asciilifeform digs in archive for the little story about the wall street 'hft' folks who omit all (!) crypto because 'speed.'☟︎
asciilifeform: 'pardon my cynical twist, but what are you doing with that 20,000×20,000 double-precision floating point matrix you say you need to invert _today_? If you answer "nutt'n, I jus kinda wondered what it'd be like, you know", you should be very happy that I am most likely more than 3000 miles away from you, or I would come over and slap you hard.'☟︎☟︎☟︎☟︎
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: what fascinates me is how many people whine about 'slow' without saying precisely why they want 'fast', and while remaining entirely innocent of basic kindergarten-level gotchas like 'lamport's clock'
asciilifeform: BlueMeanie4: 'usability' << we're using it. and it appears - you are, too. so what kind of 'usability' is lacking ?
asciilifeform talked two chaps who were previously innocent of pgp and (mostly) of irc through the whole shebang. it took - minutes.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: (from one russian commenter) - 'does the nail polish change to warning colour after the fifth martini?'
asciilifeform: perhaps the nail polish - in a transparent variety - will catch on there.
asciilifeform: phun phact: knockout drops are alive and well in russia. but they are typically used by women - on men. chemically-assisted pick-pockets.
asciilifeform: re: electronic warfare article - the conflation between garden-variety signal jamming and 'emp' circuit zapping is inexcusable and a classic leper's bell of journalistic hacks
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: if you're lucky, 'google groups' might have a good fraction of it
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: but i doubt that google corp. has the only copy of 'dejanews' - ask around.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: still got those usenet archives ? << only ever had a hand-sewn, humble archive (a la 'yarchive.net' but not as good.)
asciilifeform: lol re: the notion of 'controlling' a hypothetical 'superintelligent' machine.
asciilifeform: the russian 'pinnockio' - 'буратино' - is an almost totally different thing. a kind of parable about chumpatronics (esp. in the animated musical rendition)
asciilifeform: to the point that virtually no russian-speaking folks ever read the originals
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: (you probably knew) soviet 'fanfic' of devil knows how many famous works - e.g., 'wizard of oz', 'pinnockio', - was hyper-bestselling
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i thought sinclair lewis was the original
asciilifeform: (unrelated) gold and silver also stored in the IC << they get the Au out - chemically. in just the same way miners do. melting point of Si never plays into it.
asciilifeform: see also feynman's 'lectures on physics' vol. 1, sect. 6-3.
asciilifeform owns the shirt on his back and a large heap of various rusting scrap metal
asciilifeform would challenge BingoBoingo to pauper contest, if he knew what one would be
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo - theories re: wagen. a) they wanted to see if you'll pull the pin on the thermite. b) they thought you might have coin.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: wasn't aware they actually do the whole nkvd thing << now that i think about it, they do one better. you can keep your passport - but when they scan it at the airport, if the bell rings you get a special treat.
asciilifeform is greatly puzzled re: how anyone might imagine BingoBoingo had anything to do with SR
asciilifeform discovered, after some digging, that he could get russian passport - but would have to spend 1+ year there
asciilifeform: not that, come that hour, the folks with passports will fare any better
asciilifeform scratched head, definitely remembers somethign like this
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: if i recall, they took his passport last year
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: why'd they let you loose? or should we assume that you're posting from a stake ?
asciilifeform saw, on at least one occasion, stereotypically shifty fellow on a train with stereotypical bulge in his pocket - standing right next to polizei, who was entirely disinterested...
