asciilifeform: you can get machine racks in shipping containers. drop them straight on the snow, connect to power plant, put a bit of concertina wire around.
asciilifeform: 'yeah we're short on cabling, the men delivering had to shoot their dogs'
asciilifeform: cargo cult, too. fat lot of good it will do for the idiots.
asciilifeform: this decimal point crap is a mega-lol. they can't inflate, so... let's move decimal. like in a banana republic, or '90s russia.
asciilifeform: everybody's seen the photos of fleets of gasenwagen, brand new
asciilifeform: since we're at the 'pack parachute' stage, nobody's shooting stoolies around here yet.
asciilifeform: what's to keep the stoolies from using their eyes?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: treetops, flying machines parked on office roofs, charging solar, etc. - sure. line of sight to a friendly window, city-style - not likely.
asciilifeform: it's good for the environment - and ok fer you!
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: they include 'for the good of the poor' in any official proclamation now. as in 'the good of the proletariat' and whatnot.
asciilifeform: this was mainly from a shortage of master 'morsemen'
asciilifeform: punch holes in ordinary 35mm film, feed into machine later
asciilifeform: russian sets of that period came with hole punchers (similar to the ubiquitous hand-cranked office label printers)
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: if you study the other exhibits on that site, you will learn that even 1950s soviet 'spy radio' designers understood that one must send very rare messages, in the shortest possible bursts
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: you imagine this situation of perfect loyalty and imperfect communications << point! the buggers are spotty even at using rsa. how do you say 'funkspiel' in english?
asciilifeform: would be nice to see the transition to step 2 sooner, rather than later
asciilifeform: if you're pumping out kWatts of whatever, wherever - you're a target.
asciilifeform: if you're 'meshing' with consumer hardware, on fixed, documented frequencies - you're a target.
asciilifeform: and to think that it is purely an 'american problem' - is a mistake.
asciilifeform: i dare to invoke the 'parachute theorem,' and say that the time to build comm infrastructure out of the real (or imagined) control of the crown is now, and not when it becomes a dire necessity.
asciilifeform: put up a mast << might as well hoist a black flag on same mast.
asciilifeform: good luck setting up a line-of-sight anything in u.s. suburbia.
asciilifeform: the point i wanted to make was that anything other than a very broad, military-style spread spectrum setup, with hop keys exchanged in person, is simply a beacon for the gasenwagen.
asciilifeform: bounce: suggested earlier. and, of course, by many other people, in the past.
asciilifeform: in usa at least, 'hams' know that they live at the pleasure of the crown, various folks are always hungry for their spectrum pie
asciilifeform: bounce: it relies on some reasonably general-purpose channel, of whatever bandwidth
asciilifeform: bounce: the other hams will eagerly turn you in
asciilifeform: i, for one, have no copper phone line, and know no one who still does
asciilifeform: bounce: resurrecting fido << see the point earlier about the destroyed 'bell' copper in usa
asciilifeform: anything that transmits over 1000km is a fat target.
asciilifeform: a usenet-style system, where messages might resort to travelling in a truck full of disk, seems inevitable in a scenario like this.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: real time tcp/ip, over 1000s of km, for millions of people - is a luxury.
asciilifeform: and once it is melted down - metal is metal
asciilifeform: refrigerators, unlike cars, don't come with legal titles
asciilifeform: hard to think of how else the crown could distinguish between legit and thieving metal recyclers.
asciilifeform: sorta like how, in old scotland, they had a contraption very similar to the later guillotine - 'scottish gibbet' - where a cattle or horse thief would find the animal he stole attached to a rope, which pulls out the peg, blade falls.☟︎
asciilifeform: (can easily think of creative penalties for buyers of stolen copper. say, hanging with same stolen cable. on a hv mast.)
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: optical line-of-sight would work well in places other than usa - ones where people still live in cities
asciilifeform: but see mp's story of the last emperor.
asciilifeform: in a functioning empire, the penalty would be - sizzling in the electric chair. right there, in the bed of a specially-built police truck.
asciilifeform: in usa, desperados are attaching trucks to hv cables and driving off.
asciilifeform: folks who like to eat shit - can eat it. others will continue to eat food.
asciilifeform: the correct way to do 'pirate radio' net is - frequency hopping 'spread spectrum.' meet the other local node people in person, to agree on a key.
asciilifeform: plenty of quiet spectrum, there for the taking, esp. if one only needs a few km of range.
asciilifeform: and, given that 'one may as well hang for a sheep as a lamb,' why stick to only 2m.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: Shame encryption on Amateur radio frequencies is a crime << eventually, u.s. folks who want genuine net will need to commit this - or some other - crime.
asciilifeform: eventually, the one or two remaining copper subscribers will complain. and perhaps it will be re-filled. or not.
asciilifeform: the one on my street emptied out a few years ago
asciilifeform: instead, there are tanks of co2 chained to poles here and there☟︎
asciilifeform: my understanding is that these, at least where i live, and in a number of other places, have given out - and never replaced
asciilifeform: in a traditional telco plant, there are giant air dryers, blowing into ducts, to keep positive pressure
asciilifeform: copper is expensive - not merely the metal, but maintenance - keeping water out of the cable ducts, etc. the telcos would hurry to be rid of it even the removal did not speed the arrival of arsenet.☟︎
asciilifeform: but it could convert to ArseNet overnight.
asciilifeform: nobody gives a damn, at present, because we all love fiber
asciilifeform: gone from the house, and from the pole.
asciilifeform: for example - moving into new house, i discovered a dangling stub where the old 'bell atlantic' copper ought to be.
