The truth at any cost lowers all other costs
Rwanda launches first ‘Made in Africa’ smartphones
“We are actually the first who are doing manufacturing. We are making the motherboards, we are making the sub-boards during the entire process,” he said. “There are over 1,000 pieces per phone.”
Could Rwanda become the world’s first open source everything superpower?
Bellcycle: The New Open Source Modular Bike
A Bellcycle is a new kind of bicycle that is built from a DIY kit and lets you ride with a straight back and hands kept in a natural position. It’s modular and can even be set up to carry cargo.
The Bellcycle is a concept from Labs Bell and has been designed by Alex Bell, an engineer who was born and raised in NYC, US.
Artificial organs developed by biohackers will soon deliver insulin to diabetics
In 2018, several hybrid closed-loop systems will begin to appear on the market. These will measure a user’s blood-sugar levels every five minutes or so and supply insulin subcutaneously as appropriate. A large part of the R&D behind them was done in the open-source community. One such group, the Open Artificial Pancreas System project (OpenAPS), has for the past three years been encouraging diabetic biohackers to explore and improve their existing monitoring and insulin-delivery systems.
“Engineered wood is the material of the future for urban building. The Open Source Wood Initiative is a great way to promote sustainable building,” says Philippe Blanchard, lecturer from Ecole Superieure du Bois.
Short descriptions of all three concepts can be found from opensourcewood.com/hackathon.
Visit: http://opensourceecology.org/
10% of cost or better, Open Source is…
Children Synthesize Two Dollar Version of Martin Shkreli’s $750 Malaria Drug
The aim was to enable anyone in the community (from professors and pharmaceutical professionals, to undergraduates and school classes) to help solve our most pressing health concerns. […]
Anyone could take part, all the data and ideas had to be public domain, and there were to be no patents. Our lab notebooks were no longer sitting on the bench of a locked lab, but were updated in real time on the internet.
In two key areas (computing and transportation) the comprehensive level of technical and engineering expertise required is far beyond the majority of individuals to cope. Most people are not even aware of the environmental damage being done by computers and vehicles. Silicon ICs require vast amounts of pure water, as well as large quantities of heavy and rare earth metals. Electric vehicles – touted as “the future” – require large quantities of neodymium (for the magnets), copper (for the motors) and lithium (for the batteries). Neodymium is found only in deposits that are surrounded by radioactive isotopes, and requires a THOUSAND litres of boiling sulphuric acid to purify just one kilogram of neodymium.
Constructing houses out of mud with a 3D printer … this looks like a great advance for getting building costs down to what can be afforded locally just about anywhere!
The world’s largest Delta 3D printer creates nearly zero-cost homes out of mud
The future of affordable (and sustainable) housing may lie with 3D printing. The World’s Advanced Saving Project (WASP) has unveiled the world’s largest delta-style 3D printer, which can build full-size buildings out of mud and clay for nearly zero cost. The massive BigDelta printer stands 12 meters tall (40 feet), and it’s nearly completed its first house at a cost of just 48 euros so far. Read more, watch video, see compelling photographs.
ROBERT STEELE: I cannot over-state the importance of the work that Dr. Marcin Jakubowski and his team are doing with Open Source Ecology and the Global Village Construction Set. They have added a plastic recycling and printing machine to the latter. Now they need your help raising the last $8,000 in a $75,000 campaign at kick-starter to build an Open-Source House Tool-Kit, all plans free online. Use the link below to become a referrer, make 10%, and help this worthy project in its final ten days of fund-raising.
https://open-building.kickbooster.me/
Open-Source Toolkit Aims to Make Home Building Cheap, Easy and Green
As open source advocates and newlyweds, Marcin Jakubowski and Catarina Mota decided to reinvent the home-building wheel a few years back. In the process, they have been developing an entirely open-source toolkit that makes the design and construction of eco-friendly, off-grid modular housing easier, cheaper, and faster through use of modular designs, rapid-build construction, social production, locally-sourced materials, and open-source machines.
Image of $25K Open Source Starter Home Below the Fold
3D Printer Build Workshops Survey
This form is used to collect data on past and existing 3D printer build workshops. The goal is to gain insights on whether the DIY 3D Printer Build Workshops can scale to broader participation as a self-sustaining revenue model. The results of this form are public information, visible in the results spreadsheet (http://bit.ly/1TMVEcY). Test of form took 11 minutes to complete. This form is published under the CC-BY-SA license by Open Source Ecology (http://bit.ly/QixCrU).
3D Printer Build Workshops Survey
Tiny Villages: Horizontally Scaling Society
Cloud computing is about horizontally (as opposed to vertically) scaling systems. Instead of building one super-powerful server, you create many inexpensive servers that each contain a small part of the system. There are multiple advantages to “scaling out” rather than “scaling up”, such as incrementally improved capacity with little or no downtime and less expensive, more maintainable servers.
Continue reading “Jason Livesay: Tiny Villages – Horizontally Scaling Society”
Hacking the farm with low-cost, open source tool designs
Don Watkins, opensource.com, 15 February 2016
Phi Beta Iota: MUST READ. Kudos to Don Watkins for the questions and opensource.com for paying attention outside the IT arena. This is a very positive development.
