log☇︎
265595 entries in 0.169s
asciilifeform: Reminds me of: "I remember someone saying that if it hadn't been for automatic switches in the telephone network, the entire population of planet earth would have had to be telephone operators to handle the load of telephone usage in 1993 or thereabout. I get the eerie feeling that because modern computer systems are so incredibly braindamaged in their design and in the tools used to program them, the entire po
asciilifeform: deadweasel: you know how failing organs sometime enlarge to unbelievable sizes? hearts the size of a basketball?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: you speak as if that's evidence of effectiveness
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: yeah, because that worked out so well for personal computing (and later the Net)...
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: at MPEx? what else "just happens" there?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: that is, why do you hire them?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: one naturally wants to ask: why were they there?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the "I fire..." quote reads like "I expel rabid badgers from my house every day."
asciilifeform: anyone know if someone ever built a miner out of discrete emitter-coupled logic (or gallium arsenide, or the like) ?
asciilifeform: wouldn't it be riotously funny if a 386 eventually outhashes the ASICs...
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: bruteforce mining is a contest of fiat bank accounts (and perhaps botnets.) I prefer contests of wits.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: but yes, that's the only sort of BTC mining I'm personally interested in (well, that and optical computers.)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: well yes. and cryproanalytic attacks on hashes aren't new, per se.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: and no, this wasn't my idea. I may or may not have a better one, however.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: I can't bring myself to read the btc forums, did anyone discuss it there?
asciilifeform: unrelated: anyone have thoughts re: "satcoin" (http://jheusser.github.com/2013/02/03/satcoin.html) ?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: Orlov has been writing since the mid-2000s
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: collapse veterans think quite alike.
asciilifeform: benkay: the minions do the work
asciilifeform: benkay: I hear protection rackets are a good investment: http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2013/03/where-theres-no-government.html
asciilifeform: benkay: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Mavrodi . or what MP said.
asciilifeform: benkay: start a (legal) pyramid scheme.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: yeah, it is a badger, isn't it. They also had: "Groundhog Fat: Enriched!"
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: they were behind the counter, so presumably not cheap. I didn't ask...
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: here's a photo: http://greenapteka.com/zen_cart/images/Barsuchiy%20shir_capsules.jpg
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: my local Russian grocery actually sells pills claiming to be made from dead weasels.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: "The only thing you cannot do with a bayonet is sit on it." (Talleyrand)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: this sounds perfectly logical inside your head, until you're outnumbered and outgunned, and down on your knees - ready to please?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: I argue that, just as it is better to have a wife who doesn't cheat, it is also good to not be hated. especially if this can be accomplished at reasonable cost.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: if I'm not mistaken, it sums up your political angle nicely.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: you should put up "oderint dum metuant" as a subtitle on your site.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: great illustration right there, for why we're fucked: the grad student will be thinking of his sister, whoring for food in the West, when he pulls the trigger.
asciilifeform: smickles: I suppose I spoiled it already for everyone who hasn't.
asciilifeform: smickles: not if you actually saw the film.
asciilifeform: fucking over the stupid and the impotent is safe. but who can be 100% sure that those are the only ones he is fucking over?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: its perfect right up to the moment some disgruntled grad school dropout in Mumbair turns loose the superplague.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the most likely conclusion, of course, is that the "hot" side grows lax and lazy from the cheap labour traded for goodies by the "cold" side. and the latter eventually sacks Rome.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the leveling can go in either direction, of course. unlike a heat engine.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the problem with that kind of interaction is that it uses a thermodynamic gradient, if you will. one that eventually levels out.
asciilifeform: the right way to deal with fraud is to make it instantly and physically detectable at the scene in as many cases as possible. and not post-facto enforcement.
asciilifeform: pigeons: trademarks existing is the whole reason why we have chumps willing to pay for names instead of physical properties of the product.
asciilifeform: you buy an XYZ pair of shoes. and it would come with a unique (verifiable through the net) RSA-signed message, with a serial number, stating that the unit is genuine and was sold in such-and-such a place on such a date.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: why not extract it from a PGP public key instead? can't be faked, and doesn't need armed thugs to enforce.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: if someone were to open a fake MPEx, would anyone be fooled? Why do you need trademarks enforced by governments?
asciilifeform: trademarks are appealing if you think that competitors could actually fool chumps into thinking they are buying your product.
asciilifeform: pigeons: if you have no love for Apple-style products, why are their patents a problem for you?
asciilifeform: pigeons: if all Apple patents were voided tomorrow, would there be a flood of Apple-quality products from other vendors?
asciilifeform: If you use patents to keep a product off the market (or to keep it a luxury good whereas civilization might otherwise make it a mass good) you are a patent troll.
asciilifeform: This was perhaps the original patent troll: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Licensed_Automobile_Manufacturers
asciilifeform: At least in the U.S., it is a straightforward contest of bank accounts.
asciilifeform: Bugpowder: patent trials are routinely won and lost on technicalities. And your opponent can drag the trial onwards into infinity, until you or the party representing you runs out of cash.
asciilifeform: Bugpowder: if you have the funds to prosecute a patent lawsuit in any jurisdiction that matters, you are by definition not a "small inventor."
asciilifeform: Bugpowder: have you ever been a small inventor and actually tried to prosecute a ripoff of your idea?
asciilifeform: benkay: for some value of "better" this already happened.
asciilifeform: Bugpowder: if your entire revenue stream depends on patents, you're a patent troll.
asciilifeform: Bugpowder: that would be like saying that a fairytale "Bridge Troll" must never actually use his bridge.
asciilifeform: When nearly the entire opposition to something consists of idiot "back to nature" crackpots, a reasonable person starts to see it as a great idea.
asciilifeform: My guess is that much of the anti-GMO hysteria is funded or at least encouraged by the GMO vendors, specifically to distract from this.
asciilifeform: Bugpowder: the only actual problem with GMO products is the "terminator seed," which gives American patent trolls total control over food supplies.
asciilifeform: vampireb: signalling.
asciilifeform: Bugpowder: the mainstream anti-GMO hysteria is a distraction from real issues re: control of food supplies.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: intelligent poor could trash civilization permanently if they wanted to.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: and it only takes one.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: bioweapons. doesn't take a world-class brain.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: worry about the intelligent poor.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: I might take you up on that challenge.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: that wouldn't do the trick, necessarily. presumably they have plenty of BTC in house to absorb the "noise"
asciilifeform: and see exactly how it correlates with price moves
asciilifeform: say, by measuring ping time
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: not so sure about that. it might be possible to measure traffic to, say, mtgox, indirectly (without being in control of mtgox)
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: not much of a refutation now, was it?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: damn. got a log?
asciilifeform: oldie but goodie re: BTC exchanges: http://tinyurl.com/5t4xqq4
asciilifeform: Alaric didn't specifically target the concept of nobility.
asciilifeform: Cromwell pulled the first modern idiot revolution.
asciilifeform: let's go the whole hog and blame... Cromwell.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the Serbs took care of their diversity problem prior to the bombing. In fact, that was the official excuse for the latter...
asciilifeform: didn't think so
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: how was your Bulgarian bus defended?
asciilifeform: of course speculators in necessities might as well have bull's eyes painted on them (both for idiot idealists and for marauders)
asciilifeform: sometimes via trade in basic necessities, sometimes with brute force
asciilifeform: when a nation collapses, people from nearby (and not so nearby) places come to vacuum up the valuables.
asciilifeform: no, they do the traveling. See "shuttles" in the collapsing USSR period.
asciilifeform: AU/AG have value if the collapse is less-than-global, and there are speculators who might trade you food/etc from abroad in exchange for some shiny metal.
asciilifeform: you know what has been doing almost as well as BTC? Ammo.
asciilifeform: speaking of physical investments with use value (unlike metals) ...
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: Glock alone has >50% market share among U.S. police of all kinds.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: I meant both, of course.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: The two possibly largest suppliers of small arms to U.S. agencies - Colt and Glock - are nowhere to be found on the list. To no one's surprise.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: The boycott you mentioned is a cheap protest. Not one of those vendors was a major supplier for any police agency to begin with.
asciilifeform: zanz: details here: http://www.loper-os.org/?p=1108
asciilifeform: zanz: I made 0.4 BTC (or 1.4 BTC, depending on how you count) using MPEX ☟︎
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: care to say why the theory is nonsense?
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: but most BTC users will ignore the results, even more firmly than they ignored Shamir's.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: working on it ☟︎☟︎