asciilifeform: thestringpuller et al: it is a 1940s volume, but still a classic, because it is from the tail end of the era when folks had to make ~everything with their own two hands.
asciilifeform: (for some reason the proper link to the b00k is not coming up in the search..)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i broke same, with molten saltpetre
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: either visit a local school and take the ochem, or work through the usual practical exercises before you engulf self and others in a fireball from, e.g., 'bumping' (look it up) boiled solvent under vacuum
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: actual 'inpatient' harem ?
asciilifeform pictures sad tokamak equation, for harem
asciilifeform: believe or not, i also had a working toothbrush.
asciilifeform: it was sustenance enough for two+ days of programming.
asciilifeform: le, you begin to notice that all the essays are an elaborate set of mirrors set up to reflect different facets of the author, in a big distributed act of participatory narcissism.'
asciilifeform: y begin to understand that a hacker is someone who resembles Eric Raymond. Dave Winer has recently and mercifully moved his essays off to audio, but you can still hear him snorfling cashew nuts and talking at length about what it means to be a blogger[7] . These essays and this writing style are tempting to people outside the subculture at hand because of their engaging personal tone and idiosyncratic, insider's view. But after a whi☟︎
asciilifeform: 'In Paul Graham's world, as soon as oil paint was invented, painting techniques made a discontinuous jump from the fifteenth to the twentienth century, fortuitously allowing Renaissance painters to paint a lot like Paul Graham. ... I blame Eric Raymond and to a lesser extent Dave Winer for bringing this kind of schlock writing onto the Internet. Raymond is the original perpetrator of the "what is a hacker?" essay, in which you quickl
asciilifeform: i thought it was ones sore the night prior said in the morning..
asciilifeform: al transmitters started floating by overhead.'
asciilifeform: ory wonders take on a second, clandestine life under advanced socialism. The local plumber who needed a new piston rod for his Fiat 126p certainly didn't mind if it happened to be machined out of elemental titanium to a tolerance of 0.05 microns, and the next time a pipe froze you could count on him to show up bright and early. In this context of creative craftsmanship and mutual aid the government had only itself to blame when illeg
asciilifeform: 'One reason you don't want to cross Eastern Bloc scientists is that they are by necessity handy people. Operating in a barter economy, even the most unworldly theoretician learns certain marketable skills. Besides the inevitable need to jury-rig spare parts for their own experiments, scientists have to horse trade for basic conveniences like anyone else. And so it was not uncommon to see ultraprecision machine tools and other laborat
asciilifeform: a wide audience. We couldn't use a weather balloon, however, since it would be easy to check where it had come from. ...'
asciilifeform: hematician Leon Jeśmanowicz, was an electronics engineer and an ardent glider pilot. He determined that even a weak radio transmitter in an airplane flying at great height could be heard perfectly well over a significant area. That was an idea. Jerzy Wieczorek, a physicist (later president of Toruń) pointed out that we could attach the transmitter to a balloon. It would make the transmitter harder to find while enabling us to reach
asciilifeform: 'As physicists, radioastronomers, and electronics engineers, we were all struck by the possibility of doing independent broadcasts, if nothing else because that was our profession. My colleagues took part in broadcasts in Warsaw and other cities. Rooftop transmitters had low range. And they were easy for the security services to locate. We had to think of something else. Our colleague Andrzej Jeśmanowicz, son of the noted Toruń mat☟︎
