Techie Tuesday

07 Jun

It’s Techie Tuesday and I am A-Ga-Ga over this concept phone from Mozilla Labs

in Inventions, Products, Science & Technology, Techie Tuesday

Holy Guacamole, can you say ‘Want’?!  This video, produced by Billy May of Mozilla Labs, is a crowd-sourced wishlist of technological ambrosia based entirely on existing technology.  The Mozilla Seabird is envisaged as an Andoid-based operating system running “an 8 megapixel camera, dual side pico projectors, wireless charging, and an embedded Bluetooth dongle,” this phone has everything you need to finally shed your laptop and impress people who are impressed by this kind of tom-geekery.  Mozilla is clear that the phone is concept-only – something they have no plans to develop – but it definitely raises the bar for the next big iPhone killer.  Warning: this video will forever ruin any love-affair you might have with your phone – which might not be a bad thing you sicko-pervert.

h/t GAS


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31 May

Techie Tuesday – Leahy’s Orwellian Protect IP Act blocked!

in Congress, Copyright / Copyfighting / Piracy, Entertainment, Intellectual Property, Internet, Law Enforcement, Piracy, Politics, Techie Tuesday
Bun-Pirate

Image via Wikipedia

Some good news in the world of copyfighting!  I mentioned this bill in last week’s link purge, but under the authorship of the entertainment Mafioso, PIPA was intended to provide the DHS and private corporations with additional authority to seize the top-level domains of dangerous terrorists file sharing websites and bring lawsuits against those, such as Google, who provide links to them (Google has already vowed to fight any such measures).  I don't know if the bill is officially dead, but for the time being it has been effectively put on hold by Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon).

“The internet represents the shipping lane of the 21st century,” Wyden said in a statement. “It is increasingly in America’s economic interest to ensure that the internet is a viable means for American innovation, commerce, and the advancement of our ideals that empower people all around the world. By ceding control of the internet to corporations through a private right of action, and to government agencies that do not sufficiently understand and value the internet, PIPA represents a threat to our economic future and to our international objectives,” he said.

Even if you equate file-sharing with digital piracy you should care about killing this bill for several reasons:

  • In the most benign sense, it is wholly unnecessary – domains can already be ‘seized’ (albeit with a tremendous assault on due process) through a number of judicial channels and the DMCA provides the means through which to stop Google et al from linking to them.  Codifying this behavior only reinforces the governments right to intervene in the only port of free expression currently in existence.
  • It forges an unholy alliance between federal law enforcement and private enterprise whereby the same industries who decry government intervention in the free market are all too eager to expect taxpayers to foot the bill for their civil complaints.
  • It has nada zip zilch to do with national security and the DHS should not be compelled to expend resources on enforcing private litigation while actual security concerns remain unchecked.
  • Finally, for the massive expense it is entirely ineffective.  Seized domains simply rely on existing mirrors to bridge the short amount of time it takes to respawn elsewhere.  And thanks to sympathetic programmers everywhere, systems are popping up like MAFIAAfire that make it even easier for users to find them.

When you consider the the War on Drugs whose crippling expense is paralleled only by its spectacular failure, It’s inconceivable that we want to extend such tactics to the virtual world on behalf of a few, dying private companies.


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24 May

Techie Tuesday–Robot Overlords One Step Closer to Finishing Manifesto

in Inventions, Science & Technology, Techie Tuesday
A picture of Katniss from the Hunger Games and...

Image via Wikipedia

Researchers in Australia – where everyone knows the robocalypse will begin – are helping robots to invent their own language. 

To understand the concept behind the project, consider a simplified case of how language might have developed. Let's say that all of a sudden you wake up somewhere with your memory completely wiped, not knowing English, Klingon, or any other language. And then you meet some other person who's in the exact same situation as you. What do you do?

What might very well end up happening is that you invent some random word to describe where you are right now, and then point at the ground and tell the word to the other person, establishing a connection between this new word and a place. And this is exactly what the Lingodroids do. If one of the robots finds itself in an unfamiliar area, it'll make up a word to describe it, choosing a random combination from a set of syllables. It then communicates that word to other robots that it meets, thereby defining the name of a place.

First of all, I don’t care how big a bump on the head I received, I would never, NEVER forget how to speak Klingon.  That said, while I agree the project is fairly interesting, I have to wonder about the merit of these kinds of experiments that pre-suppose the outcome – in other words, the process relies on the very assumptions of how languages develop that it purports to address.

Either way, when I’m in a badass swordfight with our robotic overlords, I want to be able to understand the smack talk!

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