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Posted by sohkamyung 23 hours ago

Banned book library in a wi-fi smart light bulb(www.richardosgood.com)
560 points | 336 commentspage 4
wolfi1 14 hours ago|
Fahrenheit 451 anyone?
trelane 9 hours ago|
I suppose the bulb could get hot enough to burn the media storing the books.
timonoko 13 hours ago||
Whatever this is, Tasmota is not the solution.
Malic 21 hours ago||
Has anyone heard of similar work done with smart light bulbs but for Meshtastic nodes?
baby_souffle 21 hours ago||
Why would you put a LoRa radio in consumer-grade household electronics?

LoRa is also sub-optimal for payloads more than a few K in size and most ePub files are at least a meg...

subscribed 20 hours ago||
Meshtastic / meshcore at this point look like a dead end of the development.

Take a look at HaLow if you insist, but in general if a bulb has esp32 then you could likely replace the module for one with LoRA capabilities.

tristor 5 hours ago||
It'd be great to set this up to return files over Reticulum or another decentralized mesh protocol, so it doesn't rely on the Internet in any way.
wizardforhire 19 hours ago||
Why stop there? While meshtastic would require additional hardware, tor entry exit nodes would not. Nor would other mesh protocols… also as for hosting ideas… the text files? Def cad and related models… skies the limit with space the only limiting factor.
zuzululu 21 hours ago||
I'm surprised there are banned books with 1st amendment exists in America? I'm curious as to what these are. I think its rather silly that books can be banned.
BuyMyBitcoins 20 hours ago||
Whenever I encounter some news article regarding “banned” books I dig a little deeper and typically discover that some library or elementary school simply put an age restriction on those titles.

I’ll grant that some of the restrictions seem overprotective. That being said, a parent could easily check out one of those books for their child.

BigTTYGothGF 9 hours ago|||
There might not currently be but that hasn't always been the case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banned_in_Boston and the obscenity laws are still in place: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Diana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscenity_Prosecution_Task_For...
gustavus 21 hours ago|||
You would be correct there are no "banned books" in America.

When people say "banned book" they mean that a certain level of government such as a school board or municipality has "banned" them from being in a public (often school) library.

But the headline "In [state I disagree with] they are banning books that have [ideas I agree with]" makes a lot more headlines and clicks.

Then people run with the phrase "banned books" to make things sound worse than they are.

iberator 17 hours ago|||
Each state is part of the USA, and each state DOES ban some books.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_banning_in_the_United_Sta...

USA is ultra conservative on the average in comparison to just any European state for example.

unselect5917 15 hours ago|||
Relying on the ultra mainstream wikipedia for a banned book would be hilarious if it weren't so deeply disappointing. They'll list nothing interesting.
aikinai 13 hours ago||||
None of those books are banned.
imgabe 7 hours ago||||
> USA is ultra conservative on the average in comparison to just any European state for example.

Are you serious? The UK and Germany are arresting people for social media posts. That is actual impingement of free speech.

baggy_trough 16 hours ago|||
The point is that those books aren't actually banned for general access. They may not be present in a school library, but you can certainly get them on Amazon.
wiml 19 hours ago|||
There's a certain amount of censorship of classified information published by (ex-)military, and that kind of thing, but it can be and is challenged in court.

Purely obscene material is also not protected by the 1st, but since the 1970s, the bar for that has been placed very, very high.

The closest I can think of offhand is that for about a year during the pandemic, Twitter suppressed gratuitous COVID misinformation posts, at the request of the government.

mothballed 6 hours ago||
Jordan Derrick (Ashley Dugan) recently had a youtube video on making RDX pulled and criminally charged with "distribution of explosives information to terrorists" for publicly sharing the public domain patented/documented synthesis (going back to a German patent all the way in the 19th century IIRC) of RDX explosives and denied bail for "hate speech" of using the Israeli flag as a doormat (which was actually in the indictment).
carlosjobim 13 hours ago|||
It's not different than McDonald's and Burger King being banned in Germany.

The evidence is that they don't serve it for school lunches.

Is that a weird argument? That's the same way people argue that books are "banned" in America.

wopwops 14 hours ago||
[flagged]
metalman 12 hours ago||
Well written. That it was written at all is a strong comment on the state of our world where we have an improbable amount of data, but nothing to read.
jijji 18 hours ago||
have you you checked out "esp32-s3" which costs $7.12 and has wifi and microsd installed on it [0]. Also esp32-cam is another board with similar specifications.

[0] https://www.seeedstudio.com/XIAO-ESP32S3-p-5627.html

copper-float 22 hours ago||
I think calling them "banned" is so disingenuous. There are actual banned books that are illegal to own in the United States. None of these "banned books" come anywhere close to meeting that criteria.

Very cool project nonetheless!

K0balt 22 hours ago||
Actual banned books that are illegal to own? Such as?
simplyluke 21 hours ago|||
Zero books are banned by name in the USA. Certain content is: Classified documents (although this is just illegal to share as the one with the original clearance, not to publish/read/possess after), child abuse material, and copyright violations all come to mind.

The majority of "banned books" are books that a random school district/religious school in a conservative part of the country elected not to include in their library at some point. Many of them are required reading in many other school districts and some of the most well known books of the 20th century.

The closer-to-banned ones are generally not included on banned-book-reading-lists and are banned on major retail platforms and long out of print and tend to be racist and/or genuinely subversive to liberal democratic principles. Most of these tend to be some of the most-downloaded-books-on-the-internet, and are also in no way illegal to own in the US - though possession of many is illegal in much of the EU.

An interesting case is United States vs Progressive inc [0] in which the US dropped a lawsuit to prevent a magazine from publishing a how-to guide on building an H bomb and Defense Distributed vs United States Department of State [1] in which the US federal government settled and allowed for the publishing of 3d printed gun files online, previously prevented under arms exports claims.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Progressive,_.... 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Distributed_v._United_...

copper-float 20 hours ago|||
Yeah, I just disagree with the terminology of calling something "banned", which makes it seem a lot more dire than it is. Local book curation at a school-district level doesn't seem newsworthy to me, which is what the whole "banned books" term seems to stem from.

A library can choose what books they stock (especially a school library. Of course they're highly curated.). You don't have to agree with their choices, but the book isn't banned. You can still find it at a county library, an ebook library, or on the Internet.

So it's a bit dramatic to say "I'm fighting the system by hosting banned books!", just because some Tennessee elementary schoolers can't check it out from their school library. Just feels like a joke and a mockery when there's governments that genuinely censor books.

JuniperMesos 9 hours ago||||
In 2021 the company that holds the rights to Dr. Seuss books, founded by his family after his death, announced that they would stop printing several of his books because they judged them to be racist against nonwhites: https://apnews.com/article/dr-seuss-books-racist-images-d8ed... . This isn't a government ban on the content of the books, but rather the legitimate copyright owner refusing to print them for their own ideological reasons.

Once the books go out of copyright they will no longer be able to legally prevent anyone else from printing the books, and copyright law doesn't prevent people from legally reselling their already-purchased copies of books. But if you go onto Amazon right now and look at prices, you'll find that a copy of one of the Dr. Seuss books that the rights-holder refuses to print more copies of, such as McElligot's Pool, costs over 100 dollars; whereas a Dr. Seuss book that the rights-holders haven't judged as racist, such as The Cat in the Hat, costs about $5.

simplyluke 5 hours ago||
I'm not really sure how this is exactly pertinent to a discussion on books being banned. A copyright holder can choose to cease publication for any reason, that's categorically different than a ban. Perhaps it's a point in a broader argument about copyright.
JuniperMesos 1 hour ago||
Because a book being $100 vs $5 on Amazon because someone in a position of power made an ideologically-based decision actually meaningfully affects the ability of ordinary people to access that book, even though I agree with you that this is not a book ban in the ordinary sense of the term and that legally a copyright holder can choose to cease publication for any reason.
frollogaston 20 hours ago||||
There must be some book with actually banned content in it, right? Especially copyright violations. They could include a PDF of some Linux source code but with MIT license.

Edit: per the other comment's Wikipedia link, the unredacted Operation Dark Heart seems banned in the US because it included classified info

JacobKfromIRC 20 hours ago|||
There is a book called "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye" which is (was?) banned in the United States: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_David_California

Although copyright-infringing books may be illegal to redistribute in general, the difficulty in determining what counts as copyright infringement and what counts as fair use means you can't really tell for sure which books are illegal to distribute and which aren't, so I'm not sure that really counts as "banned". 60 Years Later had an actual court order which makes things a little more concrete.

carlosjobim 13 hours ago|||
Every book is banned by that line of reasoning, if you're distributing it without license. And every movie and every song.
bloak 11 hours ago||
Some stuff is public domain, though!
VoodooJuJu 21 hours ago|||
[dead]
greenavocado 21 hours ago|||
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_books_banned_by_govern...
yreg 22 hours ago|||
There are other countries outside of United States. And the book curation is up to the user.
limit35 22 hours ago||
It is not disingenuous, maybe a little loose on the 'meaning', but your definition is rather narrow. The Color Purple has been challenged many times in order to be removed from public library circulation and public school curriculums. Annie on my Mind was banned from the Kansas Public School system and subject to book burnings at the federal courthouse. The removal of the book (ban?) was overturned by the court. There are many similar examples of this on banned book lists. Colloquially, the term 'banned' is used often to encompass books that are actually banned, challenged, or illegally removed from public spaces due to a group actively censoring literature for various reasons. I think that general use is fine rather than being pedantic about it considering the social and intellectual costs involved. To call a book that is removed from circulation illegally not banned because there is no law banning it is foolish, since that is a reoccurring tactic among groups applying censorship on communities.
goodmythical 20 hours ago|||
It's rather subjective, though, no?

Having been in prison, I can tell you that being a Blood and having "certain books" in your locker is a "smash on sight" offense. The same could be said for the Aryan Brotherhood/Circle, and I'm sure for many other gangs.

There's a difference between "this one small group: local oklahoma school district/aryan brotherhood/catholic church" decided they don't like a book and the government level you will be imprisoned for owning/sharing this book.

If it's a 'banned' book library, why doesn't it include books banned by a variety of sources? To me, a 'banned' book library would included many thousands of books each tagged by which groups are banning them. That way, were I inclined to do so, I could read texts that were banned by both Jews and Christians, or by both democratic nations and totalitarian regimes, or whatever it was that I was interested in.

This particular compilation is a perfect example. Calling The Call of the Wild, a book that's been made in to several movies (the most recent of which grossing $111.1 million against a production budget of $125–150 million) a "banned book" is kind of ludicrous, no? Clearly many thousands or millions of people have access to it and it's contents, so it is clearly not 'banned' in any meaningful sense of the term, unless you happen to live in some region in which it is banned, but that enforces my claim that any such random small list doesn't really live up to the label.

limit35 18 hours ago||
It is subjective. I believe the application or suggestion here is if you are in a community that denies people under 18 the right to have access to certain books over philosophical differences, you can create a book server and give them access to books. If you live in a state, or institution in your example, that will legally punish you or worse for selling or owning a book, you can create a book server. The two are not different really, the systems/people that are limiting the access to literature and information through varying means of enforcement are trying to achieve the same ends, state enforced censorship and control.

In the article example, to deny this because of a technically or the degree of legal enforcement is foolish since it is rebelling against the act of banning books, the process of banning, which doesn't occur out of thin air, it is an evolution of acts. It is not an absolute and one doesn't have to wait until there is a legally defined ban to start the protest. That would be ridiculous as it would be too late.

I don't think the project is trying to make the Banned Library of Congress either, anyone could put whatever books they want on their server. It is suggesting civil disobedience by circumventing oppression through censorship with creativity, which is awesome.

goodmythical 7 hours ago||
I'm all for civil disobedience, but that's just it. "Civil Disobedience in a Light Bulb" would have been a better angle.
kloop 20 hours ago|||
> It is not disingenuous, maybe a little loose on the 'meaning', but your definition is rather narrow

The thing is that every other country does have what they're describing.

> The Color Purple has been challenged many times in order to be removed from public library circulation and public school curriculums.

And yet nobody challenged it to get it removed from US Amazon. Amazon _is_ forbidden from selling certain books in other countries. It's so not the same thing

iberator 16 hours ago|
You should add guest-logbook as in 90" and 00" to it :) Or whole fucking BBS system :) THAT would be cool
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