asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: it'd even not be wholly ludicrous to have 1 doslike thing per cpu core, and a standardized means whereby master (of which there is to be ONE) can drive the slaves
asciilifeform: it is possible to accomplish useful work on a box where only cpu, memory, and serial ports, work.
asciilifeform: everything else, even disk, is optional frill.
asciilifeform: re os : i've observed before , that the only peripheral that unconditionally ~must~ work, is rs232 port.
asciilifeform: for the 'helpers' -- the sharp end of a trench shovel.
asciilifeform: the reasons, at this point, are not a mega-secret to anyone here.
asciilifeform: end result is to be a vaguely msdos-like thing that understands how to configure x64 page table, put/get blocks of disk, and speak over rs232 port. and on top of this, a self-building gnat.☟︎☟︎☟︎
asciilifeform: asciilifeform has stabbed on and off at the problem, for a very long time.
asciilifeform: it will have to be confiscated from the monkeys, like trb was.
asciilifeform: in other 3-years-and-continuing lulz, https://archive.is/kGc6w >> '...I've been trying to build these style tools for around 10 years, on and off, and they have never built correctly for these targets and any attempt to put in a bug report about it is a waste of time as someone comes along states it works and closes it, even though it doesn't.'
asciilifeform: ( part of the appeal of 'atomic' trng is that the 'fumes' concern evaporates. )
asciilifeform: von neumann's debias algo, and xor fold, are the two legit methods of dealing with this, but they have considerable cost ( each application of either , burns away 50% of incoming bits )
asciilifeform: all 'electric' schemes for trng have the basic problem of 'breathing own fumes'.
asciilifeform: there simply ain't moar to be had ( safely, that is -- you can use a faster-slewing op amp, in this collection scheme, but you will be harvesting power supply artifacts, 'voice of america', switching transients.. )
asciilifeform: mod6: you will notice that no fg hits >8kB/s at room temp, while the theoretical max is 14.4kB
asciilifeform: ( each analogue board has 2 independent subunits, see schematic )
asciilifeform: 2x temporal, that is. on top of 4x spatial.
asciilifeform: whereas harvesting actual entropy is painful, esp. if you want an engineering margin ( e.g. 2x in FG )
asciilifeform: ( why to bother with hardware, if resorting to prng , remains a mystery )
asciilifeform: mod6: elementarily, 'limited entropy', 'respectable mainstream' turd can put out whatever it wants, GB/s, of prng
asciilifeform: if you can't recompile ( or better still, use sane proggy ) you're fucked, there is no pill.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: the koch episode was actually illustrative of the futility of 'just fix /dev/random'. it'd have done ~zero~ against the koch rng poisoning thing.
asciilifeform: shinohai: add to the loooong list of 'tardanos'
asciilifeform: keyboardization gives even greater 'nonspecificity of diddling', at the cost of 'can't have it plugged in 24/7, must use in bursts' ( as most os don't work with >1 kbd correctly )
asciilifeform: relatedly, at one point i considered a FG add-on that'd turn it into a ps/2 'keyboard' eternally pissing out, e.g., d0bc05f466024f14... which, e.g., xxd will happily eat & turn into binariola
asciilifeform: ( incidentally astute students of FUCKGOATSology will notice that the principle is applied INSIDE the device as well - FG has nfi what is plugged into rng jacks, actual analogue rng boards or tester jig )
asciilifeform: to see if the expected output results
asciilifeform: not to mention a proggy that eats rng oughta be periodically tested using ~known~ bits
asciilifeform: 'need to know principle', if you will -- kernel has no business having centralized 'and these here are rngs'
asciilifeform: but that the ~correct~ move is proggy that takes a /dev/foo1,/dev/foo2... as command line params and eats rng from ~there~
asciilifeform: it isn't that it is necessarily bad move
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: iirc we had a thread even here where somebody whined that FG doesn't work as a 'totem' where you 'plug in and forget and it just becomes your /dev/random' and that it has to be actively ~used~☟︎
asciilifeform: ^ d00d pushing 'onerng' over FUCKGOATS, with argument that the former 'is open source, mathematically verifiable, ...drivers for all current os, even openbsd...' while the latter 'no drivers, connection using obsolete medium - serial port, limited entropy'
asciilifeform: iet bij nosuchlabs. En nee, er is totaal geen sprake van meer spreekwoordelijk alufolie, integendeel. Geen drivers, aansluiting via een niet meer aanwezig medium (seriele poort), beperkte hoeveelheid random data en ga zo maar door.'
asciilifeform: meanwhile, in other excavations, https://www.security.nl/posting/505769/Random+Bit+Generator+voor+zelfbouw >> 'Het ontwerp is volledig open source, het geleverde product is te verifiëren zodat je kunt zien dat er niets is toegevoegd of weggelaten, de randomization is wiskundig verifieerbaar. Er zijn drivers voor eigenlijk alle gangbare operating systems, zelfs voor OpenBSD, en dat voor een prijs van USD 40. Die onderbouwing zie ik n
asciilifeform: not sure if that one can be pinned on rms per se -- he was already in his ambulatory mushroom phase at that point
asciilifeform: the altalena thing still , i'm told, smoulders, there are folx who have not forgotten the replacement of terrorist-republic-israel with usg-alt-israel
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: aha, is why i posted it
asciilifeform: sorta why ben gurion had the boat shelled and the survivors - machine-gunned. had 0 to do with the cargo, but with the 900+ irgun recruits on board, who didn't yet 'want to go shopping'
asciilifeform: ( 'left motherland for 100 sorts of sausage' )
asciilifeform: the infamous 'sausage emigres' of su, ditto
asciilifeform: it boggles my mind that none of these folx ( at least afaik ) ever grasped that 'nonviolence', 'rule of law', 'parliamentarianism' were tentacles of the enemy, rather than a victory
asciilifeform: iirc the irish folx went into this same /dev/null of history, quite recently
asciilifeform: 'violence is hard, let's go shopping'
asciilifeform: pretty typical 'parliamentarian' rot ^ example
