asciilifeform: but too much of this and - broke.

asciilifeform: all good and well, we all want toilets, condoms, cpus.

asciilifeform: sitting on the 'expense' side of the ledger for running civilization.

asciilifeform: something can well be ubiquitous, fun to have around, considered a basic element of civilization - and ultimately be -EV.

asciilifeform: in fact, they... well.

asciilifeform: ussr, for instance, just about broke its back producing ic (and cloned computers of various descriptions.) it is not clear that these paid for themselves, regardless of how you measure economic ☟︎

asciilifeform: it is conceivable the the entire ic age has been fueled by a continuously-rolling 'jam tomorrow' bezzle

asciilifeform: just to add to the already forming lsd trip in this thread: i'm not personally convinced that ic production HAS EVER BEEN +EV ☟︎

asciilifeform: nubbins`: afaik they STILL do

asciilifeform: very few folks seem to understand the full depth of this

asciilifeform: (and who am i to contend that they were wrong?)

asciilifeform: the perpetrators were convinced that the chumps were convinced that there is simply no other way.

asciilifeform: no one even tried to hide.

asciilifeform: afaik all without exception miner vendors did this.

asciilifeform: summary: nobody knows how to make selling computers +ev without the millions-of-planktonous-idiots market being involved somehow ☟︎

asciilifeform: but this is very different from how the computer on everyone's desk was built

asciilifeform: if mircea_popescu suddenly feels like commissioning the production of an ic from own personal lunch money, who am i to discourage

asciilifeform: see also the old thread re: how no one ever, to date, non-fraudulently financed the production of a bitcoin miner.

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=07-08-2015#1229626 << at -ev? thing is, nobody ever invented 'reasonably priced electronics sold to sane people.' that is, no one has ever demonstrated the economic feasibility of this. the only kinds of computer sold in perhaps 25 years were: a) sold to chumps buying forced 'pr0gr3ssss' and b) so expensive everyone shits his pants ☝︎

asciilifeform: but it's all in the logz.

asciilifeform: (describes not scheme per se, but walks the student through implementing scheme in scheme, and then implementing a detailed simulator for a machine which is the intrinsic minimum for executing scheme.)

asciilifeform: the book (lovingly referred to as sicp, 'sick pee') is a textbook illustration of precisely what i mean when i say 'fits in head'.

asciilifeform: mit (the home of sussman and the original arena for this) officially became irredeemably doomed in my eyes when they stopped.

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=13-11-2014#920453 << that sussman ☝︎

asciilifeform: phun phakt: when it appeared, american schools began to use it as a mandatory undergrad textbook. and you can measure precisely when each school turned full-bore retard by ~when they stopped~

asciilifeform: (half of this if you're willing to forgo informative error handling, and some of the more difficult features like 'call/cc')

asciilifeform: of reasonably large text.

asciilifeform: and 3) great student exercise, where the kids won't demand to hear why both 'elt' and 'nth' exist (perennial retardation example from cl, which was born in a 'no vendor left behind' multi-turdculturist compromise)

asciilifeform: scheme remains 1) a very clean scripting language to embed in another proggy 2) a very spiffy starting point for a future lisp (including hardware)

asciilifeform: which the 'official committee' did

asciilifeform: this was mostly understood by the enthusiasts around a decade ago, but some of the response was also pathological: 'let's bolt on a huge turd of a standard library'

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=07-08-2015#1229675 << complicated. scheme is an example of a 'suckless movement' that didn't catch on. that is, 'throw out all the legacy crud', but after that the thing has to be inhabited. if not inhabited, then dies young, while leaving, yes, beautiful corpse ☝︎

asciilifeform: folks with outdoor space often use those.

asciilifeform: there are also 'fancy' targets that jump up and down when hit

asciilifeform: those who have a field nearby - do only this!

asciilifeform: also it is not uncommon for visitors to stand so close, they elbow one another

asciilifeform: (in the locales in usa where shooting galleries are even a thing)

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=07-08-2015#1229671 << i own the whole series (all but the idiot java volume.) some of'em coloured by old gf, even. just last week got the latest 'little prover' in the post! ☝︎

asciilifeform: (even cn is mostly unleaded now, in response to eu pressure)

asciilifeform: and nobody cancelled them or is about to

asciilifeform: the vendors are insistent that this is no longer happening, but there is strong reason to not believe this any more than anything else that ever came out of their mouths

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=07-08-2015#1229616 << laugh, but this is happening. esp. concerning gpu: several whole generations of nvidia products suffer from the dreaded bga ball defect, and have strictly limited lifespan. ☝︎☟︎

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=07-08-2015#1229596 << i've been making something quite like this. (see last bullet in aug.'15 s.nsa broadcast for summary) ☝︎

asciilifeform: http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=07-08-2015#1229582 << if meant 'perly', i welcome suggestions of how it could be made less so. but - the incantation works. i encourage folks to try it. presently investigating how to re-sign things while preserving all timestamps. ☝︎