Posting Returns ~ Back to the Open Net...

Anyone paying attention would have seen my Maximizing Progress posting gone AWOL. That's both busyness and over-reliance on the FB walled-garden. It's so easy to fork good links off to one of my dozen or so specialty FB groups (e.g. Vital Cities, Thinkertools, Libertaria, Sci Fab, Vision 2050, plus the classes). Blogging is more work, for now, and so it's gotten pushed down the stack of priorities. But I'm pissed about FB being closed zone and I want a more open alternative. This here isn't perfect -- and still subject to the whims of the big Goo -- but it too needs feeding. So, I'm back.

Homebrew Sensing ~ DIY Enviro Health Tools!

Excellent to see MIT alum and Public Lab for open technology and science founder Jeffrey Warren win the Knight News Challenge grant for The Homebrew Sensing Project: Environmental health monitoring with open source tools...

"Just as the Homebrew Computer Club challenged assumptions that computers had no place in the home, the Homebrew Sensing Project explores the potential for spectrometry, a powerful analytic technique for identifying materials, in your home and neighborhood. We have leveraged the emerging Do-It-Yourself movement and the power of open source hardware and software development to bring spectrometric analysis to a new audience -- non-experts investigating and testing their immediate environment. The Homebrew Sensing Project gives everyone access to simple, affordable tools to collect data in their own backyards, providing the information they need to make environmental health decisions."

Death Map ~ Humane Borders, Better Future?

The Guardian's Edward Helmore writes that 'Death map' of deserts aims to save lives of desperate Mexican migrants...

"...over the past decade, more than 2,000 corpses, often desiccated, with the bones scattered by animals, have been recovered [...] Humane Borders is one of several groups working to reduce the number of migrant deaths. Yet even as the numbers of Mexican -- and increasingly Central American -- migrants attempting the hazardous crossing appears to have declined, the number who die trying remains troublingly consistent.The crossing to America is simply becoming more dangerous. [...] a new project known officially as The Arizona OpenGIS Initiative for Deceased Immigrants -- Younglas call it the "death map" -- may begin to reduce the deaths and help families of the missing recover the bones of their members."

P.S. Weaponized Drones for the Border Patrol will not help.

3DP Liberator ~ First Successful Wiki Weapon...

DailyMail spots that Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson has successfully fired The Liberator, the first entirely 3DPrinted gun (except for firing pin and bullet). Statist liberals are appalled and pandering politicians are already seeking to ban it. But the plans are online and the genie is now way out of the bottle... P.S. In a grotesque violation of freedom of speech and other essential elements of the US Constitution, Cody has been forced by the Feds to take down the designs.

DIY Spectrometer ~ Public Lab's Light Analyzer!

Public Laboratory is shipping their DIY Spectrometer!

"Chemists use expensive tools called spectrometers (there are several kinds) to analyze unknown solid or liquid samples. We are working on a cheap version which we hope to use to identify oil contamination in water and soil, as well as a range of other possible toxins. Spectrometers can also be used to identify species of plants or crop diseases, assess plumes from smokestacks, and have many other applications."

"What we perceive as a single color consists of multiple blended colors -- just as green paint can be made from mixing yellow and blue paint. A spectrometer is a device that splits light into the various colors it is composed of, which we otherwise cannot distinguish with the naked eye. By viewing a substance through a spectrometer, one can distinguish the exact mixture of colors, which correspond to specific wavelengths of light, that make up the perceived color of the sample."

Welcome to Life ~ Dystopian Corporatism Spoof

Tom Scott posts at IEET on Uploading Ruined by Capitalism...

"If capitalism, intellectual property and other trends continue unchecked this could be the kind of user agreement we’d be offered upon upload."

I'm not sure this is centrally about capitalism or rather the currently backwards and broken state of contract law, IP law, personal data rights, and more, plus the still lagging inadequacies of opensource alternatives. Nevertheless, I think this spoof of dystopian corporatism is hilarious;-) PS As a bonus, check out Tom's Journalism Warning Labels!

Smarthistory ~ More Free World-Class Education!

Excellent to hear that Smarthistory has merged with Khan Academy!

"A free and open, not-for-profit, art history textbook [and now] part of the Khan Academy, we use multimedia to deliver unscripted conversations between art historians about the history of art. We are seeking contributors -- especially for canonical non-Western material and other survey topics not yet covered. [...] We are excited to announce that Smarthistory is now part of the Khan Academy. For the past year, we’ve been so impressed by what Sal and his team have accomplished. Our missions are perfectly aligned -- we are all working toward a free world-class education to anyone anywhere."

Safecast ~ Opensource Radiation Measures...

Great to see Safecast, an opensource distributed radiation measurement and mapping system. Civic media response to fear, uncertainty, and doubt of government veracity and industry objectivity...

"The ongoing crisis in Japan has highlighted our collective need for trusted information. This site is not meant as a replacement for government or nuclear agencies. Our hope is that data sets from various places can provide additional context to the official statements in these rapidly changing events."

Open Source Ecology ~ Civilization Starter Kit...

Marcin Jakubowski speaks at TED2011 on Open-sourced blueprints for civilization and the DIY hardware maker culture...

"open-sourcing the blueprints for 50 farm machines, allowing anyone to build their own tractor or harvester from scratch. And that's only the first step in a project to write an instruction set for an entire self-sustaining village (starting cost: $10,000)."