asciilifeform: it is very difficult to do anything seriously electronic without one

asciilifeform: had to be resoldered for american mains (move to center tap of transformer) as it was brit-made

asciilifeform: (appears in one of the photos linked earlier, displaying supply voltage and current consumption of rng)

asciilifeform: Adlai: anyway, what i was saying was that it was once not uncommon for components to be measured before placement. but guess what, in modern world this is 'unnecessary' we're told.

asciilifeform: (for those innocent of the thing - it was simply a box with battery, and tipped with a small carboniferous fork. stick the fork on solder ball, it melts...)

asciilifeform: Adlai: actually, pick'n'place machines build in the '80s did this as routine matter

asciilifeform: probably with 'hot tweezer'

asciilifeform: reworked units appear to pass basic test

asciilifeform: the foreigners who are in jp for the long haul, are typically on serious business and live among their own kind.

asciilifeform: the only reason why jp is still interesting to anybody is precisely that these folks -can't- get in their wot

asciilifeform: but this doesn't work unless, well, you are

asciilifeform: the more serious ones wanted to 'be japanese'

asciilifeform: and that wasn't on the menu.

asciilifeform: the 'pathology' was that these people imagined they wanted to move to japan, but what they -actually- wanted was: -to have always lived there-

asciilifeform: i used to read it.

asciilifeform: nubbins`: there was an entire newsgroup for these folks (and 'candidates') once - soc.culture.japan

asciilifeform: was asking, whether any but the last item (signals) concerned bitcoind source itself

asciilifeform: which lacks even such an elementary thing as mix-ins

asciilifeform: incidentally, the ifdef-iness of bitcoind speaks for the horrendous mega-ugly of cpp

asciilifeform: (would have done the same for nintendo ifdefs if there had been any)

asciilifeform: i zapped the win32 ifdefs on account of them cluttering up my reading material, and for no particular other reason

asciilifeform: one would think somebody has a botnet deployment to consider

asciilifeform: i'm actually rather surprised that nobody's clamouring to reintroduce winblows build

asciilifeform: or TOPS-10

asciilifeform: aha there we go.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: thousands of sex offenders << my understanding is that the lion's share of these are 'statutory' violators

asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: if you really need a working crapple build i think mod6 had one

asciilifeform: (the 'no defenses' thing is not strictly true, at one point 'predator' was fitted with a small anti-aircraft rocket, iirc in gulfwar-2)

asciilifeform: payload can be ordinary thermite.

asciilifeform: 'predator', interestingly, has a top speed similar to a decent car's.

asciilifeform: (they are not built to fight, but to assassinate)

asciilifeform: none of the american unmanned machines have any defensive armaments.

asciilifeform: a little high for rifle, but a ww2-era airplane could take it down.

asciilifeform: (or did at any point while truck was moving)

asciilifeform: at time t

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the way the machines are typically used is that usg knows precisely where the truck will be

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: methinks the entrie drone thing is getting abandoned eventually. they don't actually seem to work worth a shit << whatcha talking about, they're as good for rocketing trucks full of unarmed people as they ever were...