asciilifeform: midnightmagic: looked it up, saw vapor-dep/sintering gadget
asciilifeform: midnightmagic: have you ever witnessed the operation and internals of even a very elementary 'nano' instrument such as electron microscope ?
asciilifeform: but please set up camera for 'darwin tube' first
asciilifeform: midnightmagic: go and pump a high vacuum from a vessel you sintered on a 'metal printer'
asciilifeform: midnightmagic: meanwhile please go and 'nanofabricate atom by atom'... one mosfet. (it's been done! so what if you need a 'gigabuck' of gear to crap out an item which is worth a nanopenny...) then get back to us☟︎
asciilifeform: midnightmagic: i don't do 'patience', i do actual understanding of physical reality vs snake oil.
asciilifeform: occasional touch with reality is good for you
asciilifeform: midnightmagic: take a little less lsd
asciilifeform: i will not say with confidence that no one will ~ever~ make meaningful semiconductors in their kitchen or in the jungle. but i WILL say with confidence that no one will make meaningful semiconductors in their kitchen ~using things that have been made in today's kitchens.~
asciilifeform: given as presently i can't even afford to not have a day job which eats 98% of time & energy☟︎
asciilifeform: jurov: i can 'decide' all i want' 'spirit is willing but flesh is weak' in this case. unless you'd like to contribute $100B for a fab and an army
asciilifeform: there would be no valid reason for any two units, regardless of ~when~ or ~where~ made, to be distinct in any way other than size and density.
asciilifeform: thing could even have a clear lid, like the old uv-erasable eeproms, for inspection with optical microscope (the fabric would be visibly homogeneous)
asciilifeform: a readily-available ~true~ fpga would be the greatest political advance in a century of electronic crud.
asciilifeform: you ~can~ sloppily 'bit-bang' a 10BaseT ethernet nic. but ~not~ sdram controller.
asciilifeform: because you MUST meet the dram refresh timings - or bits fall on the floor.
asciilifeform: sdram is the absolute worst case, because the difference between 'acceptable performance' and 'works at all, for any purpose' is slim
asciilifeform: because go and try writing own controller with anything like acceptable performance.
asciilifeform: the entire thing is cynically deliberate. notice how, e.g., xilinx boards, come with ethernet jack and magnetics? well, you can't actually ~use~ the ethernet without paying a per-unit license fee to the bastards
asciilifeform: and ~every single chip~ even from particular vendor has entirely different internals.
asciilifeform: but in reality, you are stuck using all kinds of pre-baked pieces (adders, shifters, ddr outputs, and the routing fabric per se) baked in there by vendor
asciilifeform: it gives the impression that you can actually turn any valid logical circuit into an imitation of something like slow 1980s silicon
asciilifeform: thing is, fpga is fundamentally a very cruel lie
asciilifeform: this, again, is only possible if you know the actual physical fabric (only xilix does)
asciilifeform: on top of this, all of the critical paths in the circuit must have approximately same propagation delay - or the thing ~won't work at all~
asciilifeform: you can pick up a textbook and write a dram controller for fpga from first principles - and it won't work. because, for starters, only a small number of output cells in the chip can function on both rising and falling edge of clock cycle (what 'ddr' means) and only xilinx's closed turd knows where they are in the routing fabric;☟︎☟︎☟︎
asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=17-06-2015#1165915 << key detail: 'IP-Core : MIG V:3.6.1'. that's 'memory interface generator', xilinx's gui turd. it shits out code which is a mere wrapper on a closed-source gigantic steaming pile of shit. and the output is unique to a particular model and subtype of chip.☝︎
asciilifeform: usg could answer the 'we know where you live' with 'so what, come and get it'
asciilifeform always thought this photo was an in-joke of some sort
asciilifeform: su folks who turned coat and worked for usg. outed, and shot
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: let's rephrase. ever heard of a fella named sergey motorin? adolf tolkachev ?
asciilifeform: 'The FSFE's December newsletter mentioned this article. For whatever reasons it suddenly disappeared from the website. A diff against Google's cache shows...'
asciilifeform: 'Libgcrypt now accepts contributions after having received a simple mail (right, e-mail, no transatlantic snail mail) with a Developer’s Certificate of Origin as known from other projects. Voilà, patches with new features and performance improvements started to come in.'
asciilifeform: and no one seems to know precisely how/why
asciilifeform: decimation: schneier is a worrisome case because he was - very clearly - a genuine fighter against usg who later ended up on enemy side.
asciilifeform: (btw the answer, at least partially, for 'why they don't consult the files' is that what the inquisitors are mainly interested in is ~liars~ rather than the facts)
asciilifeform: what remains after these are subtracted is some very wooden 'list the terrorist orgs you have been a member in, and why' verbiage
asciilifeform: (e.g., old residences, employers, blood relatives, marriages, etc)
asciilifeform: speaking of 'sf-86' form, does anyone else consider such things a peculiar anachronism? it isn't as if usg did not already have 100% of everything in that thing in some db or other☟︎
