notes.husk.org. archive page 2 of 74.tagged quote.

2013-06-12

post/52745047135

quote 00:11:48

“ While the market merely shines (and the feudal gutters), the planned lases. ”

Iain M Banks (1954-2013): A Few Notes On The Culture.

“ On Eurocopter helicopters designed in France, the main rotor turns clockwise when viewed from above, in common with rotorcraft deriving from Russia. Eurocopter products developed in Germany have a main rotor which turns counter-clockwise when viewed from above, in common with American rotorcraft. ”

Eurocopter on Wikipedia (indirectly via vruba)

2013-06-06

post/52332435057

quote 23:39:52

“ The Silicon Valley operation works alongside a parallel program, code-named BLARNEY, that gathers up “metadata” — address packets, device signatures and the like — as it streams past choke points along the backbone of the Internet. BLARNEY’s top-secret program summary, set down alongside a cartoon insignia of a shamrock and a leprechaun hat, describes it as “an ongoing collection program that leverages IC [intelligence community] and commercial partnerships to gain access and exploit foreign intelligence obtained from global networks. ”

U.S. intelligence mining data from nine U.S. Internet companies in broad secret program - Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras in the The Washington Post.

I can’t wait to see the shitty clip art behind BLARNEY’s logo.

post/52266711344

quote 02:47:00

“ On the level of straight fact, there is the common, false assertion, Myth #4, that Bradley Manning leaked “top secret” material. It is true that Pfc. Manning did enjoy top-secret security clearance, a distinction he shared with the 1.4 million other people who are eligible for Top Secret security clearance. (And how, by the way, can any secret accessible by a population the size of all of Vermont and North Dakota together, a group larger than the population of Washington, DC, itself, be a secret?) It so happens that not a single one of the documents that Pfc. Manning declassified was “top secret” status. More than half of the diplomatic cables are not classified in any way, and neither was the infamous helicopter gunsight video that shows an Apache gunship slaughtering a dozen Iraqis, including two Reuters news agency employees. ”

Chase Madar: Seven Myths About Bradley Manning | The Nation (via jomc)

As I said on Twitter the other day, “national security is a joke”.

2013-05-29

post/51654844586

quote 18:57:51

“

In an effort to combat graffiti on trains, German rail provider Deutsche Bahn is testing a new weapon: a drone outfitted with an infrared camera.

The new drone, outfitted with an infrared camera and the company’s red and white logo, will use GPS to document the times and places where vandals are observed, making it easier to prosecute offenders. Flying at an altitude of some 150 meters (492 feet), it will be able to keep watch for more than 80 minutes at a time, quietly whizzing through the sky at up to 54 kilometers (33 miles) per hour. It can also be put on autopilot function for stretches as long as 40 kilometers, the paper said.

”

Spiegel Online, Deutsche Bahn Gets Drone to Stop Train Graffiti in Germany, quoting a story in Bild (via Quinn Norton).

2013-05-28

post/51570746573

quote 18:38:38

“ Unless everyone becomes a software engineer—a proposal that was floated to me by several tech people, in one form or another—egalitarian stock plans are not an answer to the deepest structural problems in America. ”

George Packer: A Reply From Silicon Valley: Apple, Taxes, and Tech Libertarianism for The New Yorker.

post/51521359257

quote 02:14:14

“ Pan’s legislation also addresses other anti-consumer practices by prohibiting the use of robotic ticket-buying software, or “bots,” which bombard online box offices with thousands of simultaneous purchase requests thereby gobbling up the best seats and preventing the average fan from obtaining tickets. ”

Legislation Gives Customers a Break at the Box Office, a press release from Perry Communications Group on California Assembly member Dr Richard Pan’s AB 329, which (amongst other things) bans automated ticket purchasing.

2013-05-24

post/51236216085

quote 18:45:14

“

Reblogging for the bunny cartoon.

I should really find the sketches I did for modern rabbit tactical armor in college…

”

paperbits.

That makes sense, because it was pretty much blogged for the bunny cartoon.

I would love to see the tactical armour.

(Source: cooper.com)

2013-05-21

post/50995689071

quote 17:18:40

“ There’s no such thing as Flickr Pro today because [with so many people taking photographs] there’s really no such thing as professional photographers anymore,” Mayer said ”

Flickr gets revamp — with 1 TB of photo storage free — and Yahoo gets new NYC office — Tech News and Analysis (via iamdanw)

(via iamdanw)

2013-05-20

post/50922142839

quote 19:37:04

“ In 2007, around the time it launched its second unmanned station, Bigelow Aerospace boasted that as many 800 paying crewmembers could be flying in 10 years’ time. Six years later, the number of Bigelow astronauts remains zero. Bigelow has launched ambitious self-funded enterprises before, but he is also known for being capricious with them. In 2004 he pulled the plug on the National Institute for Discovery Science, which funded paranormal research. Bigelow’s ”

Greg Klerkx: Living in space

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notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.