asciilifeform: sorta like the kind of fellow everyone must know, that got back from afghan and sleeps hugging his rifle, does nothing as hobby but clean and oil it, cycles the bolt at the slightest noise in the house
asciilifeform: it's a siege mentality, necessarily extreme
asciilifeform: 4kw fridge. that the germans, swedes, whoever, can't blackmail you with by withholding
asciilifeform: a surprising fraction of soviet economy reduced to - obscenely inefficient method of producing sovereignty-enforcement hardware
asciilifeform: lenin suggested that the west 'will sell you the rope to hang it with.' not sure if this can be meant literally - could russia buy working nukes from the targets?
asciilifeform: was crap << complicated. if you want sovereignty - gotta crank out the hardware, best as you can.
asciilifeform: the objective - entirely non-monetary - ensure that russian industry gets sawn apart for metals - was achieved.
asciilifeform: decimation: start with the soviet mistake (circa mid-70s) of scrapping their own (interesting! e.g. trinary!) comp. research and deciding to copy western archs - e.g. pdp
asciilifeform: my (no means) expert understanding - they let themselves get arseraped by us banks
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: if you ever have time, consider writing a piece about Ar circa '98-'02
asciilifeform: until you move in and try to get, e.g. smt resistors shipped in from malaysia
asciilifeform: Ar, india, etc. look cheap to the uninitiated.
asciilifeform: doesn't look quite so cheap then, no?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: consider benkay's point. if i have to wrap sample pcbs in benjamins to get them through customs, this ought to be considered a cost of doing business in Ar
asciilifeform: don't know how to ask << makes a difference if this is a fixable condition (know who to pay off, etc) or more difficult (have the correct uncle)
asciilifeform: anything fucktarder muricans do gets stalled << whatever the reason - let's say benkay or i need to get a crate of strange through Ar door. no go, because passport is wrong color. or this is disinfo ?
asciilifeform: decimation: no law involved - in the usual sense
asciilifeform: e.g. the authority of the past N years, when the trademark was legal - where is it now.
asciilifeform: decimation: this is a more interesting event than appears at first. they just zapped 'stare decisis'
asciilifeform: afaik folks get housed on company dime at drilling platform
asciilifeform: mr. spam can live in a roach-infested hovel and actually keep 90% of his bread crumbs
asciilifeform: no car, no boss, no $1000 suits, no clock, etc
asciilifeform: there's a reason, for example, why e.g. a spammer will 'work 16 hours a day to make money while he sleeps'
asciilifeform: then see who is rich, who is a pauper
asciilifeform: likewise, subtract any money you are forced to spend (e.g. google man must pay $50k/yr, say, to live within 2 hrs. drive of the plant) from your salary.
asciilifeform: and stop it when you come home and take off your shoes
asciilifeform: e.g. if you have to drive a car to the plant, start the 'clock' from when you turn the ignition key
asciilifeform: i often say to people, that they should calculate their salary per minute of doing-something-they'd-rather-not
asciilifeform: d co-authors continue. Academic science is only one such market; other familiar examples include rock music, professional sports, and national politics. '☟︎
asciilifeform: 'One of various ways of organizing work that economists have identified, a tournament market "offers participants the chance of winning a big prize--an independent research career, tenure, a named chair, scientific renown, awards--through competition," writes Richard Freeman and co-authors. Tournament markets amplify "small differences in productivity into large differences in recognition and reward," Freeman an☟︎☟︎
asciilifeform: i don't know him well. if you want to dispute his info, wake him up (he does - did? lurk here)
asciilifeform: decimation: kanzure is a friend of a good chum of mine. as i understand, he made 'fuck you money' in one of the last 'dotcom' bubbles and wanders around the world.
asciilifeform: no longer monopoly of starving artists.
asciilifeform: plenty of engineers living on noodles.
asciilifeform: also ignores certain unpleasant realities:
asciilifeform: it's a great essay, but ought to have been named 'how to die to be rich'
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: you've been starving all this time?
asciilifeform: likewise, your design will go straight to the chicoms, who will produce it at their pleasure.
asciilifeform: (if unpackaged - have fun welding the gold whiskers on yourself)
asciilifeform: decimation: crucial details missing. e.g. turnaround, yield (% working), whether they package the dies
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: only one way to find out
asciilifeform: decimation: not really. can use, e.g. 'magic'
asciilifeform: decimation: $500 << do they also have a bridge we can buy ?
asciilifeform: decimation: these are a dime a dozen. not very useful for fpga work, as the latter have proprietary pieces that, if you do not use, leave you with a monstrously bloated design that fits nowhere.
asciilifeform: scandal was pinned on the corpse. case closed.
asciilifeform: ^ case of 'staple gun'-style 'suicide'
