asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: old-fashioned dead drops a la Aldrich Ames work fine.
asciilifeform: the only reason I find this tidbit interesting is that it is yet another example of chumps who think that 'encryption' will save them - without having anything resembling a secure endpoint.
asciilifeform: also have to wonder how much LTC the operator holds
asciilifeform: it does one particular thing: bring in the idiot chumps
asciilifeform: gotta love the compromised 'PGP' (in-browser crap)
asciilifeform: the linked document is very close to an official declaration of intent to scam.
asciilifeform: recipe: 1) found Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust. 2) "lose" (walk off with) the private keys. 3) profit!
asciilifeform: "The Shareholders’ limited rights of legal recourse against the Trust, the Trustee and the Sponsor and the Trust’s lack of insurance protection expose the Trust and its Shareholders to the risk of loss of the Trust’s Bitcoins for which no person is liable."
asciilifeform: I, for one, sure as hell wouldn't put $100M of BTC on silicon I didn't design (or at least control the design of.)
asciilifeform: the proper way to run btc services. fully history-free software/hardware stack.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: so you did it already?
asciilifeform: so you use cash. if necessary, every camera you walked/drove by on the way to the counter will cough up its footage, to the right people.
asciilifeform: the people applying 'rules' are applying their whims, and to your arse, rather than to bitcoin (or whatever else the instrument of your perceived mischief may be.)
asciilifeform: bitcollapse: think of it more like 'warez'
asciilifeform: when you use currency minted by an empire, you are buying into its philosophy (if one dare call it that) - like it or not.
asciilifeform: all this talk of IDs at store counters will seem nostalgically quaint when start needing a working RFID beacon just to pass through public doorways.
asciilifeform: you don't really own land unless you have 'Infangthief' on it!
asciilifeform: the real joke is that the ASIC may very well become worthless by the time the thief gets around to fencing it. (when ASICs will be a dime a dozen and mining difficulty - astronomical.)
asciilifeform: this is how U.S./NATO crypto-phones work, if I recall.
asciilifeform: re: the stolen ASIC: here's an idea for improved design: consider an ASIC that needs a "breath of life" packet to run. it would live on a physical key, that must be present on power-up. (can be removed afterwards, assuming battery-backed power.)
asciilifeform: given the way bitbet works, how would a hypothetical IP ban matter? Isn't everyone using TOR/proxies/etc. anyway?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: didn't you once describe living out exactly this incident?
asciilifeform: for short-range EMP, the Serbian method ought to work: ordinary kitchen microwaves with a stick jamming the door sensor.
asciilifeform: re: the link: reminds me of the old (1970s?) MIT fly swatter. a low-power beam is bounced around a room with mirrors. it terminates on a photocell. if the beam is broken, the laser goes from 5mW to 5W for 100ms or so.
asciilifeform: EMP is a more likely countermeasure. It is quite impossible to adequately shield a small flyer against EM.
asciilifeform: in the swarm scenario, the only weapon that might save you is a fully-automatic shotgun and a full crate of shells. even so, only one machine needs to get lucky and come within range.
asciilifeform: re: compact drones: we are unlikely to see small arms on man-portable flying machines, because Newton's 3rd Law. Plastique is another matter.
asciilifeform: the most accomplished troublemakers should hope for, at most, cut brake cables. or a tragic bathtub slip.
asciilifeform: Getting droned on U.S. soil is a kind of wankfantasy apotheosis for political crackpots. It is like asking to be beheaded by the caliph personally. hardly anyone is worthy of that level of attention.
asciilifeform: KRS-1: Next from the WSJ: "From Wienerschnitzel to dog turds: a guide to cylindrical delicacies."
asciilifeform: anybody try this yet? I bet it simply eats the value of the private key.
asciilifeform: reasonable. so, the alpha folks can feel very noble and courageous as they crawl to the graveyard with everybody else.
asciilifeform: philosophical question, almost; is a beta with a nuke still beta
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: 96% male... the "clever poor" fellows will break out the baccilae long before then.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: hierarchy cannot be destroyed; it is conserved, rather like energy. The problem in the U.S. (or, for that matter, USSR) is a divergence between formal and actual hierarchy.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: perhaps they ran out of tungsten
asciilifeform: they'll be seeing plenty of 100 bills soon. in wheelbarrows.
asciilifeform: I find it amusing that that kind of sum gives you media bragging rights
asciilifeform: 1.5 mil is chump change. That's the cost of ~4-5 ordinary public buses.
asciilifeform: I mean, I understand the hallowed tradition of building expensive smoke and mirror contraptions for the government to buy. But straight-out paper fraud is in some ways more honourable. At least the latter doesn't tie up the time and energy of people who could be doing actual, useful engineering.
asciilifeform: keep in mind that NASA also tested Podkletnov's antigravity engine.
asciilifeform: thestringpuller: for a very curious definition of "work", they do in fact work.
asciilifeform: jurov: nope. but I did read the papers.
asciilifeform: American bureucrats - mean, evil, failures, and - the unforgivable sin: boring on top of it all.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: of a working one? nope. nor does anybody else.
asciilifeform: DWave - fake quantum computer, ho hum.
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: I've been trying to reproduce the exact incompetence, for my simulated trader, with no success so far. tried every FP representation I could think of.
asciilifeform: if this is a bug, it is a very clever bug.
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: I do know this. what I was talking about is the stated multiplications being very slightly off, in their favor.
asciilifeform: I wasn't talking about straight-out truncation or rounding
