asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: re: historic hardware: ever own a 'ibm workpad z50' ?
asciilifeform: ink about how to get out of problems like that. Outside the poker table, consider any problem that starts with the words “So, I have been having a steamy secret affair with the wife of this violent mob boss, and now she...”'
asciilifeform: ace, because it can only have resulted from you having made choices that are obviously wrong and easily avoidable. At the poker table, the description of an alien problem might begin “So I called a raise and re-raise preflop from the small blind with my jack-three offsuit...” Say no more. Don’t call a raise and re-raise from the small blind when you have nothing but a measly jack-three offsuit, and you won’t have to th
asciilifeform: 'I’d like to see one expression coined by the poker writer Matt Matros become common parlance, since it applies far more widely than only to poker. An “alien problem” means some problem that might be fun, interesting and educational to analyze, and it would be really important to know the solution if you ever found yourself in that situation, but the point is that you shouldn't even be having that problem in the first pl☟︎☟︎
asciilifeform: reminds of ilkka kokkarinen's 'alien problems':☟︎
asciilifeform: think of a taxi or bus park. there's usually a handful of disabled vehicles, but they either await the scrapyard or a shipment of parts, given as the latter can be had
asciilifeform not involved in this profession in any capacity, knows from thirdhand sources.
asciilifeform: a greybeard and squad of monkeys parts them out, maintaining the handful in some semblance of working order.
asciilifeform: the rest - are kept in parts graveyards.
asciilifeform: as i understand, this is why countries that inherited, bought, stole, etc. some xxx quantity of soviet aircraft yy years ago, tend to fly some small handful z of them at a time
asciilifeform: much like your finger cannot function for long or very usefully unless attached to the rest of you
asciilifeform: have to understand, jet fighter is not really a complete machine. it is a tentacle of the larger industrial slave empire which produced and employed it.☟︎☟︎☟︎☟︎☟︎☟︎☟︎☟︎☟︎☟︎
asciilifeform: with engine MTBF measured in tens of hours - doubtful.
asciilifeform: really, the quintessential specialist's toy.
asciilifeform: comes from an infamous crackpot whose name i've forgotten, who wrote a lengthy treatise on how planet has been secretly ruled by lizard-like aliens since time immemorial
asciilifeform: at no point may the orcs have a leader who is not an active muppet.
asciilifeform: fought a war partly to make this easier.
asciilifeform: usg ships afghani opium directly into ru.
asciilifeform: then rebranded as a u.s. dept. of state 'dissidents need to plan their glorious democratic multi-coloured revolutions without interference from cruel orcish gestapos' gizmo.
asciilifeform: it was (originally - and semi-publicly) spun as a 'our spies need to do their thing under the cloak of a river of shit traffic so here's this free service' gizmo
asciilifeform: tor project funding wasn't secret, either
asciilifeform: in other news: usg's oceanic fiber tap catalogue apparently leaked.
asciilifeform: 'de-anonymization' paper << mega-snore.
asciilifeform: adlai: because that is the language in which fundamental research in computing continued, while in the west - died in 1950s.
asciilifeform: 'Of course, this already happened: someone wrote a patch... in 2011... That said, the patch was rejected, and that's that. The bug lives on.'
asciilifeform: only when its teat is empty of milk, and then the hide is emptied of skin, can there be any question of 'letting it go.' and even then, someone might like to tan your hide.
asciilifeform: to usg, you are a resource. a head of cattle. who lets a cow go ?
asciilifeform: see also mircea_popescu's article 'on your way out of the gravity well, this awaits you'
asciilifeform: try moving your only 1mil overseas, intact
asciilifeform: undata: generally folks with a liquid, detachable (!) 1mil usd - have considerably more that is left behind, like the early stages of a rocket
asciilifeform: if his check from moscow didn't bounce - he can listen.
asciilifeform: like, if mircea_popescu figures correctly, orlov
asciilifeform: i also mentioned 'folks paid to give a damn'
