Posts by ultimape@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #9ypCO08mulhxPz0Gie by ultimape@mastodon.social
2017-09-16T20:46:02Z
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"Sheep were brought to graze in the White House lawns in order to save the manpower required to mow the expansive grounds. Wool from the sheep was sold as a fundraiser for the Red Cross."https://www.whitehousehistory.org/photos/sheep-graze-on-the-white-house-lawn
(DIR) Post #9ypCO0NK2jKm93nsNE by ultimape@mastodon.social
2017-09-16T20:46:24Z
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"President Wilson is having no end of trouble with the flock of sheep he purchased recently to graze on the White House lawn," a May 12, 1918, Washington Post article reported. The problem: The sheep were scared of the cars that had started to appear across the District of Columbia in increasing numbers."https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/10/white-house-sheep-a-history/453405/
(DIR) Post #9ypCO0a5HHXgmdm4GW by ultimape@mastodon.social
2017-09-16T21:15:06Z
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"But corn—with all the fertilizers and pesticides it takes to produce—is an exceptional burden on waterways. Unlike pasture, which keeps ground covered in grass year-round and the soil intact, corn requires plowing and added nutrients to pump up yields. [...] Through the winter snow and spring rains, fields are kept bare—meaning that the exposed soil can wash away."https://thefern.org/2017/06/troubled-waters/
(DIR) Post #9ypCO0qkHKrzcJZNEe by ultimape@mastodon.social
2017-09-16T23:29:39Z
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"Every system, whether it is a single mind, a family, a business, or a country, develops a hegemony of powerful interests that first promulgates rules and policies for the good of the system and eventually promulgates them for the good of the hegemony."https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/feeling-our-way/201507/the-tendency-smugness-in-the-culture-psychology
(DIR) Post #9ypCO1BJ2tJge5BnHc by ultimape@mastodon.social
2017-09-17T00:26:20Z
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"In 1918, Oswald Spengler published The Decline of the West. Today the word “decline” is taboo. Our politicians shun it in favour of “challenges,” while our economists talk of “secular stagnation.” The language changes, but the belief that western civilisation is living on borrowed time (and money) is the same."https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/17/is-western-civilisation-in-terminal-decline
(DIR) Post #9ypCO1V9r5CDdeTeE4 by ultimape@mastodon.social
2017-09-18T03:46:08Z
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"The media’s desire to psychoanalyze members of generation W is natural enough. They want to know why these people are acting in a way that they, members of the corporate media, would not. But sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander; if there are psychological motivations for whistleblowing, leaking and hacktivism, there are likewise psychological motivations for closing ranks with the power structure within a system"https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/the-banality-of-systemic-evil/
(DIR) Post #9ypCO1hZ6x7YG8HYZ6 by ultimape@mastodon.social
2017-09-22T03:24:01Z
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"the watershed has retained and even bettered its purifying capacities over the last century.“That’s the good news. The bad news is 91 percent of that land is privately owned, meaning it could be converted to nonforest uses whenever the owners make that decision. It’s their land,” he says."http://digital.vpr.net/post/study-new-england-loses-65-acres-forest-day-development
(DIR) Post #9ypCO2AHOC5bhBiUK0 by ultimape@mastodon.social
2017-10-06T20:04:27Z
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"Removing lawns may sound like a small, wonky step, compared to building dams. But the green turf in American yards actually stands as a worthy target for water savings, a public enemy in the eyes of many during a drought such as California's five-year-old one."https://www.usnews.com/news/news/articles/2016-10-31/in-california-a-350-million-social-experiment-over-lawns
(DIR) Post #9ypCO2YNwZN6twzjtY by ultimape@mastodon.social
2017-10-07T16:13:04Z
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"But once again things get conflated – the critique of Capitalism and the call for its downfall is not one and the same as Tyler’s offered model of masculinity/nihilism. Tyler’s masochistic ideology is not feasible – he gets fucked in the end because he is just another damaging ideology that traps you in a sick cycle. So in this manner, Tyler isn’t always an opposition to capitalism, but a parallel to it."http://numerocinqmagazine.com/2011/08/23/were-the-all-singing-all-dancing-crap-of-the-world-or-youre-doing-it-wrong-the-fight-club-identity-crisis-by-brianna-berbenuik/
(DIR) Post #9ypCO2ifKLaxPpnwv2 by ultimape@mastodon.social
2017-10-30T21:20:08Z
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"It is extremely difficult to demonstrate to the average person the reality and value, and especially the money value of an intangible thing. The motion model makes this value apparent and impressive. It makes tangible the fact that time is money and that an unnecessary motion is money lost forever."http://www.e-flux.com/architecture/artificial-labor/153913/simfactory/
(DIR) Post #9zW9FZOBBnTvLplBnU by ultimape@mastodon.social
2018-01-03T23:54:48Z
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@polymerwitch@toot.cat Thats a good question. I've been keeping an eye on that space but haven't seen much.I hadn't heard of 'nearby' before, but it looks like opengarden's meshkit (they built firechat's p2p app commonly used during disasters/protests) https://www.opengarden.com/meshkit.html But its not open source.I'd been tracking openpeer but they stopped their product development & pivoted to an app.A search of competitors for that meshkit suggest that https://github.com/servalproject might be worth looking at?
(DIR) Post #9zW9FZdQH7fu76tMYa by ultimape@mastodon.social
2018-01-04T00:09:24Z
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@polymerwitch@toot.cat I can't find much on the 'ultrasonic modem' aspect of nearby, but there is a BLE beacon system sdk online here: https://altbeacon.github.io/android-beacon-library/index.html which is compatible with that "eddystone" protocol that google's becon system uses: https://developers.google.com/beacons/ (they have it on github too: https://github.com/google/eddystone )Might take some elbow grease to get it going in an app, but seems like its more than possible to recreate.
(DIR) Post #9zW9FZnhettkczhZa4 by ultimape@mastodon.social
2018-01-06T09:13:58Z
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@polymerwitch@toot.cat Took a while to find a sound based modem, but turns out I have some friends on facebook who are really nerdy about software defined radio modems and ham radios to point me in the right directionhttps://github.com/quiet/quiet looks like its open source and the .js bindings have an 'ultrasonic' mode, and there are android/ios compatible versions as well. I was also suggested that I take a look at http://www.whence.com/minimodem/ but couldn't confirm if it can support ultra sonic or phone apps.
(DIR) Post #9zW9FZwv6dGr5a0vwm by ultimape@mastodon.social
2018-01-06T09:19:48Z
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@polymerwitch@toot.cat Looks like you could use the two systems together (BLE modem + SDR audio modem) to set up the initial peering and then use that to exchange keys, then swap over to wifi+serval to save battery. Still a bit of work, but you'd get a good "local" experience via temporary location based mesh nets that would rival what 'nearby' can do (and all open source afaict).bonus: have fun making your cellphone make funny squeeking noises to annoy children and dogs.
(DIR) Post #AAaJ5DUnx8YRw4XCs4 by ultimape@mastodon.social
2017-04-11T01:19:17Z
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"Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber argue that reason is not geared to solitary use. It evolved to help justify our beliefs to others, evaluate their arguments, and better exploit our uniquely rich social environment."https://www.amazon.com/Enigma-Reason-Hugo-Mercier-ebook/dp/B06XWFM3PP/This is why I talk to myself using social media.It lets past me communicate with future me.
(DIR) Post #AAaJ5E0i2W4jX1SgbI by ultimape@mastodon.social
2017-04-11T01:24:20Z
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Pronouncing "Whomst'd've'ly'yaint'nt'ed'ies's'y'es"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6osvX6yGGqsThought vector ::(:(::(:))) : Bidoof memes : I'm dying squirtle : rowlethttps://www.google.com/search?q=owlet+meme&tbm=isch#imgrc=nRn0erq9ayS5-M:Related word vomit: https://mastodon.social/@ultimape/2038172
(DIR) Post #ADDCcclFx7nl5756CO by ultimape@mastodon.social
2018-01-06T09:41:15Z
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I spent time exploring what it would take to recreate google's 'nearby' and indirectly discovered a really interesting stack for building decentralized p2p adhoc meshnets.Video on 'nearby': https://youtu.be/Acdu2ZdBaZEhttps://github.com/quiet"ultrasonic modem"https://github.com/AltBeaconbluetooth beaconshttps://github.com/servalprojectwifi meshnetShifts an oppressive user hostile tech behind ultrasonic tracking into something liberating?Fuck. Yeah.context:https://mastodon.social/@ultimape/99302138746316346
(DIR) Post #ADDCcdFk7mBibfLRia by ultimape@mastodon.social
2018-01-06T10:19:37Z
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As an aside, packet radio is really weird. Here's a presentation by a guy who's thesis is trying to fully document and reverse engineer the entire bell202 spec being used in the field. A technology stack that has literally been around since before he was born.https://youtu.be/opmYMAgpKeA?t=6m44sI can only vaguely grasp what is going on here with my experience in electronics, networking and signal theory from college, but sure is interesting.
(DIR) Post #ADDCcdkEIQZg8DbnEm by ultimape@mastodon.social
2018-01-06T10:25:05Z
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Watching the I/O presentation on 'nearby' It seems they encode the signal inside of a noisy pattern. Off the cuff it looks like an attempt to avoid odd bounces, but also reminded me of how bats use frequency in echolocation to focus the sound beam, but doing it in reverse to ensure a wider sweep? (ref: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/276/1658/853). I think this is also used in sonar systems.A college friend suggested it might be a form of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-hopping_spread_spectrum used in 802.11g to avoid reflections and stuff.
(DIR) Post #ADDCceF4RlFDfs2QJE by ultimape@mastodon.social
2018-01-06T10:36:13Z
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For background and history on the concept of sending data, first check out this stackoverflow question/answer set, which includes a great diagram on what it looks like to 'call' another computer https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/68790/how-does-a-signal-travel-down-a-telephone-wireAnd then take a look at how they ran telephone wires, set up microwave towers to handle longer distance, and eventually an entire world wide network http://www.telcomhistory.org/vm/scienceLongDistance.shtmlThen try this exploration of how it shifted to telephone-over-internet (+beyond?)https://medium.com/@aantonop/why-dumb-networks-are-better-f0b94c271b76