asciilifeform: but whole sheband is probably smoke for something else entirely.

asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: if you think that no one is ~that~ retarded... think again

asciilifeform: (which went to the same garbage collector in the sky, in approximately the same way)

asciilifeform: why did 'truecrypt' ?

asciilifeform: ( https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3g7bpa/brainwallet_shut_down_permanently_due_to << re same )

asciilifeform: https://twitter.com/dakami/status/629822315837009920?s=09 << from the l0lfarms

asciilifeform: oooh when will they eeever learn

asciilifeform: where have all the phat blox gone, they're all under 300K every one...

asciilifeform: 'where did all the ' txspam 'go, long time paaaassing, where did the' txspam 'go, long time ago...'

asciilifeform: ^ divorced ?

asciilifeform: !up benkay

asciilifeform: this led to 'produce scrap metal at very high speed' (tm)

asciilifeform: the last time this surfaced in a major way was when cnc lathe & mill were introduced, in the '50s (paper tape!) and engineers took to the notion that machinists could now be dispensed with

asciilifeform: the abstraction is imperfect and necessarily leaks. ☟︎

asciilifeform: the basic root of the matter is that 'industrial production' is an abstraction ~on top of~ craftsmanship in the same way as the digital computer is an abstraction on top of analogue solid-state physics

asciilifeform believes that this tale, if has any factual ground, is a corruption of some other thing that was actually physically plausible

asciilifeform: and a serious lapse in quality when somehow the staffing rotated and this was not done

asciilifeform: involved workmen pissing in barrels to anneal

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=08-08-2015#1230197 << there is a famous and quasi-mythological story about ww2 factory where ппш-41 ( http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/11/112064/1619943-ars57_6.jpg ) was made. ☝︎

asciilifeform: mm neat.

asciilifeform: which makes 2 washers.

asciilifeform: or i wash it.

asciilifeform: (sorta like gcc..)

asciilifeform: programmatizing gpg is a pain, though.

asciilifeform: (i don't grasp the need for notions like 'check in' or 'check out', etc. one instead throws patches and sigs in a pot, and then proceeds to ask for graph, and then select a leaf on said graph - and get a src tree out.) ☟︎

asciilifeform: once actually useful, will post draft.

asciilifeform: and walks graphz

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: in somewhat related nyooz, i've been experimenting with what for now i call 'v' - a very dumb 'versioner' that i've been writing, which eats solely 0) pgp keys 1) patches 2) signatures for same, many-to-many mapping of (2) to (1) ☟︎

asciilifeform: (for a spell anyway)

asciilifeform: 1300+kalash

asciilifeform: 1300.

asciilifeform: (among other)

asciilifeform: sorta what i was getting at

asciilifeform: and 'ip'

asciilifeform: (i confronted him personally, at his house, he said 'stuff it')

asciilifeform: like dks and the lisp machine blueprints, aha

asciilifeform recalls mircea_popescu's article re: same

asciilifeform: the top hats!

asciilifeform: aha

asciilifeform knew that

asciilifeform: ^ that nobody gave half a fuck ?

asciilifeform: for the mundane reason of wanting own si.

asciilifeform: (it is interesting that - afaik - no detailed production masks, notes, etc. from sov. clones of dec, zilog, etc. ever surfaced publicly during the collapse. quite possibly this is pure misfortune, the net did not arrive in time to catch'em, and/or no one digitized the materials)

asciilifeform: but that was that

asciilifeform: it tried, i have a bag of'em here

asciilifeform: where is the 'coop' z80 ?

asciilifeform: on the off chance that one of them happens to be engineerable

asciilifeform: was trying to think of some others

asciilifeform: this is why i said 'like cannon' aha.

asciilifeform: but how do we end up ^there from _here

asciilifeform: something quite like that.

asciilifeform: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Ultima_Ratio_Regum_Cannon.jpg << him

asciilifeform: ultima ratio regum (tm) !!

asciilifeform: i can see it.

asciilifeform: who then issue, like cannon?

asciilifeform: it ends up making space tourism look cheap.

asciilifeform: and here is where we meet up with vlsi boojum: you can't do vlsi economically if there is room for six computers total. ☟︎

asciilifeform: aha

asciilifeform: no britney there, no. but was it 'in the hands of idiots' still ?

asciilifeform: hence my mental excursion in this gedankenexperiment to the world of j.s. bach and his organs

asciilifeform: my real question was 'is it possible to finance a computer without duping millions that they Must Upgrade Because (tm) ' ?

asciilifeform: at any rate, this edges into the territory of converting meters to litres and 'comparing the soft to the warm'

asciilifeform: about same as small computer.

asciilifeform: there we go.

asciilifeform: (or, for completeness, some yet-entirely-undiscovered 'third road' where we make'em out of belly button lint)

asciilifeform: no britney? welcome to 'univac', $1m half-z80.

asciilifeform: because all of our machinery ~today~ was financed via 'britney'

asciilifeform: near a locus of earthly power

asciilifeform: something which is a ~place~

asciilifeform: so perhaps computer can exist in the future of http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=08-08-2015#1230074 -- but only like an 18th c. church organ ☝︎

asciilifeform: and came into existence via very questionable finance

asciilifeform: and then realized that virtually every tech entity of that period, is either dead or usgized

asciilifeform: if making such things is 'good business'

asciilifeform: i had this whole 'trip' while holding a ru z80 in my hands and wondering why there is no more where it came from

asciilifeform: 500k in what, usg uni tuition ? l0l

asciilifeform: in just about any numbers one cares to pick. whether in minerals, or in joules, or in time of scarce experts tied up

asciilifeform: aha but i'm cheaper.

asciilifeform: i.e. that ~all~ asics are quite like bitcoin asics in that respect

asciilifeform: like bitcoin asics.

asciilifeform: the notion i was trying to get at is that presently existing units were financed on 100% 'jam tomorrow'

asciilifeform: was the rough of it

asciilifeform: vlsi as man-in-space

asciilifeform: back, had to put some food in

asciilifeform: with the lot of us.

asciilifeform: said the fella who sweats blood on account of misbehaving computers.

asciilifeform: oh hey.

asciilifeform: well, and that minerals are not even half of the problem.

asciilifeform: like the easter island statues.

asciilifeform: hypothesis, roughly, that vlsi might turn out to be yet another very expensive religious ritual

asciilifeform: notice i mentioned su likewise

asciilifeform: whereas i suspect that it is only a small part of the great shortages

asciilifeform: and folks usually begin and end the discussion with minerals

asciilifeform: when some resource that is ultimately finite (petro, selenium, shitanium whatever) is squandered faster than it can be recovered and various things 'have come to expect' and begin to tear apart.

asciilifeform: but sure, aside. there is still such a thing as -ev on civilization scale

asciilifeform: notice that it did not save germany, though it had every desire to live.

asciilifeform: but this is one of those 'yes, possible' but 'no, no one is inventing this parachute and we're already thrown from window' affairs.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu like just about everybody else at this point is muttering 'fischer-tropsch'

asciilifeform: sadly, more complicated. just the turbine lives and dies by plenty of petrol-based lube

asciilifeform: only if fix RuBisCo

asciilifeform: but not others.