tmsr - Log 2019-02-28

asciilifeform: dun even need ~that~ much magnification -- chip has 2uM features, and ordinary scanner already has 4uM x 4uM pixels.

asciilifeform does not know why this had to wait for 30 YEARS, but dun intend to let it wait another 3

mod6: If inquiring minds would like to know, happy to elaborate. But I'll put up a blog post about it sometime before the end of the weekend I suspect. ☟︎

mircea_popescu: asciilifeform what are you cutting with ?

mircea_popescu: could even ~slow~ grind it off.

mircea_popescu: right ? just do it slow and well...

asciilifeform: it's not even clear that this dance is req'd, of yet, seems like there's a lid which simply needs to come off, on these

mircea_popescu: you knjow, the micron at a time might be a good thing to do ~anyway~.

mircea_popescu: yes it will take more time / cost reagents. nevertheless, "here's my micron-by-micron decap of bolix."

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: from the lit, seems like it's an iffy way to take off layers, tends to induce thermal cracks

mircea_popescu: makes a definitive piece, basically.

mircea_popescu: asciilifeform that's why i was saying ~slow~.

asciilifeform: the ~real~ gold would be if could emissograph it. like those rembrandts. but i dun think my current gear is up to it.

asciilifeform: ( typically this involves 150kv+ xray, which goes straight through the film w/out exposing it, and film is then exposed by electrons emitted from ~underneath~ )

mircea_popescu: maybe the next one.

mircea_popescu: "Another housemate, George, had a vicious temperament and had been in and out of jail many times. He was permanently one parole violation away from ending up back “on the inside” and had long given up any hope of getting his driver’s license back. He had been virile and fecund and had a couple of former wives who had taken out restraining orders against him and several children whom he wasn’t allowed to see. George wa

mircea_popescu: s an avid conversationalist and could easily be prompted to hold forth on any number of subjects, although his poor grasp of the facts and numerous delusional convictions invariably caused his narratives to become mired in internal contradictions."

mircea_popescu: ^ the us "right", by and large.

feedbot: http://www.loper-os.org/?p=3067 << Loper OS -- X-Ray Spectrography Kindergarten. ☟︎

mircea_popescu: this is actually a great orlov piece ; once he abandons his nonsensical hallucinations of "having grasped the big picture" and takes up simple description he's actually quite readable.

mircea_popescu suspects "his acquaintance Tom" is rather autorepresentational, for this reason.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: is certainly how i started reading him (initially had good stuff in 'small picture' re su/usa parallel)

mircea_popescu: "Tom either graduated or dropped out from an art school (accounts varied) and could turn out competent artwork if given careful direction, but he disliked being told what to do. Left to his own devices, he indulged in drawing cartoons that featured grotesque caricatures of himself plodding through post-apocalyptic landscapes littered with wrecks of his old cars and wandering shadows of his former girlfriends."

mircea_popescu: "orlov either graduated or dropped out from college, and could turn competent prose if kept on a short leash, but he tended to believe he can actually be in charge of things. left to his own devices, he indulged in antireality boat designs and ridiculous sociopolitical systematization."

asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-02-28#1899634 << forgot to add detail : 0 penetration at 10kV (aside from through unoccluded holes) ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-02-28 03:26 feedbot: http://www.loper-os.org/?p=3067 << Loper OS -- X-Ray Spectrography Kindergarten.

asciilifeform: will prolly look vehehehery diff with the scintillator cassette + proper fujifilm

asciilifeform: i'ma also try scintillator + ordinary photopaper ( some folx report usable pics via same )

mircea_popescu: asciilifeform if you get "0 penetration" in X time, try with 3x the time and see if it changes anything. if it does, you can then sorta-calc what exposure time you need (see the curves) and then judge if it's safe to expose that long.

mircea_popescu: there's no such thing as no penetration in nature.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: at long wavelength, all but epsilon ends up going to cook the chip

asciilifeform: sorta why dentist stuffs aluminum filter in the muzzle when xray. < 20kV or so just cooks meat, without reaching film.

mircea_popescu: you figure it's getting damaged through what, metal ion transport ?

mircea_popescu: my point here is that you can ~calculate~ this, within very reasonable error margin.

asciilifeform: in the bolix board, i'ma pull the ics before it goes into the oven, they're all socketed, so sorta academic.

asciilifeform: re flipped bits -- actually considered soft xray as a potential diddle for e.g. google's fritz chip. possibly worth a shot at some pt.

asciilifeform: the multi-voltage thing will make serious diff when we reverse e.g. 6+-layer pcb and the like.

asciilifeform: ( and even there, 'tomographic' pic, i.e. from range of angle, gives moar bang for bux , possibly )

mircea_popescu: asciilifeform you can calculate the probability function of a single atom being moved, which'd be the quantum of gate breakage.

mircea_popescu: right, the ion w/e,

mircea_popescu: yes, but nevertheless, still calculable within reasonable precision.

mircea_popescu: which is my point here, half hour of math will give you rough guidance. it may well be the chip can reasonably take half hour in the oven.

mircea_popescu: even a sheet of legal pad exposes in half an hour.

mircea_popescu: anwyay, your other point is also quite sound : can certainly use low pass filter, such as metal mesh or w/e, to filter out lower energy. yes lower instant energy, but if expose for longer in the end get same total energy, more conveniently distributed on spectrum

mircea_popescu: but the overarching thing here : you can't seriously expect to be doing this x ray stuff WITHOUT blowing dust off either h's matrices or the wavefunction.

mircea_popescu: so sit down once and for all and write your equations towards usable form and there you go, math undergirth.

asciilifeform: aha, is what the dentists do. i'ma gild that lily when it turns out to need gilding tho, so far can already clearly distinguish 2 layers of pcb.

asciilifeform: last lulzbit before asciilifeform to bed : the fibrous crud in the photo ? is 1 sheet of printer paper !

asciilifeform thought 'oughta transparent..' and closed hole in the sample shelf with paper.

mircea_popescu: i think it's unconscionable to be flying this blind/by seat of pants. speaking of that "gilding the lilly", did you even calculate the remanent activity by component for that half hour of exposure ? ☟︎

mircea_popescu: or at least put a geiger to the smoldering remains ?

mircea_popescu: for all you know the fg in question is hot enough.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: on my planet, if you want remanence, you gotta bombard with neutrons, not photons...

asciilifeform: ( funnily enuff, old man edison thought otherwise, was convinced that one could 'alchemize' with xray 'if you just crank it up enuff' ! )

asciilifeform: for all i know, he was even right.. at petavolt or sumsuch. but , hate to disappoint, not at kV or even mV.

a111: Logged on 2019-02-28 06:37 mircea_popescu: i think it's unconscionable to be flying this blind/by seat of pants. speaking of that "gilding the lilly", did you even calculate the remanent activity by component for that half hour of exposure ?

lobbes: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-02-28#1899607 << congrats mod6. I'd definitely be interested in reading ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-02-28 00:29 mod6: If inquiring minds would like to know, happy to elaborate. But I'll put up a blog post about it sometime before the end of the weekend I suspect.

mircea_popescu: asciilifeform actually, it's about 10MeV ; i am pleasantly surprised you know about it, but i am unimpressed with the 1e8 error factor!

mircea_popescu: now do me teh pleasure and do teh math alongside the practical work eh! what is this, alf-is-15 lab discussions ?!

mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-02-27#1899563 << her racked box has vga ? ☝︎☟︎

asciilifeform went to compute mircea_popescu's q, 'just how much did it eat', apparently it's a bitch : absorption constant varies by chip, and in heavy industry folx mostly gave up , they stick dosimetric film underneath the board. i'ma get an upper bound tho, it's important q when we do the bitflip thing.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i dun have a 10MeV source ( do you ?? ) . tho i suppose one could float the thing on balloon and hope to get lucky with cosmic ray..

mircea_popescu: i know they did ; but it's perhaps worth revisiting!

asciilifeform: i want lower/upper bound at least, or how the fuq to even know if could flip bit.

mircea_popescu: anyway, no, 10MeV photon is not easy to come by.

mircea_popescu: asciilifeform exactly~

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: they're commercially available , for cost of ~bmw , but i dun want one here lol

asciilifeform: ( theoretically can do 70kV, per the sticker, but power supply deliberately capped by vendor, so as to get 100% absorption by the cabinet shields and sell as 'contained' or whatever oshaism it was called )

asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-02-28#1899694 << it does, to what do you suppose BingoBoingo connects the console to see whether alive ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-02-28 15:06 mircea_popescu: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-02-27#1899563 << her racked box has vga ?

mircea_popescu: a well then!

mircea_popescu: i thought he was just doing terminal over w/e

asciilifeform: rk actually has a video port, but asciilifeform baked the kernel w/out support for it

asciilifeform: ( asciilifeform would luvv a rk-like item baked by sane folx, could easily be half the size or smaller, i.e. w/out the useless ports, and perhaps with e.g. sata instead )

asciilifeform: really oughta have a backplane connector, also ( the actual rk, takes up good 70-80% of enclosure space with cabling and legs )

asciilifeform: ^ pictured is 'pi', which is item similar to rk, but rejected by asciilifeform on acct of multi-MB blobism and massive unkillable (afaik) fritz chip core

mircea_popescu: so from the actual data : properly static sjlj ~actually faster~ than zcx, on various cases of tall tower of nested loops

mircea_popescu: whereas in deeply nested procedure calls, sjlj offers no significant penalty for MANY handlers.

mircea_popescu: if you eat the cost of having 1 extra, can have 3 extra for the same dough.

mircea_popescu: the differences aren't huge, 121.9171600 vs 121.816518000 and 879.95117100 vs 879.7342540 sorta thing. but they are consistent.

asciilifeform: wtf is even the point of zcx on pc ( not speaking of http://btcbase.org/log/2019-02-12#1895611 horrors ) then. ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-02-12 23:41 asciilifeform: ( aside for weirdo 1970s chips with no interrupts... )

mircea_popescu: asciilifeform at the present juncture i can't actually tell. it seems to (very slightly) slow down loops while performing merely slightly better than sjlj with no handlers set.

asciilifeform: i dun recall whether i put this in the log, but asciilifeform found that if proggy does not use tasks, the 2 variants appear to build identical binary

diana_coman: the difference was big only on the 2-cores intel but then again, what tasks there anyway

mircea_popescu: in any case, it seems the heathen claim that "it is faster" is only true in a very narrow corner. otherwise--false.

mircea_popescu: these, incidentally, are pretty brutal testing conditions. the average program isn't likely to go 20mn procedure calls deep (witness that almost nobody even knows how to move the stack limit in kernel).

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i suspect that diana_coman is the 1st to actually measure, since 1990s (if indeed anyone bothered then)

mircea_popescu: asciilifeform i can readily believe this.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: i've had occasion to move the stack limit ( when tested ffa with massive fz widths, recall , all allocations are on stack ) but not otherwise

mircea_popescu: in any case, there's no basis for a standard-breaking runtime here. "oh, it gains some speed in corner case", gimme a break, go implement the standard. ☟︎

mircea_popescu: as things stand now, zcx meets exactly the wrecker's profile.

asciilifeform: near as i can tell, it's a vestige from days of running on os with no scheduler (dos etc)

mircea_popescu: replete with the "learned helplessness" condiments it's breaded with, for shame.

mircea_popescu: when will the fucktards learn we really don't buy the crap.

mircea_popescu: asciilifeform zcx is relatively modern item afaik.

asciilifeform: btw when we plant gnatism on bare irons, will have to implement a scheduler, and it is 'black art' of sorts ( how big to make the quantum ? how to apportion slices to cores ? etc )

asciilifeform: while on subj, asciilifeform aint even sure if the traditional slicing scheduler is Right Thing

mircea_popescu: i was thinking, "what's a slice anyway"

mircea_popescu: entirely possible. there's a large tower of "too smart for own britches" usually hiden behind these "blac arts"

mircea_popescu: you know ? all industrial processes were organized towards reducing/eliminating retoolings

mircea_popescu: then computers turn around and it's all "oh, you know, what, this compuiter could cook vegetables one slice of each at a time" "and wash knife in between ?!" "of course!"

mircea_popescu: switching was necessary in the early days of computing, when one ox fucked many men.

mircea_popescu: now when few men fuck many chickens... forget it.

asciilifeform: why the fuck machine even has an interrupt controller, if idjit programmers run slicer to continuously poll e.g. blocking i/o . it's ridiculous.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: unix imho is pretty typical piece of tard 'sleight of hand', where offers illusion that 'you can have 9000 continuous threads'

asciilifeform: good % of the riotous complexity of the sadkernel, once you subtract deviceisms, is the slicer

asciilifeform ~still~ frustratingly wedged with mircea_popescu's tube puzzle , turns out the 'S' constant for 35kV aint published anywhere, incl. the tube vendor ! and no info published re how to determine it from principles, seems like it gotta be measured by hand.

mircea_popescu: heh.

asciilifeform: one interesting twist, the machine actually has an ionization gauge below the bottom, under the crosshair. and control panel allows to specify exposure in terms of the gauge output, but in nonsensical 'AEC' arbitrary unit

diana_coman: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-02-28#1899741 -> this is imo the most puzzling part of it all: how, just how is breaking the standard justified in those conditions ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-02-28 17:51 mircea_popescu: in any case, there's no basis for a standard-breaking runtime here. "oh, it gains some speed in corner case", gimme a break, go implement the standard.

asciilifeform: diana_coman: i suspect this aint the last time we find that gnat breaks standard

asciilifeform: diana_coman: only from entomological pov. i.e. do they break the opensores one deliberately , to upsell to the payware? or both equally braindamaged.

diana_coman: last time I had to have any sort of idea what that meant, it was iirc having the stamp of higher-stamped stamp-stampers etc

asciilifeform: currently i've nfi where, if indeed at all, 'pro' differs from the public gnat.

diana_coman: my impression was that their upsell was mostly on tools i.e. the IDE whatever-its-name-was

asciilifeform: those come with the opensores gnat tho ( i was never able to get it to run, seems to only work on winblowz and shituntu ) ☟︎

diana_coman: and yes, tools for certification this and that i.e. automated bureaucracy/compliance

asciilifeform: diana_coman: 'compliance tools' aha. but , if not with the standard... then with what.

diana_coman: ah, hm, I thought there was some different version/moar features in the commercial version; anyway, I have to admit I did not really try to get it running as there was no ..need felt for it so far

bvt: hello. i also tried to find information on why zcx is broken, but not sjlj -- did not find anything specific

asciilifeform aint about to use a closed turd compiler , regardless, for any practical work. but still finds the q of 'is there a standard-compliant adatron somewhere' not wholly uninteresting

diana_coman: ah, not with the standard, ofc not; with whatever certificate x measures (as they say: traceability, formal verification, stack consumption)

asciilifeform: bvt: zcx is broken ~by design~, it doesn't attempt to implement preemptive multitasking at all.

diana_coman: in truth, they do say "coding standard verification" but I suspect that means whether a piece of code follows whatever convention specified for that project, hm

asciilifeform: bvt: i started with the supposition that it was built for irons where there is no time slicer , but currently nfi whether this is so, or whether was simply a kludge for no particular reason ☟︎

diana_coman: bvt, my understanding is that zcx said "this case is too complicated to even try to handle and why do you need it anyway, terrorist!" ☟︎

asciilifeform: btw there were a great many 1990s os that behaved exactly like zcx model -- no preemption, tasks run until they yield or self-terminate. e.g. win9x, crapple os <= 9, etc

bvt: also, at least for vxworks, adacore for certified profiles supports only sjlj, while using zcx for non-certified use-cases ☟︎

asciilifeform: ( ye olde msdos did not claim to implement multitasking at all, so dun really belong in this comparison, but the various bolt-on tsr systems for same also had this property )

diana_coman: well, at least that choice of only sjlj for certified profiles makes some sense since zcx is just not doing the full job as it were

bvt: diana_coman: it seems so, the code for ignoring aborts on zcx was added in 2003 and not touched since that time, so i agree with "broken by design"

asciilifeform: cuz that'd be interesting. i initially supposed that it was built as a 'lowest common denominator', i.e. without presumption that os supports preemption

a111: Logged on 2019-01-20 16:27 asciilifeform: the only reason asmism even potentially invites itself, is that idjit compiler gives no primitive for add/sub-with-carry or full-word mul

bvt: asciilifeform: no, did not. my attempt was to use polling pragma, but mircea_popescu made it clear that it's not an option at all.

bvt: i can try killing that code to see what happens -- i don't even understand why zcx won't just work, and there is no information on this problem in the whole internet ☟︎

bvt: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-02-23#1898712 << i would also like to have a deeper look at this 'mes' item. is this ok? ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-02-23 05:28 mircea_popescu: in any case, the ownership of this entire thing is clearly established, and entirely nobody the fuck else outside of properly authorized republican hands may fucking touch it.