asciilifeform: imho 'buy boards, make desktop' is not particularly educational in current-day, aside from the abstract teaching of 'yes, the parts are interchangeable, yes you can work a screwdriver' kindergarten curriculum
asciilifeform: in particular true for radio work, where the 'lumped' (see maxwell thread) approximation taught in uni, is actually a mere toy approximation of physical reality
asciilifeform: pulsed tx means you can get away with not only small energy supply (e.g. konsoomer photovoltaic + capacitor) but thin, inexpensive aerial wires, smallish transistor in the amp ( vs the thumb-sized monsters seen in traditional radio design ), and so on.
asciilifeform: my gedanken-schematic contemplated an ~unattended~ relay. ( approx. briefcase-sized, not counting the aerial )
asciilifeform: it is extraordinarily difficult to get even rough triangulation for pulsed station, esp when there are ~several~ going. ( iirc we had the thread )
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: even kgb at its golden age more or less threw in the towel in face of pulsed pirate
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: 'make own ups' is a sort of peculiar joke, surplus datacentre ups are just short of a dime a dozen
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the edison battery thread aha
asciilifeform: ( when asciilifeform was running number for a -- so far, paper-only , gedankenexperiment -- shortwave gossipd station, realized that the traditional outlandish bulk of 1000+w shortwave transmitter, is unnecessary if you only care to transmit millisecond bursts a couple times per hr ; can have fairly compact and inexpensive item, not normally seen in 'heavy' pirate radio experience )
asciilifeform: ( btw this kind of thing has some interesting implications: iron that runs in pulse duty cycle can handle unspeakable wattage for so long as the pulse is short. consider typical example, photographer's xenon flash lamp, if you wanted same light in a sustained 100% cycle, you need a 10kg projector rather than 10g flash thingie. or targeting laser for tank, easily 50w , but pocket-sized. )
asciilifeform: from asciilifeform's personal history with sad iron, the alpha and omega of the weakness of konsoomer ups, is that it features no way to handle the devil in the details of plugging in gigantic array of battery ( they tend to have minimal or nonexistent inverter cooling, and melt down long before your bank of boat batteries or whichever, runs out )
asciilifeform: dafuq, one might naively ask, is the point, of such a thing.
asciilifeform: re 'surprised by wealth folx', asciilifeform was somewhat astonished to discover that esr's infamous 'open sores ups project' features not a 'make own heavy industrial ups to run for 3 days' but instead... clone of one of those laughably miniature things they sell at konsoomer kompooter shops, 'run for 3min so you can shitdown'
asciilifeform: i saw a pretty great showing of it once, complete with pipe organist accompaniment
asciilifeform: speaking of, did mircea_popescu ever watch the ancient silent film of faust ?
asciilifeform: dragonfly can run on 2 joules / day, for all i know 700btc can run 700yrs of kako
asciilifeform: i've nfi, but the 700+ coinz prolly helped neh
asciilifeform: ( afaik the nato variants, seldom manage this )
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: possibly minor diff, but the occasional orc oligarch does manage to move some dough offshore and live kakobrekla-style in some zimbabwestan island for yrs
asciilifeform: 'A friend, learning C, asked me for help in understand the results of some such expression as a = (b++) + ((b++) + (b++)) It emerged that one could run this on different compilers, even on the same machine, and get about as many results as one tried different compilers...' etc
asciilifeform: meanwhile, in heathendom, in re the http://btcbase.org/log/2018-06-30#1830910 lulzfest, https://archive.fo/0AQo0 >> 'what happens when a bunch of people without even first year maths try to write a specification without understanding how to define representations. Technically the representation model is entirely non-normative because it's logically circular.'☝︎
asciilifeform: mosquitoes here in mosquitostan nearly thick enuff to walk on.
asciilifeform: meanwhile in usg limba de lemn : 'This report is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment; its conclusions are identical to those in the highly classified assessment but this version does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign.'
asciilifeform: sad part is, thing really does have a gyro. but asciilifeform does not currently know what, if anything, the enemy fw does with the output.
asciilifeform: in other interesting rtfm's, 'The GNAT compiler supports dimensionality checking. The user can specify physical units for objects, and the compiler will verify that uses of these objects are compatible with their dimensions, in a fashion that is familiar to engineering practice. The dimensions of algebraic expressions (including powers with static exponents) are computed from their constituents.' (ch. 6.5)
asciilifeform: meanwhile, in barnum's 'suckers born erry minute', https://archive.li/3CVPx >> '...posing as admins, mods, or other key figures in the cryptocurrency world, posting messages that urged users to type a long command inside their Mac terminal, claiming to help with various problems..' etc
asciilifeform: in the fritz business, they call it 'attestation'
asciilifeform: ( there's '9000+' possible ways to do this, and without changing pcb layout at all; already the thing can inspect fw, ram, etc. and reset the box if it doesn't like what it finds )
asciilifeform: in other lulz, https://archive.li/mt8rj << google, just as i expected, working on using cr50 to abolish the 'at least can boot own linux' 'hole' entirely
asciilifeform: i dun disagree with the 'no own power' thing, if i were designing a lappy i'd make it something like a https://archive.li/SAqOz , separate box for battery etc.
asciilifeform: well yes. it is possible to build something like a 1990s lappy. but not really out of ultraminiaturized crapple-style claptrap under microscope.
asciilifeform: li-ion battery is not mircea_popescu's edison ups , where all you gotta do to charge is apply a voltage. it eats pulse train, with thermometer feedback, etc crapola.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: this is approx on par with replacement dog head for hippo.
