log☇︎
221700+ entries in 1.697s
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform: but for desktop machining - perfect. so long as you aren't in a hurry. << well no, see, electricity is still sold by the watt. whether you're in a hurry or not, you still need same wattage, so still are beholden to the same (rather high) cost. so i suppose "so long as you're making something small enough for your fun doing it to be worth the 0.001 cent to 1/4 dollar price transition"
mircea_popescu: TheNewDeal: it's just a trilema article written like shakespeare, no? << it's the merchant of venice ye lout! :D
mircea_popescu: " you will need to swap the electrolyte a few times, and clean the cavity (at least with a nail) from the products of electrolysis." from the imgur in question. this is not strictly true : in some cases the electrolyte products are protective, in some cases however they are not. depends a lot what we're drilling. (this is roughly why rust is a problem for iron but not aluminum say.)
mircea_popescu: part of why the wot is so fucking useful. "you're not a ceo until mp says you're a ceo" has, along with its excellent oppressive potential, some incredible value in practice.
decimation: most "Libertarians" are pretty much leftists with a slight preference for more "personal freedom" (the kind without personal responsibility)
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform: with little-to-none attention to principles << the reason would be that chemistry is not a science. physics is the science. if the kids wanted the principles they'd go for physics. if they didn't that means they don't wish to understand the thing, but merely you know... be engineers :D
mircea_popescu: this was more of a 60s 70s and somewhat 80s thing.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform: http://imgur.com/AR8UVBW << quoted for the battery. now that EXACT battery, so exact that a vague outline thereof is the most that's needed and the most a person of taste and discrimination would ever draw, for fear of being you know, boringingly fastidious, is a 4.5 volt 3 cell mangan oxide battery that was the most important element of my childhood.
mircea_popescu: moreover, the actual loser in the us, ie, the actual us, is desperate to attach the current representation of their eventual doom to something that's a perennial loser.
decimation: you have to understand, the "Libertarian party" in the US is a perennial loser, they are desperate to attach to anything that smells of success.
mircea_popescu: for this same reason a newtonian physics professor would rather entertain phlogiston than string theory.
mircea_popescu: "look how right we are, and how relevant to the future and general affairs as a going concern : even this bitcoin thing is about something we discuss."
mircea_popescu: it's starting to amze me, the natural cargo-cult-ish inclination of most english space dwellers. it's a sort of, 1. learn french ; 2. read some fragments of rousseau at local library, by themselves ; 3. start blog to impart your discovery that you call "the social deal" to the world.
mircea_popescu: decimation: to me the obvious use for plastic turd is to make molds for metal pouring << metal pouring is a very iffy proposition tho.
decimation: this lurkomore is a hilarious combination of wikipedia, pravda, and 4chan
decimation: lol I didn't realize that there was a controversy about how to spell "Ukraine" in Cyrillic http://lurkmore.to/В/на
asciilifeform: 'this has been a production of Orcish Science for the Human Experimentalist (TM). Hope you enjoyed the show.'
asciilifeform: prominently missing from the napkin sketch is a number of necessaries (means for cooling the electrolyte, scrubbing metal out of it, positioning of the head, etc)
asciilifeform: but for desktop machining - perfect. so long as you aren't in a hurry.
asciilifeform: (unless you're a weirdo with a cnc mill and a very fine bit)
TheNewDeal: I've worked in manufacturing envirorments for a few years now, was quite familiar with that acronym but didn't think you were using it for some reason
asciilifeform: alternatively, use a clever electrolyte that is only an electrolyte where illuminated by a laser.
asciilifeform: if clever, emplace a magnetic field of the appropriate geometry around the fluid intake/return channels, so it is propelled entirely electrically. if even more clever, emplace a system in the reservoir to re-separate the metal from the electrolyte.
decimation: no I'm pretty sure it's a direct quote from the merchant of venice
TheNewDeal: it's just a trilema article written like shakespeare, no?
asciilifeform: the funny thing is - they appear to understand exactly why the naive approach results in a putrid mess instead of the desired cut.
asciilifeform: the moving 'cutter' must be a nozzle where only a small area of liquid contacts the place to be cut.
decimation: this is roughly the deal most "managers of stuff" find themselves in: we will pretend you are a normal human as long as you give us stuff
asciilifeform: (summary of paper: monkey is taught to solve a puzzle which unlocks a dispenser of tasty food. is placed in a cage of 'uneducated' monkeys. is then reliably beaten into dispensing the food for the 'bosses.')
TheNewDeal: Quote from Tech Visionary George Glider "satoshi's worth a million bucks!"
decimation: this is because of the relative high status of a doctor compared to a chemist actually working in a big chemical corporation
asciilifeform did a 'second tour of duty' in undergrad ochem, as adult. and saw this alive.
asciilifeform: decimation: aside from the unremarkable decay across the board of all things u.s., there is a specific phenomenon at work on chemists. in most u.s. schools, they do not actually teach chemistry. instead, they carry out an eleborate 'hazing ritual' for would-be med school applicants.
decimation: my uncle was a research chemist (retired) at a large chemical firm in rural us. he was always complaining about the low quality of "chemists" who graduate from us schools
decimation: it's obvious that there's a segment of silicon valley circus that sees bitcoin as a way to exit from usg
decimation: even if you had a free high-quality waterjet, one would have program, get water+abrasive, monitor cut closely, maintain jet machine
TheNewDeal: I could get you a waterjet... but it may just be a super-soaker with a paint job
asciilifeform: sintering is only used in 'real life', generally, when there is no other choice (ceramics, and metals that really don't behave well in a mill like tungsten)
asciilifeform: i bring up electrolytic machining to explore a point - that tech meant for 'jungle conditions' is a very different field from what is presently dealt with by 'sane' engineers. ☟︎
mircea_popescu: maybe when i retire i make myself a lab.
TheNewDeal: we draw all the programs out with software called alphacam , our company adds on a toolbar that automatically generates the g-code, then you literally just upload it to the machine and hit go
TheNewDeal: a monkey with a cool 250k
asciilifeform: but could a monkey purchase it.
TheNewDeal: pauperizable? a monkey could run this machine
asciilifeform: article suggests a useful 'household' application for the demo - poke a hole in a hardened steel knife where the handle fell off, to bolt on new handle.
asciilifeform: reprint of a 1973 article in same.
TheNewDeal: they're CNC machines though, so you can do some cool in-lay stuff with em though http://imgur.com/Botjoww I did that with a guy in chicago
asciilifeform: how to drill a hole without a drill.
asciilifeform: this is a bitch if you actually care about 3d geometry
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform iirc plasma cutting is 2d for a very similar reason : too damned expensive.
mircea_popescu: decimation you familiar with adiabatic as a concept ?
asciilifeform: plasma cutter is generally a 2d affair.
asciilifeform: (or with a 'knife' in the general sense)
asciilifeform: point of the above unfinished tale is, most of the difficulty of machining as a field revolves around the unwanted sequelae of having to cut metal with metal.
mircea_popescu: you know one of you two needs to get a real name thing going. it's so fucking difficult for me to keep diametric and decimation apart in my head.
asciilifeform: (but he's a thinking man; no idea what 'maker derps' do)
asciilifeform: he owns a cnc mill, the size of a tv set.
asciilifeform: if you're fine with waiting a year for the, e.g., pistol, draw 1 amp instead of 1000.
mircea_popescu: can you make a tungsten carbide shooter ?
mircea_popescu: hehe. "build a nuclear plant you're done"
asciilifeform: it was a response to the nato embargo on selling 6-axis milling machines to the sovblok.
asciilifeform: this was perfected in ussr, and the only vendor of electrolytic mills (which could trivially 'etch' small - or large - arms of whatever kind, on a desktop) is still russian.
mircea_popescu: are on the record stating something like "well these two idiots came in, one a complete nobody , the other a dork, but we figured... whatever, it's just a script, we've not spent that much money on it"
mircea_popescu: somewhat vaguely related : the nbc producers that decided to greenlight seinfeld, the largest grossing production in the history of nbc and the thing that even made sitcoms a thing
asciilifeform: as i recall, locklin's observation was that 'printed' gun is a technowankerous curio, vastly inferior to an aggregation of discarded plumbing parts and a rusty nail
decimation: the broken-ness becomes a negative externality that is distributed randomly
asciilifeform: like many successful/creative types, he had a 'red dwarf phase' of life
mircea_popescu: decimation this is a particular sort of methodological error strategists of the "too clean" variety make. the error is to imagine that what's in question is whether the new thing is promising (positive) rather than broken (negative). fact is any new thing that isn't broken will probably outperform any current thing simply because business is about growth.
asciilifeform: diode logic is a complete logic, incidentally.
mircea_popescu: wasn't he the guy who overengineered a diode while neglecting transistors to the point nobody could afford it ?
asciilifeform: shockley did, if i recall, hit upon the idea of building a sperm bank to.. hand out own sperm
mircea_popescu: at least hughes was not a boring stolid "social improvement" type.
decimation: fortunately they had the sense to follow noyce into the middle of nowhere and start a new business
mircea_popescu: prolly a good case study
mircea_popescu: shockley is perhaps the best example of totally nutso master running his harem straight into a wall.
asciilifeform: in modern usa, noyce would rot in own juices in a psychiatric ward.
decimation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Noyce "In the summer of 1940, at the age of 12, he built a boy-sized aircraft with his brother, which they used to fly from the roof of the Grinnell College stables. "
assbot: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. #1 [ ] - YouTube
nubbins` gets the vague sense that gribs could use a !translate plugin
mircea_popescu: people who have to come to b-a to start a successful operation don't need just the money, or even the money at all.
asciilifeform: decimation: philo farnsworth invented the raster scan while plowing a field. there's always a weirdo exception.
asciilifeform: '…like a refugee from very rural Pakistan who gets relocated to Oslo, Norway, and still thinks that he could make better food if he were only allowed to light a fire in his living room instead of using that complex electric stove. (This is a real news item. Every now and then, landlords discover indoor fireplaces and occasionally the “newbies” to civilization burn down the building.)' (herr naggum) ☟︎☟︎
mircea_popescu: now this may be just fine and dandy "for some applications", but it's not a computer.
mircea_popescu: to put it in the terms of the anonimity as urban/rural dispute article : the rural guy can run software without ever needing a garbage collector, because no program ever covers memory.
mircea_popescu: think, the rural noob in town has been the lol of the town's margins anywhere anytime, pick a society. coincidence ?
mircea_popescu: it's because they don't get the incentive or the opportunity to use a large swath of the brain.
mircea_popescu: one of the worms in question is a shepherd. he says, 1950ish : "con le stelle se puo parlare".
mircea_popescu: he is incredibly popular with the worms, for the obvious reason : a shot at their idea of a better life.
mircea_popescu: meh i can't find where i said it. anyway, in that film, which is predicated on the notion that an urbanite goes in the rural other world (he's a fraudulent film talent scout, cinecita was a big deal in post war italy).
asciilifeform: decimation: they can machine, weld, assemble own parts from scrap << sure. but can they build so much as a kalash round with own hands, to the required tolerances?
decimation: but they are a minority even in rural areas
mircea_popescu: (as to the other point, the orbital spybots are a crapshot. earth based antenna is obv the right approach to the problem)
asciilifeform: (how many of the latter still work - a different question)
mircea_popescu: obviously a car without an engine will continue to be a car without an engine for as long as hills and people willing to push can be found.
asciilifeform wonders when ocean fiber reamplifiers will begin to include a few kg of trotyl with motion fuse, for meddlesome buggers
decimation: said Lt. Col. Tom Crosson, a Pentagon spokesman. ?We respect the freedom of all nations, as reflected in international law, to operate military vessels beyond the territorial seas of other nations.?
mircea_popescu: a war is won by a) making fat targets that b) the enemy tries to take out but c) fails.
decimation: heh yeah that's a good point ascii
asciilifeform: you can charge inductively under the sea, but parasitic currents are a drag
decimation: re: luxury submarines: http://www.ussubmarines.com/ << supposedly can stay submerged for at least a week going 2 knots