Tough Mudder - Premier Adventure Challenge Series

I'd like to give one of these a shot someday, while I'm still sort of young and mostly spry. 


http://toughmudder.com/



Tough Mudder events are hardcore 10-12 mile obstacle courses designed by British Special Forces to test your all around strength, stamina, mental grit, and camaraderie. With the most innovative courses, half a million inspiring participants, and more than $2 million dollars raised for the Wounded Warrior Project, Tough Mudder is the premier adventure challenge series in the world.

Fooling facial recognition surveillance cameras with cunning and crocheting

By Xeni Jardin at 7:08 pm Tuesday, Mar 20

[Video Link]

Canadian yarn-lover and privacy-lover Howie Woo has developed an ingenious system for thwarting surveillance cameras that use face recognition technology. His solution involves crochet and LOLs. Here are more photos (via the Boing Boing Flickr Pool). More about Howie's playful creations here.

Folding Gun Disguised As Flashlight

The Military-Maker Complex: DARPA Infiltrates the Hackerspace Movement

I leave it to my buddy Klint to keep me up on a wide variety of cutting edge information in fields from technology to occult mysticism and back to military intelligence. His site Technoccult is, as Klint succinctly puts it: "a general interest blog for weirdos."

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Klint Finley

In a two part essay Fiacre O’Duinn explains why DARPA’s partnership with MAKE magazine to fund 1,000 makerlabs in U.S high schools is antithetical to the maker movement and wonders whether it’s a line in the sand that will divide the movement:

While the MENTOR program involves cooperation, this is done so as part of challenge competitions, in which teams compete against each other for cash prizes. This seems in stark contrast to how maker culture has developed to date. Why is competition necessary? If the goal is truly for education using the hacker/maker model, can learning and exploration not take place merely for pleasure, in a completely open environment, or must it be reduced to yet another lesson in the need to hoard and compete for resources and information?

Third, why has the field of study in these makerspaces narrowed only to STEM topics? What happened to the transdisiplinary focus of hacker/maker communities that make them so innovative? Where are the arts? Where are wearables, knitivism, DIY molecular gastronomy? Why do the challenges involve working on unmanned air vehicles or robots, projects that are of interest to DARPA for their military applications? Shouldn’t we encourage STEAM rather than STEM? Could it be that regardless of their educational potential, these topics have no possible military application? With such a narrow focus, one could ask which culture will win the day, maker or military?

Finally, why are the full details of the Make proposal and specifics of the agreement with DARPA not being made public? Because in dealing with the military, lack of transparency is simply a matter of course. This works well for the military but why is it necessary for a community project involving children? Why was a “Secret” clearance level needed to work on designing modules for the program, according to this job advertisement? This lack of transparency also leaves other questions unanswered. For example, as the program expands to over 1000 schools, will military personnel be brought in to teach? This last question brings me to issues of recruitment, STEM education and the military.

The biggest issue of all may be the use of the the MENTOR program as a military recruitment vehicle.

Make, DARPA and the line in the sand, #1

Make, DARPA and the line in the sand, #2

I’ve long opposed military recruitment programs in schools, but what might the benefits of such a program be? I’ve been thinking lately that in these times of austerity, and given the general difficulty in getting public funding for education and social programs in the U.S even when we’re not in a recession, tying social programs to hawkish programs like defense and law enforcement may be the only way to go.

In his “State of the World” in 2009, Bruce Sterling suggested taking a national defense position on climate change:

If I wanted to be politically effective, rather than visionary, I’d disguise myself as a right-wing Green, probably some kind of hunting-shooting NASCAR “conservationist,” and I’d infiltrate the Republicans this year. [...]

So we publicly recognize the climate crisis: just as if we suddenly discovered it ourselves. And we don’t downplay the climate crisis: we OVERPLAY the crisis.

“Then we blame the crisis on foreigners. We’re not liberal weak sisters ‘negotiating Kyoto agreements.’ We’re assembling a Coalition of the Willing tp threaten polluters.

“We’re certainly not bowing the knee to the damn Chinese — they own our Treasury, unfortunately, but we completely change the terms of that debate. When the Chinese open a coal mine and threaten the world’s children with asthma, we will take out that threat with a cruise missile!

That’s our new negotiating position on the climate crisis: we’re the military, macho hard line.

Would it work? Would it be worth selling out the rest of your values for?

I don’t know, but also consider the sorry state of jobs in the country. On the one hand, Newt Gingrich’s moon base idea was justified as a defense measure, but it was widely seen as a proposal as a jobs program for NASA’s home state. Maybe a moon base was too wild an idea, but could something like sci-fi work? Remember, the interstate highway system in the U.S. was actually called the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways and was justified as a defense measure. If we want a jobs program to rebuild or crumbling infrastructure, it seems like we could do a lot worse than call it a homeland security program.

So given the sorry state of STEM education, and the expense of setting up hackerspaces and the absolutely dismal state of public libraries (which many suggest turning into hacker spaces), is it time to consider letting DARPA build hackerspaces for the kids, even if it means letting in military recruiters and having the kids focused on making weapons?

I can see the pragmatic benefit, but I still just can’t justify it. As Fiarce points out, the program is just too antithetical to the maker spirit. And although as many have pointed out DARPA has funded all sorts of research over the years, including the creation of the Internet, the MENTOR program will specifically include a competition for designingweaponized vehicles for military use. DARPA may do some good work too, but having kids design weapons for the military crosses a line for me.

So will it split the community? Someone with more knowledge of the history of the computer hacking movement and how the NSA and other defense agencies tried to hijack it might have more insight than me. But it seems that if the maker movement has any momentum of its own, then this shouldn’t be fatal to it. Those who want to collaborate openly and make things other than war planes, and those attracted to the militaristic elements of the DARPA program will go there. Hopefully the maker movement will be able to sustain both strands, much like the computer hacker movement managed to sustain an open source movement.

See also: 3 BIG questions (and lots of smaller ones) about DARPA & Make

What Is A Maker?

Simple, concise piece harvested from Raising Geeks & Gearheads.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

What is a Maker?

As I'm heading to Maker Faire in California this week, I've been asked a few times - "What is a Maker?"

This article from the NY Times explains it well - The Kitchen Table Industrialists

Excerpt from the article:

If you lived in Detroit in 1961 and watched Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” at a drive-in, you might have caught a 30-minute trailer called “American Maker,” sponsored by Chevrolet. “Of all things Americans are, we are makers,” its narrator began, over footage of boys building sand castles. “With our strengths and our minds and spirit, we gather, we form and we fashion: makers and shapers and put-it-togetherers.”

Fifty years on, the American maker is in a bad way. Such is the state of American industry that waste paper is among the top 10 exports to China, behind nuclear equipment but far ahead of traditional mainstays like iron and steel. Manufacturing employment has fallen by a third in the last decade alone, with more than 40,000 factories shutting down. More Americans today are unemployed than are wage-earning “put-it-togetherers.” But the American romance with making actual things is going through a resurgence. In recent years, a nationwide movement of do-it-yourself aficionados has embraced the self-made object. Within this group is a quixotic band of soldering, laser-cutting, software-programming types who, defying all economic logic, contend that they can reverse America’s manufacturing slump. America will make things again, they say, because Americans will make things — not just in factories but also in their own homes, and not because it’s artisanal or faddish but because it’s easier, better for the environment and more fun.

What makes this notion something less than complete fantasy is the availability of new manufacturing machines that are cheap, simple and compact enough for small companies, local associations and even amateur hobbyists to own and operate. What once only big firms with hulking factories could fabricate can now be made in a basement or by e-mailing a design to an online factory-for-hire. These machines can produce all sorts of things, including plastic pencil holders, eyeglass frames and MP3 players.

Makers, as they call themselves, can’t compete with the long, orderly rows of workers from the poorer provinces of China or India who cut, stitch and solder bras, shoes and cellphones for pennies — or even with the hundreds of billions of dollars a year worth of stuff that continues to pour out of large, old-fashioned American factories. Their method involves creating “hacker space” cooperatives, where a few dozen members share a 3-D printer, a laser cutter and an oscilloscope and engage in collaborative manufacturing projects. Makers have created companies like Shapeways and CloudFab, which for a fee will manufacture small runs of products that you design. They are becoming kit makers like Bdeir, manufacturing building blocks that allow others to create things.

Neil Gershenfeld, an M.I.T. physicist who is an intellectual godfather to the maker movement, suggested to me that the new tools would over time change global industry as we know it. He predicts a wave of new competitors for the megacorporation that designs, makes and sells products all under one brand. Instead, Gershenfeld imagines a consumer of the near future downloading a design for a mobile phone through an iTunes-like portal; buying an add-on from another firm that tweaks the design; and having it printed at a neighborhood shop in a plastic shell of your choice.

The new personal factories may seem like crude toys for only the most die-hard D.I.Y.-ers. But in technology circles, they are talked about as a looming revolution that could change the way people work and create new opportunities for millions. Personal factories can perhaps be compared to the earliest personal computers — versions of their giant counterparts that are drastically cheaper but also slower and more clumsy. This futuristic vision is the one that the White House endorsed in a recent report on personal manufacturing: “Within a generation, you will have a hard time explaining to your grandchildren how you were able to live without your own fabber,” it said, using a popular word for the new manufacturing tools. “Personal-fabrication technologies present an opportunity for our nation to continue to lead the rest of the world in manufacturing, but in a new way.”

Of course, I can't say all that to people when they ask, so I typically answer - "Garage Inventor" - people who explore the possibilities of what they can dream up and build using their minds and tools, and the minds and tools of their friends...

If they are still paying attention at that point, I _attempt_ to explain that a Hackerspace is not a den of evil...

Manuals Fit for Mayhem... by Mail - Old Article on Loompanics

Dug this one out of the dustbins of history.

Manuals Fit for Mayhem--by Mail : Publications: Firm in Port Townsend, Wash., offers 800 titles and had sold the book on money laundering found in the home of jailed investment adviser Steven D. Wymer.

January 05, 1992|SONNI EFRON | TIMES STAFF WRITER

Under your Christmas tree, did you find gift-wrapped copies of "Gunrunning for Fun and Profit," "Take No Prisoners: Destroying Enemies With Dirty and Malicious Tricks," or "Above The Law: The Complete Guide to Obtaining Diplomatic Immunity" by an author called "Ambassador X"?

No? Then you must not be on Michael Hoy's mailing list.

Hoy, a former accountant once dubbed "Conan the Librarian," is the publisher from Hell. His company, Loompanics Unlimited of Port Townsend, Wash., claims to do a million-dollar-a-year mail order business selling 800 titles that stretch the First Amendment far enough to give the Founding Fathers heartburn.

Among its most outrageous offerings are such mayhem manuals as "Kitchen Improvised Plastic Explosives" ($7.95); "How to Get Anything on Anybody" ($30), a handy guide to bugging, tailing, tapping, tracing, snooping and reading other people's mail; "Mercenary's Tactical Handbook" ($12), and a six-volume treatise on "How to Kill" ($8 each).

The Loompanics catalogue is "an important source for anarchists, survivalists, iconoclasts, self-liberators, mercenaries, investigators, dropouts, researchers, and just about anybody interested in the strange, the useful, the arcane, the oddball, the unusual, the unique and the diabolical," Hoy declares.

"We are the lunatic fringe of the libertarian movement," he adds.

Hoy insists that his business is perfectly legal. In fact, he says the FBI, the CIA and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are among the 20,000 names on his mailing list, along with a number of famous mystery writers and Hollywood studios.

Still, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles did a double take when a Loompanics book entitled "How to Launder Money" was found during a search of the Newport Beach home of jailed investment adviser Steven D. Wymer.

Wymer is charged with civil and criminal securities fraud and money laundering in connection with the alleged loss of more than $100 million of his clients' money. The indictment does not say where the money is alleged to have gone, but Wymer's attorney, Michael Perlis, has said it was lost through bad investments and is not "in an offshore bank account waiting for Steven Wymer."

Federal prosecutors say the money-laundering manual was found in Wymer's dresser. Perlis said it belonged to Wymer's wife. "He did not read the book," Perlis told reporters.

"Put it this way: We're not accepting that it was hers," said Assistant U.S. Atty. Jean A. Kawahara.

Written from prison by one John Gregg, "How to Launder Money" was published in 1982 and has sold several thousand copies, Hoy said. But it has been out of print--and out of the catalogue--for five or six years and its advice is now dated, Hoy said.

"Some of those loopholes have been closed," he said.

The publisher would like to update and reissue it, but Gregg died behind bars. "We used to have to send his royalty checks to an attorney because he was in prison," Hoy said. "I think it was for money laundering or some kind of money shenanigans."

Hoy describes his personal philosophy as practical anarchism. "The basic idea is you don't have to overthrow the government if you can avoid it," he said. "Rather than being oriented toward crusades on issues, personal empowerment is what it's all about."

And if it's illegal, immoral or revolting, Hoy has a book about it--and possibly three of them.

Loompanics sells the gruesome "Physical Interrogation Techniques," which instructs on "how to torture information out of an unwilling subject," and the macabre "Silent Death by Uncle Fester," billed as "the most advanced book on household manufacture of poisons we have ever seen."

The weird, the wacky and the defiant are offered along with less benign fare. "How to Start Your Own Country," "Steal This Urine Test" and "The Computer Underground: Hacking, Piracy, Phreaking and Computer Crime" are offered next to neo-Nazi, satanic and misogynist tracts. Political musings range from "Confessions of a Holocaust Revisionist" to Friedrich Nietzsche's "The Antichrist," several volumes on Ayn Rand, and a wide selection on "tax avoision," or "how to get government parasites out of your pockets."

Loompanics sells about 150 of its own titles, with the balance from other underground publishers, including Los Angeles-based AMOK, a necro-punk, cult, gonzo and gore bookstore in the Silver Lake district. For $8.95, the "AMOK Fourth Dispatch" catalogue offers "a guide to the steamy undergrowths of the well-manicured fiction garden and a thorough directory of the extremes of information in print."

Officials with the FBI, the IRS and the Treasury Department either declined comment on possible investigations of Hoy or said his operation appears to fall safely within First Amendment protections. The publisher says he pays his taxes and has never been harassed by the authorities.

Last Earth Distro now carries Emergency Kits and Supplies!

Last Earth Distro now stocks emergency gear and preparedness kits! Thanks to our friends over at www.emergencyzone.com, a Northwest based company. Orders drop ship quickly from their Idaho warehouse, so sadly cannot be combined with your book orders. And until we get our shipping calculators adjusted, we may have to contact you to request additional postage funds if your order is heavy. All items should have the weight listed. Thanks for your continued support as we branch out a bit. Please let us know if you have any questions, or would like an exact shipping quote prior to ordering.