Solar Ice Maker: No Moving Parts, No Electricity

“The tubing (or heat exchanger) is filled with a liquid refrigerant material. The reflective panel focuses light and heat energy from the sun onto the piping which vaporizes the refrigerant. So far, no ice. When the sun goes down however the vapor goes through massive heat loss due to pressure differences and roughly 14 pounds of ice are produced depending on the design.

The refrigerant rapidly cools once it hits 104 degrees Fahrenheit, due to its unique properties making, it perfect for typical temperature ranges in warm climates.

Read full story (with great photograph).

2012/06/26

Josh Kilbourn: John Robb on Resilient Communities

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Hacking

Here’s the Future of America

by John Robb on June 25, 2012

Writing from: Aspen, CO. I’m speaking/attending the National Geographic Environmental Conference (focus of the conference: adapting to climate change).

I had the good fortune of sitting on a conference panel with Mayor Fetterman of Braddock, PA.

He’s a great bear of a guy (he makes me, at 6′ 1″ and well built, look small in comparison), but despite his size, he looked like he was slowly being crushed by the weight of the world when he showed up at the panel.

His story explained why. He’s spent the last decade trying to save a storied American town, crushed by global economic and financial forces. Forces that gutted a prosperous steel town of 18,000 with some historical treasures (e.g. the first Carnegie Library) and a thriving retail sector.

When Fetterman arrived in Braddock, the town was already in shambles. The population had fallen to below 3,000 and gang crime was rampant. In fact, the landscape of the town was so bleak, the town was used as a setting for the darkest apocalypse movie I’ve ever seen, “The Road“

Read full article.

2012/06/122012/06/12

Event: 13-15 July NYC Hackers on Planet Earth

Advanced Cyber/IO, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Hacking, InfoOps (IO), Liberation Technology, Officers Call, Politics

Home . Pre-Register . Speakers .

Travel . Volunteer . Vendors

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Welcome

Latest News

Call for Activities: workshops, artwork, collaborative spaces. Submit your ideas.

HOPE Number Nine Call for Hackerspaces seeks participation

Keynote announced! The Yes Men will talk about their approach to hacking corporations and saving the world. See the press release at 2600.com.

About HOPE

HOPE Number Nine will be taking place on July 13, 14, and 15, 2012 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. H.O.P.E. stands for Hackers On Planet Earth, one of the most creative and diverse hacker events in the world that's been happening since 1994.

We're planning three full days and nights of activities, including more of the provocative and enlightening speakers that the HOPE conferences are known for. In addition, we have access to a massive amount of space to put together all sorts of hacker projects and assorted fun stuff. In the past we've had huge hackerspace villages, film festivals, Segway rides, lockpicking villages, a wide variety of vendors, art installations, live radio, vintage computers, robots, ham radio installations, electronics workshops, book signings, and the country's biggest supply of Club-Mate.

Now imagine all of that happening right in the middle of New York City, across the street from Penn Station and down the block from the Empire State Building. It seems impossible, but with the hard work and dedication of our huge volunteer staff, we're able to pull it off. You can also become part of the magic, whether by attending or volunteering to help run the event with us. We also encourage attendees to submit ideas for talks or to suggest projects that we may not have ever thought of before.

We'll be adding more information to the various sections of this site as it develops. Please explore and spread the word!

Phi Beta Iota: The least expensive most versatile mind-expanding event in the English-speaking world.

2012/06/032012/06/03

Patrick Meier: Geofeedia Next Generation Crisis Mapping Technology

Advanced Cyber/IO, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence, Geospatial, Hacking, Mobile, Policies

My colleague Jeannine Lemaire from the Core Team of the Standby Volunteer Task Force (SBTF) recently pointed me to Geofeedia, which may very well be the next generation in crisis mapping technology. So I spent over an hour talking with GeoFeedia's CEO, Phil Harris, to learn more about the platform and discuss potential applications for humanitarian response. The short version: I'm impressed; not just with the technology itself and potential, but also by Phil's deep intuition and genuine interest in building a platform that enables others to scale positive social impact.

Situational awareness is absolutely key to emergency response, hence the rise of crisis mapping. The challenge? Processing and geo-referencing Big Data from social media sources to produce live maps has largely been a manual (and arduous) task for many in the humanitarian space. In fact, a number of humanitarian colleagues I've spoken to recently have complained that the manual labor required to create (and maintain) live maps is precisely why they aren't able to launch their own crisis maps. I know this is also true of several international media organizations.

There have been several attempts at creating automated live maps. Take Havaria and Global Incidents Map, for example. But neither of these provide the customi-zability necessary for users to apply the platforms in meaningful ways. Enter Geofeedia. Lets take the recent earthquake and 800 aftershocks in Emilia, Italy. Simply type in the place name (or an exact address) and hit enter. Geofeedia automatically parses Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and Instagram for the latest updates in that area and populates the map with this content. The algorithm pulls in data that is already geo-tagged and designated as public.

Read full article with many screenshots.

2012/05/242012/05/24

Event: 13-14 July NYC Robert Steele Live at Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE)

Advanced Cyber/IO, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Hacking, Knowledge

Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) Number 9

Learn more, Register

Robert David STEELE Vivas

Live at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City

The opening speaker for HOPE in 1994, he has been invited back to every HOPE since then, offering both a serious briefing, and SPY IMPROV, his “open anything” Q&A.

AnyMan for President

30 Minutes: Robert Steele: How I Tested the Boundaries of the Two-Party Tyranny – Last Call for Occupy/*

Not to be outdone by Jello Biafra, Robert Steele ran for President in 2012. Accepted by the Reform Party as a candidate, he tested the boundaries for six weeks, created a world-class presidential platform, a coalition cabinet, and the foundation for a national strike to demand electoral reform. He also connected with every single other candidate less Romney, and reports his impressions….not pretty at all. His campaign put forward AnyMan for President, and is the only campaign to focus on a concept instead of a personality. We the People Reform Coalition

Amazon Page

30 Minutes: 2012 The Open Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth, & Trust (Evolver Editions, June 2012)

If you thought Steele was motivated before, promoting Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), you ain't seen nothin' yet. Now he's going for the whole enchilada. In a 215 page pocketbook (use the link above to see the 33 slides and buy it in advance from any number of sources) he lays out how We the People can reconnect with our integrity, harvest the integrity inherent in Nature, and stomp into oblivion the fraud, waste, and abuse characteristic of all of our organizations — academic, civil society, commerce, government, media, military, and non-government/non-profit. Steele is for intelligence (decision-support) what Stallman is for software. The citizens' intelligence militia is self-organizing, from zip code to global. Panarchy rules!

2 hours: SPY IMPROV: Everything you ever wanted to ask about anything…

Steele, a recovering spy, honorary hacker across multiple continents, and the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reading in 98 categories (see the list here) will answer any question on any topic. Having already set the world record at The Next HOPE (8, 2010) with an eight-hour Q&A, this year the time is being strictly limited to 2 hours.

See Also:

THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust

2012/05/172012/05/17

Sepp Hasslberger: Air-Powered Car Coming to India

03 Economy, 03 India, 05 Energy, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Hacking

Air-powered Car Coming to India

Analysis by Jesse Emspak

Discovery, Wed May 9, 2012 09:09 AM ET

This car runs on the ultimate emissions-free fuel: air.

In 2007, Mumbai, India-based Tata Motors signed a licensing deal with Motor Development International, a French design firm. The idea was to build a car that could run on compressed air. Now Tata says it has tested two cars with the engines. The next step is setting up the manufacturing plants to actually build them.

2012/05/152012/05/15

Owl: Anonymous Makes a Statement – Has Meat, Add Salt

Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Hacking, Liberation Technology, Non-Governmental

This interview overall undoubtedly has misconceptions, self-inflated bravado, gross exaggerations and so forth, but if the last statement he utters is true about people coming to them, even to a significantly lesser degree than he indicates, the world-ruling elites might be quaking ever-so-slightly, but involuntarily, in their boots. And much more so if indeed insiders are giving Anonymous the “keys to the kingdom,” the passwords into it.

Insider tells why Anonymous ‘might well be the most powerful organization on Earth

EXTRACT:

Q. What’s next for Anonymous?

A: Right now we have access to every classified database in the U.S. government. It’s a matter of when we leak the contents of those databases, not if. You know how we got access? We didn’t hack them. The access was given to us by the people who run the systems. The five-star general (and) the Secretary of Defence who sit in the cushy plush offices at the top of the Pentagon don’t run anything anymore. It’s the pimply-faced kid in the basement who controls the whole game, and Bradley Manning proved that. The fact he had the 250,000 cables that were released effectively cut the power of the U.S. State Department in half. The Afghan war diaries and the Iran war diaries effectively cut the political clout of the U.S. Department of Defence in half. All because of one guy who had enough balls to slip a CD in an envelope and mail it to somebody. Now people are leaking to Anonymous and they’re not coming to us with this document or that document or a CD, they’re coming to us with keys to the kingdom, they’re giving us the passwords and usernames to whole secure databases that we now have free reign over. … The world needs to be concerned.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: 01 Any system built by humans can be hacked by humans. 02 A system's security is heavily dependent on the legitimacy of the system owner in the eyes of those using the system.

The Search for Security: A U.S. Grand Strategy for the Twenty-First Century

Category: Hacking

Sepp Hasslberger: Solar Ice Maker: No Moving Parts, No Electricity