Day: 14 January 2020

Art installation uses science to age e-waste in geological time

Nathaniel Stern writes, “The World After Us: Imaging techno-aesthetic futures (Flickr set) is an art exhibition that asks, ‘What will — and what can — happen to our gadgets over geological time?’ For the last few years, I have been working scientists to artificially age phones and computers in different ways, growing plants and fungi in watches, phones, laptops, and more, and turning phones into ink (via blenders and oils), iMacs into tools (melting down the aluminum, and shaping it into a wrench, hammer, and screwdriver), and otherwise spiking electronic waste onto 12 foot towers and/or ‘growing’ them (intermingled with botanicals) across 1000 square feet of wall space. Here I want people to think and act differently in and with their media devices, their electronic waste, and the damage it does to create both in the first place.”
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You will be helped! Research using real-world situations fails to replicate the “bystander effect”

For decades, the “bystander effect” (previously) has been a bedrock of received psychological wisdom: “individuals are less likely to offer help to a victim when other people are present; the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that one of them will help.”
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Big Telco wants more federal money to offer slower rural broadband

Comments filed with the FCC by AT&T, Frontier, Windstream and Ustelcom (an industry group representing telcoms companies) have asked the FCC to change the rules for its next, $20.4 billion/10 year rural broadband subsidy fund to allow them to offer slower service than the (already low) speeds the FCC has proposed.
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Bernie Sanders is the most popular candidate among young people, who could determine the outcome of the 2020 election

The largest political party in America is the None of the Above Party, which garners more support than either the Democrats or the Republicans: that means that motivating eligible voters to go to the polls matters more than anything else when it comes to determining the outcome of federal elections.
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Med-tech company repossess veteran’s artificial legs because the VA won’t cover them

Jerry Holliman received Bronze Stars for his military service in Iraq and Vietnam, where he was dosed with Agent Orange. Now 69, Hollman has survived multiple cancers, but lost both his legs to complications from diabetes.
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Schneier: “It’s really too late to secure 5G networks”

Bruce Schneier’s Foreign Policy essay in 5G security argues that we’re unduly focused on the possibility of Chinese manufacturers inserting backdoors or killswitches in 5G equipment, and not focused enough on intrinsic weakness in a badly defined, badly developed standard wherein “near-term corporate profits prevailed against broader social good.”
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Newton’s Principia Mathematica, George Washington’s journal: archivist stole $8m worth of rare books from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Library

Gregory Priore — former archivist for Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Library — has pleaded guilty of stealing $8m worth of rare texts from the collection over a 25 year period, fencing them through John Schulman’s Caliban Book Shop (Schulman has also pleaded guilty, and admitted to forgery as well).
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Podcast: Inaction is a form of action

In my latest podcast (MP3), I read my latest Locus column, Inaction is a Form of Action,, where I I discuss how the US government’s unwillingness to enforce its own anti-monopoly laws has resulted in the dominance of a handful of giant tech companies who get to decide what kind of speech is and isn’t allowed — that is, how the USG’s complicity in the creation of monopolies allows for a kind of government censorship that somehow does not violate the First Amendment.
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