A hat full of random, #12312123

No intro.

1) The guy who wrote Bittorrent is writing a thing to allow the embedding of encrypted messages in legit files

2) Weird-3d Printed self-healing organic shoes.

Not sure if this has actually happened, or never will… or somewhere in between. A mixture I guess. I realised that “design fiction”, which Bruce-Sterling has been going on about for years, is what I was talking about in the last post. Inventions that never seem to get invented. Kindof like SciFi, but by designers.

3) Crude oil from Algae

IMHO, this will be 50% of what ends the energy crisis… only it has a whole lot more potential than the other 51% (solar), because gen-tech microbes can produce more than just oil… it could well turn into a 3D printing precursor stage… ie: the means of creating the raw materials. Or we could just use it to create THC and never get any further than that. It’s up to you.

4) Creepy phone-bot, pretending it’s not a creepy phone-bot

Waving at machines etc.

5) Security bot, that is seeking funding and hasn’t actually happened yet.

Looks like there’s a kind of Kickstarter type thing for investors… which is moderately interesting I suppose, only I don’t have a lot of time for “investors”… or that whole mechanism that’s all about making someone who’s already rich, richer, so they can lobby govt for the destruction of the environment, the internet, the commons, us.

But the reason I like this is that what they’ve done is designed a 21st C dalek… without a gun. It’s a Dickless Dalek. “Nick Taylor and the Dickless Daleks”. Good name for a band, if I could get anyone else to join. Probably not worth the bother. Whatever. As you were.

But give it a gun FFS. All it is at the moment is a mobile CCTV. Criminals are just going to tip it over and piss on it. That’s what I’d do. If I ever saw one. It’d probably do the same to me.

6) Phone Controlled Paper Dart

From Kickstarter – made nearly $700000 with a whole month to go. Hasn’t actually happened yet though.

Speaking of which, Romo seems to be a couple of generations in…

One of the very first things I punted money towards on Kickstarter. Did it work? Did it fuck.

They gave up trying to program for Android… so when the guy in the video says “limited only by the imagination”, what he really means is “limited only by the imagination, and Apple’s terms-of-service”. It’s like fascism, but with a shiny white wipeable surface.

Shiny-White is intimately linked with this:

Those are soldiers (let’s stop pretending they’re police) arresting people at the Walmart Strike Protest. Walmart being the company where the Walton Family has as much wealth as the bottom 1/3 of people living in America… and they don’t pay their workers enough to eat. The Average American spends about $350 a year on Apple products that are made by people who are forced to sign anti-suicide contracts. Shiny.

Here’s Bruce on the subject. I like Bruce – he gets invited to things, then tells people what they probably don’t want to hear.

8 ) Sweden is about to release 100 auto-drive cars onto the streets

Volvo is doing it. Google got the ball rolling, now it’s everywhere… is a shadowy, not-here-yet sort of way. Google just bought a robotic weapons manufacturer btw. What could possibly go wrong?

9) Someone hacked a parrot to fly around hacking other parrots

I think it’s going to take quite a leap of faith/paradigm to realise that the way to bring down a drone is not to shoot a little lump of lead at it, but to interfere with its mind. Probably. Although shotting little lumps of lead would work as well, and would be a whole lot easier. Bullets are not a software problem.

10) NASA Space Robot with disturbing legs

Why do that? Why not make all the arms wibbly-wobbly? having the top half human and the bottom part satyr/octopus is just disturbing.

That’s 10. Have run out of fingers etc.