--- Day changed Mon Apr 28 2008 00:06 < fenn> my 3d mesh from straws idea isnt as cool as i thought. the mesh would flop around because it isnt necessarily rigid the way a geodesic dome is 00:07 < fenn> it would need internal bracing, not just a shell 00:08 < marainein> you need something more rigid 00:09 < fenn> than straws? could use steel tubing but the idea is it would be cheap and small and desk-top 00:09 < marainein> struts made from something wooden? 00:09 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/exp.html I need a way to make this not suck 00:11 < marainein> what parts of it are you unsatisfied with? 00:13 < kanzure> all of it? 00:13 < kanzure> I am trying to describe too many things at once 00:13 < kanzure> self-replication, exponential growth, recursion, programming, manufacturing automation, reconfigurable fabrication environments, open source, scarcity/post-scarcity, 00:13 < kanzure> etc. 00:14 < marainein> maybe you need to pick a core idea, and have links leading off it to peripheral subjects 00:14 < kanzure> what core? 00:14 < marainein> what's your goal? 00:14 < kanzure> ultimately? "to do as much as possible" 00:15 < kanzure> but in this case it's more multifaceted 00:15 < kanzure> 1) bruteforcing a self-replicating machine 00:15 < kanzure> 2) open source programmed knowledge database for automated fabrication 00:15 < kanzure> 3) scarcity/post-scarcity distinctions 00:15 < kanzure> 4) meta-repository aggregation processes 00:16 < kanzure> also the grounding problems, bootstrapping, etc. 00:16 < marainein> is the goal of this to a self-replicating machine somehow leading to a post-scarcity age? 00:17 < kanzure> yes, exponential growth means no scarcity basically ... since you can just make machines that exponentially mine the materials out of the sky (and if you think that the rest of the universe == scarcity, then we have some bigger problems haha) 00:18 < marainein> so maybe you should start the article with that, and explain how to get there 00:18 < marainein> and try and counter any obvious objections 00:19 < kanzure> but it's for more than just self-replication 00:19 < kanzure> it's going to be incredibly useful for all sorts of other projects since it's based off of git and revision control 00:19 < kanzure> and in fact, that's to be encouraged since that helps the self-replicating machine aspect 00:21 < marainein> that's part of the post-scarcity, idea, though 00:21 < marainein> isn't it? 00:21 < kanzure> nah, not necessarily 00:21 < kanzure> because this database would allow you to make various tools and systems that don't necessarily self-replicate 00:22 < kanzure> but the point is that if you have a lot of those subsystems like that in there, then you can have a giant crawler go in and find the links and fish out any self-replicating machine designs like that ;-) 00:22 < marainein> what does your hypothetical machine look like? 00:22 < kanzure> heh, only its basic design is known - it's based off of dependency loops, meaning it can make itself 00:22 < kanzure> so that's all we know 00:22 < kanzure> and this project is to *bruteforce* it from scratch 00:24 < marainein> how do you bruteforce something like that? 00:25 < kanzure> hm http://www.fightingfeynmans.com/ 00:25 < kanzure> heh 00:25 < kanzure> well, you have the computer crawl through all of the relations and permutations and so on 00:25 < kanzure> but you can't derive it from first principles 00:26 < marainein> what makes you think that such a machine exists within some sane number of permutations? 00:26 < marainein> come to think of it, what exactly is a permutation in this context? 00:27 < marainein> (I don't think this a bad idea btw, I'm just having problems understanding how it would work) 00:27 < kanzure> permutation of the design space - it's a graph, the design I mean, so you can permutate through possible connections and configurations 00:27 < kanzure> re: whether or not such a machine exists: cells. 00:29 < marainein> what do the graph elements consist of? 00:30 < kanzure> packages, tools; these are the files in the manufacturing database that can be 'made' via tools (or your own bare hands, if you're up to it) in your 'fab lab' environment - it's like an instruction set architecture except for your factory. 00:31 < kanzure> I need to go. I'll think on this later. 00:31 -!- kanzure [n=bryan@cpe-70-113-54-112.austin.res.rr.com] has quit ["Leaving."] 00:57 -!- marainein [n=marainei@220-253-155-121.VIC.netspace.net.au] has quit ["Ex-Chat"] 02:41 -!- marainein [n=marainei@220-253-155-121.VIC.netspace.net.au] has joined #hplusroadmap 03:07 < fenn> more weird shit from texas: http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/t1/_p/lunbe/Jacqueline_Mercado.zip 07:18 -!- kanzure [n=bryan@cpe-70-113-54-112.austin.res.rr.com] has joined #hplusroadmap 07:19 < fenn> reading xahlee.org.. gotta agree with a lot of his unix-bashing 07:19 < fenn> too much ad-hominem though 07:21 < marainein> if unix sucks, does that mean that some other os doesn't? 07:21 < fenn> no 07:22 < fenn> but some things are especially egregious failures, like xrdb or the regex incompatibilities 07:23 < fenn> his main point is that unix is just adding more and more layers of cruft and will never let anything go 07:24 < marainein> that's a reasonable point, but it's not just a unix problem...all major oses just seem to be getting bigger and bigger 07:25 < kanzure> Who's the "wheeee" OS guy? 07:25 < kanzure> He coded a kernel in his sleep. I forget his name. Gave piggy-back rides. 07:27 < fenn> i'm guessing something to do with firefox? 07:28 < kanzure> Nope. 07:29 < kanzure> Henry Meaken? Something like that. He redid an entire operating system architecture as well as a microprocessor architecture, for fun, because he saw some better ways to do it. 07:31 < kanzure> aha 07:31 < kanzure> Qua 07:31 < kanzure> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffmassalin_pr.html 07:31 < kanzure> Henry Massalin. 07:31 * fenn tries not to take wired magazine too seriously 07:33 < fenn> ok, autistic computer genius, big deal :P 07:35 < fenn> "It feels good to be regarded highly, but why is everything so often a win/lose competition? I love talking with smart people." 07:41 -!- marainein [n=marainei@220-253-155-121.VIC.netspace.net.au] has quit [Remote closed the connection] 07:45 -!- kanzure [n=bryan@cpe-70-113-54-112.austin.res.rr.com] has quit ["Leaving."] 13:42 -!- marainein [n=marainei@220-253-155-121.VIC.netspace.net.au] has joined #hplusroadmap 15:03 -!- marainein [n=marainei@220-253-155-121.VIC.netspace.net.au] has quit ["Ex-Chat"] 17:07 -!- marainein [n=marainei@220-253-155-121.VIC.netspace.net.au] has joined #hplusroadmap 17:46 -!- kanzure [n=bryan@cpe-70-113-54-112.austin.res.rr.com] has joined #hplusroadmap 18:27 < kanzure> Non-suckage? 18:27 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/exp.html 19:19 -!- marainein [n=marainei@220-253-155-121.VIC.netspace.net.au] has quit ["Ex-Chat"] 19:29 < kanzure> biohack.sf.net was mentioned in a Manchester BarCamp. Awesome. 19:29 < kanzure> people in random barcamps are talking about my work :) 20:20 < kanzure> "The price of ignorance is subject to inflation." 21:56 < kanzure> "What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes ... attention." 22:58 < kanzure> orismology =~ ideonomy? 23:46 -!- marainein [n=marainei@220.253-200-40.VIC.netspace.net.au] has joined #hplusroadmap 23:48 < kanzure> http://heybryan.org/quotes.html 23:49 < kanzure> I have 20 MB of plaintext laws to chug through to find the (moderately) good quotes. 23:49 < kanzure> *logs, not laws. 23:49 < marainein> :P