asciilifeform: (just as you can't fix, e.g., old age, with money - here's another 'yarchive' nugget - http://yarchive.net/med/conspiracies.html)
asciilifeform: decimation: can't fix with money. soviet professors rolled in cash (compared to most other occupations.) this just attracts poseurs.
assbot: Logged on 21-01-2014 01:57:20; decimation: ?In 1890, professors salaries [at Amherst College] were $ 2,500, more than twenty times tuition. The step up from laborer to professor was immense, for the average wage earner in 1890 earned $425 a year. ?
The20YearIRCloud: so where do they go?
The20YearIRCloud: because of the gubberment?
decimation: probably the only real defense is to go 'full perelman'
asciilifeform: we can all write the list.
asciilifeform: can carry on the list, but why.
asciilifeform: decimation: eco, pelevin, others - were clever chaps; understood that if you suck cock, you become a cock-sucker, even if 'your heart isn't in it' at first
asciilifeform: decimation: the only work of that man i found readable
The20YearIRCloud: i've been off reading physics articles trying to grasp things and lost the conversation
decimation: another way of looking at it: he's decided to hold 'allodial title' over his mind, the only place that is really possible in this world for mere humans
asciilifeform: perelman had the unfortunate combination of math and iron balls. he would not 'play ball'.
asciilifeform: if he's feeling charitable, he might leave archaeologists a box of notebooks the ants won't eat.
decimation: probably with these folks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_People:_A_Year_in_the_Taiga
asciilifeform: lives somewhere in russian north, among the trees.
decimation: perelman turned down the fields medal right?
asciilifeform: partial, if you like. full perelman is when you haven't a post address either.
assbot: Of Eco And E-mail - The New Yorker
decimation: “I don't even have an E-mail address. I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages,” Eco said at a party in his honor at the University Club of Chicago.
asciilifeform: the most i can offer to interested readers is repeat of mircea_popescu's algorithm 'have sex - with people, do business - with keys.'
asciilifeform: (how to know that schwartz (or taleb, or...) collects 'prize' rather than usg stooge with a shannonizer and irc connection - exercise for alert reader.)
decimation: yeah this connects with our discussion the other day about the collapse of the ussr being terrible for usg
asciilifeform: and - they have to give a damn.
asciilifeform: but they have to be actual sovereign kingdoms - not muppet shows.
asciilifeform: but this is the very problem that multiple kingdoms one can defect to is the only known solution.
asciilifeform: regardless of the outcome of the experiment, he'd end up seen just like the fellow who opened the 'esp instutute'
decimation: yeah but it would have implications for relativity theory apparently
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: it exists - if exists - somewhere after the 8th decimal.
asciilifeform: understand that the effect in question, even if it turns out to work as herr schwartz predicted, doesn't yield an 'antigravity jetpack'
asciilifeform: decimation: adelberger, for example, would have to perform seppuku - and all of his students, and their students
decimation: one wonders which forgotten scientist will be recorded by history while official science is resigned to the dustbin
decimation: well, mircea's theory is that musical tastes randomly change with time & entropy, the same is true for academic fashions
asciilifeform: schwartz is one of the very few people i know of whose problem cannot be solved with money per se.
decimation: I called up NIST a few weeks ago, asked them how much it would cost to measure the phase noise of an oscillator. They said it would only cost their time, which would come to about $10k! for a morning session
asciilifeform: if i were to sell a few extra organs, i could run the 50k variant of the experiment. and i'd go to my grave knowing that equivalence principle can be violated. but that'd be all.
asciilifeform: including the set that want schwartz to die in a fire
decimation: as in, ensuring that all of the masses can be traced to some standard, etc?
decimation: But according to wikipedia, it appears that the Eötvös balance is some balls, a rod, some string, and some mirrors
asciilifeform: The20YearIRCloud: no need to be a con man in the usual sense to acquiesce to usg SOP.
assbot: Logged on 27-07-2014 19:05:02; asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: in 2010 i concocted a variant of the test that could be carried out for approx. 50k USD, from scratch. schwartz answered that, in his estimation, the test would work to spec, but results would not be accepted by the field unless carried out on one of the two existing eotvos balances. one - adelberger's, one - chicom.
asciilifeform: decimation: dig the log
asciilifeform: but the folks involved with 'emdrive' have a rich history of fraud (usg and principals both)
The20YearIRCloud: I'd have to find the papers, but 30-40 years ago it was supposed to violate several principals
asciilifeform: there's always an 'imaginary particle' involved
The20YearIRCloud: and in the case of emdrive as well, it's signfiicantly more efficient than ion drives, but not absurdly so
asciilifeform: nasa is happy to fund every perpetual-motion crank on the planet - but if you're an industrial organic chemist with a history of rocking the boat - forget it.
The20YearIRCloud: And from the papers I've seen, it doesn't seem to be signfiicantly more different than the theory behind VASMIR, and NASA was all over that 15 years ago
asciilifeform: in the sense that podkletnov's drive 'worked.'
The20YearIRCloud: is he the emdrive guy?
asciilifeform: (which others?
asciilifeform: (or in use by chicoms - like his certain other creations)
The20YearIRCloud: We have been very much on the upswing concerning superconductors. 50 years ago you had to be near absolute zero, now you can do it at like -200c
asciilifeform: (bonus: shoot with the battery)
decimation: I think there are some cold superconductors used in new york to move lots of electricity through tight spaces too: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/superconductors-enter-commercial-utility-service
asciilifeform: because there - yes, critical.
The20YearIRCloud: Most of the data I'm seeing seems to support that once we reach that point, everyone gets their own airship
decimation: The20YearIRCloud: doubtful. in most circuitry heat loss in conductors isn't terribly critical, and it's hard to imagine said superconductors would be better/cheaper to fabricate than the metals we are discussing
The20YearIRCloud: The little bit of silver soldering I've done has been quite smooth too
The20YearIRCloud: This is of course until we discover room-temperature superconductors, then it's all off
asciilifeform: gold also solders beautifully, because the coating remains smooth
The20YearIRCloud: gold connectors are usually large, so there's more conductivity (due to lower resistence)
The20YearIRCloud: Well, considering how little of the connection is used for the gold, it makes plenty of sense
asciilifeform: usually the absolute conductivity isn't critical. resistance to corrosion and heat conductivity - is.
asciilifeform: they occasionally turn up in loose change even now.
decimation: after 'backing' your currency with relatively worthless metal, the next logical step being to 'back' it with nothing it all
decimation: yeah back in the early 1900's the whole idea of the 'silver dollar' was the precursor to the modern bezzle
asciilifeform: silver, at the time, (and largely still today) being primarily an industrial metal - the supply was already safely corralled.
The20YearIRCloud: speaking of the 30s-50s
The20YearIRCloud: In the us , gold hording could be jailable, but silver hording was encouraged
decimation: asciilifeform: brings to mind the play quoted by Mr. Yarvin where the kulak is found guilty of hording foreign currency in basement
asciilifeform: other interesting thing about treasure is that, afaik, your tax liability officially begins when the shovel opens the box
The20YearIRCloud: Other than that, it's pretty easy to stay quiet, and slowly sell off the horde without signfiicant attention
asciilifeform: eventually, the soviet denouement is that all precious metal is presumed 'stolen from mint.'
The20YearIRCloud: With regards to coins, you only need to avoid the very, very limited types that are assumed to be stolen from the mint
asciilifeform: so we're no longer answering the question of what the find per se is worth, in that case.
asciilifeform: to go back to the example with coins - you're probably safe if you melt them down and sell by gram
asciilifeform: if they're the real thing (full auto) - you're probably bankrupt just staying out of court
The20YearIRCloud: Theoretically it'd be possible to sell them in any state if you take the right steps
asciilifeform: The20YearIRCloud: afaik+ianal - it depends where in usa.
decimation: "Army officials say the canisters, if they exist, do not pose a threat to the affluent Spring Valley neighborhood as long as they remain undisturbed." << "it's okay for you"
asciilifeform: or - to make life more interesting - let's say that you find a sealed crate of kalashes, in cosmoline, rather than coins.
asciilifeform: for instance, IANAL, but i can easily picture, e.g, a landlord, arguing 'mineral rights' on the coins.
decimation: one wonders about the potential 'laundry' being done off of such a rich stash
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: and this isn't even considering the variant with spurious lawsuits
The20YearIRCloud: heck we had a local auctioneer do one guy's coin collection, the whole collection fit on a few small tables and sold for $350k
decimation: :The so-called Saddle Ridge Hoard, made up of denominations of $5, $10 and $20, could bring in $10 million when the sale is all said and done, with several pieces expected to command prices as high as $1 million, experts say."
The20YearIRCloud: But usually the sensationalist media takes the biggest/best one to start it off with
mircea_popescu: (in general your take is about the same as if publishing a book : about 5 to 10% after govt, agent, editor etc is done raping you)
decimation: The20YearIRCloud: that was one coin out of 1400
mircea_popescu: The20YearIRCloud how much did he get to buy beer for ?
asciilifeform: how much the crown took; how much - auctioneers
asciilifeform: how much he kept from the 200 ?
decimation: there was this story last year: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-buried-california-gold-coins-auction-20140528-story.html
mircea_popescu: The20YearIRCloud here's an exercise for you. today you find in a yard 1k coins of 10 grams each, minted 1750.
decimation: The20YearIRCloud: barrels of toxic waste?
The20YearIRCloud: and the thing is, for the most part the world is a big big place and GPR is very limited in what it can do
The20YearIRCloud: I don't know that they can be built, the costs were exorbant for non-military types
mircea_popescu: <The20YearIRCloud> Such as? << dead hookers, for one.
asciilifeform: decimation: the instrument in question is no military secret of any kind. contact a firm that lays pipes.
decimation: The20YearIRCloud: yeah that's probably not a bad idea, radar would also find unpleasant surprises that are buried
The20YearIRCloud: Once in a while I get the chance to buy a un-touched estate - Kids have no interest or are out of state, a trustee locks the property up and you bid on the real estate + all contents
mircea_popescu: dudes you gotta get out of the sticks, srsly.
asciilifeform: decimation: my particular one even mentioned failure of the vault locks.
mircea_popescu: basically, it's the living wage embodied.
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.
mircea_popescu: seeing how supermarkets also offer lockable containers on the same premise as banks do
mircea_popescu: fire seems the only reason left :p
asciilifeform: i can hardly picture a dumber hiding place then a container in a public place with your name on it.
mircea_popescu: <asciilifeform> decimation: in usa, people have contracted the disease of thinking that money can substitute for everything, including brain and balls << well their government kinda depends on this principle, so if it';s good enough for the king...
decimation: in which case the courts will hand whatever valubles to the woman, 'to support the children'
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
mircea_popescu: <decimation> asciilifeform: yeah I think the main point is that you might store papers and things that would be moderately annoying to replace in case of fire << divorce.
asciilifeform: decimation: in usa, people have contracted the disease of thinking that money can substitute for everything, including brain and balls
decimation: re: gult's gulch << I find it amusing that folks who supposedly value 'self-reliance' and 'liberty' are unable to actually fly to chile and buy some land for themselves, it can't be that hard for a person with means & brains
decimation: heh yeah agreed, especially if the 'value' of those items was simply the information on the documents
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.
decimation: well I think those terms are 'aspirational' - it goes to the arbitration conversation from a few weeks ago. everyone wants a click-wrap eula that holds them immune from any liability
asciilifeform: decimation: esp. since the one and only event that could reasonably be insured against - contents present at logged date N and absent on opening N+k - wasn't.
decimation: asciilifeform: yeah I think the main point is that you might store papers and things that would be moderately annoying to replace in case of fire
asciilifeform: decimation: the point of the bank box story is that it was entirely unclear to me wtf is the very point of such a thing, given the caveats
mircea_popescu: (look at what happened when people thought the church is a people, started donating a little to it and inadvertently created the largest landholder because unlike them, thge church didn;t die regularly)
mircea_popescu: decimation it's complicated, but in general property is the bane of human existence, so any absolute property has the potential to be absolutely murderous.
asciilifeform: drowning a box of strange in the atlantic is a considerably quieter operation than launching a rocket, however. so perhaps it wins.
decimation: re:safe deposit box, my understanding is that these are the terms all banks in the us give for such things
decimation: re: allodial title: I suppose with reference to how it was practiced in medieval England, the king's agents could be on your property on business which has the mutual consent of the king and his lords
asciilifeform: sea capsule is just a gedankenexperiment (though, i'm told, u.s. navy has insisted on actually trying.) i'm not altogether convinced that, properly carried out, it is cheaper than 'graveyard orbit'
mircea_popescu: kinda what the nuclear subs are anyway.
asciilifeform: (free up the men normally guarding for other pursuits; replace with king neptune, who can't be bribed and doesn't sleep)
asciilifeform: hence the sea capsule example. for some classes of object (nuke?) this might be cost-effective storage.
mircea_popescu: because the fetish of value is not value
asciilifeform: but notice that active players in a war rarely occupy themselves with hiding valuables
mircea_popescu: and it links quite well into "what would the devil have to pay you for you to love him".
mircea_popescu: in it. This cant be delegated, its a personal thing. Like citizenship. Like nationality. The only nation immune to the fate of Rhodesia is a nation of that kind of people, living in that kind of world.
mircea_popescu: There isnt, nor is there going to be a way, manner, instrument or device through which to protect the passive from the active. If youre not prepared and absolutely willing to spend any amount of time up to the entire rest of your life seeking out and butchering leeches with only the satifaction of well applied, excruciating cruelty as your reward, youre not made for this world and you wont long have a place
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform: very few physical objects are worth the cost of raising an army to keep arbitrarily large horde of orcs away << this argument is flawed in the following way : for he who is repulsed by war, this holds true. for he who however enjoys war, no payment is necessary.
mircea_popescu: decimation: The20YearIRCloud: When I say "allodial title" I mean something like having the right to arrest anyone - including government employees - on your property << that';s maybe going a little far. but the right to quash any action of anyone involving that land is germane.
mircea_popescu: "your negative rating in the wot means you can be killed by anyone and nobody'll care or do anything about it"
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform it will probably come down to "you're not in the wot, and so therefore may not claim to own property or pretend to sue anyone"
mircea_popescu: on the strenght of the zero one infinity rule alone, and of the banal observation that bitcoin also has no historical precendent, it seems... unwise to bet that 1 is the lucky number.
asciilifeform: that's who most of the muppets in question are
mircea_popescu: ussr isn't remembered for having been led by the smartest people ever.
mircea_popescu: no questions asked, and his children will be raped for the public record.
mircea_popescu: and which is why it's so important to get the message loud and clear to any bureaucrat anywhere, that if it comes to war, and we win, he will hang.
asciilifeform: there are folks (in usa) working on this variant as we speak. the ones that succeed and aren't provocateur shills - we'll know because none of them are on the net.
mircea_popescu: overall, these would be "softeners" work as hardeners and are quite useful.
mircea_popescu: so, some may try to soften the target, which allows the target to populate the road towards it with heads on pikes.
mircea_popescu: any supermodel material chick will tell you nobody dares, on the assumption.
asciilifeform: the best castle wall is - distance. works even on nukes.
asciilifeform: and if it becomes generally known that, e.g., a Castle Moldenstein, contains a bunker full of goodies - there is the incentive for all-comers to soften the target.
mircea_popescu: the usg collapsing doesn't make it harder.
asciilifeform: in my experience, folks preoccupied with hidey-holes tend to neglect the question of where they intend to hide... their arse
asciilifeform: i.e., armed thugs turned free-agent when the whole thing finally blows
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: 'usg' in that context also includes all 'decay daughters' thereof
mircea_popescu: decimation: asciilifeform: unfortunately if the "from whom" is usg in its many forms, the answer is largely: nowhere << bs lol.
mircea_popescu: as a gif. enough nightmare fuel there for a week
mircea_popescu: someone should morph http://trilema.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/swatted.png to the lemons kissing.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: re: 'swat' post: am i the only one who instantly thought of this: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/files/2009/09/14-sovietleaderleonidbrezhnevandeas.jpg
mircea_popescu: decimation lmao at those terms. so... why get it then ?
mircea_popescu: The20YearIRCloud: There's a town close to me that once every year auctions off 250-350 safe deposit box contents, you bid per box and don't know what is in them. All are seized from people who either didn't pay up or forgot about em << isn't there a reality show predicated on this process ?
mircea_popescu: blast romania has this too. it's called gaina, which is how you say hen, and it's the place surpluss women were taken by their tribe for to sell over to another tribe for > 5k years.
blast: but the island of woman is real, except its a mountain, in brazil ;D
mircea_popescu: seems of the ilk of "island of women" and "tower of song", ie, cheap notional filler for "virtual spaces" a la video games
mircea_popescu: The20YearIRCloud i don't get what this "let's all go huddle together" thing is supposed to do.
decimation: lol The20YearIRCloud that's an amusing post
The20YearIRCloud: http://dollarvigilante.com/blog/2014/8/27/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-on-galts-gulch-chile.html
cazalla: would it be a safe bet the reason newegg and other sites offer a discount when using bitcoin is that it's easy means of coin for usg? they can print as much $ to give discounts and the coin flows from customers -> newegg -> bitpay -> usg?
cazalla: i wonder what the chicks in that music video look like now
decimation: one wonders about the total sum of $ that usg has spent just this year searching enemies of the people
decimation: mircea_popescu: yeah your post reminds me of Mr. Yarvin's point about insulting the "protected class".
mircea_popescu: so mebbe there's some meat to the assertion, vi inhabits a middle that doesnt really exist
mircea_popescu: but actually... i find myself using nano a lot moar these days
asciilifeform: (moral, for the thick, is that an equivalent of the profession 'optician' does not yet exist for these machines)
asciilifeform always found it interesting that people whine if they try to use his computer, but never think to borrow eyeglasses and then complain
mircea_popescu: and for that matter, pencils are horribly unintuitive interfaces. think of all the great drawing in the world, and the poor user buying a pencil in the shop will draw what ? a cat ?
mircea_popescu: (the cunt also)
asciilifeform: i.e., instrument with user interface of a pencil, but somehow not the functionality of pencil.
asciilifeform: but yes, normally when people whine about 'usability,' they want - pony.
asciilifeform: in the latter, considerably greater consistency of flags
asciilifeform: 'usability' << is not necessarily a nonsense word. consider the difference between the linux and bsd userland utils
jurov: i was intrigued why it isn't possible for computer to keep asking for missing pieces until the task is fully defined
mircea_popescu: and who the hell has cowsay installed omg.
mircea_popescu: "Create a random file of a certain, and display progress along the way."
mircea_popescu: on the upside, once you get it done you can forget about it.
mircea_popescu: decimation i think the only reason it isn't a solved problem is this sort of argument : http://contravex.com/2014/08/26/infosec-education-because-stephane-bortzmeyer-is-lazy-and-im-not/ ie "usability". once you add that fuzzy requirement smart people get bored and leave,
mircea_popescu: and if you don't you can make them make an index file.
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes what is the objection ?
ben_vulpes: indexing the blockchain? sed and awk!
asciilifeform: 'i even made a pony-monkey hybrid to please you! what's with all the screaming. you like monkeys, you like ponys. maybe i used too many monkeys... isn't it enough that i ruined a pony making a gift for you!'
asciilifeform: modern 'neural network' ocr - at least for latin alphabet - is 99+% accurate. sadly this is not enough to dispense with the original images.
asciilifeform: decimation: it's already in the standard
asciilifeform: so document becomes quasi-searchable while viewed in the customary way
mircea_popescu: "given this string and this set of photos, find the string likelies"
asciilifeform: plus one generally wants to keep the photos.
decimation: to be fair I think there are methods of using good compression with pdf too. My main point yesterday was about searching the text, for which pdfs are not necessary. after all, if you ocr it, then it ought to exist as a .txt file
asciilifeform: if you have an 'ocr' system, the format allows for an searchable text 'track.'
asciilifeform: russians, accustomed to carrying around terabytes of scanned w4r3z for a generation, prefer 'djvu' - for which there is really no substitute.
asciilifeform: some. of the purported crap. yes.
mircea_popescu: outside of digging through secret service archives, why the fuck would anyone put up with pdf.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: very few of the original papers were ever made public as such
mircea_popescu: rather than reading the same "us girl next door in a sheet = roman matron" story re-written over and over 500 times.
mircea_popescu: anyway, one is well advised to evaluate his level of interest on such topics. if it's a passing casual worth 5k words then skimming one of these pulpy offerings is maybe fine. if serious enough to remember names, then probably skimming the original papers is a better bet
mircea_popescu: "inside the genovese family, by derparian herparistarian." wtf already. no armenians in sicily.
asciilifeform: muppet, who was given the job of cranking out a tabloid-grade book supposedly based on the 100kg or so of stolen paper.
asciilifeform: cristopher << brit. mitrokhin surrendered to the brits.
mircea_popescu: what the FUCK has some schmuck by the name cristopher to say about the inside of the kgb ?
mircea_popescu: "mr devektorovskyi, what are we to do then ?"
mircea_popescu: he confirms that yes they knew all about al of them, explains some of the insider jokes
mircea_popescu: by the 5th or so replacement there's a distinct impression with upper cia management that the soviets are like... sending complicated insider jokes over the mole wire.
mircea_popescu: i meant the joke
Apocalyptic: mircea, I'm asking whether it's worth a read, I don't have nor know it