asciilifeform an hour or so ago was reassembling 'model m', dried from wash, and noticed the very fine detail on the keys which prevents popping. good injection molding tech is needed to have these.
asciilifeform: there is a kind of cargo cult appeal to the things
asciilifeform: interestingly, mechanical 'underwood'-style typewriters are beloved by american 'hipster writer' types. they are easy enough to find in junk stores
asciilifeform: today's disposables have no springs, only rubber bulbs (molded into a sheet)☟︎
asciilifeform: (the necessary only metallic part is the springs, quite identical to those found in pen)
asciilifeform: the profusion of absolutely abysmal keyboards in '80s sovblok micros always bewildered me. any country that knows how to make ballpoint pens could have copied ibm's keyboard
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: jp got paid in, iirc, gold.
asciilifeform: (american industrial folk knew that orcs would copy, but also knew that the copies would not appear on american market. so it was not an issue of patent rights)
asciilifeform: and the merchants, unsurprisingly, wanted to sell.
asciilifeform: the whole 'keep those orcs from getting modern tech' thing was intensely counter-economic from standpoint of u.s. chip makers, as ussr was prepared to pay with gold, plutonium, virgins, 100x the going rate
asciilifeform: take, obviously, with a grain of liquid shit
asciilifeform: it blew me away that hearn openly expressed an interest in 'remote attestation' on the air.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i haven't a clue whether hearn is the actual author of the hearnias in question, or not. only that the particular boobytrap which he misrepresents as 'bitcoin' is a more subtle one.
asciilifeform: usg is laughing all the way to, well, their wallet.
asciilifeform: ditto for the idiots sending 'them' bitcoin
asciilifeform: i somehow fail to grasp why this is so. did the prophet forbid the multiplication of large primes ?
asciilifeform: ditto for anyone who is reading 'their' communiques.
asciilifeform: so anyone who thinks he is writing them a letter, is writing to ft meade
asciilifeform: re: t3rr0r1sm!!111!!!1: for all the loud usg idiocy, the head-choppers have yet to chop a head, on camera, on top of a carpet with their gpg fingeprint embroidered on it
asciilifeform: nubbins`: yes. we have those here. boring, sop.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i've no idea why they did it beyond the obvious fact that the type of public employed there traditionally dresses in rags
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: as i understood, the robes were mentioned because 'see how unique is our directorate, we let the kidz dress in rags if they wish'
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: if you were to learn that they dress the programmers in evening coats instead, would not also say 'retards' ?
