asciilifeform: i can't say i'm burning with desire to buy an ibm-sole-sourced chip, what 30 years after their monopoly properly died

asciilifeform: Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) equipped with infrared cameras. Admittedly, part of what appealed to me was the risk. Some of my recent successful forays had given me a brazen confidence. As part of the MacGyver Generation, I also reveled in the potential of being part of an elite few who had managed to infiltrate an active base undetected. Stupid, yes, but certainly alluring.'

asciilifeform: rms never went 'i'ma make exception because 9/11' or 'i'ma make exception because 100mil in rathead toiletpaper stock'

asciilifeform: one of the reasons i still, despite everything, have > 0 respect for rms, is that of all of these figures, he never had 'about-face' moment.

asciilifeform: i cannot speak for the folx mentioned above, but for me the appeal of, e.g., 6502, or of (pure 'sea of gates', a la FUCKGOATS) fpga work, is that there is 0 shit-in-the-dough

asciilifeform: but point is that i needed a very long and sharp drill to penetrate earth's crust, to find that they existed.

asciilifeform: btw there is one possibly interesting detail. there appears to be a large (how large, i have nfi) set of folks who publish ~actual~ work openly (recently i was on a kick of collecting 6502 and z80 design variations, adapted for present-day component availability for glue logic) and found a wealth of quality (as in, you lay it out on breadboard and it WORX) material. with multi-decade (yes) discussion.

asciilifeform: srsly he gave a talk, i fughet about what nao, at an sf b00k lovers thing, and spend 20min on His Great Achievements, and My Code Is Running On Your Cell Phone Guaranteed, etc.

asciilifeform: he's insufferable. in the 12yo 'i am NINJA!1111' sense.

asciilifeform: 'oooh i found a Warm Iron Thing in the taiga, let's break it open and get the magic out'

asciilifeform: (where do i get damascus steel??)

asciilifeform: i not only miss'em, but act on the impulse and... install'em

asciilifeform: 'but oh noez, if i make the acorns MOVABLE, little squirrels will come and take'em in all directions'

asciilifeform: btw anyone who has tried to port a linux device driver (from recent years) to an un-linuxlike os, will know what i am talking about: they are 'glued with broken glass', and it is not in any sense trivial.

asciilifeform: lulzy comments, also, e.g., 'While I don’t think he’s a “white supremacist” as such “off-line” in his essays under the pseudonym Moldbug, the travails of Curtis Yarvin as a pure hacker are illuminating, to the point I’m pretty sure they’ve killed any chance his Urbit might have in the so called marketplace of ideas.'

asciilifeform: incidentally, having not yet written a bot, i had nfi re the unreliability of the userlist thing.