asciilifeform: afaik, these 'robots' were originally intended for 'micromanagement' types to roll around a factory floor, pointing remote-controlled laser pointer at lazy monkeys, mouthing obscenities through speaker
asciilifeform: imagine a manufacturer of, say, ups, or tv, whatnot, posting an update like this.
asciilifeform: ^ what happens to folks who refuse to do arithmetic before going into production
asciilifeform: 'The new, thicker copper layer did resolve the heat build up from the current flow. Temp has been reduced by 20C with the new boards.' (from jborkl, quoting bfl co. lamenting its troubles.)
asciilifeform: (variation on the famous puzzle-joke where mathematicians were given piles of sticks to sort. they puttered around with algorithms - and then janitor comes, and simply stands the sticks up on table, picking them off longest first...)
asciilifeform: (unless it doesn't. called 'blind' via)
asciilifeform: a via occupies space on all N layers of a board
asciilifeform: on top of this, the tracks, vias, components - occupy space
asciilifeform: sometimes N or more paths have to be of the same length (to 0.1 mm or so) and you end with 'meanders' (look at the bottom side of stick of sdram)
asciilifeform: gotta obey various rules (minimal clearances between various kinds of objects; minimized path lengths; avoid vias like the plague in high-frequency signals; etc)
asciilifeform: but understand, it isn't enough to merely connect things
asciilifeform: (on account of xxxx depending on yyy which cannot be built with old version of xxxx around, etc. - sometimes 50 packages long 'chain')
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: gentoo is a source-only distro, where you get to twiddle compiler flags, wait a week for newly-provisioned machine to compile the universe, and - most annoyingly - suffer in the innermost circle of 'dependency hell' where you have to tear up the entire world to build xxxx
asciilifeform: '...The tragedy of our society is not that so many people outgrow their childlike curiosity, but that so few do. The adult equivalent of childlike curiosity is channel surfing and the ten-second sound bite.'
asciilifeform: 'It is useful, however, to distinguish between tinkering and creativity...'
asciilifeform: mr mold sometimes reminds me of a kid, given a chess set but with no notion of the game, treating the pieces as a curious kind of marble / blunt or pointed weapon.
asciilifeform: 'All cannot play the king, and a host of leaders is no wise thing. Let us have but the one leader, the one true king...' - homer's iliad, part ii
asciilifeform: decimation: carlyle, evola, ..., ..., limonov, moldy... if one were to spit out all the folks who complained about kinglessness, freenode will boot you for flooding
asciilifeform: (new meaning for tired old 'longcat is long')
asciilifeform: i often wonder how many people go to bed every night, with not one nailgun wound, disappointed at their insignificance
asciilifeform: (conveniently given the 'opposite' heart rate med shortly before he was to testify)
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: see also the death of slobodan m.
asciilifeform: (what did the corpses have in common)
asciilifeform: they ended up having to call in the soviet equivalent of a 'pinkerton' to crack the puzzle
asciilifeform: the case was an interesting one, in that it was initially treated as epidemic
asciilifeform: interestingly no mention of this on pediwikia
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: bunch of folks in ussr once died from vitamin d overdose. a tank of it was stolen and sold as 'cooking oil' (has roughly the correct appearance and consistency)
