asciilifeform: kakobrekla: when the 3620 came out, howard cannon (symbolics co.), a strong fellow, famously danced with it on a stage, claiming 'first man-portable lisp machine!'
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: it weighs about 60kg. and same for the console. (you need both to use it.) and can't even be guaranteed to survive shipping.
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: the older one (that is, the actual symbolics 3620, not the dec alpha box running emu)
asciilifeform: there were, i think, two dozen people who solved
asciilifeform: Mats_cd03: fellow named Curt Yarvin wrote an elaborate programming language / runtime env. / replacement for dns and http. and sold namespace for substantial money. but earlier he handed out parcels of address space to folks who participated in a contest - which is where i got mine.
asciilifeform: Mats_cd03: long story. might want to read 'urbit' documentation. but they are not called 'dukedoms' any more - now they are called 'aircraft carriers.'
asciilifeform: watching sewer pipe cleaning was more interesting than the linked reddit turd.
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: calculate the size of botnet needed to equal even an obsolete asic.
asciilifeform: that there is no public proof of this taking place does not change the fact.
asciilifeform: the most profitable means of obtaining mining hardware remains: to sneak hashing core onto a die that is being fabbed anyway, for some unrelated purpose.
asciilifeform: i.e. hashing power of non-public asic projects, disguised as whatever you want (as 10,000 gpu folks, say) via means familiar to any spammer.
asciilifeform: this is not even touching the subject of 'dark matter'
asciilifeform: afaik, every existing miner asic vendor started this way
asciilifeform: lotto tickets are also -ev, but there is no shortage of buyers.
asciilifeform: 1) collect usd, coin, whatever from chumps 2) bake chips 3) mine for six months, boost difficulty 4) profit !!11! 5) hand over now-marginally-useless hardware to idiots
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: look into how every asic run to date was paid for.
asciilifeform: that seems to be the alpha and omega of mining as a field.
asciilifeform: why diddle caustics in a dark basement, breathe unspeakable gasses, when you can scamzor.
asciilifeform: sorta how you can get usable gasoline via uranium carbide + h2o. but this is -EV.
asciilifeform: 100% of the ingenuity in mining seems to concern the extraction of chumpatronium from existing natural reserves.
asciilifeform: naive engineer / worker bee might imagine that 'next wave' is gallium arsenide, eldrich optical cpu, etc. - but nope.
asciilifeform: so this is likely to attract chumpatronic engineers like shit/flies
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: american bureaucrats recently decided that a btc-usd converter that simply rents out mining capacity doesn't count as 'exchange'
asciilifeform: Vexual is posting through a time warp ?
asciilifeform: (afaik miner folks are entirely innocent of any kind of innovation in silicon fab, only chumpatronics)
asciilifeform: apparently, chumpatronics are more appealing than semiconductor research in jungle conditions. whod'avethunkit.
asciilifeform: in 2010 i somehow imagined the mining thing would spur experiments in kitchen cuprous oxide fabs, other exotica, etc. but no dice.
asciilifeform: now that i live in a place with actual 'grounds', i might have to invest in said lantern.
asciilifeform: (for those who live where there is no mosquito: state of the art is a kind of gas lantern, where the outer mantle is heated around 37C, with a level of CO2 exhaust similar to human exhalation. inner mantle roasts the mosquito.)
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: afaik, the lowly propane-powered mosquito oven is still the champ.
asciilifeform: industrial civilization as we have it (esp. the u.s. variety) is fragile enough, one needn't make use of futuristic weapons to turn 'business as usual' into a nostalgic fantasy.
asciilifeform: Mats_cd03: if the idiots didn't (for whatever reason, known only to them) stick to small arms, with which (for some likewise unknown reason) they have no proficiency, they could actually do some real damage.
asciilifeform: Mats_cd03: i'd rather be in a room with the small arms postal folk than with the 'happy land' arsonist.
asciilifeform: at some point, we'll get the situation described in 1968 book 'stand on zanzibar' (j. brunner) where 'muckers' (amock) become a daily event, and people simply get used to it, in just the same way people accept traffic deaths as a 'cost of doing business.'
asciilifeform: killdozer fellow, afaik, killed no one.
asciilifeform: even the several folks who drove trucks into a crowd, generally got considerably better results than the ones with small arms.
