Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

ethanzuckerman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 185 posts

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#31

Post by nangz »

sbierwagen wrote: post #30
nangz wrote: post #16

Remember when MIT media Lab gave a civil disobedience award to bethann mclaughlin for some nebulous #metoo bs who since disgraced herself by LARPing as a fake Native American academic who died of covid? https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/twitter-account-emba... Remember when they chased Aaron Swartz to commit suicide and never gave him a civil disobedience award? Remember their extremely close links to Jeffrey E…

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry, but organisations need to be held to account.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#32

Post by saeranv »

mkeeter wrote: post #11
saeranv wrote: post #3

Awesome post. Who was the cranky researcher who developed the climate-controlled window system with the Linux box and python scripts? I want to do the same thing.

Sounds like something coming out of the Responsive Environments group ( https://resenv.media.mit.edu/ ).

Thanks for the link, I think I found our guy!

https://resenv.media.mit.edu/#Projects#personalized-building...

He published his thesis 2010, which aligns with when Ethan arrived at his office, and if you watch the video at that link, you can see the automated window control system at 1:47.

(Also the video is kind of hilarious and awesome in its own right).

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#33

Post by axaxs »

squarefoot wrote: post #27
axaxs wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason this reminds me. My old house, built in the 40s, had a mysterious small hatch in the closet floor across from the bathroom. One day I opened it and it was just a cutout of the floor, directly over the washing machine in the basement below. I'm not sure if that's lazy or genius, but it doesn't get much easier than that I guess.

Seems a nice way to send a basket with dirty clothes down without having to bag them or bring them through common areas. Was the basement in common with other people or it was all yours? Nice idea though, although hard to survive in modern times where the mere thought that a child could open it and fall down the basement onto the washing machine would deem it instantly.

This was a single family home, 3 bed 1 bath. Incidentally, the basement was smaller than the house itself, which I guess why the hatch wasn't in the bathroom itself(which was over empty crawlspace).

I'd never considered the child aspect, but that may explain why it had a lock on it(the turn up, push/pull, turn down kind, like on public restroom doors, unsure what they're called). Also, why it was so heavy. I wish I'd taken pics of it. From memory, it was probably 8"x8", about 2" thick. A small child could fit in it, but would probably have difficulty opening it.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#34

Post by cortesoft »

hardwaregeek wrote: post #15

Whenever I read stuff about this I get a sense of immense jealousy. MIT certainly has its issues but man, I'd love to be at a place where people exhibit so much joy and interest in creation. I've met my share of cool people but it truly does feel like MIT has this unique environment of technical skill and creativity.

You should join a maker group!

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#35

Post by cortesoft »

Animats wrote: post #7

It's very MIT. It's also an illustration of what went wrong with the "internet of things" concept. Sensors are easy today. Actuators are hard. Most "IoT" things can't do much. Try to buy a home power window. They exist. They're an exotic luxury home item. Even controllable home HVAC dampers are rare. It makes good sense to have a system where windows, fans, dampers, heaters, and compressors are all coordinated to max…

I use flair.co vents at my house, they work pretty well!

They do basically what you describe... open and close in rooms depending on temperature in the room, automatically. You can customize preferences for each room, and have a schedule for the day.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#36

Post by saeranv »

sbierwagen wrote: post #30
nangz wrote: post #16

Remember when MIT media Lab gave a civil disobedience award to bethann mclaughlin for some nebulous #metoo bs who since disgraced herself by LARPing as a fake Native American academic who died of covid? https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/twitter-account-emba... Remember when they chased Aaron Swartz to commit suicide and never gave him a civil disobedience award? Remember their extremely close links to Jeffrey E…

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think the parent comment is relevant since the blog post (and subsequent comments here) praises the hacker/anti-institutionalist mentality of the Media Lab. Yet when Schwartz practiced altruistic, civil disobedience in line with that sentiment, MIT's response was to sue him until he killed himself. They've done a lot of cool things that I'm into, but let's not whitewash history.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#37

Post by techer »

nangz wrote: post #31
sbierwagen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sorry, but organisations need to be held to account.

But rarely are.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#38

Post by Royalaid »

axaxs wrote: post #33
squarefoot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems a nice way to send a basket with dirty clothes down without having to bag them or bring them through common areas. Was the basement in common with other people or it was all yours? Nice idea though, although hard to survive in modern times where the mere thought that a child could open it and fall down the basement onto the washing machine would deem it instantly.

This was a single family home, 3 bed 1 bath. Incidentally, the basement was smaller than the house itself, which I guess why the hatch wasn't in the bathroom itself(which was over empty crawlspace). I'd never considered the child aspect, but that may explain why it had a lock on it(the turn up, push/pull, turn down kind, like on public restroom doors, unsure what they're called). Also, why it was so heavy. I wish I'd…

For what it's worth my grandfather has a laundry shoot in his home, but his is in the wall and is small enough that a child would have difficulty fitting through if they should reach.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#39

Post by mushbino »

anonymfus wrote: post #25
axaxs wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason this reminds me. My old house, built in the 40s, had a mysterious small hatch in the closet floor across from the bathroom. One day I opened it and it was just a cutout of the floor, directly over the washing machine in the basement below. I'm not sure if that's lazy or genius, but it doesn't get much easier than that I guess.

In typical Russian apartment washing machine is installed in bathroom.

And drying racks in sunroom.

Re: To the future occupants of my office at the MIT Media Lab

#40

Post by SQueeeeeL »

sbierwagen wrote: post #29
SQueeeeeL wrote: post #4

There's something so beautiful about a place so dysfunctional that you can't even replace standard office equipment; I know it was alluded to in the article, but in case anyone forgot, the MIT Media Lab played a part in Jeffery Epstein and he often leveraged it for good PR https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/business/mit-media-lab-je...

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It was heavily alluded too in the article, I wanted to give readers full context, because I don't think Ethan wanted to explicitly call them out in his blog...

If the mods have an issue with this comment I can take it down

Post reply on HN