asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: there was talk a few yrs ago (russian) regarding a mesh net built on modern radio hardware in mexican mountains. supposedly destroyed (via agenture methods, no fancy tech)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: BingoBoingo more or less summarized the one interesting gibblet
asciilifeform: 'But maybe "computer" is the wrong word. It's actually an iron box with a padlock. Also known as a computer whose security model is simple enough to understand and whose operating system is known completely enough to trust.'
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: sit down for this one. they don't use pgp either...
asciilifeform: (summary: fellow read 'the mice' or likewise woke up, pessimist)
asciilifeform: a tale was once told to me by one fellow 'in the know': russia sold gps jammers (serious ones, not the chinese pocket gizmos off ebay) to iraq, shortly prior to '03 american invasion. but iraq didn't pay the full invoice. so, the vendor neglected to remind the buyer that they must be arranged in a ring pattern and operated in unison☟︎
asciilifeform: radio-seeking guidance is sop even now.
asciilifeform: can't speak for the chicoms. but, given as their machines are more recent, perhaps they do the obvious thing - targeting the loud, unmistakeable radio-cacophony of the target
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: russian rockets are traditionally specced to the 'texas sharpshooter' method
asciilifeform: most people, at least, have the sense to solve the latter problem another way.
asciilifeform: consider, likewise, the infamous 'suit for surviving bear attack'
asciilifeform: a fine example, actually, of solving wrong engineering problem
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: all others - if they can afford it, live elsewhere, rather than building bunkers, investing in chemsuits, escape vehicles
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: notice that the folks who are forced to live 'in a target' on account of their profession, have rather different nukefest preparations than the crap traditionally suggested to commoners
asciilifeform: 'Which, in fact, I had. Because I'd essentially told him his research was fraudulent. The fact that my research was also fraudulent, and that neither of ours was particularly noteworthy in that regard, did not matter. And why should it? Others' crimes cannot excuse your own.'☟︎
asciilifeform: 'My Navrozov moment, of course, was when I approached one of the two - Sacco, I think - and attempted to have an intellectual discussion of this realization. The story is basically the same as Navrozov's, so it would be boring to repeat, but basically I came away with the feeling that I'd told someone his Sicilian grandmother liked to get drunk and fuck her own goats.'☟︎
asciilifeform: 'At some point during this period, however, I realized that the entire problem was a complete and utter pseudo-problem. ... So I am very confident that neither of these techniques, neither mine nor Sacco and Vanzetti's, has ever been used in practice. There is no need for them, there has never been any need for them, and there will never be any need for them. And this was quite obvious in 1993.'☟︎
asciilifeform: 'Sacco and Vanzetti came up with an entirely different solution to the slow-MMU problem, one which if I do say so myself was less imaginative than mine, but both more general and more practical. They published theirs in a real conference, received much acclaim for it, and I believe patented it, started a so-called company and eventually sold it to Microsoft.'☟︎
asciilifeform: not worth it unless you're paid for the sweat (or perhaps half a step ahead of the gasenwagen...)
asciilifeform: and then understand that you can't use actual life experiences, etc. in conversation
asciilifeform: folks who do this for a living (e.g. spying) come with 'cover' biographies and essentially live the life of an actor
asciilifeform: that's when i realized that talking about anything worthwhile under a 'tight' alias is arduous to the degree that it's probably not worth it
asciilifeform: at least that's when i (not acquainted with the man personally) learned the truth
asciilifeform: that narrowed the candidate list to 1.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: actually moldbug/yarvin 'came out of the closet' when he bragged about inventing address space randomization in an obscure paper as an undergrad
