asciilifeform: a toy that will hasten the owner's death, if used as theorized here
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: re: ad-hoc ir spectrometer discussion: no dice. not that you can't train, e.g. neural net to distinguish mdma from shoe polish - you can. but the objective of identifying synthesis byproducts (basement lab folks rarely bother with recrystallization) - this one takes actual brains.
asciilifeform: this, one should note, is when they're 'flying the mahogany bomber.' in the field, these folks have ancient hardware that does something like civilized crypto
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: key stored in what: employee badge.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: it gets better. military brass (sometimes! optionally!) signs. but with what: ms-outlook plugin.
asciilifeform: some reason i imagined sport bets were a 'major thing' (not for me personally, but for a mythical 'unwashed mass waiting to arise')
asciilifeform: if it was once alive - now dead, replaced by scar tissue
asciilifeform only ever heard of 'affiliate marketeer' as euphemism for spammer
asciilifeform read backwards, parsed wc as watercloset
asciilifeform: afaik usg contractors still submit invoices via fax.
asciilifeform: 'I realized that I’ve never touched a fax machine before—that it’s as abstract, for me, as the laser guns...' << clearly never dealt with usg. fax is mandatory to this day!
asciilifeform: i've more battery in here than in the cabinets. sad.
asciilifeform: yeah, pay per minute for the privilege of using own hardware.
asciilifeform: before the telco 'network extender' gizmos were sold (incidentally, a scam - the telco still charges for minutes despite using the chump's own local wired bandwidth!) mitm-ing was demonstrated using 'software defined radio' (inexpensive board, does exactly what is printed on the crate)
asciilifeform: but this isn't particularly interesting. the interesting part is that everything people speak of as 'inseekoore!' re: cellular comms, was baked in very deliberately - and publicly - at the start.
asciilifeform: other u.s. telcos have similar products
asciilifeform: it sits in your house, you can mutilate it at your pleasure
asciilifeform: this is a ~$300 gizmo you can buy - retail
asciilifeform: if i like, i desolder the rom and introduce mine.
asciilifeform: ^ vendor declared victory after disabling easy firmware update mechanism on the gadget. board still has jtag port, removable flash, etc.
