asciilifeform: perhaps he paid for the hoster in advance, or whoknows, still tuned in quietly, but not known to me which.
asciilifeform: nicoleci: (possibly you already know, from reading l0gz) Framedragger was a briefly-productive fella who walked off into the desert coupla yrs ago; his www is (for nao) alive.
asciilifeform: ( as i understand, will be contraband in usg reich unless Officially blessed )
asciilifeform: kalash receiver can and has been made from shovel.
asciilifeform: excluding ( again, per usg customs, can't speak for the phree world ) the bolt.
asciilifeform: ( for n00bz/non-aficionados -- 'receiver' is the part between stock and barrel, roughly )
asciilifeform: btw ftr i suspect that the wilson d00d wasn't nailed for 'distibuting evil schematics', they're ~useless as is, but for refusing to sabotage'em and play gapon for usg
asciilifeform: ( even supposing they didn't -- the place from which hypothetical box originates, definitely does )
asciilifeform: even goatfuckistans have ww2-style radar.
asciilifeform: PeterL: dirigibles, balloons, etc. of practically useful size, suck, radar profile
asciilifeform: ww2 jp accomplished however a similarly improbable feat, with 50kg ~balloons~, which had simple 'music box' mechanism that only knew how to drop ballast and vent gas, so as to get into- and out- of current.
asciilifeform: afaik the principal boojum that puts this in the 'prolly not happening' , is that ocean is not 'random', has strong currents.
asciilifeform: i also suggested to schwartz to place mesh radio in the bottles, but thread went nowhere.
asciilifeform: ( exercise for reader : compute the minimal necessary counter-force that gyro in a 5kg bottle must exert , to eventually converge on destination... )
asciilifeform: you power the gyro with the motion of the thing itself, in waves, a la japanese wristwatch.
asciilifeform: al schwartz at one time was into 'messages in bottles' , dropped in various spots from airplanes, tracked receipt ( many folx actually mailed in ! the postcard ). i suggested this variation to him.
asciilifeform: potentially could have 'self-guiding message in bottle' this way, in coupla months would even get somewhere near where intended...
asciilifeform: in gimbal. as in old icbm navigator. with the diff that its purpose is specifically to resist motion in the 'undesired' direction.
asciilifeform: incidentally re 'salmon goes fast enuff if yer patient!11' item: in asciilifeform's crackpot files, there is a gedankenexperiment, simplest possible sea propulsion, with 0 exposure of moving parts to salt : picture hermetically sealed 'bottle' with... gyroscope
asciilifeform: supposing one has mechanism for switching.
asciilifeform: btw 2 small motors that cannot do 100%-dutycycle, can be entirely legit replacement for one of 2x mass (and 5x cost) that could
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: pretty sure i got one of these here, grass cutter. air cooled tho, and even in cool air not happy to run for weeks at time
asciilifeform: i'd describe this as 'open problem', rather than 'physical impossibility' tho. conceivably a material exists out of which can be made 50kg diesel.
asciilifeform: and then talking about a 500kg torpedo.
asciilifeform: correct. ( tho in addition to 'orcs steal', we add 'poseidon steals' )
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu; currently orcs steal 300 $ of hdd, rather than $10k of hdd + $20k of torpedo..
asciilifeform: but asciilifeform is not domain expert, will not presume to go into depth
asciilifeform: small engines , to date, suffer re efficiency. sorta why tanker is sop today, vs fleet of sloops
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: gotta factor in % of lost vessels + cargo, like the satellite people do, however
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i'm 100% sold that one ~could~ build. would 1st have to devise a 50kg diesel, i've never seen one, even aside from the matter of water etc
asciilifeform: phf: gliders don't get moved when landed by currents.
asciilifeform: at any rate i suspect that the problem is not wholly engineering problem, in the sense where, yes usg torpedo (for piddling 100km range) costs $mil, a ru torpedo -- $100k, but afaik nobody's built a $1 or even $10k thing-that-sails-8000km , in which to economically carry $1k of cargo
asciilifeform: back when su spy sats dropped film bottles, they still had ( reluctantly, as it is just as asinine as it sounds ) beacons, because otherwise ~0 chance of find. even from chopper.
asciilifeform: i suspect that you'd get coupla sq. km. radius to search.
asciilifeform: what's to keep enemy from going to the beacon ?
