Read more
Uncategorized
Read moreThat’s the direction for the newest transportation system in Rio, slated to open in March: a six-station gondola line running above a collection of favelas known as the Complexo do Alemão. The government says that 152 gondolas will carry 30,000 people a day along a 2.1-mile route over the neighborhood, transforming the hour-and-a-half trudge to a nearby commuter rail station into a 16-minute sky ride.
“No es una guerra, es una misión de rescate”
He posted it in the comments, but I thought it deserved a post of its own; @Rabbitz has translated my recent essay “It’s not a war, it’s a rescue mission” into Spanish.
Thank you kind sir!
“No es una guerra, es una misión de rescate”
Read more "“No es una guerra, es una misión de rescate”"Utopia demands a denial of time. A realised utopia is definitive and concluded. It cannot evolve, for that would imply an error or instability in the originally conceived utopia.
Vincenzo Latronico, The brutality of utopias.
Read more
Read moreIn Tunisia, the post-revolution government is using the popular PiratePad collaborative, open-source text editor to help construct their constitution. The idea appears to have originated with Slim Amamou, a blogger with deep roots in the hacker community who’s ascended into the upper echelons of Tunisian politics to become a Tunisian cabinet member.
Use a 2-Liter Bottle as a 50 Watt Light Bulb lightbulb hack
Read more“It’s not a war, it’s a rescue mission” Part 3
This is the final part of a three part essay on the state and the fate of the world. If you missed it, the first part is here and the second part is here. Events discussed within it were…
“It’s not a war, it’s a rescue mission” Part 3
Read more "“It’s not a war, it’s a rescue mission” Part 3"
Color image of a region in Holden Crater. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Read moreObservations from two spacecraft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Express, have revealed potential subsurface ice deposits in areas just south of the equator, including one near Holden Crater, with an estimated reservoir of perennial subsurface water ice of about 50 – 500 kg m -2 just two or three meters beneath the surface. This is the first evidence of ice at “tropical” latitudes on Mars as low as 25 degrees.
In 2009, MRO observations revealed water ice as low as 45 degrees North in a recent small impact crater, and permanent water ice at Mars’ poles is known to exist. But most robotic missions – and hopefully one day human missions – need to land closer to the equator to meet safety criteria and engineering constraints. As evidence, the four proposed landing sites for the MSL hover within 25 degrees of the equator.*
Read moreThis is my slowly disintegrating computer. It’s bursting apart into gadgets and modules, each one good for what it does, but none a full experience. Sometimes when I go out, I carry the screen and the speakers but not the keyboard. Other times, I don’t bother with the speakers but want the keyboard and the screen.
The far side of this seems so obvious that it feels inevitable: Computers made of ad hoc clusters of devices that are as interchangeable and compatible as an ad hoc cluster of pens, pencils, scrap paper, and notebooks. I see stacks of thinscreens as cheap and shareable as office supplies. Bits of computers as semi-communal possessions, the way that re-useable shopping bags or tupperware containers are.
The Committee to Nuke Elysium 