#asciilifeform | 2020-07-17

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mats: 'hackthebox' is fun and only 10eur/mo, best sub money i've ever spent

asciilifeform: mats: wat's that ?

mats: hosted collection of ctfs, like overthewire and others in the past

mats: how is your tutoring going? getting gud with a pistol?

asciilifeform: mats: was 1time weekend refresher thing. rifles.

asciilifeform: mats: what've you been up to ?

mats: until this week i'd been spending a lot of time training in the gym (boxing), swimming, ctfs, and watching too much television

mats: socal's having a helluva time with the covid deniers

mats: been debating on/off about whether to buy a firearm, i live in a nice area with responsive police, but you never know what idiots will do

mats: theres a disturbing number of 'ghost' receivers , hundreds of thousands of them, getting on the streets

asciilifeform: mats: the plastic thing ?

mats: no, cody wilson is a shmuck, its the real thing

mats: less serial. i personally know three people who were able to purchase them online with credit cards without any of the usual controls

mats: that those people would buy them (they are asians), is a surprise unto itself, the times are a changing

asciilifeform: mats: is this just the usual blackmarket irons, or the one where you gotta machine N % of it yerself ?

mats: former, and all you need are hand tools

mats: latter*

asciilifeform: well, in e.g. philippines they still make whole thing w/ hand tools

asciilifeform: kalash, pistol, whichever

mats: https://www.thetrace.org/2019/05/ghost-gun-california-crime some coverage

asciilifeform: if yer patient, can make just about any iron by hand.

asciilifeform: mats: in 1970s SU there was a famous gang that made 100% own SMGs entirely by hand. they worked great, and still can be seen in museum

asciilifeform: it aint a mars rocket, decent craftsman can make in a week or so from junkyard stock.

mats: right

asciilifeform: what astonishes asciilifeform , is the morons who make and then can't resist to post on net...

mats: i'm also debating whether or not to buy some of the new fangled ultralight ceramic inserts and a plate carrier

asciilifeform: afaik these sold 100% openly in usa.

mats: its a couple thou up front, but they're good for decades, so amortisation isn't so bad

asciilifeform: ( unlike e.g. su )

asciilifeform: mats: i still suspect that at some pt usg will close the ancient loophole and serialize the barrels, like in the other reich countries

mats: fifty years too late for that

mats: in other not so news, https://books.google.com/books/about/Irreversible_Damage.html?id=GO6yDwAAQBAJ

mats: author predictably decried in the usual papers as 'anti trans' and what not

asciilifeform: iirc these came up in #t

mats: this ships with more scholarship than polemic

asciilifeform: self-mutilation cults are nuffin new, they had'em in medieval ru, self-castrators etc

asciilifeform: ( for that matter, even in rome.. )

asciilifeform: mats: re the seekrit weapons -- asciilifeform always thought it'd make sense for the enthusiasts to take the time and learn basic metalwork. a decent cnc rig can be had 2ndhand for less than what most of the fancy 'ar' etc are sold for commercially. then make whatever.

mats: a day in the machine shop certainly spares you from association with unsavory characters that traffic in these items

mats: in commiefornia, legal ar15 comes with a ridiculous pinhole mod of the mag ejector, so you need a small object to dump, and legal mag limits are 10 rounds or less

superkuh: Get a big bore pre-compressed air fully automatic rifle. Their performance is almost as good as firearms now.

superkuh: It worked for Lewis and Clarke.

asciilifeform: interesting, i was under impression that anyffin more modern than bow&arrow were banned in californistan

asciilifeform: superkuh: i actually have 1 of those, a+++ for pest control

asciilifeform: they aint cheap, however

mats: i forget the year (maybe post-2010), most new model firearms can only be purchased by law enforcement in ca

asciilifeform: mats: afaik californistan is traditionally most fascist locale in usa, for many decades nao

mats: https://reason.com/2019/02/06/californias-ban-on-all-new-pistol-models featuring volokh conspiracy, which i hadn't heard of until it was mentioned here (or #t? don't remember)

mats: i miss reading the regular conversations between you and mp, it was a weekly thing for me

asciilifeform: mats: maybe was entertaining to read later, but the actual process felt rather like bashing head against cement wall

asciilifeform: apropos of thread, incidentally, mp fancied himself a great armaments expert, even tho had nfi that 'eagle' fires blunt bullet with negligible penetration, entirely unlike 50 bmg. a fact known even to small children in usa.

mats: there was definitely a lot more inscrutable mp rage to skim over in the latter half of tmsr

mats: but i still occasionally grep the logs on a monthly basis for an interesting tidbit here and there

asciilifeform: there's plenty of interesting&useful in the old logs.

asciilifeform regularly links.

asciilifeform: mats: re arms, i find it interesting that despite the low cost of modern cnc, there's ~0 meaningful experimentation among the enthusiasts with genuinely new concepts. e.g. the liquid propellants suggested in '70s in nato world.

asciilifeform: theoretically could dispense with the need for precision brass cases. 1 fewer difficult-to-produce item for reich to ban .

asciilifeform: near as i can tell, all the american garage folx are making the same tired old vietnam war broomstick

mats: i'm not familiar with these liquid propellants

asciilifeform: example straight from pentagon.

mats: genuine 'ban' has long been a nonstarter, and proliferation is at absurd levels

mats: i expect people will still be digging up buried caches of ar in 2220, like recovery of qing(?) era muskets dug up for the kmt/ccp civil war

mats: hm no ming actually

asciilifeform: in ex-sov world, to this day ww2 (and even ww1) -era irons still regularly feature in police blotter

asciilifeform: i have doubts re longevity of american 'ar' tho, far too fiddly mechanism. and multitude of annoying little springs.

superkuh: "hydroxyl ammonium nitrate based liquid monopropellant" Whoa boy. Good thing they never tried it in a barrel with a diameter of more than a few inches.

superkuh: Only takes 3 or so for the deflagration to detonation transition shockwave in ammonium nitrate slurries.

asciilifeform: superkuh: linked item is merely 1 example. various armies keep returning to the idea, it is attractive to dispense with the soldier having to carry 20kg of brass, when could instead carry 4x the bullet

asciilifeform: but afaik never perfected.

superkuh: Yeah. It's a neat idea.

mats: i wish pdfs were more easily parseable

asciilifeform: mats: afaik all the dtic material is plain old scan of telefax.

mats: i'd pay for a roided pocket/historio.us (without 10k bookmarks limit) hat will index pdf content, second degree index of content of urls within urls, hitting archive.org/is if a page isnt live and caching the result, with regex plus google style modifier search like site:, around(n), wildcards, -query +query OR AND etc

asciilifeform: would need futuristic ocrism, neh.

mats: i have a massive library of interesting bookmarks (to which your link has been added) that i search regularly, and pdfs regularly fall through the gaps

asciilifeform: mats: at 1 time, i fed these through ocr, then realized that even a 1 in 50pg error rate makes the output ~useless for technical material

asciilifeform: (and in practice eggogism is much greater than above)

superkuh: I download everything and then use Recoll for full text index and search.

asciilifeform: when i mirror pdfisms on own www, i do it like this. still aint searchable, but at least dun require GB+ of shitware to display.

superkuh: http://www.recoll.org

asciilifeform: superkuh: how's the ocr ?

superkuh: Not part of it.

asciilifeform: a

asciilifeform: i've yet to see an ocrtron that doesn't miserably fall down when given mathematical (esp. 'dark ages' , made on typewriter) material

asciilifeform: and that happens to be most of what's on my hdd

superkuh: https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/usermanual/usermanual.html#RCL.INDEXING.OCR

superkuh: Apparently it has modules for tesseract and other OCR.

asciilifeform: right. nao if only it actually worked..

superkuh: Yeah. I've messed with tesseract before. And then stopped.

asciilifeform: most book warez that was in fact ocr-able, is already in plain .txt on my machine (largely ru stuff)

asciilifeform: the remainder, aint ocrable at all, cuz loox like the earlier link.

asciilifeform: mats: re bans and 'proliferations' -- theoretically any uppity plebe in usa found w/ something more than bow&arrow can be given 20-to-life if prosecutor willing to spend an evening or 2 'sewing a case'

snsabot: (trilema) 2017-05-10 asciilifeform: remember, this was the country where a man got 20 yrs for being found with a shoelace and a semiauto

asciilifeform: it's more about 'chilling effect' / 'make example' than actual attempt to make what is in effect 19th c. tech somehow unobtainable

asciilifeform: and commercial manufacturers generally won't touch anyffin that smells of 'almost banned'. take the example of electrically-fired primers.

asciilifeform: for a time, these were seen as an advance -- no firing pin, potentially much smaller wobble -- 0 mechanical clockwork for trigger. but then usg proclaimed 'these can be turned into banned MG simply in software' and whole subject disappeared, from market, from trade literature, errywhere.

mats: i remember seeing an advert for a remington weapon like this in mid 2000s, proclaimed as 'highly reliable' and futuristic

mats: forgot about it until now, wonder why it hasnt taken off for military use

asciilifeform: iirc there were problems, but nuffin that could not have been worked out via the usual iterative process. but no one wants to invest actual moneys in a design that could be banned at drop of a hat

superkuh: Electronics just seem like a bad idea in a gun.

asciilifeform: mats: pentagon very conservative with small arms design ever since vietnam debacle

asciilifeform: superkuh: most of the aficionados (whether military or amateur) already rely on electronic sights

asciilifeform: sometimes costing 5fig $

mats: simpler design - no moving parts, more rounds on station, less recoil

asciilifeform: simpler. and there are batteries that will last for 50+ yrs.

snsabot: (trilema) 2017-05-17 asciilifeform: asciilifeform bought up the lithium thionyl chloride batteries, for pennies

superkuh: What happens when someone drops a single flux compression generator or virtual cathode oscillator EMP in the area?

superkuh: Those have been common since the 80s.

asciilifeform: superkuh: overrated item. nobody cancelled inverse-square.

superkuh: Just means more cost and complexity has to be built into the electronics of the gun.

asciilifeform: nuke emp raised much false hopes re 'emp weapon', but most of the pushers are conscious frauds, pretending that similar effect can be achieved w/out pumping 1e12 charged particles suddenly through van allen belt

superkuh: If you're talking effecting an entire city or region, okay. But I totally believe in EMP for a few blocks.

asciilifeform: in reality, 20-50 metres. and at the cost of a full sized aerial bomb.

superkuh: I suppose the effect as mines would be much less since they'd not have height above terrain and minimal LOS. But maybe in trees?

superkuh: In terms of IED emp.

asciilifeform: ru actually fielded an emp shell in early 2000s. worx great in the specific context (disabling active armour at close range prior to 2nd conventional shell)

mats: penny for penny, a bouncing betty is better

asciilifeform: mats: indeed. empism is typical 'golden toilet'.

superkuh: I just like radio. :)

asciilifeform: incidentally in context of war, only really worx against radios (i.e. where there is antenna that , by design, gotta receive, so cannot shield)

superkuh: It's really hard to make any electronics without accidentally creating antenna that work for some random assortment of freqs.

asciilifeform: most famous actual field use was in gulf war 1 , against baghdad tv station. (repaired 4h later! but no one asked 'how many hrs to repair if instead had used a 100 $ aviabomb, instead of 100,000 $ 'emp' )

mats: as a schoolchild i was introduced by 'dune' to the idea that explosives are trivially accessible to people with books, at all levels of civilisation

asciilifeform: mats: i was introduced before read 'dune', via actual explosives.

superkuh: Same. It was my childhood hobby.

mats: yes, the illustrious alf kindergarten

superkuh: But I still have my fingers today.

mats: i came up in 90s silicon valley, no such education available to me

asciilifeform: is superb 'iq test' imho

mats settled for rubber band guns made out of disposable chopsticks at age 8

asciilifeform: mats: sv does seem to resemble su as depicted in usa caricatures, far more than the actual historic item

asciilifeform: superkuh: incidentally, the story of how and why flux compressor was devised, imho is interesting in own right. originates with saharov's attempts to make a fissiles-free thermonuke, in '50s.

asciilifeform: ( unsurprisingly, ~100% of the solid material on subj, to this day only avail. in ru. )

superkuh: Didn't know that. Makes sense if you want lots of current cheaply without big caps.

asciilifeform: can get far moar current than from any physically-constructable caps

asciilifeform: (and you still do need the caps -- that's how you get the initial field yer compressing w/ the dynamite)

superkuh: Right. Just not huge caps.

superkuh: http://erewhon.superkuh.com/library/Electronics/Magnetic%20Flux%20Compression/

asciilifeform: superkuh: basic principle of course public for decades nao. but if you were to go & build, plenty of 'devil in details'

superkuh: I think if I wanted EMP it'd be a simple spark gap marx hooked up to a copper pipe TEM horn in front of a parabolic dish.

asciilifeform: several physical effects not usually encountered in radio work -- e.g. corona discharge (atmosphere conducts)

superkuh: Well, marx->coax->TEM horn.

superkuh: I've got a lot of HV experience.

superkuh: Hobby-wise.

asciilifeform: superkuh: folx routinely build this, then fry lappy at coupla meters, iirc there are public photos.

asciilifeform: there are even commercial setups sold for testing shields.

superkuh: Yeah, the TEM 'bridges' you put the device in are pretty neat.

asciilifeform: however 'pull box outta knapsack and fry whole street' is science fiction.

asciilifeform: elementarily , atmosphere does not permit the req'd field density in a reasonably small volume.

asciilifeform: ( nuke emp 'cheats' via use of ionosphere )

asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-07-17#1016547 << this btw is much exaggerated. if entire device (incl. energy source) is in conductive contour, then emp irrelevant. no one cancelled green's theorem..

snsabot: Logged on 2020-07-17 14:04:57 superkuh: It's really hard to make any electronics without accidentally creating antenna that work for some random assortment of freqs.

asciilifeform: and on top of this, induced voltage only really problem if you have semiconductors. (recall mig-29, no shielding, but radar 100% lamp !)

superkuh: For a firearm triggering system, yeah, it's probably inside metal. But unlikely a complete surface. Instead each slot will act like the equivalent antenna by babinets theorem.

superkuh: Er, unlikely a completely surface surrounding the volume.

asciilifeform: if the shell is in-battery pos., then can be 100% closed countour, i can't see wainot

asciilifeform: barrel -- conductive, shell -- conductive , mechanism containing battery/trigger -- ditto

asciilifeform: and since 0 semiconductors in circuit, what exactly can opponent hope to accomplish via emp ? induce the 5A or so the primer wants to fire , hope that rifle is pointed at yer foot while this happens ?

asciilifeform: meanwhile, in lulz from other folx's chans .

snsabot: (ossasepia) 2020-07-17 jfw: and *sigh* it was originally a ~$35 TRNG; vendor closed but the schematics are there waiting for someone to step up and make more

asciilifeform still doesn't grasp what precisely prevents jfw et al from making own. asciilifeform documented the item to the point of nauseating pedantry.

asciilifeform even hosts, pro bono, orig. www where whole thing lived.

asciilifeform: can't resist to link to the lulzy 'glacier' idiocy, where is discussed 'failure scenarios' incl. e.g. 'Seismic side channel', 'Thermal side channel', 'malware', w/out mentioning that req. dep. 'bitcoin core' is itself malware.

shinohai: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-07-17#1016587 <<< those who cannot do, tea^H^H^HBitch ?

snsabot: Logged on 2020-07-17 16:21:53 asciilifeform: still doesn't grasp what precisely prevents jfw et al from making own. asciilifeform documented the item to the point of nauseating pedantry.

asciilifeform: shinohai: i have nfi. it aint especially difficult to make. (tho if fella actually thinks 'when i sell out my warehouse of N, can get N+1 in a week or 2' has rude surprise waiting for him

asciilifeform: )

asciilifeform: fwiw asciilifeform initially anticipated having to make with hands, so deliberately designed for it to be possible (albeit unpleasant) -- e.g. did not use any smt parts smaller than 0805; no BGAs; etc

asciilifeform: iirc jfw et al bought in the fire sale at least 1 example of prototype made exactly that way

shinohai: https://downdetector.com/status/cloudflare/ <<< kek

asciilifeform: lollity

shinohai: In other shits-n-giggles: https://archive.is/Mll5H

asciilifeform: lol

asciilifeform: wtf was it orig.?

shinohai: It was part of the "parler" website (which is the Trump supporter's app that is answer to twitter or something)

asciilifeform: shinohai: never heard of this..

shinohai: Been about since late 2018, though appears just coming into fashion more with conservatives a Qtards.

shinohai doesn't use, requires phone for signup

asciilifeform: shinohai: you may recall, asciilifeform said in very beginning of 'trump revolution' , 'seen this film before -- zhirinovsky' .

snsabot: (trilema) 2016-06-22 ascii_deadfiber: i dun see the 'winning.' the man is the american zhirinovsky - crafted heat sink for excitable 'red state' folk.

asciilifeform: never had to 'disillusioned' , cuz illusion was very cheap trick on day1.

asciilifeform: if some folx continue to insist that it somehow matters which muppet reads the script in oval office, this is their problem.