asciilifeform: 'turns out xfce4's terminal app depends on it. it's getting pretty tough to keep a gnome/kde free system. maybe i should give in to the evil' << l0l
asciilifeform: https://www.realitykeys.com << atrocity, linked from earlier atrocity. apparently there is no shortage of attempted schemes to build this perpetuum mobile, the 'decentralized fact verifier machine'
asciilifeform: earch / auto-complete ("pre-processing"), we don't yet have a "central" nervous system to advise our decisions...'
asciilifeform: '...when you [1] watch journalists lie on television, [2] have to deal with obviously dishonest politicians rising through an obviously-dysfunctional "democratic" process, [3] get beaten down by office politics at work, or [4] participate in any serious argument with anyone. The fiber optic cable of the 90's gave the global community a "nervous system", called the internet, but despite advances in filesharing ("memory"), and s
asciilifeform: project for months, Peter Todd is actively reviewing it. Unlike 100% of all Bitcoin 2.0 projects, there have (so far) been no standing complaints from these elite-skeptics. Roger Ver, who has famously invested-in and donated-to some of the most promising organizations and experiments in the Bitcoin space (from original Ripple, to BitPay, to Purse.io), and ignored many others, has endorsed this project financially.'
asciilifeform: 'Reputable: Truthcoin was designed by a Yale Statistician with degrees in the blockchain-relevant fields of econ, psychology, and mathematics, who has been passionate about prediction markets since long before Bitcoin was created. Truthcoin was reviewed (favorably) by Andrew Poelstra, sidechains-co-author and skeptical author of widely-circulated technical papers on cryptosystem stability. Gregory Maxwell has been aware of the
asciilifeform: pete_dushenski: if (steering_shaft_turned_since_start()){while(1){pollute();}}
asciilifeform observes that 'bugs' like this (if gaping hole in the chest of an idea can still be referred to as a 'bug'...) can live almost indefinitely long when there is a 'play money only' system such as ones mentioned earlier. simply because the 'unreasonable!11!!!11!!' folk with serious dough don't show up to clean their clocks.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: at some point, the 'intellectual property RIGHTS!!!!11!!!1!1' idiots will get what they have been so loudly begging for: underground pharma labz in every town.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: aha, i specifically said 'pill'
asciilifeform: and this is more or less universally known at this point.
asciilifeform: the $100/mg thing was grudgingly accepted by many thinking people on account of 'must fund RESEARCH!111!!111'
asciilifeform: based wholly on the presence of armed thugs enforcing 'intellectual property'
asciilifeform: being able to charge $100/mg for an organic sludge is a crown concession.
asciilifeform: so the 'disease is rare, 1mg pill costs $100' thing is a crock of shit.
asciilifeform: with no bureaucratic obstacles in the way (Officially not intended to be fed to human) - can get ANYTHING made for $20K or so, in Kg+ qty.☟︎
asciilifeform: i watched it happen, on usg tax dollar no less.
asciilifeform: know what the crowning glory here is? no drug whatsoever in an ~actual free market~ could ever cost $100/pill. it costs less than this to pay ukraininan chemists to make $arbitrarycompound.
asciilifeform: it's a piece of orchestrated hysteria to draw fire away from the serious operators.
asciilifeform: rather than 'nuke intellectualpropertyism, dekulakize and publicly behead everyone who profited from its imposition'
asciilifeform: the one thing you can be sure of it that at the end of the day the 'answer' will be something like 'pillz cost too much, need moar obamacare'
asciilifeform: this is the most galling thing, to civilians. recall mircea_popescu's 'pound of flesh' article.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: ~this~ particular l0lcow wouldn't even be a lolcow if he hadn't insisted on trolling all of usa with cameras rolling
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: 'must' my arse. fda as it exists today is a creature of the pharma cartels.
asciilifeform: my current understanding re: the firm from the link is that it specialized in ultra-low-demand items for which there is unlikely to be competition from foreign generics. clever.
asciilifeform: consider, where other than pharma does cost have no impact whatsoever on demand ?
asciilifeform: i.e. something which can only exist at usg gunpoint.
asciilifeform: but in the purely physical sense, a $10 (not even speaking of $1000) pill of ANY CONTENTS WHATSOEVER makes precisely as much sense as a $1M software package.
asciilifeform: why this particular schmuck was chosen as the whipping boy of the day, i do not know. but tlp's dictum 'if you're reading it, it's for you' comes to mind.
asciilifeform: also usg giveth, usg taketh away. a 'pharma ceo' has so much as one cent purely by the good graces of hitler - who helpfully keeps penny-a-pill indian generics mostly out of u.s. market☟︎
asciilifeform: one day mircea_popescu opens an opthamologist's practice! everyone lines up, wants to give it a try! fella walks in, 'i need new spectacles, measure my eyes.' mircea_popescu hands him... a nagant, polished, izhevsk 1941 mark visible, clean, one round in the drum. 'eat.' patient: ??? mircea_popescu: 'you can come back for this later, go home, have some children, raise'em poor and make sure the nearsighted ones die!'
asciilifeform: re: earlier thread: i have a sequel! to the broomstick story! here goes.
asciilifeform: this was still taught in school, even in usa, when i was a kid.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: 'direction' here is not in the sense of 'chemist knows the effect' - as i described in earlier threads, the models are shoddier than pretty much anyone involved in that racket is willing to admit in public. i was speaking in the sense of what usg permits to be fed to people, for test, and thereafter sold
asciilifeform: this is true. but think of modern pharma, where one really ~does~ 'pick direction' in the sense that there are, say, 100M synthesizable compounds you can work with
asciilifeform: note that i did not say that we are ~likely~ to live to see this kind of trick. research has been just about entirely in the lobotomy direction, rather than this, no prizes for guessing why.
