asciilifeform: pgp: "fundamental" problem implies that it could not be dealt with other than by breaking the protocol, no?
asciilifeform: the devs' decision bothers me for "meta" reasons. that is, the dev team has enough influence that it could add all kinds of vaguely questionable things and they will come into use on the majority of the network.
asciilifeform: jurov: all the Iranians had to do was broadcast the coordinates of the U.S. airbase the drone was to return to.
asciilifeform: jurov: the funniest part is that the drone could have been using the military (authenticated) channel, but wasn't - because of "lowest bidder" hardware on board.
asciilifeform: also, I should note that, AFAIK, neither GPS, nor GLONASS, nor Beidou use crypto authentication for the time signal (or the coordinates!) so you could still be spoofed, if someone were interested.
asciilifeform: somebody ought to make a quick buck marketing usb rhubidium clocks to "supernode" fellows
asciilifeform: btw, the extent to which btc users can be fucked with through ntp spoofing is non-zero and quite interesting to contemplate.
asciilifeform: the hardware is superb, the vendor software: abysmal.
asciilifeform: btw, industrial robots are an instructive example, because in some fields they are available, but it is very difficult to get people to trust them for all but the simplest operations
asciilifeform: and not at all like the ideal solid you see on the CAD screen
asciilifeform: other than the fact that real-world materials behave in all kinds of interesting ways
asciilifeform: this doesn't prove anything in particular, granted
asciilifeform: example: my colleague prints an iphone cradle, brings in five attempts. the phone fits in the fifth, but only because he threw in the towel and took a hand file to it
asciilifeform: even speaking solely of plastic objects where materials strength is unimportant, the main issue appears to be warping/distortion
asciilifeform: i.e. you need actual brains to make a useful object, to spec
asciilifeform: I wouldn't say "ever", but it is about the same as home CNC machining
asciilifeform: my argument isn't that solid printing is a waste of time (it is an interesting hobby) but that it is unlikely to displace industrial production for any everyday object
asciilifeform: re: 3d printers: I work with a guy who is a serious solid printing enthusiast (five figure investment in various attempts, and most of his spare time.) he prints objects like phone charging cradles and parts for model aircraft.
asciilifeform: damn, went off to meatspace for a spell and missed all the fun here.
asciilifeform: granted, there is quite a leap from Lilienfeld's cupric oxide transistor to kitchen table VLSI. but it seems like a promising idea to investigate.
asciilifeform: although Bell Labs was denied the patent on the basis of his prior art.
asciilifeform: TLDR: an obscure German fellow almost certainly had working transistors in the '20s.
asciilifeform: "...a paper, JVST A Volume 20, Issue 4, pp. 1365-1368 describing transistors made with anodized aluminum gate insulator and a chemical bath deposited semiconductor (CdS/CdSe). Both are techniques that do not require complicated equipment (beaker, current source, heater) and should have been accessible in the 1920s."
asciilifeform: "in 1995 R. G. Arns found a 1948 legal deposition by Johnson which said the opposite: that Bell Labs back then had a project to test Lilienfeld's transistors, and before Johnson took over the project,"
asciilifeform: btw, I am personally researching a means for fabricating 1980s-level VLSI in "bush conditions." No prizes for guessing why. But I cannot promise that anything will come of it.
