Election Monitors Coming to U.S.

[michael gurstein]

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/263141-international-monitors-at-pollin
g-places-draw-criticism-from-voter-fraud-group

Election Monitors Coming to U.S.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a United
Nations partner on democratization and human rights projects, will deploy 44
observers around the U. S. on Election Day looking for voter suppression
activities by conservative groups. "Through our contacts at state and county
level in certain states, we managed to secure invitations at local level and
we have taken up the offer to observe. Where this is not possible, we will
respect the state regulation on this matter and will not observe in
precincts on Election Day," said Giovanna Maiola, OCSE spokesperson.


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World's First Flying File-Sharing Drones in Action

[michael gurstein]

World
 's First Flying File-Sharing Drones in Action


http://torrentfreak.com/worlds-first-flying-file-sharing-drones-in-action-12
0320/


A few days ago The Pirate Bay announced that in future parts of its site
could be hosted on GPS controlled drones. To many this may have sounded like
a joke, but in fact these pirate drones already exist. Project "Electronic
Countermeasures" has built a swarm of five fully operational drones which
prove that an "aerial Napster" or an "airborne Pirate Bay" is not as
futuristic as it sounds.


 picture of a drone  In
an ever-continuing effort to thwart censorship, The Pirate Bay plans to turn
flying drones into mobile hosting locations
 .

"Everyone knows WHAT TPB is. Now they're going to have to think about WHERE
TPB is," The Pirate Bay team told TorrentFreak last Sunday, announcing their
drone project.

Liam Young, co-founder of Tomorrow 
's Thoughts Today, was amazed to read the announcement, not so much because
of the technology, because his group has already built a swarm of
file-sharing drones. 

"I thought hold on, we are already doing that," Young told TorrentFreak. 

Their starting point for project "Electronic Countermeasures" was to create
something akin to an 'aerial Napster' or 'airborne Pirate Bay', but it
became much more than that.

"Part nomadic infrastructure and part robotic swarm, we have rebuilt and
programmed the drones to broadcast their own local Wi-Fi network as a form
of aerial Napster. They swarm into formation, broadcasting their pirate
network, and then disperse, escaping detection, only to reform elsewhere,"
says the group describing their creation.

 

 


File-Sharing Drone in Action (photo by Claus Langer
 )


 picture of a sharing drone
 

 

In short the system allows the public to share data with the help of flying
drones. Much like the Pirate Box
 , but one that flies autonomously over the
city.

"The public can upload files, photos and share data with one another as the
drones float above the significant public spaces of the city. The swarm
becomes a pirate broadcast network, a mobile infrastructure that passers-by
can interact with," the creators explain. 

One major difference compared to more traditional file-sharing hubs is that
it requires a hefty investment. Each of the drones costs 1500 euros to
build. Not a big surprise, considering the hardware that's needed to keep
these pirate hubs in the air.

"Each one is powered by 2x 2200mAh LiPo batteries. The lift is provided by
4x Roxxy Brushless Motors that run off a GPS flight control board. Also on
deck are altitude sensors and gyros that keep the flight stable. They all
talk to a master control system through XBee wireless modules," Young told
TorrentFreak.

"These all sit on a 10mm x 10mm aluminum frame and are wrapped in a vacuum
formed aerodynamic cowling. The network is broadcast using various different
hardware setups ranging from Linux gumstick modules, wireless routers and
USB sticks for file storage."

For Young and his crew this is just the beginning. With proper financial
support they hope to build more drones and increase the range they can
cover. 

"We are planning on scaling up the system by increasing broadcast range and
building more drones for the flock. We are also building in other systems
like autonomous battery change bases. We are looking for funding and backers
to assist us in scaling up the system," he told us.

Those who see the drones in action (video below) will notice that they're
not just practical. The creative and artistic background of the group shines
through, with the choreography performed by the drones perhaps even more
stunning than the sharing component.

"When the audience interacts with the drones they glow with vibrant colors,
they break formation, they are called over and their flight pattern becomes
more dramatic and expressive," the group explains. 

Besides the artistic value, the drones can also have other use cases than
being a "pirate hub." For example, they can serve as peer-to-peer
communications support for protesters and activists in regions where
Internet access is censored.

Either way, whether it's Hollywood or a dictator, there will always be
groups that have a reason to shoot the machines down. But let's be honest,
who would dare to destroy such a beautiful piece of art?

 

 

 


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Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong

[Arns HMKV Inke]

Alexis C. Madrigal
Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong
The Atlantic, 12 Oct 2012

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/dark-social-we-have-the-whole-history-of-the-web-wrong/263523/

Here's a pocket history of the web, according to many people. In the early 
days, the web was just pages of information linked to each other. Then along 
came web crawlers that helped you find what you wanted among all that 
information. Some time around 2003 or maybe 2004, the social web really kicked 
into gear, and thereafter the web's users began to connect with each other more 
and more often. Hence Web 2.0, Wikipedia, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. I'm 
not strawmanning here. This is the dominant history of the web as seen, for 
example, in this Wikipedia entry on the 'Social Web.' 

But it's never felt quite right to me. For one, I spent most of the 90s as a 
teenager in rural Washington and my web was highly, highly social. We had 
instant messenger and chat rooms and ICQ and USENET forums and email. My whole 
Internet life involved sharing links with local and Internet friends. How was I 
supposed to believe that somehow Friendster and Facebook created a social web 
out of what was previously a lonely  journey in cyberspace when I knew that 
this has not been my experience? True, my web social life used tools that ran 
parallel to, not on, the web, but it existed nonetheless. 

To be honest, this was a very difficult thing to measure. One dirty secret of 
web analytics is that the information we get is limited. If you want to see how 
someone came to your site, it's usually pretty easy. When you follow a link 
from Facebook to The Atlantic, a little piece of metadata hitches a ride that 
tells our servers, "Yo, I'm here from Facebook.com." We can then aggregate 
those numbers and say, "Whoa, a million people came here from Facebook last 
month," or whatever. 

There are circumstances, however, when there is no referrer data. You show up 
at our doorstep and we have no idea how you got here. The main situations in 
which this happens are email programs, instant messages, some mobile 
applications*, and whenever someone is moving from  a secure site 
("https://mail.google.com/blahblahblah";) to a non-secure site 
(http://www.theatlantic.com). 

This means that this vast trove of social traffic is essentially invisible to 
most analytics programs. I call it DARK SOCIAL. It shows up variously in 
programs as "direct" or "typed/bookmarked" traffic, which implies to many site 
owners that you actually have a bookmark or typed in www.theatlantic.com into 
your browser. But that's not actually what's happening a lot of the time. Most 
of the time, someone Gchatted someone a link, or it came in on a big email 
distribution list, or your dad sent it to you. 

Nonetheless, the idea that "social networks" and "social media" sites created a 
social web is pervasive. Everyone behaves as if the traffic your stories 
receive from the social networks (Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, StumbleUpon) is 
the same as all of your social traffic. I began to wonder if I was wrong. Or at 
least that what I had experienced was a niche phenomenon and most people's web 
time was not filled with Gchatted and emailed links. I began to think that 
perhaps Facebook and Twitter has dramatically expanded the volume of -- at the 
very least -- linksharing that takes place. 

Everyone else had data to back them up. I had my experience as a teenage nerd 
in the 1990s. I was not about to shake social media marketing firms with my 
tales of ICQ friends and the analogy of dark social to dark energy. ("You can't 
see it, dude, but it's what keeps the universe expanding. No dark social, no 
Internet universe, man! Just a big crunch.")

And then one day, we had a meeting with the real-time web analytics firm, 
Chartbeat. Like many media nerds, I love Chartbeat. It lets you know exactly 
what's happening with your stories, most especially where your readers are 
coming from. Recently, they made an accounting change that  they showed to us. 
They took visitors who showed up without referrer data and split them into two 
categories. The first was people who were going to a homepage (theatlantic.com) 
or a subject landing page (theatlantic.com/politics). The second were people 
going to any other page, that is to say, all of our articles. These people, 
they figured, were following some sort of link because no one actually types 
"http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/atlast-the-gargantuan-telescope-designed-to-find-life-on-other-planets/263409/.";
 They started counting these people as what they call direct social. 

The second I saw this measure, my heart actually leapt (yes, I am that much of 
a data nerd). This was it! They'd found a way to quantify dark social, even if 
they'd given it a lamer name! 

On the first day I saw it, this is how big of an impact dark social was having 
on The Atlantic. 

Just look at