asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: do you own a chip fab? does it fit in your house? why, or why not? using the term "printing" for photomask fabrication is disingenuous.
asciilifeform: I can see the political virtues of reviving the skills of building 18th century muskets, but 3d printers aren't usefully in the mix.
asciilifeform: producing crude but working small arms is trivial. modern ammunition, not so much.
asciilifeform: contrary to popular delusion, the fist of the State will come down in the future not on guns, but on ammunition.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: if you want to go the whole hog, dispense with cartridges. fire nails or ball bearings, with injected gasoline for the propellant.
asciilifeform: btw, I personally have a design for a 3d printer which prints solid steel. think "TIG welder" plus XYZ frame. but this would be ruinously expensive to run, and would burn down the house of the first idiot who builds on in his garage. so, unpublished.
asciilifeform: my point wasn't that it is physically impossible to make small arms out of garbage (it is possible) but that a 3d printer gains you nothing compared to using parts straight from the junkyard.
asciilifeform: did you really suggest guar gum or the like?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: look up the temperature of the inside of a barrel (of the smallest pistol) after one shot.
asciilifeform: if all you want is 17th century tech, you can easily make single-shot pistol or shotgun from hardware store pipes. and it will be far more reliable (and deadly to the enemy, vs. the user) than anything you can get out of a $3k 3d printer.
asciilifeform: a barrel flexes (watch an AK on full auto on youtube, high speed camera. 4-5 cm of flex, like a Slinky.)
asciilifeform: only problem is, sintered materials are brittle
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: yes, sintering. even in the USSR, they had it.
asciilifeform: metalworking isn't hard, but it does require some skill.
asciilifeform: 3d printers are being touted by idiots as "we can now produce modern arms in our basement without knowing any machining." which is patently false, and is likely to remain so.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: if you can produce a polymer which reliably stays in one piece in the form of a rifled barrel, you can become a far, far richer man than you already are.
asciilifeform: people have carved AR lowers out of kitchen cutting boards, for instance. and even wood.
asciilifeform: for those who have never seen an AR, the "lower" is simply a small can which holds the trigger/hammer mechanism, with the stock screwing into one end and the bold carrier/barrel assembly (known as the "upper") into the other end.
asciilifeform: inhies: exactly. hence the 3d printer folks interest in the AR.
asciilifeform: hardness is not the only issue. (temperature is another.)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: find me a polymer which can be used to produce a barrel reliably firing modern calibers. I know people who will pay very serious moneys for such.
asciilifeform: so you can buy the entire metal portion of a Glock, for example (barrel and striker mechanism) with no paperwork, as if it were a video card. because the SN is stamped on an aluminum plate embedded in the lower, plastic portion.
asciilifeform: in the U.S., the part which legally counts as "the gun" is the piece with the serial number on it.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: it may help to know that the focus on the AR is solely because of a weird quirk of U.S. law
asciilifeform: a CNC mill is infinitely more useful in practice. but it doesn't have the same sexy appeal to noobs who think they can produce arbitrary widgets just by hitting a button (actually false for both solid printing and cnc)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: no surprise here. population explosion, catastrophe, etc
asciilifeform: if 3d printers actually were what their enthusiasts imagine them to be (a substitute for industrial production) rather than machines for churning out brittle crap, the same dynamic would apply here.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: if someone found a way to "fix" the atrociously-inefficient RuBisCO enzyme, you could feed a family on what you can grow in a flower vase.
asciilifeform: cads: the way I understand it, the main virtue of 3d printing is that you can build the thing in your basement out of junkyard parts and not give a rat's arse about patents or copyrights.
asciilifeform: the best way to injure an enemy with a plastic gun is to give it to him as a gift.
asciilifeform: it is a step back to the 18th century dueling pistol, in that sense
asciilifeform: ThickAsThieves: because you get one shot. the thing has to come apart laboriously to reload.
asciilifeform: ThickAsThieves: pen guns exist, for a century now. betcha you can sneak those anywhere you can carry a pen in your pocket without suspicion.
asciilifeform: ThickAsThieves: plastic single-shot zip gun. ho-hum. steel pipes from the hardware store, one inside another, an end cap plus a nail, still work better.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: actual academics mostly went extinct after ww2. (you'll meet the occasional one, preserved, like the occasional panda still alive in some zoo)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: ho hum. there's a whole dark underworld of this crud, esp. in the U.S.; and the perpetrators are often salaried academics and their flunkies.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: for those who await the lead, rather than the gold, standard.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: new idea. 7.62x39mm round with built-in BTC chip.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: idea: the gold in the casascius coin is a TEOTWAWKI "backup."
asciilifeform: I never understood why people brag about their boomsticks on the Net. Why would you want to shout for a priority seat in the gasenwagen?
asciilifeform: KRS-1: it makes a difference exactly what you're running away from.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: eating shit is a strictly-voluntary business, even in the U.S. - at least, right now.
asciilifeform: mjr___: what about people who can't... read. evil discrimination11!1, etc
asciilifeform: mjr___: govt could proclaim a tax on taking a shit if it wanted to. collecting is another matter.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: garbage entrepreneur? literally, like V. Putin?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the bulk of the U.S. economy?
asciilifeform: somebody intends to test the "pound of image is worth an once of performance" hypothesis
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the "BTC vampire billionaire" image
asciilifeform: truffles: I don't believe the man exists as described
asciilifeform: to my untrained eye, he seems like a comedian trying to spoof MP
asciilifeform: and has anyone checked the EXIF strings in his photos for interesting tidbits?
asciilifeform: can somebody enlighten me re: what's interesting about the rpietila clown? is there proof that even one of the things he's claimed is true?
asciilifeform: is that the "Class X BTC Supernode" fellow?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: I'm for the "mandatory pedestrian ram" plus "automatic liability of idiots" - method of traffic regulation.
asciilifeform: problem is, "why should I stop for red light" is mere Darwin-food when the noob has a motorcycle. In the case of BTC, he has a trailer loaded with bricks.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: try it yourself, it isn't hard
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: I once wrote a FORTH to Brainfuck compiler. Betcha they dug it out from the sands of time and are using it.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: I once heard of a mutilated-English version of this warning, that hung in German machine rooms.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: I missed the brainmining thing when it started, and found out about it by sheer accident - ran across some published code which lets even idiots try their hand at it, while looking for something else
asciilifeform: wonder what the biggest brainmining find so far was
asciilifeform: speaking of idiot passwords, it looks like people have taken to "mining" brainwallets - with results.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: perhaps your sales fee is too low?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: raise it to 1000 BTC, you could be in the black!
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: 94% of MPEx April revenue from reg fees?
asciilifeform: kakobrekla: what on earth is a Bitcoin Supernode?
asciilifeform: ezdiy: I think you misunderstand. I'm not trying to convince MP of anything in particular. Just playing out a thought experiment: what would happen if MPEx actually had competition.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: AFAIK you don't have a monopoly on PGP
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: sure, I agree, this is a stretch of the imagination. but let's imagine.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: ok, let's stick to clones. Picture Bill Gates, a hypothetical BGEx with a 5 BTC fee.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: there could be logical reasons for starting one's own "MPEx, with blackjack and hookers." Say I want to use evil altchains. And, AFAIK MPEx shares are non-voting, so it isn't that I could buy enough of them to make MP do this deed.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: By this logic Pepsi ought not to exist, they should just re-sell Coke?
asciilifeform: jborkl: true, just as there is no semiconductor plant owner with the good sense to drop some of his pocket change on building a million ASIC miners and running them in his own mansion.
asciilifeform: jborkl: no, not a random arse, someone with a good reputation, hypothetically
asciilifeform: what I'm rather hazy on is how well MPEx would hold up against a "good enough" clone that meets the basic criterion of "not being an outright scam" (AFAIK none of the MPEx competitors have met this standard) ☟︎
asciilifeform: ok, someone else with a bag full of BTC and a resonably good meatspace reputation, then.
asciilifeform: Ok, let's see if I understand: the 30 BTC is for keeping MPEx a market full of people who measure 1000 times "before cutting once." No trendoids, etc. Now let's say Warren Buffet (or somesuch) opens WBEx, charging 1 BTC.
asciilifeform: truffles: I meant the banal fact that MPEx works as it says on the box, and none of the vaguely similar services proved to do the same
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: How would you personally explain the apparent lack of competition to MPEx? Is it simply the fact that no one else has the "reputation capital" ?
asciilifeform: ezdiy: I'm not clamouring to buy an MPEx account for a penny, just objecting to the notion that the fee is somehow different from taxi medallions
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: If I recall, most NYC drivers take out monstrous loans to buy medallions.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: IDK about London, but in most places you can
