Hide Idle (>14 d.) Chans
← 2020-12-27 | 2020-12-29 → ↓
adlai: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-12-18#1027012 << aiui, the hypothesis in question is that gestapo is drastically tightening the net for what kind of coins one is allowed to own, and still gives 0 fux as to whether you own coins, in general; they simply don't want thousands of 'mom-and-pop shops' competing with the paypals and various similar startups that have already entered the
snsabot: Logged on 2020-12-18 17:58:12 asciilifeform: trinque: re: the 'who doesn't claim by 25th' -- in the hypothesis where gestapo is circling above trinque for him being known to hold privkeys for megacoin -- what's to convince'em that you no longer have the plantext privs ?
adlai: venture capital funnel
adlai: now, of course, they could be using this fear to sharpen the picture of who owns which coins, although that is not the hypothesis that you were discussing there.
adlai: and finally, for this morning at least:
adlai can't fathom how to resolve the elephantine cognitive dissonance of http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-06-08#1014400 and your expressed admiration for my automated trading program; how is the latter not pure xhrimatiscy?
snsabot: Logged on 2020-06-08 11:15:57 asciilifeform: jurov: asciilifeform's pov on this differed from mp's. the latter, as i understand, defined only 'socialist' debasement of currency (and, eventually, the entire post-feudal spectrum of politics) as 'root evil'. but exempted chrematists. asciilifeform does not exempt chrematists.
adlai does not consider this a rhetorical question, fwiw, although does have 'legal and moral defense' in place, otherwise -- would not still be working on same project!
adlai: however, it is unclear to me that anything resembling it would be possible in a world after the http://www.loper-os.org/#selection-641.575-641.655 process kills off centralized exchanges
feedbot: http://verisimilitudes.net/2020-12-27 << A Syndication of Verisimilitudes -- Revere Repeated Rewriting, Refining, Redesigning
verisimilitude: As a summary, seekdir was broken for twenty-five years, but all of the BSDs just blindly reused the code, so it went undetected until now.
verisimilitude: How pathetic.
adlai: ... and yet the CL 'community', and lack thereof, get ridiculed for the ubiquitous NIH-syndrome.
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-12-27#1027372 << adlai do you simply live in a 'high-policing' jurisdiction, or personally unlucky, or wat? just how often do they scour yer desk for incriminating papers ?
snsabot: Logged on 2020-12-27 14:44:06 adlai: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-12-18#1026968 << I've had papers with keys on them thrown in the trash by ignorant cops; it's one of the risks of junkyard steganography.
snsabot: Logged on 2020-12-27 23:52:49 adlai: leaves publicly-visible note-to-self: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-12-17#1026922 :two-yogurt-cans-and-dental-floss: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/trilema/2016-10-19#1556804
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-12-28#1027379 << imho makes sense to use phrase 'gestapo is tightening..' when there are arrests, trials, executions, ~sumthing~ other than 'ohnoez, whatif..'
snsabot: Logged on 2020-12-28 00:01:12 adlai: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-12-18#1027012 << aiui, the hypothesis in question is that gestapo is drastically tightening the net for what kind of coins one is allowed to own, and still gives 0 fux as to whether you own coins, in general; they simply don't want thousands of 'mom-and-pop shops' competing with the paypals and various similar startups that have already entered the
trinque: folks simply ought to hold their own coins. centralizing it was always stupid.
trinque: and on another tack, I have no incentive whatsoever to stand up w/e compliance regime they may foist onto the thing, and even less incentive to herp like it didn't happen, if did.
asciilifeform: trinque: you may recall, asciilifeform was orig. not enthusiastic about dbwallet
trinque: yep, I do
trinque: makes plenty of sense to e.g. centralize an "x paid y" database
trinque: but the current impl sucks for a variety of reasons
asciilifeform: trinque: remind me, how didja cover the expense of running that thing? i dun recall fee anywhere
asciilifeform: was it 100% from fatfingered sends ?
trinque: I just paid for the thing, and don't mind that I did
asciilifeform runs e.g. logger, to this day, pro bono -- but it dun take much in the way of manual labour, cancelled vacations, etc. to do it.
asciilifeform: trinque: asciilifeform received, btw, the last dbw wd. ty for a++ service !
trinque: glad to hear it
trinque: for those waiting there are more to run today
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-12-28#1027384 << this aint even a bad q. but betrays a surface reading. say asciilifeform had written, 'opposed to snooping'. but then suppose adlai asks, 'why do you rail against nsa, but cheer on a fella who pwns clitler's personal box and leaks her pants-down pics?'
snsabot: Logged on 2020-12-28 00:06:53 adlai: can't fathom how to resolve the elephantine cognitive dissonance of http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-06-08#1014400 and your expressed admiration for my automated trading program; how is the latter not pure xhrimatiscy?
asciilifeform loong ago, also had experiments w/ trading bots (was pre-btcism, however) and w/ roughly same aim as adlai's -- laboured under the naive notion that could e.g. apply well-written cl to where the industrial chrematists were stuck w/ indian java monkeys, and exploit, to take 'some of what they thought was theirs'; see also lenin's 'грабь награбленное'(tm)(r).
asciilifeform: chrematism, i'm firmly convinced, is the exact sort of sin the ancients saw it as : is intensely tempting w/ all kindsa sweets, and will easily destroy yer soul -- but only if yer ~successful~ in it.
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-12-28#1027390 << there's a lulrevelation quite like this one, just about every other year nowadays
snsabot: Logged on 2020-12-28 02:49:28 verisimilitude: As a summary, seekdir was broken for twenty-five years, but all of the BSDs just blindly reused the code, so it went undetected until now.
asciilifeform: ( recall e.g. 'shellshock' )
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-12-28#1027392 << establishment mouthpieces always follow, if not explicitly state, mussolini's 'for us and ours -- everything; for others -- the law'. recall for instance the 'lisp is slow'(tm) folx who carefully set up discussion so that unix load time not counted, but cl runtime's -- is, or pretend that year is 1960
snsabot: Logged on 2020-12-28 03:43:03 adlai: ... and yet the CL 'community', and lack thereof, get ridiculed for the ubiquitous NIH-syndrome.
snsabot: (trilema) 2017-07-02 asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-07-02#1678460 << how about we roll the boot time ( to shell!! ) of your cmachinekernel, how about?
asciilifeform: and jit compiler not invented, etc
adlai: Israel is quite full of police, although they usually don't make much trouble for individuals; I've only ever once suffered a search of a residence, due to old Silk Road troubles; events in recent years were all due to my drunken idiocy.
adlai: (once they are actually arresting and keeping you for a few hours/days, they place all posessions in a sealed bag, and throw away anything that seems contraband or merely unidentifiable... i.e., papers with the scribbles. these days - notebook full of scribbles, good luck guessing which are the important ones)
adlai: notebook makes the exact opposite impression, too. loose papers? crazy drunkard / schizo; notebook? artist!!!!
adlai: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-12-28#1027395 << I do want to make a proper, digestible, statement of the useful parts of this; however, I need to finish >> http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/trilema/2016-12-11#1581377
snsabot: Logged on 2020-12-28 11:29:26 asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-12-27#1027374 << care to expand ?
snsabot: (trilema) 2016-12-11 asciilifeform: adlai: do me personal favour , and drink a long cup of tea, i am trying to deal with actual problem here, it needs solution, from able hands
adlai: there actually are at least two altcoins now that implement versions of the cryptosystem in question, although I have studied neither one in any detail beyond being aware that they went from 'worthless testnet' to 'experimental altcoin'
asciilifeform: adlai: i know of a coula dozen shitcoins w/ oddball cryptosystems. which specifically didja have in mind ?
asciilifeform: *coupla
adlai: the cryptosystem is Pedersen commitments of aG+bH for the size of each output, and the two of which I am aware are that use this system are called Grin and BEAM.
adlai: the idea of the Pedersen commitment is that you can validate that a transaction does not inflate the monetary base, without knowing what the sizes of individual outputs.
adlai: the additional 'moving part' is that someone could have computed the discrete log of one generator relative to the other.
asciilifeform: adlai: do you know the algo ? can describe it here in detail ?
adlai studied the use of Pedersen commitments as described in the original MimbleWimble paper, those alts might use something slightly different.
adlai: "paper" is an exaggeration; the text document dumped by some anon rando, and then the slightly more detailed explanations written by Andrew Poelstra.
adlai: coinbases and miner fees are cleartext amounts, encoded as either amount*G+0*H, or amount*G+constant*H, where the constant is also published. that enables those amounts to be public, while still conforming to the necessary structure, i.e. a point on the elliptic curve
adlai: creating transactions must involve an interactive step, where the recipient provides the sender with a*G+b*H, for the amount a that the sender agrees to send, without revealing the secret b; this secret number effectively becomes the private both for decrypting the size of the output, and for spending it in a subsequent transaction.
asciilifeform: i suppose answer is 'no, don't know' ? ( ftr, when asciilifeform asks for 'detail of algo', is asking for at least this level of exposition )
adlai: 'decrypting the size of the output' is thinko nonsense, you can't decrypt that [without solvig discrete log]; however, you can ~validate~ the commitment, knowing the secret number.
adlai: sure, that is fair.
adlai does not have a linearized explanation, ready to rattle off live.
asciilifeform: adlai: i recall sweating through 1 of these in '17, and at least once later, and realizing that there was ~no~ hard proof given that the output coin <= input coin ; or that a phantom spendability key is not created
adlai: iirc, it reduces to discrete log between the two generators.
asciilifeform: and in general all 'oddball algo by anon' are guilty until proven innocent of being elaborate smoke&mirror schemes for inflatola, premine, or even straight magic-key theft
asciilifeform: imho any proposal for glorious coin-of-the-fyootoor gotta be not significantly more complicated than rsa
adlai: so, it is a quantum step less secure than the regular ECDSA in bitcoin public keys, where you have to extract the discrete log for each key you wish to crack; whereas here, you solve one discrete log (or perhaps, either one of log(G,H) or log(H,G)?), and then can reuse that logarithm for unmasking all subsequent amounts.
adlai: it is definitely a weakness.
asciilifeform: adlai: abstracting away from the concrete crackpot algo -- can you see why a flawed anonymization mechanism is worse than none at all ?
adlai: sure. security theatre is at best merely an added expense, at worst, less secure than simply blending in to 8 billion people all using the same public system in nearly indistinguishable ways..
adlai: I'd like to emphasize that I am only drawing attention towards the Pedersen commitment thingy, and not the other idea that was proposed simultaneously with the MimbleWimble and possibly integrated into those alts... they had some ideas about compressing the proof-of-work itself, and there were so many arguments over their brokenness that I never even bothered studying what the exactl complaints were.
asciilifeform: adlai: i recall a long parade of various crackpot schemes , this & others. all had 1 thing in common -- peddled by, and discussed largely exclusively by, the enrichment-scheme (invariably premine scamola, or even straight boobytrap) shitcoin enthusiast culture.
adlai: my inclination is towards systems that are simple and resilient enough that ~8 billion people are using the same system, and you simply do not need fancy mathematical hocus pocus anonymity theatere, because it is computationally infeasible to pick one person out from among the 8 billion.
adlai: or perhaps, 1 billion people using it; yet each making a few dozen txs per week, with a few dozen plausible misinterpretations of each individual tx. there is a rapid complexity explosion once the small multipliers get large enough.
asciilifeform: adlai: i won't pretend to have studied and understood ~every~ crackpot 'anon coin' scheme proposed in past decade. but will pick 1 example, schnorr's. which elegantly lends itself to being unraveled like ball of yarn if you can (and enemy -- can) find 'which end to grab'
snsabot: (trilema) 2016-08-30 asciilifeform: davout: 'ring signatures' are not the promised 'invisibility cloak', but more of a smoke grenade.
adlai: imo, such a system, combined with what you wrote in the convo with trinque last week, about being unable to prove ownership unless the defendant has screwed up so badly, that they are probably going to be prosecuted for some much meatier crime than merely posessing the wrong archive of the Library of Babel
adlai actually never fully studied the ring signature scheme(s)
adlai: I began at one point to read through the original CryptoNote paper, and then glanced at Monero and realized it was a target moving faster than I could study at my snail's pace.
asciilifeform: adlai: essence there, was 'this tx was signed by 1 of the following N keys' and implication 'you can't find which'. except, this is false, you can ~always~ find which by process of elimination, eventually
asciilifeform: adlai: that's another symptom of 'enrichment scheme'. the author releases 'new, improved!!!' algo erry yr or 2
asciilifeform: specifically to discourage detailed analysis by 3rdparties.
adlai: that much, I could understand! however, I am capable of following the mathematics, after putting in the time; yet by the time that I find a few hours to dedicate to that, fluffypony et al have rolled out their next hardfork.
asciilifeform: adlai: you will notice, asciilifeform refused to touch ANYTHING these people touched. and, now you probably also know, that it wasn't because mp sat behind him and said not to. he wasn't, and aint now, sitting. simply, incurable allergy to anyffing touched by the fluffyponies et al.
asciilifeform: in fact, the fact that they 'touched' bitcoin, kept asciilifeform off bitcoin for ~years~ at one time.
adlai: incidentally, if we upstack back to reliable systems, instead of griping about the broken ones: shouldn't there be some parallel to Lamport signatures, for obscuring amounts?
adlai has not thought this through in detail, simply asking an executive-level-stupid kind of naive question.
asciilifeform: adlai: it aint hard to 'obscure amounts', as such. what's hard is for arbitrary observer (i.e. anyone w/ a copy of the blocks) to be able to prove that coin aint being alchemied into existence.
asciilifeform: adlai: i was under impression that you understood this, earlier
adlai: you never need to multiply amounts, though, so do not need FHE
adlai: I understand that. this recent naive question is along the lines of, can the Lamport-style construction be used to make a mathematical structure that supports the addition and difference operations, to prove that inflation has not occurred.
adlai: this would avoid faith in hardness of discrete logarithm / integer factorization
asciilifeform: adlai: you gotta be able to prove that ~each~ transaction does not magick coin into existence. (and specifically NOT, as some naive folx thought, 'that globally no coins magick into existence'. these are not equivalent statements. i.e. i could suggest an algo where globally coins are conserved, but dr. evil sometimes is able to take the output of YOUR tx, on rare occasion)
asciilifeform: adlai: there's a 'circle-squaring' contradiction in there. if you can do summation/difference, you can then deduce signers.
snsabot: Logged on 2020-12-28 13:23:26 asciilifeform: adlai: essence there, was 'this tx was signed by 1 of the following N keys' and implication 'you can't find which'. except, this is false, you can ~always~ find which by process of elimination, eventually
asciilifeform: i don't grasp how you could have a way around this, even in principle.
asciilifeform: hence, in any such crackpotcoin, either: the 'anonymity' is ultimately a lie; or : the noninflation is a lie; or -- likely -- both.
adlai: incidentally, on another of the issues from the recent megaconvo: I do not share your and trinque's fear of an embrace-and-extinguishment of btc by authorities; I have warmed quite strongly to the conspiracy that says that it was created by e.g. CIA, or Secret Service, for the express purpose of working correctly, to fund their own illicit activities; and they thus need it to remain useful.
adlai: I can understand the fear that there will be barriers and pitfalls to make it less readily available for the average chump, although I strongly doubt there will be any effort to actually make it useless.
trinque: I reject the notion that any improvement of one's risk profile is driven by fear.
adlai: sure, bad word choice on my part. I do not intend to describe your risk assessment as fearful, and you can probably choose a correct word yourself rather than me putting other ones in your mouth!
asciilifeform: adlai: bitcoinism cut all folx (not only bureaucrats) into effectively 2 groups -- 'picked up some, in time' 'did not pick up'. conflict b/w these is inevitable and prolly eternal.
trinque: I'm observing that btc is undergoing regulatory capture, on which we seem to agree
shinohai: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-12-28#1027454 <<< the only thing these do is make BTC for those willing to trade for 'em xD
snsabot: Logged on 2020-12-28 13:18:40 asciilifeform: adlai: i recall a long parade of various crackpot schemes , this & others. all had 1 thing in common -- peddled by, and discussed largely exclusively by, the enrichment-scheme (invariably premine scamola, or even straight boobytrap) shitcoin enthusiast culture.
trinque: a possible pill for this is improving mixer tech, but we're way below that on the tech ladder atm
asciilifeform: trinque: not even meaning to dispute your logic ( asciilifeform in general does not follow in realtime the subj of 'just how retarded the bureaucrats at this very moment' ) but it still aint clear to me that anyone presently suffers from a problem the solution to which resembles 'better mixers' etc
asciilifeform: rather like the problem w/ e.g. 'silk road' wasn't strictly the tor 0day.
adlai: iiuc, the only people who do, are the ones who try to withdraw from e.g. Coinbase, directly into e.g. SatoshiDice, and then get their Coinbase account frozen (and the satoshidice payout, if they won -- donated to coinbase, inc!)
trinque: my dreams involve rendering impossible the things I hate, like all religious zealots :p
asciilifeform: trinque: fair'nuff. so long as aware of the risk of inventing 'elixir against headaches, sweaty feet, and mice'(tm)(r)(ilf&petrov '12 chairs')
trinque emits an acknowledging chortle
asciilifeform: also on subj, recall the famed tomb of hadja nasreddin, where massive iron door but no walls.
asciilifeform: (intended opposite to english proverbial 'submarine with screen door')
adlai does not recall that tomb, although when taken to Paris by parents as a small child, shown Napoleon's tomb; "see the sarcophagi? they are heavy, so he will stay put"
asciilifeform: adlai: americans generally do not know about this tomb, but they re-create it erry time they buy massive steel door to put in their cardboard house
adlai: fwiw, one time local police tried breaking down the door of the apartment in which I currently lurk, due to some 'broken telephone' leading to a call about one of my neighbors being misinterpreted as my address
asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-12-28#1027488 << it aint even that you can't do this ( shinohai , iirc, does -- or did, on occasion w/ success ) but that the complicated algos, the various 'mimbles' etc, are a ~shell game~, their whole ~point~ is to create an exploitable (but strictly 'NOBUS'-exploitable) information asymmetry.
snsabot: Logged on 2020-12-28 13:36:38 shinohai: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-12-28#1027454 <<< the only thing these do is make BTC for those willing to trade for 'em xD
asciilifeform: adlai: happens in usa often enuff. incl. to e.g. the mayor of the town asciilifeform was living in at one pt
adlai: they didn't use any professional equipment, although I watched [silently! with a huge grin!] while an angry and incredibly fit young cop literally sprinted and bodyslammed the door, kicking it, etc. door didn't budge; concrete frame of building - cracked.
asciilifeform: adlai: to add insult to injury, in usa, if the policeman injures himself bashing own head against door, or in some other way, you can be accused of 'assaulting' him
asciilifeform: i.e. for not opening politely
adlai: the story gets much stupider, though; the original call was for domestic violence, yet they returned to the station after giving up on my door, going to a different neighbor, poor altruistic fellow opens door with cannabis smoke wafting into the stairwell... "ok, we have accomplished policing, can return to station"
adlai actually got a nice letter quite quickly, after the one time of assaulting a police officer, declaring that they would not press charges.
adlai: (plausible self-defense, and I was literally blackout drunk at the time; regained consciousness from pain of hand breaking on jaw!)
adlai: my hand, policeman's jaw. I am impressed, in retrospect, that it landed, despite my drunkenness.
adlai has been spending the recent lockdown sobering up, fwiw.
asciilifeform: adlai: sadly cannot comment interestingly, having 0 experience w/ such joys. contact w/ policemen limited so far to tickets for burned out headlamps, and sitting on juries where these figured
adlai: Israel is now officially beginning a 3rd lockdown, although the 2nd lockdown that began in september never quite ended.
asciilifeform: adlai: hey, in usa afaik 'state of emergency' declared by... j. carter, is still in effect today.
adlai: Yom Kippur war never ended, either; Israel and Syria signed a ceasefire, and it has lasted for half a century.
adlai: one amusing thing about the rona panics is discovering that my mother was a closeted anti-vaxxer.
snsabot: Logged on 2020-12-28 13:39:37 trinque: my dreams involve rendering impossible the things I hate, like all religious zealots :p
adlai was given all vaccines as a child, perhaps this is something that the mother picked up from reading facebook etc in recent years
verisimilitude: By far the most disconcerting thing about counterfeit culture and whatnot, adlai, is the realization that this newly-misplaced trust was surely misplaced for one's entire life, following the principles.
verisimilitude: I'll be receiving a book or two as a gift soon, and they may have been ordered from Amazon, I don't know but intend to ask, which means they could've been counterfeited. Now, it's easy to think ``If the book isn't the original, I can't trust it, so I'll need to be extra careful.'', but this is what one should always be doing with a book regardless.
adlai: e.g., she told me a new joke: mouse meets another mouse, running down the street; "where are you going?", asks the first mouse; "over there, they are giving out free rona vaccines", says 2nd mouse; "relax", urges 1st, "wait until they have finished testing them on humans"
adlai: verisimilitude: heh, a few of the old books that I have intercepted on their way out from the library at the university are in "might as well be printed&rebound warez copies" condition
adlai: a few are also in surprising, "who da fuq throws these out" condition; e.g., "Nature of the Chemical Bond", 'dragon book'
adlai: CLtL2
verisimilitude: I've no issue trusting most medicine, merely because I've little choice, and when I was young had none. However, I don't intend to take any further medicine of any kind except in those circumstances where I can't reasonably help it. I've taken medicine once this year, by my count, when I was ill for a few weeks and it was clear it wasn't going to go away nicely on its own.
verisimilitude: My copy of CLtL2 is in tatters since I bought it.
verisimilitude: I don't understand the weak people who take ``preventative migraine medicine'' and other drivel; when I feel bad, I sleep it off.
adlai: for quite a while, one of the families of experimental migraine medications was substituted ergoloids, i.e., lsd.
verisimilitude: In the modern world, this extends to everything, however. I've little choice but to trust my food isn't poisoned, because I grow none of it. My machines probably aren't being used against me, but I didn't build them. It's turtles most of the way down.
adlai: there was quite a bit of excitement around bromo-LSD, which has no psychedelic effect, while still constricting the one dilated blood vessel or whatever it was that caused that one specific kind of migraine; so, now migraines don't get you free lsd anymore.
verisimilitude: Well, I grow some of it.
adlai: the food situation in Israel is quite good.
verisimilitude: I simply mean it's a matter of trust, adlai.
adlai: even the bog-standard, mass-market consumerist supermarkets seem to have food that turns reassuring colors if I leave it out of the fridge for a few days
verisimilitude: I avoid foods with sugar added, plastic containers, and whatnot, to the extent I can.
adlai: and there are plenty of shops and cooperatives where you buy from the shop owner, who buys from the farmer.
verisimilitude: How's the food situation in Israel, compared to the US, which has corn syrup, sugar, and plastic containers everywhere?
adlai: junk food is still available, of course.
adlai: pretty much all american junk food and sugary drinks, are popular in Israel.
adlai: however, there are also edible options that are easy to find.
verisimilitude: So it's just easier to find the good stuff, I take it?
verisimilitude: There's one brand of peanut butter I'm aware of sold in a glass container, with the original peanut oil still in place, and with no added sugar, as an example.
adlai: yes. part of the reason for this might be the kosher certifications, that are not required, although lots of stores and suppliers want the certifications so that they retain the religious customers
verisimilitude: Plenty of food in the US is kosher and halal, but it wouldn't be because of ``the intolerant minority'' in Israel, yes.
adlai: and along with the various strange regulations, the advantage of the kosher certification process is simply that an external observer shows up at the farm/factory/kitchen, starts poking around, asking awkward questions; tends to keep people more honest.
adlai: a few of the regulations get rather extreme, though: e.g., sea salt is not kosher, until someone verifies that microbes are filtered out of the harvesting process, because those are meat!
adlai: and then there is the strange case of fish. kosher laws count fish as dairy.
adlai: yet eggs, are neither meat, nor dairy.
verisimilitude: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-12-28#1027541 It's amusing to me how unhealthy food and entertainment from the US is popular in so many countries, including China. I've read it described as ``Our bread and circuses are so good, even countries which hate us like them.''.
snsabot: Logged on 2020-12-28 14:17:01 adlai: pretty much all american junk food and sugary drinks, are popular in Israel.
adlai had to comply with Kosher regulations whenever doing kitchen duty in the military, thus the familiarity; family, completely secular.
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: 19th c. brits almost certainly likewise thought 'our opium, so great, even in china, they hate us, but luvv it'
verisimilitude: I've read Hitler liked Spaghetti Westerns, as another example.
asciilifeform: stalin, supposedly, also
adlai: and Dear Leader, too!
shinohai: adlai: did u guise get those 24-hr rations with giant cans of olives ?
shinohai: (manot krav or similar i think?)
adlai: iirc, these are what Dear Leader hopes to receive as personal gifts when being visited by various american basketball stars... DVDs
verisimilitude: This ``Dear Leader'' being Bibi here?
adlai: shinohai: "manot hakrav olot kesef rav, al tiftaxh lashav"!!!! [combat rations great expense, do not open unless in need]
adlai: verisimilitude: n.korea
verisimilitude: Based on ``basketball stars'', is this Kim?
verisimilitude: Alright.
adlai: Bibi's weaknesses are, allegedly, pink champagne, fancy cigars, and nuclear submarines.
adlai: there is a big corruption investigation going on against the Netanyahu family these days, greatly slowed down by laws against prosecuting elected officials
verisimilitude: I don't believe most of what I read about North Korea. It's too convenient that one of the countries not enmeshed with the world banking system is a bunch of evil, inhuman, baby-eaters or whatever.
adlai: every so often, another howler gets published; e.g., fifty thousand shekels mystery item in the official governmental budget of office supplies, turns out to be... flowers! for his wife, who needs fresh roses every day.
verisimilitude: Such laws are Jewish tradition, aren't they, adlai?
adlai: iiuc they are standard in all 'western' political systems. if you want to prosecute an elected official, kick them out of office first; otherwise, they can't do their job.
verisimilitude: True, but I still thought it was funny.
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: re northkr, asciilifeform agrees entirely (and in fact well-read in subj, and from sympathetic sov. lit re same, and not from angloliberasts) ; see also .
snsabot: (trilema) 2017-04-16 asciilifeform: which is why they've been trying to rm -rf northkr since '50s
snsabot: (trilema) 2016-11-01 asciilifeform: northkr may well be the last 'soviet coldwallet' remaining.
adlai: shinohai: so, re:manot krav - these are notorious in Israel. they are essentially just boxes of various canned foods, you can buy the same ones in a supermarket, although the army gets them in bulk for cheaper
adlai: I was enlisted just after they decided spam was unhealthy.
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: sadly, northkr is prolly on the last king of its dynasty. and after him, cocacola, WHO, etc.
adlai: so, every now and then, they'd open up some warehouse with old rations from years ago, and suddenly... guess who lives off spam for a week.
asciilifeform: adlai: is interesting; afaik you can't buy u.s. army rations in american shops
adlai: well, aren't US rations "MREs" that contain all sorts of secret chemicals for instant warming, extra nutrition, etc?
asciilifeform: adlai: in sov army was regular thing -- old warehouse found, and recruits in 1980s are eating tins from 'lend-lease'
verisimilitude: It's queer living under an obviously evil government. The thought ``Maybe they'll lose one day.'' stands by ``If they lose, things may become worse.''.
adlai: manot krav are literally just cans of tuna, pickles, chocolate spread, etc.
adlai: oh, how could i forget beans. tons of beans. go excellently well with a week spent crammed in an AFV with half a dozen other men.
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: the key realization is that 'worse' aint a scalar.
adlai: the ration sets always had 'desert', too: usually a bar of halva, and a can of peaches or pineapple
adlai: the peaches were indescribably disgusting. basically sugar syrup with peach-shaped gobs of fructose marinating in it.
adlai: the pineapple - heavenly.
shinohai: The halva was what i liked, ive only ever got portions from one @ army/navy store.
shinohai: (i liked the dates actually)
adlai never quite understood what was so great about halva, although gladly traded chunks of the halva bar for his share of peaches and vegetable spread
adlai: vegetable spread is as gross as it sounds. orange paste, don't even bother reading the ingredients. there are none. just orange paste.
asciilifeform buys regularly (ru-made) halva
verisimilitude: I'm not familiar with halva.
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: eastern sweet delicacy, made traditionally from sunflower
adlai: most importantly, retains its mechanical rigidity almost perfectly through ~40C
adlai: so it hardly ever turned into the kind of gunk you find if you open a chocolate bar that sat too long in the sun.
adlai: although, in particularly bad exercises, where your rations sit for days in the summer sunlight, right by a running engine... blech.
asciilifeform can picture how this is mega-feature in 50+c warfare
adlai: folks used to joke about cooking eggs on the radar equipment, or on the engine blocks.
adlai: although according to safety instructions, if you are close enough to the antenna to cook eggs, you will die of cancer before the end of the exercise
adlai: and cooking on the engine blocks... dunno, maybe my crews just weren't very good at keeping them clean, but i wouldn't eat anything that touched them
adlai: the engine of certain vehicles has a little receptacle for collecting the densest fraction of the burned oils, these need periodically to be dumped out manually. one guy, on a dare, once stuck his tongue into that.
adlai: the army does strange things to people.
verisimilitude: How did he like it?
adlai: this was the kind of guy who lit his own farts on fire.
adlai recalls him sticking his tongue in, about 1cm into the filth, giving it a little shake, then whisking it out, hollering, retching, etc
adlai: tongue came out completely pitch black.
verisimilitude: I'm reminded of the ``It was all one long strand.'' story.
adlai: otoh, some people were probably bonkers even before the army; e.g., first week of basic training, one guy in the room next to mine got caught pissing in an empty pop bottle and tossing it out the window, instead of walking 50m to the toilets
adlai: ahaha yes. it is quite reminiscent of the spitton, although opaque! and black!
asciilifeform: verisimilitude, adlai : subj!
adlai: spittoon is unforgettable, lol.
adlai found himself suddenly recalling spittoon.txt during biochem class, thinking to self: "ahh, the DNA strands must have gotten stiched 5' to 3' between all the spittles..."
adlai: personally my favorite stories of bizarre idiocy from the military are of vehicles that ended up in seemingly impossible situations, although these don't quite translate well to text
adlai can write, "APC sunk into mud puddle deeper than entire treads", although that does not convey the experience of watching the filth begin leaking inwards
adlai: that one was a particularly annoying incident. APC was 'mine', although my CO was riding along, so he was in command, and the idiot decided that the puddle was a good place to stop. APC is waterproof, no?
adlai: this CO was one of that rare breed of human who can fall asleep standing up in mid conversation, while ~he~ is talking to ~you~!
adlai: yet somehow - officer.
asciilifeform: adlai: iirc you were a corporal? or wat
adlai: since a few decades ago, enlisted ranks in the IDF progress automatically, according to seniority.
adlai: so my ranks were simply a deterministic function of time since enlistment.
adlai: discharge paper says, iirc, equivalent of american SFC
adlai: this was part of making the army more egalitarian.
adlai had a skilled role, with extra responsibility, although the ranks themselves still progressed linearly
asciilifeform: unrelatedly, adlai , broken link here
snsabot: Logged on 2020-12-28 00:11:32 adlai: however, it is unclear to me that anything resembling it would be possible in a world after the http://www.loper-os.org/#selection-641.575-641.655 process kills off centralized exchanges
adlai: 'skilled' is relative, ofc; e.g., officially prohibited from ever touching a single screw on any computer, only qualified to attach cables, turn on, off, and report if the sad light blinks.
asciilifeform: sumthing useful, btw, that a wwwism expert (adlai?) could do -- fix the bug in the highlight js which nailed adlai's link..
adlai: lol, good luck tracking down mp's indian who wrote the original js!
asciilifeform: adlai: afaik it was cribbed straight from archive.is
adlai: maybe mp wrote it himself!
asciilifeform: ( asciilifeform doesn't use the php-end version , given as it dun work w/ equations! )
adlai: strange re:that link; somehow, the anchor ended up appended to the root URL of your blog, instead of the specific article (the mpex review)
asciilifeform: adlai: it happens when click out of highlight. known bug.
asciilifeform: unrelatedly to any of this : trinque : this in fact worked. ( tho still will grumble, it has nonstandard mount holes: of the normal atx pattern, only 6 match; and 1 of the remaining 3 atx standoffs -- will in fact short out power to the board! if not removed! )
snsabot: Logged on 2020-12-21 19:54:39 asciilifeform: will prolly try the infamous kdpe-d16 next. this an' the other one, were the last 2 opteron+ecc mobos before the great fritzchipping.
asciilifeform: adlai: a, ty
asciilifeform can only w/ difficulty picture that short as sumthing other than a practical joke by designer
asciilifeform: also seems to be documented nowhere on the net, funnily enuff. despite supposedly widespread interest in the board among 'coreboot'/linuxbios/etc aficionados.
asciilifeform: ( unpleasantly reminiscent, fwiw, of 'rms's laptop' saga )
snsabot: (trilema) 2016-02-28 asciilifeform: i recently built what i believe is an exact replica of rms's laptop
verisimilitude: I'm currently using my Lemote Yeeloong.
asciilifeform: while on subj -- if any readers know of decent (i.e. take 80mm or larger modern-day fans) hedgehogs for amd 'g34' socket, plox to write in.
verisimilitude: It's mostly good for IRC. Emacs lags in some cases I wouldn't've thought it would, compared to my other machines.
verisimilitude: s/my/mine/
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: i recall, you described. what's running on that thing ?
verisimilitude: Surprisingly, OpenBSD works best on it.
verisimilitude: The GNU/Linux options are terrible.
verisimilitude: OpenBSD gives me grief on another laptop, but works near perfectly on this.
verisimilitude: It would be nice to have CL and Gnat on it, though; I've but GNU APL, currently.
asciilifeform had a hand-sewn linux , for 'M' ; but was 'busybox' item, rather than general-purpose workstation build
verisimilitude: If OpenBSD ever drops support for it, I'll probably end up stepping in to help.
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: what asciilifeform would really like to know, is why mips32/64 linux abi was delibrately braindamaged.
asciilifeform: someone, at some point, did this. who ?
verisimilitude: Is this a reference to that ``reserved register'' drivel?
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: mno
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: talking about the abi. it uses nonstandard flags for some very basic commands, even e.g. open()
verisimilitude: Oh; well, there's also an issue where the operating system gives itself free reign to clobber some registers at any time, so they shouldn't be used.
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: iirc floating point
verisimilitude: Doing it correctly was too difficult for them.
verisimilitude: No, general purpose registers, I believe in the mid-twenties range.
asciilifeform: ( fwiw many mips implementations did not even include floating point. my emulator is among'em )
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: similar idiocy exists in x86-64 (some of the extended regs get clobbered)
verisimilitude: It's an obscenity, how most computer systems are treating the underlying machine code as Urbit does Nock, i.e. that they just ignore it most of the time, yet defend it.
verisimilitude: I've still not written any MIPS machine code, despite having owned the machine for years; if it's not a bizarre executable file format, it's bizarre constants only ascertainable by querying the C compiler.
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: simply brittleness/tunnel vision , of design. e.g. assumption that all executables on the box had in fact come out of the c compiler, which in turn has snarfed in the particular .h header soup which came w/ ~that~ kernel; etc
asciilifeform: this is common to whole unixtard ecosystem
verisimilitude: Yes; OpenBSD also wants to start tightening the screws, forcing system calls to be made from the C library.
verisimilitude: Why expose the system calls directly, then?
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: linus had 'softer' version of this retardation (permitted direct calls; but pointedly and explicitly refused to standardize the abi. however, more or less de-facto standardized without his say-so)
verisimilitude: What incenses me, is how some systems such as SBCL have some C language segments, for interfacing, and then retards come up and pretend that means all of SBCL depends on the C language.
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: in important sense, it does, tho -- can i build or operate it on a box for which i've no c compiler ? afaik not
verisimilitude: The design of the system practically enforces the C language for interfacing, and then fools use that as justification for how great the C language is.
asciilifeform: nor is easy to lift it off linux's abi and onto another platform, for this reason
verisimilitude: Sure, but certain retards then think that anything built on Common Lisp, et al. draw the same way.
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: is what i was referring to there
snsabot: Logged on 2020-12-28 11:53:09 asciilifeform: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/asciilifeform/2020-12-28#1027392 << establishment mouthpieces always follow, if not explicitly state, mussolini's 'for us and ours -- everything; for others -- the law'. recall for instance the 'lisp is slow'(tm) folx who carefully set up discussion so that unix load time not counted, but cl runtime's -- is, or pretend that year is 1960
verisimilitude: They think the C language percolates through everything, but of course it stops with C and not, say, the machine code.
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: more insidiously (and much more difficult to fix), is how influenced design of irons (e.g. 'c dun have typed pointers, so iron won't either') but this is prolly for another thread
verisimilitude: Somewhat switching topics, I may have something interesting hosted on Common Lisp in the next month or two, but I'm really just teasing with potential future work.
asciilifeform: verisimilitude: nifty, dun hesitate to post
asciilifeform bbl,teatime
verisimilitude: Yes, mentioning it makes me more likely to follow through, but it's best if I don't mention much else.
asciilifeform: $ticker btc usd
btcinfobot: Current BTC price in USD: $26822.12
asciilifeform: !w poll
watchglass: Polling 15 nodes...
watchglass: 205.134.172.4:8333 : (172-4.core.ai.net) Alive: (0.083s) V=70001 (/therealbitcoin.org:0.7.0.1/) Jumpers=0x1 (TRB-Compat.) Blocks=663420
watchglass: 54.39.156.171:8333 : (ns562940.ip-54-39-156.net) Alive: (0.112s) V=99999 (/therealbitcoin.org:0.9.99.99/) Jumpers=0x1 (TRB-Compat.) Blocks=663420
watchglass: 205.134.172.26:8333 : Alive: (0.092s) V=99999 (/therealbitcoin.org:0.9.99.99/) Jumpers=0x1 (TRB-Compat.) Blocks=663396
watchglass: 205.134.172.6:8333 : (172-6.core.ai.net) Alive: (0.082s) V=99999 (/therealbitcoin.org:0.9.99.99/) Jumpers=0x1 (TRB-Compat.) Blocks=663390
watchglass: 205.134.172.28:8333 : Alive: (0.023s) V=99999 (/therealbitcoin.org:0.9.99.99/) Jumpers=0x1 (TRB-Compat.) Return Addr=0.0.0.0:8333 Blocks=662669 (Operator: whaack)
watchglass: 71.114.46.209:8333 : (pool-71-114-46-209.washdc.fios.verizon.net) Alive: (0.160s) V=99999 (/therealbitcoin.org:0.9.99.99/) Jumpers=0x1 (TRB-Compat.) Blocks=663393 (Operator: asciilifeform)
watchglass: 208.94.240.42:8333 : Alive: (0.145s) V=99999 (/therealbitcoin.org:0.9.99.99/) Jumpers=0x1 (TRB-Compat.) Blocks=663420
watchglass: 213.109.238.156:8333 : Alive: (0.251s) V=99999 (/therealbitcoin.org:0.9.99.99/) Jumpers=0x1 (TRB-Compat.) Blocks=663250
watchglass: 143.202.160.10:8333 : Alive: (0.247s) V=70001 (/therealbitcoin.org:0.7.0.1/) Jumpers=0x1 (TRB-Compat.) Blocks=663420
watchglass: 84.16.46.130:8333 : (182518.pk.3pp.slovanet.sk) Alive: (0.313s) V=99999 (/therealbitcoin.org:0.9.99.99/) Jumpers=0x1 (TRB-Compat.) Blocks=441015
watchglass: 185.85.38.54:8333 : (tlapnet-38-54.cust.tlapnet.cz) Alive: (0.232s) V=99999 (/therealbitcoin.org:0.9.99.99/) Jumpers=0x1 (TRB-Compat.) Blocks=663420
watchglass: 185.163.46.29:8333 : (185-163-46-29.mivocloud.com) Alive: (0.124s) V=99999 (/therealbitcoin.org:0.9.99.99/) Jumpers=0x1 (TRB-Compat.) Blocks=504402
feedbot: http://mvdstandard.net/2020/12/early-pfizer-vaccine-headlines-suggest-2021-to-feature-a-repeat-of-2020-playbook/ << The Montevideo Standard -- Early Pfizer Vaccine Headlines Suggest 2021 To Feature A Repeat of 2020 Playbook
← 2020-12-27 | 2020-12-29 → ↑
Random(asciilifeform) | Download hourly DB snapshot | Get Source Code