Random Predictions, Part III
The brave new world is built on sacrifices. The brave old world is dead. Read more.
clairvoyance to your business
Hackery at the ends
The Meme Machine
New startups stealing
Pinterest, Path, Hipster accused on the same day stealing info / generating hidden revenues without user consent.
This can’t be random.
The upcoming quantified self era is about teaching the machine about all humans — either with consent or hidden as Google, Facebook, Tumblr & co already does.
A depthcam? A webkinect? Introducing a new kind of webcam at George MacKerron: code blog
Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones - WSJ.com, via Toby B. (via new-aesthetic)WASHINGTON — Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.
Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.
“Neil Harbisson introduces himself as the first cyborg ever legally recognized by any Government (2004). He was born colour-blind; so he can only see in black and white (Achromatopsia disorder).
An electronic device implanted in his neck allows him to translate colours into sounds. The camera that hangs from his forehead 24/7 was accepted as part of his British passport photo. By that very fact, the camera became congenital and not prosthetic to his body anymore. Thanks to it, light frequencies are captured and translated into sound frequencies by the chip, which in turn sends them to his brain. He literally listens to colours with his electronic eye.
A standard eye perceives light, tone and saturation. Harbisson’s organic eyes perceive light, but tone is converted into sound, and saturation into volume through his third eye.”
deconcrete/////, via Warren Ellis
One hundred Brooklyn community members and Occupiers peacefully disrupt foreclosure auction.
…approximately one hundred people peacefully and powerfully disrupted a foreclosure auction by bursting into song. At 3pm the foreclosure auctioneer attempted to start bidding on homes that had been foreclosed upon. When the bidding started, the courtroom burst into song:
“Mr. Auctioneer
All the people here
Are asking you to stop all the sales right now
We’re going to survive, but we don’t know how” […]Today’s action is part of a growing national movement committed to stopping foreclosures and keeping all Americans in their homes. Last month over 50 actions were carried out across the country, including foreclosure disruptions, eviction defense actions, and home reoccupations. Occupy Wall Street participants and other occupations across the country have been highly involved in these actions.
“We bailed out the big banks, and then they went on to foreclose on millions of families. That’s just heartless,” said Michael Premo, an organizer with Organizing for Occupation and Occupy Wall Street. “We’re committed to keeping homes occupied by people who need homes.”
Helge Peters: One Nation Under Tesco.
Reading this excellent, and quite exhaustive, analysis of the British zustände I came across this wonderful observation:
In August, in the Pembury Estate in Hackney, one person climbed the lamppost to disconnect the CCTV cameras. After clambering up, he found himself without the…
Napstering Capital
Napstering other industries / institutions in the past was about redistribution of profit and eliminating middlemen. Things got cheaper, brokers went bankrupt, huge corporations lost extra revenues, lean and agile startups flourished. The same will happen to capital and all its institutions. And it is already happening with Simple.com, Y Combinator, Kickstarter, bootstrapping. But one thing stays unchanged. Look at Apple’s shareholder structure and you’ll find the Rothchilds, Morgans, Vanderbilts and co. These dynasties have a couple of hundred years advantage to us. They are smarter, more connected and they have the cash. Do they will ever napstered? When and by whom? Is there a need to napster them? Is capital a stronger lifeform, ecosystem, evolutionary dimension than biological and mental / spiritual lifeforms? Do mones perform better than memes and genes? I think napstering is a normalisation process only. It destroys what’s weak and obsolete, incumbent. The reconstruction after napstering will need some new paradigms … unknown yet. This is not a trillion dollar question but one defining history for the next couple of centuries.
Yet surely having something wrapped right around your mind is different from having your mind wrapped tightly around something. What we live in is not the age of the extended mind but the age of the inverted self. The things that have usually lived in the darker recesses or mad corners of our mind—sexual obsessions and conspiracy theories, paranoid fixations and fetishes—are now out there: you click once and you can read about the Kennedy autopsy or the Nazi salute or hog-tied Swedish flight attendants. But things that were once external and subject to the social rules of caution and embarrassment—above all, our interactions with other people—are now easily internalized, made to feel like mere workings of the id left on its own.
How the Internet Gets Inside Us : The New Yorker (via wiredvanity)
The Pirate Bay - Evolution: New Category, via Dan W (via new-aesthetic)Today most data is born digitally. It’s not about the transition from analog to digital anymore. We don’t talk about how to rip anything without losing quality since we make perfect 1 to 1 digital copies of things. Music, movies, books, all come from the digital sphere. But we’re physical people and we need objects to touch sometimes as well!
We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles. Data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical. We believe that things like three dimensional printers, scanners and such are just the first step. We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare sparts for your vehicles. You will download your sneakers within 20 years.
The benefit to society is huge. No more shipping huge amount of products around the world. No more shipping the broken products back. No more child labour. We’ll be able to print food for hungry people. We’ll be able to share not only a recipe, but the full meal. We’ll be able to actually copy that floppy, if we needed one.
The Next Web
