tmsr - Log 2019-07-31

asciilifeform: imho actually a mistake to think of e.g. f35 as 'product' that 'has a price', as if it were toyota -- what instead is that the parasitic toad at any given time demands x %% of the printolade, and produces/pretends to produce certain # of golden toilets, and x / # is then 'price' ☟︎

asciilifeform: often enuff (e.g ronnie raygun's 'star wars') there ain't even a physical toilet.

asciilifeform: iirc mp_en_viaje had a piece where illustrated this using 'whore vs. princess wife' ☟︎

asciilifeform: where the latter 'is to be paid 100% of yer money and in return will do as much or as little as feels like'

asciilifeform: i.e. 'price of f35' is same order of item as 'price' of an individual reluctant fuck from princesswife

asciilifeform: only offers the illusion of being a finite number because of practical limits (denominator aint actually +infinity ; and numerator in practice is rarely 0 , occasionally 'wife' is bored and/or does some 'work' by sheer accident )

a111: Logged on 2015-02-21 04:28 asciilifeform: in j. sladek's 'tik tok', sf novel in '83, in the 'dark future' (tm) an aircraft-carrier-with-wheels, vast and infinitely expensive, is finally built

asciilifeform: already (Officially!) ~90% of f35 costs in 'software' (ball of cpp...) ☟︎

asciilifeform was actually mildly surprised that 'f35' resulted in something resembling a physical machine. fully expected that it would remain 'software' indefinitely.

BingoBoingo: For exactly those reasons. BFL was born sanding plastic caps from cheap surplus FGPAs after all

asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: diff is, 'btc miner asic' is -- conceptually -- a thing, that can exist. whereas jet that is somehow 'worth' cost of 300 'prospective opponent's' machines , aint a thing.

asciilifeform: tho possibly i get the implication in BingoBoingo's piece, where what utility the thing has, will be spent, 'pushing up difficulty'. but afaik this is entirely incidental to the process that produced the thing, and its predecessors/successors, process that has ~0 to do with utility, prospective or otherwise

BingoBoingo: Well, the higher difficulty goes the more constrained members of the buying group become in how they use the thing. Because Israel is driving up difficulty blowing up random warehouses, whoever might want to use the thing to take out radar sites before "humanely intervening" has to lose more jets.

asciilifeform: afaik is questionable whether item had 'difficulty' in this sense to begin with ☟︎

BingoBoingo: But as long as 'difficulty' doesn't get tested it can be marketing wanked over. Once operators begin losing airframes, its value goes from marketing bluster to something interns fight over using MS Excel spreadshit comparing it to Brasil's SUper Tucano

asciilifeform: oddly enuff, the 'difficulty gets tested and found laugh' somehow didn't make ~any measurable diff in korea/vietnam (where sov iron flew circles around nato's -- yet somehow the chairmen an' boards of 'lockheed', 'grumman', etc. ~weren't~ shot, nor any detectable similar thing happened )

BingoBoingo: Well, it lead to Gulf War 1 and Tailhook. Those lead to "Joint Strike Fighter" ☟︎

mp_en_viaje: well, "spear" that worth, literally, cost of 300 opponent spears is a thing

mp_en_viaje: they call it musket ☟︎

mp_en_viaje: that;s the problem with the plausibly-deniable socialism, the third brother : it's plausibly deniable.

mp_en_viaje: plausible to the plausibility standards of one with paludism-induced dementia, it's true, but still.

mp_en_viaje: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925747 << certainl by now. but eg f19 was pretty little whore of a plane. ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 00:24 asciilifeform: imho actually a mistake to think of e.g. f35 as 'product' that 'has a price', as if it were toyota -- what instead is that the parasitic toad at any given time demands x %% of the printolade, and produces/pretends to produce certain # of golden toilets, and x / # is then 'price'

mp_en_viaje: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925749 <<->> http://trilema.com/2013/the-corn-thing/ ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 00:26 asciilifeform: iirc mp_en_viaje had a piece where illustrated this using 'whore vs. princess wife'

mp_en_viaje: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925756 << in fairness though, the design of an object with particular refractive properties is necessarily more software than hardware -- it's the ultimate "measure 10mn times cut once" item, for each shape that ends up being built, 10e10 or 10e20 or w/e alternative shapes are investigated, ray-traced... ☝︎☟︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 00:34 asciilifeform: already (Officially!) ~90% of f35 costs in 'software' (ball of cpp...)

mp_en_viaje: the whole thing happens with no fucking guidance, eg if you were trying to "build a woman you'd like" you'd spend SOME time fiddling with the knobs, but you'd broadly know it has to have tits and they're to be big etc. when it comes to "aircraft" you have nfi, maybe it should look like a tv.

mp_en_viaje: f19 item is eminent point in case, ~nobody who saw it thought it could fly. because, objectively, damned thing can not fly, it's so unstable in all three planes it needs a computer just to stay afloat. which, of course, means it needs 4.

mp_en_viaje: even with the computer it was subsonic, unmaneuverable sadness. complete glass cannon, by 1999 even the yugos could down them.

mp_en_viaje: let's just go through this for the sake of being clear and explicit. so, suppose you decided to build a "stealth" plane, meaning : you've found in the archvies of russki radio technologies a piece from the 60s detailing how flat surfaces will scatter radio signal AWAY from the source, and thus in encounters with a single radar, you can design a 10 ton, 100 cubic meter object that looks like a square centimeter piece of duppel, on

mp_en_viaje: the radar.

mp_en_viaje: now, evidently this is useless to multi-radar systems -- but as long as you manage to keep secret what you're doing, so the others don't know how important multi-radaer and passive radar systems are, they'll prplly continue on the mega-radar trend of the 70s (as they did in the 80s) and miss you. for a decade or so.

mp_en_viaje: suppose they give you the money to try this. but you DO know how to calculate observable scatter from point to surface, but... it's not exactly a continuous function (trivially, because your surface is not continuous, you're not flyin ga sphere, and so not integrable, and moreover, you absolutely lack the '''mathematical computer''' that

mp_en_viaje: could take a shape and produce the functionals. that's not even here NOW, in spute of how fucking obviously the right thing it was cca 1989 ie 30 years ago -- all the

mp_en_viaje: "bright minds" / morons involved too busy http://trilema.com/2018/the-symbolics-discussion/ instead, whatever.

mp_en_viaje: so you talk it over with your boss, who doesn't know math which is why he's in charge of you (because he's unlikely to turn fucked in the head like ~everyone who knows math tends to), and you agree five degrees stepping and presumption of contiguity between. because fuck it, gotta decide something. (in reality more complex than this, but what can i do).

mp_en_viaje: now look at it : a circle is 360 degrees, so you'll have to "look at" (ie, run the differentials, calculate scatter) the object 72 times. once every five degees.

mp_en_viaje: and it's a 3-d object, meaning it has 72 such planes going all around. each with 72 such points. so we're at 5k tracings, for ONE single shape, and on a generous presumption of "every 0.09 rads is fine".

mp_en_viaje: if each of these produces a mb of data (and boy howdy, does it! for one thing... there's MULTIPLE radar bands, yes ? each of these scatters differently, because wavelength, and no, also not necessarily continuous function, because diffraction and other "unexpected" facepalms) ☝︎

mp_en_viaje: then you're looking at 5 GB of data PER SHAPE. and the year is 1980, meaning 40MB hard drives are cool as fuck, and there's no such thing as SSD (read : they're fucking slow)

mp_en_viaje: isn't it "of fucking course" this is gonna cost way the fuck more than machining a flat surface out of silicon carbide ?

mp_en_viaje: (likbez : "absorbs radar signal" ~= "heats well")

mp_en_viaje: happens to also be the only useful application of sintering known, but that aside. ☝︎☟︎

a111: Logged on 2016-01-31 02:07 ascii_rear: BingoBoingo: watch the film at least until where the sintering machine appears

mp_en_viaje: oh look at that, ever-so-useful monkey-man "spellchecker" doesn't approve of sintering. because holy shit, psychopaths, using words outside of the outer realms of monkey-man knowledges

mp_en_viaje: fwiw, i've been re-reading the symbolics discussion, still just as fucking stumped on http://trilema.com/2018/the-symbolics-discussion/?b=now,%20why&e=they.#select as ever. a year passing has brought me no clarity. ☟︎

mp_en_viaje: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925767 << the only difficulty is that you have to know to build multi-radar pickets rather than mono-radar megaliths. this is where china was going anyway. here's the history of conflict in present day : ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 01:21 asciilifeform: afaik is questionable whether item had 'difficulty' in this sense to begin with

mp_en_viaje: china became actor in 90s, took strategic decision that weapon of war is now rockets. this happens to be sound ; and it obsoleted the us model entirely, and the russian model partially (exceptionally good jets still useful, if you can provide the pilots -- ru can, cn can not).

mp_en_viaje: in 2000s, cn took 2nd strategic decision, that rockets many-and-tiny, as opposed to large-ish (scud) or huge (icbm). if you've ever played orion, this is equiv of the early "mir-v" revolution there, game changer.

mp_en_viaje: consequently, they covered every available surface in small rocket launchers. that's that, china is atm militarily immune to rest of the world.

mp_en_viaje: but, coincidentally, since they were building 1e5 rocket sites, they decided to also build 1e5 radars. cuz it makes sense, i guess, passibely, whatever. ☟︎

mp_en_viaje: this obsoletes "stealth" technology, because you can lie to a few people all the time but not to all the people all the time. there's no way to scatter radiation so that none of ~uknown-position~ 1e5 radars sees it. and with modern telecom and computing, it's trivial to link these so any can detect scatter from any. ☟︎

mp_en_viaje: this means a race to the bottom, everyone who paid for stealth wants to get as much value from it right now before it's worthless completely. ☟︎

mp_en_viaje: but it is intrinsically worthless, because it is ~actually cheaper~ to build radars such as "stealth" dun work than it is to build radars so it does work. and "stealth" comes at huge production (discussed above) and aerodynamic cost (alluded to above). so that's that for this idea.

mp_en_viaje: the thing with cn-style rocket is that they're 100% defensive mechanism ; this fundamentally changes the rules of the game, reverting the situation (previously, tank, 100% assault mechanism, revolutionized the previous situation, fortification, 100% defensive, etc)

mp_en_viaje: the integration trends, with "international order" and usg ngos "based on brain-kellog pact" bla bla will revert ; disintegration ("ghettoization" in butthurt fanfic) is the new trend ; this had been culturally visible for a while, but it took a sharp civilisational turn with this military development.

mp_en_viaje: usg-can-not-win-in-afghanistan will spell a "new era for peace" like the "japan can not defend homeland" spelled "new era for peace" : a different kind of peace ; one that involves the trade in recently captured 16yo precious cuntlets and all the fantastic stories of seafaring in the castle age.

mp_en_viaje: and yes, like bourgeois of old paid to be in town, because have to upkeep walls, there's going to be "real man", who lives in rocket-defended perimeter ; and freeranged animal, outside. a trend already visible ~irrespective~ of the actual military evolution, described eg by mocky in quatar, by BingoBoingo in uruguay etc. walled compound is artefact of same cultural trend as here discussed ; and it arises prior to and independent

mp_en_viaje: of the civilisational trend represented by above military discussion.

mp_en_viaje: people, once again, happened to have to do just what they seem to have been wanting to do anyway ; if this doesn't meet your criteria for benevolent divinity, then byoe. ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2017-12-28 14:27 mircea_popescu: there is no, strictly speaking, reason that iron MUST be provided on the surface of a planet just like the earth. it ~could~, very well, have simply gone through a place poor in planetoids and ended up entirely iron free on the surface. but it did not.

mp_en_viaje: bitcoin, amusingly, supports just this ; is as much and as large a chunk as rocketry.

mp_en_viaje: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925770 << rather, led to perestroika, which did provide a breather (making the f19 possible, only time us shone in the air) ☝︎☟︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 01:34 BingoBoingo: Well, it lead to Gulf War 1 and Tailhook. Those lead to "Joint Strike Fighter"

mp_en_viaje: but it seems, amusingly enough, this was reverted -- the new ru planes quite good (and the old ones still serviceable) ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2016-04-28 16:43 mircea_popescu: shinohai it should perhaps be added that a decade ago, when romania was fresh in nato etc, there was a joint exercise, with romania being designated the bad guy because they flew migs.

asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925772 << sorta the promise of wunderwaffe pushers errywhere, neh. 'this'll be our maxim mg against them heathen's spears' ☝︎☟︎

asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925779 << iirc the moola was spent on the onboard soft. but i have nfi what relation this rumour has to fact. ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 07:02 mp_en_viaje: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925756 << in fairness though, the design of an object with particular refractive properties is necessarily more software than hardware -- it's the ultimate "measure 10mn times cut once" item, for each shape that ends up being built, 10e10 or 10e20 or w/e alternative shapes are investigated, ray-traced...

asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925801 << imho pretty straightforward case of two idjit children who couldn't agree to share a toy, pulling it apart until breaks. ☝︎☟︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 08:15 mp_en_viaje: fwiw, i've been re-reading the symbolics discussion, still just as fucking stumped on http://trilema.com/2018/the-symbolics-discussion/?b=now,%20why&e=they.#select as ever. a year passing has brought me no clarity.

asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925809 << recall mussolini's 'get as much value from it right now before it's worthless completely' of ww1 gas in ethiopia ? i suspect this is exactly today's 'stealth' ☝︎☟︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 08:38 mp_en_viaje: this means a race to the bottom, everyone who paid for stealth wants to get as much value from it right now before it's worthless completely.

asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925798 << there are sintered parts even in toyota. quite old tech by nao. ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 07:24 mp_en_viaje: happens to also be the only useful application of sintering known, but that aside.

asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925808 << on top of this : at some pt (if not already) the passive radar itself will fit inside cheap flying 'toy', of which there will be 'swarm' , rather than ye olde multi-kW sovok item on trucks etc. ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 08:38 mp_en_viaje: this obsoletes "stealth" technology, because you can lie to a few people all the time but not to all the people all the time. there's no way to scatter radiation so that none of ~uknown-position~ 1e5 radars sees it. and with modern telecom and computing, it's trivial to link these so any can detect scatter from any.

BingoBoingo: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925819 << Gulf War and Tailhook though were the impetus for the F-35 "Joint Strike Fighter" with a window free from fearing foreign men, the old women were able to push through a "one true plane" that excels at nothing. ☝︎☟︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 08:55 mp_en_viaje: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925770 << rather, led to perestroika, which did provide a breather (making the f19 possible, only time us shone in the air)

BingoBoingo: Along the way carrier based Joint Strike fighter F-18E/F "Fat Hornet" was ready in time to face goat herds in 2001 and cripple Iraq in 2003

BingoBoingo: Then there's russia going all in on the air defense missiles. It's not the truck with 4 launch tubes in the press photos the US dun like. It's that the S-400 is a group of trucks, 1/3 of which have the big tubes and which coordinate together for a substantial radar picket

mp_en_viaje: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925823 << yup, absolutely. the infuriating part is that this is actually true ~sometimes~, and it's extremely hard to distinguish when it'll be the case. ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 13:55 asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925772 << sorta the promise of wunderwaffe pushers errywhere, neh. 'this'll be our maxim mg against them heathen's spears'

mp_en_viaje: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925827 << except it's not two agents, but more like three to five, and they behave like children in spite of being this current civilisation's specific heroes (id est, older men with knowledge). it's like if there was ru folk tale of "then the three ilya muromets fought each other like morons while potato blight took over the land" ☝︎☟︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 13:59 asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925801 << imho pretty straightforward case of two idjit children who couldn't agree to share a toy, pulling it apart until breaks.

mp_en_viaje: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925829 << precisely ; and, to add dimensions to the comparison, exactly equal dying pretense to greatness in both cases etc. ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 14:02 asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925809 << recall mussolini's 'get as much value from it right now before it's worthless completely' of ww1 gas in ethiopia ? i suspect this is exactly today's 'stealth'

mp_en_viaje: "It was not only born in my mind and heart, in that meeting held in March 1919 in the little hall at Milan, it was born of the profound and perennial need of this our Mediterranean "

mp_en_viaje: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925836 << this is quite factual ; the old women in this are mccain, grassley etc. ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 15:51 BingoBoingo: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925819 << Gulf War and Tailhook though were the impetus for the F-35 "Joint Strike Fighter" with a window free from fearing foreign men, the old women were able to push through a "one true plane" that excels at nothing.

mp_en_viaje: obama didn't do this bondogle ; pelosi was derpy but moderate and in general silent, clinton was rather supportive of better solution. the old women responsible are very much the (nowadays mostly imaginary) non-trump republicans

BingoBoingo: AHA, up until Clintons got out, things like stretched F-22 based light bomber were under consideration. All fell to the one true plane. Then McCain fell. Wat do?

BingoBoingo: Obama did contribute at the margins by ending production of the F-22 which is very similar to the F-35 except that the 22 was designed to succeed as a plane without compromises because plane has to be designed to accomodate derps that want to plane from helicopter carriers

mp_en_viaje: when you get to be the top man you get to be deemed to have "contribute at the margins" of ~everything, it's kinda what the definition of the term is in integrated world.

BingoBoingo: Meanwhile in local news, this Sunday is a pre-referendum on an October referendum to repeal the soon to be outgoing government's recent "lay trans"

BingoBoingo: The derps are derping about a piece of paper from this spring as though it is some alfajor like establihed part of the culture.

asciilifeform: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925843 << must point out, this portrait is only visible in retrospect. the playing characters themselves were evidently quite convinced that they were fighting over a future mega-fortune, rather than bread crust ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 17:00 mp_en_viaje: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925827 << except it's not two agents, but more like three to five, and they behave like children in spite of being this current civilisation's specific heroes (id est, older men with knowledge). it's like if there was ru folk tale of "then the three ilya muromets fought each other like morons while potato blight took over the land"

asciilifeform: and in light of e.g. http://trilema.com/2015/you-know-what-gets-no-airplay-unflattering-truth/ it aint even obvious to asciilifeform that 'hey they clearly oughta have all gone with noftsker'

mp_en_viaje: nor to me.

asciilifeform: ( from strictly archaeological pov -- noftsker's bolix, with borrowed moneys, lived ~decade longer than lmi, and produced substantially moar interesting & intact ruins, but this is perhaps orthogonal to the orig q )

mp_en_viaje: i believe it is, yes.

asciilifeform: mushroom rms's narrative is , granted, nonsense, where 'bolix sold soul to devil, lmi -- not sold'. both sold to devil, 2 diff devils. lmi's gambit was 'we'll self-fund by hand-soldering machines to sell back to mit'

asciilifeform: it is entirely unclear to asciilifeform what either 'oughta have done instead', other than 'go home to bottle'. whole affair walked on the very edge of the technological possibility of the time -- and arguably stepped right over the edge of what was commercially practical ☟︎

asciilifeform: the 1 commercial variant that was defo nowhere near being on the table, was 'consumer'. when a MB of dram cost ~same as truck, there was no question that any such machine could be purchased by anyone other than large org. the only dispute could be re what kinda org sold to, and how.

ave1: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925807, I did not know. Whole thread is the by far the best analysis I've read. ☝︎☟︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 08:37 mp_en_viaje: but, coincidentally, since they were building 1e5 rocket sites, they decided to also build 1e5 radars. cuz it makes sense, i guess, passibely, whatever.

ave1: Btw would same stealth go for ships? It seems to me a dimension less. (Not that the littoral can float) ☟︎

BingoBoingo: ave1: Ships are slow and mostly useful for how much they can emit in radar and missiles

BingoBoingo: China's building destoryers by the 50 while playing with a second hand aircraft carrier

BingoBoingo: ^ Big news is the Peso Argentino. from 0.55/1.15 to 0.70/1.00 in compra/venta

mp_en_viaje: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925864 << all the men involved should have banded together, pointedly and specifically denied monkeys any cover. ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 17:53 asciilifeform: it is entirely unclear to asciilifeform what either 'oughta have done instead', other than 'go home to bottle'. whole affair walked on the very edge of the technological possibility of the time -- and arguably stepped right over the edge of what was commercially practical

mp_en_viaje: in terms exactly equivalent to "you are monkeys, not men, drop dead"

asciilifeform: mp_en_viaje: where, in your analysis, was the man, and where -- the monkey ?

mp_en_viaje: this is moral obligation of man, not merely "mp is being vindictive" or w/e the pantsuit bullshit. man has moral obligation, unavoidable and indelible, to repress monkey.

mp_en_viaje: man who works with monkey is unavoidable living in state of sin

mp_en_viaje: asciilifeform, it's your analysis. monkey === mit ; etc. man, supposedly, at lmi, bolix, etc.

mp_en_viaje: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925866 << yes, kinda what the republic is. "best analysis anyone ever reads" ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 18:15 ave1: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925807, I did not know. Whole thread is the by far the best analysis I've read.

mp_en_viaje: http://btcbase.org/log/2019-07-31#1925868 << out of the question, such a thing as "stealth ship". friction is 5th power of speed, 3rd power of density, a ship can never move fast enough to ever be stealth. ☝︎

a111: Logged on 2019-07-31 18:17 ave1: Btw would same stealth go for ships? It seems to me a dimension less. (Not that the littoral can float)

asciilifeform: mp_en_viaje: what even is the meaning of 'stealth ship' given satellite, cheap networked sonobuoys, etc ?

mp_en_viaje: some specific improvements are available where, eg, ship is not more than 20cm over surface, so the waves provide some protection from skimming missile