asciilifeform: wasn't even able to find immediately what they claimed to use.

asciilifeform: decimation: can't say, i did not try to buy it

asciilifeform: decimation: because 'reasons.'

asciilifeform: did someone link to the ancient 'symbolics, death of heterogeneous engineering' essay ? and i didn't notice

asciilifeform up to date with log, but is not certain what is being spoken of

asciilifeform: which bit

asciilifeform: 'axe-time, sword time, ...' (tm)

asciilifeform: so.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: and this creature is rich, while good men die in butugychag.

asciilifeform: as in, gadget that directly links two machines over simple radio

asciilifeform: (ricochet modems could connect with one another without repeater, and i briefly searched if classical 'radiomodem' is still sold by anyone)

asciilifeform: to ricochet

asciilifeform: http://www.gotenna.com/pages/how-it-works << commercial product, claimed. but begs question, why the pNohe is needed.

asciilifeform: somehow - same.

asciilifeform: like the mold that grows in public toilets

asciilifeform: organism inescapable for the niche

asciilifeform knows

asciilifeform: (bottles, thermoclines)

asciilifeform: spoke with al s. once re: oceanic variant

asciilifeform: at one point even wrote a grant proposal (laugh) suggesting use in savage lands, etc

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: drew this up, in some detail, in '03-04.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: second was thermal

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: first concept was solar, cap, and wall climber / glue.

asciilifeform: not even by bureaucrats, but by the first fool who loads 'youtube'

asciilifeform: mega-issue with all publicly-accessible p2p (and inescapably low-capacity) nets is ddos.

asciilifeform: for some time.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i have a largely complete design for this and 5 other similar items, will confess.

asciilifeform: so it of course had to die 'because reasons.'

asciilifeform: and considerably cheaper than virtually all other net access available at the time.

asciilifeform: phun phact: ricochet was non-exportable on account of fairly respectable crypto.

asciilifeform: of this broken-title 'ownership' of pirate treasure.

asciilifeform: evidently the crown made a gift, to someone.

asciilifeform: though the last time i walked by, sticker was - gone

asciilifeform: decimation: apparently not. special sticker of 'no one knows who owns'

asciilifeform: but not the city, not the (long-gone) last inhabitant, nor.,,,

asciilifeform: just like -someone- knows who owns that house down the street from where i sit

asciilifeform: -someone- knows.

asciilifeform: (for one thing, it is unclear who, precisely owns them, and the contract for their emplacement - iirc - was perpetual, somehow)

asciilifeform: and, interestingly, no one hurries to remove them.

asciilifeform: virtually all of the boxes in my city - still work.

asciilifeform: you could easily drop it from airplane and would survive.

asciilifeform: it had a xilinx spartan 1st ed. fpga inside. and was built like a tank.

asciilifeform was, for a while anyway, the owner of a ricochet repeater which 'fell off a pole'

asciilifeform: http://www.wherry.com/gadgets/ricochet << historical.

asciilifeform: decimation: aha. as it is, it is very much pegged into the traditional 2.4G band.

asciilifeform: the backhaul nodes which connected these things to the ordinary net, naturally died years and years ago.

asciilifeform: http://farm9.static.flickr.com/8053/8446817062_dfc4392577_o.png << the repeaters.

asciilifeform: https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~anrew/250b/ricochet.jpg << ricochet modem

asciilifeform: decimation: where i live meters have gsm modems.

asciilifeform: they answer pings

asciilifeform: there are a dozen just within range of where i sit now

asciilifeform: but the boxes still work!

asciilifeform: in late '90s

asciilifeform: the firm went thoroughly broke, through - iirc - embezzlement - long, long ago

asciilifeform: consists of small gadgets attached to light poles

asciilifeform: i will also add that we have an even odder curiosity here. an ancient, possibly first-of-its-kind wireless net called 'ricochet'

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i can more easily imagine a 'jobs program' where monkeys with triangulolocators climb walls and scrape by hand.

asciilifeform: climb up, then break tube of cyanoacrylate glue.

asciilifeform: futher in the 'vandal' theme, i will point out that it is not difficult to build a very cheap apparatus for climbing up walls with a few dozen grams' payload, quickly.

asciilifeform: (the wild cats in my neighbourhood run on this energy)

asciilifeform: when vehicle is parked, on gradient b/w ground and cooling engine.

asciilifeform: certainly would

asciilifeform: etc.

asciilifeform: for open air applications - solar+supercap

asciilifeform: - run on thermal gradient

asciilifeform: very much leads into the ancient dream of 'p2p relay you can superglue to undersides of parked cars and other vandalisms'

asciilifeform: 'testing can prove existence but not absence...'

asciilifeform: if i had any reason to believe that these did not have magic-packet anal hole circuits, i'd be buying by the kilogram.

asciilifeform: ~50MHz 32-bit (oddball architecture) cpu, tcp/ip implemented in hardware, can address via spi (as in sd card) external eeprom.

asciilifeform: $1 or so in quantity.

asciilifeform: also unrelated, the ESP8266 mentioned last night is a very interesting item.

asciilifeform: i recall it was mentioned.

asciilifeform: but it is on list

asciilifeform: nope

asciilifeform: *than

asciilifeform: i do not think there is a better film version of the ru 1990s that 'p'.

asciilifeform: there is a set of english subs floating about.

asciilifeform: mega-recommended, lulzy.

asciilifeform: ('поколение п')

asciilifeform: it was turned into a very passable film, 'generation p'

asciilifeform: complete with 3d films

asciilifeform: decimation: pelevin had an sf story about a team of folks who create politicians, 'public intellectuals', 'most wanted terrorists', etc. from whole cloth for mankind.

asciilifeform: l0l

asciilifeform: these people do not even -have- identities

asciilifeform: which muppet wrote what - is approximately as interesting, imho, as which nigerian spammer penned which particular spam template.

asciilifeform: when the idea of ghostwriting is even thinkable, we know we're dealing with a class of muppets.

asciilifeform: decimation: aha. shortly after this i wondered wtf even to care.

asciilifeform: http://one-evil.org/content/symbols_gold.html << entirely unrelated but mega-l0l for connoisseurs of crackpottery (psychoceramics!)

asciilifeform: overwhelming evidence that he did not.

asciilifeform: l0l

asciilifeform always feels temptation to snip a letter, 'pubic intellectual'

asciilifeform: he was in quite a few places.

asciilifeform: that one.

asciilifeform: or with goats, sheep

asciilifeform: decimation: i saw ayers alive once - public talk. it was quite an experience.

asciilifeform: even i knew this.

asciilifeform: ^ this - yes.

asciilifeform: 'young' being 10 yrs. her senior, rather than 35.

asciilifeform: when she runs into young man with money - goes there.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the normal rationale is 'we rob banks because that's where the money is'