asciilifeform: for anybody who still gives a damn re: the urbit wars: http://www.loper-os.org/?p=1390&cpage=1#comment-8475

asciilifeform: 'smell of kimchi in the morning.'

asciilifeform: wish i knew why they bother to write.

asciilifeform: nope.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: these captchas have really fallen through the floor, and i will crib your method when i have a moment of time...

asciilifeform: critter from 'game of thrones'

asciilifeform: legitimate-ish but unsuccessful claimant to the throne.

asciilifeform: turns 'to the dark side', used evil magic, etc

asciilifeform: better fortran than 'new for the sake of new.'

asciilifeform: the consumer demands recycled food, gets recycled food.

asciilifeform: point. herr naggum's 3-ring-notebooks.

asciilifeform: 'what people “want” is a function of what they learn is available. e.g., do Americans want three-ring binders, and Europeans four-ring binders? or do they want binders and take whatever number of holes they come with? or do they want something that can help them organize their papers and take whatever is available? or do they really want a less cluttered office and ease of storage and retrieval of the infor ☟︎☟︎☟︎☟︎☟︎☟︎☟︎

asciilifeform: mation they receive? so, did people really _want_ three-ring binders, or is that just what they could buy?'

asciilifeform: this is actually true!

asciilifeform: nock resolves to SKI combinator calculus.

asciilifeform: where you end up using something equivalent to Church numerals

asciilifeform: hence O(n) subtraction.

asciilifeform: at least, i personally solved the puzzle by reducing it to SKI

asciilifeform: i actually suggested this to curtis

asciilifeform: back in '10

asciilifeform: (what i actually suggested was to use 'balanced-ternary', like the russian 'Setun' machine)

asciilifeform: nope

asciilifeform: nope. balanced ternary not only packs denser (ideal base is 'e' from that standpoint) but gives considerably simpler circuits.

asciilifeform: one dispenses with 'n-complement', adders are simpler, and many other things.

asciilifeform: more complicated than that

asciilifeform: the fellow who built Setun was working with ferrite-based (transformer-esque) logic elements

asciilifeform: which naturally mapped to balanced ternary

asciilifeform: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_ternary

asciilifeform: there's worked arithmetic examples in there

asciilifeform: hence the link

asciilifeform: take-home lesson is: you get a machine with fewer moving parts - and fewer weird hacks required to make arithmetic go.

asciilifeform: that depends.

asciilifeform: one could easily build 'setun' using modern Si chemistry, at negligible cost per se

asciilifeform: but then you want to use off-the-shelf parts...

asciilifeform: i've some logic i wangled together long ago, that maps consumer DRAM into ternary

asciilifeform: using the slack bits for error correction coding.

asciilifeform: ternary also tastes great with Muller (asynchronous) gates.

asciilifeform: asynchronous circuit (people have actually built classical CPUs with these, 1/3 or so the power consumption of ordinary ones)

asciilifeform: you dispense with the 'clock'

asciilifeform: metastability problem is solved by every gate having a 'inputs are ready' signal as well as inputs

asciilifeform: so propagation delays are no longer a problem

asciilifeform: in principle.

asciilifeform: C-gate is even more of an outrageous animal than ternary

asciilifeform: you end up with a CPU for which you cannot say 'X MHz'

asciilifeform: quite easily

asciilifeform: people built ARM on C-gates. why this is not done routinely, i can answer.

asciilifeform: modern chip designers use gnarly layout tools, priced in $seven figures, with run times measured in weeks, winblows, etc

asciilifeform: they're all geared to traditional (clocked) logic.

asciilifeform: none of this is a secret.

asciilifeform: the clockless ARM (pretty braindamaged idea, to take a classical cpu and make it clockless, but anyway) had to be designed ad hoc, avoiding industry-standard toolchains. ☟︎

asciilifeform: afaik it was a purely academic demo, never went anywhere.

asciilifeform: everyone knows the tale of 'Bob the Bridge-Builder?'

asciilifeform: villager Bob is visited by a chum of his. Bob points to a bridge, says 'built that there bridge, i did.'

asciilifeform: points to another, 'fixed that one last monsoon time'

asciilifeform: 'but do they call me bob the bridge-builder?'

asciilifeform: 'you fuck one goat...' ☟︎

asciilifeform: a while ago, somebody walked off with /all/ the private keys for those fobs

asciilifeform: but did rsa 'stop being bridge-builder' to the idiot 'business world' ? nope.

asciilifeform: there's a fellow who appears to have a good handle on this phenomenon.

asciilifeform: 'If the victim, at the sight of the economic predator, goes into doggie submission, we must stop discussing the phenomenon in terms of conflict and consider whether what we are observing might be some strange instance of symbiosis.' ☟︎

asciilifeform: http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2009/03/welcome-to-fuffland.html

asciilifeform: the chumps, one inescapably concludes, demand to be pwned.

asciilifeform: or witness 'Crypto AG' - swiss company; founded by best friend of the founder of... nsa. owned by: no one knows, probably usg.

asciilifeform: #1 supplier of cipher machines to diplomats worldwide...

asciilifeform: AG, even in the mechanical rotor-machine days, was publicly, loudly proven to supply thoroughly-pwnable systems.

asciilifeform: the only conclusion is that its clients became such as: a gesture of submission.

asciilifeform: same as every country that bought MIGs. 'yes, ussr, sole source of spare parts, now owns our arse. enjoy it please'

asciilifeform: see also the author's canonical piece, 'Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century'.

asciilifeform: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/060105_soviet_lessons.shtml ☟︎

asciilifeform: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/062805_soviet_lessons_part2.shtml

asciilifeform: http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/071805_soviet_lessons_part3.shtml

asciilifeform: i think he put an expanded version of this in one of his dead-tree books, also.

asciilifeform: well, orlov did.

asciilifeform: he promised to, at any rate.

asciilifeform: he said something to the effect of 'my books just fuck people up for no ultimate gain.'