asciilifeform: but this principle fails when you're talking about molten Si

asciilifeform: so far this is handled by ben_vulpes, yours truly, et al being 'stainless steel rats' who scrounge enough fiat in the secular world to run on

asciilifeform: but soldiers who can't eat - can't fight.

asciilifeform: i very much get the 'we don't want time-servers, clock-watchers' thing

asciilifeform: i snort a good bit of food, house.

asciilifeform: example.

asciilifeform: none

asciilifeform: not because it is difficult, but because the folks who could afford to - are far too busy with selecting the right cocaine and whores for their atomic dirigible voyage.

asciilifeform: nobody's about to pour and slice a Si boule as volunteer.

asciilifeform: anyway, 'they' aren't here because they are over in that other place where work - with however much friction and statal theft in the loop, sure - turns into food, houses, coke, etc. see also http://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3217750625724755@naggum.net.html

asciilifeform: l0l

asciilifeform: or what

asciilifeform: don't scale - down ?

asciilifeform: in log ?

asciilifeform: ^ hm, i missed this

asciilifeform: except they'll be here shortly after 'here' can even afford to feed the secretary catgurl.

asciilifeform: then ragnarok

asciilifeform: and so they can charge $B.

asciilifeform: it costs $1B because there are six people who can honcho a fab

asciilifeform: the 'fab costs $1B' is merely a -symptom- of the real problem

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: very glad you asked. because this is 'teachable moment'

asciilifeform: the idiocy of cpp bitcoind is not an excuse to use 'liberty dollar' etc.

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=10-05-2015#1127272 << but you are. when running closed-source idiot winblows-designed biosen which can't even embed kernel ☝︎

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=10-05-2015#1127206 >> obligatory >> http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zjOwQ0RJY4s/T5k2O8UZ1AI/AAAAAAAACNg/koj4pYe6_YQ/s1600/Vermin_Supreme.png ☝︎

asciilifeform: !s nobody dies for hotel

asciilifeform: same dynamic.

asciilifeform: or rome

asciilifeform: british, or su, or usg

asciilifeform: when it was, instead, 'who has longest sovereignty cock' - folks willingly died for the glory of $empire, yes

asciilifeform: and the criteria became 'which kingdom can make cheaper jeans'

asciilifeform: that's the thing, the 'increasingly sees as pointless' was after things turned 'rational' ☟︎

asciilifeform: jurov: ultimately, survival is not a rational act, if you think about it. eating a bullet is always 'cheaper'

asciilifeform: jurov: quite possibly

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com//?date=24-11-2014#933192 << old thread which relates. ☝︎

asciilifeform: what's the ROI on a tank? sub? nuke?

asciilifeform: the 'economically rational' thing to do, is, invariably, to suck cock of highest bidder.

asciilifeform: and cannot be

asciilifeform: because sovereignty is not a 'rational' thing

asciilifeform: shortly after they began to act 'rationally' su was no more

asciilifeform: until they decided, again economically entirely rationally, that it costs far too much for no tangible gain

asciilifeform: su - had it

asciilifeform: and that cn, ru silicon sovereignty is a sham of the most laughable kind.

asciilifeform: aha.

asciilifeform: dig down, and you will find that most of integrated circuit industry on planet3 ultimately lives and dies by the work of a handful of people.

asciilifeform: how many makers of the equipment ?

asciilifeform: (and do we consider refining the si to be part of fab process? my understanding is that it is usually done by separate firm, devoted to it. and how many are there of these ?)

asciilifeform: virtually any item you'd care to name

asciilifeform: and made, essentially, to order

asciilifeform: one of the reasons why si fab costs what it does is that many of the necessary components are made in 2, 3, locations globally

asciilifeform: (much of the cost of a launch is political, largely bakshish)

asciilifeform: considerably.

asciilifeform: no one has the faintest idea - how.

asciilifeform: rather like saying 'only solution would be space vehicles which cost 1000x less'

asciilifeform: (using presently-known tech, which relies on newton's 3rd law)

asciilifeform: like manned space travel.

asciilifeform: integrated circuit is an inherently 'statal' institution.

asciilifeform: not vice-versa

asciilifeform: the nasties etc. flow from this

asciilifeform: just the 'palace economy' you inherently get, from a chip fab costing what it costs ☟︎

asciilifeform: that's not even half of it

asciilifeform: and i dare say, usg-izing.

asciilifeform: which is, the basic idea of integrated circuit, as we know it, is inherently centralizing

asciilifeform: there is a more fundamental problem here, which i think we discussed in at least one old thread

asciilifeform: for another, fpga and the genuine article can never be comparable on account of ruinous delays in the latter

asciilifeform: for one thing, what does it even mean to test one thing against another ?

asciilifeform: no.

asciilifeform: which is why i suspect we'll be crafting discrete logic cpu again before this is all over. ☟︎

asciilifeform: making so much as an open full-adder would be an astonishing feat

asciilifeform: hence why ru missile controllers are built using ancient soviet arch, yes, but the fab is winblows-controlled and the design turns from circuit to mask also in winblows ☟︎

asciilifeform: in -every- case, the sc4mz0rz who are willing to use 'a little bit' of usg toolchain, overwhelmingly win on cost and speed

asciilifeform: but this is the ultimate lemon market

asciilifeform: they do ☟︎

asciilifeform: nor are their fabs (last i checked) toolchain-clean in terms of 100% usg-free.

asciilifeform: but ru is not interested in exporting cpu.

asciilifeform: ru has indigenous cpu design tradition, and many of the folks who were at it prior to the great 'warez shift' of mid-'70s, when compatibility with western cpus was mandated from above - are still alive

asciilifeform: cn appears to have no traces whatsoever of any indigenous tradition of cpu design. and they understand what kind of investment would be involved in changing this, and behave perfectly logically from economic point of view, and say 'fuck that'

asciilifeform: even their 'loongson' mips, in latest versions, appears to use the official licensed mips corp. designs.

asciilifeform: cn produces -licensed- arm. this tells you what you need to know about their process.

asciilifeform: (no, cn, ru, etc. are not 'free world' in this sense, they run winblows toolchains and operate overwhelmingly on designs cribbed wholesale without any attempt whatsoever to fit in any head)

asciilifeform: as for the free world, it has -not one chip fab- to its name ☟︎

asciilifeform: the only proper.

asciilifeform: as far as usg is concerned, this kind of design -is- proper

asciilifeform: virtually everything that is produced today is simply a 'model airplane' glued from opaque libraryturds licensed from N vendors

asciilifeform: decimation: this is absolute SOP among hardware makers

asciilifeform: afaik there are -no- independent (as in, based on published documents) reimplementations of arm in production today.

asciilifeform: decimation: everyone uses same tools

asciilifeform: which turns into a chip with minimal human intervention

asciilifeform: rather, it is that arm is implemented by 'licensees' who get an opaque turd

asciilifeform: that's not even the boojum here

asciilifeform: it will be in some ways a much deeper and more fetid pit.

asciilifeform: thing is, when it dies, arm will become the new x86.

asciilifeform: i will go on record as objecting to anything which extends its life

asciilifeform: x86 simply desperately must die.

asciilifeform: (one in '98, and another more recent one)

asciilifeform: phun phact: virtually everything we publicly know re: how an intel cpu inits comes from the great ami bios source leaks ☟︎

asciilifeform: decimation: because there are not so many firms with access to intel initialization turds

asciilifeform: but with a mountain of closed turds to make the hardware go.

asciilifeform: thing is, they shipped it with gentoo

asciilifeform: several years ago, i bought the arm chipset chromebook and tried in vain, for ages, to install gentoo on it ☟︎

asciilifeform: google gets nonpublic info from chip vendors and then pisses all over gpl.