log☇︎
202800+ entries in 0.122s
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform inconceivable, but this discussion is not something we can actually carry satisfactorily i guess. we'll hafta let it be.
mircea_popescu: well that's what i want to discuss, seems to me it's central to the point. what's the disconnect ?
trinque: moving the counterparty problem under a microscope where human can inspect it is not equivalent to the other given cases
mircea_popescu: if i come up with random "will you phf guarantee to me that if i swab her cheek on so and so date there won't be a spermatozoid in the microscope field", you'll just shrug.
phf: mircea_popescu: that's not directly relevant to my point though
asciilifeform: crapple was not, in '80s, what it is today.
phf: asciilifeform: you're just moving the counterparty problem around, which is exactly my point
mircea_popescu: phf which is my point. trust is not binary. yes you trust her, but many things she thinks you care about you don't, and even more you care in different contexts and to different levels than she imagines.
asciilifeform: phf: the need to 'trust the foundry' evaporates under the 'SOLELY fpga fabric' model of computation. we had the thread.
a111: Logged on 2017-03-20 20:46 mircea_popescu: in other lulz, the state of casual gaming is completely fucked up. so other than utter throwaways, stuff that looks like someone's undegrad project, the ~entire market of ipad-likes (stuff that works in the browser, or else via a "light" client for windows/mac, or else as a ipad/android etc app) is wholly like this :
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform had pc died in 1985, apple would be in charge of computing today, and all software would consist of http://btcbase.org/log/2017-03-20#1629701 ☝︎
asciilifeform: and yes it means you have to pull the eproms, burn own, etc
mircea_popescu: phf do you trust your girlfriend ?
phf: mircea_popescu: i think nature of bootstrapping problem is that you have to choose a bedrock that you can affect, and that bedrock falls under counterparty problem. if your bedrock is hardware, then it's foundries that you trust. if your bedrock is a "a unix" then you need to trust a large binary blob. yes you can construct a rube goldberg that gives you unix from bedrock without having trust, but we don't have anything like that
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: alternative is to buy shitbox built by chinese for argentina, where power cord comes out of bottom ? and gentoo won't boot
ben_vulpes: myeah, still took the americhanskis a few decades to figure it out, and most haven't yet.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i already do this.
asciilifeform: (as they were aboard, e.g., submarines)
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform had pc burned in 1995 you'd be collecting computers from ebay, via tyour tablet today.
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: the availability of general-purpose comp was ~pure accident. and quite temporary. just like, say, lathes used to be ubiquitous back when auto repair needed one.
mircea_popescu: because rakim is stuck bagging my compras for a fucking reason. and nobody asks him which way the world goes.
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes the notion that computers are mass market items are ridiculous. no, rakim didn't want one in 1977 either.
asciilifeform: but the danger of keeping the fungus alive , when it could have been killed -- is imho very real. it is what linux, for instance, ended up doing: keeping the idiot pc architecture alive long past 1995, when it should have burned
ben_vulpes: asciilifeform: sterling: "i'm astonished that i will probably outlive the 'personal computer'. what would anyone want one of those for these days anyways. 'hey you, do you want a personal computer? you can...compute on it! in private! nobody would ever know!' it just doesn't sell to the touchscreen zombies, no offense to present company."
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform you kill things in the order you can not in the order you want.
asciilifeform: but on the other hand, at some point the pain will begin to be felt, 'i want to build emacs but where do i get not only it but a box that'll build pre-poettering emacs at all, and where do i even get the gcc that still builds it'
asciilifeform: but again, has serious political problem, in my head, in that i would like x64 to DIE, not to live.
trinque: wrong machine though I gather from you, asciilifeform
phf: mircea_popescu: tcc doesn't run on bare metal though
asciilifeform: trinque: i've had an x64 asm scheme thing on back burner for eons.
trinque: "here's this syslisp written in the machine code of the hardware"
trinque: if one's going to set off creating one, might consider making that blob as (auditably) small as possible
mircea_popescu: i seriously don't see the problem with "i trust this pared down version of tcc - it builds a very slow blob but it does build it - and these tools which i read myself"
phf: lisp machine fwiw doesn't solve bootstrapping problem either.. have to trust a binary blob that you got from your l1
asciilifeform: is that very soon it will be impossible to build a usable comp on demand.
asciilifeform: the reason the subj comes up again and again
asciilifeform: phf: the reason why i have not attempted the contemplated exercise, nor seriously encouraged others to do so, is that you are right -- c and unix MUST die.
phf: asciilifeform: you introduce gcc, userland, etc. in the mix already. so either the whole system must fit in head, or else it's not an important prereq for you
asciilifeform: and that's with, iirc, no back end.
asciilifeform: seems to be ~77k line.
mircea_popescu: and afaik it wasn't specifically written to solve the bootstrap problem. prolly could be shortened thertefore.
asciilifeform: and therefore in order for the 'find trusted auditor' to have MEANING, the item being audited must fit-in-head.
mircea_popescu: how long is tcc ?
asciilifeform: it is physically impossible to do an honest job of such a thing.
asciilifeform: phf: we had at least one thread re subj. basic idea that anyone who claims to understand a million-line proggy, is a liar.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: tcc exists.
mircea_popescu: run a "who can wriote the shortest c compiler".
phf: it seems like to me like we're trying to compartmenalize counterparty problem, but afau from logs you solve counterparty problem through trusted counterparty, not "hygiene" etc.
mircea_popescu: phf i think hes' right though. we're not going to be solving shit.
asciilifeform: this ought to be possible, considering that fabrice bellard got linux kernel to built with his 'tcc'
asciilifeform: it would be interesting to produce a patched gcc that is happy to build with, e.g., borland c circa 1991.
phf: mircea_popescu: yes, the "you don't actually need a machine, just gcc and userland"
trinque: any of a wide array of options is a different situation than "needs frozen same item as being built"
asciilifeform: also noteworthy is that gcc ~at one time~ was in fact buildable with non-gcc.
mircea_popescu: phf the "need gcc and userland utils" you mean ?
asciilifeform: phf: problems that cannot be solved, are to be properly compartmentalized -- consider a house with a toilet, vs one where the occupants shit where they stand.
asciilifeform: whereas if the debian util needs ~a working debian box~, it solves ~nothing~
phf: that pretends like bootstrapping problem doesn't exist though. "step 1 find a unix box you can fully trust!1"
asciilifeform: rotor needs : gcc (all versions tested to date, afaik, worked) and userland utils
trinque: in this case needs a debian sitting there, yes
asciilifeform: trinque: what does it need in order to begin to exist on the box, though ?
a111: Logged on 2013-07-08 13:30 mircea_popescu: just like i showed the SDRs as the exact equivalent, and people ignored it because well... they never had one so it don't exist.
mircea_popescu: derpshart this idea is an uncredited rehash of stuff i said in 2011, aka not an idea.
mircea_popescu: phf this is sane, imo. exposes all the dirty hacks which "in kindergarten" etc.
derpshart: https://thecontrol.co/stablecoins-a-holy-grail-in-digital-currency-b64f3371e111 <-- lulzy idea for alt coin (ethereum token ofc) tied to price of "special drawing rights"
phf: asciilifeform: that's a bootstrapping problem though. at least at the time that i'm speaking off, it was ~expected~ that you would do a custom build of some of your packages, and they whole deploy process relied on source packages being built by not-package-author
asciilifeform: ~whole point of bsd is to 'not linux' -- the bsds are relics from the time before the 'biofilm', when there was still some coordination and, e.g., same people wrote kernel and userland-utils
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform neither of them are linux though.
asciilifeform: phf: in my experience if something 'includes both', it really expects you to use binary crapola at ~some~ point.
phf: asciilifeform: the complete debian releases from back in the day included both package and package source trees
asciilifeform: ( which bsd ? bsd died six different deaths, at different times ..)
mircea_popescu: which incidentally is the principal reason mp doesn't speak against the bsd subversion/heresy.
asciilifeform: phf: pretty sure it stowed binary packages in there
phf: debian comes closest to what would be considered "proper" in tmsr terms. the package archive is curated, the source is fully owned by the package author, etc. you can still grab old debian 10cd sets and have the entire slice of linux computing from the time
trinque: better for digestion that
asciilifeform: trinque: i stopped reading the 'nows' a while ago.
trinque: because the beoble must
ben_vulpes: everyone straight to the cinderblock palace
trinque: asciilifeform: now there is "stage4"
asciilifeform: danielpbarron: at one time, gentoo came with instructions for how to build it from 0 (using only an existing c compiler, and buncha src tarballs)
mircea_popescu: yes two centuries, but not of SOMETHING.
danielpbarron: i'm not skilled enough to know what stageN even means
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes the history of linux is not like the history of a respectable item. it's like "the history of the human biofilm on the floors of grand central station, 1817-2017".
asciilifeform: danielpbarron: around the time gentoo irrevocably went to shit, notice, it stopped supporting stage1 builds
danielpbarron: i have some stage3 tarball i keep reusing
phf: debian vendors, i suspect so does redhat, because they package the original source into own packages
mircea_popescu: phf yeah, but still, we have some experience with the neat trb building process. it can be done.
asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: nobody after the age of 'spam cdrom', where, e.g., rathead 5 HAD TO fit on 5 disks 'or what, user will use his dial-up to load the rest?\
ben_vulpes: what was that...not even "sourcerer"?
phf: ben_vulpes: what they end up vendoring is binary package artifacts from the port builds
ben_vulpes: nobody in the history of linux distros vendored
asciilifeform: phf: which is why a serious answer is to go 'full biosphere'
danielpbarron: it's not enough to just put an IP of my choosing in /etc/portage/make.conf under GENTOO_MIRRORS="" ?
phf: it's the same with openbsd's ports, netbsd pkgsrc, mac's homebrew, etc.
a111: Logged on 2017-04-03 21:08 danielpbarron: asciilifeform, i was just thinking that earlier today. I want to host my own portage mirror
shinohai: http://btcbase.org/log/2017-04-03#1636445 <<< THis would be nifty ☝︎
asciilifeform: phf: and i have found, that quite often -- they do not
phf: portage doesn't include the original source code, so even if you have the tree, need to make sure that all the external urls resolve
danielpbarron: yeah i got my own, but feel free to tar.gz.asc it to me :D
asciilifeform: and ideally we would be killing the heathen swamp rather than placing it on life support