asciilifeform: people ask why 'computing is different' and answer is that the field had the misfortune to appear at the same time as the great 'democratization' shit-lathering of the 20th c.

asciilifeform: it reduces the 'ocean of problems' to one particular - scientifically formulatable - problem.

asciilifeform: which is what the 'computing industry' is largely about.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: nobody turned thermodynamics off, but it is entirely possible to have a room full of lunatics mumbling 'vroom, vroom'

asciilifeform: but the stink of ape-man shit

asciilifeform: most of them are not actual problems

asciilifeform: ditto the 'problems'

asciilifeform: once you discover the hidden variable - that most of the creatures masquerading as 'people' are actually apes - you are left without one side of the equation

asciilifeform: this is an approachable problem

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=25-06-2015#1174884 << i can't pretend to any divine revelation re: the numbers, but what i do see is folks who pay lawyer $xxxxx to solve their problem, and offer programmer $xxx. and then wonder why their programmatic problems remain unsolved. they answer 'lawyer is a man and programmer is a monkey. and the latter gets monkey wage.' answer: you paid for monkey. so that's what you get. ☝︎

asciilifeform: hence 'all must volunteer' ?

asciilifeform: more rats than shooters atm

asciilifeform: when will mircea_popescu be volunteering for rat shooting detail in the abandoned factories of leningrad ?

asciilifeform: was trying to walk on tightrope between lunacy and sense

asciilifeform: l0l

asciilifeform: measuring software dev in 'man-time' is ~how we got a planet with microshit in the first place~

asciilifeform: sumthinglikethat

asciilifeform: but as gedankenexperiment re: what a great blight is 'worth'

asciilifeform: and who's to say what weevils will breed in the crater

asciilifeform: fair

asciilifeform: l0l

asciilifeform: 'not worth bullet' ?

asciilifeform: if there were, e.g., a martian in orbit, known for his impeccable honesty, who offered to vaporize every last employee of microshit, present and past, for 10 btc - mircea_popescu would decline ?

asciilifeform: what is the removal of the last mosquito 'worth'

asciilifeform: i.e. with negative sign bit

asciilifeform: microshit is worth what mosquitoes are worth

asciilifeform: aha

asciilifeform: if mircea_popescu wants to remove a pair of hands from sv, all he'd have to do is pay in actual money

asciilifeform: sv pays in counterfeit money

asciilifeform: there is infinite appetite

asciilifeform: in the sense of 'this is like protein folding' - sure

asciilifeform: or getting $proggy built as-so

asciilifeform: e.g., laying down shaded pixels

asciilifeform: i was speaking of problems that are at least theoretically worth solving

asciilifeform: no amount will put out the sun either

asciilifeform: well yes, because all of the things one can't even dream of affording 'look quite alike'

asciilifeform: this is ~not~ like the scarcity of, e.g., 'real computer', where ~it doesn't matter if you're rich, it doesn't exist~

asciilifeform: not hard - yes, today - if ~pay~

asciilifeform: these - yes, good luck finding.

asciilifeform wonders if mircea_popescu's idea of 'competence' approximately equals 'willing to dig in chernoble reactor for 2 rubles / hour'

asciilifeform: while (!hired(bid++)); << convenient algo.

asciilifeform: and there is no shortage whatsoever of 'skilled folk.' there is only shortage at a particular price point.

asciilifeform: 1+2 - 'unicorn'

asciilifeform: 1 or 2 alone - so plentiful that 'you can eat with your arse'

asciilifeform: the shortage is of work that 1) pays 2) doesn't make you want to shoot yourself in the head immediately

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=25-06-2015#1174799 << i live there! ☝︎

asciilifeform: 'embed engineer' sounds simple, but he has to be permitted near the jewels, know what's worth stealing, ~and~ continue working for ~you~ rather than the nice fella who now signs his bonuses

asciilifeform: (incidentally, the success history of ussr attempting this was spotty, to say the least.)

asciilifeform: sure. but why would the 'anyone' make the result available gratis to his competition ?

asciilifeform: (perhaps minus the 'nsa chapter' but enough to run shader.)

asciilifeform: if they want the gpu datasheet - they get.

asciilifeform: 'pixar' does not live by same constraints as us mortals

asciilifeform: they, likely, have proper card specs from nvidia etc. under nda

asciilifeform: ?

asciilifeform: why would anyone use anything other than linux boxen for a headless render farm

asciilifeform: winblows - not.

asciilifeform: 'mac' ~can~ be treated as something like an irix or solaris box, as a funny-looking frame around a bourne shell and x11 terminal

asciilifeform: including myself

asciilifeform: thing is, 'not microshit' is a hard criterion for many, many folks

asciilifeform: ^ must be microshit shill

asciilifeform: just ask ben_vulpes...

asciilifeform: not speaking of these. but of the folks who want a posix box that fits in a rucksack, where, e.g., 'suspend to ram' works, etc

asciilifeform: see the point re: 'sole remaining commercial unix ws vendor'

asciilifeform: they could make almost anything and folks will buy so long as it is vaguely computer-like and doesn't run winblows.

asciilifeform: mac would turn into 'ipad' 'with keyboard.'

asciilifeform: this'd be a logical conclusion.

asciilifeform: apple's trajectory for years has been to merge 'iphonism' into their entire product line

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: they don't need much gut here, the chip was designed under herr jobs and exists now

asciilifeform: (how much it sucks is a question for serious apple aficionados, not for me)

asciilifeform: (they are already shipping this chip in the pocket comps)

asciilifeform: result will likely be that apple begins shipping arm-macs with their in-house gpu.

asciilifeform: wai wat

asciilifeform: or whoever apple's current gpu buttbuddy is

asciilifeform: address hate mail to nvidia co. ?

asciilifeform: iirc shaders are not part of 'classical' opengl ?

asciilifeform: (apple does not sell such a thing)

asciilifeform: somewhere a mac shipped with an unsupported graphics card ?

asciilifeform: what was the thread about, i'm having trouble telling

asciilifeform: wai wat

asciilifeform: which runs, yes.

asciilifeform: aha, they eat via photoshit.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: as far as these folks are concerned, gentoo may as well be a particle accelerator at dubna, ru

asciilifeform: it's a machine for running photoshit without being submerged in boiling cauldron of microshit

asciilifeform: more or less what ben_vulpes said;

asciilifeform: approximately.

asciilifeform: 'run commercial apps' + 'not microshit' == 'mac'

asciilifeform: design of what ?

asciilifeform: (why mac survives, i mean. rather than apple corp.)

asciilifeform: today it survives principally because it is the only remaining commercial unix workstation vendor.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: mno. that was '90s apple (the actual apple, prior to its death and devourment of corpse by 'next' corp.)

asciilifeform: ^ shortest explanation

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com//?date=28-05-2015#1147075 ☝︎

asciilifeform: !s fragging

asciilifeform: (this is trickier than it appears, on account of, e.g., memory fragmentation effect)

asciilifeform: but we presently lack a non-retarded implementation of such a cache

asciilifeform: it is demonstrably less efficient than if there were a cache

asciilifeform: phf: both patches are presently considered 'experimental' and not yet ratified by therealbitcoin.

asciilifeform: it was in the interest of (3) that i amputated the 'orphan tx' cache as well.

asciilifeform: all that can be done is to have a node that 1) syncs, eventually 2) allows others to sync from self 3) doesn't go around writing blank cheques for the system resources of the box it runs on and handing them out to street scum

asciilifeform: but there is no especially attractive way of fixing this, presently