asciilifeform: the necessary human material is no longer readily available. just as the metals with which the SR-71 was built no longer are.
asciilifeform: i tend to agree with MP and others who conclude that we no longer live in a world where manhattan projects happen.
asciilifeform: it's rather like, say you were permitted to squeeze off one shot from a small arm at your enemy. does this amount to 'kill switch'? what if you miss? what if he's got a tough hide.
asciilifeform: and depends as much on herd psychology as anything else.
asciilifeform: whether this amounts to 'kill' is debatable.
asciilifeform: there is a 'fuck things up quite a bit' switch, possibly. (as described in my old piece)
asciilifeform: if the only things you can 'own' are those that fit in your coffin, then: stalin owned only an overcoat. and a few coin in his pocket.
asciilifeform: this goes back to the 'what is control' question from earlier, as well as MP's recent discussion of 'owning a cow'
asciilifeform: in what magic book is it written that '1%' (of what...) is a useful proxy for 'those who rule'
asciilifeform: 'it's not a bug, it's a feature' (TM)
asciilifeform: Duffer1: one can easily picture a set of aims that these things, which you aren't particularly fond of, help to advance.
asciilifeform: in this scenario, imagination can indeed have an impact on reality...
asciilifeform: re: imagination: gedankenexperiment time. let's imagine that i imagine there's a cleaner way to solve sha(Y)=X than brute force. i pursue this line of inquiry, and the imagined turns into the actual.
asciilifeform: Duffer1: this conclusion does not necessarily follow.
asciilifeform: francis_wolke: the visible muppets aren't good at much of anything
asciilifeform: correct. it's rather like the 'animal activist' folks turning the mice loose.
asciilifeform: and there is never any question of turning them loose (that'd be the end of organized civilization as a concept) but change of masters.
asciilifeform: 'kinder/gentler/paper' but otherwise effective.
asciilifeform: modern 'debt politics' is simply a maintenance of the historic norm (most humans being formally enslaved to someone or other) by other means.
asciilifeform: modern monkey-handlers have not entirely abandoned the idea of 'populistic' gifts to their charges via mass expropriation (whether via debt forgiveness, abruptly nationalized industry, or whichever other tricks)
asciilifeform: so the ROI on containing them isn't always positive.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the basic point that stands, supposing there is one, is that caging monkeys has a certain cost
asciilifeform: francis_wolke: possibly the only organized undertaking modern rulers are any good at is: presenting elaborately misleading pictures of their capabilities.
asciilifeform: you 'control' your car. but it will never fly, or sail.
asciilifeform: in the same sense that they 'control' the weather.
asciilifeform: that is, do the fellows with the 'nuclear briefcases' - 'control bitcoin'? arguably they do...
asciilifeform: 'who controls', on the other hand, is uselessly vague.
asciilifeform: a more interesting question for 'political' aficionados could be 'who has the power to kill while making the death look like bad luck?' and 'who can silently bend the system towards some desired end'
asciilifeform: everyone seems intent on inventing the parachute after being thrown, rather than before.
asciilifeform: i.e. the six or so global telecoms with de-facto control over the net could switch it off like a lamp. (provisions against this scenario are quite feasible, but no one has cared to consider much less make them.)
asciilifeform: once again 'controls' is a meaningless question
asciilifeform: all three of these are quite distinct things.
asciilifeform: and then there's the power to crunch the blockchain and squeeze out whatever truth is contained therein
asciilifeform: which may or may not be held by anyone
asciilifeform: and then there's the power to silently '51%'
asciilifeform: describing 'power' as a scalar is naive. there is power to destroy, for example, which is arguably held by whoever controls the satoshi mega-hoard
asciilifeform: MisterE: if you were the hypothetical king of the miners, you have every incentive to engineer a ruse like this.
asciilifeform: i can make 1TH look like 1,000 1GH lamers. and so can you, and so can any spammer.☟︎
asciilifeform: Duffer1: the assumption that we know anything whatsoever regarding the distribution of the bulk of mining power is mistaken.
asciilifeform: francis_wolke: and so, when a government pumps out propaganda by the truckload re: how it maintains a stable of uniquely-capable cryptologic janissaries, what can you conclude?
asciilifeform: francis_wolke: if you ruled over a 'center of cryptography and mathematics,' would you wish this to be known to your enemies?
asciilifeform: we live in the great age of muppeteering.
asciilifeform: francis_wolke: (author of first link in your piece speaking) you're half right. the flaw is that you are only including 'documented' ('flag, anthem, navy') powers.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: unless i'm missing something, trade only happens when buyer and seller agree on a price. when goods change hands regardless, we usually use another word for it.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: trades only when there is an agreement between buyers and sellers on value << where have you traded - and what? - where trade happens in some other way?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: old owner still had working passwords - half a year after the transfer was completed" << Butugichag is waiting with open arms for these fine folks.
asciilifeform: if fpga with published internal specs existed (as it did in 1994, say) but of modern proportions, this could change.
asciilifeform: virtually no one gets to 'design a computer' now. (not apple, either.) they get to glue the same old crap together in mildly-different ways.
asciilifeform: e.g. support PCI or die, support consumer SDRAM sticks or die, etc.
asciilifeform: that is, not the fact of dma being satanic in and of itself (it isn't), but just how thoroughly hardware designers are enslaved by architectural oddness beyond their control.
