asciilifeform: mats: glad that you mentioned this. because i did an experiment, and forgot to speak of it. actually tried to ride 'uber.' (did it once before, at an airport, and it sorta worked.) but this time the car approached, clearly saw me, and ... kept going. inside was a gaggle of college 'bros' all holding iPnohes.
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: checked my mailbox this morning. no telegram from chinese emperor asking for it.
asciilifeform: and, more to the point, why am i there at all? who asked for me there, paid ?
asciilifeform: 'kill the chicken to teach the monkeys' (TM) (R)
asciilifeform: srsly i would buy a tourist ticket if i could be guaranteed a front seat
asciilifeform: mats: at least they have public executions. i, for instance, am living in a tyrannical empire that doesn't even have fucking public executions to watch. picture that.
asciilifeform: (also three light-years ahead of, e.g., my own position in chinese employment market. so don't laugh)
asciilifeform: and arrange for a letter of recommendation for lucrative job cooking 'gutter oil' or mining uranium
asciilifeform: but might want to check with the cousins before buying ticket.
asciilifeform: mats: so possibly you have the 'seven-to-a-room' thing covered.
asciilifeform: mats: anybody waiting for you there ?
asciilifeform: (and before you say 'i am willing to live like mexican', note that for ~you personally~ it will cost 50x what it does for the native-born orc. because he has the extended family, willing to live seven-to-a-room with him without murder, and you don't.)
asciilifeform: srsly, hitler oughta fire these fools
asciilifeform: (or where to point the grenade launcher)
asciilifeform: 'There is a discussion on FAA meetings about encrypting the ADS-B signal. By angering the authorities, we will only speed up this process.' << holy fuck the idiocy. i have idea! let's give usg brass cars without license plates ! that way no one will ~ever~ know where they are.
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: going by what is publicly known, probably something like 1 camera-shy rich fella to 10 cia 'renditions'
asciilifeform: because they will not deliver so much as the means for making a usable steel fork. and you can take this to the bank.
asciilifeform: you would have us believe that the idiot cult of technowankerous 'homework doers' will deliver salvation re: the 'ic in your kitchen' problem. and i will say that this is not a harmless misconception.
asciilifeform: while doing a peculiarly heavy amount of 'homework'
asciilifeform: midnightmagic: my observation was that there is a curiously large population of people who studiously avoid so much as dipping a toe into the prototype waters.
asciilifeform: (last i saw, the 'cad' did not even do anything so basic as calculating bond strain energies. because atoms == legos, apparently.)
asciilifeform: midnightmagic: do you know kanzure ? the two of you would get on very well, i think. he's another fella who likes 'doing homework.' wrote a 'nano cad', even. (because surely - somehow - this puts us closer to actually rearranging atoms with bare hands, right? or so goes the theory)
asciilifeform: (does 'mean free path' mean anything to you ? or slept in 4th grade ?)☟︎
asciilifeform: i, for one, only have a mechanical vacuum pump. it clatters, spits oil. would have looked at home in edison's house. i know that i will not be making so much as a triode valve with this pump.☟︎
asciilifeform: if you have other sources, with experiments (done on something other than $maxint machinery, surplus or not) plz link...
asciilifeform: midnightmagic: so far all i see is 'homework'
asciilifeform: and often there are interesting hidden costs. for instance, i am somewhat limited in what surplus junk i can use on account of lacking 3-phase mains power☟︎
asciilifeform: midnightmagic: i'm an aficionado of university surplus junk myself. and will point out that, even without having to pay for shipping (absolute killer, but luckily i live near one) the actual price you pay, once you factor in the cost of (sometimes unobtainable) spare parts to replace broken/missing items - is often not far from 'car'
asciilifeform: (i am assuming that you know what kind of pump - multiple pumps, in practice - is involved)
asciilifeform: midnightmagic: would be neat. where do i go to get a 10^-4-torr vacuum pump for less than the cost of new car ?
asciilifeform: but so far all i see is... the apparatus described in linked www.
asciilifeform: would love to know how to do this on a 'jungle' budget
asciilifeform: i would like, for example, to fabricate simple circuits in copper (a la pcb) with electron beam
asciilifeform: link to an item you, or colleagues, crafted with electron beam?
asciilifeform: midnightmagic: where is the evidence of any actual physical experiment by these folks ?
asciilifeform: this is precisely the kind of animal mircea_popescu wrote about - idiot 'millenials' who have never so much as carved a chess set with own hands, failing to distinguish elaborate 3d drawings from actual tech
asciilifeform: (can you say 'bremsstrahlung' kidz?!)
asciilifeform: also, very amusingly, there are a total of 3 sentences casually referring to xray shielding.
