 look like a piss in the park.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform they're getting decimated alright, you're just not in a too good position to observe it i guess.
BingoBoingo: <phf> lizard hitler's stash << Jurrassic World topping the box office because Lizards are real
asciilifeform: or pill against rsa they've had since 1993 is revealed
asciilifeform: and i mean ~genuine~ catastrophe, not 'jam tomorrow' like the opm thing
phf: if corporate sop is anything to go by, it's probably easier to get access to powerpoints (cross-company shared materials), then to actual technical details (contained within individual teams' machines)
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform nah, that was actually a rather lulzy forced humiliation.
mircea_popescu: the reason they did is that some of the ips were actually traceable to various poorly protected shells.
BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> if nothing else whatsoever were known about them, the redactions make it entirely obvious << WHich is why the escaped yet utterly contained Snowden1 is known for nothing but powerpoints. Censored and surrounded with phriends.
asciilifeform: ergo they are not in any sense enemies of usg
asciilifeform: and the total, unwavering absence of leakz with actual technical details passing through them.
asciilifeform: if nothing else whatsoever were known about them, the redactions make it entirely obvious
gribble: Dear Guardian : stop being retarded. on Trilema - A blog by Mircea ...: <http://trilema.com/dear-guardian-stop-being-retarded>; Trilema Presei on Trilema - A blog by Mircea Popescu.: <http://trilema.com/category/trilema-presei/>; Dear Mr Gove: what's so 'British' about your 'British ... - The Guardian: <http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jul/01/gove-what-is-so-british- (1 more message)
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform fwiw, i've not yet published tons of reams of piles of stuff either.
asciilifeform: notice that no one is forcing the buggerz to print anything today.
BingoBoingo: <mircea_popescu> well, everything you saw the guardian publish, at any rate. << Greenwald/Guardian did filter the SNowden 1 documents
mircea_popescu: still draggedf their feet for almost a whole day.
mircea_popescu: well, everything you saw the guardian publish, at any rate.
mircea_popescu: does not per se say anything about the earlier one.
mircea_popescu: but looky : the fact that some later schmuck had better/different materials
asciilifeform: on top of this, the greenwald-poitras-omidyar shitgang never mentioned him again
asciilifeform: they were also, apparently, unable to entirely suppress the rumour of the existence of 'second man'
asciilifeform: and the fact that it was 1) out of phase 2) no more where that came from.
asciilifeform: the 'second leaker' is abundantly clear from the entirely other (interesting, actionable, technically-detailed) nature of the 'ANT catalogue' papers
asciilifeform: easy hypothesis - sell 'redphones,' 'blackphones,', 'keybase', 'cryptodoesntwork' (tm) (r)
mircea_popescu: this does not explain why bother releasing anything.
asciilifeform: t1 = schmuckden runs off with some paperz, gives to phriendz t2 = found, through one way or another, and nailgunned t3 = snowden (tm) (r) is created
mircea_popescu: it can only be plausible if simultaneously a) one's never had any sort of interaction wit hthe usg and b) one's stewed for years / millions of words' worth in some armchair generalship club.
BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> the difference is a brick in the face. << I lean towards attributing this to the two having sifferent roles and access. Difference being Snowden1 achieved escape velocity before collaborating with Greenwald and others while 2 blindly followed 1's example into trap
asciilifeform: i can think of a few others
asciilifeform: (they make him work a full shift, imagine)
asciilifeform: as in, a formulated hypothesis ?
asciilifeform: i read 100% of the material attributed to both 'snowdens'
asciilifeform: and the fact that after 'other snowden' published this, greenwald & co claimed contact
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: circumstantial; based on out-of-phase release time, and the content (uncensored) and formatting (full text memos, with technical detail, rather than idiot powerpoint)
asciilifeform: greenwald helped to lead him to the cork-lined cellar, yes
asciilifeform: (there is convincing evidence that all the ~good stuff~ - e.g., DEITYBOUNCE, GODSURGE, etc. - is from snowden2
mircea_popescu: the problem is not that i don't understand what you're saying. the problem is i don't see what you're basing it on.
asciilifeform: hardcore philologists may care about the imaginary personal life of a literary character, sure
asciilifeform: the responsible thing to do is to help propel the bastards to hell where they belong.
asciilifeform: for hoarding the goodz
mats: a man does not purport to reveal govt wrongdoing and then proceed to dump hundreds of thousands of documents indiscriminately
asciilifeform: he was permitted to write a book, the very typical 'escaped sov brass' boot, nominally 'edgy' but 100% usg-approved
assbot: Logged on 29-07-2015 03:08:33; mircea_popescu: wait, kalughin ?! the guy who was eventually bent in two, tied together and thrown out with the trash ?
phf: i don't know the bush and the policeman reference, but i assume "bent in two, tied together and thrown out" is a reference to his espionage trial, then the same
mircea_popescu: wait, kalughin ?! the guy who was eventually bent in two, tied together and thrown out with the trash ?
BingoBoingo: Carnegie and Rockefeller did not invent Northern Aggression on their own in their own lifetimes without foundations
phf: i met oleg kalugin at russian cultural center, he had a handler with him, a tall gentleman, presumably from cia, who mas making sure that kalugin doesn't say something he's not supposed to say. i always wanted one of those, but until that time i just look for coded messages in the new yorker :)
assbot: Logged on 29-07-2015 00:24:34; asciilifeform: specifically, the one thing edison is known with certainty to have invented is inferior-tech-empire-propped-by-pseudoentrepreneurial-fud
BingoBoingo: <mircea_popescu> http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=29-07-2015#1215525 << dunno that edison invented this. it was quintessential to the forging of the original us, the construct that for the first time mattered on the world stage, giving the dollar like any purchasing power whatsoever << Probably actually started when US and Britain fought for monopoly to impress North Americans into maritime service
decimation: well, we've seen the 'american century'
mircea_popescu: not so hard to be "the winner".
mircea_popescu: still, you know - that old question of "so you want the mike - what are you going to say into it ?"
decimation: after wwi anyone who wasn't a dead or on fire was by default the 'winner'
mircea_popescu: edison definitely instrumental in all of this, but there's a good half dozen names involved.
mircea_popescu: and for the first time making it worth something projectively. prior to that, it was just measured by the world, as anything. exported to china for its silver weight etc.
assbot: Logged on 29-07-2015 00:24:34; asciilifeform: specifically, the one thing edison is known with certainty to have invented is inferior-tech-empire-propped-by-pseudoentrepreneurial-fud
mircea_popescu: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=29-07-2015#1215525 << dunno that edison invented this. it was quintessential to the forging of the original us, the construct that for the first time mattered on the world stage, giving the dollar like any purchasing power whatsoever
BingoBoingo: Anyways the Nordics introduced death to America first when they collapsed Red civilization with biological terrorist attacks.
decimation: not that the trends are looking good
mircea_popescu: moreover the notion porn is bad... mmkay.
BingoBoingo: <decimation> "And before some idiot American yells "we saved you in ww2!". No, you did not. America allied with Communism and slaughtered millions of Europeans. America has brought death, porn and gmo's. FUCK YOU" << Pretty sure German actually was on the GMO crop train first
decimation: it's quite common to see them fitted with diesels that generate more than 400 brake hp
mircea_popescu: srsly, look at the "affordable" set.
decimation: ? trucks in the us have gigantic engies
decimation: there's a weird cultural thing in america about minivans
mircea_popescu: except these are suzukis with horns.
decimation: yeah, big trucks sell well in the us
mircea_popescu: next you knew, bmw and mercedes were falling over each othert toi make "suv"s
mircea_popescu: they came up with thje "let's put a lawnmower engine in ten cubic meters of injected plastic" thing all on their own
decimation: (assuming he is talking about the forced repatriation of ethnic germans
decimation: ^ this is true and completely untaught in the us
decimation: lol from the youtube comments of that Amerika song: "There is absolutely nothing positive in germany that comes from America. America's entire auto industry re-packages their cars from German made models. This model of doing business is used on every thing America sells. "
mircea_popescu: "gotta support the team!"
mircea_popescu: a facility which is both why so very few women do anything notable and at the same time why stuff like language even maintains any sort of continuity over time.
mircea_popescu: the avatars of "common sense" as held by the mentally stunted adult roman woman of "respectable extraction" would find exact equivalents in the heads of your new york rachel fucktard today, or in the heads of british imbecile a century ago, or wherever else. and it'd take them all of half an hour to start nodding approvingly at each other
assbot: Logged on 29-07-2015 00:23:54; asciilifeform: nubbins`: the philosophical (if not in any detectable way historical) continuity of microshit and edison's thing
mircea_popescu: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=29-07-2015#1215524 << that continuity is simply the immemorial, stone-like continuity of stupidity.
assbot: Logged on 29-07-2015 00:19:03; nubbins`: and then literally reversed a bunch of the terms in the next version, so a site was now a web and a web was now a site
mircea_popescu: <phf> the "west" ascii is talking about, is the place that only existed on the 80s vhs tapes. << word srsly.
thestringpuller: BingoBoingo: asciilifeform as a pot smoking hippie in some alternate reality...the stuff good sitcoms are made of
decimation: which is why they spaz out whenver something slightly right-wing happens in the us, and meanwhile award obama the nobel
decimation: yarvin pointed this out as well: you failed to live up to the america you propagandised us into believing in!
gernika: There's a generation of americans that believed in those ads and movies too.
mats: not so secret, the IMF
BingoBoingo: Only Hollywood movies where CIA is an antagonist are the ones where Tom Cruise works for a still more secret agency
phf: there's a lot of russian jews working at NIH, self style soviet dissidents, who now run various research departments same way as they were doing it back then. the common sentiment is basically "we've been had for a pair of chinese jeans"
phf: BingoBoingo: there's an entire generation of foreigners who believed in the america of coca cola commercials and schwarzenegger movies. they thought the aspirational simulacrum is the real deal. so of course moving here was a huge letdown.
BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> y'know, the mythical 'west' that my parents thought they were moving us to << I'd hate to see the alternate history where your parents moved you to ben_vulpes's west
asciilifeform: but what i actually want is to live in the civilized world.
asciilifeform: didn't say there was a solution, l0l
nubbins`: if your complaint is that the thing you want is not literally within 10 minutes of your home
phf: gentooization is the norm of usg living
nubbins`: you'd actually have to -- gasp -- go buy the beans
nubbins`: asciilifeform there are plenty of small-batch gourmet roasters that sell online
asciilifeform would like to be able to drink a ~decent~ cup of coffee without having to personally import, roast, and grind the beans
nubbins`: phun phact, you have to pay TransFair $0.10 for each coffee bag you print the "fair trade" logo on
nubbins`: (sweet maria's often makes deals direct with farmers, bypassing "fair trade" and the requisite fee structure while also giving farmers more of the money for themselves)
nubbins`: compare with most of central america, ethiopia, and others, where you can go to an actual farm and say "i want THESE beans" and receive said beans
nubbins`: kenya, for example: all coffee is sold through government auction, where the beans are sorted not by quality, original, processing method, etc but by SIZE.
phf: nubbins`: i always thought blends are like multigrain breads, a way to have a brand separate from the product, so you can easily substitute your sources
ben_vulpes: beans over the internet?
nubbins`: it's all about single-origin these days
ben_vulpes: <nubbins`> it's actual swill << every time that i'm up north i can't shake the feeling that's where they ship the tired american brands to finally croak
assbot: 2 results for 'the buggers held full control' : http://s.b-a.link/?q=the+buggers+held+full+control
nubbins`: !s the buggers held full control
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: Monsanto the Doge!!!
ben_vulpes: <asciilifeform> the secret is, i LIKED MAC OS << noises were gorgeous
BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> i bet pigs would work just as well << May need an obligate carnivore for musk from the anal glands. Perhaps physical Doge may have a use.
asciilifeform: esp. if bred for the task
BingoBoingo: <nubbins`> nowadays, the animals are force-fed so you might as well feed the beans to a cow. << I have the feeling a ruminant's multiple stomachs could defeat even a bean.
nubbins`: i guess the intestinal juices / fermenting impart a flavour
asciilifeform: they'll eat whatever
nubbins`: picks the choicest ones
nubbins`: the animal naturally likes coffee cherries
asciilifeform: nubbins`: when i learned about this coffee, as a boy, i immediately wondered why they use this animal and no other
nubbins`: and sell the beans for $150/lb
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes lives in some very other country
asciilifeform: point being, the only coffee i or anyone i know can readily access in <10 min., is office pot or shitbux
shinohai: Hey there is always Kopi Luwak
phf: nubbins`: oh, that was re asciilifeform's comments. there's plenty of good coffee in philadelphia
asciilifeform: (started mega-roasting or whatever it is they do)
nubbins`: real coffee shops filter their water
asciilifeform: there used to be a drinkable coffee in wash.,dc
nubbins`: phf maybe there is!
phf: i'm surprised there isn't some hip coffee shop with brooklyn roasted beans in silver spring..
ben_vulpes: our coffee's just about the best one can buy in this town.
asciilifeform: if i feel like coffee, i get to choose between shitbux and the office pot.
nubbins`: it's a regular occurrence these past few years for Timmy's drive-thrus to have to be rebuilt to accomodate more traffic
asciilifeform: mats: i have never personally known anyone who achieved great power or access to astonishing s33kr1tz through re. but i am willing to concede that somewhere, they exist.
phf: starbucks is kind of like mcdonalds, and the same reason microsoft won, guiranteed same mediocre experience, so if you're driving through north carolina and you need your caffeine fix, you don't have to engage any mental faculties, because there be dragons outside your comfort bubble. i've noticed that with a lot of my starbucks loving friends, for them it's kind of like "i know this, this is starbucks"
nubbins`: BingoBoingo: even the impression that powdered cheese belongs is a bad one
mats: yeah I've heard that, I only just finished the pilot
asciilifeform: mats: if it's no secret, what was your motivation in the first place for it ?
mats: my motivation to learn RE has been flagging recently and this is just the ticket
nubbins`: mats it was a bit light on the actual tech stuff for my liking
nubbins`: the experience-seller waited until the end of the convo to tell us that she'd be listing the house $30k below market value and if we didn't like that, find someone else
BingoBoingo: Several decades of "marketing" and you've got generations starting life with the impression that powdered cheese belongs on noodles
nubbins`: second one spent a fuckin hour selling us on the experience of selling our house through her
nubbins`: first one was very businesslike: what's the house like, how big, how much you wanna sell it for
BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> is it some brain infection ? << Yes, disease was 1950's USia. The appearance that came from the plenty of being only "civilized" area not torn to shit in the 1940's and agriculture's strain to provide real food. Marketing got really good at pushing "tv dinners"
gribble: The Last Psychiatrist: Don't Hate Her Because She's Successful: <http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/03/dont_hate_her_because_shes_suc.html>; No Self-Respecting Woman Would Go Out Without Make Up: <http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/01/no_self-respecting_woman_would.html>; The Last Psychiatrist: Who Bullies The Bullies?: <http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/05/cyberbll.html>
nubbins`: ;;google trappings of power site:thelastpsychiatrist.com
asciilifeform: but that anyone would ~choose~ the fuffle - is beyond my puny brain
nubbins`: starbucks drinkers do not realize that the real thing exists
asciilifeform: the only reason i can picture is if they are convinced that the real thing cannot be had
asciilifeform: i don't grasp this, and won't, regardless of how well mircea_popescu explains it. why the fuck would anyone want ritual over the real thing ?
nubbins`: starbucks is dominant because people want the experience of buying coffee more than they want coffee.
nubbins`: but really it's so they can swap out bean X for bean Y in Holiday Blend and nobody notices.
nubbins`: they claim this is so they're not selling you pesky water-containing beans but fully-dried coffee goodness
nubbins`: starbucks roasts all beans to "second crack", which is the entry point to "dark roasts"
asciilifeform: because they mandatorily overcook
nubbins`: as someone who knows far too much about the science of coffee, starbucks is actual shit
asciilifeform: possibly the fact that it was not made by microshit and did not have the familiar msdos ANYWHERE in it
nubbins`: people like starbucks for no good rational reason either
asciilifeform: the secret is, i LIKED MAC OS
asciilifeform: if you're a kid in calcutta watching a b&w tv, where americans drink it - then yes!
nubbins`: in the sense that starbucks is rich man's coffee.
assbot: Logged on 09-12-2014 02:39:31; asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: as a boy, i often thought that i would grow up, 'have money', and buy an apple computer - at least to try it (the crippled machines at schools, etc. were an interesting diversion, and i imagined that mac is 'rich man's computer' somehow)
asciilifeform: os 9 was the last actual apple os
nubbins`: i thought you couldn't even turn those back on again once they powered down.
asciilifeform: ah there.
phf: BingoBoingo: i use that ibook for mac os 9 now, with kaleidoscope, hypercard, mcl (macintosh common lisp). i boot it up from time to time and it feels like the cyberpunk future that never was
BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> i like my 'hypercard' on at least 800x600 pixels << I usually do the presentation with a "clean desk" to heighten to realization that this machine was small enought to allow civilized other work at desk, as happened in age when computer was office accessory.
asciilifeform: nubbins`: got an a1237 in the fleet - won't ever upgrade.
asciilifeform: nubbins`: they sure did.
nubbins`: asciilifeform they froze support for 2009 macbooks?!
BingoBoingo: <asciilifeform> but generally i don't recommend an archaeologist's machine to a civilian << I recommend this one because hypercard. As a dare, for the ones that get it realize not all "advances" are such.
shinohai: It's like buying a Ferrari with the hood welded shut.
asciilifeform: nubbins`: but what was their excuse for freezing support for 2009 macbooks ?!
BingoBoingo: <phf> ppc macs were nice. i spent years with a handmedown g3 ibook, running linux on it, and i still love that machine, probably for sentimental reasons << Bought one used with defunct vertical line on screen. Played with then closeted, then recycled. Prolly should have kept it.
nubbins`: ipad sorta sucks now because it can't run the latest iOS and essentially zero new apps target the old versions
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: other than as word processor, what can you use that thing for ?
asciilifeform: shinohai: it has the distinction of being the singularly worst-performing and most closed-source-chipsety machine for the money
nubbins`: jobs is marginally interesting for having fessed up to LSD usage, but as i understand it was generally a piece of shit otherwise
BingoBoingo: shinohai: Seems to address the much neglected niche of graphical www without any scripting. Apparently default browser on 'raspian'
nubbins`: at some point in my life, i'd like to require the rewinding of a motor
nubbins`: “Usually people just go for the motor,” says Bleyle.
nubbins`: Bleyle admits that repairs can be pricey, especially hand-rewinding a DC motor, which can run between US $30 000 and $40 000. But he says even a refurbished motor looks cheap compared with the $500 000 cost of replacing the elevator, not to mention the months of involuntary stair climbing during the upgrade.
asciilifeform: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/off-goes-the-power-current-started-by-thomas-edison/?_r=0
gribble: The operation succeeded.
asciilifeform: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/san-franciscos-secret-dc-grid << they still have
nubbins`: or was it the pneumatic water-based lift thing
asciilifeform: (there were lifts, etc. still on it)
nubbins`: i find people don't want X so much as they want the experience of choosing/buying/being sold X
asciilifeform: if you read the primary 'current warz' crap from 1880s-90s, it is hauntingly similar to microshit in 1990s-2000s
asciilifeform: specifically, the one thing edison is known with certainty to have invented is inferior-tech-empire-propped-by-pseudoentrepreneurial-fud
asciilifeform: nubbins`: the philosophical (if not in any detectable way historical) continuity of microshit and edison's thing
asciilifeform: nubbins`: this is probably a good time to mention a historical thesis i've chewed on in my head, on and off, for a decade or so
assbot: The Art of the Metaobject Protocol: Gregor Kiczales, Jim des Rivieres, Daniel G. Bobrow: 9780262610742: Amazon.com: Books ... ( http://bit.ly/1gkBWor )
phf: a good common lisp book to have in addition to keene's clos book is AMOP http://www.amazon.com/The-Metaobject-Protocol-Gregor-Kiczales/dp/0262610744
nubbins`: and then literally reversed a bunch of the terms in the next version, so a site was now a web and a web was now a site
nubbins`: they also reappropriated all these general words like "Site" and "Web" and gave them specific definitions
nubbins`: move over CSV, P/SCSV is the new kid in town
nubbins`: no kidding, every now and then some internal piece of code would return an array of strings as a single, very large string, with entries separated by the escape string "#;"
nubbins`: for a while i was paid to develop bespoke widgets for "microsoft sharepoint", a CMS/DMS that is the biggest piece of shit you'll never see
nubbins`: dogecoin belongs in a "classic hype machines of the information age" textbook
mircea_popescu: in other news : http://hardhandsworld.tumblr.com/post/83217145416 bitches be the hardest on bitches.
mircea_popescu: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=28-07-2015#1215327 << this reminds me of christina applegate wanting to buy a car, being quoted in "k"s and raiding the cornflakes boxes for them
mircea_popescu: the "some people should not use" observation is apt.
assbot: Logged on 28-07-2015 20:33:13; ascii_field: anyway, notice that his reaction was ~NOT~ to visit therealbitcoin.org & get the real client.
mircea_popescu: Simple fix then to a very big problem."